The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3) Read online

  There was now a big divide between the wild faeries and the local ones.

  At least Bunky was okay, but I would have to try to get it through his little construct head that he didn’t need to do everything the girls told him to. Telling the faeries not to use him like that would be akin to telling a boulder rolling downhill not to roll on you.

  “We’ll deal with that later. I don’t see how you three can help us though.” I turned back to Covey only to find she’d vanished. “Covey?”

  Her head appeared out of nothingness, or so it looked. “He has way more disguise spells on here than I even knew existed.” She nodded to the faeries who had resumed their game of tree dancing. “But we may need them.” Then she ducked back behind whatever was camouflaging her.

  I held my hand up and for once all three little maniacs came right to me. Only one missed this time, but that wasn’t uncommon for Crusty. “I need you three to stay with us. We’re looking for one of Alric’s secret spots.”

  Garbage flew in a loop. “We know! We help. We always help him get there.”

  Leaf and Crusty were all smiles and nods.

  “Always help him?” I should have known he’d been using them; he used the rest of us.

  “Yes, yes, yes. But this one best.” Leaf spun in a circle. They must not have had as much tea as Garbage did the first time; they all were slowing down a bit. “Come. We show.”

  All three little flying bundles of mayhem zipped over to where I’d seen Covey’s head a moment ago then vanished. Followed by some very Covey-style swearing. Clearly, they hadn’t sobered up enough to regain full navigation.

  I stomped my way through the vicious-looking bush illusion and went through to where they’d all vanished. And almost fell over.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was a cottage. But one that looked like it had been made by an army of gnome and dwarven craftsmen with a clan of elves doing the designs. It wasn’t big; it might have a full second story, otherwise a loft. A bit smaller than my house, but the walls were carved in graceful designs looking like an exotic garden. The windows were more works of art filled with color than a way to see out, or in, in this case. The intricately carved door would have launched a huge bidding war for any of the rich folks up on The Hill.

  However, it didn’t have anything that remotely looked like a handle.

  “How did he get this here?” Covey stood extremely close to the cottage, but I noticed she wasn’t touching anything. “Oh, and don’t touch it. He’s got an alarm spell on it.” She held up her left hand. Faint smudge marks showed that she hadn’t moved fast enough. Considering how quickly she could move, I would have been fried. She didn’t have to tell me twice not to touch anything.

  “See? Need us.” Crusty was the first to fly up to the top spire on the roof, then the other two followed. They took up positions hanging on the spire in a circle, then all started to sing.

  Thank goodness it was a short song, and no minkies were involved. Faery singing had been known to start riots and minkies, some sort of strange creatures known only to the girls, were usually in the worst songs they had.

  The cottage shimmered as the protection spell dropped and the door slowly opened. Covey started to move forward, then stopped and waved at the faeries, “Is there anything else he does before he goes in?”

  Garbage let go of the spire first, then all three drifted down to us. Their tea buzz was definitely short lived. “He give us ale.”

  Mercenary little things. “Girls, we don’t have any and we need to get in there.”

  Garbage shrugged. “Is okay, is inside.” She flew in with Leaf and Crusty right behind her. Covey shrugged and followed.

  The inside was even more elaborate and beautiful than the outside. The furniture was simple, like a cottage in the woods should be. But it was made so it seamlessly flowed into the walls as if the entire building, furniture and all, had sprung from a single seed. I shook my head.

  “This doesn’t feel like Alric at all.” I hadn’t necessarily meant to say that out loud, but there it was. This was possibly the most non-Alric place I could think of. Yes, as we recently found out, Alric was actually an elven high lord, one of the elite ruling class of the elves.

  However, he was also a thief—and that fit his personality much better. I fought down the pang of fear that hit when I remembered he was still missing. That thief side was resilient. I just had to concentrate on that. “Girls? Are you sure this is where he lives?” They had immediately headed for the back of the cottage behind a tall wooden screen with an elaborate scene of stylized elk hunters. The riders were all elves, but their clothing and headwear designs weren’t familiar.

