Ruins and Revenge Read online

  Ruins and Revenge

  A Raine Benares World Novel

  Lisa Shearin

  NLA Digital LLC

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  About this Series

  About the Author

  Also by Lisa Shearin

  Praise for Lisa Shearin

  “Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.”

  *

  The Prince

  Niccolò Machiavelli

  Chapter One

  I knew that saving the world wasn’t going to be easy, but I would have appreciated fewer personnel issues.

  Though I had only myself to blame.

  My strike team consisted of seven goblins—and one elf. An elf who wasn’t known for playing well with others, especially when most of those others were not only goblins, but powerful mages.

  And I’d been the one who had brought him on board.

  Like I said: my problem, my fault, my job to find a solution.

  I stood on the beach watching our three sentry dragons being saddled and loaded for departure. Captain Calik Bakari of the Rheskilian Royal Fighter Squadron and two of his best pilots were overseeing every detail. The dragons were their mounts, but only Calik would be piloting his dragon on the journey inland. The other two would be flown by myself and another member of my team.

  The two pilots weren’t happy about that, and they were making no secret of it.

  I didn’t blame them, but our plans had changed.

  We now had two additional team members—my son Talon, and the elf pirate captain Phaelan Benares.

  Calik crossed the rocky beach to where I waited for the lecture I knew was coming.

  “The ladies will be ready when you are,” he said. “Vendin and Kasit are not.”

  I sighed. “Dasant and I are more than capable—”

  “They know that, but understand that we’re close to our dragons. We’re going into danger, meaning their girls are going into danger—and they’re staying here. Your qualifications aren’t in question. That they’re not going is the problem. A big one.”

  “Talon is going as a power boost for Agata, and extra firepower for the team. Bane isn’t going anywhere with his broken leg, so our team is down a tomb robber and demolitions expert. Phaelan can fill his boots and then some. There’re bound to be booby traps in Nidaar set against mage and magical null. Being magic users, the rest of us would set them off merely by proximity. Plus, Phaelan’s a null who knows his way around traps.”

  Calik held up his hands. “Hey, I don’t need convincing, and neither do they. What they are is worried.”

  “I understand.”

  “They’re soldiers, and you’re in charge of this mission. They’re good at taking orders—but there’s no regulation that tells them they have to like them. They’ll just pace a rut in the beach until we get back. We’re leaving within two hours?”

  “We are.”

  “We’ll be ready.” He went back to where the dragons and pilots waited.

  There were two other reasons I wanted to take Phaelan with us, but Calik wasn’t a magic user, and his acceptance and understanding would only go so far. His job was to fly Sapphira to the mountain said to contain the city of Nidaar, then take care of her and the other two sentry dragons while we found the Heart of Nidaar. He didn’t need to know any other details.

  My team did. And to get them to accept the elf pirate as part of our team, I had to convince them we needed him.

  Phaelan Benares wasn’t particularly fond of magic, even less of powerful practitioners. Though Phaelan’s feelings would probably be better described as distrust—on the extreme end of the spectrum. All of the goblins going inland were in the top five percent of the strongest mages in the Seven Kingdoms. When your mission was to keep an evil goblin military brotherhood and their alien invader allies from getting their hands on an artifact that could command the power of the earth and seas to destroy all life, you needed the best and baddest on your side. Basically, we’d crossed an ocean to piss off our archenemies by swiping a bauble that was their last chance at power. And a chance to put an end to the Khrynsani made it more than worth the trip.

  Our adversaries knew we were here. One of our expedition’s ships had been blown up before we’d ever left the goblin capital of Regor. At the voyage’s halfway point, we’d been attacked by phantom ships manned by crews of demons and the dead. And once we were within sight of the continent of Aquas, Khrynsani and Sythsaurian weather wizards had conjured a storm to sink our small fleet.

  We’d survived and arrived.

  But I didn’t delude myself. This was where the real danger started.

  It had taken four weeks to get here. We had to find Nidaar and accomplish our mission—to keep the Khrynsani and their alien allies from obtaining the Heart—as quickly as possible.

  What my goblin team wasn’t quite grasping was why an elf pirate captain with no magic was a necessary addition. Telling them “because I said so” might end the discussion, but it wouldn’t make the problem go away.

  That was the drawback to commanding a strike team mostly made up of your childhood friends.

  My name is Tamnais Nathrach. I’m the chief mage for the goblin royal house of Mal’Salin, a duke and chancellor to the new king, that king’s heir until he produced his own, and a nearly rehabilitated practitioner of black magic.

  Now I can add leader of an expedition to hopefully save the Seven Kingdoms to that list.

  Surprisingly, Phaelan had come to me and volunteered. Even more surprising—approaching shocking, actually—was that I had agreed with him.

