Bewitched & Betrayed rb-4

by Lisa Shearin

  “I know he was solid,” Mychael said patiently, also for the umpteenth time. He was probably just as disturbed about the whole thing as I was, but being the commander of the Guardians—but mostly just being Mychael—he would never show it. I’d rarely seen him as anything other than the very picture of professional calm. “And we’re going to find out how he did it.”

  “For starters, it looks like he took a few things the general won’t be using anymore.”

  “But that doesn’t tell us how he did it,” Mychael pointed out.

  And we definitely needed to know how he did it, because Nukpana had told me he’d be doing it again.

  The door opened and Vegard stood aside for a robed man to enter. It was nearly four bells in the morning, and Archmagus Justinius Valerian was wide-awake and dressed in the robes of his office. Justinius was the supreme head of the Conclave of Sorcerers, commander in chief of the Conclave Guardians, Mychael’s boss, and quite possibly the most powerful mage, period. Since I’d known him, the old man had struck me as the type who didn’t give a damn what he wore and when, and what anyone said about it. But after barely surviving an assassination attempt within the past few weeks and the ensuing scramble for power, he wasn’t about to be seen as being anything other than fully recovered and completely in charge. Mid was home to some of the most powerful mages in the seven kingdoms, who also happened to be backstabbing, manipulative sons (and daughters) of bitches. As their leader, Justinius Valerian couldn’t afford to lower his guard for one instant. Not anymore.

  Vegard came into the room and closed the door.

  “Well, General Aratus hasn’t been seen since mid-afternoon at the elven embassy,” Justinius told us.

  Mychael frowned. “Why weren’t we told he was missing?”

  The old man chuckled dryly. “Because the elven ambassador wouldn’t admit that Aratus had been missing until I told him he was dead. If the general had been found dead behind the Satyr’s Grove with his trousers around his ankles, I could understand the ambassador not wanting to fess up.” Justinius looked at the husk of a body with clinical interest, then he looked at me. “So this is Sarad Nukpana’s idea of a present.”

  I nodded once. “That’s what he said.”

  “That goblin bastard did a piece of work on him.”

  “Couldn’t agree more, sir.” I avoided looking at my gift. I had the distinct displeasure of knowing what a dead body smelled like. The general didn’t smell dead as much as, well . . . leathery. I wore leather; I’d always liked leather. Now I was trying to breathe and not use my nose—and was considering buying a new wardrobe.

  “Does Markus Sevelien know?” Mychael asked grimly.

  “That little weasel of an ambassador wouldn’t tell me where Sevelien was. Said he was ‘out.’ ”

  The dried body on the slab also had the dubious distinction of being the middleman between an elven inquisitor, who I knew to be an evil son of a bitch, and an elven duke I had once worked for and trusted. Duke Markus Sevelien was the newly appointed chief of elven intelligence. Markus being “out” could mean anything, but he was never out at this hour unless he was working.

  “The ambassador said that he would ‘convey the tragic news to the appropriate individuals,’ ” Justinius told us. “He came here in a coach that looked more like a damned hearse.” He snorted, a sort of laugh. “Thought he was going to be taking the general here with him. I told him he could have Aratus’s body when we were done with it.” He looked closely at the folds of loose skin shrunken against the general’s face, and grimaced. “We’ve got a murderer to catch; Aratus sure as hell didn’t do this to himself. Is Vidor Kalta on his way?”

  Mychael nodded. “He will be. He’s extracting a nest of banshees from the basement of the old Judicial Building. He said he’d come as soon as he was finished.”

  The old man whistled. “Wouldn’t want him to do a halfassed job of that.”

  “No, sir.”

  I looked from one of them to the other. “Him having the same last name as Lucan Kalta is just a coincidence, right?”

  Mychael lips quirked in a quick grin. “Afraid not. They’re brothers. Lucan is the baby.”

  “A baby what?”

