Bewitched & Betrayed (Raine Benares #4)

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.

I blew out my breath, steeling myself for what I knew I had to do next. “Mychael, I know I’m stating the obvious here, but we have to find him. Now.”

I looked down at General Aratus. He used to be an elven general. Now he was all that was left of one. He was an object who had been killed in one of the most repulsive ways I’d ever heard of. As a seeker, I could pick up impressions from inanimate objects touched by someone I was looking for. I grimaced. Yep, the general was about as inanimate as you could get.

Mychael knew exactly what I was thinking. “Raine, no. If he intended the general’s remains as a gift, it’s almost certainly a trap.” His tone said no arguments.

I had to give him one. It might be the only chance we had.

“He probably left something for me, but it’s not a trap. Nukpana’s just starting his game; he’s not about to end his fun before he’s even gotten started. And Nukpana touched the general for . . .” I turned to Vidor Kalta. “How long does this ritual take?”

“An hour, probably longer.”

Shit. Sarad Nukpana sucking your life out through your mouth for an hour or more.

“Yes, it would be quite appalling,” Kalta said.

I told my body to stop shaking. It almost listened to me. “That’s a lot of contact, leaving a lot of residue.”

“I forbid it,” Mychael said. “There are other ways we can do this.”

“Name one.”

Mychael couldn’t and we both knew it.

“Believe me, the last thing I want to do is touch that thing,” I assured him. “Yes, he used to be a person, but right now, he’s a thing—a really disgusting thing. But if there’s any chance that I can find out where Nukpana was when he turned the general into what’s on this table, I have to take that chance.”

“It’s exactly what Nukpana wants you to do.”

“Maybe, maybe not. A dead elven general tossed at my feet is trouble enough; maybe that’s all the trouble he needed to cause. Mychael, we’ve got the elven ambassador parked outside with a hearse, and his boss is ‘out’ somewhere in the city right now. If we don’t have trouble already, it’s brewing. The quicker we find out where Nukpana did this, the closer we could be to finding out where he is now.”

Whatever Nukpana had done to him, any magical residue would be gone soon, if it wasn’t already. The goblin said he’d be doing this again, and I believed him. Oh yeah, I definitely believed him. That meant I had to touch his handiwork.

On the lips.

I grimaced at the thought. “You’re here. Vegard’s here. Nachtmagus Kalta, will you help pull my ass out of the fire if necessary?”

“Of course.” The inquisitive sparkle in Kalta’s eyes told me he’d love to see something bad happen just for the academic interest.

I turned to Mychael. “I’m as safe as I’m going to get.”

Mychael’s sea blue eyes narrowed in disapproval. I took that to be a “yes” but under extreme protest. Protest noted. And if what I was about to do worked, that protest wouldn’t matter. Unless, of course, it was a soon-to-be-fatal trap, in which case it still didn’t matter what Mychael thought because I wouldn’t be around for him to yell at.

I quickly muttered my personal shields into place. Get shielded and get it done. If I truly thought about what I was going to touch, I’d probably run screaming from the room. Touch him, find out what you can, and get the hell away from him. I was going to do this. I might be sick afterward, but I was going to do this.

I laid my hand across the corpse’s mouth.

The connection was immediate, but not what I expected. It certainly wasn’t the type of connection I usually got. I smelled musty air that had been closed up for way too long. Traces of mold . . . and something else. Something familiar. I’d smelled it before, but couldn’t place it now. I stood absolutely still, doing my best to block out that I was getting this from my hand on a corpse’s mouth.

That was all I got. Smells. No noise, no screams, no final moments of life about to be extinguished, no sense of General Aratus or Sarad Nukpana. No life at all. None. I breathed in and slowly out, trying to relax, to open myself to whatever was there.

Nothing.

The corpse’s hand snatched my wrist in an iron grip.

I shrieked. Mychael’s magic flared behind me and Vegard drew steel.

“No!” I told them both. I sucked air in and out through my teeth. The corpse’s grip tightened, dry and cold. I shivered all the way down to my toenails.

“It is but a programmed response, Paladin Eiliesor,” I heard Kalta say. “A message. The corpse is but a vessel.”

Dried eyelids drew back to reveal empty sockets, and the jaw dropped open in a sick parody of speech. I heard a squeak; I think it was me. Then Sarad Nukpana’s silken voice filled my head. No sound came from Aratus’s leathery lips. Nukpana’s words were for me alone.