  Crusty flew out from behind the screen and nodded. “Yes. Him here. We help him build.” Before I could ask anything else, she ducked behind it. Judging from the clinking sounds I gathered it was a kitchen. I looked back but Covey hadn’t moved much past the doorway and appeared to be trying to memorize the designs on the frame. She also muttered to herself but I knew better than to ask her what she was saying. With a shrug, I followed the girls behind the screen.

  To say this was a kitchen would be to call the entire place a hovel. It was tiny, but beautiful and graceful. The girls were taking turns trying to pull the cap off a bottle of ale, but they were clearly having problems.

  I was still trying to take everything in, but I went over and opened their ale. They quickly focused on that as I studied the place. Alric had been living in a hovel in the poor part of town when I started dealing with him months ago. Since then he mostly stayed at my place, Harlan’s place, or in a flophouse.

  All that time, he had this place? And he never took me here? I shoved that hurt aside. I’d deal with it when we got him back.

  I reached over and took the now half-empty bottle away from the girls. Three pairs of faery eyes looked at me with extreme annoyance. Clearly, their idea of helping was getting us inside, and them getting some more ale.

  “I’ll give it back after you answer some questions.” Garbage looked ready to argue, but I held the bottle up to my mouth as if to drink it. Something I’d never do. They often dove into their bottles.

  Garbage backed off and sat down on the black countertop. Damn thing even had gold veins, probably real ones, running through it.

  “What.” Leaf and Crusty flew down next to her, but all three kept a close eye on the bottle in my hand. Never mind that I was sure there were probably more lurking around this kitchen of the gods.

  “How long has Alric had this place?” I waved them off as Crusty started to give an answer. “In big people time, not your time.” She frowned then stayed silent.

  “He always have this.” Garbage narrowed her eyes like she thought I was asking a trick question just to get their ale. “He brought it, but we open it.”

  That was about the end of their information, so I handed them back their bottle and went back out to the front room. Covey had moved past the doorway but was still examining every part like a rare and treasured artifact.

  “Did you hear that? Do you have the slightest idea what they meant?”

  Covey looked up from an amazing plant carved of the sheerest piece of wood. “Yes and not really. Well, maybe. I’m not sure.” She drifted back to studying the plant.

  “Make a guess?” I slid down into the small but cushiony sofa. I was beginning to think the best part of this day had been Garbage slapping me awake.

  “I think this is a traveling house.” Covey said. “They were specially designed houses which elven nobility could carry around in a pack as they traveled. In the height of the elvish empire, their people traveled quite extensively, but they had begun having problems that kept them closer to home a few hundred years before the Breaking. I now have a feeling it was the rakasa starting to hunt the elves, but we hadn’t discovered stories of them yet.”

  She wandered as she spoke, touching everything in the room with a light hand and a look bordering on awe. “Who is Alric that his people
gave him one of these?” She said it more to herself than to me, but the place wasn’t big enough for me not to have heard her.

  “Um, wouldn’t a high lord have access to something like this? I mean it’s not like they’ve done any traveling in the last thousand years except for him, there can’t be a big call for them.” Unless he’d been lying about that as well. I was worried about what may have happened to him, but part of me was also hurt and angry at more duplicity. How could I care about someone I didn’t even really know?

  “Yes, yes.” She waved her hands at the walls. “But this is an artifact. If they still doubted how this world would receive their kind, they probably would have been wary of sending this with him.”

  I lifted up a cloth strewn across the sofa. Made of the lightest silk, yet just holding it warmed my hands. “Then he probably stole it.” That was one thing I did know about him, he was a thief and a damn good one.

  None of this was doing anything to help find him though. The place was immaculate, so there was no way to tell the last time he’d been here. There was nothing personal in it, so there was no insight that way.

