The door opened, and I was instantly on my feet. Not that I expected anything bad to come through the door, but old habits—and recent events that had reinforced those habits—were hard to break.
It was Garadin, which was a relief to both of us.
I sheathed the dagger that had found its way into my hand.
“Was Calchas at home?” I asked him.
“He was.”
Garadin had come with us to the Guardians’ safehouse, but had left soon after with an escort of two Guardians to see Calchas Becan, a nachtmagus who had the largest private collection of books on the higher dark magics, including Gates. An exorcist and demonologist by trade, Nachtmagus Becan was a nice enough gentleman by all accounts, but I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same house as that library. Still, research was good. I was going to be seeing Sarad Nukpana face-to-face tonight and I wanted to know what had happened and why—or more to the point, what had not happened and why.
Garadin was taking his time helping himself to cheese, meat, and ale at the sideboard.
“Well?” I asked impatiently. “What happened to me…it…whatever?”
“Gate got in your way,” he said around a mouthful of cheese.
“What? It was a Gate. It was open. I was on one side, Nukpana on the other. Nothing between us but air. No problem.”
Garadin held up a hand, stopping me. “Big problem. About four miles worth. You’re forgetting about distance. Apparently distance is very important, critical even.”
“What distance? We were in the same room.” As soon as I said it, I knew I was wrong. “He was on the other side of the city from me.”
“Correct.”
“But I had a clear shot,” I protested.
“Through a Gate,” Garadin clarified. “The distortions on that threshold were violent enough to diffuse all but a small part of what you threw at him.”
I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “How much got through?”
My godfather shrugged. “Maybe five percent, maybe less.”
I flopped down in my chair. “Just enough to piss him off.”
“Probably.”
No, definitely. The rest was so simple. I would have pounded my head against the wall if Nukpana hadn’t already done it for me. I was so stupid.
Piaras spoke. “Then what I did worked because I aimed at the Gate itself, not anything on the other side.”
“Precisely.”
I knew what it meant, and I didn’t like it in the least. “So if I want to do any damage to Sarad Nukpana of the permanent variety, I need to be in the same room with him.”
Garadin took a swig of ale. “Just close by will do.”
No, close by wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to be close to Sarad Nukpana or a soul-stealing rock either. But what I wanted didn’t seem to matter much this week. Though if there was one thing to be grateful for, the goblin had experienced the same problem I had, otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here to feel stupid.
“So other than closing the Gate, I didn’t do much good either,” Piaras said.
“You did the equivalent of slamming a very big, very heavy door in Nukpana’s face,” I told him.
“Then why do I feel so…” he struggled to find the right word. “Helpless?”
Garadin and I both stared at him in disbelief. Mine was the open-mouthed kind. Garadin kept his closed. He was busy chewing again.
“Helpless is the last word I would use to describe you tonight,” Garadin told him, after he swallowed. “I’m sure Sarad Nukpana doesn’t see you as helpless. And just because Tarsilia isn’t here with us doesn’t make you helpless or ineffective.”
“But I couldn’t save her. I failed.”
I spoke up. “You didn’t fail. I couldn’t save her either. If you failed, that means we both did. But blaming ourselves isn’t going to do us or Tarsilia any good. We did our best.”
“And it wasn’t good enough.”
I sighed. I felt the same way, but I was going to keep that one to myself. Piaras was just another perfectionist in the making. Nothing he ever did would be good enough, at least not for him. And while I could warn him off that path that I had well and thoroughly trampled myself, I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I hadn’t listened either. I glanced at Garadin. The tiniest smile curled the side of his mouth facing me.
“Oh, shut up.”
His smile widened. “I didn’t say a word.”
“But you were thinking plenty.”
“And I would deny every one of them.”
Piaras was looking from one of us to the other. We’d completely lost him. “What are you talking about?”
“Garadin was just thinking how much you remind him of me at your age. And he finds it funny that I’m getting back some of what I gave him.”
The young elf was still baffled.
Garadin chuckled. “Payback is hell.”
“You’ll never find a worse critic than the one inside your own skin, or a more difficult one to silence,” I told Piaras, by means of explanation. “The best you can hope for is to teach it some manners.”
“It was you against three Khrynsani shamans and a Magh’Sceadu,” Garadin told him, “and who knows how many more on the other side of that Gate. Sarad Nukpana doesn’t travel with incompetents. You kept yourself from being taken prisoner—”
“And me, too,” I chimed in. I believe in giving credit where due. “You saved both of us. Our situation would be a lot different right now if you hadn’t slammed that Gate in Nukpana’s face.”
The shadings of a gratified blush crept up the young spellsinger’s neck. “But Grandma—”
“Was beyond your reach,” came Mychael’s voice from the doorway.
“Unless someone is keyed to a Gate during its construction, once you cross the threshold, you cannot come back across,” the Guardian told him. “Once Tarsilia was on the other side, it would have been impossible for her to return. There was nothing you could have done.”
Piaras considered what Mychael had said for a moment, then nodded. I guess having your conscience absolved by a legendary spellsinger carried more weight than your friends and family, regardless of their qualifications.
“What exactly did I do?” Piaras’s voice was subdued, as if he needed to know the answer, but wasn’t all that sure he really wanted to.
“Your instinct told you the Gate needed to close,” Mychael said. “It had harmed someone you love. You wanted that Gate, and anything that had come through it, gone. You channeled that desire—rather intensely—through your voice. The Gate obeyed and collapsed on itself. In simple terms, you used your voice to make your wish a reality.”
Piaras just stared at the paladin. “But I don’t know how to do that.”
“Apparently you do. On a deep level, you knew exactly what needed to be done, and you did it.” Mychael paused, his blue eyes calmly searching Piaras’s face. “The sight of that Gate opening terrified you beyond thought.”
He hadn’t asked it as a question, but he expected a response.
Piaras nodded mutely.
“Beyond thought lies instinct. That which tells us to fight and protect, or flee and survive. It’s primal and we all have it at our core. Your instincts were telling you to do both. But you couldn’t run and you couldn’t use your body to fight, so you struck out in the only other way you knew. It was raw and primitive, but it accomplished what you wanted.”
Mychael paused. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable in the least with what he was about to say.
“A master spellsinger would have been hard pressed to do what you did tonight,” he said. “You destroyed in an instant what it took Sarad Nukpana and his best shamans hours to construct. You have an incredibly powerful instrument, Piaras. Though I’d imagine Sarad Nukpana thinks of it more as a weapon. In this one instance, I agree with him. Either way, for your own safety and the safety of others, you need to learn to harness and control that power, or at the very least guide it. And you need to learn it now. Who’s your teacher?”