All Spell Breaks Loose (14 page)

Tam had been eating an awful lot of humble pie since we’d arrived. It looked like he was developing a taste for it. Swallowing your pride might choke you the first time you had to do it; but apparently the next one went down a little easier.

“You were disgraced and banished because you refused to step back from what you stood for,” Tam continued. “You refused to teach rich, young thugs a level of magic they had neither the morals nor restraint to learn.” He paused. “I was foremost among them.”

The old goblin’s eyes glittered. “You think so?”

“I know so. I’ve turned from the dark path.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard people talking. Talk isn’t necessarily the truth.”

“I have renounced black magic.”

Kesyn Badru’s sharp black eyes looked like they were boring through to Tam’s soul. “Not entirely, you haven’t.”

Tam shifted uneasily. “When there is a great need, when no other magic would—”

“Save lives,” Mychael said. “Sometimes it is necessary to do what is distasteful for a greater good.”

Badru studied Tam, all signs of drunkenness gone. “And you think you’ve grown enough sense to tell the difference?”

“I’m trying, sir.” Another slice of humble pie. “Knowing the right thing to do isn’t always easy.”

“There’s more to why we need your help,” I told the mage. Best just to come right out with it. “My magic is gone.”

“Yeah. So?”

“And… I don’t have any magic.”

“That’s obvious. Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone inside these rotten city walls would have a clue.”

That was more than a little disconcerting. “How can you tell?”

“I don’t smell any magic coming off of you.”

“You mean sense?”

“I say what I mean. Smell. Others may sense, but I smell. Don’t let it worry you, little missy. It’s a gift—or a curse—depending on how you look at it. I can see people for who and what they really are.” He looked at Tam appraisingly. “So, while there’s no cure for stupid, you at least seem to have found a treatment.”

“Thank you, sir. I think.”

A chorus of disembodied howls, screams, and roars shook the room around us.

Kesyn Badru walked to the nearest wall, pressed his hands up past his wrists into the goop, and started murmuring. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the wall began glowing with the same blue light of the tunnel he’d created for us to escape through.

The howling, screaming, and roaring stopped. Instantly and completely.

“The beastie thinks we’ve vanished.” He scowled at the lot of us. “Though with the four of you here raising a ruckus, we only have less than an hour before it cranks up again.”

I shifted uneasily. “It senses and feeds on emotions, doesn’t it?”

Badru nodded. “No emotion and no violence equals no problem. Staying drunk helps.”

Finally, an activity I could agree with.

Imala looked at the faintly glowing walls. “How do we get out?”

Badru shrugged. “With what you have planned, I don’t want to get out.”

“
We
do.”

“Then I imagine leaving this room, then running like hell, would be as good a plan as any.”

Tam moved close enough to his former teacher that Badru could have punched him in several sensitive areas. “Sir, we can’t do this without you.” He hesitated, the smooth muscles working in his jaw. “Please help us.”

Amazingly enough, Kesyn Badru seemed to be actually considering it, though he took his sweet time doing it. “I’ll be honest with you,” he eventually said. “I’m sitting the fence on that whole ‘saving the world’ thing the lot of you are bent on doing. From what I’ve seen lately, there’s not much out there that deserves saving. Now, destroying this rock that’s become Sarad Nukpana’s reason for living—I’ll have to admit that has a certain appeal. Not because it’ll save anyone; because it’ll annoy the hell out of Sarad.”

“Actually, sir, I’m planning to kill Sarad,” Tam told him.

“Destroy his reason for living,
then
kill him. Even better.” Badru pondered this while he absently scratched at something under his robe. “I’d be risking my life a couple dozen times before we get to the fun part.” He scowled. “
If
we get to the fun part. There’s not enough money to pay me to take this job.” The old goblin mage stopped and smiled, showing two missing teeth and a chipped fang. “But anything that ends with publically humiliating and killing Sarad Nukpana? Hell, I’ll do that for free.”

Kesyn Badru clapped his hands once and rubbed them together gleefully
. “So, who you going to murder?” he asked me.

I blinked. “Murder?”

He gave me a flat look. “I’ve been drunk; I’ve never been hard of hearing.” Badru jerked his head in Tam’s general direction. “When the boy was telling me the who, what, when, where, and why the hell of you all being here, he said that you have to wet that demon blade of yours with someone’s blood before it’ll cut into the Saghred. So, who’s the unlucky winner?”

