Ghostwater (Cradle Book 5) Read online

  But he wasn’t there yet.

  Enkai hurled another ball of fire flanked by eight lesser echoes, and it hurtled toward its target. The egg’s hungry power would draw it to the scent of blood.

  He would have watched, but a twinge of danger turned him around. Six green daggers floated around the old woman, and her spirit had latched onto his. She paled when he turned around and launched her Forger technique early.

  Familiar with her madra, Enkai knew that this technique contained a life-poison that was all but impossible to stop. It would devour his life just like his own fire devoured the body, but leave him with an unmarked corpse.

  A wash of bloody flame consumed all the daggers. He could barely call what he’d done a technique; it was nothing but pure power flowing out of him. As such, the red flames that landed on her skin didn’t consume her instantly.

  Or quietly.

  She screamed loud enough to wake the dead as he hopped down from the Thousand-Mile Cloud, landing on the ground two stories below. He felt the first aching pain of exhaustion in his spirit, drawing more deeply on the egg to quench it.

  The town was nothing more than a collection of homes flanking a single wide dirt road. Most people lived above their businesses, and more than a few faces peeked out of upper windows at the sound of the screams. When they saw it was him, they slammed the windows shut.

  Cowards. They all disgusted him.

  Filled by the egg, he poured one ball of fire after another into the air around him, keeping them in orbit around his body. He was relying so much on the egg now that they looked more like fist-sized droplets of blood that were shaped like flames rather than actual fire madra. Eight smaller lights hovered around each one, until he was surrounded by a swirling constellation of power.

  The energy within him was thirsty. He could feel it. Each technique strained against his control like a dog against a leash, begging to go hunt its prey.

  Someone slammed to the ground beside him, kicking up a ring of dust.

  It was the Skysworn stranger.

  His skin was undoubtedly scorched, his face tight with pain, but he had not been consumed. Enkai’s hatred raged hotter; the Skysworn must have wasted valuable defensive constructs on their servants. They spent so much money just to defy him, when they could have had him as an ally.

  He would show them the truth of the choice they’d made.

  The stranger spread his hands, watching the fireballs encircling Enkai. “You don’t have to hurt anyone else,” he said, voice smooth and calming. “This isn’t what you want. This is what the Blood Shadow wants. Let’s just slow down, and we can talk about how to get you what you want.”

  A peal of laughter boiled up from inside Enkai, loud and venomous. “I’ll show you what I want.”

  He released his techniques.

  Sixteen balls of fire, each trailing eight sparks, streaked away from him in lines of red light so that he was surrounded by a crimson web. There were sixty-two spirits left living in town.

  It went down to forty-six in an instant.

  The egg’s power wasn’t exhausted yet. After those first people died, their bodies burst into hungry red fire. That flame craved flesh, and it jumped from victim to victim in a second. The second wave didn’t die so quickly.

  The screams rose from a solo to a chorus.

  Enkai whirled on the Skysworn servant, rage so great his body couldn’t contain it. He filled his palm with bleeding fire, but it felt just like blood.

  “It’s mine!” he shrieked, and even he wasn’t sure whether he meant the egg or the town. “You don’t get—”

  Enkai froze, throat locking up.

  Something had changed.

  The stranger stood with his eyes widened in horror, mouth half-open as he stared at the blackened holes burned in village walls. He looked like a man watching his own home burn.

  But he felt like a monster.

  His spirit suddenly loomed like the shadow of a dragon flying overhead. Rage replaced by icy dread, Enkai scanned the stranger’s spirit. His core still wasn’t dense or bright enough to be a Highgold. For a moment, Enkai wondered what had changed. Then he realized: the man’s madra wasn’t pure anymore. His channels were filled with black fire.

  Darkness flooded into the stranger’s eyes like ink, his irises kindling into circles of burning red. That horrifying gaze locked onto Enkai.

  “Why?” the Skysworn servant asked, and the word was a plea.

