Wedding Bells, Magic Spells (6 page)

The Passages were the areas between dimensions. Their boundaries flowed fog-like around our own reality. Where a Passage touched our world at one place could be just a short distance from where it touched our world in another, even though physically those points were far apart. From Mid to Regor via sky dragon was a three-day flight. Via a mirror, two steps. Via the Passages, about a mile.

A mile chock full of things waiting to kill and eat you every step of the way.

A Passage door was an opening between our world and the Passages. It could be naturally occurring, or it could have been torn by a mage. Dark mages practicing black magic were usually the only ones who would want to.

When it came to mirror magic, elves were the undisputed experts. The best mirror mages were elves, and it was through their research that mirrors had replaced the Passages as the preferred method to quickly get from one place to another.

There were things living in the Passages, and those things considered elves, goblins, and humans quite tasty.

And after what Mychael had told him, Tam and Imala had decided to take their chances with a run for their lives. I’d wondered why they hadn’t taken a sky dragon, but Mychael said considering the circumstances of Markus’s attack, Tam didn’t believe we had three days of flight time to spare.

That made me feel all kinds of better.

I’d been living in Mermeia when Tam had come to town two years ago. He was a duke and a primaru, or mage of the royal blood. Primaru Tamnais Nathrach was the ex-chief mage of the soon-to-be-assassinated goblin queen and a grieving husband of a recently murdered noble wife. Rumor had it that Tam leaving the goblin court and his wife’s murder were connected. Tam arrived in town as a goblin of wealth and influence. He purchased the palazzo of an old but impoverished Mermeian family and transformed it into Sirens—the most notorious nightclub and gambling parlor in the city. Before coming to Mermeia, Tam had already opened a Sirens location here on the Isle of Mid.

We’d met when a cash-strapped noble started working his way through his wife’s jewelry to support his gambling habit. The wife hired me to find her grandmother’s favorite ring. I tailed the ring—and her husband—right to Sirens’ high-stakes card table. I’d heard that the owner of Sirens was a scoundrel and an opportunist, but he was also a savvy businessman. Working together—and after entirely too much risk to life and limb—we got the ring back and returned it to its rightful owner.

It looked good for him to return the lady’s ring. Tam told me later he did it to impress me.

He needn’t have bothered. Being a Benares, I’d always been attracted to rogues. Kind of like a moth to flame. Most times I had the good sense to steer clear, but with Tam, I’d come close to getting my wings singed more than once.

Tam had been Queen Glicara Mal’Salin’s magical enforcer for five years. Chief mages for the House of Mal’Salin tended to have short lifespans. The lifespan-shortening was usually done by others who wanted to be chief mage. For Tam to have survived for that long at his queen’s side meant that he’d left his conscience and any morals he possessed at the throne room door.

After his wife’s murder, Tam left the court and sought out one of his early teachers, Primari A’Zahra Nuru. Like a drug, black magic was addictive—and it exacted a price you did not want to pay. With the help of A’Zahra Nuru and Mychael, Tam came back from magic’s dark path. Even though he’d been through what was essentially black magic rehab, Tam was still a dark mage. When I’d been bonded to the Saghred, Tam had nearly fallen off the recovery wagon. Hard.

The Sirens nightclub in Mermeia was mainly a gambling parlor. The Sirens on the Isle of Mid offered spellsinging as the featured specialty. On the outside, Sirens looked more like an expensive manor house than a nightclub. The diamond-shaped, lead-paned windows belonged to the restaurant part of the establishment. We were in the interior theatre where the shows took place.

Small tables were scattered across the main floor of the theatre, each covered in a crisp white cloth and set with a single pale lightglobe in its center. There were either two or four chairs at each table, with enough room between each for servers to discreetly fill drink orders—and to give Sirens’ guests privacy to enjoy the show. The second-floor dining suites were like private boxes in a fine theatre. Columns stretched from the floor to the high, vaulted ceiling, carved with mermaids and mermen—sirens that could sing men or women to their doom, or somewhere much more enjoyable.

