The Sapphire Manticore (The Lost Ancients Book 4) Read online

  “I’d guess you don’t get many prisoners then?” I asked as the first guard checked the small space, for what, I had no idea; maybe they thought I had accomplices, and then nodded. The other two fussed with my manacles and I was free. Well, no longer chained behind my back at least. I still had odd black bands around my wrists.

  I held up both hands, “Didn’t you forget part of this?” I wiggled my hands. They could move, but felt oddly heavy. Like they went on a drinking binge without the rest of me. The wristlets didn’t budge no matter what I did.

  “No. Those will keep your foul magic from coming out. They cannot be removed.” The lead guard nodded to the table, a pile of items were there that I’d missed while I was gawking over the hundreds-of-years-old art.

  Water jugs, dried meat, fruit, bread, plus what looked like a few pairs of pants and shirts. “How long am I going to be…?” By the time I’d turned around, all of the guards were gone, and the door was solidly shut.

  Damn, sneaky, silent elves.

  I tested the door, just to make sure they’d also been efficient elves, and then went to survey my new domain. A trip to the first window was rewarded with a view of a brick wall. There was about ten feet of air between us, but sometime after this tower was built an awkward addition across the way was added.

  Both windows had once been fitted with wooden frames, ones that probably contained glass a few hundred years ago. There was nothing but rotting wood there now. Nevertheless, the view from the second window was amazing. The trees and forests we’d seen coming in were actually much closer to the city center than I thought and they spread out before me like a magnificent green carpet. Small wooden house enclaves dotted the trees giving the residents the best of both worlds; quaint privacy and a nearby bustling city when they needed it.

  This building, or rather the council chambers, as I had no idea if this was part of it or not, appeared to be in the middle of everything, but it really wasn’t. Past the way we came in was a thriving marketplace, with vendors under brightly colored pavilions. The area of the entire city center was remarkably flat, and again, I marveled at how much magic had gone into making a perfect new home for the elven refugees.

  I was busy leaning out as far as I could, trying to see how far the city went, when a creak came from behind me. Thank goodness for my paranoid teachers, Covey and Alric, I dropped before I spun. The thunk only a few inches over my head told me I owed them each a strong drink.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A slender knife, more of a dirk I’d guess, quivered in the wooden frame around the window. It was longer than the knives I’d carried before Flarinen took them, but the blade was unusually long and detailed. Had I not dropped to the ground, it would have hit me in the middle of my back.

  Since I was hovering with my butt a few inches off the ground, with no room to fight even if I could do so, I decided the wise choice might be to sit. Then I thought better of that and went completely flat, and faced the direction where the dirk came from.

  The only thing out of place was the wardrobe door. It had been shut, but now it was the tiniest bit open. Considering there had to be tower wall behind the wardrobe, that meant I was trapped in a locked room with someone who wanted to kill me. Moreover, I had no magic, which meant no sword.

  Trying to keep my eye on the wardrobe for any movement, I reached one hand up and pulled the dirk free. That thing had been thrown hard enough that a good two inches of the blade was in the wood. Luckily, the wood was old so it gave with a few wiggles.

  I stayed on the ground, trying to make a smaller target in case more projectiles came flying. Slowly I crept toward the wardrobe, but still no movement. A few deep calming breaths later, as Covey was always trying to teach me, I flung open the door, my new dirk held at the ready.

  To find an empty wardrobe. Oh, there were a few wooden hangers there. From the look of them, they came with the elves after the Breaking. However, no dirk-flinging assassin wanna-be.

  There was also no nice brick tower wall behind the wardrobe. It was the same wood as the outside, but with an addition of an outline of a door. I tried prying it open and even used the dirk to try, but I couldn’t budge it.

  A secret passageway, a thrown dagger. It seemed that someone really didn’t want to wait to see if I was innocent or not. Or they knew something I didn’t.

