The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5)

  The Golden Basilisk

  The Lost Ancients Series, Book 5

  Marie Andreas

  Contents

  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

  Dear Reader

  Books by Marie Andreas

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2018 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.

  Back Cover and Interior Format by The Killion Group, Inc.

  Acknowledgments

  I keep saying this, but none of these books would have come about without the love and support of all of my family and friends.

  I’d like to thank Jessa Slade for editing magic—she keeps the stories on target. For my most awesome team of beta readers/typo hunters who plowed through the entire book and helped tighten it up: Lisa Andreas, Lynne Facer, Patti Huber, Lynne Mayfield, and Sharon Rivest.

  Above and beyond thank you to Ilana Schoonover for her amazing editing, typo hunting, and last minute fixing she did under massive pressure—thank you so very much. Any remaining errors are mine alone…or Crusty Bucket’s.

  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.

  1

  “Minkies! We’ve got all the minkies! Dance minkies!” The high-pitched voice echoed in the narrow confines of the high canyon walls, and I knew I was going to have to squish the speaker once I found her. However, stumbling around in a dark, narrow canyon, while trying to avoid stepping on my companions sleeping around the campfire, wasn’t easy.

  The faeries had taken off right after dinner—as had been their tendency the last three nights on the road. The first day on the road, Garbage Blossom had taken her vow to protect me seriously. She sat in front of my face and stared at me as we drove away from the formerly hidden elven enclave. The rest of the faeries had flown around the wagon, scouting ahead like it was a game.

  Not Garbage.

  She watched me until I finally took a nap to avoid her. The scenery on this side of the enclave hadn’t been that exciting anyway.

  When we’d set up camp that first night, there was the tiny, orange faery, following me everywhere. I woke up the next morning to a maniacal orange face mere inches away from mine.

  Luckily, Garbage had gotten bored within a few hours on the second day and forgotten her vows not long after.

  For the past three days of travel, the band of faeries: Garbage Blossom, Leaf Grub, Crusty Bucket, and another assorted twenty formerly wild faeries would show up for meals once we’d set camp, then pretty much take off and fly ahead.

  Sadly, their singing and obsession with the mythical creatures called minkies had begun again as well.

  This time it was during my watch. I only had an hour left so I thought maybe they wouldn’t be singing tonight. I was wrong and a tight slot canyon was possibly the worst place for them to start. Faeries were terrifying singers. They’d been known to cause week-long pub brawls simply by completing one of their songs. It was not pretty.

  Most of the area we’d covered had been flat and filled with little more than shrubs. But yesterday Padraig had changed direction and led us toward a huge cliff face. The slot canyon he led us through barely allowed the wagon and horses to pass, and only a lot of elven horse whispering from Alric got them to enter it in the first place. Deep rust, orange, and soft rose-colored walls ascended about three times as high as the wagon. They widened out a bit after the first half hour, but hadn’t gotten more than a dozen or so feet away from us on either side.

  Camping within those lovely, multicolored canyon walls made a perfect acoustic amplifier for the torture that was faery singing.

  “Minkies! Why have you been gone so long?” That was Leaf Grub. She didn’t often join in for the singing, that appearing to be the twisted domain of Crusty Bucket. But the closer I got to the voice, the more I heard. There was an odd, and unfortunately extremely discordant, humming, as well as snippets of song from both Crusty and Leaf.

  “Minkies. Minkies. Minkies.” More than three voices for that.

  The sound was becoming chant-like and made me move faster. The canyon had a slight bend, so I couldn’t see them, but I was getting closer.

  A dark buzzing form dove near my head, but stopped about a foot over me and purred. Bunky, my own personal chimera construct. The chimeras had come from somewhere deep below the ruins in Beccia, left there for whatever reasons by the powerful beings who created them. I’d only known of twenty from that original batch, but during our battle of a few days ago, it was made clear there were far more than that. Close to a thousand was my guess. Since I had been fighting for my life at the time, and they vanished once the battle was over, I wasn’t sure. Bunky was no help. I couldn’t understand him and while the faeries could, they rarely repeated anything helpful. Even Padraig and Alric, who both were able to understand some of what Bunky said, couldn’t get him to discuss the rest of his kind.

  Bunky had been captured by the faeries months ago when we were first trying to figure out what the chimeras were. He decided that even though he was thousands of years old and a magical construct made of a metal-like material, he was one of the faeries. He protected the girls and myself and had an odd fondness for trying to head-butt Alric.