The stage wasn’t large; it didn’t need to be. Sirens was about spellsingers and what they could do to an audience. Spellsingers didn’t need space, just flawless acoustics, so that a whispered word sounded as though it was being whispered directly into a patron’s ear even at the table farthest from the stage.

Shields at the base of the stage prevented spellsongs from having their full effect. They could be strengthened or lowered as needed. With spellsinging, the sex of the singer and the listener shouldn’t matter. A truly gifted spellsinger could make you forget that you even had a sexual preference.

Entirely too much had happened here over the past three months—all of it bad. Justinius had nearly been assassinated with a spellsong, the queen of demons had sent her undead minions here to make me an offer that I could refuse and die, and I’d nearly been killed (twice) by a thousand-year-old goblin dark mage who’d basically been a reanimated corpse.

Good times.

At this time of day Sirens was closed, but Tam had told his manager that either Mychael or I were to be allowed in at any time.

Apparently Sirens’ basement contained much more than stage equipment and old costumes. That was all I’d seen on my first and only trip down there.

The air smelled as if nothing had stirred it since then. After a misunderstanding of epic proportions with the city watch, Tam had run down here with me tossed over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Needless to say, what I’d seen had been limited to the floor and Tam’s ass. And I’d been too pissed at Tam to notice anything else.

Mychael pushed aside a rack of costumes to reveal…a wall.

I’d been on Mid long enough to know that things you thought were common, weren’t. There was no such thing as just a mirror, and walls very often concealed something else. Just because I couldn’t feel magic coming from it didn’t mean there wasn’t any. Mychael confirmed it by placing his left palm flat against a particularly dusty section. There was no click of a hidden door unlocking. A door-sized opening simply appeared.

The room beyond was darker than dark.

I stayed right where I was.

I knew Tam, and Tam would never hurt me. I didn’t have the same level of trust for Tam’s stuff, especially stuff left in a secret room openable only by magic. He’d been a dark mage for most of his life.

Mychael glanced at his upraised palm and a lightglobe flared to life, awaiting instructions.

I looked past him into the room. Nope, that dark definitely wasn’t natural. “Any chance of you being able to unblock that Passage door from here?”

“None.”

“Any chance of you covering yourself in the best shields you’ve got?”

“That goes without saying.”

“Good. Because that dark looks a little too dark.”

“Tam did that on purpose. There’s also a strong repelling spell woven in.”

“It’s working great. I’m repelled, repulsed even.”

Mychael launched the lightglobe, freeing up both hands should spell or steel become necessary, and explored the room.

I followed his every move.

Thresholds were powerful. Spirits, evil or otherwise, couldn’t cross a warded threshold unless invited by the mage who’d done the warding. The same applied to living magic users. If you crossed uninvited, your magic took a hit. Tam had known Mychael before he’d met me. Mychael had helped him to step away and stay away from black magic. I didn’t know exactly what Mychael had done for Tam, and neither one of them had ever shared details.

Neither Mychael’s lightglobe nor his shields had flickered when he crossed the threshold, meaning he had Tam’s permission to be here. Tam had created whatever was in this room two years before he met me. Tam liked me now, but he didn’t know me then. So when Mychael gestured me in, I hesitated.

“It’s safe,” he assured me. “It’s not nice, but it’s safe.”

I started to step across.

Mychael held up his hand, stopping me.

I tensed. “What?”

“This was Tam’s safe room and his escape route, if needed.” He paused. “After creating it, he never came here again. The Tam who wove these wards then is not the Tam you know now.”

Tamnais Nathrach, chief mage to the House of Mal’Salin, a dark mage practitioner of black magic, Queen Glicara Mal’Salin’s right hand and magical enforcer.

I knew this, had been told this, but I’d never experienced it for myself.

Magic users could block entrance to a room with the same ward, and yet no two would be alike. Spells worked by a practitioner bore their imprint, their essence, a piece of who they were when a ward was created. Magic was a part of whoever was gifted with it. Part of the Tam of three years ago still existed in the wards he’d placed on this door.

