Piaras suddenly stopped. It was my turn to run into him. Fortunately for both of us, he didn’t fall down.
I saw what had stopped him in his tracks. I agreed with his decision. Sarad Nukpana wasn’t what I had sensed hunting me.
A black mass loomed before us. I had seen it before—through Siseal Peli’s dying eyes.
More of them glided from the trees, surrounding us. I felt rather than heard something move behind me. I spun, going back-to-back with Piaras, my daggers held low. I was face-to-whatever with one of them. I slashed where an abdomen should be, but the blade passed straight through it. An oily finger extended to touch me. The beacon kicked against my chest like a hammer. My chest tightened until I couldn’t breathe past the pain, and my vision blurred. The things drew back.
Someone was running toward us through the trees. Moments later four Khrynsani shamans burst into the clearing. Like Piaras and me, they stopped dead at the sight of the monsters. But unlike us, they didn’t seem surprised to see them. They didn’t exactly look relieved either. The shamans moved to surround them, chanting in low, sibilant whispers. I recognized some elements of a containment spell, but of a sort that I had never been taught, nor would ever want to learn. Perfect for monsters.
It had no effect.
It was the goblins’ turn to be surprised. I felt their fear, and the creatures’ hunger. They wanted us more than they wanted to obey the shamans, and the goblins’ spells just seemed to annoy them. Maybe it was me, but annoying these things didn’t seem like a good idea. The shamans didn’t see it that way and kept chanting. Two of the creatures turned toward them. The eyes of the goblin closest to us widened in disbelief.
Two of the things glided toward him. The goblin stopped chanting and drew breath to scream, but the creatures reached him before he had the chance. They flowed over the spot where he had stood. Nothing remained.
A static charge like the aftermath of lightning hung in the air. Two of the creatures had now fed, and the others shifted restlessly, eager to do the same. The remaining three shamans were more experienced. They didn’t run—and they should have.
Some of the creatures drifted closer to me and Piaras, their caution giving way to hunger. I fought back in every way I knew. Garadin’s lessons hadn’t left me unprepared. My repel and shielding spells were of the highest level, but nothing worked. The more I threw at them, the tastier a morsel I became. Magic didn’t stop them. It fed them.
The final goblin shaman managed to scream before they took him. Then Piaras and I had their undivided attention.
Garadin had taught Piaras protection spells, but because of his age and inexperience, I had assumed they were only the most basic. I was wrong.
Piaras sang. His normally warm, rich baritone turned harsh and dark, the notes booming and discordant. He sang in goblin, the language the creatures supposedly obeyed, the language of dark magics. I didn’t like hearing it from Piaras. But the monsters just ate it up. Literally.
Spells didn’t work, sung or otherwise. Shields didn’t work. They just swallowed them whole. The beacon thrashed against the center of my chest like a wild horse fighting a bridle. I froze, suddenly more afraid of what I was thinking than what the monsters were about to do. Prince Chigaru said the beacon was connected to the Saghred. If I was connected to the beacon, I was connected to the Saghred. The creatures ate everything I could give them. Could they eat everything the beacon—and the Saghred—could give them? It didn’t seem to think so. And with my life in danger, I didn’t have a choice, regardless of what the Saghred might do to me.
There was an opening just beyond where the creatures circled us. Both of us wouldn’t have time to reach it, but if I could distract them long enough, Piaras might.
“Get behind me,” I told him. “When they come after me, I want you to run.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Do it!”
Piaras glanced sharply at me, his mouth forming the word “no.” The sound never made it out. He saw my face and froze. His own reflected disbelief—and fear. He was afraid of me. I didn’t know how he saw me in that instant, and I didn’t want to. Prince Chigaru’s words came back to me. Death. He saw death reflected in my eyes. Was that what Piaras saw now?
The Saghred’s power was building. I couldn’t stop it any more than I could stop the goblin-spawned things that closed on us. I couldn’t resist the power and found that I didn’t want to. My hand went to the center of my chest. It felt like it belonged to someone else. The leather of my doublet was no barrier. I didn’t feel the beacon, I felt what lay beyond it—wild and whole and wide awake.
Its power became my power. I was its instrument, but the tune was still my own.
My ribs heaved against the pressure to keep breath in my body. The power tore its way to the surface, a complexity of magic I never knew existed until now. That power became a part of me, as did knowledge of a way to destroy what threatened us. Thoughts not my own flashed like lightning through my mind, too fast for comprehension, too complex for reason—but not too inaccessible for action.
One of the creatures rushed us, crazed with hunger. I threw myself in front of Piaras and into the creature before it could reach us, and before it was ready to feed. The instant of contact opened a floodgate, releasing more power than a thousand such creatures could consume, and threw us both to the ground. The thing tried to separate from me to save itself, but it couldn’t. There was a blinding flash of light, then all was still. The pressure holding me down lifted. I opened my eyes.
The creature was gone. They were all gone. There was nothing left.
I felt raw and exhausted and I had the worst headache of my life. I also felt the urge to be sick. I groaned, rolled over, and threw up. It felt like there were hundreds of voices inside my head. Wonderful. Every magic-sensitive within miles must have heard what had just happened. The volume was deafening. I held my head with both hands. It didn’t help. I rolled over onto my back, gulping air. The ground was cool and damp. Maybe if I could just shut my eyes for a little while.
Piaras was kneeling over me. “Raine, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
I opened my eyes to a squint, and moved my head in what I thought was an up and down motion. It hurt, so I stopped.
Piaras started lifting me to my feet. “We need to go. Now.”
I didn’t want to be on my feet, but I tried to help him as much as I could. “Something’s coming?” I heard myself slur.
“Yes, something’s coming.”
My legs would have been perfectly content to wait for every Mal’Salin and goblin in The Ruins to converge on us. The rest of me just wanted a nap. From the sounds of things, company wasn’t going to be long in coming. It didn’t matter if they belonged to the king, the prince, or the psycho—Piaras and I would be just as dead.
“I’m okay,” I told Piaras, standing on my own. I was a bit wobbly, but at least I was upright. The ground was still looking awfully good.
He didn’t look convinced. “You’re sure?”
I managed a weak smile. “I can sleep when I’m dead, and that’s not going to be tonight. Dead, that is. Sleep I’m still hoping for.”
“Perhaps we can help you with that.”
I knew that voice.
Paladin Mychael Eiliesor stood squarely in the middle of the path that I judged to be the best way out of this nightmare—and he didn’t look inclined to move. A full complement of Guardians moved quickly and silently through the trees, putting themselves between us and the goblins. That action I could agree with and even be grateful for, but I doubted the same was true of Eiliesor’s intentions. The beacon rested quietly against my skin. Coward.