In the buildings around us were offices, conference rooms, commissaries, libraries, dormitories, apartments, auditoriums, and more courtyards—and underneath it all ran the transit tunnels.

Mychael had brought his best trackers; Sedge Rinker had sent his.

A roar split the air above our heads. I jumped and swore, then looked up with a fierce grin. A sleek, black sentry dragon was hovering above the courtyard, its massive claws extended for landing. Its rider had told the dragon where to land, and if there were any mages in its way, getting squashed was their problem, not his.

Archmagus Justinius Valerian could get away with that.

In about half a minute, we had the courtyard all to ourselves. While gratifying, it did nothing to get rid of the magical distortion. If anything, Justinius’s arrival had kicked it up a notch. But I was still glad to see the old man. As Guardian paladin, Mychael’s job was to coordinate and lead the search. Justinius was here to keep any of the aforementioned pompous mages from impeding that search.

The old man smoothly dismounted and strode over to where we were, his robes whipping out behind him as his dragon settled his wings. He was armed for ogre, with a massive sword on his hip and long daggers tucked in his belt. Though with Sarad Nukpana somewhere under the ground we were standing on, Justinius would have to make good use of his magical arsenal. I’d only seen the old man cut loose once, and dozens of demons had died ugly deaths. I’d love to be treated to that show one more time, this time with Sarad Nukpana as the star attraction.

“Anything?” Justinius’s blue eyes were as hard as agates. The old man was just as pissed as I was, and for much the same reasons.

“Nothing, sir,” Mychael told him. “Plenty of mages saw Tam land; no one knows where he went.”

Justinius scowled. “I recall he’s got himself a damned good veil.”

“One of the best.”

“Shit.”

I snorted. “Yeah, that’s my take on the situation, too.”

“What about Nukpana?” he asked me. “Is the Saghred telling you anything?”

“Just that it’s hungry.”

Mychael adjusted his sword on his hip. The blade was glowing through the scabbard. “Let’s go.”

Mychael had laid down the law for his men before they’d gone into the tunnels. Four men per search party, no one was to go anywhere alone, and each party was to check in every quarter hour with the Guardian contact wizards Mychael had stationed at five of the main tunnel intersections. Either the distortion was less in the tunnels, or Guardian contact wizards could work around it. Both would be fine by me. They were to alert Mychael the moment Tam, Piaras, Talon, or Sarad Nukpana were found. If they found Nukpana, they were not to attempt to kill, only contain. Mychael didn’t want to lose any of his men. Since Sarad Nukpana had eaten the souls of two mages over two thousand years old, plus Rudra Muralin, none of Mychael’s men could take down Nukpana if the goblin got the upper hand.

And if he’d fully assimilated the strength and skill Rudra Muralin had absorbed from years of wielding the Saghred, there was only one person who could kill him now.

Me.

And I would have to use the Saghred to do it.

I wasn’t only here as a seeker; I was here as a weapon.

Yeah, “shit” definitely described how I felt.

The transit tunnels were well lit—for the most part. As with all ways to get from one place to another, whether be it alley, street, or tunnel, some were used more than others and kept in better repair. And when you were talking about a man-made tunnel, better repair often meant lighting that actually worked. There were long patches of dark down here, way too long, and way too dark. To make matters worse, it turned out that the magical distortion was just as bad down here as it was on the surface. Mages had been using these tunnels and working magic in the buildings above for centuries—and all that magical residue had seeped into the ground and the tunnel walls.

Mychael drew his sword, barked a word I didn’t recognize, and the glow from his blade cut through the dark for twenty yards in every direction. A few seconds later, it kept me from turning my dad or Vidor Kalta into pincushions when they came around the next corner.

I lowered my throwing daggers. “Why the hell aren’t you using a lightglobe?” My hands were shaking, so I gripped the knives harder.

Dad continued toward us like he and Kalta were just out for a stroll. “You’re more likely to find things that prefer the dark when you’re sharing the dark with them.”

“Logical, yet suicidal,” Vegard muttered from beside me.

“Can you work down here?” Dad asked me quietly.

“I’m getting nothing,” I spat.

“Mychael, we need to get out of the main tunnels,” Dad told him. “Sarad isn’t in any tunnel that a mage has walked recently.”

“My men are covering them all.”

“And they won’t find Sarad. Hopefully they will find the boys or Tam Nathrach—but they won’t find Sarad.”

I tried to see into the darkness behind him. “If you know where he is—”

“I know the only place he can be. What you saw when you touched the seat in that coach confirms it. You saw an open doorway with light coming from inside. The bunkers.”

Mychael frowned. “What?”

“In case the island ever came under attack, there were twenty bunkers built behind these tunnel walls. Each bunker could accommodate fifty men, not comfortably, but there’d be room.”

As if a hundred miles of tunnels weren’t enough. “Where are they?”

“Mid was never attacked, so they were never used,” Dad told me. “And for security purposes, only the Seat of Twelve knew where they were.”

I felt sick. “So Carnades knows, and we have to ask—”

“No, Raine. The Seat of Twelve from the time when the bunkers were built back in my cadet days.”

Over nine hundred years ago.

Mychael picked up my thoughts and scowled. “They’re not on the maps.”

Mychael and Justinius had looked at a map of the tunnels just before we’d come down here. An intersecting mess of granite walls.

“Nothing was written down,” Dad confirmed. “Only committed to memory. Since there was never an attack, the bunkers were never used, and the mages died and took the location to their graves with them.”

“And this helps us how?”

“Raine, no man down here can find Sarad’s bunker.”

I knew what he was saying and I didn’t like it. Not only did I not like it; it scared the crap out of me.

“I can find it, but only if I let the Saghred loose.”

“You can still feel the Saghred’s hunger, can’t you?”

Oh yeah, I could feel it, like I was being gnawed from the inside out. I didn’t have to say it; my dad knew. He’d been the Saghred’s bond servant for centuries; he knew the hunger.

The temptations.

“The Saghred wants what it has lost,” he said quietly. “Sarad has consumed two of the other mages who were imprisoned in the stone with him. The Saghred exists beyond magic; the distortions won’t affect it.” He hesitated. “If you let it go, it will lead you to Sarad.”

I didn’t want to let the rock go or run into Sarad Nukpana in the dark. If I let the Saghred go in tunnels full of Guardians seething with magic, the rock might try to take a pre- Nukpana snack, and it would start with the men around me: Mychael, Dad, Vegard, Vidor. And I might not get control over it again.

I might not get control over myself again.

The only sound was my ragged breathing echoing against the granite walls. I did not want to do this. I so did not want to do this.

“And you’re not going to.” Mychael’s voice said no argument. His mind knew there was no other way—and he still wasn’t going to let me risk myself.

Piaras and Talon were down here somewhere, maybe captive in that bunker with Sarad Nukpana and Janos Ghalfari.