  Bunky recently found a new friend in the form of a gargoyle construct created by Siabiane, an ageless elf of massive power who lived just outside the elven enclave. The gargoyle was made after the original Ancient relic, the glass gargoyle, that had started this entire disaster. Well, started my inclusion in it—I had a bad feeling these events had been eons in the making. We were currently hunting the mages who’d stolen the relic gargoyle, along with the obsidian chimera, and a very dangerous emerald dragon. I’d ended up with the fourth relic, the sapphire manticore, somehow inside me. A small mark of it was hidden on my cheek.

  My night vision was nowhere near as good as pretty much anyone I was traveling with, but a soft gronking sound told me the gargoyle was up there with Bunky. Neither of them sounded concerned so there was no threat in the area. Aside from the assault on my ears.

  The three of us rounded the corner and found our miscreants. I thought they’d run out of the ale they’d stolen from Locksead’s henchman, Jackal, a few months ago—either I misjudged those tiny magic bags they carried or they’d fou
nd another source. Since Padraig and Covey didn’t drink, and Alric hadn’t brought any on this trip, I had a feeling that there was a pilfered elven bar somewhere back in the enclave.

  Twenty-three faeries were all sitting around a small fire, drinking and singing. I’d never seen them start a fire before so I figured one of them stole a twig from our fire. Drunken faeries with flame was not a comforting thought.

  “Could you keep it down? The others are trying to sleep.” I refrained from adding they were giving me a massive headache.

  “Must get minkies,” Garbage worked into her chant-song.

  “They needed,” added Leaf.

  “Fighting minkies.” The last was Crusty, and sung more than said even though she was sprawled out on her back and her eyes were closed. She was pretty close to needing to go into a bottle to sober up. Unfortunately, the only bottles around belonged to the faeries and I didn’t know if I could grab one from them fast enough to shove her into it.

  “You want to fight the minkies?” At least my question stopped the chanting. That was something.

  “No. Is silly,” Leaf said from where she stared into the fire. “Need minkies to fight. Cats too.” She looked over to me with sad eyes. “No kittens.”

  I waved to Bunky as he and the gargoyle hovered over me. “Can you two go watch over the camp? This might take a while.” It would be Alric’s watch soon, and so far we hadn’t run into trouble, but we were chasing two insanely powerful magic users who really wouldn’t like being followed. We knew they were heading for the Spheres—huge, carved boulders said to hold the secrets of the Ancients. They wouldn’t be happy to find that we were following them.

  Bunky bleated, then he and the gargoyle flew off. I dropped down to a crouch to better see the faeries. As annoyed as I had been about their singing, and the fact they obviously stole more ale, seeing them solemn and silent was even more disturbing.

  “Girls? What’s going on?”

  “Is not going. Needs to be going, but not. Is bad,” Garbage said.

  They were difficult to understand most times, but this was worse. I’d never seen them like this.

  “But what—”

  All twenty-three faeries cut me off by suddenly jabbering, even the semi-conscious Crusty. It was just random noise for a few seconds, then suddenly changed and they in one voice shouted, “Minkies!”

  I was about to tell them to keep quiet but then a number of tiny lights appeared directly in front of us. Most floated up, but one hovered over the fire, then drifted to Crusty. And popped.

  A small creature, a few inches bigger than the four-inch faeries, stood there. It was vaguely like a weasel, but had six legs instead of four, and appeared to be very comfortable in a bipedal position. It was covered in short dark fur that changed color as I watched. And those deep black eyes that watched me were scary intelligent.

  The fur became blinding white, finally changing to a more medium brown. I only had a quick look before twenty-three faeries, in various stages of inebriation, squealed and piled on top of the creature.

  A creature that must be the fabled minkie. After hearing about them for years, I really expected something more…impressive. It looked like a variation of some of the large plain rodents. But I’d never seen them arrive like it had. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved.

  I tried to get the faeries attention for a few moments, but there was no way I was getting them away from whatever that thing was, minkie or not. I rocked back on my heels and watched as the tiny lights that had appeared when this one did vanished as they drifted higher. Small petals branched out and seemed to be helping them move—they looked like flowers made of light as they slowly made their way up and out of the canyon.

  This hadn’t answered what the minkies were nor why the faeries wanted their cats along with the minkies. Months ago, I’d caught the faeries betting on cat racing. They’d managed to gather most all of the free roaming felines from the town of Beccia, taken over an abandoned barn, and started racing for money. What these strange lights, the fur-changing creature under the pile of faeries, and cats had to do with fighting, I had no idea. And the middle of the night was definitely not the time to try to figure it out.

  I was about to break up the faery-minkie love fest and get some answers, when a clattering of pans—as if every single one we’d had in the wagon suddenly started flying and brought a dozen friends—came from behind me.

  I gave the pile of faeries one more look, then got to my feet and ran back down to the wagon. I had no idea what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t finding Bunky and the gargoyle dive bombing the wagon, and Covey throwing every single pot and pan she could find at them.

