“Raine?”
I dimly realized his voice sounded farther away than it should. It didn’t bother me, and I think it should have.
“Fine.” I felt myself try to breathe. I stayed on my feet, so I think I succeeded. “I’m fine.”
I felt his arm slip around my waist. I don’t think he believed me. I steadied myself, then stepped away.
“Down there,” I said, forcing more air into my words than I had to spare. “Let’s go.”
The tunnel ended abruptly in a room only ten feet or so square. A white stone panel shone starkly in one wall on the edge of the globe’s light. It was a burial vault in miniature. It was only about a foot square and oddly translucent, like alabaster. It also bore a striking resemblance to the containment box Quentin had found the beacon in—and the small box Mychael now held in his hands. The frosted surface was smooth and unmarked except for a small, circular section that had been carved out of the stone.
You didn’t have to be too smart to know what was meant to go there.
Prince Chigaru stepped around Riston for a closer look. “That was not here before,” he insisted.
“When was that?” Mychael asked.
“Three years,” the goblin said.
Mychael and I exchanged glances. Plenty of time for a certain Saghred Guardian to do a little redecorating.
It took a lot of squirming on my part, but I managed to remove the beacon from my bodice. Prince Chigaru’s eyes were instantly on me, his lean body tense with restraint.
I had one word for him. “Stay.”
“Wait,” Mychael told me. “Are you shielded?”
My shoulders slumped. “Do you really think that’s going to do any good?” I sounded the way I felt. Tired.
His jaw tightened. “Probably not.”
I knelt and put the beacon into the hollow. It grated against the accumulated salt, and some of it fell on the floor. That was all. Nothing happened. That didn’t mean something wasn’t different. It was, and it wasn’t at all what I expected. I looked more closely at the white stone panel.
“What is it?” Mychael asked.
“Does it look more transparent to you?”
“No.”
I looked again—then stared in wonder at what lay beyond.
“It does to me,” I breathed. Then I became a part of it.
I was surrounded in pulsating light and movement. Flowing forms emerged from shifting colors, each separate and distinct. I realized with amazement turning to horror that the forms were alive. Most were faceless wraiths, their bodies pale and indistinct as they fled, terrified of me. Others didn’t flee, but passed just out of arms reach, with faint cries and whispered pleas, held at bay as if by some unseen hand. The remaining ones were more solid, though their bodies were wasted as if from the ravages of disease. They didn’t whisper or beg. They screamed in rage and frustration at not being able to reach me. Something stopped them from touching me, but nothing blocked their raw need. I tried to run, but the same force that held them at bay held me still.
I was inside the Saghred. The wraiths around me were all that remained of those sacrificed or absorbed over the ages. Not just goblins, but elves, humans and dwarfs—though some were too far gone to be recognized as any race.
A lone figure came toward me and stopped just beyond arm’s reach, silently staring. His elegantly pointed ears marked him as an elf, a beautiful pure-blooded high elf. His hair was silver, and his eyes were the gray of gathering storm clouds. Eyes identical to my own. A slow smile curled the corners of his lips. I could see why my mother hadn’t cared that he was nearly nine hundred years old.
Eamaliel Anguis knew me and had been expecting me—all this time, all of my life.
“Daughter.”
Like most fatherless little girls, I’d always imagined what my father would look like. What stood before me wasn’t it. For one, I could see through him.
I couldn’t move. I didn’t even know if I was breathing.
“How?” I whispered the word, but it echoed in my head, not my ears.
He smiled. It was a kind smile, encouraging, patient. “How are you here or how am I here?”
My throat was too tight to speak. I just nodded.
“Because I needed to speak with you. Don’t be afraid. You can see me and the others, but your body remains outside the Saghred, in the arms of your Guardian. You are safe.”
“Are you alive?” I wasn’t sure if it was in poor taste to ask, but I had to.
“The Saghred does not take life,” he explained. “It absorbs it. I am alive, but on a different level than you are probably familiar with. Time is different on the inside.”
I felt myself try to grin. “A couple of my formerly incarcerated Benares relatives say the same thing.”
My father looked at me as if trying to fit a lifetime of seeing me into a few seconds. His gaze was so intense that I wanted to look away, but looking away meant seeing floating wraiths. So I kept my eyes exactly where they were.
“You’re so beautiful,” he managed. “Just like your mother.”
Uncomfortable under his scrutiny—and even more uncomfortable at the mention of my mother—I brushed at one of the gown’s jewel-strewn velvet panels. “This isn’t how I normally dress. The goblin king’s masked ball. We had to get on the grounds somehow. You might say I’m undercover. The gown and going to the ball wasn’t exactly my idea.” I stopped and tried to breathe. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
He smiled. “Not at all. You found me, so it must be going well.”
“As well as can be expected—at least for one of us.” I could look right through my father and see the wraiths floating behind him. I winced. “You’re the Saghred’s Guardian. Isn’t it supposed to like you, or at least not eat you?”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Being here wasn’t exactly my idea, either.”
“I can understand that.” I risked a quick glance at the wraiths, then lowered my voice. “Not your ideal roommates either, I’d imagine.”
“All of those here were victims, some were more innocent than others. Few are actually evil; their greed and lust for power blinded them to the danger.”
I thought of Ocnus. “Greed makes you stupid,” I muttered.
My father nodded, a twinkle in his gray eyes. “Without exception. The more powerful you are, the more blind you are to your own greed—and its consequences.”
Sounded just like Sarad Nukpana.
“Could you have found a less creepy place than a crypt to hide it?”
“Under the very noses of those looking the hardest for it. In a place they would disdain. It was perfect.”
Apparently Sarad Nukpana liked it well enough to meditate upstairs. I decided not to mention that. The less creepiness I had to deal with, the better.
I held the beacon by its diamond chain. “I believe this belongs to you. Any way I can give it back?”
“Unfortunately, I’m in no condition to accept it.”
Unfortunate was right.
I closed my hand around the disk. It was warm and oddly comforting. “Isn’t it supposed to be attached to you forever or something?”
“I was ambushed by mercenaries, probably hired by the Khrynsani. I escaped with my life, but not with the beacon. The Khrynsani were close to finding the Saghred. Too close to risk leaving it where it was. To move the stone is to risk discovery. But to come in contact with the stone is to risk being taken.”
“And you had to touch it to put it in the vault.”
My father nodded.
“The stone wanted a snack before being put to bed.”
He laughed, a rich silvery sound. “I never thought of it that way, but you’re exactly right. When it hungers, it will feed.”
“I know. Prince Chigaru told me.”
My father’s expression darkened. “A Mal’Salin.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I take anything he tells me with a grain of salt—and one hand on my nearest dagger.”
“As well you should, but in this case he didn’t lead you astray.”
“I know that, too. I get the feeling the Saghred’s bad to know and worse to be around.”