“Just promise me that you will not take him on alone. Mychael and I are down here, so are his best Guardians, and Justinius Valerian contacted Mychael not long ago.” He flashed a boyish smile. A boy’s body with a nine- hundred-year-old soul. I just couldn’t get used to it. “Apparently the archmagus thinks he’ll be more useful down here. He’s on his way.”
I breathed a small, harsh laugh. “The old man just wants to get his bony hands around Nukpana’s neck.”
“He doesn’t want to sit this one out. Said it’s his duty to be down here with his men.”
I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. Lean and wiry. My centuries-old father in a teenage body still had some growing and filling out to do. “It’s my duty, too, Dad,” I said quietly. “The Saghred tricked me into taking it. It did it for survival. I sure as hell can’t imagine why it’d want a second-rate seeker as its bond servant; the thing was clearly desperate. Regardless of its reasons, it did choose me. I don’t like it, I want to get rid of it, but for right now I’m stuck with it—and the responsibility that goes with it. Sarad Nukpana has to be stopped, and thanks to the Saghred, I’ve got the biggest fist.”
Mychael approached us.
“What’s the word?” I asked.
He scowled. “No Tam, Piaras, or Talon.”
“And no Nukpana.”
“That, too.”
I readjusted my grip on my daggers, and looked down the tunnel. “Let’s see if we can change that.” I swallowed. “Wait here. I’ll wave when there’s enough distance between us for the rock to track him.”
I walked into the tunnel, lightglobes working at full capacity humming steadily around me like bees in a hive. The walls were smooth with no sign of a seam or crack that would indicate a bunker behind the wall. Great. I reminded myself that these tunnels were mage- made. All they would have needed to hide the entrances would have been a decent veil or illusion spell, a damned long- lasting one to keep working for nearly a millennium. Normally I could sense that sort of thing, but with all the magical distortion, normal didn’t exist down here.
The air shifted above me.
“Raine!” Dad screamed.
I whirled to see him running toward me, Mychael right behind him—and a massive metal door slicing through the air like a guillotine between us. Everything went into slow motion, the door, me running toward it before it closed. The only thing not moving slowly was Dad. He dived and rolled as the door slammed into the granite floor, cracking the stone with its force and weight. The metal erupted with glowing green wards, like a net woven with living snakes, hissing and spitting sparks.
Dad landed in a groaning heap by the wall, close to the wards. Too close.
“Dad! Move—”
I frantically tried to reach him. Light exploded in my eyes as the ward flung me like a doll, sending me flying ass over elbows through the air. I slammed into the floor, flat on my back, mouth gaping like a beached fish. I dimly heard my dad scrabbling away from the wards.
Taking even the tiniest breath made the muscles in my back seize up in agony. Just my luck I’d probably broken some ribs. I blinked and breathed, waiting for my eyes to focus. I slowly turned my head. Dad was sitting up against the wall, his eyes blazing with fury at the ward that’d just kicked my ass. I dragged air in and out of my lungs and pulled myself up against the opposite wall. I’d never seen a ward like that in my life. The Saghred constricted inside me; even the rock didn’t want anything to do with it.
“You . . . all right?” I rasped.
Dad breathed and nodded.
“What the hell was th—”
He swallowed and breathed some more. “Safety gates.”
I blinked. “Safety?”
“For the mages.”
“Why didn’t . . . you tell us abo—”
Dad actually looked sheepish. “I forgot.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “You forgot about that?”
“It’s been nine hundred years.”
I couldn’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, so I couldn’t throw much blame at him.
It took a lot of wincing and gasping, but I pulled myself to my feet. I didn’t think anything was broken, but plenty was bruised. “So how do we open it?”
“We don’t.”
I froze. “We what?”
“They’re meant to protect mages from invading mages. They can’t be opened, at least not by any way that I know of.”
“Would Mychael or Justinius know a way?”
Dad shook his head. “The more power they throw at those wards, the stronger they’d get.”
I looked down the hall and asked an unpleasant question. “Why did the door pick now to close?”
“These doors don’t fall unless triggered.”
“Someone told it to.”
“Yes.”
I didn’t need any extra time or three guesses to know who was playing with the switches. And to Sarad Nukpana it was exactly that—play.
The lightglobes in the ceiling above us flickered, dimmed, and died.
