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

  The two that were grabbed had been right in front of the captain, the rest having made it to the tree line. As his duty, he’d stayed as rear guard.

  The captain had cut off a tentacle and was fighting to get to another.

  Alric moved forward. “I have to help him. I need you to run back to the road, and keep running.”

  “Or it might kill both of you. We need to run.” Even as I said it, I knew he was right. I felt the spell that was charging Glorinal’s mutation and there was no way even a fighter as good as the captain was going to be able to defeat it. “Fine, you go kill it. But I’m staying here, I’m not running.” I’d finally admitted I’d been falling in love with this stubborn, pointy-eared pain-in-the-ass, and I wasn’t going to let some weird land kraken get him. I would stay back for now, but if things got worse, I was going in to save him. Whether he liked it or not.

  Alric looked ready to argue, then shook his head, grabbed me and kissed me in what I hoped looked as dramatic of a kiss as it felt, and ran out to help the captain.

  I searched my magic and asked myself if I was up to another flying satyr spell. This time I wasn’t sending that bastard down.

  Alric and the captain were a good team, working so well together that I began to have my suspicions about their relationship before Alric had become wanted elf number one.

  They’d cut off tentacles, and new ones would appear, no longer looking like fingers, arms, or legs, but weird and root-like. A wave of dark magic coming from Glorinal almost knocked me to my ass.

  “Stay back!” The captain was bleeding in a few places where a tentacle tip had sliced him, but both he and Alric were still standing and fighting. “If we fall, you must warn the enclave and stop this thing.”

  I was still feeling a bit off from the amount of magic I’d flung at Glorinal before, but then again, adrenaline could do wonderful things. That recent wave of magic had increased Glorinal’s size, and he no longer even remotely looked like what he had been. He was pulling in magic from somewhere and burning through immense amounts of it to continue his mutation.

  I had to do something and my best spell was the flying one. While I really wanted that monster away from here, I also wanted him dead and not rampaging through some innocent village. Alric had warned me many times about improvising spells on the spot, but that didn’t really count if I was improvising a modification of a spell I already knew, right?

  The Glorinal-kraken sent another wave of magic and I made up my mind. I focused on the satyr-flying spell, the one I used to send him into the ground, but added another spell I almost knew—imploding.

  I waited until both the captain and Alric had pulled back a bit, both looking worse for wear, and I sent my spell.

  The spell had seemed logical in my mind as I prepared it—part push or fly spell with a bit of implode to keep the push internal to Glorinal. Enough power behind it to stop him, kill him, and hopefully keep everything inside the clearing.

  Apparently, I still had some serious anger issues with Glorinal and everything he’d done in the last few months.

  The creature that had been Glorinal arched as the spell struck, his tentacles flailing in the air and knocking tree limbs all about the clearing. Then his entire body started expanding. I stepped back, afraid he was retaliating, when it became clear the expanding wasn’t of his doing. I’d crossed something up when I’d cast my modified spell.

  The thing still had a mouth and some sort of brain. It lifted its head toward the sky and screamed, “Master! Dragon!”

  “Get out of there!” I yelled to Alric and the captain a moment before the Glorinal-kraken exploded.

  The explosion took out two of the trees closest to him, shredding them as if they were paper, and tossed a pair of knights into the air. It also coated everything in the clearing with the gooey remains of Glorinal.

  I don’t care how much magic that bastard had, he wasn’t coming back from this.

  The remaining knights ran forward, picked up the two who had gone airborne—luckily they were shaken but able to stand—and ran for their captain. Both he and Alric had been thrown into the air and slammed to the ground by the force of the explosion, but both were moving a bit so hopefully they were okay.

  I really didn’t want to go into that mess. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but there was a lot of …goo. I had no idea what the beast had really been made of, but the slime was a sickly yellow color with purple streaks running through it.

  But Alric was in that mess, so I waded forward.

  “Stand back! We’re not sure what did this.” Alric held up a gore-soaked hand as he rolled to his feet.

  I kept going. I really didn’t want to tell him I’d done this in front of all of the knights. “It’s okay, um, it’s over now.”

  Moreover, I was still standing. And walking and talking. I’d cast a second major spell within an hour and I was okay. Once we were alone and I could admit this had been me, I’d make sure to point that out to Alric. No magic headache, no throwing up, no backlash. I was working my way around a large slime pile when the entire world went black.

  ***

  Waking up surrounded by incredibly good-looking male members of the elven race should be a dream for anyone who likes hot, elven men. And it might have been if they weren’t still covered with goo and were watching me with concern—Alric—all the way to distrust and possibly loathing—the rest of them.

  “Did you get struck?” Both Alrics asked me as they rubbed my hand.

  I blinked a few times and they pulled back into one person. “I don’t think so.” I did a quick body check for appearances. I knew what dropped me: spell backlash from what I’d just done. Again, I was so not telling the knights that. I’d doubt any of them allowed themselves to get this filthy during a battle. That I caused it was not going to make them dislike me any less.

