Lisa Shearin - Armed & Magical

Piaras’s dark eyes narrowed. “What did you see?”

“The spellsingers are in one cell. Ronan is unconscious.”

It was my turn to watch the thoughts flow across Piaras’s face. Frustration put in an appearance several times. Piaras was realizing what I already knew only too well.

We were the only hope of help for those six spellsingers.

“Even if we could get out of here, we couldn’t go to the paladin or the watch.” Piaras didn’t ask it as a question. He knew the answer as well as I did. “We’d be arrested if we showed our faces in the city.”

I nodded. “And if we didn’t get ourselves arrested, they still couldn’t help. We’re under the elven embassy. That makes what we’re standing on sovereign elven soil. Mychael’s an elf, but he’s also the paladin. Neither he nor the city watch can search the embassy grounds—or what lies under it.”

“They’d never find the spellsingers.”

“No, they wouldn’t. And with Justinius incapacitated—”

“Or dead,” Piaras cut in bitterly.

“Or dead… Carnades Silvanus is acting archmagus. He commands the Guardians now.”

Piaras couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Paladin Eiliesor has to take his orders from him ?”

“If he doesn’t, Carnades can charge him with treason and lock him up in his own containment rooms.”

“So it’s just the two of us.” Piaras’s voice was steady and resolute. He’d already decided what he was going to do.

“I’d rather it be just the one of me.”

“Not this time. I want to help.”

I want to help.

I’d said the same words to Mychael only a few days ago; it seemed like so much longer. I wanted to help find Megan Jacobs. I had been determined, I knew I could help, and I refused to take no for an answer.

Just like Piaras was doing now.

He was ready to do everything he could, anything he had to do. I almost smiled. All he needed now was a suit of shining armor. It would have looked good on him. He’d get himself killed unless I had a damned fine plan going in—the kind of plan that would work regardless of how the situation changed. It’d been my experience that bad situations rarely changed for the better. They had an annoying tendency to go from bad to worse.

I didn’t have a plan, damned fine or otherwise, at least not yet. If I was left with no other choice, I had firepower. The odds of success—or survival—without using the Saghred were next to none, the risk we’d be taking was too high, and failure was a virtual certainty.

Having an intact soul was overrated anyway.

Something really bothered me. Aside from the near certainty of im pending death or lingering insanity.

Rudra Muralin had the spellsingers, but he didn’t have the Saghred to feed them to. Now I wasn’t an expert on evil master plans, but it seemed to me that Muralin had a very large crimp in his. Maybe his age was getting to him. Maybe he just wasn’t a strategic thinker.

Probably there was something going on that I didn’t know about.

If Carnades Silvanus was acting archmagus, he had the final say over what was done with the Saghred. Knowing how he felt about goblins, there’d be icicles sprouting in the lower hells before he’d give Rudra Muralin the slightest chance to get his hands on it.

Somehow I didn’t think Muralin’s plan involved making an appointment with Carnades and asking nicely for the Saghred.

Piaras looked down the dark tunnel we were about to walk into. There were entirely too many unknowns, but one certainty—if we weren’t at the top of our game, we were dead.

It looked like a tunnel, but as dark as it was, we could be walking into a dead-end alcove for all I knew. But that’s where my seeking instinct told me we had to go. Just because it was the right direction didn’t mean it was the best or healthiest direction. My seeking instinct didn’t pay any attention to little things like dead ends or death-inducing goblins along the way. It just told me the most direct route and expected me to take it. Avoiding death and dismemberment was my job.

“So how are we going to do this?” Piaras sounded dubious about the whole thing. Smart kid.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” I told him. “We go to where the spellsingers are—killing or incapacitating any goblins or evil elves before they can do the same to us—we free Ronan and the kids, and if we’re really lucky, we get out of here with all of our pieces and parts intact.”

Piaras looked down at me and blinked. “This is how seekers typically work?”

“Nope, this time I have a plan.”

“Good. What is it?”

“I just told you.”

“That’s it ?”

“I like to keep it simple. You got a better way to get it done?”

Piaras went through the motions of thinking about it, then blew out his breath.

“Should I take that as a ‘no’?” I asked him.

The kid actually snorted. “You might as well.”

Reality rarely settles in lightly. Most times it lands on you like a slab of granite. Any noble illusions Piaras had about what “charging to the rescue” really meant had just been squashed flat.

“We’ve got plenty of blades and blunt objects.” I tried to at least sound reassuring. “You’ve got quick-and-dirty spellsongs; I’ve got the Saghred. Best of all, we’re both highly motivated to survive.”

Piaras didn’t move. “Raine, you can’t use the Saghred.”

“I said I’ve got it. I didn’t say I wanted to use it.”

“But you would.”

“Yes. The Saghred taking a chunk out of me is a small price to pay to see you and those kids safe.”

Piaras’s eyes hardened. “Don’t use it to save me.”

“That’s not your choice. It’s mine, and I’ve already made it,” I told him point-blank. “I’m prepared to do anything I have to.” I jerked my head toward the embassy above us. “If it’d come down to it, I would have used the Saghred up there to get you out. If Rudra Muralin brings out the big guns down here, I will use everything in my arsenal to shut him down.”

Piaras drew breath to retort. I held up a hand.

“Last time I checked, my brain was still in my arsenal,” I told him. “It’s always been my first line of defense, and it always will be. After that… well, I can’t make any promises.”

Piaras looked into the dark. “Blades and magical arsenals. How could anything possibly go wrong?”

I do believe he was being sarcastic.

“Raine?”

“What?”

“I’m scared,” Piaras said. Being a teenager and male, I knew that admission had cost him a lot.

“I’m scared, too. In spades. Damned near everything that’s happened since we got here has been scary.”

Piaras exhaled. “Let’s finish this so we can stop being scared.”

I smiled at him. “Best idea I’ve heard in days.”

I kept my tiny lightglobe.

I figured the goblins could see us whether we had the globe or not. This way, if they jumped out of the dark and tried to kill us, we’d at least get a good look at them while they did it.

I thought I’d have to link with Megan every now and then to locate the cell block. Not necessary. Piaras and I simply followed the trail of dead bodies like gruesome bread-crumbs. The first two bodies had been Nightshades; the next one was Khrynsani.

The one after that was also a goblin—but he wasn’t a Khrynsani.

He was one of Tam’s.

Oh no.

Piaras looked over my shoulder. “That’s not a temple guard.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Who is—”

I scowled. “Tam’s down here. He’s come to get Talon. Until about a half hour ago, this one was a bouncer at Sirens.”