by Lisa Shearin
Two against one, the goblin and the rock against me. I didn’t factor Dad into the equation, because when push came to shove, there was only so much help he could give me. This was my battle; no one could fight it for me.
Come and try to get me, goblin.
I took a deep breath and tried in vain to see through the dark. “Let’s go.”
The formerly well-lit and welcoming tunnel went on for entirely too long. Dad and I weren’t running, but we were moving at a good clip and I’d traded daggers for one of my goblin swords. If anything came at me, I wanted to slice a vital chunk out of it before it got close enough to do the same to me. Dad had an elven sword. We stayed close enough to each other for protection, but far enough away to keep an accident from happening if one of us got too jumpy.
Then I heard it, the soft scraping of steel on stone, then silence. We stopped, listening. It came from a side tunnel up ahead. A breath later, something was being dragged, something heavy, like a body. Then silence again. I shot a glance at Dad, his lips narrowed into a grim line. He nodded once.
They knew we were here; we knew they were here. No use trying for quiet. That body being dragged could be Piaras, Talon, or even Tam. My jaw clenched. If it was, that body dragger was mine.
Dad’s hand locked around my arm like a vise, his other hand making an arcing motion in front of us. He wanted to shield us first. I was all for that.
Within seconds, we had the best shield I’d ever sensed protecting us. We ran toward the dragging sounds and the shield kept pace about five feet in front of us. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Just as long as the murderous son of a bitch in the dark ahead of us could feel my blade through it.
A body appeared on the edge of our light, and a few feet beyond lay another. The attack had been quick and obviously deadly. It was who the victims were that surprised me.
Goblins. Khrynsani temple guards, to be exact.
What the hell?
I whirled around, my lightglobe keeping pace with me. Anyone who would kill a pair of Khrynsani might not be my friend, but at least we shared some of the same goals. No one was there. Just two dead goblins lying on the stone floor, their blood pooling around them.
And drops of blood leading away from them. I caught Dad’s eye, then glanced down at the bloody trail. He saw and swiftly moved to cover my flank. I tracked the drops a few yards down the tunnel. They ended, just stopped, as if our Khrynsani killer had either stopped bleeding, which was highly unlikely, or had vanished into thin air.
That was entirely too likely. I knew from unpleasant experience that not all air was thin.
With Dad covering me, I bent to get a closer look at those drops. Goblin blood was slightly darker than the elven or human variety. Though in this light, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
A body slammed into me from behind, knocking me to the floor, and putting us all in the dark. Keeping a lightglobe going took concentration, and right now all my effort was on skewering the man I was rolling around with while staying unskewered myself. My attacker was wiry and strong. A hand grabbed my wrist and slammed my knuckles hard into the floor, once, twice, three times. My fingers surrendered without asking me, and my sword clattered out of reach. Dad swore. He couldn’t stab anything without risking injury to me, so he spat a quick conjuring spell, and a flash of light flickered and quickly spun itself into a lightglobe. I twisted, catching my attacker with a sharp knee to the ribs. He grunted in pain and surprise, mostly pain.
I knew that grunt.
“Piaras?” I blurted.
The kid froze with his forearm against my throat. His expression was nothing short of stunned amazement.
“Nice attack,” I managed past his arm.
Piaras scrambled off of me until his back hit the far wall, dagger still clenched in his fist, amazement turned to fear. The kid looked scared to death.
“Don’t worry,” I quickly assured him. “No harm done.”
Scared turned to extreme caution. “I felt . . . I thought you were . . .” Piaras’s chest rose and fell with quick, shallow breaths.
The Saghred.
Dammit.
I sat up and straightened my doublet. “I stink like a soul-sucking rock, don’t I?” Battle-hardened Guardians didn’t want to be anywhere near me. What did I expect from a cadet, even if that cadet had known and trusted me for years?
Or used to trust me.
I got to my feet. “The Saghred’s the only way I can find Sarad Nukpana,” I explained. “It’s not controlling me; I’ve just loosened my hold a little so it can track him.”
