Old Man's Ghosts (39 page)

Narin coughed and nodded.

‘Tough – you ain’t dead, so you’re coming with us.’ With his finger he traced a path through the air, following the line of rooftops to work out where Sorpan’s tunnel would emerge. ‘He was heading west?’

‘They.’

That took Enchei by surprise. ‘They?’

‘Had an injured man with him, was helping him.’

‘Don’t seem likely. Was the other one even paler than a Ghost?’

All eyes turned to Narin, who shook his head. ‘Looked a local – some House under Iron. Hair wasn’t grey, but he was from round here.’

Enchei grasped Narin’s good arm and pulled the Investigator upright. ‘Could it’ve been one o’ the priests you met before?’

‘I … maybe.’

‘Doesn’t sound like your job’s done yet after all, Irato,’ Enchei said. ‘Sounds like we’ve got a second summoner to kill – one that used the first like a weapon.’

He started to skirt the open ground where the shattered building stood, heading west over the rooftops towards a stairway.

‘It could be a trap,’ Myken called after him as the others moved to follow. ‘The defenders here were no match for us.’ She pointed down to demonstrate her point, to where Lawbringer Rhe had emerged into the starlight at the heart of the Minerild, looking left and right for more Sea Snakes and possessed.

‘Aye, could be,’ Enchei replied without any of his usual levity, ‘but I want the bait all the same.’

Before anyone could argue, Enay hefted her Stone Dragon lance and gave the remaining shrines a speculative look. ‘Best you all get to the ground,’ she said with a cold smile on her face, and levelled the weapon at one of the nearest. ‘
Right
now.’

Narin hurried to obey, Kesh helping him along as Myken led the way to the stairs. Irato simply stepped off the roof while Maiss stayed with her sister, a pistol in each hand. Before Narin had reached the stairs he heard the dreadful, hushed sound of the Dragon’s Breath turning the air to flame and metal to slag. He quickened his pace, despite his now-useless arm.

Once they got to ground level Narin looked around for Lawbringer Rhe, but the man had disappeared already. Prince Kashte flashed him a smile as he arrived briefly in the starlight – rifle now stowed on his back and broadsword dripping blood. Then more gunshots came from the northern part and he was off again, two more gold-scarfed Imperials prowling in his wake.

‘Looks like they’re enjoying ’emselves,’ Enchei growled. ‘I guess Imperials don’t get much chance to brawl like commoners.’

With Irato leading the way, they moved through winding tunnels and open alleys that echoed with gunshots, shouts and cries. Narin saw nothing block their path as they followed the Ghost’s trail. He heard only the whispers of Enchei’s darts and their clatter against brick, swiftly followed by the meaty crack and thump of Irato killing something out of sight.

He tried to keep his eyes on the person ahead, Myken, and do little more – apart from keep his teeth from chattering in fear, or shock, or the memory of pain, he was no longer sure.

Kesh continued to give him anxious looks, but it was his left arm that Narin could no longer use. He tucked it inside his tunic to stop it working at the wound as he moved. His right hand tightened sufficiently around the hilt of his sword that Narin refused to be told to wait behind.

Not that anyone has suggested that,
Narin noted in a distant, dazed fashion as they emerged into a street. He saw Irato point towards movement perhaps a hundred yards away.
Enchei wants me on hand to recognise the priest. Is that it? Or something else?

He shook the questions from his mind, finding no answers in the fog there. It was easier simply to follow, to leave the decisions to his friends and stumble along behind as they hurried down the street. Ahead, Narin could see the pale golden pinpricks of magical light that adorned the towers of House Iron’s nobles.

The Spines,
he recalled, remembering the six white columns around which the largest palazzos were built. It was a sight he’d rarely seen at night, but he knew the mages of House Iron in generations past had set sigils of magic-imbued glass – invocations of divine favour – on the columns and the peaks of those palazzos. A lesser display than the long shapes that adorned House Dragon’s towers or the eyries of Eagle perhaps, but beautiful against the stars of the Gods none the less.

‘There,’ Enchei said, pointing down the street.

Narin could see nothing, but Enay and Maiss both nodded as more gunshots rang out behind them. The houses on both sides were dark and silent, the people of Iron District no doubt cowed into silence while rare violence reigned outside.

‘Who’s the other one?’ Maiss asked.

‘The priest here,’ Narin said abruptly as though jerking awake. ‘Senior Kobelt Hoker, something like that. Bastard’s one hell of a liar. Even Rhe believed him, but he was with them all along.’ He spat. ‘Pillar of the community, hah.’

