All Spell Breaks Loose (25 page)

“You handed Sarad Nukpana our people on a silver platter.”

“Not mine. Yours. Elves with certain desirable physical characteristics will be spared.”

“And you will be Sarad Nukpana’s puppet, to dispose of as he pleases.”

Carnades’s grip on my arm tightened to the point of pain.
“I will have everything I have ever wanted,” he spat. “Everything I deserve. And unlike you—I will be alive.”

“To bow and scrape to a goblin. What will your pure-blooded henchmen have to say about that?”

Carnades quickly regained his calm. “A temporary sacrifice of my dignity for the ultimate good of the elven race. History will see me as the savior of my true people.”

Then his expression changed. His face became suffused with twisted joy; his pale blue eyes glittered. It was the face of a fanatic. He honestly believed what he was saying. Carnades Silvanus would do whatever he had to do to make his warped and perverted worldview a reality, even if he built it on the corpses of tens of thousands of elves—men, women, and children—who didn’t meet his standards of elven purity.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he said, “but thought I would have to content myself with the changes that I, as only one man, could make. Yes, Sarad Nukpana is using me to get what he wants; but I am using him to get what the elven race needs. The Saghred is evil, but out of evil can come great good. There is nothing that I won’t do, no man or woman I won’t kill who dares to stand in my way.”

“Sarad Nukpana will stand in your way,” I snarled. “All you’ll be is a king of cattle. The Saghred doesn’t care what kind of blood runs in your veins, and Nukpana doesn’t give a damn about your
purity
. You’ll be raising prime beef for his altar. You may have delayed your slaughter, but you’ll never escape.”

“Little seeker, are you annoying my new partner?” said a smooth, cool voice.

Sarad Nukpana didn’t look like a man who’d taken a crossbow bolt through the shoulder only hours ago, and who had his hands and forearms literally cooked inside armored gauntlets the day before. His unmarked hands were visible from beneath the sleeves of his simple black robe, and he wasn’t wearing a sling to take the weight of an arm off of a wounded shoulder.

The Saghred had completely healed him.

He was studying me as well, his dark eyes shining. “You are a constant source of surprises, little seeker. Or since you seem to have lost the use of your magic, that title is no longer appropriate.” He cast an amused glance at Kesyn. “And my revered teacher, who endlessly professed that the best magic was no magic. How is that working for you, sir?” Nukpana stepped aside and, with a courtly bow, gestured for me to precede him. “Shall we?”

I was looking for a way out, any way out.

Not that it was easy to see where I was and where I was going while surrounded by a ridiculously large and heavily armed escort. We were going up a lot of stairs, which I took to mean up into the main part of the temple.

“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” I told Nukpana, indicating the guards.

“You should be flattered, Raine. Not every guest of mine warrants such careful attention.”

I raised my manacled hands. “Or this much magic-sapping steel.”

All traces of humor vanished. “I have not reached this night by taking chances. You have talents beyond magic. I am merely guarding against any and all of them.”

The main level of the temple was full of robed Khrynsani—robed and silent. They moved quickly and with purpose. Their boss had a big night planned.

These Khrynsani were different from any I’d seen before. Each of them—whether mages or guards—wore a long silver chain with a red, glowing gem. Down the long and wide corridor, the black-garbed goblins blended with the shadows. The only way I could tell that some of them were there was that the gems glowed like mutant fireflies. Carnades was sporting one exactly like them.

Nukpana noticed where I was looking. “My brethren all
wear lifestones when inside the temple. Each is calibrated to that individual to ensure their safe passage through the areas they are permitted to enter, and to deny entrance where they are not authorized to go.”

“So you don’t trust Carnades here enough to give him the run of the place?”

“It is for his own protection,” Nukpana replied mildly. “He is unfamiliar with our temple; it is merely a preventative measure to keep him from dangerous areas.”

“And if he does go astray, he gets a chastising zap?”

“My other mages would be alerted to his location, and would politely redirect his steps. Magus Silvanus has not and will not abuse my hospitality. He has been a most generous and accommodating guest.”

“So I hear.” I paused. “So, how does it feel to be on the verge of getting everything you want? Carnades has already told me his feelings.”

