by Lisa Shearin
There was no sign of Sandrina Ghalfari, the Khrynsani, or the Sythsaurians. I didn’t kid myself that it meant anything other than a temporary reprieve. The Khrynsani who had been guarding us had been wearing Sythsaurian teleportation cuffs. If they had each been wearing one, I was certain Sandrina would have been wearing two. While Malik had taken two of the cuffs for study, none of us were in a hurry to activate them and see where they’d take us. We thought they’d be dormant as long as they weren’t attached to a wrist, but we’d wrapped them in wards, just in case, until they could be taken to the Isle of Mid for study by Cuinn Avinel or whoever Justinius Valerian thought was best qualified.
Though as it turned out, the cuffs and two of the guns would be taken directly to the Isle of Mid.
By Cuinn Avinel himself via the mirror in his laboratory on the Conclave college’s campus.
In theory, mirror travel was possible over any distance.
Talon had found a few obsidian slabs in the caves the Nidaarians had taken as their temporary home, and had actually succeeded in linking one to Cuinn’s mirror. When the professor had been teaching Talon mirror magic, they’d used Cuinn’s personal mirror. Talon knew it, and it knew Talon—and recognized him when he attempted to link his obsidian slab to it.
Only written messages were passed at first, until Cuinn was certain that the link was solid and stable.
Getting home again just got a whole lot easier.
As did obtaining supplies and reinforcements for the Cha’Nidaar.
When Cuinn had come through himself and seen the slab of obsidian he had just stepped out of, his eyes went a little wide. Then he was fine with it, impressed even. I was glad. It was one thing to be unique; it was something else entirely to be made to feel like a freak. Just because a skill was different didn’t make it freakish, and it appeared the good professor was a firm believer in that. Later, Talon had even told him whose nephew he was. He knew that Cuinn had worked in the same department as Carnades Silvanus, and hadn’t liked him in the least. For Talon to share that with Cuinn said a lot about the trust he placed in the professor. I’d only met Cuinn a few months before, but I knew Talon’s trust wasn’t misplaced. I was grateful he had a mirror teacher of Cuinn’s skill to guide him.
We would be needing the professor’s help with the Sythsaurians and their portals. Baeseria said they had used portals to gain access to our world. Cuinn had opened the portal to Timurus that had let us view the Sythsaurian armies massing and given us proof that the Khrynsani had allied themselves with them. Hopefully he could find the portal or portals the lizard men were using and slam them shut, barricade them, or whatever you did to a portal to make sure no one ever came through it again.
A day later, Cuinn arranged to have a mirror crated and brought through Talon’s obsidian slab. Calik and Saffie flew it to the Kraken in a sling clutched in Saffie’s claws. Cuinn rode in the passenger saddle, his first trip via sentry dragon. It didn’t faze him, though; this was a man who routinely crossed thousands of miles through mirrors without a thought. Having a mirror on the Kraken would allow those who had been injured by the wave Karnia had sent to destroy our fleet to be taken to Mid for treatment, and the ships to be reprovisioned for the trip home.
Maralah became fascinated with mirror magic and wanted to learn more, and Talon had been fascinated with the Cha’Nidaar princess from the moment they’d met and was only too glad to teach. My son had always had a thing for older women.
Eamaliel Anguis had come through from Mid just this morning, and I had introduced him to the Cha’Nidaar queen. Baeseria was over fifteen hundred years old, and she took great delight in teasing Eamaliel, who was significantly younger at a mere nine hundred and thirty-four.
Kesyn had come through the new mirror on the Kraken to check on both of his students—me and Talon.
I got to have the fun of telling Kesyn what Talon had done with two slabs of polished obsidian miles apart, one on the surface, the other deep in the bowels of a mountain, while the Heart of Nidaar loomed over us trying to lay waste to half the world.
Kesyn was predictably horrified.
