My worst fears didn’t take a genius to figure out. I wasn’t what anyone would call complex, so my opinions, emotions, and fears all lived together close to the surface. The entity scooped them up like dice on a table. The Saghred, Sarad Nukpana, torture, dagger through the heart, eternity inside the rock—all were there for the knowing and exploiting.
Apparently Mychael, Tam, and Imala were better at hiding any fears they had, as evidenced by the increasing fury with which the entity attacked with anything in its arsenal.
Hornets the size of giant bats threw themselves by the dozens against Tam and Mychael’s shields in sacrificial waves, their bodies bursting into flames on contact, making room for the next attack. The shields were holding, for now. But Mychael and Tam couldn’t hold it for long. We’d all fought for our lives multiple times since breakfast, and Tam had taken out four Magh’Sceadu that had nearly eaten—
Four Magh’Sceadu appeared as if on cue.
Dammit.
“Sorry!” I yelled while trying to unthink them. It didn’t work and wouldn’t work, at least not with bat-hornets igniting inches from my face.
“Shut up!” The bellow seemed to come from everywhere at once. Neat trick. A master spellsinger’s trick.
I froze; so did the others. Even the Magh’Sceadu looked around.
“Idiots! Get in here!”
Mychael and Tam’s so-called impenetrable shield was ripped from top to bottom, opening it into the long hallway that wasn’t dark anymore—and wasn’t a hallway. A tunnel of blue light extended from the shield to what had been a blank wall. A small section was open and filled with an enraged old goblin, aged somewhere between sixty and roadkill.
Kesyn Badru, I assumed.
Tam hesitated, torn between possible death by the entity and equally likely death by his pissed-off teacher. That Tam was afraid of him—and that he’d ripped our shield like a piece of wet paper—told me Kesyn Badru was seriously badass. That was all I needed to know. I ran down the tunnel toward him. I’d take badass over bat-hornets anytime.
When I got within sniffing distance, I knew what the old man had been doing to pass the time while hiding out in a possessed house. Coming from a family of pirates, I knew what a crew coming back from shore leave smelled like. My nose told me loud and clear that Kesyn Badru had been on shore leave a long time.
Once the four of us were inside, he slammed the section of wall closed and rasped out some wicked-sounding words. The opening vanished, leaving us in a single room that had been sealed—walls, floor, and ceiling—with a thick, gelatinous coating. Ick. It must have been some kind of solid ward. Fortunately, the coating on the floor had hardened. However, since we were in here, and the entity and its playmates were out there, being in a room coated in ick was perfectly fine with me.
Kesyn Badru glared at us with some seriously bloodshot eyes. “What the hell are you trying to do, bring the roof down on my head?” He didn’t pause for an answer; he just turned those bloodshot eyes on me. “You’re that Benares girl, aren’t you?” His eyes darted up and down, taking me in, inside and out. He snorted. “That’s all you’ve got? I’m not impressed.”
I just stood there and blinked. “Uh…”
Badru turned on Tam. “And thank you once again for fucking up my life,” he snarled, “or what you left me of it. What are you going to do next, boy? Stomp my balls?”
The room shook like a toy building block some evil kid was trying to break in half.
That didn’t even slow Badru down. “The best damned hiding place in the whole city, and you screwed it up.”
Mychael put himself between the goblin mage and Tam. “Magus Badru, we need your help.”
Something hit the other side of the wall next to me like a giant fist.
“What do you call what I just gave you?” Badru snapped. “And who the hell are you anyway?”
“Paladin Mychael Eiliesor of the Conclave Guardians,” he responded in formal, flawless Goblin.
“Conclave, eh?” The goblin chuckled, a dry rasp that sounded like he hadn’t used his voice for anything other than yelling in a long time. “Those old bastards send you here to save their wrinkly asses?”
“We came to destroy the Saghred.” Mychael dropped the formality and went with angry paladin. Mychael had had it. We all had.
That got the goblin mage’s attention.
“That’s a fancy way to kill yourselves. I prefer staying drunk—and alive.”
Something hit the ward over our heads with enough force that fist-sized gobs of ward goop fell from the ceiling. I barely avoided getting splatted with the stuff.
Badru didn’t so much as bat an eye. His full attention had landed on Tam like a slab of granite. “Well, what do you want?” He actually didn’t snap or snarl. “You come home after two years with the head lady of the secret service, the Conclave’s paladin, and that unfortunate elf girl who had the piss-poor luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong rock.” He crossed his arms over his chest, smiling now, though some might say he looked more like a wolf that’d spotted its next meal. “What is it, boy?”
Tam told him everything. Why we were here, what we had to do, and when we had to get it done.
And how we needed his help to do all of the above.
“So, you need me to be your Reaper wrangler,” Badru said. “If I’m all you’ve got, you’re scraping the bottom of a bone-dry barrel. Am I your last hope, too?” he asked Tam. “Or are you just slumming and playing tour guide for your friends?”
Tam drew himself up and I half expected to hear something Talonesque come out of his mouth. He surprised me. “Sir, you’re our only hope.”
Tam had been eating an awful lot of humble pie since we’d arrived. It looked like he was developing a taste for it. Swallowing your pride might choke you the first time you had to do it; but apparently the next one went down a little easier.
“You were disgraced and banished because you refused to step back from what you stood for,” Tam continued. “You refused to teach rich, young thugs a level of magic they had neither the morals nor restraint to learn.” He paused. “I was foremost among them.”
The old goblin’s eyes glittered. “You think so?”
“I know so. I’ve turned from the dark path.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard people talking. Talk isn’t necessarily the truth.”
“I have renounced black magic.”
Kesyn Badru’s sharp black eyes looked like they were boring through to Tam’s soul. “Not entirely, you haven’t.”
Tam shifted uneasily. “When there is a great need, when no other magic would—”
“Save lives,” Mychael said. “Sometimes it is necessary to do what is distasteful for a greater good.”
Badru studied Tam, all signs of drunkenness gone. “And you think you’ve grown enough sense to tell the difference?”
“I’m trying, sir.” Another slice of humble pie. “Knowing the right thing to do isn’t always easy.”
“There’s more to why we need your help,” I told the mage. Best just to come right out with it. “My magic is gone.”
“Yeah. So?”
“And… I don’t have any magic.”
“That’s obvious. Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone inside these rotten city walls would have a clue.”
That was more than a little disconcerting. “How can you tell?”
“I don’t smell any magic coming off of you.”
“You mean sense?”
“I say what I mean. Smell. Others may sense, but I smell. Don’t let it worry you, little missy. It’s a gift—or a curse—depending on how you look at it. I can see people for who and what they really are.” He looked at Tam appraisingly. “So, while there’s no cure for stupid, you at least seem to have found a treatment.”