Lisa Shearin - Raine Benares 02 (34 page)

“They’d
never find the spellsingers.”

“No,
they wouldn’t. And with Justinius incapacitated—”

“Or
dead,” Piaras cut in bitterly.

“Or
dead . . . Carnades Silvanus is acting archmagus. He commands the Guardians
now.”

Piaras
couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Paladin Eiliesor has to take his orders
from
him
?”

“If
he doesn’t, Carnades can charge him with treason and lock him up in his own
containment rooms.”

“So
it’s just the two of us.” Piaras’s voice was steady and resolute. He’d already
decided what he was going to do.

“I’d
rather it be just the one of me.”

“Not
this time. I want to help.”

I
want to help.

I’d
said the same words to Mychael only a few days ago; it seemed like so much
longer. I wanted to help find Megan Jacobs. I had been determined, I knew I
could help, and I refused to take no for an answer.

Just
like Piaras was doing now.

He
was ready to do everything he could, anything he had to do. I almost smiled.
All he needed now was a suit of shining armor. It would have looked good on
him. He’d get himself killed unless I had a damned fine plan going in—the kind
of plan that would work regardless of how the situation changed. It’d been my
experience that bad situations rarely changed for the better. They had an
annoying tendency to go from bad to worse.

I
didn’t have a plan, damned fine or otherwise, at least not yet. If I was left
with no other choice, I had firepower. The odds of success—or survival—without
using the Saghred were next to none, the risk we’d be taking was too high, and
failure was a virtual certainty.

Having
an intact soul was overrated anyway.

Something
really bothered me. Aside from the near certainty of im
pending death or lingering insanity.

Rudra
Muralin had the spellsingers, but he didn’t have the Saghred to feed them to.
Now I wasn’t an expert on evil master plans, but it seemed to me that Muralin
had a very large crimp in his. Maybe his age was getting to him. Maybe he just
wasn’t a strategic thinker.

Probably
there was something going on that I didn’t know about.

If
Carnades Silvanus was acting archmagus, he had the final say over what was done
with the Saghred. Knowing how he felt about goblins, there’d be icicles
sprouting in the lower hells before he’d give Rudra Muralin the slightest
chance to get his hands on it.

Somehow
I didn’t think Muralin’s plan involved making an appointment with Carnades and
asking nicely for the Saghred.

Piaras
looked down the dark tunnel we were about to walk into. There were entirely too
many unknowns, but one certainty—if we weren’t at the top of our game, we were
dead.

It
looked like a tunnel, but as dark as it was, we could be walking into a
dead-end alcove for all I knew. But that’s where my seeking instinct told me we
had to go. Just because it was the right direction didn’t mean it was the best
or healthiest direction. My seeking instinct didn’t pay any attention to little
things like dead ends or death-inducing goblins along the way. It just told me
the most direct route and expected me to take it. Avoiding death and
dismemberment was my job.

“So
how are we going to do this?” Piaras sounded dubious about the whole thing.
Smart kid.

“It’s
pretty straightforward,” I told him. “We go to where the spellsingers are—killing
or incapacitating any goblins or evil elves before they can do the same to
us—we free Ronan and the kids, and if we’re really lucky, we get out of here
with all of our pieces and parts intact.”

Piaras
looked down at me and blinked. “This is how seekers typically work?”

“Nope,
this time I have a plan.”

“Good.
What is it?”

“I
just told you.”

“That’s
it
?”

“I
like to keep it simple. You got a better way to get it done?”

Piaras
went through the motions of thinking about it, then blew out his breath.

“Should
I take that as a ‘no’?” I asked him.

The
kid actually snorted. “You might as well.”

Reality
rarely settles in lightly. Most times it lands on you like a slab of granite.
Any noble illusions Piaras had about what “charging to the rescue” really meant
had just been squashed flat.

“We’ve
got plenty of blades and blunt objects.” I tried to at least sound reassuring.
“You’ve got quick-and-dirty spellsongs; I’ve got the Saghred. Best of all,
we’re both highly motivated to survive.”

Piaras
didn’t move. “Raine, you can’t use the Saghred.”

“I
said I’ve
got
it. I didn’t say I wanted to use it.”

“But
you would.”

“Yes.
The Saghred taking a chunk out of me is a small price to pay to see you and
those kids safe.”

Piaras’s
eyes hardened. “Don’t use it to save me.”

“That’s
not your choice. It’s mine, and I’ve already made it,” I told him point-blank.
“I’m prepared to do anything I have to.” I jerked my head toward the embassy
above us. “If it’d come down to it, I would have used the Saghred up there to
get you out. If Rudra Muralin brings out the big guns down here, I will use
everything in my arsenal to shut him down.”

Piaras
drew breath to retort. I held up a hand.

“Last
time I checked, my brain was still in my arsenal,” I told him. “It’s always
been my first line of defense, and it always will be. After that . . . well, I
can’t make any promises.”

Piaras
looked into the dark. “Blades and magical arsenals. How could anything possibly
go wrong?”

I do
believe he was being sarcastic.

“Raine?”

“What?”

“I’m
scared,” Piaras said. Being a teenager and male, I knew that admission had cost
him a lot.

“I’m
scared, too. In spades. Damned near everything that’s happened since we got
here has been scary.”

Piaras
exhaled. “Let’s finish this so we can stop being scared.”

I
smiled at him. “Best idea I’ve heard in days.”

I
kept my tiny lightglobe.

I
figured the goblins could see us whether we had the globe or not. This way, if
they jumped out of the dark and tried to kill us, we’d at least get a good look
at them while they did it.

I thought
I’d have to link with Megan every now and then to locate the cell block. Not
necessary. Piaras and I simply followed the trail of dead bodies like gruesome
bread-crumbs. The first two bodies had been Nightshades; the next one was
Khrynsani.

