by Lisa Shearin
There was a flicker of surprise in the goblin’s dark eyes. He expected me to be afraid. I was. But I was a hell of a lot more angry. In my family, rage wins out over fear anytime.
“Such a small request,” he murmured. “You are certain you do not wish anything more?”
“Let’s see… You gone, the rock gone, your lawyers gone. That would pretty much cover it for me.”
“Those are not within my power, or yours.” He moved his body slowly against mine, and it was all too obvious he liked being this close. “But the Guardian is within your power to free,” he whispered against my ear. “The Saghred is yours to command. Tell it to release him, and it shall be done. Immediately. You only need to will it.” He drew back just enough to gaze down at me, his dark eyes shining. A slow smile formed, fangs visible. The goblin’s smile told me that he would love to see me do it. Probably because the moment I asked the Saghred for one favor, it could demand one right back. I had a feeling that the rock’s idea of a small favor would be something along the lines of my eternal soul on a platter, like a bunch of grapes to be plucked one at a time. I wasn’t about to be served up to anything or anyone.
If I did nothing, the Guardian would die. And I had a feeling he would be the first of many until the Saghred, or Sarad Nukpana, got what they wanted.
I had another feeling. Actually it was more like a realization. Sarad Nukpana couldn’t have decorated all by himself. Nor could he be attacking that Guardian all by his lonesome. He and the Saghred were connected in some way and feeding off of each other.
If I hurt one of them, the other should at least blink. I was counting on Mychael acting when the rock blinked. Nukpana was standing close enough; his breath was warm against my cheek. I’d wonder later about how disembodied souls could breathe, let alone be warm. Wonder later; act now. His hand on my wrist had felt solid enough. Let’s see how solid the rest of him was.
My knee was ready to find out when the floor buckled beneath our feet and the silvery void rippled with an unseen impact. Nukpana and I landed hard on the floor, and I rolled clear and came to my feet before the goblin could get his hands on me again.
The void beyond Nukpana’s bedroom was lighter now, like the sun trying to force its way through heavy fog. The light faded and then flared again with increased intensity.
Nukpana looked up into the void and laughed. “Your paladin is trying to rescue you. An impressive effort. He must fear for your safety.”
That made two of us.
I was standing on the edge of Nukpana’s bedroom, and my hand brushed against the void.
It was solid, not mist.
It was also cold and brittle beneath my fingers, like a sheet of translucent ice. Fog could be penetrated, and ice could be broken. Breaking it could also let the wraiths in— or let me out. There was only one way to know for sure.
I grabbed one of the chairs and swung it with everything I had.
Nukpana’s world shattered. The void engulfed Sarad Nukpana, the room, everything. I felt myself being pulled backward. The goblin’s wordless scream came to me through the racing mist, dim from distance, but raw with undiminished fury.
In an instant, my feet went from plush fur to stone floor. Mychael was holding me pressed tightly against him, his hands on either side of my head.
“She’s back,” I heard him say to someone. He sounded out of breath. I didn’t know who he was talking to; my eyes wouldn’t exactly focus.
The room got lighter and the blurred images sharpened into Ronan Cayle and the Guardians. I shuddered, a full head-to-toe event. Then the shuddering turned into shaking and some shallow breathing. I couldn’t stop the shaking, and I didn’t even try. Breathing, I made an effort to do. Mychael’s hands went from my head to around my waist. They were strong and warm, and they were all that was between me and a quick and unpleasant trip to the floor.
The Guardian who the Saghred had attacked was on the floor, half-conscious, and trying to sit up. He was determined and his brother Guardians had their hands full trying to stop him. His first words blistered the air blue. I’d found if a man could swear that expressively, the insides of his head couldn’t have been too rattled. With only a little help from his brothers, he got to his feet.
I steadied myself with my hands against Mychael’s chest. He was standing close enough to kiss. I could feel his heart pounding beneath my palm.
I took a panting breath, then tried a smile. “You tried to break into the Saghred.”
