Ghost Sword (2 page)

“Oh?” said Kylon. 

“You are so concerned about your slaves now,” said Ramphias, a note of mockery in his voice. “That Ghost madwoman corrupted your mind with foolish, outlandish ideas. House Kardamnos now has more freedmen than slaves.”

“You were at the Agora of Nations, Ramphias,” said Kylon. “You know that Ghost madwoman saved our lives. Are we Istarish emirs or the sons of Old Kyrace? Shall we take delight in brutalizing our slaves as the Istarish do?” 

“Or shall we wait upon them hand and foot,” said Ramphias, “and bring them wine while they recline upon cushions? As you seem to prefer.”

“Does this have a point, Ramphias?” said Kylon. “While I am sure others have nothing better to do than to listen to your tedious rhetoric, I have duties.”

“You should not speak to him, so,” said Xenarro. “He is the thalarchon of the ninth fleet.” 

Again the younger man’s emotions remained unfailingly placid. 

“And the High Seat is an Archon of the Assembly of the Kyracian people,” said Thalastre. “One office carries more respect than another.” 

“My property was killed under your roof, High Seat,” said Ramphias. “I shall bring this matter before the Assembly.”

Kylon shrugged. “Very well. We shall report the death to the Assembly. The murder was under my roof, so it is my responsibility, and I shall pay you the full market price for the slave. Double, even, if it will salve your wounded pride.” 

“Very well,” said Ramphias. “But the price of the slave is irrelevant…”

“What was her name?” said Kylon.

“What?” said Ramphias. “Whose name?”

“The slave woman,” said Kylon. “The one who was murdered. What was her name?”

Irritation flushed through Ramphias’s emotional sense. “I fail to see how that is relevant. She was one of my cooks, and I needed to know nothing else about her. That is…”

“Anthippa,” said Xenarro, his voice quiet. A strange sense went through his emotional aura. He felt almost…tired. “Her name was Anthippa.” 

“Her name is not the point,” said Ramphias. “Her death is indicative of a larger problem.” 

“Which is?” said Kylon.

Ramphias pointed a finger at Kylon. “That you, my lord High Seat and Archon, no longer have the necessary spine to act as a capable leader. That you are unable to lead the Kyracian people effectively. That you have been…infected with the foreign ideas of this Ghost madwoman who seems to have infatuated you so.” A deep pulse of anger went through Thalastre’s sense. “That you are no longer fit for the office of Archon.”

“Ah,” said Kylon. “So that is what this is about, hmm? Never mind that a woman has been murdered, and that a killer wanders uncaught through our city.”

Ramphias’s lip curled in disdain. “You have gone soft, Kylon.” The anger from Thalastre redoubled. “I will raise this matter in the Assembly when we sit this afternoon. They will see as I do. Perhaps I will convince them that you are no longer fit to be High Seat of House Kardamnos.” 

“I am sure,” said Thalastre, voice calm despite the anger Kylon sensed simmering within her, “that they will hold the murder of slaves as unimportant as you do. Given how many of those men and women were raised by slaves, taught by slaves, and looked after by slaves. I am certain that they shall take their deaths just as lightly as you do, and will strive with might and main to heed the words of a dead nobleman’s bastard son.” She shrugged. “Though I know little enough of politics.” 

“You ought to control your wife’s tongue, Lord High Seat,” said Ramphias with disdain. “It could wash the barnacles from the hull of my ship. Else…”

“I warned you,” said Kylon, “that if you did not refrain from insulting Lady Thalastre, that I would challenge you.”

Ramphias look taken aback. “What? You are a stormdancer, and I am not. You would crush me in a moment.”

“Then I will fight you without sorcery,” said Kylon. 

“Perhaps this is unwise, brother,” said Xenarro. “To challenge the High Seat so openly. I…”

“No!” snarled Ramphias. “You want a fight, you arrogant whelp? Fine! Your sister, now, she was a High Seat. She knew what it meant to be an Archon of the Assembly! She would not have let herself listen to counsels of weakness.”

“If she had been willing to listen to counsels of weakness,” said Kylon, “then perhaps she would not have led New Kyre in to a ruinous war, a war our nation only barely survived. Perhaps she would not have perished in Marsis!”