  A crashing sound came from the small kitchen. A chorus of “we okay!” followed the sound. As long as they didn’t start singing I was fine to leave the faeries alone. Clearly Alric wasn’t worried about them destroying the place if they’d been the ones who helped him get in.

  Even when he wasn’t around, Alric could manage to give me a headache.

  “There still could be clues to him and his people here. We haven’t even—”

  I had been looking at an ancient map inlaid on a small table as Covey spoke, so I didn’t see what made her cut off until I looked up.

  To find a sword held an inch under Covey’s chin. The wielder was a tall, slender woman of unimaginable grace and beauty.

  And sharply pointed elven ears peering out through bright red hair.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I know beings like you could not have mastered a ghilfhaln house. Tell me where the true owner is and maybe I’ll let you live.” Her voice was cultured and eloquent, and I was happy to notice that her accent did not sound like it came from the south. The last thing we needed here was another killer elf. I was also perversely happy that she didn’t seem to know who owned this house. If Alric had been cheating on me with a beautiful elf girl, I would kill him myself.

  Covey barely breathed, but I saw her eyes narrow. This wouldn’t end well. Most likely for myself and this tiny cottage. I knew Covey could fight and I was betting the elf lady could also. She looked very at ease with her long curved sword.

  “Look, we don’t want to damage this, whatever you just called it, house. So why don’t you put down the sword, and we can all talk.” I kept my voice low and soothing.

  “I have heard of the tricks of you outsiders; you have taken things from my people for the last time. Now where is the owner—” She’d turned to me while she was talking, which gave Covey the chance she was looking for. Honestly, Covey would have attacked with or without an opportunity.

  But she did take advantage of the one she had. In a fluid movement, that no one outside of her race could do, Covey shoved the elf woman’s arm with the sword away, and at the same time she pulled the woman forward. Her blow caused the elf to lose her grip on her sword, and buckle to one knee. However, when she came up, she came up fighting.

  “How dare you strike one of the chosen warriors? I will smite you into dust! You will never see the light of day again!” Even with her extremely cultured accent, the threat was somewhat of cheesy.

  Covey tussled with her a bit more, steering clear of any furniture. After a minute Covey disarmed the elf again—this time a knife she’d had on her thigh—and hit her on the back of the head with the pommel. Hard.

  A pair of lovely and quickly crossing eyes looked at me in surprise, and then the elf crumbled to the floor.

  “Youth.” Covey dusted her hands off, and then patted down the elf woman for any more weapons. Three more knives were stashed on her. None of the weapons looked well used.

  I peered down at her. Yes, in relaxation, her face did look young, but then I knew for a fact that Alric was far older than he looked. And Jovan had been possibly thousands of years old but looked to be in his early fifties. This girl before us could still be hundreds of years old.

  “If you’ll note the age and lack of use of her weapons, even though trained, her moves were predictable, and the arrogance, while apparently common in elves, is also one found in university students of all races.”

  Apparently, my thoughts had been visible or Covey felt the need to go on a mini lecture. “Don’t you think we should tie her up or something? We need to find out which clan she’s from, and I don’t want you to keep fighting her while we try to talk.”

  Covey shrugged, then rustled around until she found some rope and tied the woman’s hands behind her back. She also pulled her up on the sofa.

  I wanted to get some reinforcements before she woke up. If this woman was from Alric’s clan, or at least any clan who hadn’t had outside contact like she sounded, she might be as disturbed by the faeries as Alric first was.

  “Girls? Can you come in here?”

  “No?” It was Leaf who spoke, and she sounded like she was trying the answer on for size.

  “Not the right answer. Let me rephrase it. We need you to come out here now.” A loud clink filled in for the answer, then some faery swearing and more clinking.

  “Stuck now.” That was Garbage and she was very put out about something.

  I walked around the screen and almost stepped on them. Crusty was in a badly closed ale bottle that was being rolled by the other two and leaking slightly. The leaking caused all three of them distress, and the bottle was now stuck against the screen.

