Ghost Vigil

  GHOST VIGIL

  Jonathan Moeller

  ***

  Description

  Kylon of House Kardamnos was once a lord and Archon of the Kyracian people. Now he is a homeless exile, aiding the Ghosts in their fight against the evil of Grand Master Callatas.

  The woman he loves lies suspended between life and death.

  And unless Kylon can defeat the nagataaru that hunt her, Caina Amalas might never awaken…

  ***

  Ghost Vigil

  Copyright 2015 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Smashwords Edition.

  Cover image copyright Diana Hirsch | istockphoto.com.

  Ebook edition published November 2015.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  ***

  Chapter 1: Waiting

  Kylon of House Kardamnos looked at the sleeping form of Caina Amalas.

  Or her unconscious form, rather. He wasn’t sure that the state she was in now could be called sleep.

  Her eyes were closed, and they seemed to have sunk deeper into her face than usual, the lines of her cheekbones and jaw sharper. Her dark hair pooled against the pillow like the cowl of the shadow-cloak she had lost in Rumarah. Annarah had left the blanket pulled up to Caina’s shoulders, her bare arms resting on either side, and Kylon saw the shallow rise and fall of her breath.

  She was alive. She shouldn’t have been, but she was. The Huntress’s sword should have killed her in Rumarah, but Kylon had stolen Morgant’s wedjet-dahn and poured the Elixir Restorata down Caina’s throat.

  That should have killed her, but instead it had healed her.

  Mostly.

  Kylon’s sword hand opened and closed into a fist again and again. He wanted to draw a sword and fight someone, anyone, but he couldn’t. There was no enemy here to fight.

  The memories burned through him, one after another.

  Caina crumpling in a bloody heap upon the floor, the Huntress’s shrill laughter ringing in Kylon’s ears.

  The whispered counsel of the Knight of Wind and Air, urging Kylon to take a desperate gamble.

  Caina’s veins burning with the silver fire of the Elixir Restorata, the silver inferno erupting to destroy the Corsair’s Rest.

  The dark shadow of Kharnaces’s ancient necromancy rising from Caina…

  “Lord Kylon?”

  Kylon blinked, forced himself to calm, and turned. “Yes?”

  Caina’s bed was in a room with a flagstone floor and rough walls of timber and fieldstone. It had a sort of barbaric splendor to it, but it kept out the wind and kept in the warmth of the fire at night. The Kaltari were ever practical about their architecture.

  The loremaster Annarah stepped to Kylon’s side. She was tall for a woman, almost as tall as he was, and wore an Istarish dress and headscarf. She had dark skin and bright green eyes, her hair a peculiar silvery-white sheen. Upon her left wrist rested a delicate bronze bracelet, identical in design to the ghostsilver bracelet upon Caina’s left wrist. Kylon had seen her use that bracelet to summon blasts of white fire, but right now it only reflected the light from the hearth on the far wall.

  “Perhaps you should go have some breakfast,” said Annarah.

  Kylon snorted. “You mean I should do something other than stand here and brood.”

  Annarah smiled a little at that. “I see you appreciate blunt speech, Lord Kylon. So I will be blunt. Go have some breakfast and some fresh air. You will do yourself no good standing here all day.”

  Kylon shrugged. “It’s not as if I have anything better to do.”

  “You will not do Caina any good, either,” said Annarah. “I can tend to her.”

  Kylon’s rubbed his jaw, stubble rasping against his palm. Gods, but his face itched. He really needed to find time for a shave. “It took us two weeks to get to Drynemet.” Their progress had been slowed by the necessity of carrying Caina in a wagon. “After we got here, I thought perhaps she would wake up, but…”

  “I don’t know when she will awaken,” said Annarah. “It may be within the hour. It may be in another month.” She sighed. “I have never seen this combination of arcane forces before. Kharnaces’s poison and the Elixir Restorata and the wedjet-dahn, combined with a mortal wound and her own sensitivity to sorcery…I do not know what will happen.”

  Kylon nodded, still looking at Caina.

