The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Page 2

  Bunky flew over all three of my friends but he seemed as confused as me, judging by his movements. The gargoyle stayed on my lap and allowed me to pet him.

  Within a minute my friends started moving and all of the faeries flew up into the air.

  “We be back sun time,” Garbage said as she and the others started to fly off.

  “Wait, where is your friend?” I looked around but their small, six-legged companion was nowhere to be seen. “The minkie?”

  Garbage spun on me and flew into my face. “When you see minkie? No one see minkie.”

  The rest of the faeries started swarming around.

  “A few minutes ago, you guys chanting, lights, six-legged furry thing showed up?”

  Garbage and the others looked confused, but they also looked like they had no idea what I was saying. “No minkies. Gone. Long time.” She flew over to Covey as the faeries left the campsite. “She hit head. Not good.” Then with another look of concern aimed my direction, she led the rest of her flying gang out of the area.

  Bunky flew after them and the gargoyle took off after him. Leaving me on the ground and very confused. Faeries didn’t lie, not directly anyway. And I knew Garbage. She wasn’t trying to be sneaky; she honestly felt no one had seen a minkie. Even she and the other faeries. Maybe that wasn’t a minkie I’d seen, but they’d all called it that.

  The world had stopped swaying, so I got to my feet.

  “What happened?” Alric was the last to rise and he looked the most out of sorts. Alric was an elven high lord, a being of power and beauty: right now, he looked like someone had woken him out of a nightmare about a bad hairdresser. His white blond hair stuck up like a bunch of drunken faeries had been sleeping in it, his normally bright green eyes were bleary and half-open, and his clothing was skewed. All in all, my normally very good-looking quasi-boyfriend was not meeting that criterion right now.

  “I was with the faeries,” I said. “I heard pots crashing, so I ran back here. You two were out and Covey was using our cookware as projectile weapons.”

  Covey shuddered as she dropped one of the battered pans back into its cubbyhole in the wagon. The side folded open when we made camp so I could see how ransacked it was. “Those…things.”

  The purple light creatures had given me the same reaction—odd since they were actually pretty in a way. Their underside glowed a light pink as they drifted toward you. Rather, as they came in for a landing to knock you out. Who knew what their plan was after that. I echoed Covey’s shudder.

  “I had just woken up when I saw them. We have stories of light creatures, but they aren’t supposed to be evil. I went to wake up Padraig and they came for me.” Alric rubbed the side of his head, felt how messed up his hair was, and patted it down. If it had been me, my hair would still be a mess. Elven hair seemed to resort to silky and beautiful without much trouble. One quick shake and it was all in order. Annoying to say the least.

  “They take over your body, some sort of transference from the skin—but clothing doesn’t slow it down much. I believe I’ve read about them in one of my books, but I’ll warrant we all have red marks showing where they touched us.” Padraig rose and went about retrieving scattered cookware. The black hair that fell to his waist shimmered in the firelight as he moved. For a thousand-or-so-year-old elf, he looked pretty damn good. Until he turned and you could see his right side. His wife and three friends had been murdered, and he horribly scarred, when the bastards we were after stole the glass gargoyle from Padraig’s study. That one of them had been disguised to look like Alric, one of Padraig’s oldest friends, hadn’t been good for either of them. Luckily, the truth had been exposed quickly once the real Alric and I came into the elven enclave.

  Padraig’s scars, like Alric’s true elven looks, were masked by a glamour. A deceptively simple, yet powerful, spell that blocked others from seeing the true person. For some reason, I could see through even the strongest glamour now. No one had been able to figure that out, and it got added to the list of ‘weird things about Taryn’. The long, and apparently growing, list.

  Covey gave another shudder and stalked away from the wagon to help bring in the rest of the cookery. Covey was a trellian academic, which wasn’t as much of an oxymoron as would be thought. Although her people had finally escaped from years of savagery and berserker tendencies, most were not huge academic minds. Covey was one of the foremost experts on elven history, lore, and magic—that was until we realized that the elves really were still alive and had been hiding for the last thousand years. She could hold her own with them though. And she had the advantage of being an even fiercer fighter, with or without a dip into berserker rage, than any elf I’d met.