  I’d had an up-close and unpleasant encounter with Lucan Kalta within days of arriving on the island. He didn’t like me then, and I thought it highly unlikely that he’d warmed to me since. He was the chief librarian of the Scriptorium, a massive repository of nearly every magic- related book, scroll, or stone slab. He didn’t like me because I’d defied his authority in front of his staff. The rule I broke was stupid to begin with, so I saw nothing wrong with going around it.

  “Is Vidor Kalta a necromancer or a nachtmagus?” I asked Mychael.

  “Nachtmagus. In my opinion, one of the best.”

  “Crap,” I muttered. “Like my skin hasn’t crawled enough tonight.”

  Most people thought a necromancer and a nachtmagus were pretty much the same thing. I guess you could say that, if you thought there wasn’t much difference between a garden snake and a cobra. Necromancers could communicate with the dead. They did séances, detected hauntings, and could tell you if you had a frisky poltergeist or an ancestor who simply refused to leave.

  A nachtmagus could control the dead—in all of their forms. Communicating with the dead was the least of what they could do. I’d heard that given enough time, money, and motivation, they could raise the dead. I never wanted to meet anyone that motivated.

  In my opinion, no one majored in necromancy unless they were just plain weird. In theory, the Conclave college had a way to weed out the weirdos. I don’t know what that said about the department’s graduates. They wanted to work with dead things, but at the same time they couldn’t be weird. Had to be the college’s smallest graduating class.

  “He’s an odd bird, and quite frankly a creepy bastard,” Justinius agreed. “But he knows his business, and best of all, he’s discreet.” He inclined his head toward the body. “How many people got a good look at the general here?”

  “Few, if any,” Mychael assured him. “The section of street he landed in is between lampposts. The shadows helped. Vegard throwing his cloak over the body helped the most.”

  “Quick thinking,” Justinius told my bodyguard.

  Vegard nodded. “Thank you, sir. I saw his uniform, and knew nobody else needed to.”

  “Other than the fact that pure-blooded goblins hate any and all elves, why would Sarad Nukpana . . .” I fumbled for a way to describe what was on that table. “. . . do this or have this done to an elven general? Was Aratus a magic user?”

  Justinius shook his head. “Not a spell to his name.”

  Something occurred to me and I didn’t like it at all. In fact, the sudden realization made me a little sick.

  I felt Mychael’s hand on my elbow. “Raine, are you all right?”

  I didn’t answer. My mind was too busy running in panicked circles. I thought I’d hit on why Sarad Nukpana had killed General Aratus and then given what was left of him to me.

  Mychael’s grip tightened. “The air isn’t good; you shouldn’t be in here.” It was his paladin’s voice, the one that gave orders I usually didn’t take. “Vegard, escort—”

  I waved them both off. “I’m fine. Actually, I’m not, but it’s not because of him.” I indicated Aratus. “Well, it is indirectly, or it could be.” I put my palm to my forehead. “Crap. I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  Mychael’s hand stayed right where it was. “Not yet, but you’re getting there.”

  I looked up at him. “What if this actually was some sort of twisted gift for me?” I asked quietly. “And a setup?”

  His brows knit in confusion. I had a tendency to do that to people.

  “Explain.”

  “There are two elves on this island who we know report directly to elven intelligence,” I said, “specifically to Markus Sevelien—and one of them is on that table. The other one is Taltek Balmorlan.”

 
Part of me wouldn’t mind seeing Taltek Balmorlan’s shriveled body on a table. I’d never liked that part of me, but that part always had my best interests at heart—like survival. Balmorlan was an inquisitor for elven intelligence who had an obsession for high-powered weapons, not the steel and gun-powder variety, but people like me whose off-the-charts magical skills made them weapons. Taltek Balmorlan didn’t ask; he just took. He was still on the island, and he still hadn’t given up on getting me.

  “Think about it,” I continued. “Sarad Nukpana dumps the general’s dead body at my feet in public and calls it a gift. And in the red-light district right after a raid on a cathouse is about as public as you can get. Balmorlan’s been claiming that Nukpana and I are working together.”

