Ghost Sword (3 page)

“You said it was a scar in the walls between the worlds,” said Kylon. “Between which worlds? There is only one world.”

“No,” said the Surge. “There are many worlds beyond count scattered among the stars. But that is not your concern. For our purposes, there are only two worlds. This world, the world of flesh and blood and material things, and…”

“And the netherworld,” said Kylon, understanding. “The Moroaica opened the gate to the netherworld so she could enter physically.” The Surge nodded. “And gates swing both ways, do they not? If the Moroaica could have used the gate to enter the netherworld, then something could have used the gate to enter our world from the netherworld.” 

Suddenly he remembered the strange sensation he had felt while pursuing the vision of Andromache, so similar to the summoned elemental he had fought outside of Caer Magia.   

Had something from the netherworld killed Anthippa?

“But the gate was closed,” said Kylon.

“And it left a scar,” said the Surge. “A scar is easier to reopen than flesh that has never been injured.”

“Which means that a sorcerer would find it easier to summon something from the netherworld,” said Kylon. 

“The converse is also true,” said the Surge. 

Kylon blinked. “It…would be easier for something to come from the netherworld.” The Surge nodded, her gray hair dancing in the wind. “But why? Some of the most powerful stormsingers can summon elementals, yes. But I always thought a spirit had to be summoned from the netherworld, that they didn’t come here of their own accord.”

“They could not,” said the Surge. “Most spirits had no interest in the mortal world. Powerful elemental princes hibernate here when they feel the need, and sometimes bring their vassals with them. But most spirits and elementals have little concern with mortals. Save for those who do have an interest in us.”

“An interest,” said Kylon. “What kind of interest?” 

“The same interest,” said the Surge, “that a wolf has in sheep.”

Kylon blinked. “You mean there are spirits that prey upon us?”

“They have many names. The Nighmarians would call them demons,” said the Surge. “The Kyracian people name them the akarthatai, the corrupting spirits. The Anshani and the Cyricans name them efreeti. What do you know about the nagataaru, Kylon of House Kardamnos?”

“Nagataaru?” said Kylon. For a moment it was a nonsense word, a string of gibberish syllables. Then it stirred a distant memory in the back of his mind, of the tutors Andromache had hired after their parents had been assassinated and she had become the High Seat of the House. “They’re…a story, an Istarish ghost story, I think.” Old histories flickered in his mind. “Something about the Demon Princes that used to rule what is now Istarinmul, before the ancestors of the Istarish came north after the destruction of ancient Maat. The nagataaru were their servants, or their masters. I cannot remember which.” 

“The Demon Princes of old would have said the nagataaru were their servants,” said the Surge, “but the nagataaru thought differently. They prey upon us, Kylon of House Kardamnos, feast upon misery and despair and horror. They travel from world to world, feeding and growing fat, and moving on once all the prey have been slain. Long have they sought to enter our world. Sometimes they do, in the north of the Empire and the barbarian lands beyond, where the walls between the worlds are thinner.”

“The Ulkaari witchfinders,” said Kylon, remembering the tattoos he had seen upon Caina’s slain lover Corvalis. “That’s what they hunt. Renegade sorcerers and creatures like this nagataaru.” 

“Creatures of the sort,” said the Surge, “that slew your half-brother’s slave.” 

“You saw that,” said Kylon.

“Of course,” said the Surge. “It was not your enemies that slew Anthippa. Rather it was the enemies of all mortal men. A nagataaru has come to New Kyre. It slipped through the damage in the walls between the worlds, and it will turn the city into its hunting ground unless it is stopped.” 

“Unless I stop it, you mean,” said Kylon.

“Yes,” said the Surge. “Of all the stormdancers in New Kyre, Kylon of House Kardamnos, you are the best-suited for this task. Few of your fellows would recognize the danger. And few of them would be capable of hunting the creature, if they even saw the peril.”

“Why?” said Kylon.

The Surge’s smile was cold. “Because of the Balarigar.”

He remembered Ramphias’s mocking words. “Because she has tainted me with her foreign ideas.” 

“By heeding those foreign ideas,” said the Surge, “you are still alive, you saved the life of Thalastre, and you helped save New Kyre and all the world from the Moroaica’s great work. It is well you listened to her, Kylon of House Kardamnos.”