They reached a fork in the road and Enchei stopped to look for their quarry as Narin and Kesh panted for breath.

‘Towards the river,’ Irato said. He pointed down to the dirt-packed ground as though it was as clear as day.

Enchei frowned and tugged a chunk of metal from the darter on his wrist, slapping an identical one back in its place a few moments later. ‘You sure? Something’s messed my senses up proper, I can’t see any traces anywhere.’

‘I am.’

They continued in that fashion for five hundred yards, taking an oblique path towards the palazzos looming on the nearer bank. The largest, those built around the ancient columns, looked like cog wheels stacked one atop another, irregularly sized with scraps of pale golden light inscribed on the walls between shuttered windows.

Around them were lesser palazzos that echoed the style and Irato led them to one at the Crescent flank of the noble streets – a lightless building of five storeys inside a yellow brick perimeter. Noble sigils in the Iron tongue were embossed on the bronze-sheathed gate that stood ajar, square pillars spaced along the wall topped alternately with stylised hammers and anvils.

Enchei glanced at his daughters and nodded to the wall. Maiss knelt at the base, making a cradle with her hands that Enay stepped into. Without any great effort Narin could see, she stood and lifted her sister, lance and all, up until Enay could see over the wall.

‘Empty,’ she reported as she dropped back down again. ‘Main door’s open.’

‘Why would they go to ground?’ Kesh wondered aloud.

‘They haven’t,’ was Enchei’s grim reply. ‘We ain’t that lucky.’

‘So what, then?’

‘Enay, Maiss – skirt the perimeter. See what other exits they got and if there’s any mischief you can get up to. There’s power here, enchantments in the stones, I can smell ’em. This place has been prepared.’

The two young women broke into a silent run, as swift and silent as the foxes used as vessels by lesser demons.

Narin exchanged a look with Kesh. ‘You’re just going to walk straight in, aren’t you?’

That elicited a grunt. ‘If this is a trap, I doubt they had Irato in mind.’ Enchei flexed his fingers and a burst of lightning crackled hot and fierce over his armoured hand. ‘You three stay here – keep this gate open. Myken, you shoot anyone you see and don’t like the look of, understand?’

With that he pulled the gate open and stalked through, Irato again following close behind. Beyond them, Narin saw a great stone basin a few yards past the entrance, ice gleaming inside it. The light of the Gods illuminated frosted gravel paths between fractured boulders half-covered with grey mosses. Under starlight the formal garden looked like a long-dead corpse of some fantastical beast entombed in ice, the broken edges of stone arranged in some complex, organic pattern.

Myken raised her musket, a practised position of readiness from which she could aim in an instant. Despite his wound Narin found himself holding his breath as he waited for some new attack, but what came was quite unexpected.

From the doorway a grey figure walked out into the starlight. Narin felt a jolt – the figure was insubstantial and ghostly. A young woman, barely as old as Kesh, with painfully thin limbs, a blurring grey dress hung down over her feet. Her gaunt face looked serene, at peace with death – though if she was truly a ghost, she had died of prolonged starvation. Her empty hands trailed through the air at her sides, a gesture of peace that revealed her clawed fingers.

‘You want me, I’m here,’ Enchei growled, apparently unperturbed.

The ghost opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Her hands described some complex gesture, more a dance than communication, but it was enough to stop Enchei in his tracks and glance back at his demon-possessed friend. If Irato had an opinion he did not share it so Enchei hurried to meet the ghost, weapons ready and armour crackling with power, rather than be left standing in the open.

Without warning, the ghost lunged forward. Enchei evaded its grasp easily, but in the next instant Narin saw it was not after him but Irato. The possessed goshe reached out and grabbed the ghost by the arms while the echo of a howl seemed to rise up from the ground. The ghost struggled a moment, unable to break Irato’s grip, then relaxed and bowed her head before bursting apart.

Suddenly, two more ghosts leaped up from the gravel beneath their feet and seized Irato. A savage open hand swipe tore right through one and it instantly evaporated into nothing, but more followed – a sudden eruption of grey blurs appearing on all sides and falling forward into Irato’s body, flailing and clawing at him. In the next moment a burst of bluish light erupted from Irato’s back and Narin heard the man howl – not the demon, the man.

Irato turned his head to the sky as half a dozen spitting whipcords of light appeared from inside him and lashed at the ghosts, but they continued forward and somehow they bodily hauled the twisting, folding shape of the demon’s avatar from Irato’s body. The former goshe screamed as the demon was ripped from his body and mind, the massed ghosts wrapping themselves around it and bearing it down into the ground, where all of a sudden it vanished.

