Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 05 - Ghost in the Stone (29 page)

“Did you jam the portcullis?” said Caina.

“Aye,” said Corvalis. “First two guards went down easy enough. The Gatewarden, though…he was a challenge. Poisoned his blades, too.” He chuckled. “Fortunately, he was smart enough to carry the antidote with him.” He looked around. “What now?”

“Most of the assassins went to the Palace of Splendors,” said Caina. “The rest are fighting the Sarbians. We’ve got to get to the Palace and warn Theodosia.”

“Then,” said Corvalis, “we help Marzhod’s Sarbians finish off the Kindred, and head to the Palace.” 

“Aye,” said Caina. She grinned behind the mask. “The Kindred are focused on the Sarbians. They won’t expect someone to attack them from behind.” 

Corvalis nodded. “Let’s give them an unpleasant surprise.”

She followed him into the corridor and froze. 

The Kindred Elder stood thirty feet away, bloody swords in either hand. His cold gray eyes narrowed as they focused upon her. 

“Ah,” he said. “The noble’s daughter. A Ghost nightfighter. I should have suspected.” He lifted his swords. “Time enough to rectify that mistake before I flee.”

“You’re not fleeing anywhere,” said Corvalis. 

“And you,” said the Elder. “I think I recognize you. One of Decius Aberon’s little bastards, aren’t you? I’m not surprised you ended up with a collection of fools like the Ghosts. A fortunate development nonetheless. I’ll send your head to the Elder of Artifel.” 

“I doubt he’d appreciate a hunk of rotting meat,” said Corvalis. “But you’re not going anywhere. I jammed the portcullis.”

The Elder went motionless, his expression blank. 

“You can’t flee to the Temple of Living Flame,” said Caina, “and the tunnel to the Ring of Valor is full of angry Sarbians. Even with that bloodcrystal chained to your neck, you’re not fighting past that many men on your own. Because by the time you get back to the tunnel, the assassins you left behind will all be dead.” 

The Elder lifted his chin with disdain. 

“I suggest you surrender,” said Caina. “There are lots of things we want to know.”

“Very well,” said the Elder. 

He dropped his swords, the blades clanging.

Caina had not expected him to actually surrender. 

“Ghost!” shouted Corvalis, and Caina felt the faint tingle of sorcery.

The Elder was drawing on the bloodcrystal’s power. 

Caina threw herself to the side as the Elder’s sinewy hand blurred. A black throwing knife hurtled past Caina’s ear with terrific speed and struck the wall with enough force to leave a crack in the stone. Caina caught her balance and yanked the daggers from her boots, but the Elder was faster. The Kindred leader snatched up his discarded swords, and charged her in a sorcery-enhanced blur.

Corvalis met his attack with a shout, his sword and dagger flying. The two men traded a dozen blows in half as many heartbeats. Yet the Elder wielded his swords with the skill of long experience and practice, and soon Corvalis found himself forced on the defensive. The Elder was the best swordsman Caina had ever seen, better even than Naelon Icaraeus, and he was going to defeat Corvalis.

Unless Caina took action. 

She raced to the side and flung a knife. The Elder tried to twist aside, but he wore no armor, and the blade buried itself in his thigh. The assassin stumbled and Corvalis stabbed, his dagger tearing a furrow along his foe’s ribs. The Elder danced back, yanking the knife from his leg, and Caina saw the blood flow stop as the bloodcrystal’s stored life energy healed the wound. 

“Foolish children,” said the Elder. He lifted his arms as the wound across his ribs healed. “You have no weapons that can harm me. Even now, the feeble wounds you have dealt me close. I am an Elder of the Kindred, and I killed with impunity long before your fathers ever lay with your mothers. I am the hunter, the terror in the darkness! You think to kill me? As well might the sheep think to overthrow the wolf! Lay down your weapons, fools, and I will kill you without…”

“Oh, shut up,” said Caina. 

The Elder blinked in surprised astonishment. Caina doubted few people had used that tone to the Elder’s face. 

“You’re not some terror in the darkness,” said Caina, “you’re a pompous old man with a minor bloodcrystal strapped to your neck. Yes, I know what that is. Take away the bloodcrystal, and you’ll bleed to death like any other man.” 

Corvalis gave her a shallow nod as he understood.

