Ghost in the Maze Read Online Free PDF Page A

down the corridor, past the rows of closed doors, and came to the palace’s grand stairs. They spiraled up to the palace’s top level, glittering and polished, and descended to the great hall below. Elaborate mosaics of geometric designs and animals covered the walls, done in the traditional Istarish style. 
    The black-armored forms of the Immortals sprinting down the stairs stood stark against the colorful mosaics. 
    Caina raced down the stairs, shadow-cloak billowing behind her. The Immortals pursued, and she heard Anburj’s voice bellowing commands. Caina was fast, but the Immortals were faster. She felt a faint breeze as the lash of a chain whip came within a few inches of her head. Another few moments and the Immortals would have her.
    So she threw herself to the left, vaulted over the railing, and jumped. 
    The stairwell yawned beneath her, and Caina slammed into the railing of the stairs on the next level. She seized the railing, her fingers gripping the edge of the cold marble.
    The strange bronze ring, the thing that Anburj had called a pyrikon, clinked as it tapped against the railing. 
    Caina swung her legs back and released her grip upon the railing. She fell another story and caught the railing. Her shoulders and arms screamed from the effort, the cut upon her right arm pulsing, but Caina pulled herself up to the stairs.
    Then she kept running, the Immortals pursuing her.
    But Caina had gained two floors and reached the ground level before they did. She turned away from the main doors and sprinted into the wing of guest bedchambers alongside the great hall. Going out the front doors would have been folly. Anburj had likely stationed men there, and she suspected he had left more men to watch the kitchen door. Her best option was to go out one of the windows in the guest rooms. Then she could run across the grounds, go over the wall, and escape into the streets. She ran down the corridor of doors, pushing them open as she did. Perhaps that would confuse the Immortals, give her a few extra seconds to escape.
    Or perhaps they would see through her tricks and kill her.
    Coming here had been foolish. Agabyzus was right. She had been taking too many risks, pushing herself too hard and daring greater dangers. Sooner or later it had been bound to fall apart. If Anburj had been clever enough to figure out that she was looking for the truth of the wraithblood, other hunters might as well. A bounty of half a million bezants would tempt many men. 
    Caina veered into one of the guest rooms. It was little different than the one she had hidden herself in earlier in the day, save for a large mirror hanging on the wall next to the wardrobe. The shutters were closed, and the windows looked north towards the Golden Palace and the College of Alchemists. Caina eased toward the shutters. If she crept out into the night without anyone noticing, perhaps she could elude Anburj and his men entirely…
    Suddenly the bronze ring upon her finger pulsed with sorcery.
    “The star is the key to the crystal.”
    The voice was dry, whispery, and it sent an icy chill down her spine.
    She whirled in alarm. She had heard those words before, on the worst day of her life, as the temple of Anubankh burned around her in the netherworld, the Moroaica’s rift to the realm of the gods howling as it collapsed. The spirit of the Moroaica’s father had claimed Caina needed those words, that she had to remember them, though Caina knew not why. 
    But she knew that voice.
    It was the voice of the spirit that had spoken in her dreams the night after she had arrived at Istarinmul, that had warned her against Ricimer’s daevagoths in the Widow’s Tower.
    Caina turned towards the mirror, already knowing what she would see in the glass.
    The indistinct shape of a shadow, blurred and featureless.
    And a yellow-orange gleam from the shadow’s eyes of smokeless flame. 
    “Ah,” murmured the shadow. “That always gets your attention.” 
    “This really