The
one after that was also a goblin—but he wasn’t a Khrynsani.

He
was one of Tam’s.

Oh
no.

Piaras
looked over my shoulder. “That’s not a temple guard.”

“No,
it’s not.”

“Who
is—”

I
scowled. “Tam’s down here. He’s come to get Talon. Until about a half hour ago,
this one was a bouncer at Sirens.”

Piaras
arched an eyebrow. “Talon?”

The
bad guys already knew, so why shouldn’t Piaras? “Talon is Tam’s son.”

“He
didn’t tell me.”

“He
doesn’t know. People in Tam’s past would come after him if they found out.”

“People
like Nightshades and Rudra Muralin.”

That
brought up a thought I didn’t want to let inside my head, let alone ponder. Tam
had to have known Rudra Muralin long before he showed up on Sirens’s doorstep.
Tam had readily admitted that Muralin had threatened Talon.

Too
readily.

“Yeah,
people like them,” I muttered.

I
could’ve kicked myself. Tam had done it to me again. Goblins didn’t give up
information that easily unless it was a diversion for something they didn’t
want you to find out. Tam had been the queen’s chief shaman, a master of the
black arts. And from what I’d heard from Mychael and witnessed firsthand, Tam
hadn’t forgotten a thing. He’d known all about the Saghred when we had found it
in Mermeia last week. He’d known what it was, what it did—and he had to have
known what it reacted to.

He’d
known full well how he would react to it.

He
already knew how he reacted to me.

And
he followed me here from Mermeia.

Passion
set the Saghred off. There were all kinds of passion. Rage was one of them. Vengeance
was another.

Once
Talon was safe, Tam had said he was going after Rudra Muralin, then any
Khrynsani or Nightshades he and his boys could get their hands on. Tam would
have enough rage and vengeance to kick any evil stone of power wide-awake.

Talon
was still tightly locked in that cell.

One
of Tam’s bouncers was dead at my feet.

That
meant Tam was down here and he was hunting. If Tam’s black magic got its hooks
into him and it got wind of me, I couldn’t be all that certain that Tam would
be able to limit his elf hunting to just Nightshades.

Tam
had known that, too. He’d told me that some things were beyond mortal control.
He knew what his breaking point would be.

Dark
power calls to dark power. Always has, always will.

I
felt Piaras watching me. “Tam’s one of the good guys, right?” he asked quietly.

A
couple of days ago, I would’ve answered that question without much hesitation.
When it came to me, Tam had been one of the good guys. When it came to me and
the Saghred, I wasn’t so sure.

I
opted for noncommittal. “Mostly,” I said.

“How
about now?”

“Good
question.”

I put
my blades in my hands where they belonged.

What
had happened between me and Tam in that alley was still fresh in Tam’s mind. I
certainly wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.

Tam
had embraced black magic his entire life until A’Zahra Nuru helped him kick his
addiction. Now Tam was down here after a shaman darker than he had ever thought
about being. Maybe. I tried not to think that Rudra Muralin and Tam might have
had more than a few atrocities in common.

I
pushed that thought out of my head. I didn’t care what Mychael said; Tam would
never do that.

Sarad
Nukpana’s voice came back to me.

Once
a dark mage, always a dark mage.

I
told Sarad Nukpana’s voice to shut up.

I’d
felt black magic before the Saghred. When you find stolen objects and missing
people for a living, a dark mage has been behind the pilfering more than once.
The safest way to confront a dark mage was not to confront him at all. Stealth
and smarts had kept me from getting myself roasted on more than one occasion.
You didn’t want to run into a dark mage in the dark, or in blazing sunshine,
either. My family said that if you can avoid it, you can survive it. Other
people called it running. I didn’t care what other people called it.

My
link with the Saghred was my first personal encounter with black magic. I had
felt the seduction, innocent at first, to use my new powers for good to help
others. I knew that desire could just as easily twist into using the power for
power’s sake, to revel in the feel of it, the rush, the certain knowledge that
you could take on anyone and anything, and utterly destroy them.

Just
like Rudra Muralin and Sarad Nukpana.

Just
what I’d told Piaras I was prepared to do.

Walking
down a dark tunnel while Death did some heavy breathing down the back of my
neck wasn’t the best time or place to have a moral debate with myself.

My
morality would have to wait. Piaras and I had a more immediate problem.

Every
elf or goblin we found was dead. I didn’t mind dead Khrynsani or Nightshades;
more dead ones meant less live ones for us to deal with. I just didn’t trust
it. Just because we hadn’t found them yet—or they hadn’t found us— didn’t mean
they weren’t down here waiting. Any surviving Khrynsani or Nightshades were
perfectly capable of shielding themselves to avoid detection.

Step
into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

Piaras
and I were shielded, and Piaras had a deadly ditty ready. The ditty itself
wouldn’t kill; it’d just paralyze anyone he intended it for. The blades in my
hands would take care of the rest. Another Benares family rule was: leave no
living enemy behind you, receive no dagger in the back.

Khrynsani
and Nightshades and daggers that went whoosh in the dark were bad enough, but
they weren’t what had scared the crap out of me and put a twitch in my left
eyelid. I didn’t like where we were, and I liked even less where we were going.

The
Saghred was thrilled.

The
more bodies we found, the heavier the pressure grew beneath my breastbone.
Coiled and hot, quivering in anticipation. Maybe the Saghred knew I was
prepared to use it. It might also know that Rudra Muralin was down here. Like a
really big, very hungry dog that recognized who had kept it well fed in the
past, it was eager for its next meal, and was pulling on its leash. Rudra
Muralin had used the Saghred to lay waste to civilizations. If he got the rock
back under his control, he’d use Piaras and me to pick his teeth.