The Elder’s lips peeled back from his teeth in terrible fury and he shot forward. Corvalis met his attack, sword and dagger working in concert. Again the Elder soon had the younger man on the retreat. Caina circled around them, trying to throw another knife, but the Elder kept Corvalis between them.

She realized his plan. He would drive Corvalis against the jammed portcullis and kill him once the younger man ran out of room to fall back. Then he would deal with Caina. 

Unless they killed him first.

The Elder lunged at Corvalis, and Caina had an opening. A knife flew from her fingers and buried itself in the Elder’s side. The Elder stumbled with a hiss of pain, and Corvalis struck. The dagger in his left hand plunged into the older assassin’s right shoulder. The Elder staggered, and Caina expected the old assassin to go on the defensive.

Instead he charged again at Corvalis. At first his right arm was slower than his left, but in a matter of heartbeats, the wound in his shoulder closed, the bloodcrystal pulsing with pale light. Soon the Elder fought as if he had not been wounded at all.  

Caina had to get that bloodcrystal away from him. Or could they wear down his reserves? A bloodcrystal could only store a limited amount of stolen life force. If she inflicted enough wounds upon him, sooner or later the bloodcrystal would run dry. Yet the Elder would kill Corvalis long before his bloodcrystal drained, and Caina could not face him alone. 

She remembered fighting Naelon Icaraeus’s mercenaries on the rooftops of Marsis. They had worn bracers that protected them from weapons of normal steel, but Caina’s ghostsilver dagger had been able to penetrate those protections. Could the dagger do the same to the Elder? Maglarion had survived a lethal wound from a ghostsilver-tipped spear…but Maglarion had been linked to a bloodcrystal of tremendous size and power. Would the Elder’s bloodcrystal give him similar protection?

It was time to find out.

Caina darted forward, ghostsilver dagger in her right hand, a throwing knife in her left. The Elder and Corvalis wheeled around each other, and Caina threw the knife in her left hand. The Elder stepped back, his right-hand sword blurring. Caina’s spinning blade clattered to the floor. The ancient assassin recovered his balance and renewed his attacks on Corvalis, but his side was open for a half-second, and he did not bother to guard against Caina. No doubt he thought his bloodcrystal would heal any wounds she inflicted. 

She raked ghostsilver dagger across his right forearm. Even from the brief contact, the dagger’s hilt grew warm, and the bloodcrystal at the Elder’s throat made a high-pitched keening noise, like metal placed under too much stress. The Elder stumbled back with a shocked scream, the cut upon his forearm smoking like a wound from a hot iron. Surprise lowered his guard, and Caina struck again, opening another gash upon his ribs. Again the Elder bellowed, and Caina threw herself out of way as he stabbed. 

“What trickery is this?” spat the Elder. “Has the Magisterium betrayed me? Did they give you that weapon?”

Caina laughed. “Truly? All these decades you’ve been the killer in the darkness and you’ve never once encountered a ghostsilver weapon? Do the Kindred permit any random fool to become an Elder?”

A stunned laugh burst from Corvalis’s lips. 

The Elder snarled and attacked her, but Corvalis intercepted the blows. The older assassin attacked with fury and skill, but his right arm no longer moved as fast as his left. The wounds her ghostsilver dagger had left were not healing as quickly as the wounds dealt by normal steel. Caina hit him with another throwing knife, making him stumble, and stabbed the ghostsilver dagger into the opening. Her blade dug into his hip, and again the Elder bellowed in fury. Corvalis drove his sword into the Elder’s belly, and Caina felt a surge of exultation. They were winning…

The Elder snatched something from his belt. Something glittered in his fingers, and Caina realized that he held a glass vial. 

A glass vial full of swirling dark fluid. 

“Corvalis!” shouted Caina. “Watch…”

The Elder flung the vial at the floor, and it exploded in a rippling plume of black smoke. Corvalis caught in the smoke in the face, and he stumbled back, coughing and hacking. Caina was at the edge of the plume, and even the little bit she inhaled made her throat close up, made her eyes water and burn. 

The Elder seemed unaffected. She expected him to attack Corvalis, to finish him off before the younger man recovered.

Instead the Elder spun to face her, swords drawn back to stab. 

She had caused him more pain, after all. 

She ducked under his first thrust and sidestepped past the slash of his other sword. He was not moving as fast as the beginning of their fight. Perhaps all his bloodcrystal’s power had gone to heal his injuries. But even without his enhanced speed, he was still fast enough to kill her. He drove her across the corridor until her back thumped against the wall. 

