Nukpana admired his guards’ handiwork. “Good. All is prepared for us.” He released my arm but not my hand, half dragging me into the clearing.
“I will take the Saghred now, Raine.”
I made no move to hand it over. “Not until you let Piaras go.”
“Very well.” Nukpana spoke without turning, and without taking his onyx eyes from mine. “Kafele?”
“Your will, my lord?” asked one of Piaras’s guards.
“Unless the Saghred is in my hands in the next five seconds, cut out the nightingale’s throat.”
Blades were drawn. Nukpana held out his hand. I gave him the Saghred.
His other hand released mine and closed over the top of the casket. “Was that so difficult?”
Not difficult for him, but breathing had suddenly become a challenge for me.
The moment Nukpana’s hands touched the Saghred’s casket I felt a power that had nothing to do with Sarad Nukpana. My father was talking to me. Not in the normal way two people talk to each other. There were no words spoken, no thoughts passed. It was more of a confirmation, an assurance that all of the Saghred’s power was now mine for the taking. The box surrounding it contained those energies only as long as I wished it. I wasn’t the only one who thought the world would be a better place without Sarad Nukpana.
That the goblin held it didn’t matter. The Saghred—and my father inside—reached out to me, offering me the power I needed to destroy Nukpana, his Khrynsani, and anyone else I chose, in The Ruins, the embassy grounds, the gardens, and the house beyond if I felt like it. The stone’s power seethed just below its surface. Waiting. Eager.
The air was charged with it. I was charged with it. Nukpana still held my hand. He felt and he knew.
His grip lightened into a caress. “By all means, Mistress Benares, show me your power,” he whispered. “I have waited all my life to witness the Saghred’s strength.”
I certainly felt like destroying. The power was mine. I trembled with it. I could destroy Nukpana now, before he could hurt anyone else I loved. I knew it. So did he.
The power was also wrong, wrong in every way I had ever been taught. The Saghred would make me into what I wasn’t. I wasn’t like Sarad Nukpana.
“Learn patience,” I hissed.
Nukpana acknowledged my choice with a bare nod. “As you wish. Bring the witch.”
A pair of Khrynsani guards brought Primari A’Zahra Nuru forward. Her patrician features were expressionless, and even dwarfed as she was by the armored guards on either side of her, her bearing remained regal. No doubt she’d die the same way. My free hand closed on the dagger in the hidden pocket of my gown. No one was dying. Not on my watch.
Prince Chigaru shared my opinion, but not for long. The struggle was quick and fatal—quick for Chigaru, fatal for one of the guards. Three more sprang to take his place, and a vicious blow to the back of the prince’s head ended the discussion.
Sarad Nukpana’s eyes narrowed, the Khrynsani guard who struck Chigaru the new object of his disaffection. “If he is dead, you will take his place.”
The guard dropped to his knees, desperately checking the prince for signs of life.
“He lives.”
“Good. See that it remains so.”
I pushed the Saghred’s power down, then took a deep breath and slowly released it. I knew it wouldn’t stay there for long.
Nukpana sensed it. “You are strong, Raine. Like your father.”
The bastard actually sounded happy about that.
“I won’t be your puppet,” I told him.
“I don’t want a puppet; I want a partner.”
“Life’s full of disappointments.”
Nukpana held up his hand and the guards stopped. “Apparently you require a more personal incentive. Release the witch,” he told the guards. His smile was slow and horrible. “Bring the nightingale.”
I screamed and lunged for Nukpana. I was fast, but the guards behind me were faster.
Four big goblins grabbed Piaras. He tried to fight them, but there were too many. As they lifted him onto the altar, Piaras’s voice dropped desperately to a dark, low register.
“Gag him,” Nukpana snapped. “Quickly.”
One guard gagged Piaras, while the other three held him down and shackled him to the altar.
My heart pounded, blood ran cold, mouth went dry. Anything and everything you’d expect to feel when you saw someone you loved about to be slaughtered. None of those things were going to get Piaras off of that slab, so I made myself stop doing them, every last one. If I panicked, I couldn’t think, and if I couldn’t think, a lot of people were going to die or worse—starting with Piaras.
“Don’t.” It took everything I had not to make that one word sound like begging. I would not beg. Nukpana would like it and I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
“What I do—or do not do—is for you to decide.” Any pretense of civility was gone from his voice. He wasn’t playing anymore. “You know what I require.”
“I can’t. I don’t know how.”
