His wordless scream was filled with pent-up rage and fear—and was aimed in a straight line through the Magh’Sceadu to the Gate that had just swallowed his grandmother. The three shamans and the Magh’Sceadu were unfortunate enough to be in his path. The force of Piaras’s voice blasted them back through the Gate’s mouth, and slammed it shut behind them.
I slid down the wall I found myself against. Piaras lay sprawled on the floor. The force field vanished with the Gate that spawned it, and Mychael, Tam, and Garadin all but fell into the room.
I crawled over to Piaras and knelt beside him. He scrabbled back as far in the corner as it was possible to get. He would have pressed himself through the wall if he could have. Anything to get away from the things that he had banished, from me, and from himself.
“Don’t touch me!” His dark eyes were haunted and his breath came in short, shallow bursts.
The remnants of his magic crackled in the air around him. I was sure he saw the Saghred’s leftovers all over me. I didn’t want to be near me, either. I lowered my hands and slowly sat back on my heels, utterly exhausted. I knew how he felt. When you feel like your skin is trying to crawl free of your bones, the last thing you want is someone touching you, regardless of how badly you may want to be held.
I sensed Mychael and Tam’s solid presence on the floor beside me. Garadin stood just behind me. The beacon had stopped burning. I didn’t need it to tell me that the danger was over. For now. Sarad Nukpana may not have gotten what he came for, but he had stolen enough.
“We’ll get her back,” I told Piaras. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”
I said it like a promise, but I couldn’t promise Piaras anything right now, least of all the safe return of his grandmother. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do everything I could to make that happen, even if it meant turning myself over to Sarad Nukpana.
“That won’t be necessary,” Mychael said, his voice close. “Even if it were, I wouldn’t let you do it.”
I turned my head toward him with an effort. My thoughts must have carried, or Mychael was just that good. Probably the latter.
“Do you have a better suggestion?”
“He will contact us, with the terms for Tarsilia’s release—”
“Release? You mean trade.” I saw no reason to dance around what was essentially an exchange that would never happen. Sarad Nukpana had no intention of trading Tarsilia for anyone. He would have other uses for her. I didn’t say it out loud. We all knew it, and if Piaras didn’t know, he didn’t need to.
“That’s what he’ll ask for,” Mychael said, “but it’s not what he’s going to get.”
“And just what is he going to get?” I snapped.
Mychael’s face was grim. “More than he bargained for.”
“I just tried to give him ‘more than he bargained for’ and it didn’t work.” I looked to Garadin for the answers I didn’t have. I knew he didn’t have them either, and that just fed my rage and frustration. “Why didn’t it work? It felt the same as it did in The Ruins. The power was there. There was nothing left of six Magh’Sceadu. How did he survive?”
“I don’t know,” my teacher admitted. “But we’re dealing with a Gate, the darkest of magics, and the Saghred. Who knows what kind of magic is at work there? But they’re both magic, so the same or similar rules should apply.” He looked genuinely concerned and didn’t try to hide it.
Nice to know it wasn’t just me, but that was nowhere near the answer I wanted.
“All I want to know is, how are we going to get my grandmother back?” Piaras asked from the corner. “And when.” There was a steely edge to his voice that I’d never heard before. His question, and his stare, were aimed directly at the Guardian.
“Sarad Nukpana is in the goblin embassy,” Mychael told him. “I can’t imagine him holding your grandmother anywhere else.”
“And the Saghred is in the mausoleum on the grounds,” Tam said.
“Convenient one-stop shopping,” I muttered.
“Do you have a plan?” Piaras asked Mychael point blank.
“I do.”
“What is it?”
Mychael looked at him in silence for a moment. “Not now.”
“Why? You don’t want to talk in front of me? You think I’m too young?” Piaras’s eyes were the darkest I’d ever seen them. They were a match for Mychael’s intensity, and then some.
“Not until you’ve had a chance to recover.” His tone said he’d tolerate no argument.
I agreed with him completely.
“You just closed a Gate, from the outside,” Mychael continued. “Do you have any idea how difficult—no, how impossible—that is?”
Piaras’s own voice was subdued, but only slightly. “No, I don’t.”
“Which is probably why you could do it,” Garadin said.
Mychael continued to look at Piaras. I didn’t know if he was sizing him up, testing him, or just seeing if he would blink first. Piaras didn’t blink and he didn’t look away. Apparently satisfied with something, Mychael broke the contact.
“We can’t talk here. There’s a place the Khrynsani can’t tear a Gate into.”
“And just where would that be?” I asked.
“We Guardians have a safehouse of our own.”
Chapter 18
Piaras was pacing.
We had arrived at the Guardians’ safehouse in the central city just before dawn. I had already seen the master bedroom in my previous visit, and the rest of the palazzo was just as lavish. It belonged to the Count of Eilde, a cousin of Mychael’s who was conveniently away on his honeymoon at the moment.
Our trip to the count’s home had been uneventful. And not much had happened since. That was Piaras’s problem. Nothing was happening at this particular moment to rescue his grandmother, and he was not happy about it. The beacon, on the other hand, seemed to know that there was a reunion with the Saghred in its immediate future. It hadn’t stopped purring since we’d arrived.
“If not now, when?” Piaras asked.
“Before midnight, tonight.” I was just repeating Mychael’s timeline, and truth be told, I liked saying it about as much as Piaras liked hearing it, which wasn’t much. But unlike Piaras, I saw the wisdom in waiting. Piaras had been forced to watch Khrynsani shamans drag his grandmother through the ugliest Gate I had ever seen or heard of, so wisdom and waiting weren’t a big part of his thinking right now.
“Sarad Nukpana will kill her before then.” Piaras swallowed and looked away, but not before I caught a glint of tears in his eyes. “Or worse.” The Piaras of two days ago wouldn’t have cared all that much if I had seen him cry. The Piaras standing with his back to me now in the Guardians’ safehouse was trying desperately to show no signs of weakness. I personally didn’t see tears as a weakness; but being in his late teens, and male, Piaras viewed the world a little differently, especially now. I guess I couldn’t blame him.
“He won’t kill her—or hurt her,” I said.
I expected him to react angrily, or at the very least demand how I could possibly know. But he didn’t. He understood all too well why Sarad Nukpana wanted to keep Tarsilia alive and whole. The goblin had other sorcerers he could use to fuel a Gate. Tarsilia was more valuable to him as a hostage. At least for now.
Piaras was looking at me. I knew he saw me for a brief moment as Sarad Nukpana saw me. A commodity to be traded for, used, and discarded. Piaras did not like seeing me that way. That made two of us.
“And he’s not going to kill or hurt me either. Or you.” I said it as much for my own benefit as Piaras’s. Seeing Piaras getting misty triggered the beginnings of a salty sting in my own eyes. I concentrated really hard on making it stop. Mychael would be here any moment, and he was not going to see me cry. It wouldn’t do Piaras much good either. Mychael had promised to fill us in on the details of this plan of his. A little enlightenment would go a long way toward improving morale right now.