Bewitched & Betrayed

Chapter 18

“I made sure of it myself,” Imala continued without missing a beat. “I wouldn’t want to be mistaken about a thing like that.”

“How did he die?” Mychael’s voice was terse. The paladin was back.

“I assure you, I had nothing to do with Rudra’s demise. He was found behind the embassy at five bells this morning, propped against a garbage bin. I was all for leaving him precisely where he was. The garbage is due to be picked up later this morning, but propriety demanded I do otherwise. Propriety and precaution.”

“Precaution?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Rudra Muralin returned from the dead before. I wanted to make certain that it did not happen again. One mad goblin regenerating himself on this island is quite enough.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Imala,” Mychael pressed.

“Merely saving the best part for last. He was dried and shriveled and delightfully dead. Sarad Nukpana must have been very annoyed at not having Markus for dinner. When my people called me out into the alley to see, I maintained my professional decorum, but my staff was cheering and applauding.” She gave us a quick smile. “I do like to see my people happy; it’s good for morale.”

Goblin humor. What other race would applaud a dead body? On second thought, elves would, especially if their last name was Benares.

Mychael’s face was grim. “Where did you put his body?”

“His husk is lying in state in the embassy.”

Oh no. “Uh, Imala, last time Rudra Muralin died, the power buildup he had from using the Saghred all those years brought him back to life.”

One corner of Imala’s lips curled ever so slightly. To a casual observer, it almost looked demure. “That scenario is unlikely to repeat itself. I cut off his head.”

Tam’s lips twitched against a smile. “You what?”

“I cut off his head,” she repeated matter-of-factly. “I tried my dagger, but the dried skin was too tough, so I ended up using an axe. It was quite heavy, but once I got past the upswing it worked beautifully.”

I burst out laughing. The visual of that tiny woman dragging an axe across the floor and lopping off Rudra Muralin’s head was too much.

“Well-done, Imala,” Tam grudgingly congratulated her.

“Thank you. I derived immense satisfaction from it.”

“I imagine the Khrynsani in the embassy feel otherwise,” Mychael pointed out.

Imala shrugged. “What they feel is immaterial since they are no longer there. Eight Khrynsani came with Nachtmagus Janos Ghalfari. They have been out with him all night, and should they have the poor judgment to return, they will be taken into custody as accessories to kidnapping and murder. As acting ambassador, I can hardly be seen harboring criminals. Janos and his Khrynsani are connected to who knows how many murders in the past week. The two that we know of are enough for me to have their heads, if I can get proof. Killing an elven general is an act of war, and to slaughter our very own ambassador—while very much needed and long overdue—is treason in the eyes of our government.”

“Shit,” Tam hissed. “Where is Rudra’s head? Please tell me you didn’t leave it close to the body.”

Imala finished off the rest of her coffee. “Give me a little more credit than that, Tam. It’s on the other side of the room in a locked strongbox and only I have the key. The box is warded and my most trusted agents are standing guard. No one will get in that room without my permission.”

“You left him there?”

She arched one flawless brow. “To come and get you out of jail.”

“Rudra Muralin’s death solves one problem,” Mychael said, “but makes another one worse. Since it’s almost a certainty that Sarad Nukpana was responsible, he now has all of Muralin’s memories, power, and knowledge. Centuries’ worth.”

Damn. If he got his hands on me or the Saghred, he’d know exactly how to use both of us. Double damn.

“So in a way, Muralin’s not really dead.” Dread churned through me. “He’s just joined forces with Sarad Nukpana.”

“I seriously doubt that it was his idea,” Mychael noted, “but essentially, yes.”

“How much power would that give him?” I knew the answer, but I really wanted someone to tell me I was wrong.

“Enough to take any mage on this island,” Tam replied. “I know I’m stating the obvious here, but we need to find him. Now.”

The tunnels I’d seen when I touched Sarad Nukpana’s coach seat had smooth stone walls, a long corridor, and shafts of blue light from the ceiling. And rats. Mychael had only been here for four years. The archmagus had been here a lot longer.

My dad had been here for hundreds of years longer than that.

One of them had to recognize the place I’d seen.

We got to the citadel as fast as we could only to find that Talon had flown the coop.

Last night, he’d gone as far as the citadel courtyard with his Guardian escort, then he’d bolted. Not just bolted; he’d used that voice of his to freeze nearly thirty Guardians in their tracks to make his getaway. Vegard had been one of them.

Mychael, Tam, and I were now standing in that same courtyard and I’d never seen Vegard that pissed. The big Guardian was a barely contained, seething mass of fury. If I hadn’t been on the verge of dropping from exhaustion, I’d have been seething right along with him.

