by Lisa Shearin
And neither were we.
“Our queen wants the Saghred bearer alive.” The Volghul’s smile broadened, showing me all of his teeth. “As do I.”
Chapter 26
I wanted to get to the Assembly chamber as quickly as possible, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.
Fate was a bitch with a warped sense of humor.
“No resistance and this one lives,” said the Volghul holding Phaelan captive. The demon looked down at my cousin with confused distaste. “This one has no magic; it is a waste of skin.”
Phaelan opened his mouth to say something he shouldn’t. The demon’s hooked claw penetrated his skin just deep enough that a single drop of blood welled around the claw’s tip. “You wish to contradict me, little mortal?”
I shot Phaelan the mother of all shut-up looks. I’d seen what those claws could do. My cousin was not going to die in a pool of his own blood.
The demon queen wanted me alive, but I suspected that distinction was only temporary, and it applied only to me. The Volghul that had Phaelan’s entire neck in his hand wanted to play-and he was looking for an excuse. In our family, snarky one-liners came as naturally as breathing. But if Phaelan wanted to continue breathing, we both needed to keep our big mouths shut.
Phaelan was a hostage, the rest of us were prisoners. My cousin had no magic to defend himself, and now he had no weapons. And in a matter of moments, neither did the rest of us. I’d gotten my cousin into this; I’d get him out. I’d get us all out. Piaras was being treated like a prize. I knew why, and so did he. Phaelan was a hostage; Piaras was going to be a royal gift.
With an escort of nine Volghuls that I could see, and more that I could sense, we weren’t going anywhere but where our captors wanted to take us. And I couldn’t see them going anywhere but the Hellgate. We’d be there in minutes. Any plans I’d come up with until now had centered on getting in, locating the Scythe, stealing it if possible, then getting out, preferably without being seen by anyone. Capture by demons had put a major crimp in those plans. Not that the finding, stealing, and escaping parts of my plan couldn’t still happen. A master thief might be able to snatch the goods out from under their mark’s nose.
But their mark wasn’t the queen of demons. And I wasn’t a master thief.
Phaelan and Vegard weren’t going to die, and the demon queen wasn’t getting her hands on Piaras. The only way either would happen would be over my dead body, and I’d take as many demons with me as I could.
Our captors led us up the last flight of stairs and the heat hit us. A broad hall curved in both directions-my guess was we were in an entrance hall to the Assembly. A sickly green glow, like some sort of fungus, had been smeared along the walls at irregular intervals, dimly lighting a space big enough to hold hundreds of mages. The heat was stifling; but it wasn’t a dry heat, this was like walking into a greenhouse. Directly across from us were a pair of massive doors that must have been at least three times my height. They were closed and were guarded by more Volghuls.
All of that registered in the only part of my brain that wasn’t screaming.
The floor was covered with eggs.
We were in a demon incubator.
I didn’t want to meet the demons that had laid these things. The eggs were oval and almost came up to my knees. Some kind of sticky goo held them upright on the floor. Half of the eggs had hatched, the rest were glowing softly, their shells nearly translucent. Things were squirming inside, things that wanted to be outside. With us. In the middle of several of the already hatched clutches lay pale bones and what looked like the remains of shredded robes. The newborn demons’ first meals had probably been Rudra Muralin’s now-deceased allies. No wonder Muralin was topside playing ambassador. He wasn’t in control down here anymore. No one was-at least no one from around here.
No wonder he wanted me to come down here to close the Hellgate.
The Volghul that had my arm clutched in his claw saw where I was looking and knew what I had seen.
“Yes, the mortal spellcasters made fine food for our children. They grow quickly and eat much. There is no more food here, so they have gone to the surface to hunt.”
My stomach knotted. Newborn demons. That was what we’d run into downstairs, hatchlings on their way to feed. Swarming through dark tunnels that emptied all over the city. Except the demons weren’t going all over the city, at least not yet. First they’d take what food was closest.
Campus. Hundreds of students.
