“Thank you, sir. I think.”
A chorus of disembodied howls, screams, and roars shook the room around us.
Kesyn Badru walked to the nearest wall, pressed his hands up past his wrists into the goop, and started murmuring. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the wall began glowing with the same blue light of the tunnel he’d created for us to escape through.
The howling, screaming, and roaring stopped. Instantly and completely.
“The beastie thinks we’ve vanished.” He scowled at the lot of us. “Though with the four of you here raising a ruckus, we only have less than an hour before it cranks up again.”
I shifted uneasily. “It senses and feeds on emotions, doesn’t it?”
Badru nodded. “No emotion and no violence equals no problem. Staying drunk helps.”
Finally, an activity I could agree with.
Imala looked at the faintly glowing walls. “How do we get out?”
Badru shrugged. “With what you have planned, I don’t want to get out.”
“We do.”
“Then I imagine leaving this room, then running like hell, would be as good a plan as any.”
Tam moved close enough to his former teacher that Badru could have punched him in several sensitive areas. “Sir, we can’t do this without you.” He hesitated, the smooth muscles working in his jaw. “Please help us.”
Amazingly enough, Kesyn Badru seemed to be actually considering it, though he took his sweet time doing it. “I’ll be honest with you,” he eventually said. “I’m sitting the fence on that whole ‘saving the world’ thing the lot of you are bent on doing. From what I’ve seen lately, there’s not much out there that deserves saving. Now, destroying this rock that’s become Sarad Nukpana’s reason for living—I’ll have to admit that has a certain appeal. Not because it’ll save anyone; because it’ll annoy the hell out of Sarad.”
“Actually, sir, I’m planning to kill Sarad,” Tam told him.
“Destroy his reason for living, then kill him. Even better.” Badru pondered this while he absently scratched at something under his robe. “I’d be risking my life a couple dozen times before we get to the fun part.” He scowled. “If we get to the fun part. There’s not enough money to pay me to take this job.” The old goblin mage stopped and smiled, showing two missing teeth and a chipped fang. “But anything that ends with publically humiliating and killing Sarad Nukpana? Hell, I’ll do that for free.”
Chapter 10
Kesyn Badru clapped his hands once and rubbed them together gleefully. “So, who you going to murder?” he asked me.
I blinked. “Murder?”
He gave me a flat look. “I’ve been drunk; I’ve never been hard of hearing.” Badru jerked his head in Tam’s general direction. “When the boy was telling me the who, what, when, where, and why the hell of you all being here, he said that you have to wet that demon blade of yours with someone’s blood before it’ll cut into the Saghred. So, who’s the unlucky winner?”
I didn’t have to think about that one. “Whoever tries to keep me from getting to the rock.”
“Well, at least that part shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll have plenty of Khrynsani trying to get at you who need stabbing. When the time comes, don’t be shy about it. Puncture as many as you can; you want to make sure that blade is as wet as it needs to be.” Badru turned to Mychael. “Mind me asking who you’re taking with you to bust your way into that temple?”
“The four of us, yourself, possibly a few others.”
Badru raised one shaggy brow. “A few. Possibly.”
“Better for stealth.” Mychael flashed a smile. “Because we’re not busting in.”
The old goblin looked at us like we were all a fistful of arrows short of a quiver. “Uh-huh. I’m assuming you know that if this stealth of yours doesn’t work, you’re Saghred chow. And note that I said, ‘You’re Saghred chow.’ After everything I’ve been through, I’ve never once considered suicide.” He shot a pointed glance at Tam. “Homicide, I’ve thought about on many occasions, but never suicide, and I’m not about to start now. So unless you’ve got bigger guns than I know of, the chances of you getting that rock without getting dead are next to none, and you’ll be taking that chance without me.”
“Don’t count us out that easily, sir,” Mychael said. “I’ve spent the better part of my professional career perfecting glamours and veils. I’ve studied Sarad Nukpana for years. I know his voice, mannerisms, how he moves—”
The old goblin simply gaped at Mychael. “You’re going to glamour as that cretinous worm and just saunter up to the altar.”
Mychael grinned. “I imagine Sarad Nukpana won’t be challenged by anyone if he wants to commune with the Saghred. He would always have guards or a mage escort with him; and conveniently, Khrynsani have a fondness for hooded robes. There should be no problem acquiring robes for temporary use.”
“Paladin, in my long life, I’ve only said this to one other man—your balls drag the ground.”
“Thank you.”
“Either that or you’re stark raving nuts.”
“The next few hours will tell. Glamouring as Sarad is but one plan. Coming back alive from any mission means being flexible. Stay flexible. Stay alive.”
“Admit it, sir,” Tam said. “You have to appreciate the irony. Sarad used a thief glamouring as Mychael to steal the Saghred. I’d love to see Mychael glamoured as Sarad to destroy it.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Badru said. “I don’t care what parts any of you have dragging the ground. No answer from you, no help from me. How are you getting in?”
“We’re not walking in the front doors, sir, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tam said. “Imala knows a passage that was created during the last renovation. I have a tunnel that was built during the original construction.”
Badru’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know if either one’s been compromised?”
Imala answered that one. “As of last month, neither one was known to anyone other than Tam and myself.”
“A lot of bad can happen in a month.”
Amen to that.
Badru smiled slyly. “I know a way in that you wouldn’t need to worry about any Khrynsani guards at all.”
Now Tam and Imala looked at the old mage like he was crazy. Mychael and I shared a blank stare.
“Is this an idea you’d like to share with us elves, too?” Mychael asked.
“There’s a cave about a mile from the harbor,” Badru told us. “It’s set into the cliffs just above sea level. The cave opens into tunnels which lead up into the temple.”
I glanced from Tam to Imala. “That sounds nice enough, but I take it there’s a reason why we don’t want to go that way.”
Tam answered me. “There are usually several reasons living in those caves at any given time.”
“Sea dragons,” Imala clarified.
That did it. Kesyn Badru had spent too much time in a possessed house.
I’d seen a full-grown sea dragon before just off the coast of Stiren. Lucky for us, it must have just eaten, and wasn’t interested in either Phaelan’s ship or crew. The only difference between sea dragons and Khrynsani was the way they’d kill us. Personally, I’d rather be stabbed than eaten. Sea dragons didn’t care if you were dead before they started eating you.
“In addition to guarding the sea cave entrance, the Khrynsani use the dragons for garbage disposal,” Badru told us. “Corpses of sacrifices, prisoners who outlive their usefulness, Khrynsani whose loyalties become questionable.” He hesitated. “The one unfortunate part is that the tunnels end near the temple dungeons, which I’d really rather not visit.”
At the mention of the temple dungeons, Tam’s eyes lit up, and suddenly Kesyn Badru wasn’t the craziest person in the room anymore. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I wasn’t any happier about that idea than I was with playing hide-and-seek with hungry sea dragons.