“It wasn’t like it was the first time I’d ever linked mirrors,” Talon told him. “Why are you surprised?”
“I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling right now surprise. More like blood-freezing terror.”
Talon merely shrugged. “I realized I had a connection to mirrors while in school on Mid. I have a lot of different powers, and since I’m still learning how to control them, the safest thing to do was to talk to an expert.”
Kesyn barked a laugh. “Safest? Did the boy just say safest?”
I smiled. “Yes, he did, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
I’d already told Talon how proud I was of him, and how proud his mother would have been. We’d already had several long talks about Gelsey—initiated by Talon. He’d wanted to know more about his mother.
“Cuinn Avinel is the expert on mirrors and portals,” Talon was saying. “So, I went to see him. He let me try things to find out what my limits were. Not so safe, but he said it was necessary to avoid accidents later on.”
“And let me guess,” Kesyn said, “Cuinn couldn’t find any limits.”
“That’s what a lot of my professors said. I don’t appear to have any, at least not any I’ve run into yet.”
“Am I the only one who thinks that when the boy finally does run into a limit, there’s gonna be a big boom involved?”
“I think that would be a safe assumption,” I said.
Kesyn gave an exaggerated—and long-suffering—sigh. “And it’s my job to be there when it happens.”
I grinned. “That’s the job you signed up for. Unless you’re having second thoughts?”
“If anyone’s qualified to be at ground zero when Talon finds a limit, it’s me. For the sake of the Seven Kingdoms, I’m staying closer than his shadow. You understand that, boy?”
Talon gave his teacher a slow, dangerous smile. “Perfectly, sir.”
That smile was mine. Kesyn had seen it before. He’d dealt with the results of it then; he could deal with it now.
I turned away before either could see my own smile.
I think they both were in for a rude awakening.
I’d just returned from assessing the damage to the Heart’s mountain. Calik and Sapphira had flown me and Agata over to survey Phaelan’s handiwork. The collapse had been complete. There was no indentation in the middle of the debris field to indicate that a way still existed to access the Heart. There would probably be more settling, but it appeared that the explosives of Phaelan and his new friends had performed as promised.
I went to find him to tell him what we’d seen.
Phaelan was sitting on a rock overlooking Aquas’s newest lake, which was actually more along the size of an inland sea. The sun was beginning to set behind us to the west. The lake had looked like a giant mud puddle in the first few days after the mountain’s destruction, but after nearly a week, the waters were beginning to clear.
After the mirror had been taken to the Kraken, Phaelan had been back and forth several times. He’d just returned from one such trip.
I sat down next to him. “Magic’s not so bad now, is it?”
The elf pirate’s teeth flashed in a brief grin. “It has its uses.”
“How are your brother and sister?”
“Ready to go home, but willing to wait until they’re no longer needed.”
“Agata and I just flew over your handiwork.”
“And?”
“The collapse appears to be complete. Good work, Captain Benares. By the way, the engineers told me what you did.”
“I did a lot of things that day. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“These things involved you and not one, not two, but three crawlspaces—and one hell of a trip to the surface.”
“Oh, those.”
“Yes, those.”
One of the engineers told me that when the city had
first been built over the Heart of Nidaar, they had reinforced the roof of the Heart’s cavern to prevent exactly what we had to do—bring the city down on top of the Heart and completely bury it. The workers had used three access tunnels, though calling them tunnels was generous. There was enough room for a man to squirm his way in, then back out the same way. There was no room to turn around, but plenty of ways to get stuck. When the smallest engineer was going to take the bombs inside, they discovered that Karnia had warded the tunnels against entry by any of the Cha’Nidaar or other goblins.
Phaelan wasn’t either one.
However, he was claustrophobic, as we had discovered in that chute leading into the Heartstone geode.
Phaelan had barely made it through a thirty-foot-long chute. Esha the engineer told me these access tunnels were a hundred yards long. Each.
