Lisa Shearin - Raine Benares 01 (34 page)

I
swallowed the scream. “Let him go.”

That
confused Nukpana. I guess he wasn’t too familiar with demands.

He
realized what I meant, and glanced down at Piaras. You think I’d have asked him
to give up a favorite lab animal. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“That’s
the deal, take it or leave it.”

He
smiled again. “You are in no position to bargain, Mistress.”

“Neither
are you.”

I
could let the Saghred use me, but it would take my breath, what was left of my
strength—and would bring me one step closer to whatever awaited me by using it
again. I didn’t want any of those things. Yet if I did nothing, the goblin
would get everything his blackened heart desired, including two of the people I
held most dear.

Easy
decision. Some things are worth any price.

I
knew what I wanted to do. I just had no idea how to do it. Fortunately, the
Saghred knew both. My heart hammered in my chest, and my breath came quick and
shallow from the awakening power. The goblin’s smile widened. I knew why I
couldn’t breathe. He didn’t. Let him think I was terrified. I was. But not only
of him.

The
Gate was in my home because of Sarad Nukpana. I wanted to hurt the goblin grand
shaman very badly. Hurt him, hurt the Gate. It was simple and brutal, but then
I’m a simple and brutal kind of girl. If he wanted the power of the Saghred, he
could have it. I hoped he choked.

At
that moment, Piaras wrenched himself free of one of his captors, kicking the
shaman under the chin with the heel of his boot. Sarad Nukpana’s attention went
from me to Piaras for a fraction of a second. It was the only chance I was
going to get. I took it.

I had
the brief satisfaction of seeing the goblin’s black eyes widen in shock as the
impact hit him. It lifted him off his feet, propelling him backward out of my
line of sight. I felt the tremors, saw the chunks of stone fall from the
ceiling in the room beyond the portal. The screams of pain I now heard were
goblin. Over it all I heard Sarad Nukpana’s voice, calling for order, weakened,
but hardly dead.

He
wasn’t dead? I had vaporized six Magh’Sceadu in The Ruins. The Saghred could
level armies, but it couldn’t kill one goblin? My throat constricted and I
tasted blood in my mouth. I continued forcing the power that coursed through me
into the Gate. Black flowers bloomed on the edge of my vision. If I lost
consciousness, I was dead.

Piaras
roared.

His
terror was compounded by a rage that had been born last night in an alley, grew
in The Ruins, and now ripped itself fully formed from his vocal chords in an
apothecary’s workroom. I’d seen him angry, but never like this. The power
within him fed off of that anger.

His
wordless scream was filled with pent-up rage and fear—and was aimed in a
straight line through the Magh’Sceadu to the Gate that had just swallowed his
grandmother. The three shamans and the Magh’Sceadu were unfortunate enough to
be in his path. The force of Piaras’s voice blasted them back through the
Gate’s mouth, and slammed it shut behind them.

I
slid down the wall I found myself against. Piaras lay sprawled on the floor.
The force field vanished with the Gate that spawned it, and Mychael, Tam, and
Garadin all but fell into the room.

I
crawled over to Piaras and knelt beside him. He scrabbled back as far in the
corner as it was possible to get. He would have pressed himself through the
wall if he could have. Anything to get away from the things that he had
banished, from me, and from himself.

“Don’t
touch me!” His dark eyes were haunted and his breath came in short, shallow
bursts.

The
remnants of his magic crackled in the air around him. I was sure he saw the
Saghred’s leftovers all over me. I didn’t want to be near me, either. I lowered
my hands and slowly sat back on my heels, utterly exhausted. I knew how he
felt. When you feel like your skin is trying to crawl free of your bones, the
last thing you want is someone touching you, regardless of how badly you may
want to be held.

I
sensed Mychael and Tam’s solid presence on the floor beside me. Garadin stood
just behind me. The beacon had stopped burning. I didn’t need it to tell me
that the danger was over. For now. Sarad Nukpana may not have gotten what he
came for, but he had stolen enough.