  “Nukpana’s been stalking you since the day he met you.” Mychael’s voice was clipped with barely restrained anger. “Even being inside the Saghred didn’t slow him down. I would hardly call that working together.”

  “Apparently Balmorlan has a looser definition,” I told him. “And that’s his boss on that table. What do you want to bet, he’s going to claim that I’m an accessory to kidnapping and murder? And since I’m an elf, that I should be in elven government custody, which conveniently happens to be him. He gets me locked up, which is exactly what he wants, and Sarad Nukpana gets the added bonus of knowing where to find me when he wants me.”

  “He’d have to get Markus Sevelien’s approval to arrest you,” Justinius pointed out.

  I jerked my head toward Aratus’s corpse. “Right now, I think he’d get it.”

  Years ago, Duke Markus Sevelien had given me my first big job as a seeker. My new business was struggling. I guess potential clients didn’t trust a Benares to find—and then actually return—their valuables. I took occasional assignments from Markus that mostly consisted of finding abducted elves: diplomats, intelligence agents, aristocrats who’d gotten involved in something over their highborn heads. It was gratifying work and I was good at it.

  Markus’s help got me through the lean years. I liked him; I trusted him. At least I used to. Now I wasn’t so sure. I never thought he’d betray me; but before, I’d never been the only person to wield the Saghred and stay both sane and alive.

  Markus had always been up-front and honest with me. And if I’d been standing face-to-face with him right now, he’d probably still be honest—his loyalties were to elven intelligence, not to me. He’d put any friendship we might have to the side as an impediment to him doing his job. And I knew from past experience that Markus would do his job at any and all costs. It wasn’t personal; it was business.

  It was the Saghred.

  And since the Saghred had attached itself to me, that made me his business. I could almost understand that; the Saghred was a weapon that elven intelligence wasn’t about to let fall into goblin hands. That meant he couldn’t allow me to fall into goblin hands. Hell, I didn’t want to be in anyone’s hands.

  If Markus had to arrest me to make that happen, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

  And both Mychael and Justinius knew it.

  The old man’s blue eyes were hard as agates. “No one is going to arrest you. As long as you’re on this island, you’re under Guardian protection and mine.”

  The Guardians were protectors of the Saghred, and since the Saghred and I were psychic roommates that protection extended to me. To Mychael, I had become more than his job.

  “Would any of that protection override a charge of accessory to kidnapping and murdering an elven general?” I asked them both.

  The old man’s silence told me what I already knew.

  “Where were you this afternoon?” he asked.

  “On the Fortune with Phaelan. So I’ve got a fine alibi—a Benares pirate vouching for an accused Benares murderer.” I snorted. “That’ll carry weight in court.”

  Right around my neck.

  Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta’s pale, long-fingered hand hovered above the dead man’s lips. “His memories were the first thing taken, then his conscious mind, his soul, and finally what little remained of his life force. The ritual . . . the act that resulted in this is called cha’nescu, and the victim was conscious and fully aware while it happened.”

  “Shit,” Vegard muttered from behind me.

  Kalta nodded without looking away from the body. “Quite.” The nachtmagus regarded the general like a lab project. “A complete absence of life,” he murmured as if he were the only one in the room. “Not one flicker remains. It’s as if he never lived. Grisly work, yet truly astounding in its complexity.”

  I remembered Nukpana’s “bravo.” Kalta’s comment was just as chilling.

  Vidor Kalta was tall, thin, and seemingly born to wear funeral black. His dark hair was cropped close to his head. I guess when you chased down ghouls and banshees for a living, short hair was a safety precaution. Kalta’s features were sharp, and his face had the pallor one would expect of someone who worked mostly nights. But it was his eyes that gave him away. Black and bright as a raven’s, Vidor Kalta’s eyes were a reflection of a quick mind, a keen intellect, and, if what I felt coming off of him was any indication, an incredible power. Power that was all the more impressive because of his restraint. It was like the man had Death on a leash, and it was following him around like a puppy.

  “Do you know how it was done?” Mychael asked.

