The Diamond Sphinx (The Lost Ancients Book 6) Read online

  The Diamond Sphinx

  The Lost Ancients, Book Six

  Marie Andreas

  Contents

  Books by Marie Andreas

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  About the Author

  Books by Marie Andreas

  The Lost Ancients Series

  Book One: The Glass Gargoyle

  Book Two: The Obsidian Chimera

  Book Three: The Emerald Dragon

  Book Four: The Sapphire Manticore

  Book Five: The Golden Basilisk

  Book Six: The Diamond Sphinx

  * * *

  The Asarlaí Wars Trilogy

  Book One: Warrior Wench

  Book Two: Victorious Dead

  Book Three: Defiant Ruin

  * * *

  The Adventures of Smith and Jones

  A Curious Invasion

  The Mayhem of Mermaids

  Copyright © 2019 by Marie Andreas

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Interior Format by The Killion Group, Inc.

  To my sister—these books wouldn’t have happened without you.

  And to everyone who ever wanted a drunken faery of their own.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing this series has been a labor of love, joy, and tears (mostly mine, sometimes the characters). I could never have done it without the love, support, and kindness from family, friends, and readers.

  I’d like to thank Jessa Slade for editing magic—she continues to make sure I don’t go following too many wild thoughts. For my most awesome team of beta readers who plowed through the entire book and helped tighten it up: Lisa Andreas, Patti Huber, Lynne Mayfield, Sharon Rivest, and Ilana Schoonover. Any remaining errors are mine alone.

  My cover artist, Aleta Rafton, creating yet another awesome work of art. And to The Killion Group for formatting of the entire book and print cover.

  And to every one of you who has followed me on this wild journey!

  Chapter One

  There was always a boom. Sometimes a big one filled with yells—mostly mine—sometimes a small one, followed by faery cursing. But there was always a boom. That had become my reality this past month. If I was honest with myself, that had been my reality since three little drunken faeries invaded my life over fifteen years ago.

  Today’s boom was a small one, mostly followed by faeries laughing rather than cursing. And it was just them discussing prior booms. Now, “boom” had never been clearly defined by the faeries. Ever. No matter how many times I asked, begged, pleaded, or how much ale I gave them. Boom was a catchall word in their world that could mean something big, bad, and world-destroying, or just a little thing that should have happened but didn’t…or vice versa.

  I rolled over on my pile of leaves and blankets that I pretended was a bed. It was too early to be up and I wanted to get in a few more hours of rest before we hit the trail again. But Garbage Blossom, Leaf Grub, and Crusty Bucket were having none of that. They were squatting around the fire, drawing something in the dirt, giggling, and talking maniacally about booms. The empty ale bottles next to them pointed out that they weren’t up early, they’d not gone to bed yet. I thought about asking them to shut up, but I knew that would just make them louder, so I rolled over and crammed my cloak over my ears.

  We’d been on the run for a month now. Just those three, my two constructs, Bunky, my chimera construct, and Irving—my newly named gargoyle construct—and myself. We were hiding from Nivinal, a nasty, unnaturally powerful bastard bent on destroying the world as I knew it. That he apparently needed me to be a part of his plans had made me run away even faster.

  We were also running from the people I cared about and loved. Something had happened to me during the battle at the Spheres—I’d changed. Into what exactly, I wasn’t sure. But it had been huge. And scaly. It had helped destroy the attackers and save my friends, but I could have easily crushed them. I had never been so terrified in my life. So I took off.

  Garbage, Leaf, and Crusty hadn’t let me go without them—and that they seemed to know what was happening to me, and were sad about it, wasn’t good. Then Bunky and Irving had shown up as well. I’d had the remaining twenty faeries promise to watch over my friends and the love of my life, Alric, and explain I had to go for their safety.

  I knew my friends; but more importantly, I knew my elf boyfriend tracker, and so I was surprised I’d made it this long without being found. They’d seen me when I changed; maybe if they’d known what I had become they weren’t really trying to find me.

  There was one more quasi-member of my group who might have been keeping them from finding me—if they were, in fact, looking. A minkie. It could be the minkie, but the faeries always referred to them as plural, so I assumed there was more than one. But the faeries always forgot him immediately after seeing him, and whenever I saw him, they didn’t. Even Bunky and Irving gronked at me oddly when I asked if they’d seen the tiny white creature. They would be staring right at it, but apparently see nothing.

  Visual mirage or not, I had a feeling the minkie was somehow masking our trail.

  A particularly high-pitched squeal of laughter stabbed through the cloak over my head and I gave up even trying to pretend to sleep. I rolled out of my makeshift bed and stretched. The woods around us were dark and the sounds of night hunts were echoing around. Wolves hunted here. Probably other creatures as well. We’d run into the wolves our second night in these mountains—they’d started circling us, until Crusty flew up to the lead wolf, smacked her on the nose, and chittered at her.