  I’d accepted Phaelan’s offer not only because I now knew him to be courageous and resourceful. My team had witnessed that bravery firsthand in Phaelan’s command of the Kraken during the attack of the giant waves, which would make his inclusion easier to accept. But I had a more personal reason. My intuition told me he would be needed. And I’d learned through past unpleasant experience that I ignored my gut feelings at my peril.

  Most people have what can be called intuition, instinct, premonition, a hunch. Some listen when that little voice starts talking, others don’t. I wasn’t clairvoyant, I couldn’t see the future, but on occasion my little voice has been known to give me a shove in a particular direction. It told me we needed Phaelan Benares, and if it was steering me wrong, it would be the first time. I wasn’t about to take the risk of telling it no.

  I had just learned another reason. A reason that confirmed my instincts.

  I wore a piece of the Heart of Nidaar in a ring. The team’s gem mage, Agata Azul, wore another tiny nugget in a pendant. She was one of the top gem mages in the Seven Kingdoms, and I had sought her out to use her pro
digious gift to help us locate the Heart. During the four-week voyage, Agata had bonded with the Heart’s fragment. That bond had saved our fleet when an unknown entity had activated the Heart against us, causing an earthquake and giant waves to destroy our ships. Agata had reached through the fragment to the Heart itself and—with a magical power boost from Talon—had calmed it, stopping the earthquake and saving all our lives.

  The earthquake and the giant waves we had experienced were but a fraction of what the Heart of Nidaar was capable of. Nine hundred years ago, a group of Khrynsani dark mages found and gained access to the city of Nidaar and its Heart. Their clumsy attempts to activate and test the stone’s power had resulted in a series of earthquakes that laid waste to hundreds of miles of Aquas’s eastern coast, draining every lake and river, turning a green paradise full of life into a barren wasteland.

  We didn’t know whether the Khrynsani had taken control of the stone again, or whether it had been activated by the Cha’Nidaar, the keepers of the Heart who were last seen nine hundred years ago, still determined to protect themselves and the stone. Or—like another stone of my recent acquaintance—had the Heart of Nidaar become sentient and was it now capable of protecting itself from any who traveled to Aquas’s shores?

  I wasn’t the only one whose intuition was telling them that we would need Phaelan before this was all over. Agata had told me she was certain that somehow and in some way, Phaelan Benares’s presence would be critical to the success of our mission.

  The stone in her pendant had seconded that motion.

  Who was I to argue with a woman and her jewelry?

  That was good enough for me.

  Hopefully, it would be good enough for my team.

  Phaelan wouldn’t exactly be welcomed with open arms, but he would be accepted—for my sake. My team trusted me with their lives, but even my word would only go so far. The rest was up to Phaelan. Not only could he not screw up, he couldn’t make even one, small mistake.

  And he knew it.

  Time for a team meeting.

  Elsu Lenmana squinted against the late-afternoon sun and up at the escarpment towering hundreds of feet above our heads, a relic of the earthquake set off centuries before when the Khrynsani activated the Heart of Nidaar.

  “That was some earthquake,” Elsu said.

  Our team sharpshooter had a flair for understatement, a characteristic that carried over to her magic. Her gift enabled her to focus immense power with pinpoint accuracy and complete silence. Magic made noise. Elsu Lenmana’s magic did not. She didn’t need to get close to her chosen target. If she could see it, she could shoot it. Elsu could generate a needle of fire that could cut through solid rock—or anything else that got in her way.

  Goblins were tall and leanly muscled. Elsu was smaller than average, curvy, and soft. Or so she appeared to a casual observer, and Elsu attracted her share of observers—casual and those with intent. She was more than capable of encouraging attention if needed for a distraction, or discouraging attention—or breathing—permanently.

  “An earthquake caused by a stone whose new best friend—our team gem mage—feels certain an elf pirate captain needs to come with us,” she added.

  Dasant chuckled. “Don’t forget that opinion was confirmed by her pendant—a piece of that earthquake-causing stone.”

  “Like that makes it sound better.”

  The big goblin tossed me a quick grin, then made a show of thinking it over, complete with frown and furrowed brow. “You have to admit it sounds more reasonable than ‘Tam’s gut told him so.’”

  If Elsu’s magic was a silent arrow to the heart, Dasant Kele’s was a deck-clearing cannon blast. What he lacked in finesse, he more than made up for with sheer destructive power. If something needed destroying, simply point Das in the right direction and he’d take it from there. Cheerfully.

  I gave them a crooked grin. “On behalf of my gut, I’m offended. The next time it tries to warn me and save your doubting lives, I’ll keep that information to myself. Like that mountain troll ambush outside Dunmor, or that cave full of not-hibernating bukas, or—”

  “Yes, we’ve all been grateful for your clairvoyant intestines,” drawled a voice from behind me.

