All Spell Breaks Loose (23 page)

Cyran and the other prisoners thought I was the Saghred’s bond servant with tons of magic. Jash Masloc knew differently. When I stepped up to the door, nothing had happened.

Tam went very still. “Magic-activated trap.”

“You got it,” I said. “The sensors in the city walls didn’t detect me, and the Magh’Sceadu didn’t acknowledge my
existence. Neither does whatever this trap is.” My bound and gagged magic was about to come in handy. “Looks like this one’s mine, boys.”

Jash calmly pointed down at the floor just outside the cell door. I looked down at the stones beneath my boots, careful not to inadvertently shuffle my feet one inch closer.

Now, if Sarad Nukpana had really wanted to be a son of a bitch, he would have rigged a trap for that cell that only a mundane could approach, but only a mage could disarm. I was hoping our psychotic nemesis had enough on his plate preparing for a combination of wedding and slaughter to waste too much creativity on one cell door. I’d learned a lot about Sarad Nukpana since he’d slithered out from under a rock and into my life, but I didn’t know whether he was a stickler for detail.

I was about to find out.

I squatted down to get a closer look at the stones. There it was. It looked like the stone the floor was made of, but a dull gleam betrayed it as something else. I knelt to get an even better look at the thing.

It was a lidded metal box with a small handle set into the top. The handle would either be to lift it out or open it up. I gingerly reached out to touch the handle. No reaction from it, no pained screams from me, and the prisoners were still breathing. Though just because I didn’t hear any alarm being given didn’t mean that one hadn’t been. Without magic, the only way I could tell would be the sound of boot-shod Khrynsani pounding down the stairs.

Whatever was in that box was made to keep any magic users out by killing those inside. If you’d risked life and hide to break someone out of prison, you didn’t want your meticulously planned jailbreak to kill the people you’d gone to all the trouble to save.

Jash was gesturing for me to lift the box out of its hole in the floor and to open the lid. I raised my eyebrows to ask if he was sure about that. He nodded once.

This could work, or it could just as easily suffocate the prisoners or fry me.

As far as magic was concerned, I’d never been what you could call a cautious student. It was a wonder that I had all of my parts and pieces in the right places. Some magical risks were fun. Opening a box that could suck the air out of a room and suffocate a dungeon cell full of mages and military officers wasn’t one of them. My mind helpfully treated me to a flashback of Sarad Nukpana reaching through that Gate to grab me and the Saghred. The smell of frying flesh wasn’t something you got the luxury of forgetting. How come you couldn’t remember the fun stuff, but seared meat got top billing?

The goblins locked in that cell obviously knew what we’d just discovered. Sarad Nukpana had probably told them himself just for giggles.

If your rescuer has magic, you all die.

The guards had seen my face on the wanted posters around town. I wondered if the goblins in that cell knew who I was. Judging from the frantic way they’d initially waved me back, they knew full well about me and my pet rock. Those had been the faces of people who knew they had only seconds to live. Now they were confused.

I was confused right along with them. My nose told me there had been Level Twelve wards down here, and they hadn’t been disabled for long. I could still smell the burnt sulfur stench left behind when they’d been deactivated. Granted, something that strong tended to linger awhile, but this had to have been in the past hour—after Chigaru had escaped.

And after we had escaped Tam’s house.

Suddenly this whole setup smelled like a trap made just for me. A mage couldn’t get near it, but I wasn’t a mage right now, and thanks to Carnades, Sarad Nukpana knew it. We were here; there was no backing out now. We had to get this cell door open, and I was the only one who could do it. The
guards upstairs had fought, but it had been a little too easy. Nukpana wanted me right where I was.

I could almost hear his sadistically silky voice. “Demoralizing, isn’t it, Seeker?”

He was probably watching right now with scrying crystals hidden in the wall cracks. And if he was watching, he and about a hundred of his Khrynsani goons might be on their way here right now. In fact, I couldn’t imagine Nukpana sitting this one out regardless of who was next on his sacrifice list.

