The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Read online

  I gasped at his face. He had a huge bruise covering his right cheek and a smaller one on his chin. “I’m fine. You’re not though.”

  He laughed. “I’m fine.”

  As he spoke, he started us walking past the gallows and down another side alley. If possible, this one was even more ill-used than the one I’d found myself in.

  Alric pushed back his hood as he studied the area, then knocked on a ragged wooden door three times.

  A little orange head popped out of a knothole above the door, peered down at us, and then vanished. A series of clinks and a rustle of chains were heard and the door swung open.

  It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. With the gray lumbering clouds outside it was by no means bright, but the entrance of this building was extremely dark.

  I found myself engulfed in a hug that smelled suspiciously like Covey, then led through a cloth wall. The entrance was dark, and kept so by a heavy curtain. But the inside was well lit. We were in an old stable, one that showed signs of my friends’ recent habitation, but probably hadn’t been used for a hundred years prior.

  Not only were Padraig, Covey, Flarinen, Kelm, and Lorcan waiting there, but so were our wagons and our horses.

  “Okay, so how did we get here, why wasn’t I with you, why was I unconscious for the last few days, and how in the heck did our wagons get here?”

  “You were unconscious? Where? How?” Covey had been holding onto me and she now spun me around looking for injuries. Leaf and Crusty took advantage of the manhandling and flew out of my pocket to join the rest of the pack in the rafters. I was pleased to see Bunky and the gargoyle up there as well.

  “Not far from here, I have no idea how. But a male faery brought me there.”

  Lorcan had been coming around one of the wagons, but his step picked up. “I am quite glad to see you, my dear.” He gave me a tight hug. “But male faeries?”

  “They is stupid. Unfinished,” Garbage yelled down from the faeries’ perch.

  “I didn’t think there was such a thing.” Alric helped me remove my cloak, led me to a side table with benches and put a warm cup of tea in my hands. I hadn’t realized how chilled I’d gotten outside.

  “Dumb.”

  “Not dumb, was yummy!”

  “Still undone.”

  “But helped.”

  All of the faeries decided they had to weigh in on the situation. Beyond their first comments, though, all I could hear was a bunch of high-pitched screeching. Bunky and the gargoyle lifted off their perch and came down near us. It was hard to tell, but Bunky looked annoyed.

  “Girls!” They were in danger of bringing down the none-too-solid-looking roof with their noise.

  Covey let loose a loud and piercing whistle. That shut them up. I wanted to ask one of them to explain the entire male faery situation, but they were too worked up. Leaf had been the most favorable about him, so once they calmed back down again, I’d separate her from the pack and see what I could learn.

  “Anyway, when I woke up the girls were with me, there was an unconscious male person lying next to me.”

  “Not person!” Garbage yelled, but I refused to look up.

  “The girls said he brought me in, but not sure from where. Oh, and he glowed. Then he stopped glowing and vanished.”

  “Not finished. Told you.”

  I never thought I’d be thinking this, but I really wanted Garbage to go get drunk somewhere. Whatever the guy was, she obviously wasn’t a fan. But she was really getting annoying.

  “Okay!” There was a flurry of giggling and screaming and all of the faeries flew off to a small loft at the far end of the room. I heard bottles clinking as they were dragged out of the impossibly tiny black bags the faeries all carried.

  “I didn’t aim that thought at you!” Although it had seemed like a good idea at the time, I was already regretting it. Not to mention the faeries shouldn’t be able to pick my thoughts out of my head. Supposedly, I should have to focus on them.

  “Have you eaten?” Covey’s voice broke into my annoyance with the faeries. This new caring Covey was taking some getting used to.

  I shot one more look at the loft with the giggling. “I don’t think so. But I also don’t feel like I was lying on a dirt floor for four days. So who knows what went on?”

  Padraig had now also come up to hug me. Flarinen and Kelm both nodded, but didn’t approach. Flarinen also had a few bruises on his face. Considering all of us had been in some serious fighting with whatever those syclarions were, bruises weren’t too surprising. Except that only Alric and Flarinen had them, and elves are freakishly fast healers. I’d have to ask someone about their fight later.

  “So you have no recollection at all of bringing us here?” Lorcan asked as he joined me at the table.

  “The faeries said that too, that I brought us here. I have no idea how that could have happened. The dragon bane worked, eventually, and after you were all taken out by the syclarions, I defeated them. But as I was trying to bring you all to the wagons, the world faded. The next thing I knew, I was waking up beside a glowing faery boy and the girls.”

  “Still stupid!”

  “Go back to drinking, Garbage.” I yelled back. If they drank enough they’d pass out and give us a bit of rest.

  “This is fascinating,” Lorcan edged closer to me with a small book and pen in hand. “Did he have wings? Was he the same size as the girls? What color?”