  I closed the wardrobe door again and jammed one of the chairs under the handle. Then went to the cot and flopped on it. What I had thought were simple markings on the dirk looked to be actual words, but they weren’t words I could read. Squinting at it I could almost make out some of the letters. It was an elven script, but far older than any I’d seen before. Someone tried to kill me with a relic?

  I really didn’t want any of my friends locked up, but it would be damn handy to have Covey with me right now. She could probably decipher this dirk with one eye closed. My stomach started growling, so I went to the table, turned the remaining chair so it faced the wardrobe door, and put together some of the food they’d left. It was actually tasty, but that could have been because I hadn’t eaten anything all day.

  I kept eating, with a few swigs of water to pack it all down, while I studied the dirk and kept an eye on the door. Both doors actually. I wasn’t going to hand over the dirk, nor tell the guards about it, but I was going to tell them that someone had broken into my room. If the guards ever came back.

  Within a half-hour the food was gone, but I had no better idea of what the words, if they really were words, said on the dirk. I had come to the conclusion it was older than the Breaking, although why someone would waste such a valuable artifact on killing me I had no idea.

  The food was doing its job, and even being freaked out about the person from the wardrobe couldn’t force my eyes to stay open. I crawled over to the cot, slid the dirk under the pillow, and passed out.

  Only to be awakened what felt like minutes later by a horrific buzzing sound. Judging by the darkness of the room, and the brightening sky out the one window, I’d actually been asleep for the entire night.

  The buzzing was coming from outside the window.

  There was nothing in the room I could use to block the window if my invisible attackers had now gone airborne. Shoving the cot up there might be an option, but I doubted I could do it before whatever was out there got inside. Instead I hid behind the foot of the bed. If I looked low and at an angle, I could still see the window, but they shouldn’t be able to see me, at least not immediately.

  The buzzing got louder, and I thought I heard some chirps as well. I was about to go over and take my chances when a trio of faeries, all riding a very long-suffering black chimera, rose to the window and came in.

  “We save!” Garbage was, of course, riding in the front and waving her war stick, Leaf hung on behind her, and Crusty was dangling sideways off the end. Hopefully the other nine were still with Harlan.

  Bunky had looked a bit flustered as they flew in, but his little goat-like face lit up when he saw me. He increased his speed and almost crashed into me.

  Normally I keep thin gloves on hand to handle Bunky. The first time we met, I touched him to move him out of my way. And was knocked flat on my ass when a barrage of images hit my brain. It took a while to recover from that, and they were nothing I could make sense of. Bunky was a construct, a made creature created by a mage thousands of years ago. He and the rest of his brood, which somehow seemed to be increasing in numbers judging by the flight of them that had flown overhead a few days ago, had come out of the ground at a dig site I was working with Qianru. Not by accident either. She hadn’t told me ahead of time, but Qianru had known something was going to happen there.

  When Qianru had first discovered them, there had only been about twenty holes…and some weren’t chimeras at all but vicious flying snakes called sceanra anam. The rest of the flying beasties had taken off, but Bunky adopted the faeries and myself and until recently was never apart from them.

  But wherever he’d been, he
was back now and aiming right for me. I put up my hands to block him and all five of us tumbled to the cot. The faeries were hooting and laughing, Bunky was trying to get as close as he could to me, and I was having my head shattered by images.

  These were more coherent than the first time, which was better and worse. I was in a city, a massive city, old and yet new. The streets were wider than anything I’d ever seen and the buildings that surrounded me were massive and all seemed to have two doors. One was my size the other about three stories high, reminding me of the gates to the council room. I didn’t see any people though. The buildings changed before my eyes, growing old and falling apart. Then they vanished and nothing but a desert was left. My heart ached as if everyone I knew and loved had been in those buildings when they vanished.

  “Why cry?”