  The wolf pulled back in surprise, but stopped snarling and tilted her head. After a few tense moments of faery-wolf silent communication, the pack faded back into the forest. Well, I thought it was tense. The girls just started laughing hysterically. Of course, they wouldn’t share what was so funny, nor what Crusty told the she-wolf. But all of the animals had left us alone after that.

  There were times I realized that I really should be scared about what my faeries could do.

  The mountains we were going through were higher than anything I was used to and the forest was dense and unt
amed. Unlike many of the areas around the kingdom, there was no sign of prior habitation. If it weren’t for the situation, I might enjoy being here. Well, if there was a cabin of some sort. And food. And a real bed.

  I dug out some of the last of the travel bread and jerky that had been in my pack when I ran away. I needed to see if the faeries had any foodstuffs in those magic bags of theirs. So far all I’d seen had been ale. As long as they let me have one every once in a while, that was fine. But hopefully they could also get some food. They seemed to eat whatever they found, but I was a bit pickier.

  The food supply was alarmingly low—two more days of dry travel bread and maybe three of the jerky. There were plenty of fresh streams, so water wasn’t an issue.

  I held up the food. “Girls? We need something else to eat—and do not bring back leaves.”

  I’d found that I had to be clear of what I wanted or they just brought in leaves. LOTS of leaves. Now that we were higher in the mountains, they also dragged in tons of pine needles, whether I asked for them or not.

  “Food good!” Crusty yelled and tipped over backwards.

  The other two didn’t look much better. I wasn’t going to get anything from them until they slept it off. I ripped off a chunk of the dry bread and a slice of the jerky and bit in. Then I reached over and grabbed an ale bottle they hadn’t gotten to yet.

  “Is mine!” Garbage stretched for the unopened bottle, but only succeeded in falling over sideways. She started snoring a moment later.

  I shook my head and opened the bottle. When I ran away from my friends, I had no plan beyond getting away from people I might hurt. Now that it had been a month of not turning into whatever it was, and hiking through these mountains, I was rethinking that logic.

  Covey, Padraig, and Lorcan were three of the smartest people I knew. Alric wasn’t a slouch in that department either, even though he had a tendency to act first and think second. They might have been able to help me figure out what had happened—and how to make sure it never happened again. Sadly, it only took me running out of food and being sick of camping for that thought to be given serious consideration.

  A rustling of footsteps through leaves came from behind me. I’d been around enough sneaky folks in the last year that I knew what to do. I kept my breathing steady, didn’t physically react, and slowly reached for a stick that hadn’t made it to the fire yet. I used it to poke at the fire, as if lost in my own thoughts, and glanced to the faeries—all three were sound asleep.

  After the wolf pack encounter, we’d had no more interactions with any animals. But there could be animals out there who hadn’t heard of the faeries yet. Not to mention, Alric wasn’t the only excellent tracker in the world. I didn’t look like I had much, but it appeared that I was traveling alone—a prime victim if someone was desperate.

  Another rustle. They were quiet, but Alric had taught me what to listen for.

  I took a slow breath, tightened my hold on my flaming stick, and spun.

  To face a tiny old lady in a badly mismatched dress and a ragged shawl, squinting at me with a stick of her own.

  “You’re not him.” She lowered her stick and peered around my fire. “Did you see some scallywag run through here? Maybe a day or so ago. Took my prime bottle of nectar and fled.”

  She was shorter than I recalled, and skinnier. Her face was hard to see clearly in the firelight. But something about her voice was familiar.

  “Mathilda?”

  “What did you call me?” The stick came back up and the very pointy end was aimed at my gut.

  “I used to know someone and you reminded me of her. Mathilda. Although her sister called her something else.”

  The woman took a step closer, looked past me to the left of the fire, and started laughing. “You still have the damn faeries! I figured you’d have ditched them long ago.” She squinted at me. “But why are you alone in the mountains, Taryn?”

  Her voice had resumed the tone I recalled, the one she used before she and her house ran off on me. Mathilda had found me after I’d been left for dead fifteen years ago. She’d nursed me back to health. After a few months, she sent me to go find some berries for one of her tinctures, took her house, and ran off. Leaving me with Garbage, Crusty, and Leaf as my wards.

  “Where is your house, Mathilda?”

  “Now, I asked first.”

  “I like the mountains, they are refreshing, and the girls and I often come up here to relax.”

