Ghost in the Razor (24 page)

The demonslayer braced the hilt of the valikon against one of the tables and put the point of the weapon against her chest.

And suddenly, in a moment of horrified comprehension, the Sifter understood. 

The Sifter now had its own destiny thread. It was being woven in the tapestry of the world. And every thread in the tapestry could be terminated. The valikon had been no threat while the Sifter occupied a corpse, but Caina was still alive, and now the sigils upon the Iramisian sword snarled into furious life. 

It could destroy the Sifter. Not just destroy its physical form. Not just banish it to the netherworld. 

The valikon could end the Sifter.

Uncomprehending terror filled the Sifter’s mind. This was impossible! The Sifter was older than this world. It was older than time itself, and had warred against other elementals across the netherworld before mortals had even existed. 

It could not cease to exist. It could not!

Yet the demonslayer braced herself against the blade, and the Sifter saw the threads of fate closing like a trap around it. 

###

The valikon thrummed beneath Caina’s fingers.

“Go,” she hissed, the world burning around her as the Sifter screamed its rage and fear. “Leave. Now. Right now. This is your one chance. Leave, or I’ll throw myself upon the blade and take you with me.” 

The Sifter thrashed in Caina’s mind, pouring a storm of dark memories at her, screaming threats and curses and imprecations. It should have been terrifying. It would have been terrifying, but the Sifter had been far more frightening when spoke calm promises. Now it screamed ever more dire threats in its terror. 

But it could not force her to do anything.

“You cannot defy me,” said the Sifter. “Perhaps you can resist me, but you cannot block me out. I will rule your every waking thought, I will…”

“That’s what the valikon is for,” said Caina. “It couldn’t destroy you when you possessed a corpse. Want to see what the sword will do to you in a living body? Let’s find out together.” 

“Then you will fail!” said the Sifter. “Your task means more to you than your life. If you die, you shall fail, and your enemies will triumph. You…”

“Morgant!” yelled Caina. She was not sure if the assassin was still alive. Or if he was even still in the laboratory. It was getting harder to see and hear past the Sifter’s screams and threats, but that didn’t matter. “When I kill myself, I will take the Sifter with me. You gave me your word! Once I am dead, I give your secret to Nasser Glasshand. You will tell him what happened to Annarah.” 

She did not hear a response, did not know if the assassin had heard her or not.

It didn’t matter. Caina closed her eyes, ignoring the Sifter’s rants and threats. Even with her eyes closed, she still saw the furious spirit, saw its fire raging around her and through her. She felt its hatred, its hunger, its endless desire to consume her. 

And she felt its growing terror. Caina had faced the certainty of her own death more often that she could recall, and she was surprised that she had lived this long. Even if she somehow outwitted and escaped all her enemies, even if she lived for another century, sooner or later she would die. 

The Sifter had never faced the possibility of death, and it filled the spirit with unreasoning, uncomprehending terror.

Caina braced herself, the valikon’s hilt rasping against the steel table. It was sharp, sharp enough to pierce her leather armor and sink into her heart. It was strange that after surviving Maglarion and the Moroaica and Ranarius and the Red Huntress that Caina would die at her own hand. She had always thought one of her enemies would catch up to her.

She took a deep breath, the Sifter’s scream of denial filling her mind, her legs tensing to drive herself upon the valikon’s blade.

Pain exploded through her head, and Caina staggered away from the table, the valikon waving drunkenly in her hand.

###

Morgant watched in astonishment as Caina threw back her head, her mouth yawning wide. 

Fire exploded from her chest and mouth and eyes, forming into the whirling cloud of embers that was the Sifter. The cloud seemed weaker, the flames sputtering and winking. The cloud jerked away towards the Mirror on the far side of the chamber. 

He could not believe it. She had done nothing. She had only talked to the Sifter.

She had actually bullied the spirit into fleeing?

All those things she had screamed at the spirit in her frenzy, the Moroaica and the Ascendant Bloodcrystal and other names of legend…had she done those things in truth?

What sort of woman was this?

Even Annarah had never done anything like that. 

The Sifter rippled, as if fighting a strong wind, and touched the Mirror.

###

The Sifter fought desperately against the currents of arcane power radiating from the Mirror, but to no avail.

It was not strong enough, not any more. It had ripped itself free from the demonslayer’s imprisoning flesh, but the effort had maimed the Sifter, like a mortal man cutting off his arm to escape from a trap. Now it could not keep the Mirror from drawing it to the netherworld.

It fought, clawing at the threads of destiny around it. It could not go back to the netherworld in its weakened state. The other ifriti would prey mercilessly upon it, to say nothing of the other spirits. Worse, Cassander’s binding was still intact, and if the Sifter returned to the netherworld without fulfilling its task, its power would be reduced further. It might take centuries for the Sifter to regain its former level of strength.

