Mychael put himself between the goblin mage and Tam. “Magus Badru, we need your help.”

Something hit the other side of the wall next to me like a giant fist.

“What do you call what I just gave you?” Badru snapped. “And who the hell are you anyway?”

“Paladin Mychael Eiliesor of the Conclave Guardians,” he responded in formal, flawless Goblin.

“Conclave, eh?” The goblin chuckled, a dry rasp that sounded like he hadn’t used his voice for anything other than yelling in a long time. “Those old bastards send you here to save their wrinkly asses?”

“We came to destroy the Saghred.” Mychael dropped the formality and went with angry paladin. Mychael had had it. We all had.

That got the goblin mage’s attention.

“That’s a fancy way to kill yourselves. I prefer staying drunk—and alive.”

Something hit the ward over our heads with enough force that fist-sized gobs of ward goop fell from the ceiling. I barely avoided getting splatted with the stuff.

Badru didn’t so much as bat an eye. His full attention had landed on Tam like a slab of granite. “Well, what do you want?” He actually didn’t snap or snarl. “You come home after two years with the head lady of the secret service, the Conclave’s paladin, and that unfortunate elf girl who had the piss-poor luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong rock.” He crossed his arms over his chest, smiling now, though some might say he looked more like a wolf that’d spotted its next meal. “What is it, boy?”

Tam told him everything. Why we were here, what we had to do, and when we had to get it done.

And how we needed his help to do all of the above.

“So, you need me to be your Reaper wrangler,” Badru said. “If I’m all you’ve got, you’re scraping the bottom of a bone-dry barrel. Am I your last hope, too?” he asked Tam. “Or are you just slumming and playing tour guide for your friends?”

Tam drew himself up and I half expected to hear something Talonesque come out of his mouth. He surprised me. “Sir, you’re our only hope.”

Tam had been eating an awful lot of humble pie since we’d arrived. It looked like he was developing a taste for it. Swallowing your pride might choke you the first time you had to do it; but apparently the next one went down a little easier.

“You were disgraced and banished because you refused to step back from what you stood for,” Tam continued. “You refused to teach rich, young thugs a level of magic they had neither the morals nor restraint to learn.” He paused. “I was foremost among them.”

The old goblin’s eyes glittered. “You think so?”

“I know so. I’ve turned from the dark path.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard people talking. Talk isn’t necessarily the truth.”

“I have renounced black magic.”

Kesyn Badru’s sharp black eyes looked like they were boring through to Tam’s soul. “Not entirely, you haven’t.”

Tam shifted uneasily. “When there is a great need, when no other magic would—”

“Save lives,” Mychael said. “Sometimes it is necessary to do what is distasteful for a greater good.”

Badru studied Tam, all signs of drunkenness gone. “And you think you’ve grown enough sense to tell the difference?”

“I’m trying, sir.” Another slice of humble pie. “Knowing the right thing to do isn’t always easy.”

“There’s more to why we need your help,” I told the mage. Best just to come right out with it. “My magic is gone.”

“Yeah. So?”

“And… I don’t have any magic.”

“That’s obvious. Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone inside these rotten city walls would have a clue.”

That was more than a little disconcerting. “How can you tell?”

“I don’t smell any magic coming off of you.”

“You mean sense?”

“I say what I mean. Smell. Others may sense, but I smell. Don’t let it worry you, little missy. It’s a gift—or a curse—depending on how you look at it. I can see people for who and what they really are.” He looked at Tam appraisingly. “So, while there’s no cure for stupid, you at least seem to have found a treatment.”

“Thank you, sir. I think.”

A chorus of disembodied howls, screams, and roars shook the room around us.

Kesyn Badru walked to the nearest wall, pressed his hands up past his wrists into the goop, and started murmuring. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the wall began glowing with the same blue light of the tunnel he’d created for us to escape through.

The howling, screaming, and roaring stopped. Instantly and completely.

“The beastie thinks we’ve vanished.” He scowled at the lot of us. “Though with the four of you here raising a ruckus, we only have less than an hour before it cranks up again.”

I shifted uneasily. “It senses and feeds on emotions, doesn’t it?”

Badru nodded. “No emotion and no violence equals no problem. Staying drunk helps.”

