Bewitched & Betrayed (5 page)

His brows knit in confusion. I had a tendency to do that to people.

“Explain.”

“There are two elves on this island who we know report directly to elven intelligence,” I said, “specifically to Markus Sevelien—and one of them is on that table. The other one is Taltek Balmorlan.”

Part of me wouldn’t mind seeing Taltek Balmorlan’s shriveled body on a table. I’d never liked that part of me, but that part always had my best interests at heart—like survival. Balmorlan was an inquisitor for elven intelligence who had an obsession for high-powered weapons, not the steel and gun-powder variety, but people like me whose off-the-charts magical skills made them weapons. Taltek Balmorlan didn’t ask; he just took. He was still on the island, and he still hadn’t given up on getting me.

“Think about it,” I continued. “Sarad Nukpana dumps the general’s dead body at my feet in public and calls it a gift. And in the red-light district right after a raid on a cathouse is about as public as you can get. Balmorlan’s been claiming that Nukpana and I are working together.”

“Nukpana’s been stalking you since the day he met you.” Mychael’s voice was clipped with barely restrained anger. “Even being inside the Saghred didn’t slow him down. I would hardly call that working together.”

“Apparently Balmorlan has a looser definition,” I told him. “And that’s his boss on that table. What do you want to bet, he’s going to claim that I’m an accessory to kidnapping and murder? And since I’m an elf, that I should be in elven government custody, which conveniently happens to be him. He gets me locked up, which is exactly what he wants, and Sarad Nukpana gets the added bonus of knowing where to find me when he wants me.”

“He’d have to get Markus Sevelien’s approval to arrest you,” Justinius pointed out.

I jerked my head toward Aratus’s corpse. “Right now, I think he’d get it.”

Years ago, Duke Markus Sevelien had given me my first big job as a seeker. My new business was struggling. I guess potential clients didn’t trust a Benares to find—and then actually return—their valuables. I took occasional assignments from Markus that mostly consisted of finding abducted elves: diplomats, intelligence agents, aristocrats who’d gotten involved in something over their highborn heads. It was gratifying work and I was good at it.

Markus’s help got me through the lean years. I liked him; I trusted him. At least I used to. Now I wasn’t so sure. I never thought he’d betray me; but before, I’d never been the only person to wield the Saghred and stay both sane and alive.

Markus had always been up-front and honest with me. And if I’d been standing face-to-face with him right now, he’d probably still be honest—his loyalties were to elven intelligence, not to me. He’d put any friendship we might have to the side as an impediment to him doing his job. And I knew from past experience that Markus would do his job at any and all costs. It wasn’t personal; it was business.

It was the Saghred.

And since the Saghred had attached itself to me, that made me his business. I could almost understand that; the Saghred was a weapon that elven intelligence wasn’t about to let fall into goblin hands. That meant he couldn’t allow me to fall into goblin hands. Hell, I didn’t want to be in anyone’s hands.

If Markus had to arrest me to make that happen, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

And both Mychael and Justinius knew it.

The old man’s blue eyes were hard as agates. “No one is going to arrest you. As long as you’re on this island, you’re under Guardian protection and mine.”

The Guardians were protectors of the Saghred, and since the Saghred and I were psychic roommates that protection extended to me. To Mychael, I had become more than his job.

“Would any of that protection override a charge of accessory to kidnapping and murdering an elven general?” I asked them both.

The old man’s silence told me what I already knew.

“Where were you this afternoon?” he asked.

“On the
Fortune
with Phaelan. So I’ve got a fine alibi—a Benares pirate vouching for an accused Benares murderer.” I snorted. “That’ll carry weight in court.”

Right around my neck.

Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta’s pale, long-fingered hand hovered above
the dead man’s lips. “His memories were the first thing taken, then his conscious mind, his soul, and finally what little remained of his life force. The ritual . . . the act that resulted in this is called cha’nescu, and the victim was conscious and fully aware while it happened.”

“Shit,” Vegard muttered from behind me.

Kalta nodded without looking away from the body. “Quite.” The nachtmagus regarded the general like a lab project. “A complete absence of life,” he murmured as if he were the only one in the room. “Not one flicker remains. It’s as if he never lived. Grisly work, yet truly astounding in its complexity.”

I remembered Nukpana’s “bravo.” Kalta’s comment was just as chilling.

Vidor Kalta was tall, thin, and seemingly born to wear funeral black. His dark hair was cropped close to his head. I guess when you chased down ghouls and banshees for a living, short hair was a safety precaution. Kalta’s features were sharp, and his face had the pallor one would expect of someone who worked mostly nights. But it was his eyes that gave him away. Black and bright as a raven’s, Vidor Kalta’s eyes were a reflection of a quick mind, a keen intellect, and, if what I felt coming off of him was any indication, an incredible power. Power that was all the more impressive because of his restraint. It was like the man had Death on a leash, and it was following him around like a puppy.

“Do you know how it was done?” Mychael asked.

Kalta nodded. “Everything was consumed that made General Aratus who he was.” He took a small towel from beside the table and carefully wiped his hands. “Once the entity that did this began the process, it continued to feed until there was nothing left. Pausing at any point would have negated the ritual.”

My stomach did a slow, nauseating roll. “Feed?”

“Not a pleasant procedure—nor painless. Though the act itself is said to be done through mouth-to-mouth contact.”

That did it; I was going to be sick. “A kiss?”

“Not one you would ever want to receive, Mistress Benares. Or be able to survive.”

“What or who could have done it?”

“Greater demons are the most common culprits.”

“What are the uncommon culprits?”