  I opened my eyes to see Crusty peering down at me. From about two inches away. I tried to pull back but the cot didn’t have that much give. “I’m not crying.” I reached up, almost knocking her aside when she wouldn’t move. She was right, tears flowed down my face. I was no longer touching Bunky, but he was looking like he wanted to fix that as soon as possible.

  I rolled away, knocking Crusty off of me and sending me off the cot. There were a number of extra shirts on the table, so I grabbed one and wrapped it around my hand.

  Bunky buzzed forward and I petted him through the fabric and was rewarded with his odd warbling–purr. The girls were busy bouncing around the cot…and an ale bottle.

  “Wait a minute, where did you get that?” I knew the answer even as I asked. The little maniacs must have a collection of ale in those mysterious black bags they carried. That explained why they seemed drunk when they came to warn us about the guard who’d gone evil—they were drunk.

  “Took from bad man. Had lots.” Leaf had control of the bottle for the moment and when she said ‘lots’, she swung out both hands, which of course meant an open ale bottle on an unstable cot with four-inch high faeries jumping on it.

  I darted forward—I didn’t want to sleep on an ale-soaked cot. Yet, as much as I didn’t want a wet bed, Garbage didn’t want her ale wasted even more. She flung her tiny body under the bottle and propped it up with her legs.

  I reached over the other two with my non-shirt covered hand and grabbed the bottle. It was half-full, which meant they’d probably already been swimming in it. I really wanted an ale, but not one they’d been diving into.

  “Where’s one for me?” I held theirs up but pulled it back when Garbage made a move for it. “I’m serious. You girls took this, unfairly, and didn’t share.”

  Garbage flopped to the cot and folded her arms, but Crusty shrugged and dug out a small piece of black fabric from the tiny pouch in the front of her overalls. She shook it a few times, and then stuck one arm all the way in. With a frown she sat the bag down and halfway crawled in. Then came back out pulling a full-sized ale bottle. Like the ones sold by Foxy back in Beccia, this one had the wide mouth and re-closeable cap preferred by the faeries.

  She rolled it to me, ignoring the meeps of protest from Leaf, and the sullen pout from Garbage.

  “How many of these did you steal from Jackal?” I knew he’d finally caught on to them, but that had been weeks ago. For them to have lasted this long, with not just these three but also the other nine all drinking from them, they must have taken a lot.

  “He buying more. We take,” Crusty said brightly. Then she frowned at Garbage. “Getting low now.”

  Jackal kept refilling his supplies along our three-week trip from Beccia to Kenithworth and the girls just kept stealing them.

  I loved those delinquents.

  I raised the ale to Crusty and Leaf. Garbage was still pouting, at least until I gave her back the one they’d been working on, and took a long swig.

  I had no idea what those bags of theirs really were, where they came from, or how they held things so much larger than themselves. All I cared about was that they’d brought me a lovely ale, just when I needed it.

  Bunky settled in on the cot, looking far more tired than I’d ever seen him. I wished we could talk. Thing was, he seemed to understand me perfectly fine, but all I got out of him was purring or buzzing. The faeries could understand him but communicating through their tiny, ale-soaked brains was difficult at best.

  And I wasn’t going to think about those weird images I got whenever I touched him as communication. The best thing Alric had come up with was that whoever created Bunky had designed him to function as a memory storage device. Whether it was for something harmless, like family memories, or something more like spying, he had no idea. He also refused to speculate why I saw the images and not him, nor the faeries as far as we could tell.

  I slid to the floor with my back to the cot. The girls had taken their bottle and moved over to the table, but I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t fall asleep the moment I lay down. Again. Regardless of how uncomfortable it was, I was still exhausted. I was also full and now drinking. Not a good combination if I wanted to stay awake. And I figured that I really needed to stay awake.

  With a sigh, and a glance at Crusty who had started to look sideways at my half-empty bottle, I set my ale aside. I had no idea what they were doing to Alric, how long it would take for this blood magic to work, or if they would even tell me what the results were.

