All Spell Breaks Loose (4 page)

“It will be in the cave waiting for us when we arrive.” The air coming off a glacier was warmer than Carnades’s voice. Nope, we definitely weren’t turning our backs on him.

“Crate?” I quietly asked Mychael.

“With food, water, blankets, medical supplies.”

If we got ambushed by half the goblin army, there wouldn’t be enough of us left to bandage.

“In case one of us gets a bad hangnail?”

Mychael managed a grim smile. “Something like that—”

Sirens wailed, lightglobes set into the walls flashed blue, and Piaras and I damned near jumped out of our skins.

Oh hell.

Sounded like Sarad Nukpana got tired of waiting.

The thing about all hell breaking loose is that unless it breaks loose
right in front of you, you have no idea what to do.

While my brain dashed between run, fight, dive to the floor, or just stand there and shake, my hands took the more practical approach and got hold of some pointy steel. Other than Carnades, there were no bad guys to stab at the moment, but that could change. No sense being unprepared.

Meantime, the alarms continued to shriek like freaking banshees.

And the rest of our team wasn’t here.

Dammit to hell.

“What
is
that?” I shouted over the din.

“Call to arms.” Mychael ran to the door. “Allek?” he shouted down the hall.

“Attacks in the city, sir!” came the response. “We’re on it!”

Mychael spat something under his breath and extended his hand, palm up. A clear globe instantly appeared above
his hand with an image of Vegard, from the shoulders up, visible inside.

“Report,” Mychael ordered.

“Breaches in the city.” Vegard had to shout to be heard over some din of his own. “The four outer districts. I’ve dispatched response teams.”

“Reinforcements are on the way,” Mychael told him.

“Sons of bitches are coming through as far from the citadel as possible,” Justinius said. “By the time our boys get there, they’ll have come, taken what they came for, and gone.”

I didn’t have to ask the old man where they’d have come and gone from. Mirrors and/or small Gates. Or what they’d come to take—any student or mage they could get their hands on and drag back with them. Until his monster Gate was ready, Sarad Nukpana was starting his fun and games with mirrors and smaller Gates.

“Are they Khrynsani?” Mychael was asking Vegard.

“Negative. Regular army, a lot of them.”

Mychael swore. Justinius swore. I broke out in a cold sweat.

Sarad Nukpana and the goblin king had started the invasion—or were about to—and more than half of our team wasn’t in the mirror room yet.

In addition to Tam, there was Imala Kalis, director of the goblin secret service; Prince Chigaru Mal’Salin; two of his bodyguards; and my father, Eamaliel Anguis. Imala had been secretly helping to organize and equip the goblin Resistance while seemingly loyal to the goblin king. Prince Chigaru was the choice of Tam and Imala—and the saner members of the goblin nobility—to displace and replace his brother, the king. My father, Eamaliel Anguis, was the previous Saghred bond servant and, thanks to prolonged contact with the rock, was now 934 years old. His soul’s present home was in the body of a twenty-year-old Guardian. He’d led the original team that had taken the Saghred from another insane goblin king about nine hundred years ago,
so he had firsthand experience with the crap we’d be stepping into when we stepped through that mirror.

Good people to have with us. Now, if they’d just get their asses down here, we could go.

“Sir, they’re not engaging,” Vegard was saying. “At least not fully. Hit-and-run tactics. It’s like they just want to be seen.”

Mychael scowled. “Draw our men out.”

Out, as in away from the citadel.

Justinius answered my unspoken thought. “The citadel’s on lockdown; no one’s getting in.”

“Unless they’re getting in the same way as the rest of them,” Mychael growled. “And the same way we’re getting out.”

Mirrors.

Oh no.

That didn’t have to mean here in the mirror room. There were other mirrors in the citadel. Last month, we’d come through one to escape the demon queen. It led from the bowels of the old citadel on the other side of the island to the containment rooms here. Down here.

With us.

Even the best-kept secrets were seldom completely kept secrets. It’d been my experience that the bigger the risk, the bigger the chance that secret had sprung a leak. If Sarad Nukpana knew we were coming to Regor through a mirror in the citadel, then he probably knew our exit mirror was in that cave; which meant that goblins could be waiting for us on the other side to escort us to the front of Nukpana’s Saghred sacrifice line, starting with me.

