Magic Lost, Trouble Found rb-1

by Lisa Shearin

  I could use some myself. Piaras couldn’t do his work until I did mine. Now that we were away from the press of courtiers downstairs, I felt the ample wards Primari A’Zahra Nuru had left behind to protect her beloved prince. If I failed to block those wards completely, Piaras wouldn’t get past the first few notes of his goblin lullaby. My job was to let the guards enjoy a sleepsong serenade while covering the figurative ears of Primari Nuru’s wards.

  Piaras swallowed. “I’ll do my best.” His voice was firm and his eyes determined.

  And I would do mine.

  “I’ll shield you while you work,” I told him. “Once the guards are out, we’ll have to move quickly. Once we’re on the estate grounds, stay close to me. Once we’re off the grounds, stay very close to me.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I understand.”

  He didn’t, but I wasn’t going to be the one giving him the gruesome details of what was waiting for us outside the estate walls—and probably inside as well. He’d find out for himself soon enough.

  My part was almost as challenging as weaving a lullaby for five Mal’Salin royal guards. More than five, actually, but I wasn’t going to tell Piaras that either. I would shift my shields to let his song extend to the guards outside our door. I didn’t want to be climbing down a potentially rotten trellis at night with goblins at my back. I could feel Primari Nuru’s wards around and inside the house. Once those were disturbed, Prince Chigaru would have every guard on the estate after us. There were enough things out there without Mal’Salin royal guards to deal with. I estimated it was about three hours until midnight. During my previous visit to The Ruins, I had found out the hard way that this was the height of feeding time. Not the best time to be out and about, especially when those doing the feeding considered you tasty.

  The amulet, beacon, or whatever it was had been helpful until now, at least when it came to shielding me. If it helped with what I was about to do, I would gladly overlook its previous attempt on my life.

  While it wasn’t necessary for the goblin guards to actually hear Piaras’s song, it was necessary that there not be any magical barriers in his way. Master spellsingers could blast through just about anything, and while Piaras might be able to do the same, the less work he had to do right now, the better. The shields I was about to put up wouldn’t be a problem. They were to keep nosy wards from listening in—Piaras’s song just needed to get out.

  It took a few minutes of concentration on my part to nestle my shields into place just above the goblin primari’s wards. It was a good fit. Nothing disturbed. Nothing activated. Everything shielded. Too well shielded. I did good work, but this was way beyond my capabilities. Even Garadin might have been impressed. It looked like the beacon was up to its new tricks, but I’d have to worry about that later.

  Now it was Piaras’s turn.

  He was hesitant at first—not from any lack of knowledge of his craft, but from too much knowledge of our situation. He knew what was at stake, and the pressure showed. His first few notes were tentative as he felt his way through the melody, concentrating hard to get just the right blend of tone and intensity. Concentrating too hard. The song suffered as a result. It might cause a few yawns down below, but that was about it.

  I held up a restraining hand. “Wait.”

  He stopped midnote, his face pale and strained. His breath seemed to stop as well. This wasn’t going to work, not like this.

  “You’re trying too hard. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to relax.”

  “Relax?” Piaras’s tone and expression were equal parts panic and disbelief.

  “I know. Easier said than done.”

  “Yes,” he said, as if I couldn’t have uttered anything more obvious.

  “You’re going to have to ignore the goblins,” I told him.

  “I’m singing to them. The spell doesn’t work without an audience.”

  “You know what I mean. Ignore who and what they are. Think of them like the people at the Mad Piper.”

  “No one at the Piper wanted to kill me.”

  I hated it when logic reared its ugly head.

  “The goblins don’t want to kill you either. At least not right now. That leaves you free to think happy, peaceful, sleepy thoughts at them.”

  Piaras looked at me like I had lost my mind. I wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong. But I was entirely sure that if he didn’t get this right, the goblins would kill both of us, and there wouldn’t be anything happy or peaceful about it.

  He thought about it, decided something, but didn’t look happy with his decision.

