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

  While they were doing that, I worked on gathering the pieces that had flown over by the trail the brownies had come down. Now that I knew the shambling creature had been a golem, the bits and pieces didn’t look as creepy and disturbing. They also didn’t smell as bad. Either I had lost all sense of smell, or they were breaking down at an accelerated rate. I found a stick and used it to lift up one of the slimy strands. To my surprise, it wasn’t slimy, but rapidly drying and crumbling into itself.

  I picked up two more strands and saw the same thing happening. Alric had only barely touched on golems as a concept, but the magic to animate them was supposed to be almost as much as trying to create a zombie. Brownies were also not a well-known topic, since they weren’t native to this part of the world. But they weren’t reputed to be great spell casters.

  So where did a bunch of brownies get enough power to make a golem but not have enough power to keep it running? Even as the thoughts were going through my head, the strand of former golem was passing into dust.

  The brownies must have had help. Whether they were the ones behind the explosion that caused the pit was also a question for another day.

  Bunky kept a good eye on the girls, buzzing loudly if one of them tried to slip a gold coin into one of their bags. I should have thought of Bunky as faery-nursemaid months ago when he decided to stay with us.

  “Do we have them all?” I’d noticed the girls were shuffling around, but hadn’t picked up any more coins for almost a full minute. At their nods, I waved them to me. It had only been a few minutes, yet they were clearly bored to tears.

  “Crusty? Did you and Bunky find anything down the hole?” I had a feeling that plenty of things were down there, and I belatedly realized I should have narrowed it down for my little wonder-drunk. I was about to clarify when she pointed behind me.

  “Them. No see then, but smelled them.” She nodded. “Now see them.”

  I spun around to see three sceanra anam rising out of the pit behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I would be leaving it out of my telling of this encounter later on, but I screamed so loudly I was surprised no one from the center of town came running to check on me. Hell, it was loud enough I was surprised no one came from the far south to check.

  All three were hovering over the pit, not moving quickly, but the way their entire bodies moved like a water snake in the air, even when holding a single position they looked like they were heading for you.

  Or they were heading for me.

  I took two shaky steps backwards, and found they flew forward an equal distance. They weren’t doing anything threatening, but when you were long, lean, and had more teeth than anyone could possibly count, you didn’t have to do anything to threaten people.

  “Girls? Shouldn’t you be doing something about them?” Granted it had been larger groups of faeries that had taken out the creatures before, but these three should at least be worried about the faeries.

  “Girls?” I didn’t want to risk my life to look around but they were being awfully quiet.

  “Bunky?” I couldn’t count on him. The last flying snake we saw went after Bunky, but at least if I knew he was around, I’d feel better.

  Nope, not a single buzz. Bunky and the girls had taken off and left me here.

  “It’s just you three and me then. Until the roaming gang of wild faeries comes through here.” I had no idea if those flying monstrosities could understand me, but I needed to try.

  The sceanra anam nearest me tilted its head as if it was listening. Or maybe it was trying to size up its next meal better. I had one knife, against three of them. And they could fly. Not a fair fight by even faery standards.

  However, I also had magic. Questionable. Weak. Untrustworthy, but would definitely give me a headache, magic.

  I hated to keep trying to use it. All of Alric’s warnings about not going further than I was ready to kept bouncing around my head. However, the sceanra anam had finished communing with the pit or whatever it was they were doing and their eyes now narrowed and focused on me.

  I’d get one shot, then I knew whatever spell I picked would slam back into me and I’d be down. I had to make the shot count.

  I pushed out all the fear of pain and the flying snakes and fashioned a spell of movement. As I wanted those things to move as far from here as possible. This specific spell was about as far over my head as the faeries were to advanced hypothetical calculus. On a surface level, it appeared to be similar to the first spell I did, pushing open a door, or sending an annoying satyr halfway through a forest. But it was far more complex.

  I gathered the spell in my head, then, as Alric had tried to teach me, flung the spell outward.

  I managed to hit the lead sceanra anam with enough force to burst it in midair. There wasn’t even enough of him left to drift to the ground.

  Of course that meant I still had two more sceanra anam, a massively building spell headache, and I felt like I was rapidly losing the ability to move.

  It only took a few seconds for the remaining two sceanra anam to realize who had blown up their friend, and about another full second before they flew right at me. I held up my knife. It wasn’t enough, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I’d made one swing, which totally missed the flying snake and reminded me how much that spell took out of me, when screeching faeries came swarming down. Bunky stayed above the swarm, which seemed to consist of every single non-wild faery in the area. My three were in the lead, of course. But then they pulled up right before the sceanra anam and waved the others forward.

  Both of the flying snakes seemed torn between the easy prey before them—me—and their fear of the crazed faeries.

  However, once the first wave of faeries charged forward, the sceanra anam decided to flee.

  Unlike the one that had been trapped in the halls of the university, these had many ways to escape.

  The faeries let out a wild mixture of calls and yells and took off after them.

  Except my three.

