by Lisa Shearin
Talon had believed that Mychael would free his father. Now he wanted to get his hands on one of the elves responsible for locking him up.
I turned to Vegard. “How long were you—”
“Best we figure, nearly half an hour.”
Damn. All this had happened nearly four hours ago, with Talon and Piaras having a half-hour head start. What the hell was Piaras thinking? I didn’t ask it out loud because I knew. He had wanted to do something, anything, to help. He’d told me himself.
“I don’t think Piaras would go along with Talon’s half-brained scheme,” Vegard was saying. “The boy’s got too much sense.”
“But he would go after him,” I said. “He knows how dangerous it is out there, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Let’s hope he uses it.” Unless teenage impetuousness had erased that good sense. Just following Talon through those gates had been bad enough.
Piaras hadn’t brought Talon back yet. I didn’t have to say all the things that could mean; we all knew.
At least the kids didn’t just go running off into the dark armed with nothing but their voices and wits—though I was starting to have serious doubts about Talon’s wits. At least he’d pilfered a couple of Guardians before he left. Best we could figure, the kid had a crossbow, a full quiver of armor-piercing bolts, a brace of throwing knives, and a sword.
And for good measure, he’d swiped the purses of two Guardians.
Phaelan always said, if you’re gonna steal, be thorough about it.
Those two Guardians had just been paid. Those were two very angry men. I bet if we turned them loose, they’d hunt down Talon real quick.
According to Piaras’s bodyguards, he had his cadet’s daggers, but there was a pair of sleek elven swords missing from a Guardian who’d been on duty at the main gate when Talon did his thing.
I forced myself to take a couple of good, deep breaths on the off chance that it might delay the screaming rant I felt coming on. And to make matters worse, standing in the middle of the courtyard didn’t give me anything to hit.
Right now, Tam wasn’t a badass dark mage. He looked like what he was—a tired, worried father. “Raine, can you find them?”
“I can and will find Piaras,” I promised him. “And if he went after Talon to talk some sense into him, hopefully they’ll be in the same place.” And hopefully that place wouldn’t have bars, wards, and magic-sapping manacles—or a life-sapping regenerating goblin. I didn’t say that out loud; I didn’t need to. Tam knew.
I tried to still my thoughts enough to work, but it wasn’t going to happen. The sun had been up for a good two hours and every Guardian still in the citadel was awake and going about their duties.
Hundreds of magic-wielding warriors didn’t exactly make for peaceful surroundings. The air was seething with macho magic. Trying to get a fix on Piaras was like trying to catch; a gnat with a fishnet.
I had to find one obscenely powerful goblin psycho in a city where magic was running rampant. I didn’t need a clue; I needed a location and I needed it now.
I had to get above the Guardians.
The parapet could work, but ideally I needed to see the whole city. The few times I’d done a seeking on Mid, it had been at night, meaning that most people had been in bed. Mid was an island full of magic users, and right now students, professors, and Conclave mage bureaucrats were awake and so was all of their magic. I needed to get above it—way above it.
I turned around and kept turning, looking for something that would work.
The seawall watchtower on the south side of the citadel.
It might not be the perfect solution, but it was as good as I was going to get as quickly as I needed it.
“Vegard, how do I get up there?”
True to his determination to stay by my side, Vegard didn’t tell me; he took me there.
My dad and Vidor Kalta were already in the tower looking out over the city. I could feel Dad’s magic scanning the city below. Apparently I wasn’t the first to think of the idea.
“No doubt you’re wondering what we’re doing here,” Dad said.
“Find Piaras.”
“Find Sarad Nukpana.” Dad gazed out over the city. “Balmorlan is good, but he is a child compared to Sarad’s new strength level. If those boys were captured, it would be by Sarad.”
“Nukpana ate Rudra Muralin,” I told them. “As well as two of the other specters that escaped the Saghred.”
Dad didn’t say anything, but he thought some choice words. “That kind of power can’t be concealed. Even on an island of mages, it’ll shine like a beacon.”