  He sighed. “You’re right.”

  I’m glad he thought so.

  I took both his hands in mine. “You can do this. I know it, and so do you.”

  He began his song again. Quietly, shyly, but without the fear of his first effort. The soft, gentle melody rose to weave a vision of warm spring evenings, the golden pulse of fireflies, and the scent of night-blooming flowers. The song rose and fell like rolling swells of a ship in a calming sea, or a mother’s hand at a cradle. Floating above it all was the heartbreakingly beautiful song of a nightingale.

  I was glad he wasn’t aiming at me.

  I casually strolled over to the window and looked down into the garden as if admiring the view. I was. Goblins were dropping like flies. It started gradually. A spear dropped from relaxing fingers. A head bobbed to an armored chest. A goblin body leaned against the outer wall. Piaras accomplished it all with extreme care and control. Garadin was right; Piaras had a genuine gift. Tonight I was grateful for it.

  I returned to the settee. I couldn’t help but smile. “Good work,” I said in the barest whisper.

  For the benefit of anyone who either looked or came into the room after we were gone, I left an image of Piaras and I still seated and passively awaiting our fate. Another shield would keep anyone from seeing us leave through the balcony doors. My usual mirages looked solid enough, but they wouldn’t stand up to touch, and would dissipate in about ten minutes—good old smoke and mirrors magic.

  What sat looking back at me wasn’t my usual work.

  If I hadn’t known I was standing by the glass doors, I would have had a hard time believing that wasn’t me sitting at the foot of the bed. Piaras looked similarly challenged.

  “That’s good,” he said, looking a little wild-eyed.

  I swallowed. “Yeah, it is.”

  I tried to ignore myself sitting behind me and picked the lock on the glass doors. The beacon apparently deemed me qualified, and let me do that all by my lonesome. I was right about the trellis. It was iron, bolted to the house, and built for the ages. I was grateful for the builder’s attention to detail. The guards slept peacefully on the ground around us.

  We had to cross an expanse of lawn to get to the forest. It was windy, and the clouds raced overhead. In a few seconds, I estimated a large cluster would pass in front of the moon, giving us better cover for a dash across the lawn.

  At that moment, a goblin sentry came around the corner of the house and plowed into Piaras. It was one of the guards who had pulled him off of Prince Chigaru. Unfortunately, he remembered us, too. So much for quiet.

  “You!” he roared, and lunged for Piaras.

  Piaras jumped back with a startled yelp. He didn’t think, he just reacted—with a solid right hook to the goblin’s temple. The guard dropped like a rock, a surprised look frozen on his face. I was surprised, too, but for different reasons entirely.

  Piaras stood over the sprawled form, stunned by his own handiwork. “That’s for calling me bait,” he finally managed.

  Someone had been teaching Piaras bite to go with his bark. “Where’d you learn that?”

  Piaras winced and shook his fist against the sting. “Phaelan thought it was something I needed to know.”

  I might have known. “What else has he been teaching you?”

  Piaras flashed a sheepish grin. “You really want to know?”

  “Probably not.�
�� I peered out into the gloom. It looked as clear as it was probably going to get, but not nearly clear enough. There were things out there. And considering the hour, chances were better than average that we were going to be meeting some of them. I stripped the goblin of his weapons and handed Piaras a long dagger.

  “Phaelan teach you to use one of these?”

  He looked uncertainly at the blued-steel blade in his hand. “We’re working on it.”

  “Hopefully you won’t get a chance to practice tonight.”

  I took a curved sword and a pair of throwing knives. The guard probably had more on him, but I didn’t want to take the time for a more thorough search.

  We ran across the lawn and into the cover of the trees. They were low and dark and more than adequate to hide us. After we had gone about fifty yards, I stopped and listened. No one was following. But that didn’t mean something wasn’t following. I was quite sure something was, and I didn’t need the beacon humming against the center of my chest to tell me about it. The hair on the back of my neck was doing a fine job.