  The exhaustion from the spell wore off extremely fast, most likely due to adrenaline, which meant it was postponed, not worn off. I waved to the faeries to show I was okay. They flew forward, but didn’t seem to be worried about my condition. All three looked toward the direction the swarm had gone.

  “Girls? Why did you take off like that? Couldn’t you have at least chased those things away?” I was glad for the assist, but it would have been better to have started with it.

  “We need to train. Good training.” Garbage folded her arms and scowled at the air where the one I blew up had disintegrated. “These hard to find now. No waste them.” Her scowl switched to me and I realized that far from being concerned about me, Garbage was upset that I’d destroyed one of their training toys. To save my own life.

  “You remember. No waste.” With that solid admonishment, including a tiny, stern finger shake, Garbage led the other two and Bunky in pursuit of their students and the soon to be dead sceanra anam.

  I wasn’t sure if I was more upset about her disregard for my safety or the fact she said they were getting harder to find. The first, and only, birth of them had been witnessed by myself, my patroness Qianru, and a collection of impeccably trained houseboys. But we had only seen five.

  Since I was pretty sure that I’d already seen at least that many, and the girls were upset about them vanishing, I had to guess they were in far greater numbers than we thought. Considering that the history books had little on them, and no one had been able to capture an intact sample alive or dead, I doubted I would get my answers anytime soon.

  I began to think that I should have stayed with Covey in town. Then an image of the rich politicians she faced came into my head. I shuddered.

  Nope, better to deal with badly made golems, misguided brownies, and exploding sceanra anam.

  I gathered the coins that had been re-scattered and peered into the pit. I wished I’d been able to get more details of what Crusty and
Bunky had seen. Maybe they’d recall some of it when they came home. My house should be finished by now, so we could have a nice quiet night in.

  There wasn’t much I could see from the top of the pit. There was little doubt it had been the result of a deep explosion. Unlike the radiating crack through the forest, I could see to the bottom here. It was at least forty feet deep, but without a snap-glow or rope, I had no way to be sure.

  The only question was what had happened to the dirt. An explosion that large should have flung dirt, rocks, and small plants all around the forest. Yet the pit and the crack had little dirt around them, and even going out a ways into the forest, I didn’t see any debris.

  Now, granted, I had inadvertently exploded the sceanra anam to such a degree that it disintegrated, but I doubted too many people would be using a spell of that level just to avoid having rocks and debris around.

  There appeared to be a layer of something almost two feet down from the edge of the pit. It was hard to see what it was; all I could tell for sure was that it seemed smoother than the rest of the pit and darker. I wanted to call the girls back, but even thinking about calling them caused my head to throb so badly I almost threw up.

  I also didn’t feel up to walking all the way back to town and getting a rope. I walked around the pit completely, trying to see if I could make out anything in the band.

  The far side from where I had been seemed a bit closer to the band, so I lay on the ground and tried to reach down as far as I could. If I couldn’t get myself down to the band, maybe part of it could come up to me.

  I had enough of a ledge on the pit to feel the band, but I couldn’t see it. It had looked like a solid band but it wasn’t. I could feel the rough edges where pieces of something cold and hard fit together. Sections of dirt told me where pieces were missing. Feeling around really gave me no clue as to what it was, how most of it had survived whatever explosion caused the pit, or where it came from. I slid my fingers back over to one of the missing areas, trying to pry a piece up.

  My plan worked a little too well as I felt the piece I was trying to pull off suddenly gave way and I heard the tinkling noise it made as it fell down into the pit. A round of swearing didn’t help, nor did my quickly aborted attempt to call the faeries again. Whatever I’d done when I blew up the flying snake was messing with any magic I had going right now.

  I flopped on my back to see if it helped the horrific pounding and nausea caused from trying to call the girls, but also to see if perhaps they were returning on their own.

  It helped the spinning, but there wasn’t a single faery wing in sight. With my luck, those damn sceanra anam had probably taken off to another county.

  I rolled back over and tried reaching down even further but I still couldn’t get to the bottom edge. The piece felt like tile and had raised parts. However, beyond trying to convince myself it was not a collection of emerald dragons, I couldn’t tell what they were.

  So I went back to where I’d lost the previous piece and tried again. Slower this time and with only one hand so that I could hopefully catch the piece before it fell.

  It seemed like an hour before I felt something start to come loose. It spoke a lot to whoever put these here that even after a major explosion right next to them they stayed in place.

  I wiggled the piece slowly, like a loose tooth, until it came off. After all the time I’d spent on the damn thing, I might have very well jumped in after it if I dropped another one.

  The piece looked like aged porcelain, but was cool, and felt more like metal. Tapping on it sounded like metal as well. The backside was scored and covered in dirt from where it had been wedged into the earth.

  No emerald dragons. I let out a sigh of relief at that. However, what was there didn’t look terribly friendly. The piece was a bit smaller than the palm of my hand, but covered in strange symbols and letters that could only be described as hostile. There was no other way to describe it. The words, if that’s what they were, were sharp and jagged. None of the symbols looked at all familiar, but they did look like they’d been made in anger.

