Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7) (35 page)

“Tylas,” said Martin to the Guard centurion. “Prepare to storm the building.” 

“Kylon,” said Caina, and he nodded and came to her side.

She didn’t ask Morgant to follow her, but he came anyway.

###

Kylon walked with Caina to the palace’s double doors, the valikon ready in his right hand. Morgant walked on her other side, his stance casual, but his weapons were ready in his hands and his emotional sense was cold and sharp as an icicle. Behind them the Imperial Guards moved in a spearhead formation, ready to storm the palace. 

Caina went up the shallow steps, her head turning back and forth as she scrutinized the doors. 

“No traps,” she muttered. “No spells, either.”

Kylon sensed nothing from the doors. Of course, the warding spells the Umbarians had laid over the palace blocked his arcane senses. Yet he was close enough that he detected bits and pieces from within the palace, and he caught bursts of tense emotion, hints of alarm and fear. He suspected the Umbarians had realized that something was happening.

And then Kylon sensed something else, something familiar, and a burst of dread went through him.

The last time he had sensed something like this a lot of people had died.

“Wait,” he said, and both Caina and Morgant stopped. 

“What is it?” said Caina. 

“The Surge gave me the ability to detect nagataaru,” said Kylon, and Caina nodded. “I can also sense the cracks in the walls of the world, the weaknesses left over from the day of the golden dead.” 

“There’s one inside?” said Caina.

Kylon nodded. “I think so. But…it’s wrong, somehow. Different. Or twisted? I won’t know until we can get past these masking spells.” 

“Could Cassander be trying to summon nagataaru himself?” said Caina.

Kylon didn’t know. It was the sort of vengeful thing that Cassander Nilas would do. Expelled from Istarinmul, he would summon the nagataaru and create an army of kadrataagu to take his vengeance upon the Grand Wazir and the Grand Master. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Kylon realized that it made no sense. Such an act would force the Grand Wazir to ally with the Emperor against the Order, regardless of what Callatas thought. Cassander had never struck Kylon as a man to waste time with empty gestures of revenge. He was ruthless and brutal, yes, but everything he did had a logical reason. 

Unless his injuries in Rumarah had driven him insane. 

“You know,” said Morgant. “I think they’ve realized we’re here.” 

“How do you know?” said Caina. 

“If you weren’t so busy exchanging ominous remarks,” said Morgant, “you could listen.” 

Even through the mask and the cowl, Kylon saw Caina roll her eyes, but she did fall silent. Kylon turned his attention towards the door, and heard faint sounds filtering through the thick wood. The tap of scabbards against the floor, the rasp of metal boots, the hissing of swords drawn from sheaths. 

The sounds of soldiers preparing themselves for battle. 

“They’re coming,” said Kylon.

Caina nodded and spun. “Lord Martin! Prepare yourself! They come!”

The doors boomed open.

“Run!” shouted Kylon, grabbing Caina’s arm and urging her forward. She sprinted down the stairs towards the Imperial Guards, Morgant racing after her, and Kylon followed them. As he did, he shot a glance over his shoulder. He saw a row of Adamant Guards charging forward, grim in their steel carapaces. Behind them bounded a trio of hulking, misshapen creatures unlike any that Kylon had ever seen before, and he glimpsed the dark shape of an Umbarian magus behind them. All of them looked dangerous, the strange creatures especially so. 

Yet the golden light held his attention. 

From within the palace, probably underneath the dome itself, came a flickering golden glow, pulsing like flames in a wind. 

And Kylon had seen a light like that somewhere before.

“Shield wall!” Martin’s voice boomed over the gardens like a thunderbolt. “Shield wall! Meet the enemy!” 

###

“Those men are possessed, are they not?” said Annarah in a low voice, that peculiar bronze staff flickering with white fire in her fist.

Claudia nodded, already casting her first spell.

As she had lain awake last night, considering the battle to come, she had wondered if she was a fool. Claudia was nine months pregnant. Her child could come at any moment. Going in a fight in her condition, with the birth imminent, was the starkest madness.

Yet as the huge beasts shot forward with a roar, their jaws yawning wide, Claudia was glad she had come.