  Enkai drew even deeper on the egg. Its power was the ultimate counter to fear.

  He hurled the ball of red light in his hand, packing twice as much madra into it as usual. The lights following it looked like stars, and each could consume a tiger like a torch.

  When the technique left his hand, the Skysworn servant’s body erupted in a black-and-red haze. It was like an illusory flame, burning all around him, but it put a heavy pressure on Enkai’s spirit.

  The stranger waited, motionless, until the bloody fireball had almost reached his chest.

  With explosive force, he leaped straight up.

  Enkai’s fireball blasted through the cloud of dust he’d left behind, which trailed up into the air. The Striker technique looped in the air, swirling up, nine orbiting lights chasing after the stranger.

  He’d already started falling, gathering red-streaked black fire into his human hand. It gathered slowly, taking far longer than Enkai’s technique had, but it carried a great sense of danger.

  Enkai reached behind him, pulling a twisted green-tipped knife from his waistband. This was a Highgold treasure, one of the most valuable weapons in the town. The blood-fire was rising to meet the falling servant, and even if he landed safely, this dagger would be waiting for him.

  A green cloud swept in from the left, catching the stranger mid-fall. He flew away on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, and once again Enkai’s technique swept through empty space where his target had once been.

  Enkai’s fireballs were Striker techniques. They were not Forged, so they ran out of power quickly. This one had already diminished to almost nothing, and Enkai could feel it unraveling. He snarled, forcing his spirit past its exhaustion again, digging deeper into the egg for another technique. He locked his eyes on the Skysworn’s emerald cloud.

  There was no one on it.

  A great, hot, overwhelming power loomed up from behind. Enkai turned, dagger raised, and a white fist caught him in the jaw.

  In his conquest, Enkai had taken blows from Highgolds before. The power of the egg had strengthened his body until he felt like he had leather for skin and stone for bones. He could catch a hammer-blow with one hand, standing as firm as though his boots were nailed to the ground.

  This time, he felt nothing but a flash of pain and a tremendous rush of noise. Then he realized he was lying on the inn’s floor in the middle of a pile of splinters. Groggy, he tilted his head up; there was a hole in the front wall big enough to ride a horse through.

  The stranger stood there, a silhouette against the sky holding a ball of black fire. More flame blazed around him in a hazy corona. His shadow fell over Enkai like the specter of death.

  No. Enkai would not allow himself to die here. Not to a Lowgold.

  The power of the egg was much greater than this.

  In an instant, Enkai drew his core dry. He pulled so hard that it might cause permanent damage to his madra channels, but he was beyond caring. He pulled up all the power of his spirit, drinking thirstily from the madra of the egg.

  Between his hands, a red light bloomed. This didn’t look anything like flame; it was a pure crimson light that hung in the middle of his palms like a red sun. This was a technique worthy of the egg. It sang with power, an echo of the Phoenix’s song that had turned the sky red.

  In triumph, he pushed forward, releasing the technique on the Skysworn’s servant. A river of light, straight as an arrow and thick as a man’s leg, blasted forth with all his rage and fury.

  The stranger lifted his left palm in response, his b
all of dark madra hovering in front of him. It erupted into a bar of liquid fire, black streaked with red.

  The two streams of fire clashed head-on, only a foot from the Skysworn apprentice’s outstretched hand.

  Enkai was prepared for a direct clash of their spirits, pushing the egg’s madra into the technique so he could blast through the stranger’s technique.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The dark flame devoured his, melting through an inch at a time. By the time Enkai started to panic, the stranger’s power was almost at his chest.

  “You can’t—” Enkai started to say. Then the bar of black fire burned through his stomach.

  And the egg was gone.

  Dark flames spread through him, and he collapsed to the floor like a straw doll. It didn’t hurt like he would have expected. It only tingled, as though he faded away like a Remnant.

  He had time for one last, jealous thought. This stranger had so much power, but he acted like a servant. If Enkai had sacred arts like that and combined them with the egg, he could have ruled the world.