“Sarad could still infest a host body,” Kalta said, “but after another victim or two he will be too solid to leave his own body. Then he can be killed like any other man.”
After another victim or two. Like Piaras and Talon.
“Sarad Nukpana contains the souls of those who are now dead, murdered by his own hand,” Kalta continued. “This will make him easier to locate. He will attract attention he does not want.”
I snorted. “Yeah, me.”
“Reapers, Miss Benares. Reapers.”
I swallowed hard. Not easy to do when your mouth suddenly stopped making spit.
“I had a run-in with one last night,” I said.
Kalta’s black eyes were on me like a shark. “You what?”
I mentally smacked myself in the forehead. Way to tell everyone what you did last night, Raine. And that you weren’t in the citadel like everyone was supposed to believe.
“At Sirens,” I lied. Everyone knew I was at Sirens; no one could know I was at Markus’s house. Vegard was at Sirens; he knew I was lying, but I’d deal with that later. “I didn’t think about what I was doing. I dug up as much magic as I could without tapping the Saghred, and let him have it.”
Kalta arched a dark brow. “Let him have it?”
“I punched him right where his face should have been. I felt a little winded afterward, but at least the thing went away.”
Kalta went a shade or two paler, if that was possible. “Miss Benares, I wouldn’t do that again if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t defeat it; you overfed it.”
“But I didn’t feed it anything.”
“You felt fatigued afterward?”
“Yes, but—”
“You fed it rage—Saghred-powered rage, whether you realized it or not.”
“I didn’t use the Saghred.”
“The power the Saghred has already given you was more than sufficient. You fed it your life force. Reapers take souls; it’s all that remains of life. It ‘went away’ as you phrased it, because it was full of Saghred-fueled magic. The Saghred is also fueled by souls. What you fed it was extremely powerful. If Reapers become stronger, they can take the living. You just made one stronger. It will be back for more.”
“Oh shit.”
“Quite.”
As if there weren’t enough monsters loose in the city this morning, now I’d created a Super Reaper. I pushed the thought aside. If it came after me, I’d deal with it then. With the souls he’d ingested, Sarad Nukpana was probably almost as tempting a target as I was. Though it’d be just my luck that evil souls tasted bad.
“Sarad may have the power,” my dad said. “But it takes more strength than he can spare to hide it. He grows confident and even more arrogant.”
I quickly stepped up beside him. “You’ve seen him?”
“We’ve sensed him.”
“Where?”
“The north side of the city.”
I looked where Dad’s attention was riveted. I saw the smoke from an unknown number of chimneys and a thin layer of morning fog from the harbor. The buildings were hidden; apparently Sarad Nukpana wasn’t.
“The Conclave’s section of the city, mainly office buildings,” he told me.
I couldn’t believe it. The bastard was hiding in plain sight. “He’s in there?”
“That is my belief,
yes.”
It made sense, brilliant sense. Uncle Ryn had always taught us that the best hiding place was smack-dab in the middle of those you were trying to hide from.
“Are the buildings old?” I asked.
Dad gave me a quizzical glance. “Yes, some of them are quite old.”
“As old as you?”
“A few of them. Why do you ask?”
I described what I’d seen last night when I’d touched the coach seat where Sarad Nukpana had been.
“Does that sound familiar?” I asked.
Dad gave a small, harsh laugh minus the humor. “Mid’s known for its winters. What you just described are the transit tunnels.”
“You don’t make it sound good.”
Dad nodded. “You saw only a small section of nearly a hundred miles of tunnels connecting every building in the Conclave complex.”
“Every building?”
Kalta spoke. “Conclave mages don’t spend all that money on elaborate robes to drag them through the mud and snow. We’re fastidious creatures.”
I certainly couldn’t see Carnades Silvanus getting his silk hems dirty.
I exhaled. I did not need this. “Are they still in use?”
“Not as much as they once were,” Kalta said. “The buildings are now connected aboveground.”