The Elder drew back his swords to finish the fight.

Caina snatched her cloak with her free hand and threw it at him. 

The Elder raised his right sword to block, his left sword still angled to kill her. 

But steel could not touch the peculiar shadow-cloth, and it passed through his sword and draped over his face. The Elder bellowed in fury and Caina sidestepped, his left sword clanging against the wall. She lunged at him, hoping to land a killing blow with the ghostsilver dagger, and the Elder jerked back. 

Instead of meeting his chest, her blade slammed into his left hand.

His sword and several of his fingers fell to the ground, smoke rising from his ruined hand.

The Elder howled like an enraged animal, and his boot slammed into Caina’s gut. She fell hard to the stone floor, trying to catch her breath. The Elder loomed over her, gray eyes bright with crazed fury, and his sword came up for the kill.

Corvalis intercepted him.

The Elder whirled to face the new threat. For a moment the sheer fury of Corvalis’s attack drove the Elder back, but the Elder was the better swordsman, even wounded and fighting with only one blade. Corvalis’s momentum played out, and the Elder counterattacked. Step by step Corvalis retreated, face grim.

The Elder drove him into the room of machines and glass tanks.

Glass tanks filled with acid. 

Caina staggered to her feet, wheezing and coughing. The Elder deflected a thrust, and the blow knocked Corvalis’s sword against one of the glass tanks. For a terrible moment Caina thought the tank would shatter, that Corvalis would disappear beneath gallons of hissing acid. 

But the tank only chimed. The glass was far too thick for a single sword blow to shatter.

The glass pipes connecting the tanks, though…

A mad idea came to Caina. 

She drew a throwing knife and took several deep breaths, trying to ignore the throbbing ache in her chest. The Elder drove Corvalis back, pushing him towards a gap between the machines and the wall. Corvalis would be trapped, and the fight would be over. 

A glass pipe ran over the Elder’s head, connecting two of the acid tanks. 

Caina took one final breath, drew herself up, and flung the knife.

The blade slammed into the pipe and tore a chunk of glass from its underside. A jet of green acid burst from the pipe, spraying the floor.

And the Elder’s shoulders and neck and head.

His face and clothing went up in snarling white flames, and a horrible scream came from his throat. The Elder spun and staggered into the corridor, hissing yellow smoke rising from his face and chest. She glimpsed his glaring gray eyes even as the flesh of his face dissolved around them. He lurched towards her, and Caina found herself too horrified by the ghastly spectacle to move.

Corvalis appeared behind him, sword in both hands. 

The Elder’s burning head jerked off his shoulders and rolled across the floor, still smoking. His body crumpled as his clothing burned, revealing horrid acid burns across his shoulders and chest. 

The smell was dreadful.

“Gods,” said Corvalis, wiping the sweat from his brow. “We killed a Kindred Elder. Gods. I wasn’t sure they could be killed.”

“Any man can be killed,” said Caina, her voice weak, “if you stab him a dozen times, pour a tank of acid over him, and then cut off his head.” 

“He’s…not going to come back, is he?” said Corvalis. “That bloodcrystal thing can’t heal this, can it?”

“I doubt it,” said Caina, stepping around the smoking lump of the Elder’s head. She picked up her shadow-cloak and slung it over her shoulders, pulling up the cowl. “But just to make sure…” The Elder’s torque lay a few inches from his body, the green crystal glowing dimly.

Caina plunged her ghostsilver dagger into the bloodcrystal.

It shivered like a dying thing, the green light flaring, and crumbled into smoking black ash. 

“He’s not coming back,” said Caina. She braced herself against the stench and pushed aside his ruined shirt, examining his belt. 

Corvalis snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re looting his corpse.”

“That’s exactly what I am doing,” said Caina. A number of small pouches hung on his belt, and she searched them. She found several more of those glass vials and claimed them for herself. “The records of the Cyrioch family are locked up in his desk. If we can get our hands on those records…ah, here we are.”

She tugged an elaborate steel key from one of his pouches. 

Caina’s fingers tightened around it. At last she held the answers she sought. 

“What the devil is that smell?” 

A dozen Sarbian mercenaries strode down the corridor, their sand-colored robes speckled in blood, scimitars in hand. Marzhod walked at their head, a loaded crossbow in his arms. He looked pleased with himself. The attack through the tunnel must have gone well.