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

  “I am so sorry.” Padraig came into my line of sight. I still couldn’t really move much. “I’ve never seen anyone react like you did.” He glanced over his shoulder at a cage. “Or them. I’m sorry that we had to lock your faeries up. They were a bit out of control.” A whistling came from a corner of the room out of my range of sight. Padraig held up his hand. “I’ll be right back, this test will tell me if there were any foreign elements in the nectar.” A screeching alarm went off, and he ran to it.

  “This can’t be right.”

  More crashing followed at Padraig’s yell and I really wished I could sit up to see. Unlike my earlier assessment, I wasn’t tied up. My body was refusing to listen to me. The noises coming from the corner sounded like one of Covey’s attempts at cooking. Those often ended up exploding.

  Lorcan ran out of my view, as well as the drifting Siabiane. I briefly wondered if she was a ghost like Reginald.

  I heard a horrific clanging of pans, or something of that sort, then a muffled explosion. Whatever happened got the girls to launch into another round of hysteria. I hoped whatever they were locked up in was strong—I’d never heard them like this.

  There was still some sort of commotion going on, although I heard all three voices and the faeries, so everyone should be all right. Wait. “Bunky?” Panic filled my mind, what if that was the clanking I heard?

  “Your construct friend is fine. He’s staying with the faeries to try to calm them down.” Lorcan said as he came to where I could see him. I was sad that he was working with Padraig, as I was sure they’d tried to kill me.

  “Before it exploded, the test indicated that there was poison in the nectar.” That came from Padraig.

  I didn’t know if I was regaining my mobility naturally or if it was just being so mad, but I found that I could roll to face him. “Yes, because you put it there. You didn’t even drink your glass.”

  Padraig and Lorcan both looked confused, but the ghostly Siabiane started laughing as she drifted over to me. “He didn’t put the poison in the nectar, and I’m sure whoever did will be very upset that they missed getting old Lorcan during his night-cap. But they couldn’t have counted on you and your friends and your remarkable metabolisms.”

  “So, Padraig didn’t poison me?” My voice came out in a squeak.

  “No, my child. Someone was trying to poison me.” Lorcan came closer as well. “I have a glass every night, and I doubt my metabolism would have flushed whatever that was out like yours did.”

  “Help her up, you silly old goat.” Siabiane stood near me and pantomimed lifting me up. “Men.”

  Padraig looked thoughtful as he stepped around Lorcan and placed a pile of pillows behind me. “You really thought I was trying to kill you?”

  “I don’t know you very well, and, well, you did attack Alric.” I held up one hand and smiled when I realized I’d done so. That was a good sign. “I know, you had extenuating reasons. Bigger issue is how am I not dead and what did they give me? And are you sure the faeries will be okay? They were swimming in it after all.”

  Lorcan shook his head at Padraig. “You let them swim in my gladrian nectar?” Before Padraig could answer, Lorcan turned and faced me. “As for why you’re not dead, I’m afraid only Siabiane could answer. Padraig doesn’t have enough of an alchemist lair here to do a full test, and the small one we just tried blew up the equipment. But someone tried to poison me, and got you instead—something about your biologic nature saved you.”

  Siabiane scowled. “I could probably tell what the poison had been by smelling. But since I can only see and hear you with this spell, that can’t be done.” She spun around. “Maybe that should be my next project. A spell that projects smell along with sight and sound.”

  A weird noise like a giant bleating sheep echoed oddly in the small room. I looked around but both Lorcan and Padraig pointed to Siabiane.

  “Oh dear, it is still growing, you know. Hungry all the time,” Siabiane said in general to the room, then spun back to me. “You call me if these boys get out of hand.” With a flourish, she vanished.

  “How can I call her?” I was able to push myself up a bit more, but still leaned heavily on the pillows.

  “She’ll find you if you need her,” Lorcan said. Then he pulled one of the chairs closer. I looked down and realized I was lying on his desk.