I stepped in front of my dad and Kalta to get an unobstructed view of the city. The buildings looked like children’s toys from this height and distance. I let the morning breeze—and the magical residue it carried—pass over me. “Gentlemen, would you stand on the other side of the room? Better yet, if you could step out into the stairway and close the door, it’d really help my concentration.” The less magical interference I had to sort through, the better my chances for locating Piaras and hopefully Talon.
I stood staring out over the city until I heard the door close quietly behind me. Then I closed my eyes, forcing the noise from the courtyard far below into the background until it was no more audible than a fly buzzing. Then I separated the magical residue from the breeze until all I felt was ocean breeze, no harbor stench, just clean, clear air.
I opened my eyes.
The city was spread below me, and I not only sensed what my dad had; I could see it. A black, oily trail spread over the north side of the city, concentrated in a small cluster of white buildings in the far distance. I knew they weren’t small; Conclave buildings probably covered acres.
And Sarad Nukpana was beneath one of those buildings, somewhere in a hundred miles of tunnels. Once I was closer I could narrow the search. But Nukpana was second on my search list.
Piaras had left the citadel over four hours ago, through the main gate. I’d known him since he was a child, long before he’d come into his magic. I was living in the apartment above his grandmother’s apothecary shop when adolescence had set in and Piaras’s voice had changed. Magically speaking all hell had broken loose when that’d happened.
My throat tightened at the thought of him out there alone. I forced my emotions down. Find him, Raine. He’s alive; you’d know if he wasn’t. He’s fine and he’ll stay that way if you just do your job.
I knew Piaras’s magical scent. I closed my eyes halfway and gazed down at the citadel’s gate, filtering out everything but what I knew as Piaras. A lot of magically gifted men had gone through those gates over the past four hours, but only one of them had been Piaras. I methodically sorted through each layer, pushing sensations of others aside until I found it. I don’t know how long I had been standing there, but a trace of magic, silvery and faintly glowing, rose to the surface of my awareness.
Piaras.
It wasn’t just a trace.
It was a trail.
Piaras had left me a trail to follow. It led out the front gates and down a side street. He’d followed Talon and he’d left a trail. Relief washed over me in a wave and I started breathing again. I closed my eyes to the barest squint and became a part of that glowing path, following it, gaining speed as I went. I’d never been able to track that fast before. The power the Saghred had been gradually giving me sent me at dizzying speed through Mid’s streets, people and buildings a nauseating blur. I slowed and then stopped. White granite buildings loomed over me, blurry around the edges in my mind’s eye.
I knew what those buildings were.
I knew where Piaras and Talon were.
Conclave complex, north side of the city.
Same place as Sarad Nukpana.
I snapped out of my trance and sagged down to the floor, breathing hard. Speeding through the streets had made me dizzy; coming back to my standing-still body made me sick. I kept my eyes open, focusing on the floor, breathing in and out until the floor stopped moving and my mind accepted that I had as well. The seeking-induced whirlies stopped.
A familiar presence brushed my mind, knew my thoughts.
Knew what I had seen.
Oh no. Don’t.
“No!” I screamed. I scrambled to the window and pulled myself up. Wind blew my hair back. Wind from Kalinpar’s powerful wings.
Tam was mounted on his back.
“Dammit, Tam! No!”
He heard me, but was way beyond listening. Talon was in the same place as Sarad Nukpana.
Tam was going to save his son, even if he had to face a sadistic demigod to do it.
Chapter 19
The Conclave complex was the epicenter of all that was magical in the seven kingdoms. Magic—new, old, and ancient—virtually oozed from the granite walls. And then there were the mages, some of the most powerful and pompous, displaying their magic like peacocks with a full fan of tail feathers. The distortion was unbelievable. And unless we could clear hundreds of mages from a maze of buildings, that distortion was staying right where it was.
Piaras’s trail was defused, diluted, buried.
Gone.
Shit, shit, shit!
I didn’t spit the words, or scream them like I wanted to, but with our link, Mychael heard them loud and clear—as well as all the others I’d been using since we landed. At least something in this place was loud and clear.
“Raine, anger isn’t going to help us find anyone.”