He felt a wave of disgusted exasperation. He had expected his enemies to challenge him, but he did not have time for a fool like Ramphias. Someone powerful had killed Anthippa, and Ramphias was too blind to realize it. It would have taken a blow of surpassing power to sever the poor woman’s head from her neck in one strike. There had been blood spattered everywhere, yet Kylon had seen no footprints, and his guards had examined every man, woman, and child within the ziggurat, yet had found no one with bloodstains. And there had been the strange sorcery Kylon had sensed in the moment before he found the body. 

The murderer was still on the loose, and Kylon had to waste words with his imbecilic half-brother. 

“And if you had proven stronger in Marsis,” said Ramphias, “then perhaps the city would a Kyracian colony today, and your sister would yet live!”

And that was enough.

“Ramphias, bastard of House Kardamnos and thalarchon of the ninth fleet,” said Kylon, “as High Seat of House Kardamnos, I accuse you of offering grievous insult and offense to myself, to House Kardamnos, and to my wife. You will select a time and a place for a duel and I shall meet you there, or else I shall denounce you as a dishonorable coward before the Assembly of the Kyracian people.”

A stunned silence fell over the hall. Even the slaves froze in their duties.

“So be it, you blustering pup!” said Ramphias. “I shall…”

“Enough.” 

The woman’s voice was quiet, but it cut through Ramphias’s shouting nonetheless.

Ramphias turned, and his face went tight with sudden alarm. 

A young woman cloaked in robes the color of the sea stood in the doors to the hall. A bronze amulet in the shape of three eyes hung from a chain around her neck, the metal corroded and green as if from seawater. The woman’s eyes changed color as Kylon looked at her, cycling from the blue of a calm sea to the iron-gray of a storm and back again, punctuated from time to time with the black of a furious winter storm. 

The woman was a priestess of the Surge, the oracle of the Kyracian people. 

“Kylon of House Kardamnos, Archon of the Assembly,” said the priestess.

“I am here,” said Kylon. The Surge rarely intervened in the internal politics of New Kyre, but when she did, her word was law, and those who failed to heed her warnings came to a bad end. The Surge had summoned Kylon once before, after Thalastre had been wounded and near death from the touch of a necromantic weapon. If he had not come at her summons, if he had not heeded her words, the undead sorcerer Rhames would have used the Ascendant Bloodcrystal and plunged the world into a new era of darkness and death

The priestess’s appearance alarmed him far more than anything else that had happened today. 

“The Surge summons you to her Sanctuary,” said the priestess. “She bids you to leave whatever business is before you and to come at once. If you do not, Kylon of House Kardamnos, grave danger awaits you and your kin.” 

“I will come,” said Kylon. He turned to his wife. “Thalastre, I leave matters in your hands until I return. Ramphias, Xenarro, please see yourselves out.” 

“But…” sputtered Ramphias, looking back and forth between Kylon and the priestess, his frustration clear. He had hoped to force the issue, drawing Kylon out before the Assembly. But for all the ruthlessness of New Kyre’s politics, no one would interfere with a man who had been summoned by the Surge, lest they draw the oracle’s displeasure.

At least until he had finished the Surge’s task. 

“Go, husband,” said Thalastre. She offered a polite smile to Ramphias and Xenarro. “I am sure your half-brothers will manage to find the door on their own, eventually.” 

“Lead on,” said Kylon, and the priestess led him from the Tower of Kardamnos.

###

A short time later, Kylon climbed to the crest of the Pyramid of Storm, the massive tiered ziggurat rising from the heart of New Kyre. 

The pyramid’s crest towered a thousand feet above the ground below, and Kylon had a splendid view of the city. From here he saw the massive fortified harbor, the western sea stretching away in an endless blue-green sheet. He saw the ziggurats of the noble Houses rising from the city like fists of gray stone, saw the tenements encircling the city where the poor and foreigners lived. 

And he saw the ruins of the Surge’s half-rebuilt Sanctuary. Once the small stone temple had filled the Pyramid’s crest, until the Moroaica’s terrible spells had torn it apart in a blaze of sorcery. The slaves were hard at work rebuilding it, supervised by masons. 

The Surge herself stood near the stairs, watching the work, her white robe rippling in the wind. She looked no more than middle-aged, her iron-gray hair hanging in a curtain around her head. Yet Kylon felt the massive arcane power around her, sorcery beyond his ability to comprehend. Her mantle of power let her view the storm of the world, let her observe far-off events and glimpses of the future. 

“Kylon of House Kardamnos,” murmured the Surge. “You have come to us again.”

