Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 06 - Ghost in the Forge Read Online Free Page A

taste in opera. But come! What is this grim news of yours?”
    “That mask and rod,” said Halfdan. “Show them to me.”
    Claudia rose, retrieved the jade mask and the metallic rod from a locked chest, and brought them to the table. She carried them wrapped in cloth. “I suggest, Master Basil, that you do not touch them. I don’t know what effect they might have.”
    “Sound counsel, my dear,” said Halfdan as Claudia tugged away the cloth. The empty eyes of the jade mask gazed at Caina, and she felt the crawling tingle of sorcery from the aura of power surrounding both the mask and the rod. 
    “Those hieroglyphics are Maatish,” said Caina. “I’m sure of it.”
    She remembered the Maatish scroll upon the podium atop Haeron Icaraeus’s mansion, the storm screaming overhead, Maglarion laughing as he worked the spell that would have killed every living thing in Malarae…
    “You’re right,” said Halfdan. “Those are Maatish symbols. But this mask and rod aren’t Maatish. They’re Catekhari.”
    “Catekhari?” exclaimed Claudia. “But that is impossible. The Catekhari are reclusive.”
    “You know of them?” said Halfdan. 
    Claudia straightened up, hands behind her back, and she reminded Caina of a student about to recite a lesson for her tutor. “Catekharon is one of the free cities, west of Anshan and southeast of New Kyre. A reclusive society of sorcerers who call themselves the Scholae rule the city, though outsiders refer to them as the Masked Ones…” She blinked. “You mean Marina was attacked by a Masked One?” 
    Corvalis glanced at Caina. She had told him her true name, but she had not given it to Claudia. Caina could not bring herself to do it. Her true name was a measure of trust…and she could not bring herself to trust a magus that much.
    Not even Corvalis’s sister. 
    “That seems likely,” said Halfdan. 
    “But that is impossible,” said Claudia. “Everything I read about the Masked Ones said they were reclusive, and loathed leaving their city for any reason. And by all accounts the Masked Ones are sorcerers of great puissance. How are Marina and my brother still alive?”
    Halfdan shrugged. “Perhaps the Masked One was overconfident. Or unused to physical fights. Or Marina simply outwitted him. She’s rather good at outwitting sorcerers.”
    “If those are Maatish symbols,” said Caina, “then are the Masked Ones necromancers?”
    “No,” said Halfdan. “From what I understand, it seems the Masked Ones were once a society of some sort in ancient Maat. The necromancer-priests and the pharaohs ruled Maat, while the Masked Ones were a lesser order of sorcerers charged with making enspelled artifacts for the necromancer-priests. When the Kingdom of the Rising Sun collapsed two thousand years ago, the Masked Ones fled north and settled in Catekharon.” 
    “The Masked Ones are rumored to be artificers of unequalled skill,” said Claudia.
    “They are,” said Halfdan. “What I am about to tell you is a secret known to few outside of the Ghosts. Even I did not know it until two weeks ago. The Masked Ones are perhaps the most powerful sorcerers in the world. The Magisterium, Istarinmul’s College of Alchemists, the stormsingers of New Kyre, the occultists of Anshan…none of them dare challenge the Masked Ones and their enspelled artifacts.”
    “If they have such power,” said Caina, “why do they not rule the world?”
    “Apparently they have no interest in it,” said Halfdan. “The Masked Ones study the arcane sciences and little else. They ignore the outside world, but if threatened, they respond with deadly force. Both Old Kyrace and Anshan tried to conquer Catekharon. Both were utterly defeated. The Anshani were defeated so badly that they suffered seventy years of civil war afterward.” 
    Something clicked in Caina’s head.
    “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” said Caina. 
    Claudia frowned. “How could you possibly know that? He hasn’t