As of now, that could be me. Or maybe he’d want me chained to the side of the altar while he sacrificed life after life to the stone; their souls pulled screaming through me before being dragged into the Saghred. Their life forces being used to take more souls, more lives, more kingdoms, until—

Stop it, Raine! Stop screwing around, get these people out of that cell, and haul your ass out of here.

Time to earn my keep. I lifted the box out and opened it.

It made magic, something only a gifted sentient being should have been able to do, but this was just a box with nothing inside but gears and levers. I had no idea how it could create a ward and sustain or take the air in a stone-walled room. How it did those things didn’t matter. How I could stop it did.

The workings of the device reminded me of the locking mechanism on a Caesolian nobleman’s vault. Emptying that vault hadn’t been my idea; that had been Phaelan. He’d tricked me into coming along because he knew I was better with mechanical gadgets than he was. I hadn’t known that a heavily guarded and warded vault was Phaelan’s planned after-dinner activity. Note to the wise: if my cousin asked you to dinner, enjoy the meal and get out. Sticking around for cognac and cigars would be a mistake.

It stood to reason that if the gears stopped, the ward and air sucking would stop, too. Or maybe stopping it would simply take the air out of the cell faster. The only way to
know was to stop the thing. I was lying flat on the floor, my face inches away from one of Sarad Nukpana’s sadistic toys, picklocks out, and tinkering with the insides.

I’d had to do some quick work on that vault in Caesolia, too. The guards that nobleman employed carried what were basically meat hooks on a stick. That the hooks were silver and the pikes inlaid with gold didn’t mean that it would feel any fancier sliding through your guts. I was motivated then and I was motivated now.

I couldn’t see Sarad Nukpana trusting a prison guard not to screw up his trap and suffocate his valuable sacrifices. There had to be an easy way to do—

A key.

Or at least a slot for one. There was a thin slot, on the outside of the box, concealed among the fancy filigree some royal metalworker covered the box in to try to impress Sarad Nukpana or the late king. Knowing Nukpana, he was the picture of politeness and thanked the man for his artistry right before he had him killed so he couldn’t make the same thing for someone else. Probably took the gold right out of his dead hands.

Locks, I could do. I didn’t have time to hope that Nukpana’s gadget maker had enabled the machine to recognize when someone used picklocks rather than the key. I had to trust that he didn’t. There’d be no surer way to get your throat slit than to make a gadget fatal for the man who had paid you to make it.

There was a click.

The gears turned faster.

Oh shit.

I looked into the cell. Torches burning. Prisoners still breathing.

The box’s gears clicked and whirled and…

…and stopped.

A click came from above my head and the cell lock released.

Yes!

I started to pull out the picklock and the gears started whirling again.

In a fumbling panic, I got the picklock back where it was and the whirling stopped. Looked like I’d be holding this thing until everyone was out.

Jash pushed the door and Tam was pulling. It was heavy, but they got it open in short order, and the goblin prisoners quickly got out.

Kesyn came charging down the stairs with shouting and pounding boots entirely too close behind him.

“You got that Plan B ready to go, boy?” he yelled to Tam.

Tam had a string of curses ready. I hoped a brilliant alternate escape plan would come next.

The old goblin stopped next to me. I was crouching on the floor, picklock still in the keyhole.

It was past time to go. I pulled out the picklock.

There was a loud click, the floor opened up, and Kesyn and I fell into darkness.

I landed hard in something soft—and squirmy.

“Dammit, girl,” Kesyn wheezed, “you could kill a man with that bony ass of yours. Ever think about eating?”

I half rolled, but mostly fell off of Kesyn and onto what should have been a floor. However, any floor I’d ever walked, landed, or fell on hadn’t been spongy.

I was panting and shaking. I swallowed and panted some more. “What the hell was that?”

Kesyn heaved himself to his feet. “Other than a trapdoor, it’s proof Sarad was expecting us.”

I scrabbled to stand up, falling twice before I could get my feet steady on the whatever-it-was we’d landed on. It wasn’t breathing; at least I didn’t think it was. Wherever we were was dark and damp, and from the way our voices bounced off the walls I couldn’t see, we were in a room only marginally larger than a closet. Frantically I looked up. No seam of light showed where that trapdoor was, and no sound came from beyond it.