Talon wasn’t the only teenager missing from the citadel.

Piaras was nowhere to be found.

Mychael had his men patrolling the city looking for Sarad Nukpana add Talon and Piaras to their “people to be apprehended” list. Apprehended without undue force, but apprehended and brought directly back to the citadel.

“Talon asked me where Balmorlan and Carnades were going after they left headquarters.” Vegard was responding to Mychael’s rapid-fire questioning.

“And Piaras was here in the courtyard when you arrived?”

“No, sir. He was on the stairs there leading up to the parapet.”

“His guards?”

“With him, sir. Likewise zapped by that little . . .” He clenched his jaw against what he really wanted to say. “Sorry, sir,” he said to Tam, “but your son caused a major security breach. Thirty Guardians, frozen like bloody statues. Anyone could have strolled through those gates and slaughtered the lot of us. How Piaras managed to avoid being—”

Tam spoke, his voice a marvel of forced calm. “Apparently Talon can now pick and choose who he wants the spell to affect.” Until now, Tam had been entirely too quiet. Scary, deadly quiet.

“He has enough focus for selective targeting?” Mychael was fighting to maintain what calm he had left. “That’s a dangerous combination under the best of circumstances. Tam, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know it had gone that far,” Tam snapped and so did his control.

That was probably the honest truth. Most mages came into their full power in their late teens to early twenties. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an age known for rational, responsible thought—or any kind of thinking before acting. And when their power came, it came fast. Last night, Talon had held one Nightshade. In the predawn of this morning, the kid had put thirty Guardians into suspended animation. I guess the Nightshade was just a warm-up.

Piaras had inadvertently put half of the Guardians in the citadel to sleep during one of our first days on the island. Talon had just stopped time for thirty Guardians in the citadel’s courtyard. He probably could have done more, but the men in the courtyard were all he needed to take out.

Two inexperienced, unbelievably powerful teenagers loose in the city, in all likelihood hunting Taltek Balmorlan. Talon knew what Balmorlan wanted with his father—and with him. And he knew that Balmorlan was likely responsible for the Nightshades who tried to kill us all. While I approved of their target, their methods and inexperience were going to get them killed.

Or worse.

I should have known Talon was going to do something like this the moment he agreed to go to the citadel. There was no way the kid was going to stay in the citadel while his father was imprisoned and charged with murder by elves. He probably considered being in the citadel a prison, too. And in a way Mychael had intended it to be just that. A full Guardian escort to get Talon here, the archmagus to keep him in. Next time, gagged and hog-tied would be the way to go.

Talon had believed that Mychael would free his father. Now he wanted to get his hands on one of the elves responsible for locking him up.

I turned to Vegard. “How long were you—”

“Best we figure, nearly half an hour.”

Damn. All this had happened nearly four hours ago, with Talon and Piaras having a half-hour head start. What the hell was Piaras thinking? I didn’t ask it out loud because I knew. He had wanted to do something, anything, to help. He’d told me himself.

“I don’t think Piaras would go along with Talon’s half-brained scheme,” Vegard was saying. “The boy’s got too much sense.”

“But he would go after him,” I said. “He knows how dangerous it is out there, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Let’s hope he uses it.” Unless teenage impetuousness had erased that good sense. Just following Talon through those gates had been bad enough.

Piaras hadn’t brought Talon back yet. I didn’t have to say all the things that could mean; we all knew.

At least the kids didn’t just go running off into the dark armed with nothing but their voices and wits—though I was starting to have serious doubts about Talon’s wits. At least he’d pilfered a couple of Guardians before he left. Best we could figure, the kid had a crossbow, a full quiver of armor-piercing bolts, a brace of throwing knives, and a sword.

And for good measure, he’d swiped the purses of two Guardians.

Phaelan always said, if you’re gonna steal, be thorough about it.

Those two Guardians had just been paid. Those were two very angry men. I bet if we turned them loose, they’d hunt down Talon real quick.

According to Piaras’s bodyguards, he had his cadet’s daggers, but there was a pair of sleek elven swords missing from a Guardian who’d been on duty at the main gate when Talon did his thing.

I forced myself to take a couple of good, deep breaths on the off chance that it might delay the screaming rant I felt coming on. And to make matters worse, standing in the middle of the courtyard didn’t give me anything to hit.

Right now, Tam wasn’t a badass dark mage. He looked like what he was—a tired, worried father. “Raine, can you find them?”

“I can and will find Piaras,” I promised him. “And if he went after Talon to talk some sense into him, hopefully they’ll be in the same place.” And hopefully that place wouldn’t have bars, wards, and magic-sapping manacles—or a life-sapping regenerating goblin. I didn’t say that out loud; I didn’t need to. Tam knew.