  “Or even if you don’t need her, she’ll find you.” Padraig had gone back to cleaning up the mess his study of the nectar had made.

  Padraig finished cleaning and came back next to Lorcan and me. I still wasn’t up to leaving the bed-desk yet. “I take it the bed in the room outside isn’t used?” I patted the desk beneath me. Which was starting to feel uncomfortable—another good sign.

  Lorcan looked thoughtful, and then nodded to some conversation only in his head. “Actually, the bedroom isn’t completely safe. I have it warded as well as I can, but there are too many powerful mages in this building to trust it.” He waved around the small study. “This room is smaller and was built with special protections in the walls. Ones no one but I, Padraig, and a very select inner circle know about. I felt it better to keep you in here in case someone is scrying for you.”

  “I would love to find out what made you strong enough to deflect the poison.” Padraig leaned forward and I noticed he had a pen and a blank scroll in front of him. Clearly an academic and alchemist. Covey would love him. “Whatever the poison was, it was very strong. Maybe something to do with your background? Do your parents live near Beccia? Maybe we could interview them later on.”

  “They died.” I let out a sigh at the pang of sadness that flowed through me, both about their deaths and the fact that what I recalled of them and my childhood was so faint and scattered. As if they were a story where someone had only given me every few pages. I shook my head and forced a small smile at the looks of sorrow on both men’s faces. “It happened over fifteen years ago. A boating accident. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of my memories in it as well.”

  Both men nodded and Lorcan patted my hand.

  “What I’d like to know is what’s happening with Alric. And are they looking for me?” I was extremely confused when I first woke up, but once I realized Lorcan and Padraig hadn’t been trying to kill me, I knew Lorcan wouldn’t be here if Alric were still in immediate danger.

  “They’ve rescinded the order of execution. I pointed out a number of flaws and mistakes with the spells that were used to test his blood.” His face darkened. “They weren’t mistakes at all, but clear and deliberately muddled results. However, I don’t want the powers behind this to know I was aware of their machinations. My investigation gave Delphina enough to work with.

  You are another story. They claim you’d been accidentally put in a tower, and that you were killed by an escaped shadow monster. The cooks all agree they saw it, and you fought valiantly.”

  “What?” I was glad about Alric, although that still meant he was locked up somewhere until they could re-run the tests. But that I was dead? I had to get out of here and let my friends know before word got to them—and to Alric. “How could they say that? They all ran off before anything happened.”

  Padraig nodded. “Aye, but they want to have a good story to tell at the pub. And if I know Lorcan, their memories had some help. No one will be looking for you, or your spirit sword, if they think you are dead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There was a crackling in the air, and suddenly Siabiane re-appeared. She was pretty much sharing the same space as Lorcan.

  “What are you doing over here? Do put your furniture back in its proper places.” She drifted to the left so she wasn’t standing on him and faced me. “What did you and Alric bring back with you? What items?” Unlike before, where she had been extremely serene, she was frazzled now.

  “Items? Just what we had on us when Flarinen grabbed us.” My brain was still foggy from the trying to not die thing, but I shook it off. “Relics? We did have some relics with us. An obsidian chi
mera and an emerald dragon. Alric had them, but I have a feeling Flarinen took them when we got here.” That was a good point actually. I’d been so worried about them getting the faeries, and overwhelmed with looking at the massive council chambers, I hadn’t noticed what happened to the parcels Alric had been carrying.

  I knew Flarinen wouldn’t have let the relics get away, but I was really hoping he’d forgotten about that chest from the village. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about him—whose side he was on for one thing. There were clearly some serious infighting factions within the elven enclave, but I had no idea what they all were. Alric’s reaction to what was in that chest, not to mention the whole bit about me almost exploding while being stuck to a book, really made me not want anyone having access to it.

  Siabiane started whirling around. I supposed she was pacing wherever she was, but it looked a bit odd on our end.

