“We can’t talk here. There’s a place the Khrynsani can’t tear a Gate into.”

“And just where would that be?” I asked.

“We Guardians have a safehouse of our own.”

Chapter 18

Piaras was pacing.

We had arrived at the Guardians’ safehouse in the central city just before dawn. I had already seen the master bedroom in my previous visit, and the rest of the palazzo was just as lavish. It belonged to the Count of Eilde, a cousin of Mychael’s who was conveniently away on his honeymoon at the moment.

Our trip to the count’s home had been uneventful. And not much had happened since. That was Piaras’s problem. Nothing was happening at this particular moment to rescue his grandmother, and he was not happy about it. The beacon, on the other hand, seemed to know that there was a reunion with the Saghred in its immediate future. It hadn’t stopped purring since we’d arrived.

“If not now, when?” Piaras asked.

“Before midnight, tonight.” I was just repeating Mychael’s timeline, and truth be told, I liked saying it about as much as Piaras liked hearing it, which wasn’t much. But unlike Piaras, I saw the wisdom in waiting. Piaras had been forced to watch Khrynsani shamans drag his grandmother through the ugliest Gate I had ever seen or heard of, so wisdom and waiting weren’t a big part of his thinking right now.

“Sarad Nukpana will kill her before then.” Piaras swallowed and looked away, but not before I caught a glint of tears in his eyes. “Or worse.” The Piaras of two days ago wouldn’t have cared all that much if I had seen him cry. The Piaras standing with his back to me now in the Guardians’ safehouse was trying desperately to show no signs of weakness. I personally didn’t see tears as a weakness; but being in his late teens, and male, Piaras viewed the world a little differently, especially now. I guess I couldn’t blame him.

“He won’t kill her—or hurt her,” I said.

I expected him to react angrily, or at the very least demand how I could possibly know. But he didn’t. He understood all too well why Sarad Nukpana wanted to keep Tarsilia alive and whole. The goblin had other sorcerers he could use to fuel a Gate. Tarsilia was more valuable to him as a hostage. At least for now.

Piaras was looking at me. I knew he saw me for a brief moment as Sarad Nukpana saw me. A commodity to be traded for, used, and discarded. Piaras did not like seeing me that way. That made two of us.

“And he’s not going to kill or hurt me either. Or you.” I said it as much for my own benefit as Piaras’s. Seeing Piaras getting misty triggered the beginnings of a salty sting in my own eyes. I concentrated really hard on making it stop. Mychael would be here any moment, and he was not going to see me cry. It wouldn’t do Piaras much good either. Mychael had promised to fill us in on the details of this plan of his. A little enlightenment would go a long way toward improving morale right now.

The door opened, and I was instantly on my feet. Not that I expected anything bad to come through the door, but old habits—and recent events that had reinforced those habits—were hard to break.

It was Garadin, which was a relief to both of us.

I sheathed the dagger that had found its way into my hand.

“Was Calchas at home?” I asked him.

“He was.”

Garadin had come with us to the Guardians’ safehouse, but had left soon after with an escort of two Guardians to see Calchas Becan, a nachtmagus who had the largest private collection of books on the higher dark magics, including Gates. An exorcist and demonologist by trade, Nachtmagus Becan was a nice enough gentleman by all accounts, but I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same house as that library. Still, research was good. I was going to be seeing Sarad Nukpana face-to-face tonight and I wanted to know what had happened and why—or more to the point, what had not happened and why.

Garadin was taking his time helping himself to cheese, meat, and ale at the sideboard.

“Well?” I asked impatiently. “What happened to me…it…whatever?”

“Gate got in your way,” he said around a mouthful of cheese.

“What? It was a Gate. It was open. I was on one side, Nukpana on the other. Nothing between us but air. No problem.”

Garadin held up a hand, stopping me. “Big problem. About four miles worth. You’re forgetting about distance. Apparently distance is very important, critical even.”

“What distance? We were in the same room.” As soon as I said it, I knew I was wrong. “He was on the other side of the city from me.”

“Correct.”

“But I had a clear shot,” I protested.

“Through a Gate,” Garadin clarified. “The distortions on that threshold were violent enough to diffuse all but a small part of what you threw at him.”

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “How much got through?”