“I did.” His eyes reflected concern, relief, and rage all at the same time. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
I shook my head. “You breaking in gave me the idea to break out. It worked.”
Mychael’s hands tightened briefly around my waist; then with a quick glance at his men, he loosened his hold and stepped back, much to my disappointment.
To my surprise, I stayed on my feet. “Did I vanish or something?”
“You were here the whole time,” Ronan Cayle said. “All five seconds of it.”
I blinked. “Seconds? That’s it?”
“It felt like longer?” he asked.
“About a half hour’s worth. I guess time’s different on the inside.” I’d heard that from some of my formerly incarcerated family members. I never thought I’d have my own experience to draw from. “What happened out here?”
Mychael’s expression darkened, and I think it was aimed at me. “You went for the box’s lid before I could stop you. Then you closed the lid and took a step back.” He paused uncomfortably. “You stopped breathing; that was how I knew he’d taken you inside.”
I stared at him. “I stopped breathing?”
“It’s the first sign of an out-of-body experience,” he told me. “And considering what you’d just touched, I knew where you’d gone.”
I felt the residual tingle of his hands pressed to the sides of my head. “You used your hands to—”
A muscle twitched in Mychael’s jaw. “Attempt to retrieve your soul.”
“My soul was gone?” My voice sounded very small.
“It was.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. Though there was a good chance that I’d scream later.
“What happened in there?” Mychael asked quietly.
I swallowed. “Nukpana tried to tell me that being bonded to the Saghred was a gift, not a curse. It wasn’t a very convincing argument. It’s also a discussion I’d rather not have with him again—in my body or out.” I looked from Mychael to Ronan. “Are you two ready to do what we came for and get the hell out of here?”
“More than ready,” Mychael said. He looked at Ronan. “Sir?”
In response, the maestro tossed aside his outer, merely flamboyant robe, exposing the inner, if at all possible, more outrageous robe. I guess it was the sort of thing a legendary spellsinger wore to a legendary stone of power figurative ass kicking. I didn’t know if Ronan Cayle was getting comfortable to sing, or getting unburdened by all that silk should running become necessary. Either one sounded like a good idea. But I didn’t want to be the one to tell the maestro that if the Saghred decided to fight back, his little brocade-booted feet weren’t going to do him any good.
“The melody is more effective in a lower range,” Ronan told Mychael. “You start. I’ll come in with the countermelody.”
“Is everyone able to shield themselves?” Mychael addressed the question to his Guardians and me.
I nodded. The Guardians responded by speaking their personal shields into place. I followed suit. We weren’t shielding ourselves against the Saghred; we were protecting ourselves against what Mychael and Ronan were about to do. I had no doubt that their sleepsong would be one of the most potent. We weren’t wayward souls, but it was still a sleepsong sung by a pair of masters. If we didn’t shield ourselves, we’d be on the floor snoring. With shields, we would still be able to hear the song, but the spell wouldn’t affect us.
Mychael began to hum, the softest, most soothing sound
I’d ever heard. Even standing across from him, I could feel the sound resonating from deep in his chest. I could only imagine what it would feel like to be held there, listening to that sound, feeling that music. The humming resolved into whispered words, the syllables melding one into the next, the pitch low and constant and warm.
He had a deep, molten, luscious baritone that made me think of melted chocolate. Decadent and delicious, not to mention hypnotic. If that voice had been persuading me to go to sleep—or do anything else—I don’t think I’d have been able to resist. Hell, I don’t think I would have even tried.
I’d only heard Mychael’s singing in snippets. But I knew enough about spellsinging to know that his voice was doing some very intricate and impressive work. I couldn’t tell yet if the Saghred was impressed enough to be sleepy, but it made a fan for life out of me. The tune was simple and heartbreakingly beautiful, but it was the words of the spellsong that would have tripped up a lesser spellsinger.
Ronan’s tenor seamlessly merged with Mychael’s baritone, flowing underneath in a strong countermelody. Not surprisingly, I didn’t feel the same way about Ronan’s voice, but I knew enough about spellsinging to tell that his pipes more than matched his reputation.