  “Could they have sent the lights to stop us? Covey dropped really fast once those things touched her and none of you looked good when you were down.” I hadn’t been stung by the creatures, and I feared what would have happened if I had. Who knew how long it would take the faeries to come back to camp if I hadn’t been able to call them?

  “I don’t know. I would think if they knew we were following them, the reaction would have been a lot bloodier,” Alric said.

  The two mages, Reginald and inquisitor Nivinal, had escaped almost a day before we’d been able to follow, and as far as we knew they had no idea anyone realized where they were going. We needed to keep it that way.

  Alric had been checking the edges of the camp for stragglers, then came back to stand next to me. “Are you okay?” He rubbed my arms then tilted my face up to make it visible in the firelight. “You’re bleeding.”

  I had checked my head for blood earlier, but not my face. A trickle of blood was coming from my nose. Alric handed me a bit of fabric. It stopped flowing after I wiped it away. But that wasn’t a good sign. The spell had taken a lot more out of me than it should.

  “I used a push spell on the lights; they were really heavy for only looking like bits of glowing fluff. I’m not really sure if I sent them away or they vanished on their own.”

  Alric frowned and nodded toward the wagon. “It’s my turn to stand watch. I know it will be cramped, but all three of you should sleep inside until daybreak. There’s no way to know if those things will come back.”

  Padraig handed Covey the last of the pans, an extremely dented skillet, and darted past her to go further into the wagon. He came back later with a few battered books. Ones from his arcane magic and Dark collection. Padraig and Alric were both experts on the Dark, a group of elves who’d managed to nearly destroy their entire race in their attempt at conquering it. Myself, and all the people in the surrounding lands, thought the elves had died out a thousand years ago. The elves had thought the Dark had been destroyed in their final battle—also a thousand years ago. We were all wrong.

  “I’m staying up as well,” Padraig said as he piled the books near the fire. “Day will be here soon enough and I’d like to find out what those creatures were before we come across them again.”

  Covey looked toward the horizon. Everything looked like the dead of night to me, but she had better eyes than I did. “I’m going to research as well. The sun will be up in a few hours.”

  I looked at all three of them, and then shook my head. While their eyes might allow for reading obscure books by firelight, mine certainly wouldn’t.

  “You three have a great time, I’m getting some sleep.” I went into the wagon, and pushed enough stuff off the bench in the back to make a bed. Then swore and climbed back out. “Oh, and keep an eye out for the faeries. They have been up to something and I’m not sure it’s something we’re going to like.” At their nods, I went back into my created bed. That last bit went without saying. I had no idea if I’d seen a minkie, nor exactly what they were. But at any given time the faeries were probably into something that was going to bring trouble to someone.

  A moment later, Alric stuck his head in. The look of concern on his face destroyed any slightly romantic thoughts I might have entertained at his arrival.

 
“Are you sure you’re okay? You look pale.” He sat down on the bed next to me.

  “I’m fine. Figure out what those things were and maybe we’ll know why they were so hard to move with magic.”

  He watched me for a few moments, then gave me a quick kiss. It was almost impossible to have any type of romantic development when we were traveling in such close quarters with friends.

  “You’d tell me if anything else came up? Was there any reaction from your friend?” He briefly touched my left cheek where the tiny sapphire manticore mark was hidden.

  I sighed. Alric was smart, talented, and sexy, but he could also be a mother hen. “Nothing. Just like the past few days.” The powers from the sapphire manticore had helped us during the fight in the enclave by holding the shield covering it in place a bit longer. It hadn’t done anything since then. If it weren’t for the fact the mark was still on my cheek—under a glamour of its own—I might think it had somehow left me.

  I must have shown my annoyance at the daily inquiries about the internal relic, because he got up and left.