I hated tunnels.
Chapter 20
“Sarad knows we’re here.”
I didn’t need Dad to tell me that. The skin between my shoulder blades was doing a fine job. It was itching like crazy. It only did that when something sharp and steely was aimed at my back—or when a crazy goblin was stalking me. It was pitch damn dark, so it could have been either one or both.
Though my little pessimistic voice informed me it wasn’t both. Sarad Nukpana wanted me alive, very much alive. That meant no steel, which left stalking.
I summoned a lightglobe, the kind Vegard had taught me how to do, with the blue lightning inside that would fry anything it came in contact with—or anyone I threw it at. It bobbed eagerly by my shoulder.
Sarad Nukpana had to know the tunnels were full of Guardians hunting him. His lair was about to become his prison. He had no time to waste getting the Saghred under his control. To get the Saghred, he had to get me first. But with that iron door and wards crackling behind us, and a dark, one-way tunnel in front of us, I suddenly wasn’t all that sure who was the prisoner and who was the jailer.
My breathing was absurdly loud in my own ears. “Dad?” I whispered.
“Yes?”
“We’re going to find Nukpana or he’ll find us.”
“Either’s a safe assumption.”
“You were the Saghred’s keeper for a long time.”
“Too long. What are you getting at, Spitfire?”
I shot him a surprised look, and smiled. Leave it to a dad to know just what to say to his scared-witless daughter.
A grin lit his boyish face. “What? I can’t call you what Ryn does? I think it suits you.”
“When we find Nukpana or he finds us, do you have any suggestions other than let the bastard have it?” It took me a few seconds, but I managed to swallow. “Something sneaky that doesn’t involve the Saghred having its way with me?” I tried a smile that no doubt looked sickly. “Because I’m not that kind of girl, know what I mean?”
Dad slipped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “I know exactly what you mean. You’re not like that nor will you ever be.”
“Mychael said pretty much the same thing.”
Dad gave my shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Mychael’s a wise man; he knows what he’s talking about.”
And I knew what I had to do. Find Sarad Nukpana and try not to get my body possessed by the goblin—or my soul taken by the Saghred.
Two against one, the goblin and the rock against me. I didn’t factor Dad into the equation, because when push came to shove, there was only so much help he could give me. This was my battle; no one could fight it for me.
Come and try to get me, goblin.
I took a deep breath and tried in vain to see through the dark. “Let’s go.”
The formerly well-lit and welcoming tunnel went on for entirely too long. Dad and I weren’t running, but we were moving at a good clip and I’d traded daggers for one of my goblin swords. If anything came at me, I wanted to slice a vital chunk out of it before it got close enough to do the same to me. Dad had an elven sword. We stayed close enough to each other for protection, but far enough away to keep an accident from happening if one of us got too jumpy.
Then I heard it, the soft scraping of steel on stone, then silence. We stopped, listening. It came from a side tunnel up ahead. A breath later, something was being dragged, something heavy, like a body. Then silence again. I shot a glance at Dad, his lips narrowed into a grim line. He nodded once.
They knew we were here; we knew they were here. No use trying for quiet. That body being dragged could be Piaras, Talon, or even Tam. My jaw clenched. If it was, that body dragger was mine.
Dad’s hand locked around my arm like a vise, his other hand making an arcing motion in front of us. He wanted to shield us first. I was all for that.
Within seconds, we had the best shield I’d ever sensed protecting us. We ran toward the dragging sounds and the shield kept pace about five feet in front of us. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Just as long as the murderous son of a bitch in the dark ahead of us could feel my blade through it.
A body appeared on the edge of our light, and a few feet beyond lay another. The attack had been quick and obviously deadly. It was who the victims were that surprised me.
Goblins. Khrynsani temple guards, to be exact.
What the hell?
I whirled around, my lightglobe keeping pace with me. Anyone who would kill a pair of Khrynsani might not be my friend, but at least we shared some of the same goals. No one was there. Just two dead goblins lying on the stone floor, their blood pooling around them.
And drops of blood leading away from them. I caught Dad’s eye, then glanced down at the bloody trail. He saw and swiftly moved to cover my flank. I tracked the drops a few yards down the tunnel. They ended, just stopped, as if our Khrynsani killer had either stopped bleeding, which was highly unlikely, or had vanished into thin air.
