Dave Gross - Lord of Stormweather

"Over here!" yelled Chaney, pointing toward Radu. "Over here!"

The other guard drew his sword and peered where Chaney pointed, but he saw nothing.

"Run!" advised Chaney. "You can't stop him!"

The guard turned to question his companion just as Radu emerged from the darkness.

"Sorry," said Chaney.

He stepped out of the possessed guard's body just as the man's partner felt Radu's blade sever his spine.

The guard Chaney had inhabited shook his head and blinked at the sight of his fallen companion. He raised his sword to defend himself, but Radu beat it aside effortlessly. The assassin's blade dipped neatly into the man's throat.

Chaney knew he'd given the guard no time to escape, even if he could apprehend his peril in the second before his death. Still, the ghost didn't want to find out what would happen to him if he was in the man's body at the moment of death. Perhaps nothing, since he was already dead and bound to Radu. He wanted time to give the matter more thought before he dared to experiment.

Chaney consoled himself in the knowledge that his shout had started an alarm all around the house. First a chain of voices, and a rapid, resounding bell alerted all within Stormweather Towers to the danger.

"Now you're well and truly buggered," said Chaney. "No point in going on, now that the entire house is alerted. Maybe you could take a nice holiday along the southern Moonsea. You could use some sun."

Radu ignored both Chaney's jibes and the disintegrating bodies of the guards and pulled on the kitchen door. It remained firmly shut.

"I'm guessing about now you're wishing you'd taken his keys before killing your guide," said Chaney. "Let's get out of here."

The vapors of his victims finally caught up to Radu. They rushed over his body, then into his face, through the holes in his mask, and finally-Chaney imagined-into his mouth and nostrils.

Radu gasped at the massive influx of power. It wracked his body and threw the sword from his hand.

"Oh, dark and empty," gulped Chaney.

An instant later, the magical feedback reached him, too. It blasted the very memory of substance from his mind, unraveled all his reason, and scrubbed the vision from his eyes. For an eternity or a second, all he knew was a universe of white screams.

When reality returned, it was a sensation of motion. Radu dragged Chaney by his invisible leash through the splintered kitchen door. The staff had long since gone to bed, except for Brilla, the chief cook. She clutched a trembling knife in one hand as she pressed her plump body against the far wall. Chaney remembered the woman fondly, for she'd always been kind to him even as the other servants avoided young master Talbot's scurrilous friend. He was glad to see Radu had wasted no time for killing her before he sought his target.

He felt the tug and got his feet beneath him. He ran to catch up to Radu, but something blocked his way.

Chaney realized he could still hear the screams from the recent influx of life. Barely visible, even to his sight, the ghostly images of Radu's victims huddled all around him. They clutched at Chaney's clothes and hair like palsied beggars craving a coin. One of them grasped his knees in the ancient gesture of petition. Chaney looked down at the demented face of the man he'd possessed. Confusion and betrayal swelled in his eyes.

Those damnable eyes. They would not stop looking at him.

"All right," he said. "All right. I'll think of something."

The phantoms released him, and Chaney ran out of the kitchen.

He found Radu in the long passage between the feast hall and the kitchens. Radu stood near the center of the corridor, crouched in a swordsman's guard. A white halo blazed around his head as the surplus of unholy energy burned from his saturated body.

Radu put his back to the huge oaken feast hall door. To either side and across from him, ranks of mounted armor lined the walls, each beneath the personal insignia of its former owner. House guards stood before either end of the corridor. They held their target shields before them, edges overlapping to form a wall over which they thrust the points of their swords. With the help of the empty armor, they surrounded the intruder. Slowly they marched toward the center of the hall, hedging him in where he had no escape.

Radu spun around and kicked the feast hall door. His foot shot through the thick wood, creating a hole just large enough to reveal the ranks of house guards already waiting behind it.

Chaney allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction at seeing his nemesis cornered, then he sank into the body of one of the house guards, careful not to take one from the front ranks. Merging with the man's body felt like forcing himself into a pool of cool mud. It was more difficult than possessing the guard at the kitchen door but far easier than forcing his way into Radu Malveen.

"He means to kill Tamlin!" shouted Chaney. "Be careful, he's inhumanly strong and deadly with that blade. Take him down with spears!"

A man wearing a sergeant's braid looked incredulously at Chaney's host and said, "How do you-?"

"Oops," said Chaney.

He stepped out of the guard's body into the sergeant's, earning an instant promotion.

"Do it!" said Chaney with his new authority. "Summon reinforcements with spears."

One look at the cornered assassin told him that Radu had heard his command and understood its true source. He glanced up to see the higher reaches of the grand stairway.

"Look out!" shouted Chaney. "He's-"

Radu had already leaped fifteen feet up to the second floor. He ran toward the east wing-

Toward Tamlin's bedchamber.

"That's a stroke of luck," said one of the guards near Chaney.

"What do you mean?"

"The master is still down in the cellars, overseeing the-"

"Oh, dark," said Chaney.

The ghost had long feared that he and Radu each heard what the other did, as demonstrated by his own recent "eavesdropping" on the message Drakkar sent the assassin. Before he could say anything else to the guards, Chaney felt himself pulled from the sergeant, toward Radu.

On the lower floor.

Even amid the shouts and alarms throughout the house, Chaney heard the constant moaning of his spectral choir. They floated all around him, no longer content to lurk in the shadows. Something had stirred them. Chaney wondered whether there was a limit to the number of souls Radu could contain. Or perhaps the ghosts sensed something Chaney himself could not, some dread oracle of disaster.

Chaney willed himself along the tether that bound him to Radu. The motion carried him through the marble tiles, past the stone foundation, and into the rocky soil beneath. At last he emerged in a stairway of unadorned stone. There, Radu fought a hulking figure in Uskevren livery.

Chaney recognized Vox, Tamlin's voiceless bodyguard. Because his friend Talbot had always hated the brute, so had Chaney. Old rancor was nothing compared to their current, common purpose.

The big man fought a holding action. He'd already dropped his big axe in favor of a pair of heavy, notched knives-sword-breakers. Each time his foe's blade thrust toward him, Vox parried in an effort to catch Radu's slender blade in the teeth of his own weapons. Even if he were not aware of the horrid effects of death at Radu's hand, Vox was taking no chances. That he was fighting in pure defense suggested that he expected help from above.

Unfortunately, the mute couldn't call for help.

Possessing the man would only distract him and hasten his death. Trying to do the same to Radu had already proven futile. Chaney simply didn't have the power to overcome the assassin's implacable will, especially when the man was so fully empowered by the spirits of the dead.

The same spirits that circled Chaney, moaning and pulling at him. What were they trying to tell him?