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

  I secured the dirk in the waistband of my pants as best I could and ran for the door. I still expected people running up at the newest explosion, but the tower stairwell sounded completely empty.

  Except for my clattering feet.

  I slowed down. Amazing. Those two explosions couldn’t be heard but my running down a few steps echoed.

  “We go!” Crusty picked that moment to start singing. She only got those two words out when I put my thumb over her mouth.

  “No singing. We’re sneaking, remember?”

  Crusty nodded from behind my thumb, so I removed it.

  “But how find us?”

  That was the point. We didn’t want them to find us. Oh crap. Bunky and the other two faeries were still out and about. I paused on the stairs. I had no idea if those guards survived. I also didn’t know if anyone was going to come up and check on them, or me, before my friends came back.

  Crusty peered at me closely, and then tapped the side of my head. “Too much here. Go them in here.”

  My little basket case faery was really showing me up today. She could tell I was trying to figure out a solution, but all I had to do was think about the girls and they would come. I crafted an image of them coming to us in the hall, and then added a few ale bottles for good measure.

  It wasn’t until I thought it had gone through that I leaned back against the step. I hadn’t been zapped by the cuffs. “I just did magic, and I wasn’t zapped.”

  I said it out loud because that was how it came out, but Crusty tipped her head then tapped mine again. “This not magic. Is you.”

  Dang, while I was glad not to have gotten shocked again, I wasn’t sure which was more unnerving, that my ability to call the faeries was unrelated to my relatively new magic or that Crusty was acting so smart.

  A rumbling came from my former room, and I crept forward. I was hoping it was Bunky, Garbage, and Leaf, but this had been a weird hour to say the least.

  Bunky came tearing over the window ledge, two little colored blurs hanging on for dear life. I had wanted them to come to me but this was a bit much!

  Then I noticed the arrows coming in after them.

  The arrows missed all three, but clearly whoever was firing them knew which window they went in. Quiet wasn’t the best option any more, and we needed to get out of this tower as fast as possible.

  “Come on!” I beckoned Bunky toward me. He swung close by and I thought Crusty would join her friends, but Garbage gave her a stern head shake so she climbed up to my shoulder and made some reins out of my hair.

  Garbage shook her war stick forward, and Bunky tore off down the stairwell. It was a lot easier for him, he just had to fly. I had to try to navigate the narrow stairs with Crusty trying to steer me into a wall.

  “Faster!” Now Crusty was slapping the reins of my hair against my neck. As impressed as I’d been with her in the last twenty minutes, she and I were going to have a very serious discussion when we got out of here.

  It seemed like we were going down much farther than I had originally been marched up, but I couldn’t catch up with Bunky to ask them where we were going. And my poor brains were jostled too much by the stairs to be able to try to mentally call them.

  Finally, when I was panting so hard I was afraid I’d be going down the rest of the stairs the easy way—sliding with a broken neck—a landing opened up and Bunky pulled to a stop in front of it.

  It smelled like heaven.

  Yes, I’d eaten all the food they had left, but it wasn’t great food. Moreover, judging by the headache I was starting to get, these damn spell cuffs might cause magic backlash—at least food-wise.

  “We can’t stop to eat.” My own stomach gave the loudest protest at that.

  “No—this plan,” Garbage said and then she leapt in the air, landing on top of my head, and grabbed on to a bunch of my hair. “This way.”

  If I thought Crusty had been annoying trying to steer from my shoulder, it was nothing compared to Garbage doing the same from the top of my head.

  The doors were old and had cobwebs but still moved when I pushed. Bunky flew over my head with Leaf now swinging her war stick in the air.

  “I still boss! This one move slow!” Garbage yelled, and then actually hit the side of my head with her war stick.

  Did she think I was one of her racing cats?

  “Knock it off!” But I couldn’t afford to slow down to grab her. The fact that people with arrows had been shooting at my friends, and dirk-flinging guards had been trying to kill me meant we had no time for anything.