“We’ll
get her back,” I told Piaras. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

I
said it like a promise, but I couldn’t promise Piaras anything right now, least
of all the safe return of his grandmother. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going
to do everything I could to make that happen, even if it meant turning myself
over to Sarad Nukpana.

“That
won’t be necessary,” Mychael said, his voice close. “Even if it were, I
wouldn’t let you do it.”

I
turned my head toward him with an effort. My thoughts must have carried, or
Mychael was just that good. Probably the latter.

“Do
you have a better suggestion?”

“He
will contact us, with the terms for Tarsilia’s release—”

“Release?
You mean trade.” I saw no reason to dance around what was essentially an
exchange that would never happen. Sarad Nukpana had no intention of trading
Tarsilia for anyone. He would have other uses for her. I didn’t say it out
loud. We all knew it, and if Piaras didn’t know, he didn’t need to.

“That’s
what he’ll ask for,” Mychael said, “but it’s not what he’s going to get.”

“And
just what is he going to get?” I snapped.

Mychael’s
face was grim. “More than he bargained for.”

“I
just tried to give him ‘more than he bargained for’ and it didn’t work.” I
looked to Garadin for the answers I didn’t have. I knew he didn’t have them
either, and that just fed my rage and frustration. “Why didn’t it work? It felt
the same as it did in The Ruins. The power was there. There was nothing left of
six Magh’Sceadu. How did he survive?”

“I
don’t know,” my teacher admitted. “But we’re dealing with a Gate, the darkest
of magics, and the Saghred. Who knows what kind of magic is at work there? But
they’re both magic, so the same or similar rules should apply.” He looked
genuinely concerned and didn’t try to hide it.

Nice
to know it wasn’t just me, but that was nowhere near the answer I wanted.

“All
I want to know is, how are we going to get my grandmother back?” Piaras asked
from the corner. “And when.” There was a steely edge to his voice that I’d
never heard before. His question, and his stare, were aimed directly at the
Guardian.

“Sarad
Nukpana is in the goblin embassy,” Mychael told him. “I can’t imagine him
holding your grandmother anywhere else.”

“And
the Saghred is in the mausoleum on the grounds,” Tam said.

“Convenient
one-stop shopping,” I muttered.

“Do
you have a plan?” Piaras asked Mychael point blank.

“I
do.”

“What
is it?”

Mychael
looked at him in silence for a moment. “Not now.”

“Why?
You don’t want to talk in front of me? You think I’m too young?” Piaras’s eyes
were the darkest I’d ever seen them. They were a match for Mychael’s intensity,
and then some.

“Not
until you’ve had a chance to recover.” His tone said he’d tolerate no argument.

I
agreed with him completely.

“You
just closed a Gate, from the
outside,
” Mychael continued. “Do you have
any idea how difficult—no, how impossible—that is?”

Piaras’s
own voice was subdued, but only slightly. “No, I don’t.”

“Which
is probably why you could do it,” Garadin said.

Mychael
continued to look at Piaras. I didn’t know if he was sizing him up, testing
him, or just seeing if he would blink first. Piaras didn’t blink and he didn’t
look away. Apparently satisfied with something, Mychael broke the contact.

“We
can’t talk here. There’s a place the Khrynsani can’t tear a Gate into.”

“And
just where would that be?” I asked.

“We
Guardians have a safehouse of our own.”

Piaras
was pacing.

We
had arrived at the Guardians’ safehouse in the central city just before dawn. I
had already seen the master bedroom in my previous visit, and the rest of the
palazzo was just as lavish. It belonged to the Count of Eilde, a cousin of
Mychael’s who was conveniently away on his honeymoon at the moment.