Her voice was eerie, as if three voices spoke from her mouth at once. One of the voices belonged to a young girl. The second to a woman in her prime. The third to an aged crone, heavy and bent with years.

Kylon bowed. “My lady Surge.”

To his surprise, she laughed. “A peculiar title. I am simply the Surge, for that is the nature of the power I bear. To see the surges in the currents of time, the ebb and flow of fate as driven by the winds of the storm of the world.” She tilted her head to the side, gray hair brushing the shoulder of her white robe. “You are not glad to see me.”

“No,” said Kylon. “When last we spoke, your counsel led me to the blue bloodcrystal that saved Thalastre. For that, I am grateful beyond the measure of words, and would reward you if material wealth meant anything to you. When you last summoned me, I thought it had to do with Thalastre…but it was to stop Rhames and the return of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun. So I fear the reason you have summoned me now.”

“An honest answer,” said the Surge in her threefold voice, “and a wise one. You have many enemies, Kylon of House Kardamnos, both ones that you know and ones that you do not, and they circle about you like wolves.” 

“Ramphias and the others?” said Kylon. He sighed. “The Assembly traditionally turns upon successful commanders…and I was successful in battle, and successful in negotiating a peace with Lord Titus and the Emperor. I expect the Assembly to turn upon me any day. I have only a few more months in my term as Archon, and should I complete it unscathed I plan to withdraw from politics and devote myself to the affairs of my House.”

“A sound plan,” said the Surge, “but you face a far greater foe than your traitorous blood.”

“Who, then?” said Kylon. 

“Something that is a foe to all of New Kyre,” said the Surge, “and indeed all of mortal men.”

Kylon felt a chill. “Another sorceress of power like the Moroaica?” 

“No,” said the Surge. “But something she has made possible. Do you recall the rift she opened above the city?”

“How could I possibly forget?” said Kylon. “It was only two months ago. And I shall remember that day until the moment of my death.” The armies of golden dead had almost destroyed New Kyre, and the Assembly had received reports of cities destroyed and ravaged in other parts of the world, and rumors held that Istarinmul had fallen into chaos, that the eastern provinces of the Empire had risen in revolt against the Emperor, convinced that the Ashbringers had returned to overthrow the Empire. “But the Moroaica was defeated. Caina Amalas slew her, and her rift was closed. And we must now recover and rebuild.”

“Yes,” said the Surge. “And we must live with the consequences of what the Moroaica has done. For she carved a great wound into the walls between the worlds, and wounds leave scars. Give me your hand.”

Kylon hesitated. “I will of course obey…though I wish to know why.”

The Surge offered a humorless smile. “I have no designs upon you. You are a married man. And I shall not harm you. Save for this. I will give you knowledge that you will wish you did not possess.” 

Kylon nodded and offered his left hand. If she changed her mind and decided to harm him, he would prefer that she leave his sword hand intact. The Surge’s fingers, cold and bony, closed around his palm, and she sensed her powerful sorcerous aura wrapping around him.

“Now,” murmured the Surge, “look above us.”

Kylon inclined his head. It was a clear day, with billowy white clouds floating here and there, throwing patches of shadow over the city. Some birds flew overhead, but otherwise he saw nothing remarkable.

“For what, honored Surge,” said Kylon, “am I looking?”

“The scar,” said the Surge. “Which you will see when you see through my eyes.” 

Her arcane aura strengthened, and Kylon felt some of it pour into him.

And then, all of a sudden, he saw the rift of golden fire reappear in the sky.

He stiffened in alarm, his free hand twitching toward his sword. The rift blazed overhead, just as it did on the day of the golden dead. Then it vanished from his sight, shrinking as it had when Caina had slain the Moroaica. Yet after it shrank, a…distortion remained. A ripple, a mirage. The sky almost looked…thin. Like a garment worn threadbare.

Kylon had the suspicion his brain was trying to interpret something the human eye had not been meant to see. 

“What is it?” he said at last.

“A scar,” said the Surge. She released his hand, but Kylon could still see the strange distortion in the sky overhead. He also saw smaller distortions scattered over the city.

“From the rift, the gate the Moroaica opened,” said Kylon. 

“You speak truly,” said the Surge. “For the rift was a wound in the walls between worlds, and wounds can close. But a severe wound will leave a scar. And a scar is weaker than the surrounding flesh.”