  Or it could be the massive yawn I gave.

  I heard my three friends muttering softly outside the wagon, but didn’t have enough energy to stay awake and try to listen.

  3

  A ray of diffused sunshine poked me in the eyes until I gave in and rolled away from it. I’d gotten better at short bouts of sleeping in the past few weeks but wasn’t a fan. It had started during our trip to the elven enclave when Alric and I were prisoners of the elven guards. The knights who were bringing us in sang every night. Unfortunately, the harmonics in the enclave they lived in were different than the outside world and their singing could have fallen under the definition of torture. Sleep was sporadic under those conditions and I learned to grab whatever I could.

  I could dodge the ray of sun, but there was no getting around the amount of noise taking place around me. Covey muttered to herself as she fussed with things two feet away from me. Most likely complaining about the state of her cookware. Never mind that she was the one that created all the dents.

  I was about to move again to see if I could block her noises when the unwelcome sound of horses echoing through the canyon hit my ears. I jumped out of my blankets and saw Covey grab the sword she’d become fond of and leap out of the wagon.

  Of course, my sword was nowhere to be found.

  A number of months ago, I’d inherited an odd, elven spirit sword, something that appeared and disappeared at the whim of its owner. At least the ones that Alric and Padraig had did. Mine seemed to come and go whenever it felt like it. And apparently now was not when it felt like it.

  I grabbed my dagger instead and followed Covey out of the wagon.

  And tripped over my sword lying in the dirt in front of me. I grabbed the stubborn thing and rolled to my feet, managing not to look too insane as I turned toward the sound. It was coming from behind us, the sound of horses running too fast for a twisty narrow canyon.

  My three friends were all off across the camp from me and heavily armed. I would have joined them but the lead horse barreled into our camp right at that moment.

  I steadied my stance, holding both blades out but not too far away from me. The horseman was already slowing down but I did move to the right in case he kept coming. The rider was an elven knight, full helmet down so I had no idea if it was one of the good ones, or a follower of the Dark that we’d missed.

  Another rider came up behind him, also in full elven armor, after them was a small wagon pulled by a single horse.

  The first rider looked down at my weapons, did a quick glance to my friends, then shook his head and removed his helmet. Long blond hair tumbled out.

  Flarinen.

  He’d been the one responsible for taking Alric and I in to the elven enclave to answer for crimes we didn’t commit. We’d never completely seen eye to eye about anything, but had a mild truce going by the time we left a week ago. The elven king and queen had sanctioned this trip, as well as one to the south by my patroness Qianru and another to a hidden group of elves to the north by my friend Harlan, and his newest love interest, Orenda.

  So then why was the captain of the knights charging after us as if we’d robbed the throne?

  The second knight held back at the entrance of our camp, but Flarinen slowly walked his horse forward. Padraig and Covey moved to either side of the entrance from where the canyon curved into this area, but Alric walked forward. Like me, he held his sword at the ready.

  “Come now, you can’t still wonder what side I’m on?” Flarinen didn’t move off his horse, but he did wave for the second rider to stay back. The wagon driver had a cloak with the hood pulled down over their face.

  “We can and we will,” Alric jutted his chin toward the second knight. “Take off your helmet if you please, and tell your wagon driver to come forward.”

  Flarinen glared at him. Along with being a decent swordsman, the tall elven captain was the master of the glare. “Do what he says, we don’t have time to waste.” Flarinen hadn’t moved toward his sword, but did get off his horse.

  The second knight removed his helmet, but stayed on his horse. A young elf with short deep red hair, I didn’t recognize him so I couldn’t tell if he was a follower of the Dark or not.

  The wagon slowly moved forward and stopped.

  “Hood off, if you’d please,” Padraig said as he and Covey closed in.

  The form took off his hood. Lorcan. Rather the body of Lorcan, a powerful, elven mage who’d had his body stolen by his brother Reginald—who happened to be a Dark mage before he’d lost his own body to death centuries before.

