The black mages hadn’t dropped their veils, but the mist flowed around them, outlining their shapes. One of the bastards was standing less than three feet away and I’d been completely clueless. The ward spinning and solidifying around us looked like black mist swirling with motes of bright red light like thousands of demonic eyes.
Kesyn shook his head in disgust. “These are Sarad’s top spellslingers; and the grandstanding sons of bitches can’t resist showing off.” He snorted. “Spells with sparklies. Why didn’t they just tie a bow around it?”
“Do something!” I hissed to Kesyn.
“I can’t use magic in here,” he said. “We’d fry. They wouldn’t.”
“There’s nothing you can do? Because there sure as hell isn’t anything I can do.”
“I didn’t say that. It’s taking all the strength and concentration this bunch has to hold the ward together. They can’t even risk letting their concentration waver to lower their veils, and I doubt they can even spare the thought to listen to us. They’ve positioned themselves between two layers of wards, so they’re shielded from the outside and inside against magic, weapons, and sound. So spellsongs won’t work, either.” The old goblin leaned back and twisted from side to side, cracking his back. “So we’re waiting on your lover boy to get back with that dagger. Though I do wish he’d hurry. I wouldn’t want this happening prematurely.”
I was tempted to smack Kesyn upside the head. “He won’t be able to get in!”
The old goblin gave me a sly wink. “I’ve got a key.”
Sarad Nukpana was directing his dragons to slaughter the Resistance; he wasn’t defending the Saghred, because he knew it was being taken care of. He knew that I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the Saghred. To keep the two of us right where he wanted us until he dealt with the Resistance, Nukpana had tasked his top black mages with wrapping us in a lethal Level Thirteen blanket.
Suddenly the air in the temple crackled with static like right before a lightning strike, quivering, eager, and alive… and wrong.
At its epicenter stood Sarad Nukpana.
He began gathering his power like one of the dragons drawing in a massive breath. In an instant, all of the chaos and death fell into the background as a sound like a distant thunder built until it vibrated the very air around us with its intensity. It shook the ground beneath our feet with a rumbling throb. Once. Twice. Three times.
Everyone felt it. Most of the combatants down on the temple floor retreated to the far walls, thinking another dragon was coming up through what was left of the floor.
I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Sarad Nukpana. “I have a feeling this is worse than dragons.”
Kesyn was off of the altar and standing beside me, his face grim, all signs of humor gone. “It’ll make them look like puppies. Sarad hasn’t even broken a sweat yet, but he’s about to. I hear he picked up a major power boost a few weeks ago.”
I nodded and continued staring. Sarad Nukpana had more power to draw on now, more magic at his command than anyone or anything except the Saghred itself. Nukpana had recently eaten the souls and consumed the life forces and magic of history’s strongest and most evil sorcerers. Men who had been conquerors and killers, who had cut swaths of death and destruction through entire kingdoms. They had been prisoners inside the Saghred along with Sarad Nukpana. And along with Nukpana, they had escaped. The goblin had methodically hunted them down and consumed every last one of them.
Sarad Nukpana had all of that knowledge, all of that killing power at his disposal, and he had yet to truly unleash it.
Until now.
Time slowed to a stop.
It hadn’t really, but my mind made it seem that everyone was moving in slow motion. This had happened to me before when I was in the middle of something that had a high probability of getting me killed. It was my mind’s way of giving me a chance to figure out how to undo my stupid.
This wasn’t my doing, not this time.
Sarad Nukpana stood as a statue, his beautiful face drawn into a rictus of rage, releasing his power, giving his magic flesh.
It took form, born from what Nukpana had become, created out of his own poisoned mind, the manifestation of his twisted soul. The air wavered before the goblin’s upraised hands, wavered and came together as a living thing that only vaguely held a human shape. It was easily three times Mychael’s height, its pallid skin stretched and rippling, not from muscle, but from things moving inside. Huge, distorted faces with mouths stretched in silent screams, fangs pressed against the skin, stretching it to the point of splitting open, eager and desperate to feed. Monstrous hands, grasping and pushing, arms and legs writhing inside determined to escape the skinform Sarad Nukpana had created.
Prince Chigaru and a handful of army officers were closest to the thing when it manifested. The prince led the attack. The creature bent and, with a mere swat of its fingers, sent Chigaru flying toward the opening in the floor. The prince stopped just short of falling in. Princess Mirabai ran to his side, armed with nothing except her broken pike. The officers rushed to protect their prince.
The remaining people still in the temple who had stood with Sarad Nukpana for whatever reason—terror, intimidation or like-minded sick souls, twisted by an all-consuming desire for power—they all ran. Loyalty held by fear or intimidation was quickly abandoned when something even scarier showed up.
I spotted Mychael using Tam’s curved blade, carving his way back toward us.
“Does he have it?” Kesyn snapped.
If Mychael had found the Scythe, I couldn’t see it. “Your eyes are better in this murk than mine,” I shot back.
The old mage stared intently. “I think he’s got it in his other hand. Come on, elf; get your ass up here.”
Mychael saw Nukpana’s living nightmare come to unholy life at the same time as everyone else. He glanced sharply between where Kesyn and I were sealed in the Khrynsani’s ward to the gigantic, patchwork monster that Nukpana had created and was about to unleash on the Resistance. Even with the dragons against them, they had been winning, but Nukpana’s creature was about to change that. Mychael’s frustration and rage were clear. He could take on one, not both.
Tam made the choice for all of us.
Only one thing could keep Sarad Nukpana occupied long enough to at least give us a chance to destroy the Saghred. Only one thing had the strength and cunning to bring down a monster.
A major-class demon summoned by black magic.
Mychael had found the Scythe of Nen.
Now Tam was going to sell his soul to buy us time to use it.
“We won’t let you down, boy,” Kesyn whispered.
Tam stepped out onto one of the few sections of the temple floor that hadn’t been cracked or broken, his back toward the mysterious blaze just outside the temple in Execution Square, the flames’ reflection licking hungrily at his gleaming black armor.
Tam didn’t say a word. There were no incantations, no raised arms, no shouts of challenge. In testament to his skill, he simply stepped aside as the shadows to his left parted like a curtain.
The demon was shorter than Sarad Nukpana’s creature, but height was the only thing it lacked. It was part man, part bull, and all demon—from his cloven hooves to his massive, horned head.
The monster and Tam’s demon took measure of each other, then began slowly circling, drawing closer to their intended kill with every step.
The time to stop Tam was long gone. The demon had been summoned and released, the damage done. Tam was one of the most powerful mages I’d ever met, but Sarad Nukpana had the knowledge, cunning, and power of six of history’s magical heavyweights.