I remembered the terrified chaos in the Quad yesterday that had been caused by one demon. These were swarms, nothing but teeth and starving stomachs, small enough to go anywhere, ravenous enough to eat anything.
I saw Vegard out of the corner of my eye. His face was an expressionless mask. Guardians protected the Conclave mages and students. Mychael would defend a student before a mage anytime, and Vegard thought like his commander. He needed to get away; we all needed to get away. Now. Someone had to warn those kids. Sora and her faculty were expecting Volghul-sized demons and larger-not hundreds, maybe thousands of piranha with feet and endless appetites.
“Your young ones will be sweet.” The demon’s sharp black tongue flicked across his lips in anticipation. “Our young will feed first, then we shall join them.”
I felt the pull of the Hellgate through the closed doors. Actually it was the Saghred doing the feeling; I wanted to be doing the running. What lay beyond those doors was the entryway into our world for a horde of demons. In the midst of my growing panic, it dimly occurred to me that I had absolutely no clue how many demons were in a horde.
The Assembly was huge. Row after row of crumbling stone tiers that had once held chairs fanned up and out from the massive round stage with steps leading up to a dais that dominated the chamber. Seven columns rose from the edge of the stage to meet the vaulted ceiling.
The Hellgate was on the dais, and it was only a gate in the loosest sense of the word. A slickly wet membrane was suspended between two of the columns like a spiderweb, opaque around the edges where it touched the columns, and increasingly transparent as it neared the center, with a narrow opening that looked more like a slit than anything else. A demon slid through and landed with a wet plop on the stone floor. It looked up, quivering in its eagerness. Demons only got that excited over one thing. Food. It scrambled to its feet, claws, whatever, and with two bounds disappeared through one of the five man-height mirrors set up at the base of the other columns. Depending on where the receiving mirrors were on the island, the demon might not have to go far to find what it wanted.
“Oh shit,” Vegard breathed.
I couldn’t have said it better.
As fascinating as incoming demons from Hell were, my attention was riveted to a stone slab to the right side of the Hellgate opening, a slab that bore a disturbing resemblance to an altar. Or more to the point, I was riveted to who was on that slab.
Carnades Silvanus. Chained, gagged, and laid out in a white robe like a demon snack.
Rudra Muralin stood at the head of the altar, and at the sight of me, what was a confident smile twisted into a smirk. He was one happy goblin. My goal-with my dying breath, if necessary-was to ruin his day.
I wanted to yell out “I told you so” to the elf mage, but I looked around me at an uncountable number of yellow, green, and red eyes shining out of the darkness-and every last pair of those eyes were staring unblinking at us.
We were newcomers, prisoners, playthings.
We were food.
I couldn’t see the stairs beneath my feet all that well, but it didn’t really matter since my feet didn’t touch them but once or twice. The two Volghuls who gripped my upper arms decided that I was easier to lift and carry.
We were nearly to the stage before I saw the demon queen. She was tall and slender with opalescent skin that was a near-perfect match for the Hellgate’s membrane. She wore an intricate headpiece set with pale jewels. That was all. The queen of demons was naked. It took me longer to reali
ze this. I was a Benares; I looked at the jewels first. But from the collective intake of breath from behind me, her nudity was the first thing-and probably the only thing-that Phaelan, Vegard, and Piaras had noticed.
She had an unearthly beauty that was spoiled somewhat by her red eyes with vertical black pupils, and the twisting claws on the end of tapered, but otherwise elegant fingers. Aside from that she was flawless, and quite obviously female.
“The Saghred bearer comes to me at last.” Her voice was lush and full, like overripe fruit on the verge of rotting. “You are too late to bring me what I wanted.” She paused, and her lips curled as if from a private joke. “But you are just in time to give me what I require.”
As she spoke, she negligently twirled something between her fingers; it was silver, slender, and curved. I was sure there were cavorting demons carved into it, but I didn’t feel the need to move in for a closer look.
The queen of demons had the Scythe of Nen.
I had a feeling of impending doom.