Their spellduet was essentially a lullaby for one, soft and soothing. Volume wasn’t needed, just intensity.
I just wanted to stand there and bask in the rolling waves of scrumptious sound, but I had work to do. It was my job to see if Sarad Nukpana had stopped listening because he couldn’t keep his eyes open. I felt the Saghred begin to waver. The soft light illuminating the stone never changed, but what I sensed from it definitely did. It was working.
Then it wasn’t. Something or, more to the point, someone, was fighting back.
I’d give Mychael and Ronan three guesses and the first two didn’t count.
I saw Sarad Nukpana with others I had only seen through silver mist—his new friends, his allies. Only now they were just as solid as Nukpana himself. There were goblins and elves and humans, with a couple of creatures whose race or species I didn’t recognize. The evil inside the Saghred didn’t restrict itself to Sarad Nukpana. They were down, but they weren’t going out. I heard laughter, muffled but still mocking.
I didn’t want my voice to possibly disrupt what Mychael and Ronan were doing, but I made sure my expression spoke volumes. They knew as well as I did what was happening—and what was not happening. They were getting the message without my help. Professionals that they were, their spellduet never faltered.
Suddenly, a disembodied voice floated in the air around us, a voice of staggering strength and power, a baritone like Mychael. It was deep, vibrant, and impossible to ignore.
It was Piaras.
Maintaining one particularly glorious low note while Cayle’s tenor danced above it, Mychael indicated a small square opening, almost hidden in shadow near the ceiling. Of course, an air vent. I thought the containment rooms were sealed, but that was ridiculous. If they’d been sealed, we wouldn’t have been able to breathe. I assumed that like in most large buildings, the vent led to a network of tiny tunnels running throughout the citadel. Piaras was practicing on the citadel’s main floor in the music room. I recognized it as one of his sleepsongs. But unlike Mychael and Ronan, Piaras wasn’t singing a lullaby for one. The kid was trying to knock out a platoon. It was a sleepsong for use on a battlefield—and if we could hear it down here, so could the rest of the citadel.
Oh shit.
Magnified by the ducts, his voice was as hypnotic as Mychael’s—and as sleep inducing. I heard what sounded like a sigh of smug, sensual contentment from Sarad Nukpana. If the Saghred had been a cat, it would have been purring. I didn’t want the rock belligerent, but I didn’t want it happy, either. Piaras’s singing made it just a little too happy.
Then the Saghred simply drifted off to sleep. I felt like a lead weight had been lifted from the center of my chest. All sense of the Saghred was gone. I hadn’t felt this good in a long time.
Piaras’s voice went silent with the end of the spellsong. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but I couldn’t deny what he had done.
An untrained teenage spellsinger had just put the Saghred to sleep.
Chapter 5
We ran up the stairs in what must have been record time. The wards on the containment levels had protected the Guardians there, but once the three of us reached the citadel’s main floor, Piaras’s handiwork was sprawled all around us.
Dammit.
Piaras knew to shield his voice when he practiced. More important, he knew how. I didn’t know what had happened here, but it couldn’t have been Piaras’s fault. I’d never seen Mychael that angry, and Ronan Cayle looked like he’d skipped angry and gone straight to enraged.
Dammit to hell.
We saw three kinds of Guardians on the way to the music room: asleep, stunned, and mostly awake. The asleep ones had been caught completely unawares. The stunned ones had probably heard a couple of notes before they could get their shields up. The mostly awake ones were the experienced Guardians who knew what they heard and immediately protected themselves.
There were way too few of those.
This morning I’d thought I was in trouble. I knew Piaras was in trouble.
The corridor in front of the music room looked like the aftermath of a bad bar fight or a good night out—some of the Guardians were snoring; some were happily curled on their sides; and one had slid down the closed music room doors. He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t quite with us, either.
