“What
“Call to arms.” Mychael ran to the door. “Allek?” he shouted down the hall.
“Attacks in the city, sir!” came the response. “We’re on it!”
Mychael spat something under his breath and extended his hand, palm up. A clear globe instantly appeared above his hand with an image of Vegard, from the shoulders up, visible inside.
“Report,” Mychael ordered.
“Breaches in the city.” Vegard had to shout to be heard over some din of his own. “The four outer districts. I’ve dispatched response teams.”
“Reinforcements are on the way,” Mychael told him.
“Sons of bitches are coming through as far from the citadel as possible,” Justinius said. “By the time our boys get there, they’ll have come, taken what they came for, and gone.”
I didn’t have to ask the old man where they’d have come and gone from. Mirrors and/or small Gates. Or what they’d come to take—any student or mage they could get their hands on and drag back with them. Until his monster Gate was ready, Sarad Nukpana was starting his fun and games with mirrors and smaller Gates.
“Are they Khrynsani?” Mychael was asking Vegard.
“Negative. Regular army, a lot of them.”
Mychael swore. Justinius swore. I broke out in a cold sweat.
Sarad Nukpana and the goblin king had started the invasion—or were about to—and more than half of our team wasn’t in the mirror room yet.
In addition to Tam, there was Imala Kalis, director of the goblin secret service; Prince Chigaru Mal’Salin; two of his bodyguards; and my father, Eamaliel Anguis. Imala had been secretly helping to organize and equip the goblin Resistance while seemingly loyal to the goblin king. Prince Chigaru was the choice of Tam and Imala—and the saner members of the goblin nobility—to displace and replace his brother, the king. My father, Eamaliel Anguis, was the previous Saghred bond servant and, thanks to prolonged contact with the rock, was now 934 years old. His soul’s present home was in the body of a twenty-year-old Guardian. He’d led the original team that had taken the Saghred from another insane goblin king about nine hundred years ago, so he had firsthand experience with the crap we’d be stepping into when we stepped through that mirror.
Good people to have with us. Now, if they’d just get their asses down here, we could go.
“Sir, they’re not engaging,” Vegard was saying. “At least not fully. Hit-and-run tactics. It’s like they just want to be seen.”
Mychael scowled. “Draw our men out.”
Out, as in away from the citadel.
Justinius answered my unspoken thought. “The citadel’s on lockdown; no one’s getting in.”
“Unless they’re getting in the same way as the rest of them,” Mychael growled. “And the same way we’re getting out.”
Mirrors.
Oh no.
That didn’t have to mean here in the mirror room. There were other mirrors in the citadel. Last month, we’d come through one to escape the demon queen. It led from the bowels of the old citadel on the other side of the island to the containment rooms here. Down here.
With us.
Even the best-kept secrets were seldom completely kept secrets. It’d been my experience that the bigger the risk, the bigger the chance that secret had sprung a leak. If Sarad Nukpana knew we were coming to Regor through a mirror in the citadel, then he probably knew our exit mirror was in that cave; which meant that goblins could be waiting for us on the other side to escort us to the front of Nukpana’s Saghred sacrifice line, starting with me.
If so, the only thing the bastard had to do was sit back and wait. He had what we wanted. He had the Saghred. He also had hundreds of hostages, nobles who supported Chigaru over his brother the king. All he had to do was wait on us to arrive to start the party.
The only way we’d know any of that for sure would be to step through the mirror.
“We need to go!” Carnades screamed over the sirens. “Now!”
For once, and probably for the only time, I agreed with him, but that didn’t mean I had to like it or what it meant. We did need to go, but going now would mean me, Mychael, and Carnades alone in Regor. Oh yeah, the elf mirror mage would like that. Kill us (or at least try), then run for his miserable life. He’d have to keep running, but he’d be free—until he pissed off another entire race and got himself dead. I had news for him—we weren’t going anywhere without the rest of our team. Tam, Imala, and Chigaru were goblins who knew Regor like the backs of their hands. After 934 years attached to the Saghred, Dad knew every trick that rock could pull to keep itself in one piece.
And even though Tam’s teacher hadn’t spoken to Tam in years, Tam was our best chance of finding him once we were in Regor. After that, it’d be up to Mychael. He was known throughout the seven kingdoms as the Paladin of the Conclave Guardians, and had the respect that came with the job. However, Mychael’s powers of persuasion wouldn’t do us a damned bit of good if he didn’t have anyone to persuade.
A sudden creepy-crawly sensation ran down my back that had nothing to do with goblins running amok in the city or Carnades within spell-slinging distance behind me. Power was building; power that wasn’t from Guardians with a collective case of magical jitters and nothing to smite. Even with no magic myself, I sensed it.
It was dark. Ugly.
And it was here.
A deep throb came from the far corner of the room, from a mirror mounted on the wall, framed in dark, rune-carved wood. Hands encased in armor tipped with bright steel claws ripped through the canvas covering. Goblins came through, armed with blades and crossbows. They were between us and the door; we were between them and Carnades’s mirror.
Like I said, ugly.
Nine Khrynsani, two of them mages. That was as accurate a count as I could get or cared to get as I scurried to the left to give myself room to fight. I left the power packers to Mychael and Justinius. I had a sword in each hand and balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to move in whatever direction the closest goblin picked. More Khrynsani poured through the mirror like a black-armored wave, and Piaras’s voice rang out from behind me, a commanding baritone aimed at the Khrynsani. I recognized the quickly cascading notes and words as a spellsong I’d heard Mychael use before. The goblins should have dropped in their tracks.
They kept coming.
With some kind of dark plugs in their ears.
Oh crap.
They’d known spellsingers would be guarding the mirror room.
We’d been betrayed from the inside out. Now our enemies were in here with us and deaf as doornails to any spellsong Piaras or Mychael could throw at them.
“Where’s Tam?” Piaras shouted. I wasn’t the only one who knew we needed to get through that mirror while we still could.
I parried a lunge that came entirely too close to finding its mark. “Good damned question.”
Piaras had a sword in one hand, a long parrying dagger in the other, and was putting both to good use. His opponents lately had had a fatal tendency to underestimate him because of his young age and brown eyes. Anyone who looked that innocent couldn’t have the nerve or instinct to kill. They soon found themselves wrong on all counts, not to mention dead. Piaras wasn’t a killer, but two months ago, his mind had been briefly taken over by Sarad Nukpana. The goblin’s link with Piaras and his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to control his mind had left the kid with the goblin’s masterful skill with a sword, among other deadly talents. Nukpana knew only too well how to kill, and as a result, so did Piaras.
Two Khrynsani found that out the hard way.
Seconds later, an explosion blew the door off its hinges as well as disintegrated a goodly chunk of the stone wall around it. Several Khrynsani who’d had the misfortune to be standing too close went flying.
Tamnais Nathrach was reckless, his magic powerful, and danger was just another way to have a good time. The man also knew how to make a damned fine entrance. Tam had weapons anywhere he could strap them. He was going home and was amply prepared for a less-than-warm reception. Tam followed up the concussion spell
