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

  “It’s complicated.” He started to say more, but that was already going the wrong direction. I waved him off.

  Then Qianru came in holding a giant log. Okay, it looked like a log, but it was hollow and had some cryptic carvings on its side. One of the houseboys came to try to help her with it, but she slapped him aside.

  “This was found in the ruins of the first southern elven settlement. They set up long before the Breaking.”

  Padraig nodded slowly, but looked very concerned about the thing she held in her hands.

  “It will take down the unbelievers, but protect the finder.” She held it up and clicked the end of it before any of us could respond.

  The log weapon fired out a pellet that looked like a chunk of ice the size of my head. At the same time the manticore tattoo on my cheek sent a blast of icy pain through my entire body. I couldn’t cast a spell in time to fling away the projectile—and I knew if it hit, it would shatter me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Time seemed to slow down as the ice chunk came to me. Even though Alric was right next to me, I knew he couldn’t stop it. The look on his face as it flew closer confirmed that.

  The ice hit me in the middle of my stomach with enough force to send me through the wall behind me and into the garden. Surprisingly, I was still intact even though I felt like I’d been slammed through a wall. There really was nothing else to compare that to.

  Time went back to normal and everyone came running toward me. At the back of the crowd was an extremely confused Qianru. She no longer carried the log weapon.

  “That shouldn’t have damaged her at all. My people were so sure of it.” She fluttered her hands around both in an explanation and to get someone to help me. I’d never seen her like that.

  Alric reached me first and gently helped me up. Padraig was there to support the other side. Alric took a good look at my face, and then brushed where the manticore was. It flared cold once, but then settled down. From the look on his face, it had done something just now.

  “Are you okay?” Alric was cradling me in his arm as if I was a thousand years old and Padraig backed off.

  “Are all my parts still in place?” I wasn’t as cold as I’d been right before the weapon hit, but I was still numb.

  Alric smiled. “Yes.” He turned back to Qianru. “I’d say your people, and possibly some of ours, were wrong. Taryn is a digger, a good one, yes, but she’s not the relic finder.”

  “So, your people really thought she was some mystical being?” Covey stepped forward and she had her fighting face on. Harlan was right behind her and his tail was twitching. Good to know they had my back.

  “Not as such.” Padraig tried explaining.

  Covey folded her arms and glared as only a university professor could. “Did you, or did you not, send Alric out into the wild, unclean lands of our world to find the relic and possibly this relic finder?” At Padraig’s faint nod, she faced Qianru. “And did you come to Beccia, bring her on as your digger, with the intention of proving she was this finder? Regardless of what danger you all put her in?”

  Qianru still looked stunned—a look I’d not even seen on her face when she’d been betrayed by Jovan. Then again, if she was a spy, that betrayal might not have been as unexpected as I’d thought. She managed a small nod.

  Covey motioned for Harlan to come forward and between the two of them they took me from Alric. I wasn’t standing too well, but they were both strong enough to keep me upright.

  “I believe we will be taking our friend to the suite of rooms assigned to us. I want all of you to think about what you have done.” Covey led us back through the dining room. We went in through the door instead of my exit point and toward a back hall.

  Harlan had stayed silent, but finally gave a chuckle. “You should have been a barrister, my dear. You would have made a killing.”

  Covey grinned, letting teeth show this time, but I knew there was no ill will toward Harlan. “Who said I wasn’t back in my homeland?” Now she focused on me. “Are you okay? I simply cannot believe how caught up those people are in myths and legends.”

  Had my ribs not still been feeling massively bruised from the impact, I would have laughed. The old Covey would have given away her life mate for information on the elves or their myths.

  “I think so. I still have no idea what happened.” That was a bit of a lie. I knew what happened: my patroness shot me, and I’d found out that Alric hadn’t been completely truthful. Again. I got that his people were important to him. I wished that I felt that way about more than the two people with me right now. The whole concept of caring about an entire community, about your entire race, over anything else was something I couldn’t relate to.

  “Those people care more about their damn relics than people,” Covey said to me, then leaned across me to waggle a finger at Harlan. “It’s a good thing I am not a barrister, or I’d find a way to sue them into last year.”

  They stopped in front of a pair of doors, easily ten feet high, and Harlan left me leaning against Covey in order to open them.

  I let out a whistle. This was a serious suite. The room I was led into was larger than my entire house back in Beccia but was clearly just a sitting area and small bar. It was designed so whoever stayed here could gracefully entertain while still being a guest in another’s home.

  There was a lot more color than Qianru seemed to be aware of, and the style looked a bit old fashioned. Most likely Qianru worried about the public areas of whatever place she lived in, and left the private areas to whatever décor the place came with. That was fine by me. I liked this much better than her glowing white.

  “So you have spent the last two days here?” I knew Covey would have traded all of this luxury in a heartbeat for that nasty tower I had been locked up in, just because it was old. I wished I could show them the castle, but people wanting me dead, Alric being a fugitive, and even if there wasn’t a full civil war yet, there was some very serious internal skirmishing going on with the powers behind the throne, which kind of meant that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  “Yes, and let me tell you, if Qianru hadn’t had as many relics and scrolls as she does I think Covey would have gone crazy after the first hour.” Harlan made himself at home in a massive chair that fit him perfectly.