  The room led into a kitchen. The end nearest to us hadn’t been used in such a long time that dust had become the primary color. I slowed down, much to Garbage’s annoyance, but she refrained from slapping me again, to avoid old battered pans that hung from the ceiling. After a few steps we rounded the corner to where the smell was coming from.

  A huge kitchen spread out before me, hustling with at least a dozen workers, preparing more food than I’d ever seen.

  And Bunky, with Leaf riding him, dive-bombing them all.

  The cooks didn’t seemed too rattled by the black chimera bopping over their heads. It was when I skidded into view, with a faery standing atop my head like a chariot racer and another clinging to my shoulder, that all hell broke loose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They all started screaming as if I was a one-woman invading army and had the heads of my victims dangling from my belt. Then they started throwing pans at us.

  “Wait!” I dodged all of the thrown cookware. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need a way out.”

  More yelling, this time followed by pointing. But they were pointing past me.

  A dark shadow was coming in from the tower stairwell behind us, one with three shapes inside. They were the guards from the tower and all three were very dead. Necks didn’t dangle like that unless they were broken.

  I can’t say I felt too bad. They had tried to kill me after all, but I didn’t need them to come after me while dead either. Whatever the blackness was, it moved like fog but was definitely lifting up the dead guards and shuffling them forward.

  The clatter of pans and the sound of a dozen pairs of feet running away told me we were pretty much on our own at this point. After previous run-ins with zombies, I was confused when the guards didn’t come for us on their own. In fact, the dark shadow stopped for a moment and one of the guards tumbled to the ground. When the shadow monster started oozing forward, it left the dead guard behind.

  That could be good. Not great, good. Better-than-what-we-had-before good.

  I hoped. I kept an eye on the body for a few seconds, but it stayed down in the crumbled heap it was left in.

  I didn’t want to turn my back, but the only way out was going to be through the kitchen. The black shadow was blocking even the sight of the way we’d come in.

  “Hang on, girls,” I yelled then spun around and sprinted through the kitchen. Bunky and Leaf had been waiting but once I came closer they started heading for the door as well.

  I couldn’t take the time to look behind us. The kitchen was a minefield and falling was a real risk, but from the clanking behind us, most likely from the two remaining bodies inside it, I knew the shadow monster was gaining speed.

  Bunky and Leaf hovered in front of a pair of massive oak doors. I ran faster, planning on hitting a door at enough speed for it to fling open and let all of us out.

  Those were heavy-looking doors—this was going to hurt. I figured bruised was better than dead.

  I flung myself at the left door but it opened just as I would have hit it and I ended up bowling over a pair of elves.

  “Shut the door!” “Block that now!” There were two more elves behind the ones I’d hit, and they were barking orders and dodging a very irritated Bunky.

  The two I’d hit were elven guards, but their armor was different than the three who’d tried to kill me. It fit better, for one thing, and looked cleaner. Two more simila
rly garbed guards came from the sides and bolted the door behind me. A solid thunk against the wood told me the shadow creature had held onto at least one of the dead guards. Or fake guards, as they most likely were.

  The two elves behind the guards were an aged gentleman with long white hair and a scar running under his neck, and Padraig.

  He still looked odd, with half of his face unmoving and his hair gone, but the madness that was in his eyes on the council floor was gone. He reached down and helped me to my feet.

  “I assume you and your friends are unharmed?” His voice was softer and more melodious than it had been before as well.

  I reached up and pulled Garbage and Crusty out of my hair, they both looked okay. Aside from the fact Bunky was staying out of grabbing range and Leaf was still swinging her war stick, they seemed fine as well.

  Another slam on the bolted doors, this one a bit louder, swallowed my answer, so I tried again.

  “Yes and no. What are you going to do with us?” I was looking for anything that even remotely looked like a way out, but there was nothing. One long hallway and six very fast elves. I had a feeling that even the old elf would be fast. He looked remarkably spry for being of an advanced age. He looked older than Jovan, and Jovan had been alive at the time of the Breaking.

