All Spell Breaks Loose (33 page)

I was tempted to smack Kesyn upside the head. “He won’t be able to
get in
!”

The old goblin gave me a sly wink. “I’ve got a key.”

Sarad Nukpana was directing his dragons to slaughter the Resistance; he wasn’t defending the Saghred, because he knew it was being taken care of. He knew that I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the Saghred. To keep the two of us right where he wanted us until he dealt with the Resistance, Nukpana had tasked his top black mages with wrapping us in a lethal Level Thirteen blanket.

Suddenly the air in the temple crackled with static like right before a lightning strike, quivering, eager, and alive… and wrong.

At its epicenter stood Sarad Nukpana.

He began gathering his power like one of the dragons drawing in a massive breath. In an instant, all of the chaos and death fell into the background as a sound like a distant thunder built until it vibrated the very air around us with its intensity. It shook the ground beneath our feet with a rumbling throb. Once. Twice. Three times.

Everyone felt it. Most of the combatants down on the temple floor retreated to the far walls, thinking another dragon was coming up through what was left of the floor.

I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Sarad Nukpana. “I have a feeling this is worse than dragons.”

Kesyn was off of the altar and standing beside me, his face grim, all signs of humor gone. “It’ll make them look like puppies. Sarad hasn’t even broken a sweat yet, but he’s about to. I hear he picked up a major power boost a few weeks ago.”

I nodded and continued staring. Sarad Nukpana had more power to draw on now, more magic at his command than anyone or anything except the Saghred itself. Nukpana had recently eaten the souls and consumed the life forces and magic of history’s strongest and most evil sorcerers. Men who had been conquerors and killers, who had cut swaths of death and destruction through entire kingdoms. They had been prisoners inside the Saghred along with Sarad Nukpana. And along with Nukpana, they had escaped. The goblin had methodically hunted them down and consumed every last one of them.

Sarad Nukpana had all of that knowledge, all of that killing power at his disposal, and he had yet to truly unleash it.

Until now.

Time slowed to a stop.

It hadn’t really, but my mind made it seem that everyone was moving in slow motion. This had happened to me before when I was in the middle of something that had a high probability of getting me killed. It was my mind’s way of giving me a chance to figure out how to undo my stupid.

This wasn’t my doing, not this time.

Sarad Nukpana stood as a statue, his beautiful face drawn into a rictus of rage, releasing his power, giving his magic flesh.

It took form, born from what Nukpana had become, created out of his own poisoned mind, the manifestation of his twisted soul. The air wavered before the goblin’s upraised hands, wavered and came together as a living thing that only vaguely held a human shape. It was easily three times Mychael’s height, its pallid skin stretched and rippling, not from muscle, but from things moving inside. Huge, distorted faces with mouths stretched in silent screams, fangs pressed against the skin, stretching it to the point of splitting open, eager and desperate to feed. Monstrous hands, grasping and pushing, arms and legs writhing inside determined to escape the skinform Sarad Nukpana had created.

Prince Chigaru and a handful of army officers were closest to the thing when it manifested. The prince led the attack. The creature bent and, with a mere swat of its fingers, sent Chigaru flying toward the opening in the floor. The prince stopped just short of falling in. Princess Mirabai ran to his side, armed with nothing except her broken pike. The officers rushed to protect their prince.

The remaining people still in the temple who had stood with Sarad Nukpana for whatever reason—terror, intimidation or like-minded sick souls, twisted by an all-consuming desire for power—they all ran. Loyalty held by fear or intimidation was quickly abandoned when something even scarier showed up.

I spotted Mychael using Tam’s curved blade, carving his way back toward us.

“Does he have it?” Kesyn snapped.

If Mychael had found the Scythe, I couldn’t see it. “Your eyes are better in this murk than mine,” I shot back.

The old mage stared intently. “I think he’s got it in his other hand. Come on, elf; get your ass up here.”

Mychael saw Nukpana’s living nightmare come to unholy life at the same time as everyone else. He glanced sharply between where Kesyn and I were sealed in the Khrynsani’s ward to the gigantic, patchwork monster that Nukpana had created and was about to unleash on the Resistance. Even with the dragons against them, they had been winning, but Nukpana’s creature was about to change that. Mychael’s frustration and rage were clear. He could take on one, not both.