I tried to still my thoughts enough to work, but it wasn’t going to happen. The sun had been up for a good two hours and every Guardian still in the citadel was awake and going about their duties.

Hundreds of magic-wielding warriors didn’t exactly make for peaceful surroundings. The air was seething with macho magic. Trying to get a fix on Piaras was like trying to catch; a gnat with a fishnet.

I had to find one obscenely powerful goblin psycho in a city where magic was running rampant. I didn’t need a clue; I needed a location and I needed it now.

I had to get above the Guardians.

The parapet could work, but ideally I needed to see the whole city. The few times I’d done a seeking on Mid, it had been at night, meaning that most people had been in bed. Mid was an island full of magic users, and right now students, professors, and Conclave mage bureaucrats were awake and so was all of their magic. I needed to get above it—way above it.

I turned around and kept turning, looking for something that would work.

The seawall watchtower on the south side of the citadel.

It might not be the perfect solution, but it was as good as I was going to get as quickly as I needed it.

“Vegard, how do I get up there?”

True to his determination to stay by my side, Vegard didn’t tell me; he took me there.

My dad and Vidor Kalta were already in the tower looking out over the city. I could feel Dad’s magic scanning the city below. Apparently I wasn’t the first to think of the idea.

“No doubt you’re wondering what we’re doing here,” Dad said.

“Find Piaras.”

“Find Sarad Nukpana.” Dad gazed out over the city. “Balmorlan is good, but he is a child compared to Sarad’s new strength level. If those boys were captured, it would be by Sarad.”

“Nukpana ate Rudra Muralin,” I told them. “As well as two of the other specters that escaped the Saghred.”

Dad didn’t say anything, but he thought some choice words. “That kind of power can’t be concealed. Even on an island of mages, it’ll shine like a beacon.”

“Sarad could still infest a host body,” Kalta said, “but after another victim or two he will be too solid to leave his own body. Then he can be killed like any other man.”

After another victim or two. Like Piaras and Talon.

“Sarad Nukpana contains the souls of those who are now dead, murdered by his own hand,” Kalta continued. “This will make him easier to locate. He will attract attention he does not want.”

I snorted. “Yeah, me.”

“Reapers, Miss Benares. Reapers.”

I swallowed hard. Not easy to do when your mouth suddenly stopped making spit.

“I had a run-in with one last night,” I said.

Kalta’s black eyes were on me like a shark. “You what?”

I mentally smacked myself in the forehead. Way to tell everyone what you did last night, Raine. And that you weren’t in the citadel like everyone was supposed to believe.

“At Sirens,” I lied. Everyone knew I was at Sirens; no one could know I was at Markus’s house. Vegard was at Sirens; he knew I was lying, but I’d deal with that later. “I didn’t think about what I was doing. I dug up as much magic as I could without tapping the Saghred, and let him have it.”

Kalta arched a dark brow. “Let him have it?”

“I punched him right where his face should have been. I felt a little winded afterward, but at least the thing went away.”

Kalta went a shade or two paler, if that was possible. “Miss Benares, I wouldn’t do that again if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“You didn’t defeat it; you overfed it.”

“But I didn’t feed it anything.”

“You felt fatigued afterward?”

“Yes, but—”

“You fed it rage—Saghred-powered rage, whether you realized it or not.”

“I didn’t use the Saghred.”

“The power the Saghred has already given you was more than sufficient. You fed it your life force. Reapers take souls; it’s all that remains of life. It ‘went away’ as you phrased it, because it was full of Saghred-fueled magic. The Saghred is also fueled by souls. What you fed it was extremely powerful. If Reapers become stronger, they can take the living. You just made one stronger. It will be back for more.”

“Oh shit.”

“Quite.”

As if there weren’t enough monsters loose in the city this morning, now I’d created a Super Reaper. I pushed the thought aside. If it came after me, I’d deal with it then. With the souls he’d ingested, Sarad Nukpana was probably almost as tempting a target as I was. Though it’d be just my luck that evil souls tasted bad.

“Sarad may have the power,” my dad said. “But it takes more strength than he can spare to hide it. He grows confident and even more arrogant.”

I quickly stepped up beside him. “You’ve seen him?”

“We’ve sensed him.”

“Where?”

“The north side of the city.”

I looked where Dad’s attention was riveted. I saw the smoke from an unknown number of chimneys and a thin layer of morning fog from the harbor. The buildings were hidden; apparently Sarad Nukpana wasn’t.

“The Conclave’s section of the city, mainly office buildings,” he told me.