  “I think it’s from when I pushed him into the ground—actually maybe I was still magically tied to whatever that thing was and his destruction dropped me.” I was proud of that excuse. It sounded plausible. The captain even nodded slowly and pulled back. His men followed. Alric narrowed his eyes and scowled.

  Okay, so it was plausible to people who didn’t use magic much and didn’t know me.

  I was saved from addressing his scowling concern by a yell.

  “Captain, we found something.” Three knights had gone over by the remains of the rock pile. Whatever Glorinal had become in those last few minutes, he’d been strong. Where there had been a thirty-foot-high pile of massive boulders was now a scattered collection of chunks the size of a child’s ball. Except for the one full-sized boulder the knights were yelling about.

  Alric helped me to my feet and we walked to where they were studying something. A tree stood between us and the boulder in question. A big tree the size of a full-grown gapen. It had survived the battle almost intact, except for the hole at eye level right through it. A round hole, the size of a head.

  I pulled my hand out of Alric’s. Had I blown off Glorinal’s head and it went through a tree? I was only able to walk through the clearing of gore and goo by making myself not think of what it was. I wasn’t going to be able to ignore a disembodied head.

  Not to mention, with Glorinal’s track record, even having only his head intact might allow him to come back.

  Alric looked around the tree at what the captain and all of the knights were looking at, and ran forward.

  I doubted he would do that for a head, not to mention I didn’t want to be left out, so I tottered after him. I wasn’t up to running after or away from anything right now.

  “Leave it be. It’s one of the relics.” Alric pushed the knights out of the way. I’d been looking at the captain’s face, and where I would have expected anger or annoyance, a thoughtful look appeared. That made two times for that. I was going to have to seriously reconsider who the captain was.

  “Move back, he’s the expert.” He nodded to me. “And the lady.” He actually held out his arm and helped
me move forward. I could have fallen over from shock at that point.

  The knights pulled back, but all I saw was Alric’s broad, slime-covered back.

  “I am the resident digger in the group, you know.” Yes, Alric knew more about the relics in question than I did. And the way he said relic made me think it wasn’t any relic—it was one of the relics that might have destroyed the Ancients.

  He stayed fiddling with something up against the rock for a moment more, and then stepped back.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but the back end of the missing obsidian chimera relic embedded in the boulder was not it. I also hadn’t expected Glorinal to mutate further, or for me to explode him, so it was just a day for that.

  “Is it?” I moved forward slowly, after all, maybe it wasn’t the relic.

  “Yes.” Alric’s voice was distracted. The relic was stuck a good four inches into the boulder. That the boulder hadn’t even cracked spoke a lot to the force that had sent it there. And to how hard that damn chimera was.

  “Then how did it get there? Glorinal wasn’t carrying it. He pretty much had no clothes on.” Aside from a ratty loincloth, anyway.

  Alric touched the relic carefully with the tip of one finger, then ripped off a piece of his shirt and put it between his hand and the black chimera. “We don’t want to touch it. I think it was inside him.”

  “Okay, why? And how? And we’re back to why again.” I was disgusted and horribly intrigued all in one little package. Curiosity always seemed to get the advantage over common sense for me. Alric was holding the rag over the chimera, but still trying to figure out how to remove it. I couldn’t help it—I touched the rag-covered artifact.

  And landed flat on my ass about two feet back. Luckily I’d missed hitting any of the knights, but they could have just dodged really quickly.

  “I said don’t touch it.” Alric went to help me up but one of the knights was there first. Apparently, the captain treating me like a person instead of a prisoner was a sign for all of them to do so.

  I felt a rush of power as I rose to my feet. That it started on the hand that I’d laid on the chimera wasn’t lost on me. The lingering effects of my serious magic mis-use vanished and I now felt like I could run around the forest a few dozen times. That should have made me happy. Except my mind made a nasty connection.

  I flexed my fingers to shake off the remaining power buzz as I walked toward Alric and the relic. “I have a feeling I know why Glorinal had that inside him.”

  “To keep it safe from the rakasa?” one of the knights said. I think that was the first time one of them spoke to me.

  Alric was watching me carefully, and then focused on my fingers. “Your hand is glowing.”

  The hand I’d touched the chimera with had a faint glow, but it faded as I watched. Along with my burst of magical energy. “I think that relic is a magic amplifier. We know the gargoyle dealt with time and dimensions, I think this one increases magic.” I looked up to Alric. “That’s how he survived the mine collapse.”

  Alric looked ready to deny it, and then gave a short nod instead. He’d already known. Bastard. And known it could affect people as well as other relics. When we were alone, I really needed to ask him why he kept things from me and how much he really knew about the relics.

  “So why didn’t it do that the first time you grabbed it?” I’d never touched the chimera before. I’d been more than a little freaked out when a bunch of obsidian shards melded into the little artifact—in the middle of a pile of my laundry no less. However, Alric had. And he’d been stripped of his magic prior to that and was just getting it back. Having his full magical strength back during the fight with Glorinal and Jovan would have helped him a lot. But he’d clearly still been weak. Handling the chimera then, hadn’t helped him.