If so, the only thing the bastard had to do was sit back and wait. He had what we wanted. He had the Saghred. He also had hundreds of hostages, nobles who supported Chigaru over his brother the king. All he had to do was wait on us to arrive to start the party.

The only way we’d know any of that for sure would be to step through the mirror.

“We need to go!” Carnades screamed over the sirens. “Now!”

For once, and probably for the only time, I agreed with him, but that didn’t mean I had to like it or what it meant. We did need to go, but going now would mean me, Mychael, and Carnades alone in Regor. Oh yeah, the elf mirror mage would like that. Kill us (or at least try), then run for his miserable life. He’d have to keep running, but he’d be free—until he pissed off another entire race and got himself dead. I had news for him—we weren’t going anywhere without the rest of our team. Tam, Imala, and Chigaru were goblins who knew Regor like the backs of their hands. After 934 years attached to the Saghred, Dad knew every trick that rock could pull to keep itself in one piece.

And even though Tam’s teacher hadn’t spoken to Tam in years, Tam was our best chance of finding him once we were in Regor. After that, it’d be up to Mychael. He was known throughout the seven kingdoms as the Paladin of the Conclave Guardians, and had the respect that came with the job. However, Mychael’s powers of persuasion wouldn’t do us a damned bit of good if he didn’t have anyone to persuade.

A sudden creepy-crawly sensation ran down my back that had nothing to do with goblins running amok in the city or Carnades within spell-slinging distance behind me. Power was building; power that wasn’t from Guardians with a collective case of magical jitters and nothing to smite. Even with no magic myself, I sensed it.

It was dark. Ugly.

And it was here.

A deep throb came from the far corner of the room, from a mirror mounted on the wall, framed in dark, rune-carved wood. Hands encased in armor tipped with bright steel claws ripped through the canvas covering. Goblins came through, armed with blades and crossbows. They were between us and the door; we were between them and Carnades’s mirror.

Like I said, ugly.

Nine Khrynsani, two of them mages. That was as accurate a count as I could get or cared to get as I scurried to the left to give myself room to fight. I left the power packers to Mychael and Justinius. I had a sword in each hand and balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to move in whatever direction the closest goblin picked. More Khrynsani poured through the mirror like a black-armored wave, and Piaras’s voice rang out from behind me, a commanding baritone aimed at the Khrynsani. I recognized the quickly cascading notes and words as a spellsong I’d heard Mychael use before. The goblins should have dropped in their tracks.

They kept coming.

With some kind of dark plugs in their ears.

Oh crap.

They’d known spellsingers would be guarding the mirror room.

We’d been betrayed from the inside out. Now our enemies were in here with us and deaf as doornails to any spellsong Piaras or Mychael could throw at them.

“Where’s Tam?” Piaras shouted. I wasn’t the only one who knew we needed to get through that mirror while we still could.

I parried a lunge that came entirely too close to finding its mark. “Good damned question.”

Piaras had a sword in one hand, a long parrying dagger in the other, and was putting both to good use. His opponents lately had had a fatal tendency to underestimate him because of his young age and brown eyes. Anyone who looked that innocent couldn’t have the nerve or instinct to kill. They soon found themselves wrong on all counts, not to mention dead. Piaras wasn’t a killer, but two months ago, his mind had been briefly taken over by Sarad Nukpana. The goblin’s link with Piaras and his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to control his mind had left the kid with the goblin’s masterful skill with a sword, among other deadly talents. Nukpana knew only too well how to kill, and as a result, so did Piaras.

Two Khrynsani found that out the hard way.

Seconds later, an explosion blew the door off its hinges as well as disintegrated a goodly chunk of the stone wall around it. Several Khrynsani who’d had the misfortune to be standing too close went flying.

Tamnais Nathrach was reckless, his magic powerful, and danger was just another way to have a good time. The man also knew how to make a damned fine entrance. Tam had weapons anywhere he could strap them. He was going home and was amply prepared for a less-than-warm reception. Tam followed up the concussion spell he’d used to destroy the door with his armored fists.