Finally, an activity I could agree with.

Imala looked at the faintly glowing walls. “How do we get out?”

Badru shrugged. “With what you have planned, I don’t want to get out.”

“We do.”

“Then I imagine leaving this room, then running like hell, would be as good a plan as any.”

Tam moved close enough to his former teacher that Badru could have punched him in several sensitive areas. “Sir, we can’t do this without you.” He hesitated, the smooth muscles working in his jaw. “Please help us.”

Amazingly enough, Kesyn Badru seemed to be actually considering it, though he took his sweet time doing it. “I’ll be honest with you,” he eventually said. “I’m sitting the fence on that whole ‘saving the world’ thing the lot of you are bent on doing. From what I’ve seen lately, there’s not much out there that deserves saving. Now, destroying this rock that’s become Sarad Nukpana’s reason for living—I’ll have to admit that has a certain appeal. Not because it’ll save anyone; because it’ll annoy the hell out of Sarad.”

“Actually, sir, I’m planning to kill Sarad,” Tam told him.

“Destroy his reason for living, then kill him. Even better.” Badru pondered this while he absently scratched at something under his robe. “I’d be risking my life a couple dozen times before we get to the fun part.” He scowled. “If we get to the fun part. There’s not enough money to pay me to take this job.” The old goblin mage stopped and smiled, showing two missing teeth and a chipped fang. “But anything that ends with publically humiliating and killing Sarad Nukpana? Hell, I’ll do that for free.”

Chapter 10

Kesyn Badru clapped his hands once and rubbed them together gleefully. “So, who you going to murder?” he asked me.

I blinked. “Murder?”

He gave me a flat look. “I’ve been drunk; I’ve never been hard of hearing.” Badru jerked his head in Tam’s general direction. “When the boy was telling me the who, what, when, where, and why the hell of you all being here, he said that you have to wet that demon blade of yours with someone’s blood before it’ll cut into the Saghred. So, who’s the unlucky winner?”

I didn’t have to think about that one. “Whoever tries to keep me from getting to the rock.”

“Well, at least that part shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll have plenty of Khrynsani trying to get at you who need stabbing. When the time comes, don’t be shy about it. Puncture as many as you can; you want to make sure that blade is as wet as it needs to be.” Badru turned to Mychael. “Mind me asking who you’re taking with you to bust your way into that temple?”

“The four of us, yourself, possibly a few others.”

Badru raised one shaggy brow. “A few. Possibly.”

“Better for stealth.” Mychael flashed a smile. “Because we’re not busting in.”

The old goblin looked at us like we were all a fistful of arrows short of a quiver. “Uh-huh. I’m assuming you know that if this stealth of yours doesn’t work, you’re Saghred chow. And note that I said, ‘You’re Saghred chow.’ After everything I’ve been through, I’ve never once considered suicide.” He shot a pointed glance at Tam. “Homicide, I’ve thought about on many occasions, but never suicide, and I’m not about to start now. So unless you’ve got bigger guns than I know of, the chances of you getting that rock without getting dead are next to none, and you’ll be taking that chance without me.”

“Don’t count us out that easily, sir,” Mychael said. “I’ve spent the better part of my professional career perfecting glamours and veils. I’ve studied Sarad Nukpana for years. I know his voice, mannerisms, how he moves—”

The old goblin simply gaped at Mychael. “You’re going to glamour as that cretinous worm and just saunter up to the altar.”

Mychael grinned. “I imagine Sarad Nukpana won’t be challenged by anyone if he wants to commune with the Saghred. He would always have guards or a mage escort with him; and conveniently, Khrynsani have a fondness for hooded robes. There should be no problem acquiring robes for temporary use.”

“Paladin, in my long life, I’ve only said this to one other man—your balls drag the ground.”

“Thank you.”

“Either that or you’re stark raving nuts.”

“The next few hours will tell. Glamouring as Sarad is but one plan. Coming back alive from any mission means being flexible. Stay flexible. Stay alive.”

“Admit it, sir,” Tam said. “You have to appreciate the irony. Sarad used a thief glamouring as Mychael to steal the Saghred. I’d love to see Mychael glamoured as Sarad to destroy it.”