Millennia, even.

It was no use. 

The Sifter touched the Mirror, the gate yawning around it, and the mortal world vanished.

###

In his study in the Umbarian embassy’s mansion, Cassander Nilas sat at his desk, scowling at the letters. Grand Wazir Erghulan had been most displeased about the chaos in the Bazaar of the Southern Road, and had laid the blame at Cassander’s feet. The letter contained ominous rumblings about expelling the Umbarian embassy. Grand Master Callatas knew full well that Rolukhan’s Immortals had been responsible for the fighting, yet Callatas still felt the need to play these petty games. Well, the old wretch’s song would change once the Sifter hunted down and slew Caina Amalas…

A bolt of pain exploded through Cassander’s head, and he fell backwards out of his chair. 

He surged to his feet, his pyromantic gauntlet extended, a half-dozen defensive wards ready to cast. Bit by bit he realized that he was not under sorcerous attack. One of his spells had shattered. 

The Sifter.

The binding upon the Sifter had collapsed.

Cassander blinked in utter astonishment. 

Caina Amalas had actually banished the Sifter?

It seemed Cassander would have to endure yet more gloating from Callatas.

Chapter 20: The Silver Fire Is Your Only Salvation

Caina blinked and looked around. 

Her head throbbed, and it hurt so badly that she felt to see if she had anything embedded in her skull. She felt nothing but sweat and some ashes upon her forehead. Something cool and metallic brushed against her skin. The pyrikon had resumed its bracelet form and returned to its accustomed place upon her wrist. 

The Sifter was gone.

She wiped the sweat and grime from her eyes and looked at the Mirror. It still let out its pale gray light, the netherworld visible behind the reflection. Yet a crack bisected the Mirror, and it seemed to tremble in its frame. The aura of sorcerous power around it shivered as well. 

Apparently Rolukhan had not designed the Mirror to accommodate a spirit with the potency of the Sifter. That was bad. A lot of sorcerous power flowed through the Mirror, and if it collapsed the resultant explosion would destroy the laboratory. It might even explode with enough force to bring down the damaged drum tower. 

Caina turned, trying to clear her aching head, and saw Morgant staring at her.

The black-coated assassin stood a dozen steps away. His face was a blank mask, but there was something different in his gaze. He seemed…warier. Like a wolf unable to make up its mind about a potential threat. 

Like he was afraid of her.

“You’re alive,” he said at last.

“Seems so,” said Caina, trying to think through the ache filling her skull. 

“What did you do?” said Morgant. 

Caina shrugged. “I talked to the Sifter and convinced it to leave.”

“How?” said Morgant.

Caina smiled, showing her teeth. It wasn’t really a smile. “I’m very persuasive.”

“Clearly,” said Morgant. 

“You’re going to tell me,” said Caina, gesturing with the valikon for emphasis. “You’re going to tell me what happened to Annarah.”

“Yes,” said Morgant. “However, I suggest we vacate the Craven’s Tower first. I suspect that gate is about to collapse with explosive consequences.”

Caina nodded. They would return to the courtyard. Likely Nasser and Kazravid had finished emptying the vaults by now. Otherwise Caina could withdraw to one of the safe houses and meet up with him later. She just had to find Kylon…

A burst of fear went through her.

In the fury of her struggle with the Sifter, she had forgotten about Kylon. That blast from the Sifter had hit him, and he had fallen…

“Damn it,” whispered Caina, “damn it, damn it, damn it.” 

She hurried around a row of tables and found him. He lay upon his back, his chest jerking and hitching as he tried to breathe. His eyes gazed unseeing at the ceiling, and his face and lips had taken on the grayish tinge Caina had seen in people right before they died. 

Five metal shards jutted from his chest, and another from the base of his neck. The Sifter’s fiery blast had struck one of the tables, and the molten shards had embedded themselves in Kylon. They had cauterized the wounds going in, but ripped open his back, leaving him to bleed out. Or to die when his heart and lungs stopped from the damage.

“Kylon,” said Caina.

His eyes turned towards her, and he tried to say something, but it came out as an incoherent whisper. 

“He’s finished,” said Morgant. “We have to go. Even if that Mirror doesn’t explode, this place will be crawling with Immortals soon. Even I can’t kill them all.” 

Caina said nothing as she watched Kylon’s final moments of life ebb away. This wasn’t just. He had seen his wife murdered, his unborn child slain, had seen his sister die from her folly. He hadn’t even gotten to avenge them. 

The Mirror began to let out a keening sound. 