  I took us in a direct line away from the estate. Distance was more important than direction right now. We were in The Ruins, so I could safely assume that anything following us wanted to kill and eat us, and probably not in that order. When I no longer felt anything breathing down my neck, I’d stop and get my bearings. Our pace was even faster than the goblin guards had set bringing us into The Ruins. Survival was a powerful motivator.

  After my last trip to The Ruins, I had asked Janek Tawl for a map and committed it to memory. I had sworn I would never get lost here again. With the amount of criminal activity in The Ruins, the city watch had commissioned the best maps money could buy. Hopefully I would live long enough to tell Janek it was a good investment.

  The ground sloped upwards, and we followed it. There were only two areas of The Ruins that could be called high ground. We were fortunate to have found one of them. It wasn’t the way out, but it would go a long way toward helping me find one. At the top, there was a low grouping of stones surrounding a rock slab where the ground leveled off. I knew exactly where we were. That slab had seen various uses over the years, none of them good.

  Piaras stopped beside me. “Where are we?”

  That wasn’t a question I wanted to answer. “It doesn’t have an official name.”

  “What’s the unofficial name?”

  “The Butcher Block.”

  He looked at the slab. “Because of the rock?” he asked uneasily.

  “Yeah, because of the rock.”

  The spellsinger stepped in for a closer look. I didn’t stop him. There was enough light to see where dark stains had seeped into the stone, becoming a permanent part of it. Piaras didn’t need to be told what those stains were.

  He quickly returned to my side.

  The lower Ruins spread out below us. In the distance, I could see the lights from the Sorcerers District and the harbor. So close, yet so far. Unseen from the forest floor, the tops of the trees twinkled with light when seen from above. In the canopy, pale lights of blue and white glowed, died, then reappeared farther away, until the forest was alive with fairy light. I had to admit it was possibly the most beautiful, and surprisingly peaceful, sight I had ever seen. And I didn’t let myself believe it for one second.

  “How do we get out?” Piaras asked.

  “The closest exit is a little over two miles that way.” I indicated the mostly overgrown path to our left, and the lights in the all-too-far distance. “That’ll put us out at the south end of the Sorcerers District.”

  “That’s a long two miles.”

  Two tiny pinpoints of light appeared through the trees. I thought they were eyes, until they separated. In the next few seconds, more delicate pink lights appeared, singly and in groups of two or three. They darted around us on translucent wings. The illumination seemed to come from the creatures themselves.

  Piaras turned slowly, following their flight. “Are they moths?”

  I tried to see one clearly as it dove in front of my face and then away. I caught the briefest glimpse of miniature arms, legs, torso and head—all no larger than my thumb, and all without a shred of clothing. There were both males and females.

  “They look like some type of sprite or fairy,” I said.

  Tonight was full of firsts. Possibly not everything living in The Ruins wanted us for a late supper. If it were true, it would be a welcome change.

  One of the fairies darted on hummingbird wings around Piaras’s upheld hand. She was definitely female. She lightly brushed the spellsinger’s hand with her feet. Once. Twice. Piaras remained perfectly still and waited with breathless anticipation. The fairy landed.

  More fairies appeared. Their glow was brighter than before, the colors deeper, more of a rosy orange than pink. I noticed a slight cut on Piaras’s wrist where the bindings must have broken the skin. The fairy had noticed, too.

  “Piaras,” I warned.

  “But they’re beautiful,” he protested, enthralled with the ethereal form perched coyly in the palm of his hand. His face was illuminated by her pale pink glow. She looked rather taken with him, too.

  “Yes, they’re very pretty. Now, say goodbye to the nice, naked lady and let’s get out of here.”

  The naked lady smiled, and suddenly she wasn’t so nice anymore. Razor-sharp teeth glittered in a tidy row a split second before she hissed and sank them into Piaras’s wrist. With a gasp, Piaras jumped back and swatted at her. Her pink glow flared to red as she and the others dove at us.