  I took a breath. Why couldn’t I have had cats instead of faeries? “Why are you two rolling her?”

  Garbage flew up to my eye level. “She no come out. You say come now. We being good.” The last word sounded like she wasn’t sure quite how to say it. I knew she didn’t know how to be it, so the entire concept might be messing her up.

  I didn’t even try to figure out what she meant, so I picked up the bottle and shook it until Crusty looked at me. Her face was bloated and huge. A closer look revealed it was just her mouth. Like she was holding a giant mouthful of something and now her head was too big for the neck of the bottle.

  “What is wrong with her?”

  Leaf flew up to eye level and joined Garbage. “Don’t know. Is stuck.” She patted the side of the bottle sadly. “Will be there forever.”

  I had to think the combination of hyperactive tea and whatever ale did to their brains was killing off brain cells. All three looked at me sadly. I had a feeling that at least on Garbage’s end it was half for her friend and half for the fact she now couldn’t get in the bottle.

  I tapped on the glass. “Crusty? Sweetie? Spit the ale out.”

  She looked at me, and then went cross-eyed as she tried to look at her own mouth. Then cautiously opened it. She tried to stop it as it came out and managed to swallow some of it.

  I pulled off the stopper and she squished out. The faeries fit in the bottle part, but it was only because they were squishy that they could get in and out through the narrow bottleneck.

  “You saved her!” All three flew around me in an almost terrifying show of love.

  Actually, spitting out ale would be foreign to most of the regulars down at The Shimmering Dewdrop, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

  “Okay, now that that is done.” I waved off the very soggy Crusty who was trying to hug my hair. “I need you three to sit across from our new friend there and look fierce.”

  “Not fierce, no sticks,” Garbage said.

  “No feathers,” Leaf added.

  Crusty looked at us and gave a huge belch.

  “You don’t need to go to war on her, just watch her.”

  Garbage looked annoyed—she was quite fo
nd of being able to poke her war sticks at people, and clearly had been hoping I would send them home to get them. Then she buzzed up to eye level again. “It okay, I give her the look.”

  I had no idea where she’d learned it, but Garbage contorted her face so that one eye was extremely narrow and the other huge and menacing. It looked like she was insane rather than scary, but as long as she was happy with it I wouldn’t say anything.

  “You go right ahead.” I waved them over to where the elf was, and then nodded to Covey to come outside.

  “We need to find out if she knows anything about Alric. Maybe he was taken by another elf.” I refrained from adding, “again”, but it hung there anyway.

  “Not all elves know each other, and not all other elves are bad.” A bow and arrow sat on a stump across from the doorway. Covey picked up what had to be the elf’s longbow, then handed it to me. A lot of very small runes were etched into the wood. “This indicates a clan probably further to the north, far to the north. She’s not from the south where Glorinal and Jovan came from.”

  I wanted to argue, after all a bow wasn’t a lot to go on. However, I couldn’t think of a good reason why, if our unconscious friend was part of kidnapping Alric, she would come wandering through the woods and accost us. She seemed too arrogant to be doing anything as lowbrow as kidnapping. I handed the bow back to Covey and went back into the cottage.

  Our guest hadn’t regained consciousness yet, or if she had, she was playing to see if she could gather information about us. Covey laid the bow and quiver next to the sword and knives, and then sat down.

  The faeries were still watching the elf, but they were clearly losing interest. Garbage still had her ‘face’ on, but it was slipping from looking completely insane to only slightly demented.

  One way to find out if our friend was faking it or not. I motioned for Garbage to come closer to me, and of course, the other two followed. That was fine; three were more disturbing than one. “When I wave you forward, I want the three of you to fly over to her and start jumping on her. Preferably where she can see you.” I spoke in a whisper so low that I didn’t even think sharp elven ears could pick it up. Faery ears were sharper.