  I ran closer and realized that the battle wasn’t between Covey, Bunky, and gargoyle, but all three of them fighting against some tiny dark purple creatures. They almost looked like the bright lights that had emerged when the minkie appeared except their glow was dark, purplish, and menacing. Even if my friends weren’t fighting them off, I would have a bad feeling about them.

  The light creatures didn’t seem to be fighting, although given their shape I had no idea what they could do to fight, but they were actively trying to land on Covey. Then I noticed that both Alric and Padraig were sprawled out awkwardly near the fire. They’d both been asleep when I left to find the faeries, but their current positions indicated they’d gotten up, and then had been knocked unconscious.

  By those little purple light things? My heart raced, but I held back from running to Alric. He was still breathing, they both were. They just weren’t moving and the positions they were in indicated they had been in motion when they fell.

  Covey ran out of things to throw and both Bunky and the gargoyle were overwhelmed as they attacked the purple lights. Three of the lights drifted down and briefly landed on Covey. She dropped like an empty sack of ale bottles.

  I screamed and the lights turned toward me.

  2

  They didn’t move fast, more like they were swimming through the air at a steady pace. I might be able to outrun them but they were coming from all directions, and Bunky and the gargoyle didn’t appear able to slow them down.

  I didn’t have many options. Up until a few months ago, I was a magic sink. Not only could I not do magic, only the strongest spells would work on me. Somehow that drastically changed when I found myself with unexplained magical abilities. My spell casting was limited, and seemed to work much better with dragon bane, a whiskey, but I did have one spell down well. Push.

  I mentally dug in deep and pushed those purple lights as hard as I could. Spell casting didn’t come as easily for me as for Alric or Padraig. Even my push spell took effort. I had no idea what they were, but they’d taken out three of my friends—three of my exceptionally skilled-at-defending-themselves friends. That two of them were heavy magic users might have stopped me from trying my own spell. If I’d thought about it.

  Luckily for me, I was developing a tendency to act without thinking.

  The light creatures tumbled in the air but didn’t move as far as I’d hoped. I tried again and put all of my effort into them going away, far away. Spell strain usually hit me afterwards when I tried this hard, but not while I was spell casting. This time my head felt like it had been struck so hard I reached a hand up expecting to see blood. There was none. I kept focusing on the lights.

  Finally they vanished. Literally. One moment they were there, refusing to be moved by my impressive magic—such as it was—the next, they were gone. I wasn’t sure if I’d sent them away, destroyed them, or they went to find easier prey.

  Bunky and the gargoyle came swooping in, and only then did I realize that I had dropped to a sitting position. It must have happened while I was trying to disperse those things. The world seemed a bit blurrier than it was previously, so I figured staying down might be a good idea.

  Bunky hovered nearby but didn’t try to touch me. Good thing. Normally I wore thin gloves to be able to touch him without side eff
ects. Those effects being a flood of memories that weren’t mine. I seemed to be the only one it happened to and the way I was feeling right now, I would probably pass out.

  The gargoyle didn’t care and dropped right into my lap. Like Bunky, he was a construct, but I never sensed anything when I touched him.

  I petted the gargoyle between his brows and looked at my collapsed friends. All of them were unconscious, breathing, but still not moving and I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take before I felt able to stand. I was going to have to call for help.

  Since they weren’t singing anymore, I couldn’t hear the faeries from this distance, but I might be able to get at least my three to come this way. The rest would no doubt follow.

  I concentrated my thoughts on my original three faeries: Garbage Blossom, Leaf Grub, and Crusty Bucket. I built a huge pile of full ale bottles in my mind and sent the faeries the image. In the past few months we’d found that I could call the faeries with my mind—sometimes. And only if I gave them an image strong enough to grab their attention. They knew there probably wasn’t ale, but that wouldn’t stop them from making sure.

  A full minute passed, and not a single peep from any faery heading my way. So I started tipping the bottles over and letting them spill out in my mind. That had been a suggestion from Padraig when I couldn’t get the faeries to respond a few days ago. Worked well this time too.

  “We want,” Garbage was the first to get to me, but the mob was right behind her. She hovered in front of me, her tiny hands on her hips and her lower lip stuck out.

  “Sorry, no ale. Only what you ladies have,” I said. Then I pointed to Alric, Padraig, and Covey. “Some purple lights knocked them out. Lights that looked sort of like the lights that showed up when your friend appeared.”

  As soon as I said purple lights, Garbage spun and flew to Alric. Without a word the faeries all separated, a third going to each person. They sat on them. Nothing else, no magic, no secret words, just sat.