I couldn’t believe it. The bastard was hiding in plain sight. “He’s in there?”

“That is my belief, yes.”

It made sense, brilliant sense. Uncle Ryn had always taught us that the best hiding place was smack-dab in the middle of those you were trying to hide from.

“Are the buildings old?” I asked.

Dad gave me a quizzical glance. “Yes, some of them are quite old.”

“As old as you?”

“A few of them. Why do you ask?”

I described what I’d seen last night when I’d touched the coach seat where Sarad Nukpana had been.

“Does that sound familiar?” I asked.

Dad gave a small, harsh laugh minus the humor. “Mid’s known for its winters. What you just described are the transit tunnels.”

“You don’t make it sound good.”

Dad nodded. “You saw only a small section of nearly a hundred miles of tunnels connecting every building in the Conclave complex.”

“Every building?”

Kalta spoke. “Conclave mages don’t spend all that money on elaborate robes to drag them through the mud and snow. We’re fastidious creatures.”

I certainly couldn’t see Carnades Silvanus getting his silk hems dirty.

I exhaled. I did not need this. “Are they still in use?”

“Not as much as they once were,” Kalta said. “The buildings are now connected aboveground.”

I stepped in front of my dad and Kalta to get an unobstructed view of the city. The buildings looked like children’s toys from this height and distance. I let the morning breeze—and the magical residue it carried—pass over me. “Gentlemen, would you stand on the other side of the room? Better yet, if you could step out into the stairway and close the door, it’d really help my concentration.” The less magical interference I had to sort through, the better my chances for locating Piaras and hopefully Talon.

I stood staring out over the city until I heard the door close quietly behind me. Then I closed my eyes, forcing the noise from the courtyard far below into the background until it was no more audible than a fly buzzing. Then I separated the magical residue from the breeze until all I felt was ocean breeze, no harbor stench, just clean, clear air.

I opened my eyes.

The city was spread below me, and I not only sensed what my dad had; I could see it. A black, oily trail spread over the north side of the city, concentrated in a small cluster of white buildings in the far distance. I knew they weren’t small; Conclave buildings probably covered acres.

And Sarad Nukpana was beneath one of those buildings, somewhere in a hundred miles of tunnels. Once I was closer I could narrow the search. But Nukpana was second on my search list.

Piaras had left the citadel over four hours ago, through the main gate. I’d known him since he was a child, long before he’d come into his magic. I was living in the apartment above his grandmother’s apothecary shop when adolescence had set in and Piaras’s voice had changed. Magically speaking all hell had broken loose when that’d happened.

My throat tightened at the thought of him out there alone. I forced my emotions down. Find him, Raine. He’s alive; you’d know if he wasn’t. He’s fine and he’ll stay that way if you just do your job.

I knew Piaras’s magical scent. I closed my eyes halfway and gazed down at the citadel’s gate, filtering out everything but what I knew as Piaras. A lot of magically gifted men had gone through those gates over the past four hours, but only one of them had been Piaras. I methodically sorted through each layer, pushing sensations of others aside until I found it. I don’t know how long I had been standing there, but a trace of magic, silvery and faintly glowing, rose to the surface of my awareness.

Piaras.

It wasn’t just a trace.

It was a trail.

Piaras had left me a trail to follow. It led out the front gates and down a side street. He’d followed Talon and he’d left a trail. Relief washed over me in a wave and I started breathing again. I closed my eyes to the barest squint and became a part of that glowing path, following it, gaining speed as I went. I’d never been able to track that fast before. The power the Saghred had been gradually giving me sent me at dizzying speed through Mid’s streets, people and buildings a nauseating blur. I slowed and then stopped. White granite buildings loomed over me, blurry around the edges in my mind’s eye.

I knew what those buildings were.

I knew where Piaras and Talon were.

Conclave complex, north side of the city.

Same place as Sarad Nukpana.

I snapped out of my trance and sagged down to the floor, breathing hard. Speeding through the streets had made me dizzy; coming back to my standing-still body made me sick. I kept my eyes open, focusing on the floor, breathing in and out until the floor stopped moving and my mind accepted that I had as well. The seeking-induced whirlies stopped.

A familiar presence brushed my mind, knew my thoughts.

Knew what I had seen.

Oh no. Don’t.

“No!” I screamed. I scrambled to the window and pulled myself up. Wind blew my hair back. Wind from Kalinpar’s powerful wings.

Tam was mounted on his back.

“Dammit, Tam! No!”

He heard me, but was way beyond listening. Talon was in the same place as Sarad Nukpana.

Tam was going to save his son, even if he had to face a sadistic demigod to do it.