“Fine,” said Kylon, rolling his shoulders. This talk of worlds and omens was beyond him. He was a soldier, and the Surge had given him a task that suited him best. “How do I destroy the nagataaru?” 

“You cannot,” said the Surge. “It is a spirit and therefore immortal. However, to act in the mortal world, it needs to possess a physical body.”

“As the Moroaica possessed Caina’s body, as Scorikhon tried to possess Andromache,” said Kylon. “Then I must kill an innocent to stop the nagataaru?”

“The nagataaru’s host is not an innocent,” said the Surge. “The spirit will seek out a willing partner, one with whom it can form a symbiosis. One that would prove a willing partner, rather than an unwilling vessel.” 

“There are half a million people in New Kyre,” said Kylon. “Any one of them could house the nagataaru.”

“You will be able to see it,” said the Surge, pointing at the sky. 

The rippling distortion of the scar filled his eyes.

“I can still see it,” said Kylon.

“You can,” said the Surge, “and you shall continue to do so. The gift I have given you is irrevocable. You will always be able to see the scars to the netherworld…and you shall always be able to note the presence of spirits, nagataaru or otherwise.”

“I see,” said Kylon, disturbed. That would be useful, to be sure, especially if more of these nagataaru creatures came through the scar and into the city. Though he wondered what else the Surge could do to him without his knowledge. “If there is a battle to be fought, I will not shy from it.” 

“Go with my blessing, and may the gods of storm and sea watch over you,” said the Surge. “Though there is one other question you wish to ask me, is there not?”

Kylon hesitated, considered for a moment. 

Then he sighed.

“Caina Amalas of the Ghosts,” he said. “What will happen to her? What the Ghosts and the Emperor did to her was unjust.”

“It is not a just world,” said the Surge.

“Nevertheless,” said Kylon.

For a moment the Surge said nothing, gazing into the air.

“Her fate is in her own hands,” said the Surge. “The Balarigar may destroy herself, for grief poisons her heart. Or she may press on, for many lives are in her hands. Very many lives. And she faces as great a danger as you do. For the nagataaru have willing allies in lands other than New Kyre. That is all I can tell you.”

Kylon nodded, put it from his mind, and left the Pyramid.

He had work to do.

###

After night fell, Kylon saw Thalastre to bed, donned his armor and a cloak, and belted his sword of storm-forged steel about his waist.

And then he went alone into the night.

Once, the thought of doing so would never have crossed his mind. He was a noble of New Kyre and a son of House Kardamnos, and such a man did not wander the streets without his guards. Yet the Surge had been right. His encounters with Caina Amalas had changed him, and some of her strange, sideways perspective of the world had colored his thoughts. Including her knack for donning disguises and strolling undetected into the strongholds of her enemies.

And once again, he found that she was right. 

No one recognized him. He was just another swordsman in a cloak, a man on an errand of his own, and no one troubled him. The sensation was disorienting. He was one of the most powerful men in the city, and had been a noble of House Kardamnos all his life. Anonymity was something new to him. It was almost intoxicating – he could stroll into a wine house and order a drink and play dice with mercenaries and caravan guards, and no one would recognize him. Of course, his mannerisms and speech would give him away. He did not have Caina’s gift for changing his accent, for transforming himself into a different person through posture and gesture and phrase. 

He paused in an alley and extended his arcane senses. The emotions of the nearby crowd washed through him, a confusing jumble of hope and depression and lust and exhaustion and hunger and simple boredom, but by long practice he blocked them out. Kylon focused on the distortions over the city, the scars left by the Moroaica’s mighty sorcery. 

He was near the vast maze of New Kyre’s docks, north of the Agora of Nations and close to the Agora of Fishmongers. He sensed the largest scar over the Pyramid of Storm, but there were smaller, fading ones scattered through the city’s poorer districts. At first he thought they were echoes from the larger rift over the Pyramid, but he realized they were traces of the nagataaru’s passage.

Like footprints. The creature did not belong in this world, and its presence left distortions in its wake, just as waves rippled out from a ship upon the sea. And if Kylon kept his wits about him, he could use those distortions to find the nagataaru and kill its host.