If Nukpana had been a cat, he’d have been purring. “It’s a sensation I most highly recommend. It’s a pity you won’t be experiencing it.”

“I’ll just have to live vicariously.”

A pair of armed Khrynsani standing guard on either side of an open doorway spotted Sarad Nukpana and instantly snapped to attention as we approached. I casually glanced in just in case it was a way out.

It wasn’t.

No. Oh no.

Deidre Nathrach stood just inside the room; Nath was beside her. It was a cell, empty except for a bench bolted to the far wall. Barrett was sitting on the bench. All of them were wearing long, pristinely white robes. Sarad Nukpana was a fastidious psycho; he’d want his sacrifices neat and tidy.

Sacrifices. He was going to kill Tam’s mother and brother first, then the elderly butler Tam thought of, and loved, as family.

I stopped breathing, paralyzed with a dread so sharp that it staked me to the stone where I stood.

Nath saw me and ran for the door, stopping short of the opening. There must have been a ward. When he spotted Nukpana, his lips pulled back from his fangs in a feral snarl. I knew Nath, and I still had to force myself not to reach for a weapon.

A weapon I no longer had.

No sound could escape that cell and neither could they.

Sarad Nukpana stood impassively as Nath followed his snarl by screaming a few physically impossible and fatal things he wanted to inflict upon Nukpana’s person. I couldn’t hear him through the ward, but no sound was needed. It was in Goblin, it was emphatic, and all of it was perfectly clear.

Sarad Nukpana’s hand against the small of my back pushed me forward again, but not before Deidre and I locked eyes.

Her large, dark eyes said it all. If I had been captured, then so had Tam, or he would be soon. Her entire family was in the hands of a madman. Her only consolation was that she wouldn’t have to watch them die. She would be the first to fall under Sarad Nukpana’s sacrificial knife. Deidre Nathrach wasn’t chained, just caged, but just as helpless to do anything about it. We were her last hope, and now her hope had failed her.

Nukpana’s voice was crisp and formal. “We prefer to give our sacrifices as much freedom as possible in the time remaining to them, hence the lack of restraints and an unobstructed view of open spaces.”

A dimly lit corridor, lined in light-sucking black granite, would be their last view, before the altar and Sarad Nukpana’s face, as his hand brought the dagger down.

“My first official act as king will be to execute the assassin of my honored predecessor,” he continued.

“And the mother of your lifelong nemesis,” Kesyn called
from behind us where he was surrounded by his own guards. “Come, now, boy. At least admit the real reason.”

“Merely taking the opportunity given to me to settle scores. An opportunity passed is an opportunity wasted. You taught me that, and I learned it well. Uncommonly wise words, sir.”

“And you always twisted my words to suit your own purpose.”

Nukpana’s lips curled in a smirk. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“You don’t want an opportunity,” Kesyn spat. “You want an excuse.”

“After tonight I’ll no longer need either.” Nukpana’s smile was relaxed and genuinely happy. It was creepy as hell. “You’re an old man who is content to live in the past and reject progress. Both are burdens you will not have to bear for much longer.” His smile grew. “Guards, prepare him for the altar.”

I didn’t scream or struggle. Instead I viciously embedded my elbow as far as I could in Sarad Nukpana’s gut. I gave it everything I had, and a lot that I didn’t. I was a dead woman walking anyway, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to take as many pieces of Nukpana as I could with me. The Khrynsani guards had been careless enough to chain my hands in front of me and I was only too glad to make their leader pay.

My elbow earned me the reward of a pained gasp from the goblin.

An instant later, I was on the bottom of a pile of Khrynsani. Now I couldn’t breathe, either, but knocking some of the hot air out of a baby demigod was worth it.

Nukpana wouldn’t kill me. Not yet. He also wouldn’t let his goons beat the crap out of me. Hopefully. He wanted me able to stand up next to that altar, or chained to it, and he wanted me fully aware and whole when it happened.
Then
he’d carve my heart out with a spoon. But until then, he wouldn’t want a mark on me.

“Raine, no!”

It was Kesyn.

“When you see it—” The old goblin’s last word was stopped by a fist. Nukpana wouldn’t care if his teacher got roughed up before his turn on the altar.