I didn’t have to think about that one. “Whoever tries to keep me from getting to the rock.”

“Well, at least that part shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll have plenty of Khrynsani trying to get at you who need stabbing. When the time comes, don’t be shy about it. Puncture as many as you can; you want to make sure that blade is as wet as it needs to be.” Badru turned to Mychael. “Mind
me asking who you’re taking with you to bust your way into that temple?”

“The four of us, yourself, possibly a few others.”

Badru raised one shaggy brow. “A few. Possibly.”

“Better for stealth.” Mychael flashed a smile. “Because we’re not busting in.”

The old goblin looked at us like we were all a fistful of arrows short of a quiver. “Uh-huh. I’m assuming you know that if this stealth of yours doesn’t work, you’re Saghred chow. And note that I said, ‘
You’re
Saghred chow.’ After everything I’ve been through, I’ve never once considered suicide.” He shot a pointed glance at Tam. “Homicide, I’ve thought about on many occasions, but never suicide, and I’m not about to start now. So unless you’ve got bigger guns than I know of, the chances of you getting that rock without getting dead are next to none, and you’ll be taking that chance without me.”

“Don’t count us out that easily, sir,” Mychael said. “I’ve spent the better part of my professional career perfecting glamours and veils. I’ve studied Sarad Nukpana for years. I know his voice, mannerisms, how he moves—”

The old goblin simply gaped at Mychael. “You’re going to glamour as that cretinous worm and just saunter up to the altar.”

Mychael grinned. “I imagine Sarad Nukpana won’t be challenged by anyone if he wants to commune with the Saghred. He would always have guards or a mage escort with him; and conveniently, Khrynsani have a fondness for hooded robes. There should be no problem acquiring robes for temporary use.”

“Paladin, in my long life, I’ve only said this to one other man—your balls drag the ground.”

“Thank you.”

“Either that or you’re stark raving nuts.”

“The next few hours will tell. Glamouring as Sarad is
but one plan. Coming back alive from any mission means being flexible. Stay flexible. Stay alive.”

“Admit it, sir,” Tam said. “You have to appreciate the irony. Sarad used a thief glamouring as Mychael to steal the Saghred. I’d love to see Mychael glamoured as Sarad to destroy it.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Badru said. “I don’t care what parts any of you have dragging the ground. No answer from you, no help from me. How are you getting in?”

“We’re not walking in the front doors, sir, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tam said. “Imala knows a passage that was created during the last renovation. I have a tunnel that was built during the original construction.”

Badru’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know if either one’s been compromised?”

Imala answered that one. “As of last month, neither one was known to anyone other than Tam and myself.”

“A lot of bad can happen in a month.”

Amen to that.

Badru smiled slyly. “I know a way in that you wouldn’t need to worry about any Khrynsani guards at all.”

Now Tam and Imala looked at the old mage like
he
was crazy. Mychael and I shared a blank stare.

“Is this an idea you’d like to share with us elves, too?” Mychael asked.

“There’s a cave about a mile from the harbor,” Badru told us. “It’s set into the cliffs just above sea level. The cave opens into tunnels which lead up into the temple.”

I glanced from Tam to Imala. “That sounds nice enough, but I take it there’s a reason why we don’t want to go that way.”

Tam answered me. “There are usually several reasons living in those caves at any given time.”

“Sea dragons,” Imala clarified.

That did it. Kesyn Badru had spent too much time in a possessed house.

I’d seen a full-grown sea dragon before just off the coast of Stiren. Lucky for us, it must have just eaten, and wasn’t interested in either Phaelan’s ship or crew. The only difference between sea dragons and Khrynsani was the way they’d kill us. Personally, I’d rather be stabbed than eaten. Sea dragons didn’t care if you were dead before they started eating you.

“In addition to guarding the sea cave entrance, the Khrynsani use the dragons for garbage disposal,” Badru told us. “Corpses of sacrifices, prisoners who outlive their usefulness, Khrynsani whose loyalties become questionable.” He hesitated. “The one unfortunate part is that the tunnels end near the temple dungeons, which I’d really rather not visit.”