  That was weird. I obviously couldn’t read it; I’d never even seen this form of image writing before in my life. Yet it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and an overwhelming urge to throw this back into the pit filled my head.

  I think the only reason I didn’t toss it away was because I’d worked so hard for the damn thing. I pulled myself away from the edge of the pit, and eased up into a sitting position.

  I needed to find something to wrap up this thing; the more I looked at it the less I wanted to touch it. I was surrounded by leaves, any of which would make a great wrap.

  I hid the carved tile in the high grass in front of the nearest tree, and started climbing up it. I’d just reached the big leaves when I saw movement below me.

  A man completely in brown walked right to where I’d hidden the tile, found it in a matter of seconds, then held it up to me in salute and walked away. He was wearing a large floppy hat, and a mask of some dun-colored fabric. All I could see were coal black eyes that looked far too smug with himself.

  I was exhausted from my adventures out here so far, but that gesture wiped out all of the fatigue. After all I went through and someone was going to walk off with it? I don’t think so.

  I stuffed the leaves in my shirt, then jumped out of the tree and landed on the person in brown.

  Based on the size and build, I’d guess it was male, and he had a good foot on me in height. But I had the advantage of falling from a distance, so I managed to take us both down.

  Since even a slight thought of maybe trying to use magic on him sent a stabbing pain into my head, I started punching.

  He was good. I only got a few good shots in before he rolled to his feet then started blocking my punches when I followed. But when he blocked me, it was every hit. It looked like he had a sword under his cloak, but he wasn’t going for it, nor even fighting back.

  Then I got in a sneaky shot Covey had taught me to his lower back. He stumbled forward then came up swinging. I danced backwards and realized he wasn’t swinging as much as grabbing.

  I smacked his hands away, sneaking in a few more jabs. I might have even been able to take him down if a voice behind me hadn’t broken my concentration.

  “Stop playing and grab her. Thanks to you, the elf girl got away. We’ll bring in this one. We need to make the meet.”

  I spun to see this person I hadn’t even heard approach, and my attacker in brown took the brief distraction and pinned my arms. A moment later a bag was over my head, a silencing spell bag unless my attackers had suddenly gone mute, and rough rope was coiled around my hands.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A rough nudge to my left shoulder got me walking, then a few more nudges turned me around a half a dozen times until I wasn’t even sure which direction we were going. Whoever was working with the man in brown, they weren’t keen on my slow walking. After the maze they walked me through to disorient me, someone big and beefy threw me over his shoulder.

  Not hearing anything other than my own breathing was more than a little freaky. However, maybe they were being quiet in hopes I’d think it was a silencing bag. I tested the theory with a scream. That did nothing other than echo around the very sound spelled bag and add to the headache I had from my excessive destruction of the sceanra anam.

  I wished it wasn’t so dark in here so I could at least see what the inside looked like. I’d had a knock-off one of these bags back when I was bounty hunting. But it had been taken when one of my collars, one Gorgeous Sammy the cherub, met with an untimely demise after I’d turned him in. I never asked for my bag back.

  However, this bag felt like a real one. The quality of the fabric against my face was akin to something up on The Hill.

  Since I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t yell, and trussed up as I was over this monster’s shoulder, couldn’t move, I did what I could do. Think. I didn’t have much. The man in brown
had said nothing, but hadn’t been trying to hurt me until the other voice came in. He also hadn’t acted as if he would let me go, more like a bored cat who’d found a new toy. But I think if I had stayed in the tree he wouldn’t have come after me. There wasn’t much to be gained from him aside from that he could fight and wasn’t in command of whatever this operation was.

  The second voice was probably the one in command. He hadn’t sounded stressed out or worried about me getting away or even hurting his all-in-brown fighter. He seemed more upset at the games the fighter was playing. He’d said they’d take me instead of a female elf that got away. Unless there was a run on female elves racing around in the ruins, he had to mean Orenda. The fact she hadn’t said anything about escaping from someone didn’t bode well for whatever her true reason for being in Beccia was. Nor for whatever sort of trouble she might bring down on Harlan and Covey.

  And at least a third one, a bruiser, the one carrying me with little care for how many low-hanging tree branches might smack me.

  The brains, the player, and the brawn. There could be more, but the three of them were a nice neat little package. One that had been in those woods for a reason. The man in brown must have waited until I freed the tile piece, but whether that was their goal, or it changed when I left the piece on the ground, I wasn’t sure. If the tiles had value, they could have stayed to try to free more, with the bag on my head I wouldn’t have known. The only way I knew they hadn’t done that was the fact we were moving.

  The brute carrying me wasn’t a picture of grace, that I could tell from being an unwilling passenger. Therefore, I wasn’t too surprised when he took a misstep and almost dropped me. He recovered before either of us took a tumble, but the movement sent a knife hilt briefly into my lower side. I hadn’t even noticed that they hadn’t searched me when they tied me up. It had happened so fast that I hadn’t paid attention. Who kidnaps someone and doesn’t search them for weapons?