  I leaned back in a sofa that was stuffed within an inch of its life. Fatigue caught up to me for a moment, but I shook it off. Besides, how could I still be tired when Alric had dropped that sleep-walking spell on me?

  “What was that?”

  I opened my eyes to find Covey peering closely at my face.

  “What was what?”

  “You had a look of extreme annoyance, and I swear there was a flash of blue under your skin.” Covey pulled back a bit but was still far closer than normal social customs would call polite.

  Harlan peered closer at me but his look of disappointment told me the color had gone. I knew where both the color and the annoyance came from. I had no idea why, or how the two were connected.

  “The annoyance is at Alric—for a number of things.” I sighed and forced myself to get up and sit in one of the chairs. While very comfortable, it wasn’t as likely to make me fall asleep as the sofa. “Maybe the blue was left over from whatever Qianru shot me with.” I wasn’t up to telling anyone about the manticore, at least not until Alric and Padraig figured out more about what it was doing inside me.

  The door rattled a few times, then a few more as if an army of imps were sending birdseed pellets at it. We could be under attack, but I seriously doubted that within the depths of this mansion.

  “The girls, I assume?”

  Neither one answered, but Harlan got up and opened the left door. A dozen faeries and one purring Bunky poured into the room.

  “I thought they could go through walls now?” Now granted, when they first started doing it they left holes in their wake, and I seriously doubted Qianru would be okay with that happening here. However, they’d picked up
a few more tricks in the weeks we were apart. One of which was going through a door and not leaving a mark. Even through my very patchwork sealing spell.

  Crusty was the closest to me as the rest were still flying around and jabbering. “It no work.” She shrugged. “Too soon, boom.”

  I think once we got through whatever this Ancient weapon issue was, as well as the elven mayhem it seemed we were being sucked into, I was banning the word “boom” from the girls’ vocabulary.

  “Yes, we found out that spell isn’t working as it should,” Harlan said as he held out his paw, which now had a piece of rock sugar on it. Crusty was the only one paying attention, so she flew to Harlan, grabbed the sweet, and crammed the entire thing in her mouth.

  There went her talking anytime soon. Not that she’d been that helpful.

  “The girls went through two walls in the stables here to show off. There are now a dozen holes in each wall.”

  Crusty flew up to her friends. At first there seemed to be a tussle about her candy, but then Garbage spotted the bar and they all swarmed it.

  “So they can’t go through the walls? At least without making holes?” I nodded to them prying open an ale bottle. “It might be a good idea to make sure the windows are closed.” Keeping them inside was a much safer option. Especially if drunk.

  Covey nodded then went toward the back hall and what I presumed were a set of bedrooms.

  Harlan nodded. “Yes, what they can and can’t do seems to be changing. Garbage insists these were all things they could do but stopped. But they can’t tell me why or how.”

  I thought about getting an ale for myself before the flying drunkards grabbed them all, but I was full, safe, and sleepy. If I was going to stay awake long enough to get things sorted, ale would be a very bad idea for me. I settled for a cup of water.

  “Speaking of weird things—why and how did they grab those syclarion guards and why didn’t you help us fight?” I hadn’t seen anyone other than the faeries out in that clearing, but my friends couldn’t have been that far behind.

  Harlan rocked back with what could only be described as pride. “The idea for the removal of the syclarions was Orenda’s. Sadly, we weren’t close enough to help take those rakasa varlets out and the faeries said their spell wouldn’t work on them. She got the girls to fly recon and bring back what they found, if they found you.” He chuckled. “She wasn’t clear enough, so the girls brought back a tied-up syclarion. She praised them, so they brought back more. All of them, I assume?”

  I nodded, not really wanting to explain about the zombie one. I filled him in on our side of things with the syclarions first tailing us, then being captured by the rakasa, and made a mental note to give Orenda a huge thank you for pulling them out when she did.

  “But where did they end up?” I knew no one had brought the syclarions along, and letting them go wouldn’t have worked. I also couldn’t see any of my friends being bloodthirsty enough to kill them all. Even Covey. Unless she was really pissed anyway.

  Covey came back and sat down. Judging by the lack of questions as to what she’d missed, I gathered she’d been listening as she shut up the back windows.

  “It was Covey’s idea, so she should tell you.” Harlan nodded toward Covey.

  She gave a small bow from her seat. “But you were the one who made it happen.”

  I looked from one to the other. I was actually now very glad that the faeries were drinking—at least I knew I wasn’t in some horrible nightmare. These two were more likely to fight over taking credit, than vice versa. Their current behavior made me highly suspicious.

  “One of you, I don’t care which, tell me what you did with the syclarions.”

  “I had them taken to the edge of the Trellian desert. Right outside of the capital.” An innocent look didn’t fare well on Covey’s face. In fact, it was terrifying.

  “Your people hate syclarions.” Which was something I had in common with them actually. Most other races disliked the reptilian bullies, but Covey’s people and I hated them. The trellians still had a peace agreement with the syclarion government, so they wouldn’t kill them. Probably.