  The aged elf laughed a far bigger laugh than someone his size would warrant. He sounded more like one of Foxy’s minotaur customers after too much brandy.

  “I’d say we were told true about this lass.” His voice was deep as well. He smiled, but there was a sadness in his blue eyes that the smile couldn’t overcome. “We should go to a more private pla—” His words were cut off as the door behind us burst open, sending a guard flying over our heads and into a very solid-sounding pillar.

  “Get behind me!” Padraig yelled as he, the old man, and the guards took up formation.

  The shadow thing was down to dragging along one battered, dead, fake guard, and he was not looking well. It moved slower now as well.

  I didn’t argue but ran behind Padraig. I motioned for Bunky to come down closer, and then put Crusty and Garbage on his back. “You have to listen—if I tell you to, all four of you need to flee.” I held up one finger as Garbage took a breath to protest. “No. You have to flee. Get Uncle Harlan.”

  Garbage held her glare, and then nodded. “He help.”

  “Yes, he’ll help. Now be ready.” At this point I didn’t want to send them off. Someone had been shooting at them from outside the chambers after all. But if it was between the thing slowly rolling toward us, and them taking their chances outside, I’d want them outside.

  Both Padraig and the old man wiggled their fingers. I’d seen Alric do that once or twice before a spell.

  “If you’re spellcasters, take these cuffs off of me. I can fight.” I held up both wrists.

  Padraig and the old man shared a look and finally Padraig held his hand over my wrists and both cuffs popped off. “Do what you can.”

  In the few moments that I’d looked down at my wrists, the darkness had crept forward to surround us.

  Padraig and the old man were chanting spells, something Alric had taught me to do in my head. I felt the edges of the spells as they formed—they were so far above anything Alric had ever done around me, it was mind-boggling.

  The darkness lashed forward and grabbed one of the guards. He was yelling his own spell, but the darkness only slowed down a moment before it swallowed him. Even though I couldn’t see him anymore, the sickening crunching sound told me what happened to him.

  I was about to try one of my spells, not that I had that many, when my twice-cursed sword appeared in my hand.

  “She is a sword carrier! Blessed be!” The old man beamed and I swore my sword glowed a bit in his direction. Great, the really old elf and my weird sword knew each other. Hopefully we’d all live long enough for them to get reacquainted.

  “Use the sword.” A woman’s voice popped up right behind my ear, but all I saw were Bunky, the girls, and a bunch of male elves. “The sword, child. Stab. It.”

  The words were so forceful that my arm moved a bit without me controlling it. With a scream of nothing in particular, I channeled my flying spell into a fly-apart spell and stabbed into the nothingness that attacked us. As if it had been planned, Padraig and the old elf released their spells as well.

  A coldness as I’d never felt before flowed up the sword into my hand, but it didn’t move farther than the hilt.

  The shadow monster had seemed very incorporeal, but suddenly it was condensing down, becoming solid. Forming a mass that included the two dead guards—the last of the original three and its newest victim. Then it exploded. Considering there had been dead bodies inside, I was very grateful that it exploded at a minuscule level. The pieces that flew around us were so tiny I couldn’t even feel them.

  The sword flashed once. Then I heard what sounded like a “well done”, again in a woman’s voice, and the sword vanished.

  I suddenly felt like I’d been the one who’d been blown apart and I folded down to my knees.

  Bunky and the girls buzzed forward as Padraig tried to help me up.

  “You back!” Garbage stood atop Bunky’s head and shook her war stick at Padraig and the rest of the elves. An impressive feat since Bunky was dodging around, and unlike me, he didn’t have any hair for her to hang on to.

  “Oh, now my day has been graced!” The old elf stepped forward, his robes flowing around his feet. It took me a minute to realize he hadn’t been wearing robes until a moment ago, but had just been wearing a tunic and pants. He also seemed to appear younger.

  What kind of a trick was this?