“Can you see anything?” I asked Kesyn.

“Enough to see that no one else is going to be coming down the way we did. I heard the snap after I fell in.”

What the hell was he talking about? “Snap?”

“Trapdoor like that has to be reset before it’ll open again. I don’t know who Sarad was fishing for, but I think the boy will be tickled pink when he sees what he got on the end of his hook.”

Us. I didn’t want to ponder the image that Sarad Nukpana catching us on a hook conjured. Nor was tickled an emotion I could imagine Sarad Nukpana having. Though if he saw me, he might come close.

I desperately wanted to call out to Mychael, to let him know I was down here.

Raine, he knows exactly where you are—down a hole. If you open your big mouth and yell, you’ll let anything down here know you’re down here, too.
Nukpana could have just as easily rigged his trap to catch food for the nice dragon family downstairs in this godforsaken house of horrors.

“Those prisoners just set foot out of that cell only to get captured again,” I muttered.

From the brushing sounds, I assumed that Kesyn was straightening his layers of robes and whatnot. “We don’t know that,” he said. “All we know for sure is that
we’ve
been caught. By who is an assumption, but since we’re in the Khrynsani temple, and Sarad’s in the temple, it’s safe to assume that Sarad’s on his way here.”

Our assumption was all that was safe right now; we sure weren’t.

Kesyn just stood there, listening to me panic. “Would you like some light?” he eventually asked.

“That would be helpful.”

I waited. No light.

“Well, basilisk balls,” Kesyn said mildly.

I tensed. “What is it? Or what
isn’t
it?”

“Magic doesn’t work. Must be a dampening ward around this cell.” He paused. “Nice job, actually.”

“Glad you’re impressed with their work ethic.” My voice was starting to shake right along with the rest of me.

I heard Kesyn fumbling around in his robes.

“If you have to take another whiz, old man, get away from me.”

“Nope, saving that for a special occasion.” More fumbling. “Let’s see if I still have… Yes, I always carry spares.”

I snorted. “A flask?” Though I wouldn’t mind a stiff belt right now.

“That, too.”

A spark flared to life in front of me, moving vigorously up and down. It was one of Kesyn’s light marbles, activated by shaking, which was what he was doing to it. The light confirmed what my hands had already told me: small cell, high ceiling that was mostly a hole soaring up into darkness, and no apparent door in any of the four walls. There had to be one. Why go to the trouble to bait a trapdoor without any way to extract your prize? That was what the two of us would be. Prizes.

Kesyn moved to the center of the cell and tossed the small green light up into the shaft. A sharp pop and sizzle later, we were dusted with glowing green remains of a destroyed light marble.

Kesyn gave a low whistle. “Nasty ass wards.”

I couldn’t see the old goblin take a bite out of his never-ending chunk of cheese, but I sure smelled it.

“Well, we won’t be climbing out the same way we fell in,” he noted. “That’s okay; I’ve got more.” He found another light marble in his pocket and shook it up.

Silence. Still no shouts from above. If Mychael and Tam were trying to blast or pound their way through that floor to get to us, I couldn’t hear it. Unless they were too busy fighting for their lives against whoever had been wearing those boots running after Kesyn.

“Who was chasing you?” I asked.

“Temple guards.”

“And?”

“Some black mages.”

“How many are ‘some’?”

“More than a few.”

Damnation.

Mychael and Tam could fight more than a few, and hopefully the mages among the prisoners they’d just freed would still be able to put up a decent fight after being in that cell for who knew how long.

“Could you tell how strong those Khrynsani mages were?”

“You don’t get to be a black mage by being a magical ninety-pound weakling,” Kesyn snapped. “I didn’t stop and ask for their qualifications.”

I blew out the first decent breath I’d managed to get. “Sorry.”

Kesyn grunted. I took that as manspeak for “no problem.”

“Where do you think we are?” I asked. “Besides up shit creek without a paddle?”

“This is the Khrynsani temple. This whole place is shit creek. Up, down, doesn’t matter where. I’d say we’re in a cell.”

“No kidding.”

“Judging from the padded floor, they wanted whoever tripped that trap up there to live, at least for a while.”