  “Yes, they do.” Covey’s smile was all teeth. “I have a feeling the syclarion ambassador will have some explaining to do once he reads the note I pinned to one of them.”

  I thought about it for a second. It was fitting in a way, and they might have a better chance at being returned to their people than they would have with the rakasa.

  “But how did the girls carry them around? That was so not part of anything they could do. And if they could do that, they could have saved a lot of running around the last couple of days.” I thought how nice it would have been to just have the faeries transport us here. Maybe they could get us all to Siabiane. After all the traveling as of late, I was a little sick of it.

  “Um, that wouldn’t work. For one, the girls aren’t sure how they did what they did. Part of it was Orenda, but we can’t replicate it.” Harlan scowled. I had a feeling he would be working very hard to replicate it. He hated traveling even more than I did.

  Covey nodded in agreement. “And then there’s the freezing. The syclarions dropped into hibernation, but I’m not sure what it would do to any of us.”

  “They froze?” I glanced over to my singing and dancing faeries. I didn’t mind if they sang, as long as I couldn’t hear it.

  “Yup, as they were transported to us,” Covey said. “Like blocks of ice off a northern glacier. They were still alive, but in a deep sleep.”

  Sigh. There went doing anything the easy way. I rethought the ale issue and decided a little might be medicinal. Got up, grabbed a bottle, then filled them both in on my couple of days—excluding the blue freeloader somewhere inside me.

  They both stayed very silent—for the two of them anyway—until the incident with the bones.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  After a few moments of rapid questioning, they both settled down when it was clear I had no answers—or very few.

  Harlan leaned closer to me. “So do we know if it was only elves killed in this massacre?”

  “I think there were other races as well. Not all of the darker side of elven history happened during the Breaking. But neither Padraig nor Alric said much about them and we were sort of on the run at that point,” I said.

  “On another note, the chimera had been inside Glorinal before I blew him up,” I said to hopefully distract them from the bones. That launched a new barrage of questions and I had to explain the entire incident with the rakasa, Glorinal, and the chimera.

  “So Padraig and Alric currently have the chimera and the dragon,” Harlan said as he got to his feet to pace, his favorite way to think. “Are we sure what either of them do?”

  Covey nodded. “The evidence and the scrolls point to the chimera being a magic focus. The shards it is constructed of probably each act as tiny magnifiers. And that was borne out by what it did to Glorinal.”

  I hadn’t told anyone about the way I’d first reacted to the emerald dragon. And so far it had been carried around by a number of people, and aside from creating a target for rakasa attacks, it didn’t seem to affect any of them. However, it could be important—besides, as far as I knew I was the only one who handled it with bare hands. Even Alric had it in a bag.

  “I’m not sure what it would do as part of a weapon, but when I found it I really wanted to keep it all from you.” I took a swig of the ale. “I kept it hidden for a few days and kept having ideas of running away with it.”

  “Interesting.” Harlan paused in his pacing to scowl. I didn’t think it was me, but rather the situation.

  “I can’t think how that would be helpful for a weapon. Attraction? Greed?” Covey shook her head.

  “I know it makes no sense. The gargoyle affects time and seems, or rather seemed, to be able to open dimensions. That might have been lost after the first use, unless it has the chimera with it, which makes sense since it magnifies magic. But the dragon causes g
reed?” I stopped myself before I mentioned the sapphire manticore. I wasn’t ready to discuss that yet. Actually, I was having a nice bout of denial about it and didn’t want to sit through a few hours of questions. I set my now empty ale bottle down and dropped my head in my hands. People were killing each other over these relics, yet there was no way to tell how they all fit together.

  “Time and dimension, magic enhancement, greed, and paranoia?” Covey said. I raised my head and nodded slowly. I’d seen all of them as my enemy. Now it was her turn to drop her head in her hands. “I have no idea.”

  “Is cause needs parts.” Crusty had flown down from the bar and was now stumbling around the sofa. “Parts is smarts.” She started laughing hysterically at that point and I couldn’t get any more words out of her.

  “Ah, the words of the tiny bring wisdom.” The voice came from nowhere at first, then solidified to a circle of darkness in the ceiling. It was as if the ceiling was there and not there at the same time.

  “You have come so far, my children. I will gather you to our side when the final battle comes.” The voice was low. I perfectly understood the words, but they had an odd lingering accent. I wouldn’t be able to explain how or why, but it felt like the speaker learned the language a few eons ago.

  Crusty looked upwards and started rising toward the circle—she was twisting, as if fighting an invisible hand that was slowly raising her to the ceiling. I grabbed her and held tight but I felt the tug on her tiny body.

  There was nothing but a dark circle and the voice. It took me a second, but I recognized that voice—it was the mage who’d stood outside the shield, controlling the rakasa.

  I’d be damned if anyone was taking my faeries. I leapt to my feet and sent a sealing spell toward the ceiling. A massive flare of cold started on my cheek, and then overcame me. The manticore was modifying my spell somehow—but it was working. Icy blue covered the black spot and the voice vanished. The pull on Crusty stopped and I let her go.