None of the creatures looked quite alike. They all vaguely resembled a mixture of man and bear, albeit a bear that had been twisted and misshapen. Thick bands of muscle corded their torsos and limbs, and their brown fur rose up in greasy spikes. Claws the size of daggers tipped their paws, and their jagged yellow fangs could punch through steel armor with a single bite. The huge creatures were terrifying on the battlefield, and could tear their way through a shield wall of Legionaries without much difficulty. They were neither immortal nor invincible, but they could wreak ghastly casualties before they were taken down, as many Legionaries had learned to their sorrow.

Yet there were easier ways to deal with the damned things. 

“Ursamorphs,” said Claudia, a blue spark snarling between her fingers, “possessed by a spirit of fury and hunger.”

“Such a thing,” said Annarah, “is a violation of the Words of Lore.” 

The Adamant Guards surged down the stairs, but the ursamorphs bounded before the Umbarian soldiers. There was a silvery flash as Kylon charged to meet them, the valikon starting to glimmer in his hands as the weapon reacted to the presence of the malevolent spirits within the creatures. Nasser and Morgant and Azaces ran to aid him, the Imperial Guards forming into a shield wall. 

A creature like an ursamorph had been forbidden under the laws of the Magisterium as well, which had forbidden summoning and binding spirits. Once Claudia had believed in those laws, had believed in the power of sorcery to guide and shape and rule mankind. Now she had seen too much battle and too many corrupt sorcerers to believe that anyone could be trusted with that kind of power. Regardless of the laws or the Words of Lore, the ursamorph was still an abomination, a thing made to kill.

Fortunately, Claudia knew just how to deal with it.

She focused her will upon the nearest ursamorph and cast a spell. The blue spark flared with light, leapt from her fingers, and soared across the garden. Years ago, when she had fled her father, she had feared the wrath of his lieutenant Ranarius, and Ranarius had delved deep into the forbidden sciences of summoning elementals. To defend herself, Claudia had practiced spells of banishment. They had not been enough to protect her from Ranarius.

Nevertheless, she had gotten quite good at banishment spells.

The blue spark slammed into the nearest ursamorph, and the creature reared back with a booming howl as fingers of blue lightning shot up and down its muscled limbs. Claudia felt the pressure of the malevolent spirit straining against her will, but she held fast, holding her mental defenses and power in place. For a moment the spirit of fury shivered against her mind, and then all at once the pressure vanished as her spell drove the spirit back into the netherworld. The ursamorph staggered, went to one knee, and shrank and collapsed into itself, blurring into the form of a gaunt, naked man with ragged hair and insane eyes.

Annarah shouted and struck the end of her strange bronze staff against the ground, and a shaft of brilliant white flame lanced from its end. It struck the Imperial Guards, and for an awful moment Claudia was sure that Annarah had miscast her spell. Yet the fire passed through the Guards without harming them, and instead the shaft raked across the charging ursamorphs. The creatures staggered, howling in pain as the white fire cut a charred line across their furred hides. 

“I will distract them,” said Annarah, casting again. “You shall banish them.”

Claudia nodded and began casting her banishment spell again. 

###

The Adamant Guards crashed into the Imperial Guards, steel ringing on steel. Blue sparks and white fire flashed overhead as Claudia and Annarah worked their spells, bringing their power to bear against the twisted creatures that had emerged from the palace.

The creatures held the entirety of Kylon’s attention.

He had never seen anything like them, nothing like this peculiar hybrid of man and beast. They reminded him a little of the hideous abominations that had arisen upon the day of the golden dead. Yet these things had not been created by necromancy, but by summoned spirits within their flesh. He could sense the spirits within the hulking things the Imperial Guards called ursamorphs. The nagataaru were spirits of malevolence and hunger, the ifriti like the Sifter spirits of flame and fury. The spirits within the ursamorphs were creatures of furious, feral hunger, predators who desired to destroy and kill and feast. 

The ancient Iramisians had made the valikons to deal with such creatures, and in the hands of a Kyracian stormdancer, a valikon could be put to good use. 