Piaras was holding his dagger arm tightly to his chest. His tunic sleeve was slashed and bloody.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s just a cut.”
“You’re bleeding.” I started toward him. “Let me—”
“Raine, no!” Instantly, Dad was between us.
Keeping me from touching Piaras.
A retort died on my lips. I knew why he’d done it. With sick realization, I knew.
I’d almost killed Piaras. I could have done worse than kill Piaras.
The Saghred had been quietly waiting. Knowing that to take care of that wound, I would have to touch Piaras, and if I touched even one drop of Piaras’s blood . . .
The Saghred would have taken him.
I was the walking Saghred. Piaras’s bleeding made him a sacrifice waiting to happen.
I backed against the far tunnel wall, into the dark where monsters belonged, my breathing ragged.
Piaras used his legs to push himself up, his back sliding against the wall while cradling his arm against his chest. “It’s only a cut,” I dimly heard him tell Dad.
Dad cut a strip of cloth from his own undertunic and used it to bandage Piaras’s arm. Mychael could have healed it, closed the wound, stopped the bleeding. But Mychael wasn’t here. Dad was. He’d been the Saghred’s Guardian and bond servant for centuries. He knew the danger. If he hadn’t dived under that door, I would have found Piaras and I would have . . .
“Thank you.” Horror at what nearly happened choked my words. “I’m so sorry, Piaras.”
His fear turned to confusion. “I don’t understand.”
He knew he didn’t want the Saghred touching him, but aside from a natural revulsion of the Saghred’s evil, he didn’t know why.
I told him.
When I’d finished, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Good instincts, kid. You knew you were dealing with a killer.”
“You’re not a killer,” he said vehemently.
“But the rock is. And right now, we’re one and the same.” My throat constricted as I spoke. “You need to stay away from me.” I stared at my dad for a long hard moment. When I spoke, my words were clipped and hard. “Once Sarad Nukpana is dead, contained, confined, or whatever the hell it is I have to do to him—we’re going to find a way to separate me from this damned rock.”
Dad smiled with a baring of teeth. “Know it, Daughter.”
Piaras’s mouth fell open. “Daughter?”
Oh crap. That was the problem with secrets—remembering who not to tell.
With a pair of dead Khrynsani at our feet and probably more on the way here, there wasn’t time for the extended version. “It’s long and complicated, but yes, he’s my father. I’ll explain later. Have you seen Sarad Nukpana?”
Piaras managed to drag his eyes away from my dad. “Only a glimpse.”
“Was he solid?”
“Hard to tell; he was wearing a cloak.” Piaras glanced down at the dead goblins and looked a little pasty.
Dad shone his lightglobe on the bodies. One across the throat, the other through the heart.
“You killed them.” I didn’t ask it as a question. Piaras had every bit of Sarad Nukpana’s sword skills, and had obviously put them to lethal use.
“I had to; I had to get Talon out of there.”
Oh hell, Talon. “Where is he?”
Piaras p
ointed at the wall at my back. “In there. These two were guarding him.”
Dad laid his hand on the smooth granite. “Has to be a bunker.”
“Nukpana’s?” I asked.
Piaras shook his head. “He’s using it as a holding cell. They caught Talon before I could get to him. I followed them down here.”
“Why didn’t you go for help?”
“If I left, I’d never find it again. When the guards stepped away for a few moments, I tried using my dagger to mark the stone. It didn’t even make a scratch.” He looked at the flat stone in frustrated anger. “I couldn’t leave him—and I had to do something before Sarad Nukpana came for him. I was trying to come up with a plan when I . . . uh, sneezed.”
I winced. “That’ll get you noticed real quick.”
“I had to kill them.” Piaras’s words came out in a rush. “If I only knocked them out, they’d come to and go for help. I had to stop—”
“You did what you had to do,” I calmly finished for him.
