All Spell Breaks Loose

Chapter 16

Imala snatched a ring of keys off the desk and threw them to Tam. Then she shoved a dead guard draped over the desk out of her way, and started scanning a book lying open there. Meanwhile Mychael and Tam ran down the corridor, looking in the rest of the cells, which had bars for doors, not wood. The cells appeared to be lit from inside, but Mychael and Tam hadn’t stopped at any of them. That meant only one thing.

Empty. All of them were empty.

I looked over Imala’s shoulder. She never looked up from the page, her finger running down the writing there, then flipped the page. “This says what cells are taken and by who. Knowing that also tells us what cells are still available.”

“I take it there are supposed to be prisoners up here?” I asked.

Imala furiously flipped the pages. “Yes,” she snarled. “And Tam’s father is supposed to be in that first cell. The Khrynsani keep meticulous records.”

Unless they’d been ordered to quickly move the prisoners and not keep meticulous records. I didn’t need an announcement complete with trumpets to tell me that we’d stepped in something we should’ve steered clear of. It was too late now; we were knee-deep in it.

“But Nukpana doesn’t start sacrificing until tomorrow night,” Piaras said. “There’s another level, right? The prisoners must be down there.”

I nodded, not taking my eyes from the stairs leading down to that level. The same stairs Khrynsani guards and those two prison mages had come charging up. Stairs that were now empty, leading to a level that was completely silent. With all the hell we’d raised up here, the prisoners should be shouting. If their guards had been in a knock-down, drag-out fight, chances were good that the people they’d fought were here to free them. The prisoners would be calling out to us, letting us know where they were.

No shouts. Silence. Crickets.

I had a really bad feeling about this, bordering on panic. By coming here, we might have doomed the mission—and ourselves. Though we’d all agreed to take the risk. The unspoken question that no one had asked but had to be thinking—what if those prisoners were no longer in the dungeon at all? It was looking like we were the only living people in the dungeon, new prisoners for the taking. This was feeling more like a trap every second.

Kesyn ran halfway down the stairs leading up to the temple. The sleeve of his robe was pushed back to his elbow, his arm extended, fingers spread, palm out toward the door at the top of the stair. The old goblin was out of breath, apparently from holding his spells in place. “Tam, can you track your father? Tell if he’s even here?”

“The distortion—”

“Just calm yourself down and do it.” Kesyn’s firm voice and steady words were those of a veteran teacher of hotheaded young mages-in-training.

Tam’s breathing slowed in response, and his eyes grew distant, his magic working feverishly to locate his father.

I didn’t know how long it would take, but it was time I could put to good use. I ran back to where I’d thrown my crossbow pistols and quickly reloaded both of them, looking down the stairs leading to the second level what felt like every split second, expecting more guards to come charging up at us swinging swords, spikes, axes, and anything else that’d introduce us to our insides with one slice. Not that I wanted that to happen, but at least it’d be normal, and a hell of a lot less creepy than a dungeon that was quiet as a crypt.

“Mychael,” I barely whispered, trying not to disturb Tam’s work. “This isn’t right. This isn’t good.”

He was scowling down the stairs, unblinking. “No, it’s not.”

“Somebody had to have hit the alarm down there. We couldn’t have taken out all of them.”

Mychael gave me a tight nod, still staring down the stairs into the near darkness.

I’d have preferred if he’d have disagreed with me, but I needed the truth.

I tried for a smile; it came off more like a grimace. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it? Though somehow I don’t think this truth is going to set us free.”

Mychael, bless him, gave me a wink.

I think my heart started beating again. I rotated my bandoleers so I had plenty of bolts within quick reach.

“Got him,” Tam whispered, not moving, his eyes staring at an empty place on the wall. “Father’s still here,” he told Imala.

“Where?”

Tam nodded toward the stairs. “Down there. He’s with others.”

Down in the silent dark.

Kesyn silently appeared from around the corner. “You’re sure of your tracking?”

“Yes, sir.” Tam resisted the urge to snap.

“Well, then, go get him,” Kesyn said. “We made this trip; let’s not waste it. I’ll keep the escape route open here.”

“Your Majesty, you should stay here,” Tam told Chigaru.

“No. These men and women need to see me. I have to prove myself worthy to be their king. I’m going with you.”

Tam could have argued with that. He didn’t. One, we were way past being out of time. And two, Chigaru was right. Having the Mal’Salin name wasn’t enough, not anymore. The name needed to be attached to a man whom these prisoners would see as worthy of it. I was glad no one had to tell Chigaru that; he knew it for himself. At least one thing boded well for the future of the goblin people. That is, if Chigaru and this particular group of goblin people made it out of here alive.

Kesyn had gone back up the stairs to the temple door, and turned his back to us, focusing on guarding that door and maintaining his spell. I’d known Kesyn Badru for only a few hours, but I had no doubt the old goblin could make anyone who thought about keeping us from leaving the dungeon permanently regret that decision.