  Mathilda opened her mouth to speak, but my two constructs dropped from the sky and hovered between us. Bunky was making a low growl and Irving was trying to mimic it. Irving carried the basilisk relic somewhere inside him, but it no longer appeared in his mouth. I’d been debating how to glue a construct’s mouth shut until I realized that.

  “Oh now, aren’t these cute?” She held out her hand, but both flew back out of range. “And trained as well! Have no fear, my stalwart guardians, I mean your ward no harm. Tell them we are friends, Taryn.”

  I looked at the two constructs—had they been living creatures, and not made of magical metal, their hackles would have been up. I dropped my stick into the fire. “Are we friends? You did trick me into being responsible for those faeries, and then abandoned us in the middle of a forest.”

  The laughing cackle was the same as it had always been. “Eh, I had places to go and you needed to grow.” She nodded down to the sleeping faeries. “So did they. Queen Mungoosey has kept the faeries alive during extremely dark times, but they need to remember who they were—who they are. Going with you helped them.”

  “Bunky, Irving, stand down,” I finally said. “But keep an eye on her.”

  They both flew up a few feet over our heads.

  I folded my arms. “Now, what do you really look like?” Her sister, Siabiane, had indicated that Mathilda loved disguises.

  Again the cackling laugh. “You really have met Siabiane. Very well.” She waved her hand and her glamour dropped. She was still short, just not as tiny as she had appeared before. Just a few inches shorter than I. Her face was unlined and ageless, like that of her sister. Her ears had been rounded before, but now had the slight point of an elf breed. I’d never figured out if Siabiane was an abnormal pure breed elf or a mixed breed. The odds were looking toward both of them being mixed breeds.

  “Or we’re just so old our ears have lost their points.” Mathilda’s cackle was more disturbing coming from someone who looked like she did now. The rags and mismatched clothing definitely didn’t fit the delicate elegance of her face.

  “You’re reading my mind?”

  “No, just following your reaction. You hesitated on my ears. Siabiane and I are elves, but from a long vanished line.” She shrugged. “I think we’re the only two left in this land—we came from over the sea. Both of us have our reasons for sticking around. I’m not done here yet.” She looked me over slowly. “Clearly.”

  “I’d offer you some breakfast, but I’m a bit low on rations at the moment. You’re welcome to sit by my fire. Unless you need to go chase whoever stole your nectar.”

  She peered closer into my face for a few moments, her expression serious. Then she smiled. “There is far more to you now than when I found you—you were empty then. But it would make more sense for you and your entourage to come join me in my cottage. It’s just over the next hill.” She squinted over the fire toward the dark woods beyond. “And that thief is probably long gone. Had he taken off this way, he would have stumbled into you all. You’re being here threw off my sense of his location.” She shrugged. “I am annoyed, and I will catch him eventually, but I have more nectar.” She looked around expectantly. “Well? Pick those little drunkards up, gather your things, and follow me. Unless you truly prefer the outdoors?”

  I still wasn’t happy about her abandoning me fifteen years ago, but I was less annoyed at her than I was tired of roughing it. I said nothing but grabbed my bedroll, shoved the faeries into my pack, and was back at her side a few minutes later. Bunky
and Irving kept diving low over her in what I called their sniffing mode. They were deciding on whether they liked her or not. Which was fair—so was I.

  Chapter Two

  Mathilda’s cottage looked pretty much the same as I remembered. Since it was a bit before true dawn, the warm glow of lit candles and a fire made it brighter. It was also a bit leafier than before; there were now vines growing around it making it blend in with the surroundings. But the walls underneath were brightly colored with splashes of purple, orange, and vibrant blue.

  “Wouldn’t it work better if you painted the house more natural colors?” I lifted my pack toward her cottage. “You’d blend in better.”

  Mathilda clucked and shook her head, but continued to the front door. “I like my colors. And my vines.” She patted one strand that hung near the door and I saw it curl around her hand.

  I shrugged and nodded to the constructs to follow as I went inside.

  The inside was small and crowded with furniture, books, and baskets. I was struck by how different she and her sister were.

  “So how was Siabiane the last you saw her?” Mathilda asked as she puttered over and took a kettle off the stove.

  “Seriously, stop reading my mind.” I’d been about to drop my pack and take a seat, but not if she’d started reading minds.

  “I’m not. But you really need to school your face. Everything you think is displayed to those of us who are old and wise. My sister and I are different in many ways. We each want to help the world get back on track—I just take a distant, long-range approach. She prefers to be more hands on. And I like clutter.”

  I dropped my pack and sat. Bunky and Irving hovered for a bit, before flying up to the rafters and settling down. A peek in my pack told me the faeries were still out. “Back on track?” Somehow Mathilda’s ability to combine housekeeping styles and world changing events into a single thought didn’t surprise me.