“And you did a clean job of it,” Dad reassured him. “You did what a Guardian would have done. I know you don’t think it’s fine work, but it is.”
“Would throwing up also be fine work?”
“Not right now,” I told him. “See if you can’t hold off until we’re out of here, and I just might join you.” Goblins could see like cats in the dark. But there the goblins lay, unliving proof that Piaras had gotten the drop on them and made it count. “How did you hide?”
“Negating spell and a full-body veil,” Dad surmised without turning from his inspection of the stone wall.
Piaras blinked in surprise. “Yes, sir. How did you—”
“I’ve been a Guardian for a long time, Piaras. It’s the first thing they teach cadets. Don’t confront when you can hide.”
“Was Talon conscious when they locked him in?” I asked.
“Yes, and mad as hell.”
“How did the guards open the bunker?”
“I wasn’t close enough to see. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. If you’d been any closer, you’d probably be in there with Talon.” I quickly moved next to Dad. “See a way in?” The longer we stood here, the more likely we’d have company we didn’t want.
“I don’t sense a spell or ward, so it would have to be a talisman, keyed to this bunker.”
“Piaras, help Dad search the bodies,” I told him. “Since they’re dead, they probably don’t have anything the Saghred wants, but with all that blood, I can’t risk touching them.”
I hadn’t even finished speaking before Dad was kneeling next to one of the dead goblins and doing a highly professional job of pilfering the body: going through pouches, pockets, then taking his dagger and cutting the ties off the goblin’s leather armor to search through the layers.
Piaras searched the other one, doing what needed to be done, but trying not to think about what he was doing—stripping the body of a goblin he’d just killed. The first time Piaras had killed had been less than a month ago; it’d been self-defense. This had been the same thing. Almost. Piaras had kept himself concealed, plans running through his head because every option led to him doing exactly what he’d just done: kill two Khrynsani guards. He hadn’t wanted to do it, but it wouldn’t be the first time that an ill-timed sneeze had forced a man’s hand.
Piaras stood, a palm-sized metal square gleaming dully in his hand. “Could this be it?”
Dad took it from him, studying one side, then the other. “It looks old enough.” He shone his lightglobe slowly up the length of the wall.
“Wait,” I told him.
Dad stopped the globe.
“A few inches to the left.”
The globe moved and the shadowed dint in the stone revealed itself to be a shallow square, about a foot from the ceiling, easily reachable by a tall man. With the disk in his hand, Dad reached as high as he could go, then he stood on tiptoe.
“Dammit, my old body wasn’t this short.”
Piaras stepped forward. “Let me, sir.” He slipped the disk into the hollow, no tiptoeing needed. There was a click and the stone panel slid back.
I expected one big room. By no stretch of the imagination could this room be large enough to house fifty mages. If Mid had been under attack, I’d have taken my chances out in the tunnels. There were two doors on either side of the room, probably for storage. Though the first one on the left was storing one goblin teenager. A big clue was a hole cut into the door and set with iron bars. But the red cloud of a ward drifting restlessly in front of the door was the clincher. I guess the mages who’d built these bunkers had made provisions should they catch one of their attackers.
Dad swore quietly but extensively.
“What?” I asked.
“Those wards are wicked bitches.”
“Can you take them out?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually isn’t now.”
“I know,” Dad all but growled.
I felt the wards, and under that a gag spell. Sarad Nukpana was being careful. He knew what Talon was capable of, especially after the kid’s performance last night. But most important, Talon was his prized catch. He wasn’t taking any chances.
The wards shifted and I saw it—a hinged door a little over a foot high and that much again wide. I’d seen similar in modern jail cells. Guards could pass food to a prisoner without the risk of unlocking the door. The wards shifted again, covering the hinged door. I counted all the way to ten before the wards moved away again. The little door stayed untouched by the ward for another count of ten. Nice and regular.
I grinned. This could work.
“No, Raine.” Dad’s voice said his word was final. He’d looked where I’d been looking. I wasn’t the only one who could count to ten.