Phaelan had planted a bomb—in the dark—in all three, then squirmed out backward the way he’d come in.
Then the elf pirate’s Nidaar experience was topped off with his trip out of the mountain to the surface. Esha had told us they had an invention that made it a fast trip.
He wasn’t kidding.
It amounted to a metal platform with hand and foot holds just large enough for one person to stand on. It was mounted in an old lava tube that went straight from the city to the surface. It was powered by five Heartstones mounted under the platform.
Phaelan’s the trip to the surface—encased in a narrow lava tube—had taken less than a minute.
Esha said the elf had screamed the entire way up.
“I’m impressed,” I said quietly. “And grateful to you. You’re a good and brave man, Phaelan Benares. Raine said I would be glad that you were with me. She was right.”
“You gave me one job, and I was going to do it. Besides, I had to come. Raine would kill me if I let anything happen to you.” His jaw tightened. “Have you gotten any updates?”
“Eamaliel said reports would be few and far between. The situation in Pengor’s still too unstable to risk sending out a message. He promised that as soon as they heard anything, they would let us know.”
Phaelan stood and clasped my shoulder. “That’ll have to be good enough.” He flashed a roguish grin. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. My cousin has a knack for making her enemies regret their actions.”
The elf pirate walked back down to the main camp.
Raine and Mychael Eiliesor and others were in Pengor. The late, not-lamented Carnades Silvanus and his henchman, Taltek Balmorlan, had spent years securing allies—and their money—among some of the most powerful and influential men and women in the elven government, military, and aristocracy. Their goal had been two-fold: the purification of the elven race and the extinction of the goblins. Those efforts had taken a serious hit when Balmorlan and Silvanus had been taken into custody and their plots exposed. Carnades’s death at Sarad Nukpana’s hands had dealt another blow. But racial hatred ran deep among many powerful high elves: both for elves they saw as inferior due to racial mixing, and any goblin who breathed air. More conspirators had arisen to take the places of those who had been arrested, and Taltek Balmorlan had escaped on his way to his execution. And I had no way of knowing if Sarad Nukpana was still imprisoned in the Lower Hells.
Carnades had sold out his people and the Conclave to Sarad Nukpana and the Khrynsani in exchange for being made king of the elves after Sarad used the Saghred to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Carnades had provided Sarad with elven and Conclave defenses and military installation locations.
With the destruction of the Saghred, that invasion never came to pass.
But all that knowledge was now in the hands of Sandrina Ghalfari, the remaining Khrynsani—and the Sythsaurians.
The growing new elven conspiracy had gone so far as to accept assistance from their human neighbors—the Nebians, the only kingdom that had refused to sign the pledge to combine armies to fight against the Khrynsani and Sythsaurians.
The Nebians were also the kingdom who had sent ships to destroy our fleet—with Sythsaurian sorcerers on board.
Yes, it was a tangled mess. And it was just going to get worse before it got any better.
If it got any better.
I wanted to be with Raine and Mychael. I wanted to be there when the Silvanus family was destroyed. Most of all, I wanted every Silvanus brother to know precisely who I was to the sister they had murdered.
Agata was making her way up the rocks to where I was sitting.
I didn’t hear her. I felt her.
Our bond had become comfortable—and even comforting.
I hadn’t experienced either one in far too long. During the last few years, my life had become one death-defying dash after another. The past few days had been almost like a vacation. A guilty vacation. I was needed elsewhere, and here I was, sitting on a rock gazing out at a newborn sea.
And I was going to do it for one more day, guilt be damned.
Without a word, Agata sat next to me.
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
One side of my mouth twitched in a quick grin. “Nothing gets past you with me anymore, does it?”
She leaned in conspiratorially. “It never really did. The umi’atsu merely gives me words to go with what my intuition already knew.”
“A’Zahra Nuru might be able to help us break it.”
Agata shrugged.
I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. “You don’t care if it’s broken or not, do you?”