Our
trip to the count’s home had been uneventful. And not much had happened since.
That was Piaras’s problem. Nothing was happening at this particular moment to
rescue his grandmother, and he was not happy about it. The beacon, on the other
hand, seemed to know that there was a reunion with the Saghred in its immediate
future. It hadn’t stopped purring since we’d arrived.

“If
not now, when?” Piaras asked.

“Before
midnight, tonight.” I was just repeating Mychael’s timeline, and truth be told,
I liked saying it about as much as Piaras liked hearing it, which wasn’t much.
But unlike Piaras, I saw the wisdom in waiting. Piaras had been forced to watch
Khrynsani shamans drag his grandmother through the ugliest Gate I had ever seen
or heard of, so wisdom and waiting weren’t a big part of his thinking right
now.

“Sarad
Nukpana will kill her before then.” Piaras swallowed and looked away, but not
before I caught a glint of tears in his eyes. “Or worse.” The Piaras of two
days ago wouldn’t have cared all that much if I had seen him cry. The Piaras
standing with his back to me now in the Guardians’ safehouse was trying
desperately to show no signs of weakness. I personally didn’t see tears as a
weakness; but being in his late teens, and male, Piaras viewed the world a
little differently, especially now. I guess I couldn’t blame him.

“He
won’t kill her—or hurt her,” I said.

I
expected him to react angrily, or at the very least demand how I could possibly
know. But he didn’t. He understood all too well why Sarad Nukpana wanted to
keep Tarsilia alive and whole. The goblin had other sorcerers he could use to
fuel a Gate. Tarsilia was more valuable to him as a hostage. At least for now.

Piaras
was looking at me. I knew he saw me for a brief moment as Sarad Nukpana saw me.
A commodity to be traded for, used, and discarded. Piaras did not like seeing
me that way. That made two of us.

“And
he’s not going to kill or hurt me either. Or you.” I said it as much for my own
benefit as Piaras’s. Seeing Piaras getting misty triggered the beginnings of a
salty sting in my own eyes. I concentrated really hard on making it stop.
Mychael would be here any moment, and he was not going to see me cry. It
wouldn’t do Piaras much good either. Mychael had promised to fill us in on the
details of this plan of his. A little enlightenment would go a long way toward
improving morale right now.

The
door opened, and I was instantly on my feet. Not that I expected anything bad
to come through the door, but old habits—and recent events that had reinforced
those habits—were hard to break.

It
was Garadin, which was a relief to both of us.

I
sheathed the dagger that had found its way into my hand.

“Was
Calchas at home?” I asked him.

“He
was.”

Garadin
had come with us to the Guardians’ safehouse, but had left soon after with an
escort of two Guardians to see Calchas Becan, a nachtmagus who had the largest
private collection of books on the higher dark magics, including Gates. An
exorcist and demonologist by trade, Nachtmagus Becan was a nice enough
gentleman by all accounts, but I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same house as
that library. Still, research was good. I was going to be seeing Sarad Nukpana
face-to-face tonight and I wanted to know what had happened and why—or more to
the point, what had
not
happened and why.

Garadin
was taking his time helping himself to cheese, meat, and ale at the sideboard.

“Well?”
I asked impatiently. “What happened to me…it…whatever?”

“Gate
got in your way,” he said around a mouthful of cheese.

“What?
It was a Gate. It was open. I was on one side, Nukpana on the other. Nothing
between us but air. No problem.”

Garadin
held up a hand, stopping me. “Big problem. About four miles worth. You’re
forgetting about distance. Apparently distance is very important, critical
even.”

“What
distance? We were in the same room.” As soon as I said it, I knew I was wrong.
“He was on the other side of the city from me.”

“Correct.”

“But
I had a clear shot,” I protested.

“Through
a Gate,” Garadin clarified. “The distortions on that threshold were violent
enough to diffuse all but a small part of what you threw at him.”

I had
a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “How much got through?”

My
godfather shrugged. “Maybe five percent, maybe less.”

I
flopped down in my chair. “Just enough to piss him off.”