The lights faded. Irato gave one final croak of pain and sank heavily to his knees then all was silent. Myken didn’t wait any longer and marched through the gate, musket levelled. Enchei turned in a circle as she came, looking for a target for his darts, but at last went to check on Irato, who looked about to topple face-first to the ground. The stricken man stared off at nothing in the distance, shuddering at what had just happened.

Behind Enchei the door crashed open and the shadows were split with light. Narin recoiled from the white fire silhouetting his friend even as Myken aimed and fired. If the bullet struck, Narin didn’t hear it. A surge of wind whipped up over the ground as Enchei rolled and fired. Stuttered white light seemed to flash across his faceless helm then something caught hold of him and yanked the former Astaren off his feet.

Myken dropped her musket and fired a pistol, but failed to stop whatever force was dragging Enchei towards the door. He twisted in mid-air; throwing his body through an impossible horizontal flip and landing upright with his baton tearing the air apart ahead of him. Again he was snared and dragged off his feet, spun about as his body made a furrow in the gravel.

‘Oh f—’

Narin blinked and Enchei was gone.

Enchei crashed heavily to the flagstone floor and rolled sideways. He pushed himself up into a crouch and spun away, expecting some sort of attack, before realising he was in a still, dark room. Shades of grey fluttered across his eyes as his mage-sight fought to readjust. The lines of an atrium enclosed by narrow archways slowly unfolded before him.

Through the central arch he saw a grand hall that rose to almost the height of the entire building – a central space penned by curling staircases and partitions in the House Gold fashion of hollowed-out caverns. Directly in the centre of the room, a figure of nightmare regarded him. Once it had been a man of House Gold – the Kobelt, he assumed – but now there was little left of the man he’d once been. Black trails of blood marred his cheeks, welts and fissures in his skin spilled blood and smoke-like trails. Where there had been something darkly magnificent about the possessed Banshee, haloed by a demon’s shadow, here it was monstrous as the forces slowly tore their vessel apart.

Enchei checked left and right as incantations buried deep in his memory began to sing and he rubbed the metal of his gauntleted fingers together. He could feel the armour chime and radiate tiny pulses of sound as the shape of the palazzo’s interior began to develop in his mind’s eye – the line of stairs and semi-defined rooms, four solid chimney stacks and curved beams that supported the roof. It was a warren with few obvious exits; the lower windows too small to escape through, the winding staircases all leading down to the centre where the demon waited. The demon’s presence distorted it all, offered Enchei only a twisted picture with a deep well at its heart, but he saw enough.

No point dragging this out,
Enchei thought as more incantations activated. His muscles began to ache with building power, runes on the metal edge and ball of his gauntlets glowing white. Without waiting he fired a stream of darts at the Kobelt. The possessed man didn’t bother to dodge, letting the slivers of metal punch through the flesh without effect.

Enchei continued to fire, volley after volley until the man’s face was a lacerated mess – it wouldn’t stop the demon, he knew, but anything that weakened its vessel might be worthwhile, if he could stay alive for long enough. He had no intention of getting into a straight fight, not when there was a tangle of obstacles to get lost in, but torn flesh and arteries forced the demon to expend more energy to maintain its link to the mortal realm.

When he stopped, the demon hadn’t moved. In the strange washed-out twilight of his mage-sight there was a moment of stillness. Even the air was caught between breaths and Enchei found himself frozen, watching the demon from halfway behind a stone pillar.

‘You realise you can’t win,’ called a woman’s voice from somewhere above Enchei. ‘Not against both of us.’

Enchei suppressed a curse.

‘Your point?’ he replied after another furtive check.

He could see no one and the voice seemed to echo from three different points on the upper floor – she was clearly masking her location. The incantations in his mind changed to staccato pulses flooding around the building, but the demon was a vast sucking hole in the world. The outline Enchei saw was so warped by its presence that he could make little sense of it, and certainly not find the speaker.

‘You do not need to die.’

Enchei paused. ‘You got a weird fucking way of selling that one. I’m all for foreplay, but days o’ hellhounds chasing me is a step too far.’

‘I’m a practical woman. I recognise you’re adept at staying alive and I would prefer to be out of this place quickly and clean.’

‘You mean before House Iron’s Astaren come?’ Enchei felt a moment of hope as he spoke. However problematic the presence of Astaren might be, if she was keen to avoid them that gave him something to work with.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Master Tattooist. Their presence in the city is modest and they know the dangers of the Terim.’