“If someone gets curious and decides to come down here,” Kesyn said over his shoulder, “what I’ll do won’t be pretty and it sure as hell won’t be quiet—so move your asses.”

We didn’t need to be told twice. In fact, like Chigaru, we didn’t need to be told at all; we were already halfway down the stairs to the second level. When we got there, we found something almost as panic inducing as a couple dozen guards running at you.

No guards at all.

My nose told me there were plenty of prisoners down here—at least there had been. Problem was there were no guards or wards down here making sure they stayed.

No one said it. We all knew it.

This had trap written all over it.

Just because armed-to-the-teeth guards weren’t there to meet us didn’t mean something worse wasn’t about to jump us if we so much as twitched. I shot a glance at Mychael. There had to be defenses and they had to be magic ones. It had to be magic, the bad kind. I couldn’t sense it, but I knew he’d be able to.

He shook his head once. Slowly.

Crap.

I looked to Tam. His lips were pulled back from his fangs in a snarl. That was answer enough. He knew there was something here, but he couldn’t see, sense, or smell it.

No sounds from any potential occupants of the cells. A dozen doors stretched down the corridor on either side of us. No hands were between the bars; no shouting came from inside the cells. It wasn’t like any dungeon I’d ever been in. Then again, Sarad Nukpana wasn’t just any jailer. Silence meant surprises awaited anyone who came down here with the intent of breaking anyone out.

I’d been in a warded cell recently. It had been blocked with Level Twelve wards, which were the strongest that could be conjured. The soldier who had been standing guard outside didn’t dare get closer than arm’s length from the red wards that crackled only an inch beyond the bars. Anyone could see Level Twelve wards, mage or mundane. There’d be a lot of fried mundane guards otherwise. If there were wards in front of those dozen cells, I couldn’t see them. And if neither Mychael or nor Tam could tell what was out there, then Sarad Nukpana had planned it that way.

The silence was absolute. Whatever kept the prisoners in those cells also kept any sound from getting out.

Imala’s voice came from directly behind me. “A plan?”

“You’ve never seen anything like this?” Mychael asked her.

“Never.”

“Tam?”

“No.”

About half of the cells were solid iron doors with a barred window at eye level and a slot at the foot of the door for passing food to prisoners. The rest were iron bars. I looked in the one closest to me. Pitch-dark and seemingly empty. While I waited for something to lunge out of that darkness, tear through those bars, and start killing us, my stomach entertained itself by tying itself in knots.

Normally any place where people were regularly held prisoner had odors. None pleasant and all were easily identifiable. I could easily identify them now. There were people down here—a lot of them. A ward that kept prisoners away from the iron bars, smothered sound, but smells made it through. Nasty work.

Torches were mounted in the wall between each cell and the next.

No lightglobes.

The guards had used fire to light the corridor, not magic. Interesting, and not in a good way. Why wouldn’t they use lightglobes down here?

Tam strode to the first cell door that was only bars, then quickly went to the next.

And froze.

We didn’t know the reason for it, but he did. We ran to Tam and stopped.

It was Cyran Nathrach. He’d been beaten, he was bloody, and he was also holding out both hands, eyes wide with terror, silently screaming, “Stop!” and pointing desperately at the floor. Behind him, the cell was packed with goblin prisoners, men and women. The cell appeared to be huge, and it was full. It looked like all the prisoners had been crammed into one cell. But why?

There was only a pair of torches burning in the cell. When Tam had taken a step closer, the torches had dimmed, and the prisoners had started to panic. Only one thing dimmed fire.

Air. Or, more precisely, a lack of air.

When Tam came close to the cell, the air was somehow taken out of the cell. The torches in the hall didn’t flicker one bit, so the hall wasn’t booby-trapped, but the cell was. And the prisoners in that cell were emphatic that trap had something to do with the floor.

Tam growled, a full-throated snarl.

“Step back,” Mychael told him.

Tam didn’t like it, but he did it.

The torches resumed flickering as if they had all the air in the world. Cyran and the other prisoners took relieved gulps of air. Mychael took one step forward, and the torches flickered. Mychael immediately stepped back and they resumed burning normally.

A prisoner from the back of the cell was quickly making his way to the front.

Count Jash Masloc.

Jash held up both hands, telling us to stay where we were. He then pointed to Tam and Mychael, and made a sharp shooing motion. Then he pointed to me and crooked his finger. He wanted Mychael and Tam to back off, and me to come closer.

I knew why.

Suddenly the prisoners in that cell weren’t the only ones short of breath, but my breathing problems weren’t due to deadly magic, just terror of what only I was apparently able to do. I stepped up to the cell bars despite the panicked look of Cyran Nathrach and the frantic waving of two mages behind him. Jash said a few words to them and they stopped, their expressions stunned.

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.