She smiled fully. Her teeth were more or less human-more if you just considered the number, less if you noticed that every last one was fang sharp.
“Nice knife,” I managed through a suddenly tight throat.
“It is a pretty little thing, isn’t it? I thought you would appreciate it, considering that it was acquired through no effort of your own.”
I didn’t mention that I’d made every effort to get to it first. She knew that as well as I did.
Her voice dropped to a resonant purr. “Come closer, elfling.”
I didn’t move. The Volghuls clutching my arms simply lifted me straight up and carried me. It was hard to look tough and be defiant when your feet didn’t touch the floor. They put me down about five feet in front of their queen and right next to Carnades’s altar. I looked down at the elf mage, sighed, and just shook my head. From the flare of rage in those arctic eyes, I think I got my message across. I’d warned him; he didn’t believe me, and now here he was. I’d imagine his abduction had resulted in some halfhearted searching and a lot of silent cheering.
Beyond the stage were shadows and restlessly shifting shapes. Large shapes that were moving in closer to get a better look at us-or a better sniff and probably hoping for a taste. From what I could see, a couple of them were large enough to have been responsible for the population explosion upstairs. I was sure I’d been in worse places, but I couldn’t think of one right now. My brain was too busy running back and forth between mere panic and basic terror.
The black magic Rudra Muralin had used to create and open the Hellgate was still there. A brimstone stench seeped through the Hellgate from what lay beyond, but hanging over it all was terror, pain, despair, death-all the ingredients for inviting hell on earth. People had suffered and died here. And the smarmy goblin not five feet in front of me was responsible for it all.
I slowly looked around at the horde moving restlessly in the darkness around us. “Is this more or less what you had in mind?” I asked Rudra Muralin. I was going for cool, calm, with a touch of cocky. I didn’t quite get there, but my voice didn’t crack once. I was nothing short of stunned.
He flashed a grin full of fang. “I’m anticipating much more. And now that you’re here, the real fun can begin.” Muralin turned to the demon queen and inclined his head respectfully. “Your Majesty, when we have the Saghred and it is time to kill this one, may I use the Scythe of Nen and do it myself?”
The queen kept her eyes on me. “Patience, young one,” she told Muralin. “The elfling has yet to be truly useful to me. You would carelessly waste a valuable resource.”
“The elf will only be useful when she is dead,” Muralin countered adamantly.
“That is your opinion. It is yet another that I do not share.” The demon queen’s lips curled in the faintest of smiles. “I have found that males are best used, not trusted,” she murmured in my direction.
The goblin’s black eyes flashed in anger. “But I have-”
The queen’s smile vanished and she held up a single, taloned finger. Wisely Muralin swallowed his next words. The goblin was insane, not stupid. He was cautious, maybe even afraid of her. Smart of him.
And good to know.
“Curb your tongue, goblin,” the demon queen snapped. “Or you may find yourself without it.” Her ruby eyes settled on me. “Silence is another admirable trait in males. Unfortunately, so few possess it.”
I grinned. It was probably a bad idea, but I just couldn’t help it.
“You find my words amusing, elfling?”
“Just highly perceptive, Your Majesty. Particularly when it comes to him.” I nodded toward Rudra Muralin.
“Ours is a business relationship, nothing more. Trust never entered into it.”
“Trust and business can be a dangerous combination,” I agreed, tossing a meaningful glance in Muralin’s direction. “It can blow up in your face at the most inconvenient times.”
The goblin stood utterly still, his black eyes promising murder, but interestingly, he made no move to deliver. In fact, I felt nothing from him. No presence, no magic, nothing. If I hadn’t been standing there seeing him with my own two eyes, I wouldn’t have known he was there. The open Hellgate distorted all of my senses, and if there was ever a time that I needed all of my senses on high alert, it was now.
The demon queen’s ruby eyes met mine and I couldn’t look away. “You I trust less, but I like more.” She looked past me and smiled slowly. “Do you wish to barter for the elfling’s freedom as well?” she asked someone behind me.
“I do.”