‘Who, then?’

‘I am not here to kill Lawbringers, not if I can help it.’

‘Doesn’t help the recruitment effort, eh?’ Enchei ventured. ‘Your Eagle paymasters might be unhappy if the Emperor turned against them.’

She laughed, a thin and dead sound. ‘Paymasters? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Right, my mistake.’
Keep talking, give the others time. I’m not getting out of here without a distraction.
‘Still – best only Dragons die while you’re hunting me down, eh?’

‘Say what you like about House Dragon, they don’t whine about casualties.’

‘They do seek revenge, though.’

‘I intend to be somewhere they cannot find me.’

Aye, unless the coming war goes disastrously and if that’s the case, the whole Empire’s in chaos, so you’re well down the list of priorities.

‘What do you want, then?’

She sighed, a whisper of breath that raced up and down the length of the palazzo. ‘You know that – and now your time is done. Give yourself willingly or have the Terim rip your memories out of your eyes as you breathe your last.’

Enchei started to move towards a slightly more protected corner, watching the demon shift slightly to follow him. ‘You think my mind’s as easy to crack as all that?’

‘I will manage.’

The certainty in her voice made him believe her. Whatever failsafes and defences had been implanted into his mind by the mage-priests of Ghost, he wasn’t willing to gamble they’d stand up to the combined efforts of a higher-order demon and the most terrifying of Leviathan’s Astaren. They spoke to the Gods of the deep, legend told, and Enchei was one man who knew the terror of a god’s presence in his mind.

‘Guess you won’t take my word there’s nothing of value in my memories? That you’d never make it through the valley passes?’

The tiniest of flutters sparked in his gut – one he quelled instantly, but enough to make Enchei linger on the thought. The Fields of the Broken – the god he’d killed. Even the Ascendant Gods had been kept from that valley while the various armies tore themselves apart; it hadn’t just been snow and ice cutting them off from the rest of the world.

‘I like a challenge, if the reward’s sufficient.’

‘It’s dead. I killed it before it fully woke,’ he said more in hope than expectation. If there was nothing of value or danger left in that valley, it wouldn’t have been sealed off.

‘That hardly matters. Your answer is no, then? As you wish.’

‘Wait!’ Enchei yelled as the Terim took a step forward.

Her impatience was palpable and icy. ‘Yes?’

Enchei looked around for inspiration, desperate to prolong things even a few more moments, but the gilt-edged furniture, wire-bound lanterns and long curtains provided him with nothing. The moment stretched out until Enchei felt a manic grin slip on to his face. He whispered an incantation and felt the warmth against his skin as the armour obeyed.

‘Nah, I got nothing,’ he muttered and broke into a run.

As he ran, his boots crashed down on the flagstones in a shower of sparks that seemed to ignite the air around him. From under his clothes burst a glittering smoke, pouring from his armour with a threatening hiss as he moved to disperse it as far as he could manage.

Bursts of utter dark came from the possessed man in reply. Through the peripheral haze and smoke, Enchei glimpsed the after-echoes against the smeared grey of his mage-sight. A tall upright body and long forelimbs, curved neck and spread wings – the size of a true dragon and just as terrible to behold.

The Kobelt ran forward just as Enchei ducked behind a staircase and checked his stride. A darting claw of shadow smashed forward across his path, slicing neatly through a wall-hanging before smashing a sideboard to splinters. Enchei hit back with darts and baton, cutting furrows through its shadow wing and studding the man’s tattooed cheek. Neither seemed to slow the demon but Enchei was already moving, smoke billowing in his wake.

Up ahead a grey figure appeared, causing Enchei to lurch to one side, darts spitting as he went. They passed through the ghost without effect as it advanced with claws raised. He dropped and skidded on a rush mat, sliding into the grey figure as it struck. Claws caught his forearm and screeched down the armour while Enchei’s blow met no resistance. He spun and drove up to face the ghost again, but now his metal fingers were surrounded by spitting light.

One swipe gouged through the ghost and sent it reeling, one step and a lunge burst it apart. Grey tatters billowed briefly in the smoke-laden air then dropped back into nothingness but as Enchei turned to resume his charge around the palazzo he caught sight of a huge shadow limb grab a fretwork partition and rip it away.