“Mid was his first stop after leaving Regor,” Mychael said. “A’Zahra Nuru was here.”

A’Zahra Nuru was the mage Tam had approached when he realized he needed help.

Mychael had just warned me what I’d be stepping into, literally.

I swallowed nervously, took a deep breath, and crossed the threshold.

I winced as I crossed. There was a featherlike brush of Tam’s magic against my shields, and I shivered. This was Tam, and yet not Tam. The wards on the door had been woven by a man who had just fled the goblin court. His wife had been murdered and he had been framed for the crime. Tam had been on the run from his enemies—those he’d known and those who still hid in the shadows awaiting their chance.

The magic that had gone into creating those wards belonged to a Tam I’d never known, but had been told about. Rage, fear, pain, soul-crushing grief. This Tam had already been plotting revenge even as he fled. Revenge that was breathtaking in its violence. Everything Tam had, was, and had planned and hoped to be had been torn from him when Calida Nathrach had been poisoned. The Nukpana and Ghalfari families had been responsible for it all. But the Tam who had created this hadn’t restricted his anger only to them. Tamnais Nathrach wanted to lash out at anyone and everyone. All that magic from the dark depths of a well of power, aimed at all who dared to defy him, who were foolish enough to stand in his way. He would strike, swiftly and without mercy.

The same residue of unbridled violence permeated what appeared to be a simple wooden door on the other side of the room. The wood itself was old, ancient even. Runes had been branded into it; not with a branding iron, but with the finger of the practitioner who had traced them there, the very touch burning the runes into the door.

Tam’s touch, superheated by black magic.

I recognized some of the runes, but not most. And judging from those I could read, I had no desire to have the rest translated for me.

They were runes of protection, runes to keep what waited on the other side where they belonged—as far away from the population of this world as possible.

“How is this thing safer than a mirror?” I asked.

“Because no one in their right mind would use one.”

“And Tam and Imala are coming through that?” I’d instinc-tively lowered my voice to keep from being heard by the things on the other side. “When Tam comes through, what’s to stop things from coming through with him?”

“Tam…and me.”

An exhausted paladin and a danger-addicted goblin.

What could possibly go wrong?

*

Imala Kalis, director of the goblin secret service and protector
of the goblin royal family, came through the Passage door first.

Considering that her feet weren’t anywhere near the floor at the time, I didn’t think her mode of entry was her idea.

She’d been thrown.

Mychael was there to catch, which was good because he was all that stood between Imala and a wall. Hitting that would’ve made her even less happy than she already was.

I got out of the way of who was coming next. The man who’d thrown her dove through the entry, hit the floor and rolled, kicking out with his booted feet to slam the door.

Something hit the door from the other side. Hard. With a shriek that threatened to make my ears bleed, the whatever hit the door again. Harder.

The goblin hadn’t budged. Flat on his back, his long legs bent, bottom of his boots pushing with all he had to keep what was in there from joining us out here.

Goblins knew how to make an entrance—especially this goblin.

Tamnais Nathrach grinned up at us. To him, we were upside down. “Sorry I’m late.”

Then he gave all his attention to the door. No works, no spells, no incantations, just intense staring and even more intense concentration. The runes blazed so brightly, I had to look away and squeeze my eyes shut. Too bad I hadn’t done it fast enough to keep the runes’ afterimages from glowing against my closed eyelids.

Black magic runes, there for the viewing for the next few hours whenever I closed my eyes.

Oh good.

The monstrous whatsit on the other side flung itself—or whatever it was throwing—against the door again. The sound wasn’t nearly as loud, the door didn’t budge, and the shriek that followed barely registered in my ears.

That apparently told Tam it was safe to take his feet off the door and put them on the floor where they belonged.

Tam and Imala were dressed almost identically in black from head to toe, including boots that came up to mid-thigh. Their armor was leather and both were wearing blades anywhere and everywhere they had the room. Both wore their hair pulled back in a long goblin battle braid.

I’d seen them wear this armor before; heck, I’d worn this armor before. It was functional and made a seriously fierce fashion statement.