“We must go,” said Morgant. “You don’t want to leave him here, fine. Cut his throat and put him out of his misery.” Caina glared at him. “If you don’t want to do it, I’ll do it. I can make it so quick he’ll never even realize it is happening. But it would be best not to linger.”

He was right. She knew he was right, and she was furious at him for it. She started to open her mouth to answer.

Then something occurred to her.

“The silver fire is your only salvation,” said Caina. 

“What?” said Morgant.

“Why did the Surge tell him that?” said Caina. “Why? We haven’t seen any silver fire.” Her mind raced, her rage and pain forgotten. “Not unless…”

She remembered showing him the vials of Elixir Restorata, and her hand strayed to the foil-lined pouch at her belt.

Something too cold and too desperate for hope curled around her heart.

“No,” said Caina. “It wasn’t a message for him. It was a message for me. The Surge knew he would come here, that he would see me again.”

The Mirror let out a high-pitched keening. 

“We…” started Morgant.

Caina ignored him, propped the valikon against a nearby table, and knelt. She started yanking the metal shards from Kylon’s chest. They came out wet with his blood, and he groaned as she pulled the jagged things free, his hands starting to rise, only to fall twitching to the floor. 

“If you wanted him to bleed out,” said Morgant, “there are quicker ways to do it.”

“No,” said Caina, pulling out the last shard. “I don’t want that.” She lifted the pouch from her belt and opened it, and the pale silver light of Elixir Restorata glimmered within. “I have something else in mind.”

With quick motions, she ripped a strip of cloth from her sleeve, wrapped it around the fingers of her left hand, and pulled one of the vials of Elixir from the pouch. 

Morgant’s pale eyes widened, and he took a quick step back. “That’s Elixir Restorata.” 

“Observant,” said Caina. She cracked the seal on the crystal vial, and the silver light within it brightened. 

“That is extremely dangerous,” said Morgant, looking from Kylon to the Mirror and back again. “If you give that to him so close to the Mirror, the released power might shatter the gate, and then we’ll all die.”

“We can’t move him,” said Caina. With her free hand, she pinched Kylon’s nose shut and tilted his head back. His jaw fell open, and she upended the crystal vial over his mouth. The shining Elixir poured down his throat, and Caina held his nose shut until she saw him swallow. 

She straightened up, the empty vial clenched in her hand. 

For a moment nothing happened. Kylon’s breathing became a faint rasp, more blood leaking freely from his wounds. She had killed him. The Elixir they had stolen from Callatas had been flawed, and Caina had ripped the shards out of Kylon’s wounds. He was going to die of blood loss in front of her, and she could do nothing to save him. 

Then she felt the prickle of arcane power gathering around Kylon.

“Damn it,” said Morgant. 

The aura of power grew stronger, and flickers of silver light shone in Kylon’s wounds. The silver fire spread fingers beneath his skin, crawling up his arms and into his face. The Elixir was flowing into his veins, spreading through his body as it mixed with his blood. The silver light in his wounds got brighter, until it seemed as if candles of silver flame burned in his flesh. 

The power around him doubled, and then doubled again. 

The Elixir was pulling a lot of sorcerous power into Kylon. 

His eyes bulged open and he let out a gasp, his back arching as his muscles contracted. Before she could react, he clawed to his feet, one hand clutched to his side, his eyes wild and uncomprehending. His face contorted with pain, and he shuddered, the silver light in his veins burning brighter and brighter. 

“Kylon,” said Caina. “What…”

“Get back!” said Morgant, and he grabbed her shoulder, pulling her several steps away.

“What?” said Caina. 

Kylon shuddered, and a faint haze of silver light began to shimmer around him. 

“If that works there’s going to be a backlash,” said Morgant. “A release of excess energy. It will burn anything near him. I take it you’ve never seen an Alchemist use an Elixir before?”

Actually, she had, several years ago in Malarae. In desperation, Ibrahmus Sinan had consumed his unfinished Elixir Rejuvenata, and his body had exploded with golden fire. The explosion had destroyed the Istarish ambassador’s residence…and the unfinished Elixir had twisted Sinan into a hideous monster. Caina had thought the explosion of golden fire a side effect of the Elixir’s incomplete state, but apparently finished Elixirs also erupted with raging flame.

Or Caina had been wrong, and she had just condemned Kylon to a horrible death. 

Kylon straightened up, his face contorting with pain.

Morgant cursed and sprinted away, ducking to take cover behind one of the intact tables. 

“I’m sorry,” said Caina. “Gods, Kylon, I’m sorry.”  She grabbed the valikon, ran down the aisle to the table, and ducked next to Morgant. She risked a look over the table, saw Kylon sheathed in silver fire, felt a tremendous amount of sorcerous power gathering within him.