  Kalta nodded. “Everything was consumed that made General Aratus who he was.” He took a small towel from beside the table and carefully wiped his hands. “Once the entity that did this began the process, it continued to feed until there was nothing left. Pausing at any point would have negated the ritual.”

  My stomach did a slow, nauseating roll. “Feed?”

  “Not a pleasant procedure—nor painless. Though the act itself is said to be done through mouth-to-mouth contact.”

  That did it; I was going to be sick. “A kiss?”

  “Not one you would ever want to receive, Mistress Benares. Or be able to survive.”

  “What or who could have done it?”

  “Greater demons are the most common culprits.”

  “What are the uncommon culprits?”

  “A nachtmagus with enough power could have done this.” Vidor Kalta smiled at his macabre joke in a flash of small teeth, white and even. “But considering Mid’s present predicament, I believe the response you seek is a spiritual entity—one of those previously imprisoned in the Saghred, perhaps?”

  “We have a suspect,” Mychael told him. “Could a spirit have done this?”

  “That would depend on who the spirit was in life, and how long they had been imprisoned inside the Saghred.” Kalta’s bright, black eyes were on me. “From what Mistress Benares reported from her most enviable journeys inside the stone, most of those inside would have been too weakened to perform the ritual. Do you know the ages of the escaped spirits?”

  Mychael hesitated a moment before answering. “We do. The youngest is approximately forty years old; the eldest is more than four thousand.”

  “Fascinating. Since you have only captured one, may I ask how you know this?”

  “We have a source.”

  “May I ask—”

  I spoke. “Sarad Nukpana took my soul inside the Saghred not long after he was imprisoned. Generally villains only share their evil master plan with you when they don’t think you’ll be getting away. He told me who his allies were; I gave the names to Paladin Eiliesor.”

  And I’d just given Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta a bald-faced lie. Hell’s hounds could have been snapping at my heels and I wouldn’t have told anyone that a seventh soul had escaped from the Saghred.

  Our information source was my father. A Guardian and protector of the Saghred since its capture from the goblin king almost nine hundred years ago. Nearly continuous contact with the stone had stopped my father from aging. About a year ago, the Saghred had turned its protector into its dinner, imprisoning my father’s soul inside the stone with the thousands that had been previously con
sumed by the Saghred, or sacrificed to it. Now his soul occupied the body of a young Guardian who had been killed by the demon queen moments before she opened the Saghred.

  Dad was also still a wanted criminal. He had fled Mid nine centuries ago and had taken the Saghred with him to keep the stone’s power out of the hands of some of the Conclave’s top mages, but as far as the Conclave was concerned, there was no statute of limitations on Saghred stealing. If he was discovered, he’d be executed; it didn’t matter whose body he was wearing.

  “Our primary suspect had only been inside for a month,” Mychael told Kalta.

  “You refer to Sarad Nukpana.”

  “I do.”

  “Last winter I had the unique opportunity to meet him. The high priest of the Brotherhood of the Khrynsani. A most ancient and—among the goblin aristocracy—a most venerable order. Being a human, I do not share their belief that goblins are the superior race and all others should be subject to their whim and rule. But I valued the chance for an extended discussion with their leader. A most prodigious intellect, eager to learn, to experience. Not surprisingly, he expressed a keen interest in my calling.”

  “The Sarad Nukpana I saw tonight wasn’t an entity, spiritual or otherwise,” I told him bluntly. “Could doing that”—I indicated the corpse—“help Nukpana . . . regrow his body?”

  “You said he was wearing a cloak.”

  “Yes, and a hat.”

  “Did you see his hands, or was he wearing gloves?”

  I gazed at a point on the far wall, recalling the street, the coach, the horses, and the hands of the coachman who held their reins. “Gloves. Only his face was exposed.”

  Kalta’s eyes flickered with what looked like doubt. “It was dark.”

  “It was light enough,” I snapped. “I couldn’t see through him. And he had enough of something in those gloves to control four horses.”