Chapter Thirty-Six
Asane person could never spend fifty years murdering three thousand people. Any faint hope I may have harbored that he really would let us go vanishes.
“Nobody else has to die,” Darnen continues with an oily and patently false sympathy. “You’ll retrieve it for me. We’ll figure out how its magic can help mine, and you’ll be on your way. So easy, right?”
“Nobody has to die,” I repeat woodenly. “Nobody doesn’t want to die, though.”
Darnen looks puzzled, so he doesn’t know quite everything. He doesn’t know I’m the Nobody behind this entire quest. Will Artemisen allow me to touch this key, like she did the amulet? The first key wasn’t dangerous in itself—Chitai retrieved it, and Trick and Kaelen both touched it safely.
I think of Kaelen, Chitai, and Andras and fight back tears. Will Sergeant Neville and Bern be able to fight their way into the temple to rescue them? What will happen to Elianna and Trick?
“I have a better offer. Let those two go,” Trick says as calmly as if he’s negotiating in the marketplace. “I’ll get the key for you. I’ll even give you something to sweeten the deal.”
The druid sneers at my friend. “You have nothing I want.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Trick reaches into a pocket and pulls out a ruby the size of his palm. “How about this? Whet your appetite? I have more in my saddlebags, and I can even show you where there’s an entire cave filled with treasures just like this, after I get the key for you.”
I gasp at the size of it. Trick must have stolen gems from the draugrs.
Darnen’s gaze swings to me, and Elianna, just behind him, takes advantage of the distraction to step closer to his back.
If only she could conjure up those exploding balls of light now.
Even if they didn’t kill anybody, they might scare them for long enough that we could retrieve the key and escape.
The Zhagarn see her, though, and one of them races forward and smashes the hilt of a dagger against the side of Elianna’s head. She collapses onto the ground like a marionette whose strings were cut. I cry out and run to her, shoving the Zhagarn out of the way, heedless of Trick’s warning shout.
She’s still breathing. For now. But Andras and Chitai may be dead, killed by the Zhagarn still in the rotunda.
And Kaelen.
No. I can’t think of Kaelen right now, or I’ll lose any courage I still possess.
“Get me the key, Soli,” the druid says. “I’m bored. Nobody likes it when I’m bored, because I kill people just to liven things up. But as you can see, none of them can stop me.”
“I’ll stop you,” Trick says, revealing the warrior beneath the jokester and the thief. It’s not just this journey that has honed Trick into a weapon so sharp and fierce. His very hard life did that a long time ago, but I never had cause to see it before now.
If the odds were even, I’d bet on Trick every time.
But these odds are far from even.
“I’ll help.” I pull my second dagger from my thigh sheath and take a defensive stance. This causes Darnen to laugh so hard he actually bends over and clutches his gut. The Zhagarn in the room bare their teeth in ghastly smiles.
When I take a step toward him, Darnen whirls and crouches down next to Elianna, yanks her head up by her hair, and puts a knife to her throat.
“How about you both put down the blades and surrender nicely? Then nobody has to get hurt, and this pretty sorcerer doesn’t have to get dead, no matter how much I despise her father. ”
The fury rising inside me bursts through my body like the amulet’s light did in that field. I won’t let him kill Elianna.
I won’t.
No matter what it takes.
But then I stumble back a step, bile rising in my throat. Because suddenly, horribly, I know exactly what it will take to stop Darnen.
What choice I’ll make to ensure his reign of terror is put to an end.
I will use the goddess’s amulet to cause harm.
No. Not cause harm. There’s no need for pretense with myself.
To kill.
All this goes through my mind in seconds, and I let my dagger fall to the stone floor.
“Soli, no!” Trick shouts.
The druid smiles and drops Elianna’s head, which thumps to the stone floor hard enough to make me wince. When he stands, he raises his hands, holding them open, palms up. Blue flames dance between his fingers. “Come along then, little man. Show me what you’ve got.”
“I have a better idea,” I say. “I’ll get the key for you. But let Trick take Elianna and go.”
Trick grabs my waist and forcibly shoves me behind him. “Not a chance.”
He glances over his shoulder at me and drops his voice to a nearly silent murmur. “Run, Soli. You can’t save Elianna or me, but you can maybe help the others. Get out and get to Bern and Neville.”
“No!”
“Please. For any friendship we ever had, when I distract him, run.” Then he shoves me toward the stairway, whirls around, and runs for the druid, dagger out.
But Darnen is quicker.
Frozen where I stand, I can only watch in horror as the druid manifests a spear of orange light that he drives into Trick so hard, the tip comes out of his back.
And then my friend—my only true friend from childhood—falls.
I scream and drop to my knees next to him, covering the wound with my hands, heedless of the spear tip slicing my palms. Blood pumps through my fingers like the years and memories racing through my mind.
Trick, sneaking purple ink into the library for my braid.
Trick, buying me a hot sweet roll at a festival.
Trick, grinning hugely when he gave me the wooden snow leopard.
Trick, admitting how much his childhood trauma still affects him.
My friend is gone.
My friend is dead.
I stare into a future without Trick in it, a future where this evil druid murders all of my friends, just like he killed thousands before.
And every fiber of my being vibrates with one overwhelming desire: Darnen has to die.
The Zhagarn have to die.
I reach up to the amulet, the action hidden by my position still bent over my dead friend. I make a single tiny adjustment, and the locket falls into my palm, leaving the amulet bare.
Then I clamp my mouth shut against the screams and the fury clawing their way up my throat, and I stand.
“I guess you win,” I tell Darnen, who’s smirking at my pain. My voice is flat and hollow. “I’ll get the key for you. Don’t hurt anybody else.”
I don’t know if it’s my words or the look on my face, but he hesitates before he nods and gestures toward the plinth. His Zhagarn watch me uneasily, then rush to press their bodies against the two walls, as far from the key as they can get without leaving the room.
“I’m sorry, Artemisen, if this is blasphemy,” I whisper, turning my tear-streaked face to one open wall, where the pale gold of early morning glimmers along the tops of the Panterran Mountains.
“Hurry it up, girl,” Darnen snarls, impatiently crossing the room until he’s standing barely a breath away.
I smile at him, a huge and deliberately vapid smile, and press a hand against my chest. “A hug for good luck?”
Before he can react, I throw one arm around him and pull him close. Then I rise on my toes and, with fingers still wet with Trick’s blood, shove the naked amulet against the bare flesh of his neck.
And I laugh when he bursts into flames.