“But you do. In these very woods you destroyed six Magh’Sceadu, merely because they threatened your precious nightingale. I’m asking for a similar demonstration.”
“Do I get to pick the target?” The words came out through clenched teeth.
The goblin laughed. “I could hardly enjoy the performance if I were vaporized.”
“Scared?”
“Merely prudent.” I felt his personal shields go up. He might as well have erected a fortress around himself.
“We all make sacrifices, Raine. I don’t wish the nightingale’s death either. Merely show me the Saghred. Show me the power, and we both get what we want.” He looked over at where Prince Chigaru lay unmoving on the ground. “I think the prince and the witch will work nicely for your first demonstration.”
I didn’t move.
Tiny, pale lights appeared and flickered in the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. Each flicker brought them closer to us. Fire pixies. No doubt they considered the stone altar one big buffet. My job tonight was to make sure every last one of them went to bed without supper. The guards had probably rung the dinner bell the moment they chained Piaras to that altar.
“I am but a student, Mistress Benares,” Sarad Nukpana was saying. “There is much to learn, and much to be accomplished. You will assist me in my work.”
He placed the casket on the altar and opened it. Piaras seemed to stop breathing. So did I.
Nothing happened. The Saghred didn’t steal anyone’s soul. My father’s ghostly hands didn’t shoot out and wrap themselves around the goblin’s throat. Absolutely nothing.
I expected something. From Nukpana’s expression, nothing was precisely what he expected.
He lightly caressed the stone’s surface. “Such a simple thing, is it not, Mistress Benares?”
My breath caught and my heart hammered in my chest. I actually felt the lightness of his touch, the warmth of him as if his fingertips had touched me, not the stone. I wondered if by controlling the Saghred, he could control me. That wasn’t about to happen, not if I had anything to say about it. I tried not to think that I might not have any say.
“You still do not understand, do you?” he asked when I didn’t respond.
His hand remained on the stone, and I felt a warm pressure heavy on the back of my neck. I didn’t know if he was aware of the connection. I felt a shudder coming on and stopped it.
“You fear what the Saghred would give,” he continued, “because you do not know the extent of its gift.”
“I never considered madness a gift.”
“Madness, or an unfettered mind?” His voice was soft and coaxing. “A mind without limits, free to do, to accomplish anything it can imagine. To be without boundaries. As the daughter of Eamaliel Anguis, you will have the honor of experiencing power beyond that of every mage on the Isle of Mid combined. Power the Conclave and their Guardian pets want for their own. Your powers will continue to grow. They fear that. I do not.”
The stone gleamed in the moonlight and waited. Waited for the decision I didn’t want to make.
A fire pixie glowed and fluttered near the altar. Either it was the same pixie that had bitten Piaras two nights ago, or it was her twin sister. Or maybe all fire pixies looked alike. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
The grand shaman drew a dagger out of his robes. I’d seen its twin last night. A foot-long triangular blade, jewel-encrusted grip, pommel topped with a ruby the size of a child’s fist. That one had been used to tack Nukpana’s letter to me to the embassy gates. I was right; the crazies always carried spares. He put it on the altar next to the casket.
Piaras’s dark eyes met mine, wide with panic and terror—and hope. A muffled sound came from behind his gag. He hadn’t given up, not yet. He had no idea what I was going to do to keep him from taking that dagger through his heart, but he was hoping I knew.
I did.
The goblin grand shaman lifted the Saghred out of the casket and set it on the altar next to the dagger.
A male pixie clothed in blue flame darted in front of my face, then dove for my neck. I swatted at him, and he fled. Only after he had gone did I feel the sting. I touched my neck and my fingertips came back wet with blood.
The smell of blood, and the promise of more lured in more fire pixies. They were being cautious—all except Piaras’s pixie. She fluttered around Sarad Nukpana and Piaras, glowing bright orange, eager to feed. Beauty, but no brains. She’d be better off taking her fluttering elsewhere. Piaras struggled in vain against the shackles that bound his wrists over his head.
Nukpana struck, one-handedly catching the pixie in midair, and crushing her the same way. He wiped the remains on the altar with no more regard than a swatted fly. The Saghred pulsed once with a nearly imperceptible glow. If I had blinked, I’d have missed it. Someone was awake—and hungry.
Sarad Nukpana’s shields shimmered as he enhanced their power even more. He was being careful. Nothing was getting through those shields unless he allowed it. I was familiar with what he was using—a circle to protect himself against the awakening Saghred, as well as spells, people, and weapons.