“Down!” barked Morgant, and he grabbed the top of her head and shoved her down.

The explosion came an instant later. 

A thunderclap rang out, and blazing silver light filled the laboratory. The Mirror let out a horrible metallic shriek, and the ground heaved and shook. The arcane power of the Elixir Restorata hammered at her in violent waves, her skin crawling in the presence of such potent sorcery. Raging curtains of silver fire erupted past the table, and the table itself rocked violently. An awful heat washed past her, and for a terrible moment she feared that the sheer heat of the unleashed silver fire would set her aflame. 

Bit by bit the silver fire faded away, the arcane power lessening. At last Caina climbed to her feet, fearing what she had done to Kylon. Perhaps the Elixir had reduced him to a smoking corpse, or a nightmarish creature similar to the hideous thing that Sinan had become in his final dreadful moments. 

A circle of destruction a dozen yards across marked the spot where Kylon had stood. The floor was blackened and charred, and the nearest tables were warped and bent from the unleashed power. Smoke rose from the corpses upon the tables. In the midst of the destruction…

Caina blinked. 

In the midst of the destruction stood Kylon. The unleashed silver fire had burned away his clothes, leaving him naked. The ghastly wounds in his chest and back and neck had vanished without a trace, the skin smooth and unmarked. Some of the scars she had seen on his torso and arms had vanished.

He was alive. Alive, unwounded, and with no sign of the hideous mutation that had marked Sinan. 

Kylon wobbled a bit, looking around in confusion. 

“You?” he said, looking at Caina. “Caina? I don’t…I don’t…”

His eyes rolled up into his head, and he collapsed to the blackened floor. 

Caina cursed and ran around the table as the Mirror let out another screech.

###

Morgant hurried after Caina, shooting a glance at the damaged Mirror of Worlds. 

Three cracks marked the glass. Multiple reflections danced in the fractured glass, and the pale light from the netherworld beyond was starting to sputter and flare. It was a curiously beautiful sight, one that would have been a challenge to paint, but Morgant wanted to get as far away from it as possible. He was no sorcerer, but he knew what happened when a Mirror of Worlds closed improperly.

Explosive things.

“Help me,” said Caina. She jammed the valikon into her belt, turning it so the blade would not touch her leg. Morgant wondered why she didn’t just sheathe the damn thing, then realized its scabbard must have been incinerated in the Elixir Restorata’s fire. “I can’t carry him out of here alone.”

“For the gods’ sake,” said Morgant, glancing at the Mirror. “We have to get…”

She moved so fast that he didn’t realize what she was doing until it was too late. Her hand came to a stop a few inches from his neck, the ghostsilver dagger rock-steady against his throat. She stood so close that he felt her hot breath against his chin.

“You’re going to help me carry him out of here,” said Caina. Her voice and face were calm and icy, but her eyes were wide and bloodshot and a little crazed. “I played your stupid game and I won, but it almost killed him. So you’re going to help me carry him out of here, or I’m going to open your throat and your precious secret can die with you. See if you can keep your word to Annarah then.”

Morgant believed her. 

Just, he supposed, as the Sifter must have believed. 

A wide smile spread across his face, and he almost laughed aloud.

She was beautiful. Perfect. A weapon deadly and unique. He almost wished he could have met the Ghosts who had trained her, shaped her. Morgant worked with paint and canvas, but the Ghosts had taken Caina and had molded her into a masterwork, a perfect weapon. She was a killer, but her weapons were her wits and her mind. With them she had defeated the Sifter. 

She was exactly what Morgant had sought for all these years, someone who could help him keep his word to Annarah. How could he ever have doubted it? Of course, he first needed to keep her alive, lest her regard for the stormdancer get her killed. He supposed such sentimentality was a defect, but no weapon was perfect. Besides, such emotion fueled rage, and that rage had driven her to vanquish the Sifter.

“Take his wrists,” said Morgant. “I’ll get his ankles.”

Caina’s eyes narrowed. “Just like that?”

“Well, you can’t help me keep my word to Annarah if you’re dead,” said Morgant, “and if you’re trying to drag the Kyracian out when that Mirror fails, you’ll die.”

She nodded and lowered the dagger.

###

Caina strained, her hands under Kylon’s arms as his head brushed against her chest. All that muscle made him an effective fighter and was damned pleasing to the eye, but it made him blasted heavy. Morgant held Kylon under the knees, and together they hurried across the laboratory and scrambled up the stairs. The aura of the Mirror washed over Caina, growing sharper and more violent. 

“I have to admit,” said Morgant, “when I thought of all the many disastrous ways this venture could end, I did not think carrying a naked Kyracian out of the Tower was one of them.”