Tam made the choice for all of us.

Only one thing could keep Sarad Nukpana occupied long enough to at least give us a chance to destroy the Saghred. Only one thing had the strength and cunning to bring down a monster.

A major-class demon summoned by black magic.

Mychael had found the Scythe of Nen.

Now Tam was going to sell his soul to buy us time to use it.

“We won’t let you down, boy,” Kesyn whispered.

Tam stepped out onto one of the few sections of the temple floor that hadn’t been cracked or broken, his back toward the mysterious blaze just outside the temple in Execution Square, the flames’ reflection licking hungrily at his gleaming black armor.

Tam didn’t say a word. There were no incantations, no raised arms, no shouts of challenge. In testament to his skill, he simply stepped aside as the shadows to his left parted like a curtain.

The demon was shorter than Sarad Nukpana’s creature, but height was the only thing it lacked. It was part man, part bull, and all demon—from his cloven hooves to his massive, horned head.

The monster and Tam’s demon took measure of each other, then began slowly circling, drawing closer to their intended kill with every step.

The time to stop Tam was long gone. The demon had
been summoned and released, the damage done. Tam was one of the most powerful mages I’d ever met, but Sarad Nukpana had the knowledge, cunning, and power of six of history’s magical heavyweights.

Without the Saghred’s power, what I wanted to do and what I could do were worlds away from each other. Right now I was less useful against both demon and monster than Mirabai and her broken stick.

Mychael raced up the stairs to the altar, and Kesyn didn’t give him time to start trying to blast his way through. The old goblin quickly held out both hands telling him to stop and then a single finger asking him to wait. Mychael gave a tight nod, and stood ready just outside the ward, facing the Khrynsani black mages with his magic flaring, bright and white-hot. He held it in check, letting it swirl and quickly grow around him like a contained cyclone, ready for release.

“We don’t have to break their spell, just their concentration.” Kesyn told me with grim satisfaction. “I’ve been arming myself for the past day in case something like this happened. It’s one of the many advantages to being old. There’s one thing that can get through any ward. Air. These bastards can’t concentrate if they can’t breathe—or don’t want to.” The old mage grinned. “Take a breath and hold it.”

“What? I don’t unde—”

“You don’t have to understand, just do it. Do you think I’ve been eating that cheese because I liked the taste? Take one old man and add stinky cheese. Do the math, girl—or in this case, the chemistry.”

One second those black mages were sealed in a Level Thirteen ward; the next they were gasping for fresh air that no longer existed.

Their concentration broke when Kesyn broke wind.

The mighty mage Kesyn Badru released a spell that laid low the collective strength of the Khrynsani’s most evil archsorcerers.

That’d sound better in the history books than one fart made the old man a hero.

When the Khrynsani lost their concentration, the spell controlling the ward buckled and broke, releasing a backlash that left only two of the mages standing, though staggering would be a more accurate description.

Mychael and his magic were waiting for them. When the crackling light dimmed, the mages weren’t dead at his feet. They were simply gone. A wisp of smoke floating in the air and the fading scent of incense were the only clues to what had happened to them.

Then there was no ward, no black mages. It was just us with the Scythe of Nen and the Saghred.

Mychael removed the Scythe from its scabbard.

Carnades’s blood still coated the blade, blood that had to be present before the Scythe could cut into the Saghred. For possibly the first and definitely the last time, Carnades Silvanus was about to do something noble.

Mychael started to give me the Scythe, then hesitated, his eyes on mine.

“You promised,” I said quietly. “I have to do this, not you.” I had to swallow to get the rest of the words out. “If this… goes bad, I’m not going to die knowing you’re living with that guilt.”

Mychael’s hand tightened around the Scythe of Nen until his knuckles showed white against his tanned skin.

Then he put it in my outstretched hand, and stepped back to give me and Kesyn room to work. I knew he’d stay close. He couldn’t protect me from the Saghred, but he would keep anything and everything else from harming me.

The Saghred was on its pedestal, no shields protecting it now. I didn’t kid myself for one instant; the Saghred didn’t need any help. It’d kept itself intact and feeding for thousands of years, maybe longer.