  I wish I’d had time to grab a bow and arrows. Flarinen had brought one of the Dark mages we were chasing right into our midst.

  “All of you, stay where you are,” Padraig yelled. He and Alric moved forward slowly. “Tell me why I shouldn’t destroy you right now.” He was focusing on Reginald in Lorcan’s body, but he had his left hand up as if holding an invisible ball—he had a spell armed and ready.

  Before anyone could speak, a ruckus mob of singing, screaming, and giggling faeries tumbled into the area—all of them aimed right at Reginald.

  “Wait!” I knew it wouldn’t do any good, the girls never listened to me, but I had no idea what Reginald could do to them.

  They ignored me, flew right through all of us, past Flarinen, and the red-haired knight and enveloped Reginald.

  I ran forward although I wasn’t sure what I could do. I stopped running when I saw the faeries were all kissing Reginald.

  Although the being looked like Lorcan, a kindly, ancient elven leader, the inside was all his evil brother. So what were the faeries doing, and why would Reginald be laughing about it?

  “It’s Lorcan,” Flarinen said with his usual sneer. At least that hadn’t changed. “His brother left his body long enough for him to get it back.”

  I looked from Flarinen, to Lorcan, to Padraig and Alric. They’d pretty much said that it would be impossible to do that. Yet here were my faeries, smothering this person with kisses. They didn’t even do that to me.

  “It’s true, my child. His spell dropped for a brief time two days ago, and I found myself with a body again.” Lorcan gently pushed aside the mass of faeries.

  I walked forward. I kept my sword and dagger ready. I could try a spell, but whether it was Reginald or really Lorcan, my magic wouldn’t stand a chance. “What happened when we were in your rooms?”

  The small, gentle smile that faced me was all Lorcan. “You and your faeries almost died. Well, you did; they’re tougher. Someone had poisoned my nectar. You drank it and collapsed, all the while accusing Padraig here of trying to kill you. Your flying friends swam in it, but really didn’t have any problems.”

  I hadn’t told anyone about that.

  Padraig ran forward and pulled Lorcan off the wagon and into a huge hug. “Well met! I feared we’d not be seeing you back in your rightful form.”

  “Is him,” G
arbage said to no one in particular. She led the rest of the faeries further up into the air but they stayed over the camp.

  Lorcan patted Padraig on the back and I came forward to hug him myself. He’d been around since his brother pulled the body snatch, but in ghost-like form. It was good to see him back together.

  Covey had only known him as the evil Reginald, or the ghost-like Lorcan, so she stayed back watching us all.

  “I don’t understand what happened.” Alric came forward, his well-behaved sword vanishing immediately at his mental command. “Or why you’re here. We can’t turn back.”

  “What happened to me is part of why I had to have Flarinen and young Kelm here escort me to you. I have my body yes, but we’re not sure for how long. I need to be there when you stop Reginald to make sure I keep it.”

  Flarinen shrugged. “There was no way I was going to let anyone else do this duty.”

  “You’ve done your duty,” Alric said. “Lorcan is safe with us now. Go back home.”

  Alric and Flarinen had grown up together in the elven enclave. From what I’d gathered they had pretty much hated each other their entire lives.

  “We’re staying with you.” The grin was pure nasty as Flarinen helped Lorcan down from the cart. “Orders of the king and queen. We stay with this group until I resolve the problem of our missing mages and regain the relics they stole. I am to take charge.”

  “Flarinen, I am still recovering from my ordeal, but I will smack you myself if you don’t tone it down.” That was the Lorcan I’d come to know. Pale, and thinner than he had been, but the light in his eyes was all him.

  Garbage drifted down slowly and hovered directly in front of Flarinen. She folded her arms, narrowed her eyes, and that familiar lower lip jutted out. “Is lying.”

  Flarinen’s image of a powerful knight of the elven realm was shattered as she darted forward, only stopping an inch in front of his nose. He kept from falling over as he stumbled backwards—but only barely.