  “She may be different when she awakens,” said Annarah in a soft voice. “She might have lost some of her memories and skills.”

  Or, Kylon thought, she might not awaken at all. Perhaps the Elixir had healed her flesh but her spirit had fled, leaving her body an empty shell.

  He sighed and looked at the rough beams of the ceiling.

  “I understand, at least a little,” said Annarah. “My husband died in Iramis.”

  “I understand that, too,” said Kylon. “The Huntress murdered my wife and I could not save her.” His sword hand balled into a fist. “Then the Huntress attacked Caina, and I tried to save her…and I don’t know if I did. I am running in a circle, chasing my own tail, following bloody death after bloody death that I cannot prevent.” He let out a long, ragged breath. “Forgive me. I am…overwrought.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” said Annarah. “Can you sense her at all?”

  “No, nothing,” said Kylon. His skill with the sorcery of water let him sense the emotions of others, for all men were but water in the end. Even from sleeping men he detected a few flickers of emotion as they dreamed. Yet from Caina he felt nothing at all, absolutely nothing. It was as if she was not there.

  As if she was dead.

  “And if you touch her?” said Annarah.

  Kylon hesitated, then took Caina’s left hand. The fingers felt cool and dry as he grasped them He suddenly felt her presence against his arcane senses. He could sense her, but he detected no emotion from her, no consciousness. Kylon could also sense the lingering aura of the Elixir Restorata working its way through her veins. The Elixir’s power had erupted from her like an explosion, blasting apart the Corsair’s Rest in Rumarah, killing Cassander Nilas and a small army of Adamant Guards, and healing the mortal wound in her heart. The power of the Elixir lingered within her as they left Rumarah and traveled across the Desert of Candles and the Trabazon steppes to the Kaltari Highlands.

  It lingered within her still.

  “I don’t feel anything from her,” said Kylon. “But the power of the Elixir…”

  “I think it is still healing her,” said Annarah. “The poison of the Great Necromancer did a considerable amount of harm to her, most of it invisible to the naked eye. I think, Lord Kylon, that once the Elixir finishes its work, the aura will depart and she will awaken, though I cannot be sure.”

  “Why do you think that?” said Kylon.

  “Because Callatas made that Elixir,” said Annarah. “I knew him before he became the Grand Master, before he abandoned the Words of Lore in his ruinous pride. He ever detested laziness and sloppy work. I cannot imagine that has changed about him.”

  “A hopeful thought,” said Kylon.

  “You have done all that you can for her,” said Annarah. “It is time to look after yourself. She would be upset to awaken and find you an exhausted wreck.”

  “She thought that she was going to die,” said Kylon. “Before we left Istarinmul. She said that was why we had to keep each other
at arm’s length, because she knew she was going to die and she didn’t want to inflict that kind of pain upon me again.”

  “A foolish argument,” said Annarah. “You are both mortal, and shall therefore die in any event. Better to die having loved each other than not.” She smiled. “And she didn’t die. You saved her, because you were wise enough to see what had to be done and bold enough to do it.”

  Kylon said nothing, watching Caina’s motionless face.

  “Laertes was looking for you,” said Annarah.

  “Was he?” said Kylon.

  “He needs your help,” said Annarah. “Something about the civil war. It is the sort of thing that would have caught Caina’s interest.”

  Kylon shook his head. “You really were a physician, were you not? Truly, you have mastered the imperious manner.”

  “Much practice, my lord Kylon,” said Annarah. “Go. Caina is in good hands. She saved my life at least as many times as yours.”

  “Thank you,” said Kylon. He looked at Caina for a moment longer, and left the room.

  He walked through the headman’s hall of Drynemet, a cavernous hall with carved wooden pillars supporting the roof high overhead. A smoldering fire pit stood in the center of the hall, wisps of smoke rising towards an oculus in the roof. Perhaps a score of Kaltari warriors slept wrapped in their patterned cloaks upon the floor, sleeping off the last night’s revels.