  “Girls, stay back.” I started to get to my feet. Both Padraig and this old man had sent spells that I was fairly sure helped blow up that shadow thing. Nevertheless, I didn’t know why he was changing in front of the faeries. I had no idea who was on which side.

  “I don’t recognize these three or their charming steed. But the wee ones were known to us long before the Breaking.” He looked up and smiled. “They were our friends.”

  I backed away from the old man. The smile was the same as the weird ghost guy. And the eyes as well, now that I wasn’t running for my life and could look at them clearly.

  “You were in the tower. You called that smoke, shadow, whatever it was, to attack us.” For once the faeries, probably more Bunky than them, took my suspicions to heart. Bunky started flying higher and away from where anyone could grab him.

  The old man sighed and looked to Padraig with a frown. “I told you he was back. That mischievous hooligan thrives on mayhem, and there’s enough chaos around here right now to keep him fat and happy.” He looked back to me with a wince. “I assure you, Reginald didn’t call the shadow beast. He might have accidentally let it out from the nether hells, but it wasn’t done in malice, trust me.”

  “Reginald?” That seemed a very non-elven name.

  “Yes, my brother. Been dead over fifteen hundred years and still keeps causing problems.”

  “Your Excellency!” A pair of guards came running around the corner, their eyes only focused on the old man, and then skidded to a halt when they saw me.

  The old man shrugged to Padraig, then nodded to the guards. “Yes, yes, we’re all friends here, what is it?”

  “It’s the council. They’re building a scaffold to hang Alric.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “What? We have to rescue him.” I no longer cared that the odd old elf man had a dead brother who might or might not be involved with a deadly shadow creature.

  “We save!” Garbage yelled. Bunky had swerved down lower, and all three faeries were now chanting and brandishing their war blades.

  The old man’s eyes went wide. “Most certainly not. The last thing that would help young Alric in any way would be to have a construct and some mythological beings show up to save him.” He nodded to the guards around him. “I need all of you to stand at the ready. We cannot let this ups
et anything, nor can we let Alric die unfairly. Go hinder what you can. I will be down there shortly.”

  “Hinder what you can? We need to stop them, not hinder them. And I know there is no way he was the one who stole the gargoyle. He was with me and my friends digging for more relics to take back to your people.” I didn’t know what Bunky, the girls, and I could do, but we had to do something. Judging from Padraig’s attack earlier, he wouldn’t help, and the old elf was some sort of important ruler so he couldn’t help.

  “It’s okay. We know he didn’t attack me, nor kill my friends and my wife.” Padraig’s voice was low, and pain showed on his face. “Until I touched him in the chambers, however, I would have sworn it had been Alric I had faced that day. The creature who attacked us wore his face, oddly, but it was his face. Ironically, fighting with the real Alric convinced me it hadn’t been he who had attacked us. The magic in him was wrong.”

  “Then how could that blood test, or whatever she was going to do, be wrong?” I didn’t know what to think at this point, but I knew we all had to get out of this enclave.

  The sound of feet coming in steady formation from down a side corridor caught all of our attentions. The old elf changed again, this time dressed in ornate robes and a headpiece.

  He motioned Padraig over. “Take them to my chambers. Use the small stairwell, no one must see them.”

  I looked the direction the marching was coming from. I had little to go on, except that Padraig had once called Alric friend. I had to hope that still meant something to him, now that he realized Alric hadn’t slaughtered his wife.

  I nodded to Bunky and the girls. “We’ll follow him. Bunky, stay low and near me.”

  The old elf nodded to Padraig and moved the guards with us to stand in formation behind him as he faced the new arrivals. They also successfully blocked our exit from being readily seen.

  Padraig was taller than he had looked before. His left side looked healthy and fine. Unlike his ruined right side. I shuddered to think what kind of damage couldn’t be repaired by the amount of magic that had to be in this council building. I had been sure that a changeling had been the one behind the theft of the gargoyle. Up until I heard and saw the damage the attacker had done. Having fought a changeling before, I knew they couldn’t do what was done to Padraig.