At the mention of the temple dungeons, Tam’s eyes lit up, and suddenly Kesyn Badru wasn’t the craziest person in the room anymore. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I wasn’t any happier about that idea than I was with playing hide-and-seek with hungry sea dragons.

“Tam, we can’t risk—” I began.

“Our most powerful mages and top military minds—all imprisoned by Sarad because they refused to bow to him.” Tam looked at Mychael. “We’d have an army that’s on
our
side.”

“And your father.”

“Yes, and my father. It won’t make up for everything I’ve done, but it’d be a start.”

“I like even odds,” Mychael said. “But if evening the odds risks the mission, it’s not worth the attempt.”

I bit my bottom lip. “Though…”

“Not you, too?”

I raised both of my hands defensively. “Hey, just trying to do that ‘stay flexible, stay alive’ thing you were talking about. As little as we need something else to do while under
Sarad Nukpana’s nose, this might be just the thing we need to buy us some time. Sometimes chaos is a good thing. A bunch of vindictive battle-hardened mages and warriors loose in the temple on the eve of Sarad Nukpana’s greatest triumph. Yes, Nukpana will have to leave guards around the Saghred, but he’ll have no other choice than to send the rest of them to stop that prison break.”

Tam spoke. “Mychael, with their help, we might just be able to destroy the Saghred
and
Sarad’s Gate. Mother said the team that’s trained and ready to destroy that Gate are in those dungeons. At the very least, we’d be giving these men and women the dignity of dying while fighting instead of waiting to be slaughtered like animals. To me, that’s a chance worth taking.”

Mychael frowned. “I know they won’t take orders from me, and you didn’t exactly leave a clean record when you had to get out of town.”

“Imala, would they listen to you?” I asked. “Or would they think you were still working for Sathrik?”

“Shit,” she swore mildly.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Part of why Imala Kalis had been able to gather so much inside information on King Sathrik’s plans was that, technically, she still worked for the guy. For goblins, maintaining dual alliances came as naturally as breathing. But this wasn’t a game for the men and woman Sarad Nukpana had imprisoned in those dungeons, and Imala telling them she was one of the good guys might not go over well.

“Think you could convince them that you wouldn’t set them free just to turn around and set them up?” I asked.

“They would listen to you,” Tam said quietly.

I blinked. “Me? You know I’m an elf, and I think that’s going to be fairly obvious to them, too.”

“You’re also the Saghred’s bond servant.”

Imala nodded. “Our people know who you are, and that includes what you look like.”

“But I don’t have any magic.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tam said. “They know what you’ve done to thwart Sarad Nukpana, and they know that he wants—and needs—you dead. You’re here to destroy the Saghred. Mychael is the paladin of the Conclave Guardians, the keepers of the Saghred for the past thousand years.” He flashed a grin. “The two of you have the hero credentials; we’ll just be there as your trusty sidekicks.”

I snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“That we’re trusty or sidekicks?”

I gave him a crooked smile. “Either one.”

“I haven’t spent all of my time in this house,” Badru said. “I’ve been out, and there are some people I still trust to talk to. From what I’ve heard, Sarad’s keeping those prisoners healthy and well fed. Apparently that rock doesn’t like weak food. I’m sure those boys and girls would like nothing better than to pay Sarad back with interest for fattening them up for the slaughter.”

“Okay,” Mychael began. “I’m not saying we’re going to do this thing, but how many cells are there and how do they open?”

“A dozen cells on two levels,” Tam said. “All but a few of them open with the same key. The chief guard and his senior officers each have one.”

“How many officers?”

“Usually four.”

“Think we can get our hands on one?” Mychael shot Tam a meaningful look. “Quietly?”

Tam’s grin was slow and borderline evil. In that moment, he looked entirely too much like Talon. “He’ll never know what happened.”

Kesyn Badru’s instructions for getting out of the house were simple:
run like hell and don’t look back. Throughout my professional career, I’d successfully used that strategy many
times. I was glad to be able to say that it worked this time, too.

It was full dark once we got outside. The streets would be busier, and the odds for getting stopped and/or captured would be greater. We were still cloaked and hooded, and Kesyn Badru was sporting a battered, wide-brim hat. Since we were headed for the harbor, then the sea cave, the most direct route would have us going under a place I’d heard a lot about, and had absolutely no desire to visit.