Mychael stepped over the Guardians on the floor, pushed the dazed one aside, and flung open the doors. Piaras was there and, surprisingly, so was Phaelan.
Piaras looked up from his music stand, his big brown eyes like a deer caught in torchlight. He knew from the looks on our faces that something was deathly wrong, and it was his fault. Then he saw the Guardians on the floor behind Mychael, and every bit of color drained from his face.
Phaelan was sprawled in a chair reading a book— completely conscious and utterly clueless.
I jerked the book out of his lap. He plucked the plugs out of his ears, and sat up indignantly.
“What?”
I pointed to the pile of Guardians outside the open door. One Guardian staggered by, leaning on the wall for support.
Phaelan whistled. “Damn, looks like my crew on shore leave. Did the kid do that?”
“Apparently.”
Phaelan grinned at Piaras and gave him a thumbs up. “Good work, kid.” He stopped and took in everyone’s expressions, including Piaras’s. The grin vanished, and the thumb wilted. “Not good work?”
Mychael pushed past Piaras and went to the air vent near the ceiling. Apparently that was how Piaras’s voice had traveled throughout the citadel, so that’s where Mychael aimed his. He took a deep breath and sang. The spellsong was loud; it was discordant; and it commanded every sleeping Guardian to wake up. Now. When he finished, he turned on Piaras, his eyes blazing.
“Did you disable the shields on this room?” he demanded.
“No!” Piaras was horrified. “The shields were down?”
"We could hear you in the containment rooms, through the air vent.”
“I checked the shields before I started,” Piaras protested. “They were up the entire time.”
From the moment he came through the door, Ronan Cayle had been stalking around the edge of the room like a hound on a fresh scent. “Not for your last song, they weren’t.” He never took his eyes off the walls. “And the shields on this room weren’t disabled. They were cut.” Cayle stopped in front of a section of wall near the air vent. “A careful, surgical cut,” he said, sliding his hand up the wall. His hand stopped. “A cut that started right here.” He quickly pulled a chair over, stood on it, and moved his hand slowly over the metal grille of the vent, careful not to touch it. “And it extended right into the air vent.”
Piaras looked like he had stopped breathing or had forgotten how. “A cut? Bu
t I would have known if someone slashed the shields.”
“Not if someone very talented didn’t want you to know,” Cayle said, never taking his eyes off the vent. He carefully placed his fingertips on the grille. “And that someone took great care so you would not know—and chose the air vent so your song would reach the most people.” Cayle sounded like he almost admired the bastard’s work.
“Where could they have cut the shields from?” I asked.
“Since they were cut while Piaras was singing, it wasn’t from inside this room,” Mychael said. “They would have worked from the other side of the wall.”
“What’s back there?”
“Two rooms. The reception area for visitors and a common room where the men relax when they’re not on duty.”
“So it was guests or Guardians.”
Mychael’s eyes were blue frost. “None of my men would have done this,” he said quietly.
“Then one of your guests was up to no good,” I told him.
“Who’d want all the Guardians to take a nap?” Phaelan asked.
Mychael and I looked at each other. Nightshades or Khrynsani. Take your pick. The Nightshades wanted to kill Mychael. The Khrynsani wanted me alive. Both would love to get the Saghred. Sleeping Guardians would make getting any of the above a whole lot easier.
Mychael glared at the wall. “Whoever did it simply walked out through sleeping Guardians.”
“Or has blended back into the woodwork,” I said. A lot of things didn’t make sense to me right now, but two questions demanded asking. “Well, whoever it was, how would they’ve known Piaras would be in here, and what spellsongs he’d be practicing?”
Piaras cleared his throat. “I reserved the room last night, and I had to give a reason.” He paused apologetically. “I wrote ‘sleepsongs.’ ”
“The logbook is on a desk down the hall,” Mychael told me.
I was incredulous. “Anyone could have seen it?”
“It’s a book to reserve time in a music room, Raine. A spellsinger practicing is hardly a state secret.” Mychael looked at the air vent. “Is it still asleep?”