  Kylon’s left hand strayed to his collar, his fingers coiling around the heavy golden ring that hung from a cord around his neck. It was the signet ring of an Imperial lord, worn from age and much use. Caina had given him the ring in the final moments before the destruction of the Corsair’s Rest. It must have belonged to her father. She rarely spoke of her family, but he suspected they were all dead, and given the loathing and hatred that filled her sense on the rare occasions she mentioned her mother, Kylon guessed that her mother had murdered her father.

  He hoped he could give the ring back to her when she awoke.

  He hoped she remembered the ring when she awoke.

  Kylon left the hall and stepped into the main square of Drynemet. The village filled most of the hilltop, the round houses built of rough stone and roofed with domes of thatch. Many of the houses had skulls mounted over the lintels, trophies from raids and battles. Kylon had grown up in the splendors of the Tower of Kardamnos in New Kyre, had sailed to most of the world’s great ports, and by comparison the villages of the Kaltari seemed rude places. Yet the Kaltari were fierce, grim fighters, and everywhere Kylon looked, he saw men laboring at forges and workbenches, preparing swords and hauberks and bows, while women wove cloaks and fletched arrows.

  Drynemet armed itself for war.

  The rasp of a boot upon the ground came to Kylon’s ear, accompanied the steady, calm emotional sense of a man who had seen and survived (and dealt) quite a lot of violence.

  “Laertes,” said Kylon, turning.

  “Lord Kylon,” said Laertes. The former Imperial centurion was middle-aged, heavily muscled with balding hair, and wore only a simple tunic, trousers, and leather boots. A broad leather belt encircled his waist, holding a heavy broadsword favored by the Legionaries of the Empire of Nighmar.

  “Annarah said you wanted to see me,” said Kylon.

  Laertes grunted. “Me? No, I’m just the messenger. Nasser has some scheme up his sleeve. Needs your help for it.”

  Kylon hesitated. He wanted to wait at Caina’s bedside until she awakened. Yet he knew that would accomplish nothing. If Caina was awake, she would have cheerfully gone to assist whatever scheme Nasser had in mind.

  Besides, Nasser’s schemes often led to fighting, and Kylon wanted to hit someone.

  “Lead on,” he said.

  “This way,” said Laertes, gesturing. They circled around the hall, past the round stone houses of the village. “How is she?”

  “The same,” said Kylon. “Annarah thinks she’ll wake up once the Elixir finishes healing her.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my time,” said Laertes. “That silver fire, though…aye, that had to be one of the strangest.” He shook his head. “Damnedest thing, though.”

  “What?” said Kylon.

  “We’ve been working with Caina ever since Nasser recruited her about a year and a half ago,” said Laertes, “and it never once entered my head that she was a woman. And a pretty young woman, too. I tried to arrange for ‘Ciaran’ to marry one of my daughters. Suppose that explains why she was never interested.”

  “She is,” said Kylon, “a very gifted liar.”

  “Good thing she has you to look after her, then,” said Laertes.

  They came to the terrace behind the headman’s hall. It was a broad expanse of stone, perched at the edge of a cliff, the rocky hills rising away in the distance, their slopes dotted here and there with patches of pine trees. It had a fine view of the hills, and the village’s headman preferred to conduct most of his business out here rather than in the hall, likely because of the splendid view.

  Strabane, headman of Drynemet, sat at a weathered wooden table, a scowl on his face. He was a huge man, the chair straining to hold his weight, but very little of his mass was fat. He had a shaved head and a scarred face, and wore chain mail, his sheathed greatsword propped against the table next to him. According to Caina, he had been a gladiator until he had joined Nasser Glasshand’s band of thieves, and he had gotten rich enough from the heist in Callatas’s Maze to return to the Kaltari Highlands and establish himself as a headman.

  Nasser Glasshand sat on the other side of the table, clad in dark clothing, a leather glove and bracer covering his left hand. Kylon would have said that Nasser looked Anshani, but he knew Nasser was Iramisian, had been the last Prince of Iramis before Callatas destroyed the city and murdered its people.