  Seconds later, Mu Enkai was nothing more than a pile of ashes.

  Unsatisfied, dark fire spread from his body, consuming the ruined inn. The screams coming from around town slowly died while the survivors huddled in silence and darkness, hoping to be overlooked.

  In the midst of the black flames, the apprentice Skysworn stood alone.

  Ghostwater

  Chapter 1

  On their clouds, Lindon and the two Truegold Skysworn returned to Stormrock, the black city in the sky. They alighted in the tallest tower, presenting entrance codes to the Skysworn on guard.

  This was Starsweep Tower, headquarters of the Skysworn. For them, it must be like coming home.

  It was only Lindon's second time inside.

  Numb, he followed the two green-armored figures inside, past a few other scattered Skysworn. They all looked as exhausted as he felt, and the smell of blood hung heavy in the hallways. More than once, he saw a servant in the dark blue uniform of the Arelius family mopping up a puddle left by a bloodspawn. Or one of its victims.

  The Bleeding Phoenix hadn't even attacked directly. It had only risen for a few days.

  They would be cleaning up the aftermath for years to come.

  All the Skysworn were either on a mission, preparing for a mission, or too injured to work. They were stretched so thin that even the Lowgolds didn’t have a moment to rest.

  Without a word, the two Truegolds brought Lindon to a single, sparsely furnished room behind a black door. It was lit by a stark white circle of script on the ceiling, and filled with only one round table and nine surrounding chairs. There was a three-foot gash in the wooden table, and it looked fresh.

  Lindon slid his bulky brown pack into one of the chairs, then turned to leave the room.

  Bai Rou held up one armored hand, his eyes burning yellow in the shadow beneath his hat of woven reed. “Stay here,” he commanded.

  Lindon wanted nothing more than to sink into a chair, but he had more pressing concerns. “Pardon, but I will return. I'd like to go see Yerin.”

  Renfei, a slight woman with a resolute air and a black cloud hovering in the air over her, jabbed a finger at the table. “Sit. We'll be back. Do not leave this room.”

  “I would like to check on her for myself, if you don't mind.” The last he'd seen her, her soul had been exhausted, but her Blood Shadow was stable. That was the main reason why he wanted to make sure she was all right; the Skysworn were not likely to leave someone with a Blood Shadow to herself. Especially not now.

  Bai Rou stepped forward. He was a brick wall of a man, and the armor only added to his silhouette.

  “Sit,” he said.

  Though, as big as Bai Rou was, he only had an inch or two on Lindon. Compared to the difference in their spirits, that didn't seem like much.

  How would that armor help him against the Path of Black Flame?

  Lindon realized he was meeting those yellow eyes glare for glare, and dark madra was creeping into his vision. Blackflame flowed through him, angry and defiant.

  He looked to the side, blinking his eyes clear, and focused on his pure core. With the clarity came the cold shiver of reality setting in; he had almost started a fight with a pair of armed and armored Truegolds in their headquarters.

  “Apologies. I have been...stressed.”

  Lindon couldn't have called Renfei's expression sympathetic, but at least she hadn't pulled the hand-sized hammer hanging at her hip. “Don't be. The target is dead, the parasite neutralized. Mission accomplished. Don't think about it more than you need to, just do as you're told.”