Kylon faced one of the ursamorphs, the valikon blurring back and forth before him. The creature lumbered after him, moving faster and striking harder than a normal man could have attacked. Kylon’s sorcery of water did not make him as strong as the ursamorph, but the sorcery of air made him just as fast, perhaps even a little faster. He dodged the swipe of the creature’s claws, sidestepped, and brought the valikon down with both hands. The blade flashed with white fire, and the force of his swing drove the blade through the ursamorph’s outstretched arm, severing its paw at the wrist. The ursamorph reared back with a horrible scream of fury, and Kylon struck again, sinking the valikon into the creature’s chest. The symbols upon the blade pulsed with white fire, and the ursamorph screamed as the ancient sword destroyed the spirit bound within its flesh. An instant later the ursamorph shrank, becoming a gaunt, ragged looking man with insane eyes, his mouth opening and closing as he collapsed to the grass to die. 

Kylon ripped the sword free, moving to find the next ursamorph as the Adamant Guards and the Imperial Guards clashed. 

###

Caina circled around the edges of the fight, heading for Claudia and Annarah. 

She might possess the sight of the valikarion, but without a ghostsilver dagger that did little good against the Adamant Guards and the ursamorph creatures. The sight of the valikarion would let her see the spells upon the Adamant Guards as they crushed her skull to a pulp, but little else.

Fortunately, Caina could employ her abilities in other ways.

The Silent Hunters were going after Claudia and Annarah. 

Both sorceresses had their full attention upon the ursamorphs, even as Kylon and Morgant and Nasser battled the hulking creatures. Malcolm and Azaces stood guard over Annarah and Claudia, even as Nerina calmly sent crossbow quarrel after crossbow quarrel into the Adamant Guards, but none of them would be able to see the Silent Hunters.

To Caina, they stood out like a torch in the darkness. She could even see them if she closed her eyes. 

The Silent Hunters hadn’t figured that out yet. 

She ran past the battle, following a silvery-green shape running towards Annarah and Claudia. Caina slipped a throwing knife into her hand and flung the weapon, adding her momentum to the force of her throw. Her aim was true, and the blade sank into the Silent Hunter’s left calf. The man stumbled and went sprawling with a cry, flashing back into visibility, and Caina sprang upon him with a dagger before he could recover. 

She got back to her feet and kept running before the Silent Hunter finished dying. 

Another silvery-green outline circled behind Claudia and Annarah, preparing to spring upon them. Caina took a step forward and flung her bloodied throwing knife. This time the weapon caught the invisible Silent Hunter in the side, and the man flinched. He appeared in a flash of silver light, and Caina charged at him. The Silent Hunter slashed his dagger, but Caina saw the blow coming and dodged, stabbing as she did so. Her dagger plunged between the ribs in his left side, and the Silent Hunter stumbled again, wheezing. His next attack came slower, and Caina finished him off with another stab between the ribs.

For all their powers of invisibility, the Silent Hunters were still naked men with daggers, and it was much easier to kill a naked man than an armored one or even a clothed one. 

Their invisibility was their advantage, and they trusted too much in it.

Caina retrieved her throwing knife and dagger and went after another Silent Hunter.

###

The last ursamorph collapsed in the blue lightning of Claudia’s banishment spell. The malevolent spirits seemed to drive their hosts insane, and those who survived simply squatted on the ground, muttering to themselves and pawing at their filthy hair. Kylon wondered if the men were volunteers who had asked the Umbarian magi to summon the spirits into their flesh, or if they were slaves forced to undergo the transformation against their will. Either way, the banishment of the spirit seemed to leave their minds a broken ruin. 

Perhaps it would have been a mercy to kill them, but Kylon left the broken men alone.

With the ursamorphs defeated, he turned his attention to the Adamant Guards. The Umbarian soldiers were locked in battle with the Imperial Guards. The Adamant Guards were stronger and impervious to pain, but the Imperial Guards were superbly trained and clad in the finest armor the smiths of the Empire could forge. The two shield walls strained against each other, a dozen dead Imperial Guards and Adamant Guards lying upon the grass, but neither side gained an advantage.

It was time to change that. 

Before the Adamant Guards reacted, Kylon charged them from behind, wounding two men with the valikon. He did not kill them, but he did not need to bother. The Adamant Guards he had wounded stumbled beneath the terrible weight of their steel carapaces, their spells of strength disrupted, and the Imperial Guards seized the moment to land killing blows of their own.