He turned and retraced his steps as the possessed Kobelt stepped forward, ducked down in echo of the hunched demon shadow that surrounded it and reached claws after Enchei. One came within a whisper of hooking his leg and Enchei checked his stride, seeing an opportunity. He twisted and chopped down with his open palm, hammering a glow rune against a shadow-claw as long as his forearm. It connected with a burst of light and sound that made Enchei reel, the detonation driving him back against the outside wall as the claw exploded. A terrible screeching rang around the palazzo but the demon’s fury was only increased and it raked furrows in the stone walls as it struggled forward in the cramped space behind the stone stair.

It was increasingly hard to see anything with the glitter smoke still billowing from his armour. Enchei was forced to fire his baton blind, knowing it would do nothing more than slow the demon. From his belt he pulled a misshapen metal ball. It was an ugly and crude weapon, but as the trails of lightning around his fingers ignited the fuse and he tossed it, the veteran wasted no time in diving clear.

The grenade exploded in an even brighter light; a sputtering orb of white forming on the flagstone floor and shredding a limb of the demon. The explosion was more palpable this time and the force pitched Enchei into a panelled cupboard set to one side of the atrium.

Stars above!
Enchei thought blearily as he shrugged free of the wreckage and fought his way upright.
At
least we know those work.

The grenades were a recent creation. After Narin’s recognition by the Emperor himself, Enchei realised the chances of meeting another Astaren had just got greater. He’d sacrificed his battlefield weapons when he faked his death all those years ago, knowing what his comrades would be looking for if anyone required confirmation. Until now that had been a risk worth taking, but the goshe’s firepowder weapons had reminded him that he might one day need to pierce Astaren armour.

Before he could move, another ghost materialised and leaped for him. Claws scored the armour at his throat as Enchei was driven back. He twisted frantically then slammed his palms together in a burst of light inside the ghost’s head. It vanished in the same storm of tatters but behind it was a greater danger still. While the demon’s howls of pain and fury shook the stones under his feet, there was a moment of quiet in Enchei’s mind. At the far end of the hall was a figure – a living person who paid the demon no mind. A woman; the Benthic Knight.

She wore a long black coat that would have been severe except for the ornate filigree of its collar, buckles and cuffs. From her dead white skin and hair he could see she was a Leviathan and, as he looked, the air trembled around her. There were faint ghostly images of figures flanking her but Enchei’s attention was more drawn to the slim black cane resting gently in her hands. She flicked it idly in his direction and Enchei felt the impact like a slashing sword across his chest.

He reeled sideways, glimpsing a dull reddish light in the tip of the cane as it was twitched back across him and another blow struck his helmet. A volley of darts in reply was swatted aside and then Enchei was running again – the demon’s rage building to shuddering proportions behind him.

As he went left and right, cloth was slashed open and wood splintered under the impact of her unseen lash, but Enchei kept his head down until he reached more secure cover. At another staircase he pulled one of his precious grenades from his belt and tossed it blind into the centre of the hall, but as it exploded he heard no cries or alarm from the Knight.

A little help, girls,
he thought frantically, knowing his daughters couldn’t hear his thoughts – chillingly aware he’d been cut off from theirs since being dragged into the palazzo.
Narin, Kesh – any of you. Win me a chance – Gods above just give me that!

Enay signalled to her sister and readied her lance. Maiss pulled herself up to the top of the palazzo’s rear wall and levelled a pistol over it. Before her head was up, a bullet had struck the crest next to her and her own shot was hastily fired. A second bullet spat up from the stone by her fingers, but in the next moment Enay was up and the Dragon’s Breath churned a path of flames across the memorial statues standing in the moonlight.

A flash of movement attracted her eye and she moved with it, pulling away just in time as a zip of air sliced the side of her head. In the rear garden of the palazzo, the renegade Ghost, Sorpan, dived out of the skewed path of her weapon. He came up shooting again, his pistol inexhaustible it seemed, while Enay knew her sister only had one loaded gun left.

Enay spun away, feeling the trickle of blood down her ear as she went. The Dragon’s Breath was her best defence, she knew – its indiscriminate and terrible power forced the man into haste. As she fired again she sensed Maiss drop down over the wall and crouch behind a broad urn-topped memorial. Sorpan saw it too and directed a shot in her direction but then had to hide again as Enay swept the searing heat lance across his hiding place.

‘Sorpan!’ she called as she joined her sister over the wall. ‘Give yourself up!’

That threw him, she sensed it almost as clearly as she did her sister’s advance. The strange powers they had inherited made them an effective and lethal hunting team. Though Sorpan would be counting on being able to hear any directions they gave to each other, the twins didn’t need to do any such thing. Their connection was bone-deep and instinctive – Enay had an understanding of how Maiss would move or act that went beyond communication.