Somehow the stone knew what I was about to do. It hadn’t resisted when the demon queen had thrust the Scythe into
it to free her husband and king. I was only one elf with no magic, and the rock knew it because we were bonded and it’d taken my magic itself. It knew my fears and my weaknesses; and believe me, there were a lot of both right now, especially fears. But Tam had killed the demon queen with good old stealth and cunning. I had both of those. However, Tam had also had surprise on his side. He’d snuck up on the demon queen and lobbed her head off. There wasn’t going to be any sneaking up on the Saghred.

Kesyn had been standing a little off to the side to give Mychael and me some semblance of privacy. He stepped up to stand by my side. “Let me get some Reapers down here first,” he said quietly.

An instant later, I felt the old goblin mage’s call, literally felt it, his thoughts brushing like butterfly wings against my mind. I resisted the urge to shiver. The Reapers appeared almost instantly.

Kesyn and I looked up. A vortex had opened that went through and beyond the temple ceiling. We couldn’t see the end of it, or out into the temple. The swirling wasn’t some kind of gray mist; it was Reapers. Thousands of them.

Instantly the Saghred was in my mind, whispering to me without words, a sibilant hiss that pushed the vision of the Reapers aside and replaced them with what was happening right now to the people I loved. Tam clenched in one hand of Nukpana’s creature, while it fought the demon with the other hand for possession of Tam. Piaras snapped up by a dragon and dragged screaming into the bowels of the temple. Sarad Nukpana had turned his attention from his monster to Mychael. Mychael was now on his knees, magic fading, strength almost gone, struggling under Nukpana’s unrelenting attack. Khrynsani black mages surrounded him, sacrificial daggers at the ready.

“No!”
I screamed the word out loud and in my mind.

None of it was true. The Saghred knew me; it knew what scared me.

It was the Saghred that was afraid. Sarad Nukpana had somehow bound it; it couldn’t take me until the goblin gave his permission. But that didn’t mean that the thousands of souls about to be ripped from the stone through me wouldn’t kill me or drive me irrevocably insane. Like me, the Saghred was vulnerable, possibly for the first time in its existence. An existence I was going to end, even if I ended my own life.

I was afraid, too. Hell, I was terrified. But my fears weren’t for me, not anymore. Some things were worth dying for. Tam knew that. He had made that decision for himself, determined that an eternity of torment was worth destroying the Saghred to save those he loved, and his people,
all
of his people.

The Saghred wasn’t giving up. It weighed down my mind, sending my thoughts into a tailspin of torturous images.

My fear will not control me. My fear will
not
control me. The Saghred will not control me.

I had a power that the Saghred didn’t have and would never have. In its own way it was magic, magic that the Saghred could never bury or bind or take away from me.

Love.

Tam was risking his soul for it. Mychael had fought for me all these months and was now by my side protecting me. Chigaru’s love for Mirabai and his people inspired him to challenge the evil of Sarad Nukpana.

One rock wasn’t going to take that away from any of us.

I got a death grip on the Scythe.

For an instant, I could see through the Reapers. The dark energy swirling around Sarad Nukpana shifted as he saw me poised with the Scythe. All of his attention, the entire focus of his vast power, was caught up in controlling his monstrous creation.

Nukpana’s mad eyes widened in desperation as he screamed to the Saghred, “Take her!”

I drove the Scythe of Nen into the Saghred up to the hilt.

Shrieks, screams, agonized wailing, whether from me or the Saghred or its captive souls, I didn’t know and was beyond caring. It was as if I’d plunged the Scythe into my own guts. My breath froze, my heart fluttering in shock and panic, fluttering, then slowing, stopping. My fingers weakened on the Scythe’s grip, the cold metal sliding away. Suddenly another hand covered mine, warm and strong, keeping my fingers tight around the dagger, sharing his strength, his determination.

“Hang on, girl. We’re almost there.”

Kesyn Badru.

I managed to raise my head. I could no longer see through the spirits swirling around me and Kesyn. I looked up. The Saghred’s souls were escaping, the Reapers guiding them up into the vortex and on to whatever came after.