He followed the distortions across the city until he came to New Kyre’s northern gate and the Agora of the Free Cities. The road from the gate led to the various squabbling city-states of the coast, to Teslyn and Anub-kha and Ulmanost and Catekharon and the others, and endless caravans came through the gate carrying a countless array of goods. Caravanserais and wine houses ringed the Agora, and thousands of foreigners came through here on a daily basis. 

It was the perfect place for a creature like the nagataaru to hunt its prey. No one would notice a few missing foreigners. If some caravan guards went missing, or a foreign prostitute vanished, the magistrates would take note of it, but expend little effort to find the killer. 

But New Kyre was Kylon’s city, and he would not permit a nagataaru to prey upon those within its walls, foreign-born or not. 

The distortions led him to a seedy-looking wine shop, a rickety wooden roof over walls of cracked adobe. It looked like the sort of place where one could buy any sort of vice or hire thugs willing to perform any task. Yet the building was curiously silent. Kylon heard the sounds of drinking and laughing and occasionally fighting from the other wine shops and brothels, but nothing but silence from the shop in front of him. 

He loosened his sword in its scabbard, summoned sorcerous power, and stepped through the wine shop’s door. 

Inside the common room looked like many others he had seen, with trestle tables and benches. A long bar ran the length of one wall, with heavy wine casks sitting upon wooden stands. A fire crackled in the hearth, more for illumination than for heat in New Kyre’s warm nights.

And the room was deserted.

Kylon blinked in surprise. The door had been unlocked, and the taverns around the Agora of the Free Cities were overflowing with merchants and travelers. He would have expected a crowd.

Not empty silence. 

He extended his arcane senses, seeking for the distortions that marked the nagataaru’s passage. The wine shop crawled with them, and a flicker of emotions brushed against Kylon’s senses.

Fear. Utter terror. 

And something else, a peculiar tangle of gloating exultation and fury and madness tangled together in a burning knot, bound with something alien and strange.

The nagataaru, perhaps? 

It was coming from beneath his boots.

Kylon crossed the common room and drew his sword, the storm-forged steel glinting in the firelight. He found the door to the kitchen, and beyond the door to the cellar. Behind the door he saw a worn set of stone steps descending into the earth, the pale light of a lantern flickering ahead. 

And a familiar smell flooded his nostrils.

Spilled blood. Quite a lot of it, in fact. 

He descended the stairs, both his ears and his arcane senses straining to detect any sign of foes. The stairs ended in a broad cellar, the ceiling supported by rafters and thick brick pillars, the floor hard-packed dirt. It was deeper and wider than Kylon expected, and in the far wall he saw a tunnel leading into darkness. A smuggler’s den, where illicit goods could be hidden from the Assembly’s customs inspectors, and illegal items could be smuggled in and out of the city.

Along with criminals, perhaps? 

But for now, that was a secondary consideration.

The corpses strewn across the floor held Kylon’s full attention.

There were at least a score of them, all with the rough look of mercenaries and teamsters. Every last one of them lay in a pool of blood, their faces frozen in terror. Some of them had been beheaded. As far as Kylon could tell, they had all been killed with the same weapon. Some sort of sword that dealt impossibly smooth and fine cuts, a blade that sliced through skin and muscle and fat and bone with great ease. What sort of weapon could do that? Kylon himself could behead a man in a single blow using the sorcery of water to augment his strength, but even his storm-forged steel could not deal such an impossibly fine cut.

A faint murmur reached his ears, and Kylon spun. He saw something moving near a brick pillar, and he circled around it, sword ready to strike. A man lay upon the floor in the midst of the corpses, his wrists and ankles tied together, a gag wrapped around his head.

Kylon recognized Ramphias at once.

His half-brother’s eyes rolled towards him, wide and filled with terror. Ramphias began shouting into the gag, his panic and fear rolling over Kylon’s arcane senses. 

Then he went rigid, his eyes turning towards the tunnel, and Kylon felt that strange, alien jangle of emotion once more.

He stepped around the pillar again and saw Xenarro walking toward him. He bore no weapons, though blood spattered his armor and face. His face twitched and jerked as if worms crawled beneath his skin, and he smiled when he saw Kylon. And as he did, Kylon saw the rippling distortion around him.