If you’ve got a reputation, put it to work for you.
I held my head high, met the eyes of anyone who looked at me, and stared them down. I tossed in a contemptuous smile for good measure, a smile that said loud and clear that I was only wearing these chains because it amused me. However, I could become unamused at any moment.
With a phalanx of Khrynsani guards both in front of and behind me, I had no choice but to walk at the pace they set. These guys didn’t walk as much as process. Sarad Nukpana wanted to give his new subjects plenty of time to see what he’d caught. For the first and probably the last time, his motivation perfectly matched mine. I was in no hurry to get to where I was going.
Up ahead, Princess Mirabai stopped and turned toward a goblin couple seated in the front row. She carefully raised her veil, which wasn’t easy to do with her jeweled manacles and chain. The man stood and smiled, extending his hands to her. With the same care and precision, Mirabai spit in his face.
He must have been the father of the bride.
Mirabai calmly lowered her veil and continued her procession.
I had to admit, the girl had class.
The altar rose before me as we ascended the final steps.
It was empty.
My knees went weak with relief. If Mychael or Piaras had been captured, Sarad Nukpana would have had one of them chained there. The bastard had been bluffing. It was all I could do to keep from looking up and all around me for some sign that the cavalry was about to make their entrance. If they were, I didn’t want to give them away. If they weren’t, my already shaky morale could do without being kicked.
Trumpets sounded a fanfare from a gallery somewhere above our heads.
Two of my guards each put an armored hand on my shoulders, and forced me to my knees on the final step before the dais. I glanced over at Princess Mirabai. She had been permitted to remain standing but, like me, was one step below the dais.
King Sarad Nukpana entered the temple through a door to the side of the altar. I was surprised he didn’t come up the aisle to let everyone get a good look at him. I’d gotten an all-too-good look at him two hours ago, but judging from what I could see at knee level, Nukpana had added a few kingly touches to his ensemble. He was still sumptuously attired in purple and black with a scarlet sash, but had added black chest armor intricately embossed with a silver scorpion. Naturally, he now wore a crown, a silvery ring of scorpions with their tails intertwining. I wondered if he had added the armor in case some of his allies weren’t feeling as friendly as they professed to be.
Sarad Nukpana was in black; the door he came in through was black; the bloody temple was black marble—it was no wonder he needed those tin horns to let everyone know he’d arrived.
Sandrina Ghalfari followed at a stately pace in her son’s wake, similarly gowned and arrayed—and, of course, crowned. Since she was standing behind her son, she’d opted not to wear chest armor in favor of several strands of diamonds that looked like they would be just as effective in stopping an assassin’s bolt. Her position relative to her son bore a remarkable resemblance to Nukpana’s position in relation to Sathrik before he’d begun his speech. If Sandrina started moving off to the side, I was going to dive for the floor.
Tam had once told me that the scorpion was the Nukpana/Ghalfari heraldic beastie. Scorpions equated nicely with poison, an obvious choice for a family that had Sandrina Ghalfari as its matriarch.
My guards jerked me to my feet and lifted me up onto the dais, half dragging me toward the altar.
The thing was a monstrosity.
I would have thought that a sacrificial altar would be large enough to hold a body. If that was true, the Khrynsani temple altar was at least twice the size it needed to be.
Someone was compensating.
A pair of silver magic-sapping manacles lay at the head and foot of the altar, both attached to the black stone slab by chains that vanished into it. The manacles had been polished until they gleamed, then placed with care at either end. Waiting for the first victim.
The altar itself was scrubbed clean, leaving no trace of blood. Then I saw why there probably had never been much blood spilt on most of the altar to begin with. The Khrynsani weren’t wasteful. The Saghred wanted blood, so they had made certain that the victims’ blood, like the victims themselves, could not escape. The slab was pitted and grooved, though not from careless stabbing, though no doubt some of the gouges had been created that way. There was a scooped-out section like a small bowl at what would be chest height on the victim chained to the table. One side of the bowl was deeper than the other. Radiating off from the deepest part of the bowl was a pair of grooves carved with care, beginning shallow and growing deeper as they reached the front side of the altar.
I knew what it had to be. A bowl carved into the altar for catching the heart blood, and a pair of grooves for funneling it to the front of the altar to…
My eyes followed the groves forward to where they ended—to the place I’d been desperate to avoid seeing.
The Saghred.
An orb the size of a fist, the Saghred was usually black, but I had seen it turn red right before it was about to feed. It was red now, the bright red of the blood it was about to receive, and glowing in what could only be described as eager anticipation.
The grooves went on either side of the Saghred’s low, clear pedestal of carved crystal, its center hollow. The path the blood would take was obvious. It would flow around the base of the pedestal and merge, and when the altar grooves had been completely filled, the blood would flow up through the hollow pedestal beneath the Saghred where the stone rested in a shallow crystal bowl. As more blood was released from sacrifices, the pedestal would fill, then the bowl, and the Saghred would all but float in blood. Deidre and Nath’s blood would bathe the Saghred and I would be standing next to them, watching—and feeling—them die. If enough people were slaughtered on that altar, the Saghred’s bowl would eventually overflow. I looked down at my feet. A metal grate completely encircled the pedestal and altar.
A drain for the excess blood from an endless procession of victims.
Sudden dizziness and nausea made the pedestal and altar waver before my eyes. My guards grabbed my chains and, before I had my feet back underneath me, jerked me to a post in front of the altar. One of the guards roughly seized my wrist. There was a click, then my wrist was held immobile in something even tighter than my manacles had been. Before my vision could clear, Sarad Nukpana was beside me, gripping my manacled hand.
I focused my eyes. My right wrist was chained to an iron post that had been mounted directly behind the Saghred’s pedestal, between it and the front of the altar. I was manacled so that I was forced to face the head of the altar. Not only would I feel all of the deaths; I would have to watch them die. My hand and fingers were suspended above the Saghred, held in the goblin’s iron grip.
He smiled down at me. “Don’t worry, Raine. The Saghred has promised not to take you. I’m not the only one who wants you to suffer.”
Sarad Nukpana forced my hand down onto the Saghred and I screamed.
I didn’t think I could have stopped that scream tearing its way out of my throat if I’d tried. Nukpana had forced my hand down, but the Saghred had grabbed it, holding it fast against its pulsating surface. My palm and fingers were fused to the stone; even if I hadn’t been manacled, I couldn’t have pulled away. The Saghred didn’t budge from the pedestal; it was as if the rock had become a part of it. Suddenly the stone sent a charge spiking through my body, forcing me to my knees.
I saw the Saghred, truly saw it. The stone filled my vision, then my entire being. The thing I thought I could destroy, what puny and insignificant mortals had pitted themselves against down through the ages and had failed, every last one of them. Even my own father had failed; the best he could do was to keep the rock as far away from himself as possible. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d still had my magic. The vast majority of it had been given, granted, and bestowed by the Saghred. As I had found out the hard way, what had been given could be taken away or denied.
At that moment, the Saghred allowed me to truly see it, to know the breadth of its existence, the extent of its power.