  I also didn’t know what they were going to do with me. They’d locked me up in a fairly self-supporting place. I had water for a few days, food that possibly could have been meant for a few days, plus plumbing and a bed. Aside from the entire someone-had-tried-to-kill-me situation, I could stay up here without any contact for three or four days. Or could have if I hadn’t eaten all the food already.

  I was settling in to have a long mental discussion with myself when I heard a creak come from the wardrobe.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The faeries were still playing with their ale bottle and not paying attention to me. Bunky was dozing, but his eyes were still half-open watching the faeries.

  “Bunky. Hey, Bunky?” I kept my voice down, both for whatever was in the wardrobe, and the fact I really wanted to keep the faeries from getting involved. Once I knew what was after me, and if I was attacked again, then I wanted crazed faery backup. But not until then. Besides, I hadn’t seen them fly since the explosion and I wasn’t sure how much damage they could do running after someone.

  I was about to reach up and poke Bunky, through a shirt of course, but he looked at me and blinked his eyes. “I need you to charge the wardrobe.” I held up my hand as he started to move. “Let me open the door first.” I grabbed the dirk from the cot and crawled over to the side.

  The chair was still locked in place in front of the door, but I didn’t want Bunky to charge forward. Knowing my hardheaded little construct he’d bust through the chair and the door. Unless we caught whoever was stalking me, I wanted to be able to lock things back up.

  Staying close to the ground, I crawled forward as silently as I could, then with a yell to Bunky, I shoved the chair aside and flung open the wardrobe door.

  Bunky was a speeding flash of black as he flew in. And didn’t come back out.

  I looked inside. Had I doomed my little friend?

  Nope, he’d kept going because the door I couldn’t force open even with tools was now completely open. Even moving closer, I couldn’t see anything inside except darkness.

  There was no way I could leave Bunky to face whatever was down there. As a construct he wasn’t alive in the traditional sense, but he was a thinking and caring being. Moreover, I’d seen that the constructs could be destroyed.

  I looked back, but Leaf and Garbage were dancing around their almost empty bottle, and Crusty was pretending she was a water fountain inside the bottle. They weren’t going to help. I needed to rescue Bunky, if that was what was needed, on my own. Plus, my curiosity always got me. Usually it got me into bad places. This door, and more importantly the hole for it that appeared to have been built into the tower when it
was first constructed, was fascinating. That it might be a way out was a plus.

  I swore I heard my curiosity give an insane cackle of glee.

  The floor of the wardrobe groaned as I walked in, far more so than I’d heard moments before. Either someone had only opened this back door and not come into the wardrobe, or there was someone a lot tinier than me climbing around out here.

  I paused, waiting to see if I could hear anything in the darkness. All was silent. Including a trio of faeries I should be hearing in their drunken throes behind me.

  “What do?”

  Luckily, their silence had tipped me off and I didn’t scream at the little voice down by my ankle. I would not be mocked by anyone for jumping however.

  Yup, all three faeries, seemingly not upset about being on the ground instead of flying, were standing by my feet, peering into the same blackened space I was. The difference was that I knew what caution meant and that word was completely foreign to the miscreants.

  Not waiting for my answer on what I was doing, all three tore off into the blackness. They were quick for having such short legs, and their laughter as they went was sort of a good clue for me. Of course, they laughed at things many people would run away screaming from.

  With a sigh, I followed them in.

  The stairs leading to this tower when I was brought in here had been tight, narrow, and old. These stairs in the wardrobe were so tight you could barely take one step before it curved again and, judging from the smell and the crumbling feel of the stone, were older than the one I’d been marched in on.

  Bunky seemed to have excellent night vision, and the faeries’ was very good as well. Me, not so much. I was forced to walk very slowly, keeping one hand on the wall and the other on my dirk. Then I noticed a glowing on the stairs ahead of me. It started on the treads, and seemed to be crawling up the walls like some kind of moss. It was very faint, as if someone had dusted the stairwell with light.