  He sunk into the nearest chair, trying not to just collapse and sleep. He tried to brace his right arm on the table, but he forgot to cycle madra through it, so his Remnant arm sank right through the wood. “I apologize for my disrespect, but I am concerned about Yerin. Please, I need to know that she is being treated well.”

  ~~~

  Yerin was being treated like a prize pig hauled in front of a bunch of butchers.

  Her hands were manacled in halfsilver and chained to the stone wall behind her, while a bunch of unarmored Skysworn prodded her spirit with theirs. It was hard not to shake like a shaved bear in the snow under the tickle of their scans.

  “And you feel that you were treated...poorly by the Skysworn?” the voice of this green-hooded man made it clear that he thought a knife across the throat and a shallow grave was better treatment than she deserved.

  “What put that in your head?” Yerin asked, glaring at him.

  She didn't say any more, but one of the hooded figures in the back scribbled onto a little board. She figured they were making sure she was still herself, and not a shell the Blood Shadow happened to crawl into. She just wasn't sure how they were doing that, when they didn't know her from a bullfrog.

  “Have you had any urge to harm or kill your fellow man?”

  “Having a few of those urges right now.”

  “What color is this card?” He held up a paper with a splash of yellow paint on it.

  Her Goldsigns twitched, the silver blades hanging over each shoulder eager to cut her free. She calmed them—they wouldn't be able to cut through the halfsilver, made of madra as they were, so she would have to dig through the script-reinforced stone behind her. And the second she started trying that, they would cook her like a side of bacon.

  Still, she was stone certain they were doing nothing but burning up her time. “What does that tell you? Is a Blood Shadow blind to color?”

  The Skysworn examiner looked like he was struggling not to spit at her feet. “Answer the question.”

  “Yellow. You want me to tell you the shapes next?”

  This time, he held up a green card. “And this one?”

  “...if you can't tell what color that is, you need a new line of work.” Every Skysworn in the tower wore green robes when they were out of their green armor.

  He paused for a second as though deciding whether he could backhand her or not, but accepted the answer. He pulled out a card with a triangle painted on it.

  “Do you know what shape this is?”

  She stared at him. “Are you pulling my chain right now?”

  “Answer the question.”

  She shook her wrists, rattling the chains. “You're welcome to kill me now if it'll bring this to an end.”

  He stepped closer, wind madra swirling green around him. He wore a thin beard and he looked at her like she'd killed his children and made him watch. “Don't tempt me, Redmoon.”

  She grinned at him. “Not Redmoon. Arelius.” Eithan Arelius was the only reason she was tied up at all, instead of facing the business end of an axe.

  If he touched her without the stamp of his Emperor, or at least another Underlord, Eithan would wear his skin like a scarf.

  He reddened and turned away as the door opened. When Bai Rou entered, the examiner and note-taker buzzed over to him like vultures to a corpse. They
muttered to him for a while—telling tales about her, she was sure.

  The big man's burning yellow eyes flicked to her, and she turned her smile on him like a blade. He gave no sign whether she'd drawn blood or not, but raised his voice so she could hear. “She's clear?”

  “It's in a stable condition,” the note-taker said, “but there's no telling how long that will last. It's largely up to her.”

  “She'll turn against us before the sun sets,” the examiner said, glaring at her.

  Bai Rou folded his arms and leaned against the wall, and he was watching her too. “She comes with me.”

  Yerin rattled her chains again. “We're wasting breath. You got a key, or am I going to go gray in here?”

  They freed her in spite of the examiner's protests, but left the halfsilver shackles on her wrists.

  Bai Rou pulled her into the hallway and began marching her down without a word. She caught more than one hostile glare, rough search of her spirit, or flare of a half-formed technique.

  What a spine that took, to shake swords at a girl in chains. They had better hope she didn't remember their faces. Not only did she have the power of Redmoon Hall inside her, she had the will to use it against them. They'd dropped her off a cliff and left her to die.

  Well, one Skysworn had.

  Smartest thing to do would be to kill her flat-out. If they let her hit Truegold, they'd regret it.

  “You looking for somewhere to drop me?” she asked.

  He said nothing.

  “You can't kill me, so you want to put me to work. Lindon isn't cutting it on his own?”

  She tried to conceal the real worry she felt, after she'd been forced to leave Lindon in the care of the two Truegolds. She'd only had a fingernail's weight of trust in the Skysworn to begin with, and now even that much had dried up and blown away. They wouldn't draw swords on him, not with Eithan's name hanging over him, but they wouldn't step quick to help him either. He needed her help.

  “The Blackflame completed his mission,” Bai Rou said. “We will speak to you both, and that's all you need to know.”