“A nachtmagus with enough power could have done this.” Vidor Kalta smiled at his macabre joke in a flash of small teeth, white and even. “But considering Mid’s present predicament, I believe the response you seek is a spiritual entity—one of those previously imprisoned in the Saghred, perhaps?”

“We have a suspect,” Mychael told him. “Could a spirit have done this?”

“That would depend on who the spirit was in life, and how long they had been imprisoned inside the Saghred.” Kalta’s bright, black eyes were on me. “From what Mistress Benares reported from her most enviable journeys inside the stone, most of those inside would have been too weakened to perform the ritual. Do you know the ages of the escaped spirits?”

Mychael hesitated a moment before answering. “We do. The youngest is approximately forty years old; the eldest is more than four thousand.”

“Fascinating. Since you have only captured one, may I ask how you know this?”

“We have a source.”

“May I ask—”

I spoke. “Sarad Nukpana took my soul inside the Saghred not long after he was imprisoned. Generally villains only share their evil master plan with you when they don’t think you’ll be getting away. He told me who his allies were; I gave the names to Paladin Eiliesor.”

And I’d just given Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta a bald-faced lie. Hell’s hounds could have been snapping at my heels and I wouldn’t have told anyone that a seventh soul had escaped from the Saghred.

Our information source was my father. A Guardian and protector of the Saghred since its capture from the goblin king almost nine hundred years ago. Nearly continuous contact with the stone had stopped my father from aging. About a year ago, the Saghred had turned its protector into its dinner, imprisoning my father’s soul inside the stone with the thousands that had been previously consumed by the Saghred, or sacrificed to it. Now his soul occupied the body of a young Guardian who had been killed by the demon queen moments before she opened the Saghred.

Dad was also still a wanted criminal. He had fled Mid nine centuries ago and had taken the Saghred with him to keep the stone’s power out of the hands of some of the Conclave’s top mages, but as far as the Conclave was concerned, there was no statute of limitations on Saghred stealing. If he was discovered, he’d be executed; it didn’t matter whose body he was wearing.

“Our primary suspect had only been inside for a month,” Mychael told Kalta.

“You refer to Sarad Nukpana.”

“I do.”

“Last winter I had the unique opportunity to meet him. The high priest of the Brotherhood of the Khrynsani. A most ancient and—among the goblin aristocracy—a most venerable order. Being a human, I do not share their belief that goblins are the superior race and all others should be subject to their whim and rule. But I valued the chance for an extended discussion with their leader. A most prodigious intellect, eager to learn, to experience. Not surprisingly, he expressed a keen interest in my calling.”

“The Sarad Nukpana I saw tonight wasn’t an entity, spiritual or otherwise,” I told him bluntly. “Could doing that”—I indicated the corpse—“help Nukpana . . . regrow his body?”

“You said he was wearing a cloak.”

“Yes, and a hat.”

“Did you see his hands, or was he wearing gloves?”

I gazed at a point on the far wall, recalling the street, the coach, the horses, and the hands of the coachman who held their reins. “Gloves. Only his face was exposed.”

Kalta’s eyes flickered with what looked like doubt. “It was dark.”

“It was light enough,” I snapped. “I couldn’t see through him. And he had enough of something in those gloves to control four horses.”

“I don’t dispute your account, Mistress Benares. I am merely attempting to gauge the extent to which Sarad Nukpana has regenerated.”

The bottom dropped completely out of my stomach. “It’s possible, then.”

“Oh, yes. Most of my colleagues still consider such an accomplishment to be theory. But a very few have actually witnessed the phenomenon; unfortunately, I was not one of them.” He flashed his teeth in an anticipatory smile. “It appears that’s about to change.”

“If you ran across Sarad Nukpana now, I hardly think he’d want to chat over drinks.”

Mychael’s expression was hard. “If he’s not completely regenerated, how do I stop him from going further?”

I spoke. “Better yet, how can we make him go back?”

“You can kill him, Mistress Benares,” Kalta told me point-blank. “According to the notes of one of my colleagues, Sarad Nukpana will become almost corporeal every time he feeds. But as his regenerating body absorbs the life force of his victims, he will fade again.”

“Feeding and digesting,” Mychael concluded.

Kalta nodded. “And then hungering once again. Though each time he feeds, the fading will become less, until he has consumed enough life to qualify as a living being himself. Only then will you be able to kill him like any other mortal.”

Mychael glanced down at the general’s corpse. “Nachtmagus Kalta, I can’t wait until Nukpana gorges himself on the citizens and guests on this island, so there’s enough of him for me to kill.”

“You may not have long to wait for that opportunity,” Kalta said. “If he has been free for nearly three weeks, and was strong enough to drive a team of horses, then General Aratus was hardly his first victim.”

“To get the strength he needed to kill someone like General Aratus, he probably began with people he thought wouldn’t be missed,” Mychael surmised.

“A correct assessment, in my opinion. A weakened predator consumes whatever it can to become strong enough to go after the larger game it truly desires.”

I snorted. “People whose deaths would cause an inter-kingdom incident.”

“You said that Sarad Nukpana consumed the general’s memories,” Mychael said.

Kalta nodded. “That is correct.”

“Would Nukpana retain those memories?”

“His memories, as well as his abilities and talents.”

Oh hell.

That meant Sarad Nukpana knew everything a top elven general knew, meaning Aratus’s military strategic ability and any secrets he was privy to by being in close contact with elven intelligence. Only now they were Nukpana’s secrets. He could use them, or he could share them with the goblin secret service. Their highest-ranking officers had been arriving on Mid along with their counterparts in elven intelligence. Give it another week and Mid would be seething with spies.

All of them wanted to get their hands on me. Any of them would be perfect victims for Sarad Nukpana.