Free Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 08 - Ghost in the Mask by Jonathan Moeller

stroke tore a dozen of the shadows apart. Yet for every shadow that unraveled into mist, two more rose from the ground. Was Ephaltus calling all the spirits of the netherworld to rise and aid him?
    Kylon struck down another shadow.
    He had to reach Ephaltus. The exile was using the dagger to control and summon those shadows. If Kylon killed him, perhaps the shadows would break away, or simply return to the netherworld. 
    He turned…and then Ephaltus was before him, the shadows billowing around him.
    Belatedly Kylon remembered how much Ephaltus had hated Andromache. And what better revenge than killing Andromache’s sole remaining blood? 
    Ephaltus slashed at him, and Kylon blocked the blow with his sword. Yet the dagger pulsed with green fire, and Kylon felt it draining away his sorcery, the way Sicarion’s strange spell had done during their duel in Catekharon. Kylon stumbled as a chill went through his limbs, and he fell to one knee, his vision swimming. 
    Ephaltus grinned and drew back the dagger for the kill.
    “No!” 
    Thalastre loomed out of the swirling shadows, hands extended. A gust of freezing wind slammed into Ephaltus, driving him to his knees. Kylon surged forward, still on one knee, and plunged his sword into Ephaltus’s chest.
    The exile screamed, his face twisted with pain…and a final cunning glint came into his maddened eyes. 
    He threw the black dagger.
    Kylon ducked…but the weapon had not been aimed at him.
    He jumped to his feet as the blade left a scratch on Thalastre’s right hand. 
    She frowned in confusion…and then staggered, her face clenched in pain. Her aura fluctuated against his senses as her arcane power struggled against the dagger’s necromancy.
    “Kylon,” she said. “I…I don’t…” 
    Ephaltus died on Kylon’s sword, and the gray shadows faded into nothingness. 
    He ran to Thalastre, and caught her just as she fell.
     
    ###
     
    An hour later Kylon stood alone in the Agora of the Archons, watching as the ashtairoi directed the slaves to clean up the bodies of the slain. One hundred and ninety-seven people had died, killed by Ephaltus’s necromantic shadows before Kylon had cut him down.
    He looked at the Pyramid of Storm, where the most powerful stormsingers had carried away Thalastre.
    The number might well rise to one hundred and ninety-eight before the sun vanished beneath the sea to the west. 
    Tiraedes and Thalastre’s father walked towards him. 
    “Well?” said Kylon. He ought to have greeted the Lord Speaker and the Exarch by their titles, he knew, but at the moment he did not care.
    “She lives,” said Tiraedes, “for now. Had she not been a sorceress, the dagger’s touch would have slain her at once. As it is, her power slowed its necromantic influence long enough for the stormsingers to slow her heart and put her into a coma. She will live…but if she wakens, the dagger’s aura will kill her at once.” 
    Sirykon hesitated, and then put his hand on Kylon’s shoulder. “You must not blame yourself. Many men died today, but far more would have perished had you had not cut down the traitor. We all attacked the shadows, uselessly. It did not occur to us to fight to their master.”
    “I was not fast enough,” said Kylon. “Lord Speaker, did the stormsingers say if there was a cure? A way to reverse the dagger’s influence?”
    Tiraedes shook his head. “They do not know. We have never seen such a weapon before. Perhaps it is Maatish in origin, as Ephaltus claimed. We…”
    “Kylon of House Kardamnos.”
    Kylon scowled, wondering who would interrupt…and the scowl faded from his face.
    A young woman cloaked in blue-green robes stood before him. A bronze amulet fashioned in the shape of three eyes hung from a chain around her neck, the metal corroded and green from seawater. Her eyes changed color as he looked at her, cycling from the gray of a furious storm to the blue-green of a calm sea and back again.
    She was a priestess of the