My mouth fell open. I tried to jerk around to look, but my head was all that could move thanks to my twin Volghul anchors.
Tam stepped up on the dais, giving the Volghuls no more consideration or notice than the columns surrounding the stage.
I hadn’t sensed a thing. I still couldn’t, even with our umi’atsu bond, and Tam was standing right next to me. All I could hear was a crackling white noise from the Hellgate, distorting my thoughts, filling my head. Focusing was an effort. Magic was…
… Oh no.
Magic wasn’t possible. I couldn’t use any magic, and neither could Rudra Muralin.
And neither could Tam.
The distortion from the Hellgate was too strong, and the tangible proof was chained to that altar-and standing right next to me. The manacles holding Carnades weren’t the magic-sapping variety. They were just iron. Just iron was holding down one of the strongest mages there was.
Then there was Tam. His leather armor was slashed across his chest and back, by both claws and steel, and more than a few of those cuts had reached Tam’s skin. He didn’t have a single weapon on him-at least not any that I could see. Tam’s long hair was down and disheveled, the queen was all cold beauty and confidence. There was no sign of Tam’s dark mage hit squad. They were either dead, or they were the ones Tam was bartering for. Oh, this was not good.
Tam wasn’t a prisoner, but he wasn’t a guest, either.
The queen was looking from me to Tam and back again, thoughtfully tapping the tip of the Scythe’s blade against her lips.
Then she made a low, pleased sound from deep in her throat, part purr, half hiss. “You know the elfling.”
“We’ve met,” Tam said dryly.
“Oh, I think it is much more than that. You barter prettily, goblin; but I require more than sweet words. You know this.”
“I have told you that I cannot procure what you want.”
“Cannot procure? Oh, but I think you can. You simply refuse to get it for me. If you require an incentive, I would greatly enjoy providing it for you. You brought many other goblins to fight beside you. I could torment them one at a time before your eyes, if you make it necessary. I assure you that there is no limit to my creativity. Eventually you will do what I want.”
The demon queen was playing with Tam, and I had a sinking feeling she had only begun her games. Eggs were hatching, demons were rampaging, her enemies
were magically helpless or chained before her, and she had the Scythe in her hands. She could afford a little time to indulge herself. I resisted the urge to step in front of Piaras. It would just attract her attention that much faster.
The demon queen gazed down at Carnades. “And I thought this one would be my only source of amusement. Release her,” she told my demon guards. “Release all of them; they cannot escape.”
They immediately did as ordered. When they let me go, I felt a cool rush of blood into my lower arms and flexed my fingers to restore the circulation. Not that I could do anything, at least not yet, but it always paid to be prepared. I wondered how far the no-magic zone extended. My legs wanted to find out; my head knew I wouldn’t make it two steps.
“By all means, elfling. Try to escape.” The queen looked out into the shadows. “My subjects are forbidden to be on this side of the columns. It pains them to see you thus, you and your friends, since I have not yet released them to feed. Their hunger is quite overwhelming them.” The queen’s red eyes sparkled with malevolent glee, and her voice dropped to a sibilant whisper. “By all means, take a walk in the dark.”
“I’ll pass.”
I couldn’t see into Tam’s mind, but apparently the demon queen could see into mine. Then again, maybe she couldn’t. Escape was the obvious thing to do when a pair of demonic thugs let you go. But I wasn’t going to take the chance; if by some miracle I got a plan worth pursuing, I’d do everything I could to keep it to myself.
The queen looked over my other shoulder. Piaras. She’d spotted Piaras.
Dammit.
“You bring me treasure,” she murmured in approval, her eyes bright. The demon queen cast the barest glance at Rudra Muralin. “This one brought me nothing. No gifts, no tribute.” Her full lips narrowed in regal displeasure. “Arrogant.”
“Not even flowers?” I said before I could stop myself.
The queen laughed, silvery and cold, a calculated sound, probably practiced to duplicate the real thing. She showed Muralin her teeth. He had only two fangs; she had a mouthful.