  “Oh, that would explain it then. Two more of them could cause this. Yes, yes.” She spun on Lorcan. “I need those relics and I need a team of alchemists out here, as soon as possible.”

  Lorcan shook his head. “I’ve no one to spare. There are too many whose loyalties are questioned in the chambers right now, and I have two teams out on the borders.” He looked to me. “And Padraig tells me there is some goo heading our way.”

  Siabiane stopped spinning and looked thoughtful. “Yes, that mage incident. Unfortunate to say the least. You should have enough people to address it. But I will take Padraig, Taryn, Alric, and their friends.” She nodded to the cage of the faeries. “Both the big ones and the littles.”

  “You want me to free Alric, find and steal the relics, and smuggle all of us halfway across the enclave to your home? Without being caught?” Padraig shook his head.

  Siabiane drifted to him. “The old Padraig would have found it a challenge.”

  “The old Padraig is gone.” He faced away from her and folded his arms. His face was shutting down right before my eyes.

  “There’s another relic.” I’m not sure why that popped out of my mouth, but Padraig’s pain was almost palpable. I believed Siabiane needed the relics for whatever she was doing. But watching her face, as she watched Padraig fold in on himself made another point clear, she also wanted to help him.

  “Do tell.” Siabiane spun to me. Lorcan sat back in his chair and watched us all.

  Sadly, I didn’t recall much of what Qianru said about it, aside from the fact she wanted it and she thought it was here in the enclave somewhere. I wasn’t even sure it was connected to the others. Except that with Qianru’s track record, I had to figure anything she was after was somehow related to the Ancients. And not in a good way.

  “Well, not much to tell. But my patroness, you all might know her, Qianru?” All three nodded, but their range of nods was interesting. Both Padraig and Lorcan seemed cautious, Lorcan extremely so. Siabiane looked like Qianru was her best girlfriend. “Anyway, she said she’s looking for a sapphire manticore, bigger than the other three Ancient relics we’ve found, but I’d bet it was part of the Ancient weapon as well.”

  The second the words ‘Ancient’ and ‘weapon’ flew out of my mouth, I knew I’d screwed up. I’d blame the near poisoning death I was still recovering from and just hope that we really could trust all three of them. Not that we had a lot of choice. I had no idea how I would get out of here, let alone how I would find the two relics, rescue Alric, and get all of us out of there.

  I knew Alric wanted to clear his name, but there was some seriously dangerous stuff going on here in the old hometown.

  “That was the weapon the killers were looking for.” Padraig’s voice started fading at the end.

  Siabiane looked on sadly, but Lorcan reached out to hug him.

  “Alric and Covey, that’s my friend…you wouldn’t have seen her though. But they both feel the gargoyle, the chimera, the dragon, all of them, are a weapon.” I looked around, might as well go all the way. They might have had clues, but the codex was on the other side of the shield—they couldn’t have seen it. “We think there could be as many as six or seven parts, and Alric is fairly sure it’s what destroyed the Ancients.”

  Padraig sat down on the chair. Very hard, which was difficult since they were very soft chairs. Tears started streaming down his face. “She said that. My wife, Gastia, all of her research since she was a young secondary student was about the Ancients. She knew someone had deliberately, and violently, destroyed the entire race.”

  Lorcan leaned closer to me. “The common academic wisdom is that they destroyed their culture and simply faded into history. Padraig and Gastia were academic rebels.”

  Padraig looked up with a fierce smile. There were still tears, but they had a power behind them now. “We were the academic rebels.” He lowered his eyes, and then looked up defiantly. “I am going to get everything to you, Siabiane. I can’t get my wife or friends back, but I can prove they were right.”

  “Excellent, and very much needed,” Siabiane said. A brief look of panic crossed her face and she looked off at something on her side. “The sooner the better. My own gargoyle issue is becoming worse. I think due to the arrival of the other two relics. And if there was already one in the enclave…this could be bad.”