“It’s the only chance we have,” I told him. “You said it yourself—those wards are wicked bitches. So I’ll go under them.”
Dad scowled. “In ten seconds.”
“So I’ll go fast.” I kept my eyes on the wards. Ten seconds on, ten seconds off. I loved predictability.
“No, I’ll go fast,” he told me.
“Your shoulders are too broad.”
“I’ll fit,” Piaras said.
I looked at him and his shoulders. “No, you won’t. Plus you’re too tall; you’d never make it through before those wards touched you.”
“What would happen?”
Dad’s eyes had gone back to tracking the wards. “Well, you’d be a lot shorter for one thing.”
I realized something distinctly unpleasant. “Dad, if Talon has any wounds, I can’t touch him.”
Dad handed me his gloves. I didn’t know if they’d work, but I tried them on. They were a little large, but manageable. “I’ll just try not to touch the kid.” I slid out of my sword harness and started stripping off my doublet.
Dad stared at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making myself as narrow as possible.” I would fit, but most of my clothes wouldn’t. After I’d stripped off everything extraneous, I was left wearing high boots, trousers, a small pouch with some necessities, and an awfully thin shirt. I suddenly noticed it was really, really cold down here. Dad noticed the parts of me that didn’t like the cold and quickly looked away. Piaras noticed and then tried not to notice.
I shoved a dagger into my belt at the small of my back and pulled the gloves back on.
Piaras nervously glanced back at the bunker opening. “If there’s nothing I can do in here, I’ll stand watch outside.”
Dad nodded once. “Thank you, Piaras.”
The kid looked at me, his dark eyes solemn and afraid—for me. “Be careful, Raine.”
“Whenever I can.”
I started to kneel, and Dad laid a firm hand on my arm.
“If for some reason you can’t get out the way you went in, I’m taking that door off its hinges. Wards or not.”
I smiled. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
I knelt
and waited for the ward to move. I opened the flap and quickly looked inside. It wouldn’t do me any good to risk life and limb wiggling through that flap if Talon wasn’t in there.
Or if a goblin guard was. It’d suck to avoid having my legs cut off by a ward only to have my head lopped off by an ax. I looked. Talon was in there and he was alone. He seemed to be asleep—or unconscious. I was hoping for asleep.
“Dad, the room’s big enough. When I start through, get your hands on the bottom of my boots and shove me through.”
He knelt beside me. “You got it.”
I waited for the next ward cycle to start, dropped to my stomach, started squirming through, and Dad gave me a shove that damned near drove my head into the far wall of the cell. It felt like I left parts of me around the edges of that door.
I scrambled to my feet. Talon was awake and giving me a lascivious look that I’d gotten on numerous occasions from his father. The similarities made me uncomfortable in ways I’d never imagined.
Talon was chained to the wall. There were enough links to allow limited movement, but that was about it. I thought it was a little overdone. No doubt the kid was nimble, and he was a knockout spellsinger, but wards, a gag spell, and chained to the wall? Apparently I could add paranoid to my list of Sarad Nukpana descriptors.
Talon rattled his chains and grinned, slow and wicked. “I’ve had this dream before.”
Yep, like father, like son.
I just looked at him. “Kid, I can go right back out the way I came in—without you.”
“I’ll shut up.”
“Smart choice.”
His grin turned sheepish. “It appears I didn’t make the smartest choice last night.”
“Let’s see . . . you froze a courtyard full of Guardians, ran away, got yourself snatched and brought here when Mychael and your dad told you to go to the citadel and stay there—so I can see where you might think that.”
“Would ‘sorry’ cover it?”
“Doesn’t even come close.”
“How did you find me?” Talon asked, nimbly changing the subject.
“Piaras led us to you.”
“Piaras?”
“He followed you from the citadel, saw Nukpana grab you, and risked his own life to follow you down here—then he had to kill two Khrynsani to try to save you.”