“I’m not exactly detecting any sense of urgency from you.”
“There’s a reason for that. Even if an umi’atsu can be broken, it can be dangerous to try. Neither one of us needs to be losing any power.”
Agata glanced down at her Heartstone pendant hanging openly outside of her shirt. It was hers now. I’d made her a gift of it. I still wore my ring.
She cradled it in the palm of her hand, the flames inside flickering happily at her touch. “Thanks to spending time in that geode, in the city, and bonding with the Heart itself, I’ve picked up some extra. And no, I don’t want to lose it. I think it’ll be needed. Cancel that, I know it’ll be needed.”
I shifted so that I was facing her. “Agata, your part in this is over. The Heart is beyond reach, its connections to the land severed. Your work is done.”
“So, I’m to simply go home, oversee the rebuilding of my house—”
“Which I am paying for. If your house being burnt to the ground wasn’t due to me being there, it had everything to do with the Khrynsani wanting you to find the Heart for them. I needed you to find the Heart for me, that makes me at the very least indirectly responsible. Talon’s linked that black mirror of his to the mirror in my office at home. Barrett says the reconstruction is nearly finished. He’s also had your wardrobe replaced. Since your house isn’t ready yet, he’s put your new clothes in your room in my home.”
Agata smiled slightly and raised a brow. “My room?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Well, it was the one you stayed in before we left to come here, and it will be yours until your house is ready.”
“You know, you have a tendency to take responsibility—or blame—for a lot.”
“That’s because I’ve been at fault at lot. Many things would not have happened—and many people would not have died—if not for my actions. I’m dangerous to be around, Agata.”
“I’ve noticed that. But you attract that danger because you resist, you fight those like Sandrina Ghalfari and Sarad Nukpana. You stand up, you fight, and you refuse to let them win.”
“And those close to me suffer or die because of it. More than once, those I love have been used against me. I couldn’t protect them. Gelsey was killed because of me. I failed to—”
“You didn’t fail, because you didn’t know. Gelsey was protecting you. She chose not to contact you. She knew you weren’t ready to go up against her family.” Her dark eyes were intent on mine. “Tam, you didn’t kill Calida.”
“My actions—�
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Agata shook her head in vehement denial. “No. Your actions wouldn’t have affected the outcome. I know what happened. I heard. Sandrina would have killed Calida regardless. She wanted you gone. As long as you were there, Sathrik couldn’t begin usurping power from his mother. He couldn’t have gotten close enough to have killed her.”
“I wouldn’t have been chief mage if it hadn’t been for the black magic.”
“You wouldn’t?” She smiled a little. “Be honest with yourself, Tam. The black magic had nothing to do with it. It helped you survive, but you were much more than Gilcara’s enforcer. You were her protector. That’s why you stayed by her side for so long. She needed you, and you knew you were protecting more than one woman, one queen. You were taking a stand against all that the Khrynsani, Sandrina, and Sarad represented. All that they would do to the goblin people if they ever gained full power. Gilcara’s son is equally wise in keeping you by his side.” Her smile grew warm. “Chigaru knows what his mother knew, and he chose the best man to be his heir. You were protecting the goblin people, Tam. You still are, and you always will.” She paused. “I think Calida was a wise woman, too. She knew why she fell in love with you, because of the kind of man you are. I know who you are. I looked inside of you before I agreed to come here with you.”
“You’ve heard the stories about me.”
“I have, and they didn’t match the man who was standing in my soon-to-be-destroyed home.”
“Sorry about that.”
“There you go, taking the blame again. It wasn’t your fault. It was yet another in what I suspect is a long line of events you’re shouldering the blame for. You can’t take the blame for the evil of others.”
“But I—”
“Got a little drunk with power? Enjoyed your work? Enjoyed defeating the Khrynsani at every turn? There’s nothing wrong—”
“I wouldn’t call diving headfirst into black magic a little drunk.”