  He was also a master thief and a master manipulator. Kylon wondered just how long Nasser had been arranging a shadow war against Grand Master Callatas.

  “Ah, Lord Kylon,” said Nasser, rising and offering a smooth bow. “Thank you, Laertes. I fear there has been no change in Caina?”

  “None,” said Kylon. He sat at the table, and one of Strabane’s bondsmen came forward, carrying a tray with cups of tea, loaves of bread, and slices of Kaltari cheese. The Kaltari favored bitter tea, but Kylon suspected that was to cover up with the aftertaste of their cheese, which was potent. “Annarah thinks the Elixir is still working.”

  “The Balarigar,” said Strabane. “You sure she isn’t a sorceress, Nasser? Or some kind of skin-changing demon? I was sure she was a man.”

  “I am entirely certain,” said Nasser with perfect calm. “Her opinions on sorcerers are…quite forceful, let us say.”

  “Half the Kaltari Highlands would agree with her,” said Strabane. “The demon-worshippers are going to be a problem.”

  “Demon-worshippers?” said Kylon.

  “That leads us to the reason I asked you here,” said Nasser. “We would like your help.”

  “You know the Kaltari tribes are marching,” said Strabane. “The men of the Highlands have had enough of the arrogance of the Slavers’ Brotherhood and Grand Wazir Erghulan Amirasku and the devilry of Grand Master Callatas. We’re going to join Tanzir Shahan’s rebels and march for Istarinmul. We’ll throw out Erghulan and Callatas, make Tanzir the new Grand Wazir, and see if we can find the Padishah or his sons.”

  “Probably buried in shallow graves in Callatas’s cellar,” said Laertes.

  Strabane shrugged. “Then they can pick a new Padishah. I don’t care who, so long as he has more sense than Erghulan Amirasku. Shouldn’t be hard.”

  “Why do you need my help for that?” said Kylon.

  “Those demons from the netherworld,” said Strabane. “The ones the Grand Master likes to call up.”

  “The nagataaru,” said Kylon.

  “You can sense them,” said Strabane.

  “Aye,” said Kylon. The Surge, the oracle of the Kyracian people, had given him the ability. It had
done him little good. He had sensed the Huntress’s attack upon the Tower of Kardamnos, but had been unable to save Thalastre from her sword. And the Huntress had used a shadow-cloak to mask her presence during her attack on Caina.

  “Most of the Kaltari pray to the Living Flame or the old gods from before our nation migrated here from the Empire,” said Strabane. “But there are some who follow older ways, who worship the nagataaru in imitation of the ancient Demon Princes. The cultists have gotten stirred up lately, even tried to attack the Lord Ambassador from the Empire during his pilgrimage to Silent Ash Temple. Seem to think the end of the world is coming, and their ‘lords of the void’ might arrive to rule over us all.”

  “They’re not wrong,” said Kylon, thinking of what Caina had learned about the Apotheosis.

  Strabane grunted. “They’re making trouble for us. Later this morning I’m going to meet with an old friend of mine named Mulgor. He’s headman of the village of Surig south of here, near a place called Shaman Hill that’s sacred to the demon-worshippers. The cultists have been making trouble for Mulgor, trying to keep him from joining the other tribes when we march.”

  “So you’re going to go reassure him,” said Kylon. His sister had often made similar visits to wavering allies, and depending upon the circumstances she would either soothe them or terrify them into compliance.

  She had been good at terrifying people.

  “Aye,” said Strabane. “I’d like to have you along in case the cultists cause trouble. You might be useful.”

  Kylon started to say something flippant, and then stopped himself. Strabane had a good point. Kylon could sense the presence of nagataaru. He also carried an Iramisian valikon, one of the few weapons capable of destroying a nagataaru. If the cultists attacked Mulgor, Kylon’s aid could be invaluable.

  He wanted to stay in Drynemet until Caina awakened, but Caina would have wanted to help Strabane.

  And as much as Kylon did not want to admit it, there was nothing he could do to help Caina right now.