My godfather shrugged. “Maybe five percent, maybe less.”

I flopped down in my chair. “Just enough to piss him off.”

“Probably.”

No, definitely. The rest was so simple. I would have pounded my head against the wall if Nukpana hadn’t already done it for me. I was so stupid.

Piaras spoke. “Then what I did worked because I aimed at the Gate itself, not anything on the other side.”

“Precisely.”

I knew what it meant, and I didn’t like it in the least. “So if I want to do any damage to Sarad Nukpana of the permanent variety, I need to be in the same room with him.”

Garadin took a swig of ale. “Just close by will do.”

No, close by wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to be close to Sarad Nukpana or a soul-stealing rock either. But what I wanted didn’t seem to matter much this week. Though if there was one thing to be grateful for, the goblin had experienced the same problem I had, otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here to feel stupid.

“So other than closing the Gate, I didn’t do much good either,” Piaras said.

“You did the equivalent of slamming a very big, very heavy door in Nukpana’s face,” I told him.

“Then why do I feel so…” he struggled to find the right word. “Helpless?”

Garadin and I both stared at him in disbelief. Mine was the open-mouthed kind. Garadin kept his closed. He was busy chewing again.

“Helpless is the last word I would use to describe you tonight,” Garadin told him, after he swallowed. “I’m sure Sarad Nukpana doesn’t see you as helpless. And just because Tarsilia isn’t here with us doesn’t make you helpless or ineffective.”

“But I couldn’t save her. I failed.”

I spoke up. “You didn’t fail. I couldn’t save her either. If you failed, that means we both did. But blaming ourselves isn’t going to do us or Tarsilia any good. We did our best.”

“And it wasn’t good enough.”

I sighed. I felt the same way, but I was going to keep that one to myself. Piaras was just another perfectionist in the making. Nothing he ever did would be good enough, at least not for him. And while I could warn him off that path that I had well and thoroughly trampled myself, I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I hadn’t listened either. I glanced at Garadin. The tiniest smile curled the side of his mouth facing me.

“Oh, shut up.”

His smile widened. “I didn’t say a word.”

“But you were thinking plenty.”

“And I would deny every one of them.”

Piaras was looking from one of us to the other. We’d completely lost him. “What are you talking about?”

“Garadin was just thinking how much you remind him of me at your age. And he finds it funny that I’m getting back some of what I gave him.”

The young elf was still baffled.

Garadin chuckled. “Payback is hell.”

“You’ll never find a worse critic than the one inside your own skin, or a more difficult one to silence,” I told Piaras, by means of explanation. “The best you can hope for is to teach it some manners.”

“It was you against three Khrynsani shamans and a Magh’Sceadu,” Garadin told him, “and who knows how many more on the other side of that Gate. Sarad Nukpana doesn’t travel with incompetents. You kept yourself from being taken prisoner—”

“And me, too,” I chimed in. I believe in giving credit where due. “You saved both of us. Our situation would be a lot different right now if you hadn’t slammed that Gate in Nukpana’s face.”

The shadings of a gratified blush crept up the young spellsinger’s neck. “But Grandma—”

“Was beyond your reach,” came Mychael’s voice from the doorway.

“Unless someone is keyed to a Gate during its construction, once you cross the threshold, you cannot come back across,” the Guardian told him. “Once Tarsilia was on the other side, it would have been impossible for her to return. There was nothing you could have done.”

Piaras considered what Mychael had said for a moment, then nodded. I guess having your conscience absolved by a legendary spellsinger carried more weight than your friends and family, regardless of their qualifications.

“What exactly did I do?” Piaras’s voice was subdued, as if he needed to know the answer, but wasn’t all that sure he really wanted to.

“Your instinct told you the Gate needed to close,” Mychael said. “It had harmed someone you love. You wanted that Gate, and anything that had come through it, gone. You channeled that desire—rather intensely—through your voice. The Gate obeyed and collapsed on itself. In simple terms, you used your voice to make your wish a reality.”

Piaras just stared at the paladin. “But I don’t know how to do that.”

“Apparently you do. On a deep level, you knew exactly what needed to be done, and you did it.” Mychael paused, his blue eyes calmly searching Piaras’s face. “The sight of that Gate opening terrified you beyond thought.”