Behind Tam came Imala, Prince Chigaru, and his two bodyguards. Since we’d be stepping through a mirror to Regor, they were all armed and armored for trouble. That was good, because we had plenty of trouble right here, no walking through a mirror needed.

Carnades Silvanus was now somewhere behind me. He was even more likely to kill me than the goblins were. Fry me where I stood, then claim that one of the goblins had done it, or that his shot went wide and it was a horrible accident. With all the heavy firepower flying around, accidents weren’t just possible, they were likely, and I was the first person one was likely to happen to. In an enclosed space, spells were just as likely to hit your own people as taking out the people you were actually aiming at.

I barely managed to avoid being brained by the pommel of a thrown knife. I had no clue who had done the throwing. Right now, my biggest challenge was finding space to fight without killing, or being killed by, my own people.

Technically, Carnades was one of my own people. That thought was just scary enough to make me risk a quick glance behind me. The mirror mage had his hands full, literally and figuratively, as one Khrynsani had jumped him and another was about to join the fray. I’d never thought of Carnades as the brawling type, but I’d learned never to
underestimate survival instinct. He had nothing left to lose except his life, and everything to gain by taking ours and leaving the goblins with the blame.

Carnades’s hands were around a goblin soldier’s throat, his hands flaring with silver light. The Khrynsani let out a shriek you wouldn’t have thought could come from a grown man. The screams stopped and Carnades tossed him aside, the dead goblin’s throat a smoking ruin of blackened flesh.

Mychael wrenched the helmet off of a dead goblin and hurled it at the mirror they’d come through. Just a normal throw probably would have done the trick, but Mychael didn’t want to risk anything except a direct hit. There was magic behind that helmet missile, and it hit, turning the mirror’s reflective surface into a spiderweb of shattered glass. Nothing else would be coming through that.

Stopping the flow of goblins was good, but taking their escape hatch away had the undesirable effect of turning homicidal Khrynsani into homicidal and desperate Khrynsani.

But the remaining Khrynsani were outnumbered and they knew it.

Or they should have.

Anyone in their situation looking halfway happy was, in my opinion, all the way suicidal. If that was the case, these boys were about to get their wish.

One of them grinned until his fangs showed.

Mychael swore, seconded by Tam.

I didn’t need to sense what they did. I could see it.

A clawed hand, a massive hand, punched through the mirror right next to Carnades’s. The hand was attached to and followed by a scaled arm corded with thick muscle. Nothing that big should have been able to move that fast, but apparently no one had ever told that to it—whatever it was. There wasn’t any need to shatter the mirror it was coming through; the monster did that all by itself, squeezing its hunched shoulders and horned head through the glass, snapping and reducing the frame to splinters. That it had
destroyed its own escape hatch didn’t seem to bother it at all. In fact, judging from its dingy, yellow eyes and a mouthful of smiling fangs to match, it looked downright happy about where he was.

Happy and hungry.

Piaras launched into a litany of curses in Goblin. Someone had been around Talon too long. Then I saw what Piaras had seen. Spellsongs wouldn’t do any good on this thing, either. It didn’t have plugs in its ears.

It didn’t have any ears.

Though I was betting it’d bleed. Problem was getting close enough to stick it with something sharp without having it do the same to us, namely with the hooked claws attached to the fingers that were dragging the ground.

“Down!”
Justinius roared.

The old man didn’t have to yell twice. I hit the floor, with Piaras a split second behind me. At that moment, Justinius Valerian, archmage of the Conclave of Sorcerers and the most badass spellslinger there was, opened up on the monster. It was beautiful—in a seriously gory way. Justinius’s hands glowed incandescent white as he hit the monster with a fireball hard enough to embed the thing into the bedrock on the other side of the room.

At least that was what should have happened.

The fireball punched a hole the size of a shield through the monster’s midsection, but instead of the monster’s insides spilling onto the outside, suspiciously shaped blobs plopped wetly onto the floor.

Suspiciously shaped like the monster they’d fallen out of.

Oh hell.

Then Mychael was there, pushing me and Piaras toward Carnades’s mirror, away from the monster population explosion taking place before our eyes. Tam’s spells and Imala’s steel were trying to keep up, but some of the little buggers were getting past them.