  I looked to Padraig, but he didn’t look in the least surprised that she said gargoyle. He’d been tortured and his wife and friends killed defending the glass gargoyle. Which the killers got anyway. When he went back to cleaning things up, I turned to Siabiane.

  “Didn’t they take the gargoyle?” I knew after the beastie had been destroyed by Alric and Thaddeus in the dimension it opened, it had managed to come back. Alric said that was part of its power. I seriously doubted whoever attacked Padraig and his people would have destroyed it. Whoever they were, they wanted it too badly.

  “They did,” Padraig said and looked up, but he seemed far less sad than before. “They also took all of our research on it. And we’d been hidden very well. An earlier attack made us go far underground. But that didn’t stop them.”

  “Siabiane doesn’t have the glass gargoyle,” Lorcan said. “She had been experimenting with it, sort of, before it was taken. She’s created her own replica.”

  I didn’t like the way he said replica at all. That thing could open up rifts to other dimensions, and had some weird time powers going on that no one had been able to really explain. A replica could be very, very bad. Especially one created by someone powerful enough to send her disembodied self across the land.

  “Is it a good idea to be bringing more relics out there to this replica? The chimera in particular has some really dangerous abilities behind it.” I wasn’t up to going into Glorinal, the rakasa, the fact that Glorinal massively upped up his magic mojo and possibly went even more insane because he got that thing inside him. Somehow. “They are dangerous enough on their own.”

  “I think we have enough power to keep them from interacting.” Padraig had finished cleaning up, so he picked up the cage with the still dozing faeries and the dozing Bunky and brought them closer. He didn’t sit down—clearly he was ready to go now.

  “And the alternative studies agree with what Alric found, that all of the parts of the weapon must be together for full power.” Lorcan looked thoughtful. “The threat of such a weapon might help keep some of our factions in line.”

  Now that was a bad idea. But I didn’t think saying that was going to help me get out of here. Lorcan only wanted the best for his people, but anything that could wipe out an entire race of beings wasn’t something to be used. Or even threatened to be used.

  “But you could never use it,” Siabiane said. She was looking at Lorcan differently now, as if she’d never seen that side.

  He fluttered his hands. “Of course not. Just thinking nonsense out loud as an old man does. Point is, I believe having a few of the relics together will help you better understand their functions.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed his brush off of his own comment, but he was an old man. I’d ask Al
ric how old later, but I knew I was looking at someone who was old long before the Breaking.

  Lorcan nodded to me as if nothing had changed. “I think I can get Alric out. He won’t be cleared yet, so you’ll have a wanted man on your hands. But from what I’ve heard of some of his adventures, that wouldn’t be unusual for him.” He got up and paced. “The relics will be more difficult.” He was clearly working things out in his own mind, so I broke in.

  “And our bags. Alric had some other bags, our personal possessions. We’d need anything of ours that Flarinen brought in.”

  Padraig nodded. “I can get those and the relics. You get Alric.” He turned to me. “Where are your friends staying?”

  “I have no idea where it is, but apparently my patroness has a mansion somewhere? Wherever Qianru is, they’ll be.”

  Siabiane moved closer to me. “Patroness? Are you an artist, my dear? I’d gathered you were a relic hunter like Alric.”

  “I’m a digger, an archeologist. However, in my world the elven and Ancient ruins are controlled. In order to dig, you must have a patron or patroness. They secure the dig site and supplies.” I shrugged. “Qianru is my current one.”

  Siabiane nodded. “I do like her, you know I do. I’ve had such a time watching her here.”

  Lorcan had been putting together a small box but shook a finger at Siabiane. “You can’t go spying on people, especially that…woman.” He tossed a look over his shoulder to me. “No offense, but she is a bit odd.”

  That was the understatement of the year. But in my book she was the best patron I’d ever had. She wasn’t a shapeshifting megalomaniac syclarion bent on mutating time and space to create his perfect world for one thing.