Ghost Undying Read Online Free Page A

things for the great mistress, dog?” said the gladiator.
    “Be silent,” said Sicarion. Oh, but one day he would make Dorgan regret his treachery. On impulse he started to summon arcane power, expecting the Moroaica’s ward to disrupt his attempt…
    But the power came at his call.
    The ward was gone.
    Sicarion blinked in surprise. Tentatively he worked the spell to sense the presence of sorcery. The Moroaica’s ward upon him had vanished…and the wards around the mansion had dispersed as well. Had someone dispelled them?
    Or had the Moroaica grown so immersed in her studies and arcane experiments that she had simply forgotten to maintain them?
    Either way, Sicarion had his chance to escape.
    But first, a little revenge.
    He turned, his left hand coming up, green fire crackling around his fingers.
    Dorgan started to shout, but Sicarion finished his spell first. A pulse of shadow and green fire slammed in Dorgan’s chest, throwing him against the wall. The gladiator went rigid with a strangled groan, every muscle in his body contracting at once, and toppled to the floor.
    Sicarion grinned, stooped over him, and took a dagger from his belt. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a bit, Dorgan.”
    He raised the dagger, cursing at its awkward grip in his left hand…and stopped.
    One of the spells of Maatish necromancy he had studied flashed through his mind. 
    Why not try it?
    He hacked off Dorgan’s right hand, the gladiator trying to scream through a spell-locked jaw. Sicarion took the limp hand in his and pressed it to the stump of his right wrist. He whispered the spell, summoning necromantic power, and green flames crawled and snapped around his maimed arm.
    Sudden agony flooded through him, and Sicarion screamed. 
    And then the flesh of Dorgan’s sword hand and Sicarion’s right arm crawled together.
    The pain exploded through him, and Sicarion toppled to the floor with a groan. 
    After a moment the agony faded, replaced by something like euphoria. Sicarion sat up, blinking and flexing his fingers…
    The fingers on both hands.
    He looked at his new right hand. It was larger than his old one, but strong and limber. Dorgan’s darker skin seemed strange against the pale skin of his arm, and the hand was joined to his wrist with a hideous ring of garish scar tissue, but Sicarion hardly cared. He made a fist over and over again, the euphoria only fading a little. 
    With the spell he had learned from the Moroaica, he no longer need fear injury or death. Any body part he lost, he could replace. He grinned, picked up his dagger, and turned to finish off Dorgan.
    But he saw that the former gladiator had already bled to death. 
    Well, no matter. Now to escape the mansion and make his way to the Magisterium chapterhouse and send the magi after the Moroaica. In the chaos he could leave Malarae. He had caches of money hidden throughout the city, and could easily escape and set himself up in comfort in some distant land.
    Sicarion turned towards the mansion’s doors.
    And as he did, the doors, the frame, and part of the surrounding wall exploded in a spray of shattered masonry and splintered wood. 
    The blast flung Sicarion to the floor, and he scrambled backward, coughing and wheezing in the masonry dust. A figure strode through the doors, a tall, thin man in the ragged clothes of a Nighmarian noble. A strange jade mask covered his features, carved in the expression of a serene face, and he carried a silver rod in his right hand, its length carved with Maatish hieroglyphs.
    Sicarion’s spell to sense the presence of sorcery was still active, and he sensed mighty arcane forces upon the tall man.   
    Power enough, perhaps, to match the Moroaica.
    “Where is she?” said the masked man in a hoarse voice, rod pointing at Sicarion. “Where is she?”
    “What?” said Sicarion.
    “You are one of the Moroaica’s minions,” said the masked man. “I sense her necromancy upon you. Where is she?”
    Suddenly