I knew what he’d tried to say. A chance. When I see it, take it. I hadn’t forgotten. I didn’t have either the breath or a lack of sense to respond. Kesyn knew I’d heard him. Though Deidre had taken a chance when she saw it, and look what it’d gotten her.

Nukpana straightened up with a ragged hiss. “Take her to my quarters.”

One of the guards in the pile decided clubbing me on the head was an appropriate response to that order.

Everything went black.

I had certain expectations to waking up in Sarad Nukpana’s
bedroom.

Chained to the wall was one of them. Having a white-robed, wide-eyed goblin lady staring at me like I was one of the dragons downstairs was not.

As my vision cleared from the head clobbering I’d gotten, I realized that she wasn’t wearing a white robe. It was a white gown, shimmering with tiny pearls and what appeared to be diamonds.

I did the math: white gown, young, beautiful, bejeweled. I was going to take a big leap here and guess.

“Princess Mirabai?” I said, then winced at the pain in my skull.

She was startled that I knew her, but she didn’t jump back. Though I couldn’t exactly jump forward since I was attached to an iron ring set in the floor by a three-foot chain linked through my manacles. The area around where I was chained had absolutely nothing within reach, not even a
chair to sit on. I felt like an unruly dog that had done something extra naughty. I guess elbowing Sarad Nukpana in the gut in front of his lackeys qualified. And to top it off, I couldn’t stand up; the chain was just long enough to let me get to my knees. I didn’t even have to wonder if Nukpana had done that on purpose.

“You’re Raine Benares.” Princess Mirabai’s voice was rich and cultured—and surprisingly calm. Her eyes told me she was no longer afraid of me, but was still cautious. Smart lady.

I nodded and immediately regretted that, too. “Right now, I wish I weren’t.”

“Right now, I would gladly trade places with you.” The girl sounded sincere enough; maybe she’d been hit on the noggin, too. “You get to die tonight. I’m to be married and mated to a monster.”

“When you put it that way, I do have it better, don’t I?” I didn’t mention that her monster groom was also technically a reanimated corpse. The poor girl had enough problems.

I took a good look around at what Sarad Nukpana called his quarters. The room was filled with sensual comforts. There was a low bed covered with silken pillows. A plush chaise upholstered with fabric that looked too soft to be real. An elaborately carved and inlaid table with two chairs, set with the remnants of a meal, mostly uneaten. The floor was covered in rugs, mostly of thick, soft fur. Except where I was, of course. I got to sit on cold stone.

It was familiar.

It took me a minute, but I remembered. Soon after I’d arrived on Mid, I’d done something well-intentioned that turned out to be well-intentioned but ill-advised, and had gotten my soul temporarily dragged into the Saghred, where I’d had a nasty encounter with Sarad Nukpana’s newly disembodied soul. The goblin had used magic to shape his prison more to his liking. From what I was seeing now, it
looked like he had turned the inside of the Saghred into his own personal version of Home Sweet Home.

“Have you seen Prince Chigaru?” Princess Mirabai was asking.

I blinked a few times to refocus my eyes on her. Jeez, even blinking hurt. “Uh, not for a while.”

“But you have seen him?”

“Yes.”

“He was unharmed?”

“He was the last time I saw him.” I didn’t mention that the last time I’d seen him was also the same time that Khrynsani black mages were thundering down the stairs at our backs.

Tension visibly drained out of her. “Thank you.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not being hunted. It’s just unlikely he’s been caught.” I decided to keep “yet” to myself.

“When they brought you, Sarad told me that there would be more new prisoners before sundown—”

“Sundown? It’s morning already?”

“It’s just after midday.”

I blinked. “How long was I out?”

“Nearly an hour.”

A knock on the head didn’t usually put me out for that long. My body probably took advantage of the fact that I’d stopped moving to fit in a nap. We must have been in those caves and tunnels longer than I thought. As a result, I had less time than I wanted to think of a way out of this mess, and—if I was lucky, blessed, and a miracle magnet—still manage to take out the Saghred as well. Though all three of the above were looking less likely by the second.

“Would you have any way to know if anyone’s been caught in the hour I was out?” I asked.

Mirabai shook her head. “This room is soundproof.”