Ghost Ascension – preview #2 of 3
(A letter to Countess Caina Amalas, circlemaster of Malarae, from the Ghost circlemaster of Cyrica Urbana.)
Countess,
My spies report that the assassin Nikaedes has left the Cyrican provinces and will arrive in Malarae. Almost certainly someone within the capital has hired him to kill the Emperor. No other murder would be worth the vast sum Nikaedes charges.
Countess, you trained me, and I know well your cunning and skill. Yet I urge you to be on your guard against Nikaedes – he is one of the most dangerous men in the Empire, and certainly the most effective assassin.
I will tell you what little the Cyrican Ghosts have managed to learn about him.
He was born perhaps a hundred and forty years ago, and was at one time an initiate of the Magisterium. In his fifth year of study, however, the Magisterium expelled him – for what reasons we do not know. The Magisterium put a bounty upon his head, and Nikaedes fled south, to Anshan. There he became an independent assassin – and one of such fearsome reputation that the Anshani satraps and emirs go white with dread at mention of his name. In the last century, he has killed dozens of Anshani nobles, satraps, emirs, nobles, occultists, and at least two of the Great Shahs – and his hand is suspected in the death of at least one more. About eighty years ago one of the Anshani assassins’ brotherhoods took exception to a foreigner usurping their contracts, and set out to kill him. Instead, he slew them.
All of them.
He must have some skill at sorcery, almost certainly necromancy, to have survived for so long. Yet we do not know the extent of his powers. The stories connected with his murders credit him with command over the shadows, or the ability to shrink or expand to great size, or to drive his victims insane with a glance – a dozen different and fantastical powers. Others claim that he possesses a sorcerous relic salvaged from the Fourth Empire or stolen from the necropolis of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun, or a weapon of arcane might, and draws his powers from that.
Countess, I do not know why Nikaedes has left Anshan for Malarae. But it must be to kill our Emperor. No other death would draw him north. I urge you, find him and kill him at once, or at least drive him from Malarae before it is too late.
I beg you, do not underestimate him. If you do, the Emperor will almost certainly perish.