  I’d seen enough. “Run!”

  Piaras didn’t have to be told twice.

  Run we could do, but escape was not happening. The forest had upright trees, fallen trees, rocks, brambles, and vines. The blood-sucking fire pixies just darted over or around anything in their path, flames spreading out behind them like the tails of tiny comets. The ground grew soggy, then wet beneath our feet. If memory served me, there was a shallow pond just ahead. Nothing like a little water to dampen fire pixie ardor. At least that was what I was hoping. It was the best I could come up with on no notice.

  We burst into the clearing and were instantly knee-deep in pond water.

  I quickly waded toward the center, and told myself that being drained dry by fire pixies was a worse death than drowning. I didn’t buy it for a minute, but for Piaras’s sake, I’d at least try not to think about it.

  “Get a deep breath and stay under for as long as you can,” I called over my shoulder.

  The pixies could just hover above the surface until we were forced to come up for air, but I’d deal with that stumbling block when I came to it. One problem at a time.

  The center of the pond was chin deep on me, chest deep on Piaras. I took all the air my lungs would hold and went under. Piaras followed and did the same.

  The pixies were on us immediately. They looked like torches waving over the surface. They darted about, searching. I thought my lungs were going to burst, but I didn’t move. Then as suddenly as they had arrived, they were gone. Not trusting luck of any kind tonight, especially the good kind, I waited a few extra moments before sticking my head above the surface. It was hard not to noisily gulp air.

  No pixies. No lights.

  Piaras’s head popped up beside me. “They’re gone?” he gasped, once he had filled his own lungs. He seemed as doubtful of our good fortune as I was.

  I scanned the surrounding trees. No glow. “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Why?”

  “Tastier offer?” I didn’t really believe it, but it would have to do until something else came along; but in the meantime, I wasn’t going to question it too closely. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I felt heavier coming out of the pond than I had going in. I knew I was taking some of the pond with me soaked into my clothes, but I was listing a little too far to the right. Piaras looked at me, his eyes as big as saucers.

  “Raine.” His voice was tight.

  I stopped and l
ooked down at myself. I didn’t see anything. “What?”

  He grimaced and pointed to my right side.

  I lifted my right arm to get a good look and bit back a scream. It came out as a squeak.

  A black, shiny leech was working hard to attach itself to my ribs. It was easily a foot long. And from the enthusiastic way it was squirming to get through my leathers to my skin, I must have been the best thing to come along in quite a while.

  I cleared the water and was on the bank with my knife out in record time. The only thing I wanted worse than to have that leech off was to scream. I couldn’t remember ever wanting to scream and run that badly.

  “Soul-stealing rock, razor-fanged pixies, blood-sucking leeches,” I hissed as I struggled to get my knife wedged under the thing’s blindly seeking mouth and pry it off. “When this is over I’m going to treat myself to a screaming fit. I deserve it, and I’m going to have one.”

  I sliced the leech from my doublet and checked myself for others. I stopped. Something was very wrong. Even more wrong than foot-long leeches. Piaras coughed twice from swallowing water, and then it hit me. The noise Piaras had just made was the only sound I could hear. It was as if every creature, living or whatever, was holding its collective breath in anticipation of something. The pixies had known what it was, that’s why they had given up so quickly. I suspected we didn’t want to wait around and find out what the pixies knew. Piaras realized it at the same time.

  “Which is it?” he whispered.

  I assumed he was referring to my litany of this evening’s monsters.

  “None of the above. We need to move.” The amulet felt like it was trying to slice its way through my doublet to free itself. “Whatever it is, it’s coming at us fast.”

  I doubled back toward the hill with the intention of skirting its base. That would put us back in the direction of the closest way out. The newest threat was coming from the opposite direction, so every step in our present direction took us farther from the whatever-it-was and closer to home. Worked for me.

  I stopped suddenly just before the edge of a large clearing. Piaras plowed into me from behind, and we both went down in a tangle of limbs. I looked up and froze.