  Alric looked up from where he was still studying the relic. “I’ve no idea. The codex is extremely vague. And even more so with the other three or four relics. But I’d guess Glorinal either did something to trigger it during the cave in, or it happened when he put it inside himself.” He raised a hand as both the captain and I leaned forward to ask another question. “No, I don’t know how he did that either.”

  “We are at an impasse. I can’t leave this relic behind. My people must have it. But at the same time I don’t want anyone to touch it.” The captain had moved closer to the boulder and the imbedded chimera, but unlike me, he did not make a move to touch it.

  “I think I can get it out. It was embedded through magic and it’s actually part of the boulder right now. But I need something heavier than my shirt.” Alric went back to looking at the relic but carefully wasn’t touching it.

  “Bring me one of the tents.” The captain held out his hand. Immediately a tent was handed over.

  I wanted to see what he was going to do. Nevertheless, his pointed look was mostly pointed at me, so I stepped back with the knights.

  Alric covered the chimera and part of the surrounding boulder around it with the tent. He’d folded it over twice, so the fabric was thickest over the relic. He took a deep breath and placed both hands on the fabric-covered chimera.

  At first it looked like nothing was going to happen. The only sound in the clearing was me shifting as I stood. Those damn knights looked like they could stand perfectly still for days.

  Then an inhalation sound followed by an expulsion filled the area. Alric was flung back to my feet.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alric was curled around something and had smoke drifting off his still slime-covered clothes.

  “He got it.”

  I looked up at the captain’s announcement and saw the boulder was completely unmarked and free of any little black relics. Not even so much as a scratch indicated where the chimera had been embedded.

  Alric stiffly unrolled out of his fetal position. He cradled the tent-covered blob that I had to assume was the chimera.

  “I don’t know why, but this thing is a hell of a lot heavier than it was before.” Alric got to his knees and tightly bundled the relic up. Judging by the looks around me, more than a few of the knights had wanted to get a glimpse at it.

  It had looked the same size as before, so something internal must have increased its weight. Considering where that thing had been living for the last few months, I really hoped there was nothing of Glorinal in there along for the ride.

  One of the knights, a junior one judging by the way he took care of most of the menial tasks, stepped forward. “I can put it with the rest of the packs.”

  Alric got to his feet but kept the bundle close to his chest. “I think it might be best if I keep this.” He’d looked to the captain, but he didn’t appear to be challenging him. “I’ve no idea what it could do to anyone if exposed.”

  The captain seemed to read more in Alric’s words than I was hearing, even with Alric’s almost respectful tone and stance. “Agreed. But you will hand it over to the alchemists when we arrive in Eirlian.”

  Eirlian? That was the name of their home? That was the first time any of them, including Alric, had mentioned it by name, instead of referring to it as the enclave or home. Not for the first time, I wished Covey were here. She would rip the name apart to find enough information about the elves living there, and what happened to them after the Breaking, to fill a journal.

  When the faeries had shown up, I had a brief thought that maybe the rest of my friends were around as well. But the faeries could travel far further and faster than the others. Although I didn’t see them kidnapping syclarions on their own. Therefore, they were working with someone, somewhere.

  I glanced around the clearing just in case. I wasn’t a tracker anywhere near Alric’s level, but hopefully if my friends were around I could see them. Nothing looked out of place, but the surviving trees around us were fairly dense.

  “Agreed.” Alric’s voice brought me out of my mental wandering. “I will submit the object once we’re home.” He fashioned a rope out of one end of the tent and looped
it over his shoulder. He was still holding the object, but this way he wouldn’t drop it if attacked.

  That seemed to satisfy the captain, and he motioned for the packs to be picked up and led the way back to the trail.

  I walked alongside Alric, on the side of the chimera. I couldn’t help it, I wanted to see what would happen if I touched it again. The tent fabric seemed to be blocking it, but what if I could still channel it?

  “Think about where it’s been and what it did to him.” Alric didn’t even turn to me but must have felt my fussing about.

  “Well, but he was warped anyway.” I kept my voice down. “I just wanted to see it.”

  Alric adjusted the pack and looked down at me. “I think we can assume this thing is what started his mutation. The rakasa built on it and took advantage. No one should touch this until the alchemists have it under control.”

  I sighed in surrender and went back to looking for my flying friends in the trees.

  Alric dropped his head next to mine. “They aren’t there. I’ve been looking too.”

  The knights marched silently ahead of us, and I was pretty sure those sharp elven ears heard everything. “So do we know what the faeries were doing and why?” At first I’d thought the girls had shown up to rescue us, but considering that they left us with the rakasa and Glorinal, I doubted that assessment.

  Alric studied the back of the knight he was walking behind, and then finally looked back to me. He probably went through the same thought process I had. Even though they were taking him, and me, in as prisoners, technically the elves weren’t the bad guys.

  “I was going to ask you. As to how, I’d say something has changed again with them.”

  Okay, apparently some cryptic comments were still going to be made. The knights didn’t need to know everything. I nodded in agreement to the tactic.

  “As for the why, that is a damn good question. It helped us for certain, but not as much as it would have had they taken the rakasa out that way,” Alric said.