“Neither is much of anything else,” I said. “Why do you think I’m cussing like one of Phaelan’s gunners with wet powder?”
There were fancy- robed mages freaking everywhere, though I noted with satisfaction that they were giving me a wide berth. I didn’t know if they sensed the Saghred on me or were just steering clear of a heavily armed—and clearly pissed to the point of killing someone—elven woman. I didn’t know if it was a man thing or a me thing, and right now I didn’t give a damn.
We’d found Kalinpar in a courtyard in the west end of the complex. No Tam.
We were presently standing in the middle of said courtyard, our own sentry dragons landed and secured where they were supposed to be—away from people and horses. Apparently under the right circumstances, both could be considered tasty. I thought about turning Kalinpar loose in the crowd. That’d clear the place of mages real quick.
Even with our umi’atsu bond, I couldn’t locate Tam. Hell, I couldn’t even tell which way he went. I’d probably have better luck asking the damned dragon. And the Saghred wasn’t helping matters at all. Kalinpar wasn’t the only thing that considered powerful mages potentially tasty. I could literally feel the rock’s hungry anticipation. I had no intention of feeding it anything, but either the rock was delusional with starvation or it knew something that I didn’t. Probably the latter, but I wasn’t going to think about it or the rock. I had enough problems to deal with right now other than having to worry about the Saghred looking forward to a future meal.
In the buildings around us were offices, conference rooms, commissaries, libraries, dormitories, apartments, auditoriums, and more courtyards—and underneath it all ran the transit tunnels.
Mychael had brought his best trackers; Sedge Rinker had sent his.
A roar split the air above our heads. I jumped
and swore, then looked up with a fierce grin. A sleek, black sentry dragon was hovering above the courtyard, its massive claws extended for landing. Its rider had told the dragon where to land, and if there were any mages in its way, getting squashed was their problem, not his.
Archmagus Justinius Valerian could get away with that.
In about half a minute, we had the courtyard all to ourselves. While gratifying, it did nothing to get rid of the magical distortion. If anything, Justinius’s arrival had kicked it up a notch. But I was still glad to see the old man. As Guardian paladin, Mychael’s job was to coordinate and lead the search. Justinius was here to keep any of the aforementioned pompous mages from impeding that search.
The old man smoothly dismounted and strode over to where we were, his robes whipping out behind him as his dragon settled his wings. He was armed for ogre, with a massive sword on his hip and long daggers tucked in his belt. Though with Sarad Nukpana somewhere under the ground we were standing on, Justinius would have to make good use of his magical arsenal. I’d only seen the old man cut loose once, and dozens of demons had died ugly deaths. I’d love to be treated to that show one more time, this time with Sarad Nukpana as the star attraction.
“Anything?” Justinius’s blue eyes were as hard as agates. The old man was just as pissed as I was, and for much the same reasons.
“Nothing, sir,” Mychael told him. “Plenty of mages saw Tam land; no one knows where he went.”
Justinius scowled. “I recall he’s got himself a damned good veil.”
“One of the best.”
“Shit.”
I snorted. “Yeah, that’s my take on the situation, too.”
“What about Nukpana?” he asked me. “Is the Saghred telling you anything?”
“Just that it’s hungry.”
Mychael adjusted his sword on his hip. The blade was glowing through the scabbard. “Let’s go.”
Mychael had laid down the law for his men before they’d gone into the tunnels. Four men per search party, no one was to go anywhere alone, and each party was to check in every quarter hour with the Guardian contact wizards Mychael had stationed at five of the main tunnel intersections. Either the distortion was less in the tunnels, or Guardian contact wizards could work around it. Both would be fine by me. They were to alert Mychael the moment Tam, Piaras, Talon, or Sarad Nukpana were found. If they found Nukpana, they were not to attempt to kill, only contain. Mychael didn’t want to lose any of his men. Since Sarad Nukpana had eaten the souls of two mages over two thousand years old, plus Rudra Muralin, none of Mychael’s men could take down Nukpana if the goblin got the upper hand.