  As always, I hadn’t heard Malik’s approach, even on a rock-strewn beach. Preternaturally silent even for a goblin, it was said that Death himself envied Malik Chiali’s stealth in approaching his victims—or his friends. Malik was an equal opportunity creeper. He also didn’t suffer fools easily or gladly, and felt that the majority of the goblin population fell into the fool category. He was one of the most intelligent people I had ever known, and my friend had little patience with those less brilliant than himself, which meant nearly everyone.

  “What are they warning us about this time?” he asked.

  “They’re saying to take Phaelan Benares with us,” Dasant told him.

  The only reaction that earned from Malik was an arched eyebrow. “Would this be in reference to Captain Benares’s swashbuckling derring-do?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  “His devil-may-care disregard for danger?”

  “No.”

  “His belief that the streets of Nidaar are paved with gold?”

  I shook my head. “Jash told him they’re not. He enjoyed breaking that news way too much.”

  Malik spread his hands. “Then Tamnais, my friend, I am at a loss.”

  “It was Tam’s gut and Agata’s shard,” Elsu told him. “Apparently it thrummed when Phaelan asked Tam to go with us.”

  There went the eyebrow again. “Thrummed?”

  “Thrummed,” I said. “Agata’s description. It happened when Phaelan asked to go with us, and again when I agreed.”

  “When you and your gut agreed,” Dasant chimed in.

  “Yes, me and my gut. Agata told me she has experienced the same response from other stones of power. It’s an affirmation.”

  Malik shrugged. “Then so be it. Far be it from me to dispute Tamnais’s viscera and opinionated jewelry.”

  “Also, Bane’s in no shape to go anywhere,” I said.

  Bane Ahiga wasn’t happy and neither was I, but you had to play the cards you were dealt. Bane’s cards had gotten him a broken leg in the attack on a pair of Nebian frigates. He was up and moving around, albeit slowly and with the aid of a cane. Without our fleet’s first-rate healers, he’d still be in bed. Because of their work, he was walking and getting stronger every day, but he wasn’t strong enough or fast enough for what we had to do.

  He would be staying behind, working with Kesyn Badru, my teacher and mage heavyweight, as a two-man battlemagic security force for the ships. If we were successful in our quest, we needed a way to get home. If we failed, either we wouldn’t need a way home or the goblins and elves on the ships soon wouldn’t have a home to go to.

  Bane had met with Phaelan and deemed him qualified for the mission. Bane didn’t give approval lightly. In fact, he’d never deemed anyone to be even remotely close to his level of demolitions expertise.

  That said a lot about Phaelan’s skill. I just wasn’t sure if what it said was a good thing.

  “Phaelan’s done a lot of tomb robbing and demolitions in his time,” I told them.

  “Bane’s also a mage.”

  I smiled slowly. “And Phaelan’s a null.”

  That won me a few slow grins and nods of grudging approval.

  They knew what I was saying. A null was a person who had no magic at all. If you had valuables you wanted to keep, you protected them with physical measures such as locks, and magical means, such as wards or spells. If you could afford it, you did both. This ensured that a thief who was also a mage would set off alarms and often fatal countermeasures if they got too close to a vault, or wherever you kept your valuables. Magic could be sensed. It wasn’t difficult. What was difficult for any magic user was to tamp down their magic so it couldn’t be detected at all. Most, me included, could hold it down for less than a minute. That wouldn’
t be long enough to get into a vault. That’s where a null who was also a talented thief came in handy.

  A null and thief such as Phaelan Benares.

  In addition, the Khrynsani would be looking and listening for goblins. Not listening with their ears, but with their magical senses. An elf registered differently than a goblin; an elf null would register as background noise, if at all.

  One thing I wasn’t going to tell my team was to behave with Phaelan. Every man and woman on my team, regardless of race, had better be able to take care of themselves. Phaelan would be no exception. My team had spent four weeks at sea on ships captained by his siblings. I was sure they’d heard plenty of stories. They knew what they needed to know. Phaelan was more than capable of taking care of himself. If one of my people took teasing one step too far, they’d find that out for themselves.

  I took every mission seriously, and I felt the same way about my entertainment.

  Elsu was watching me. She smiled very slightly. “Sounds like we’re taking an elf.”

  Chapter Two

  We would be traveling light, and that included food and water.

  No goblin liked field rations, but I would gladly give up gourmet dining to have a week’s worth of food that fit in a small pouch at my waist. I could fight or run for my life and not be weighted down. While the taste left much to be desired, you felt full after eating it, and your strength never lagged. As far as I was concerned, when you were in the desert, you couldn’t ask for more than that.

  Water was more difficult. We each could carry only one waterskin; fortunately, one of our team members had a gift that kept on giving. Water, that is.