  “No wings, about as tall as Alric, and he was sort of tree colored, darker skin, but his hair was lighter brown.”

  “There is no precedent for male faeries. Now, granted, we discounted and distorted the tales we had of the faeries over the years. Yet I do recall some scrolls speculating on them before the Fall. Not a lot was known, as the faeries became scarce after the destruction of the Ancients, and they were far more common here than in the elves’ ancient homeland before we migrated.” Lorcan spoke out loud, but low enough that he appeared to be muttering to himself.

  Covey perked up at that. The new softer, gentler Covey was immediately replaced by the hungry academic. “I wondered why the elves didn’t overlap the Ancients more. I’d love to hear anything you know.” Okay, that was a change. The old Covey would have hounded him until all of his useful information was taken and only an exhausted husk remained.

  “I’m sure we’ll have time on our trip. Once we figure out where we are in relation to where we need to be. I’m not sure how far we are from the Spheres.” Lorcan scowled at some papers at the far end of the table. “Nor from where we started.”

  I was going to ask but the wonderful smell of stew hit me at that moment. I might not have believed I was out for four days, but my body felt it.

  I shoveled in a few huge mouthfuls then looked up to notice everyone was watching me.

  “What?” I said around my most recent mouthful.

  “You’re eating like someone who’s been unconscious for a few days, that’s all.” Alric swung a leg over the bench and sat down next to me. “I was worried.” His smile faded and he took my face in his hands. He would have kissed me if my mouth hadn’t been full of stew. Still, it was good to see genuine concern in those amazing green eyes.

  We stared at each other for a few moments until Covey gave a cough. “Hate to break this up, but Lorcan does have a point. We’ve no idea where we are.”

  That wasn’t good. These were some seriously smart people. Well, and Flarinen. I wasn’t sure about Kelm yet. The rest were the smartest people I knew.

  And after four days they had no idea where we were? Where I supposedly dropped us. Great. I ate some more stew.

  “Now, to be fair, we haven’t been out much. Mostly only to look for you, but there was some pretty horrific weather when we first got here and going out was problematic.” Lorcan was looking anywhere but at any of us. Not a good sign. If he’d been doing this avoidance the entire time I was gone, I was surprised that Padraig hadn’t called him on it.

  A closer look at his f
ace told me that Padraig was avoiding the situation as well. I slurped the last of the stew. Maybe they were right; either this was the best stew I’d ever had, or I hadn’t eaten in a few days. I pushed the empty bowl away and turned to Lorcan. “I’m not sure if you just don’t want me to know, since supposedly the opinion seems to be that somehow I brought us here, or you two don’t want any of us to know. But I can tell you have some pretty solid ideas.”

  I must have developed better people reading skills over the last month, both Covey and Alric looked surprised. First at my observation, then when they watched Padraig and Lorcan. Flarinen had been skulking around the edges, but his scowl showed he’d been listening.

  “You two know where we are?” Alric got up from next to me. He respected Lorcan, and Padraig was one of his oldest friends, but that low voice usually meant he was seriously annoyed.

  Lorcan held up his hand, both as a calming gesture and to keep Padraig from the response he was about to make. “Now, I wasn’t certain until we got Taryn and the faeries back. I had some clues, based on the odd weather, and the sullenness of the populace. It’s been mere rumors you know, no one has ever actually been able to confirm or deny the existence of such a place.” He gave a shrug and an awkward laugh. “No one has ever made it back, you see.”

  Alric tipped his head back. “You mean to say you believe we are in the actual Null? Not just a town named Null? The neutral ground of good and evil where everyone lives in limbo, never dying, never moving on? It doesn’t exist.”

  Padraig stepped forward. “That is the myth of the place, but I believe we can safely confirm that it is not some deathless limbo.”

  “I saw two men hung from those gallows and they looked pretty dead to me.” I wasn’t going to mention that at first I thought it was Alric and Padraig. It still made my stomach clench.

  “And we saw a fight three days ago where a woman warrior was run through. They buried her,” Covey said. She looked far more interested in the myths than the reality.

  “I’m not saying the Null of myth exists,” Lorcan said. “But I do think this might be where the travelers who fail to make it to the Spheres end up. There is some very strong magic going on.”

  “And they stay here? My brief walk through didn’t indicate a place we’d want to stay at. How and why would I have brought us here?”

  “There could be more to it,” Flarinen said. “I noticed that when we first woke up here, I was ready to fight.” He gave a shrug and motioned to the bruises on his face. A move Alric echoed. “But in the past few days I’ve felt my drive weaken. Kelm and I are doing our daily routines, but it is getting harder.”

  “I should have noticed that,” Lorcan said. “I put it down to my unique body situation.”

  “So we fell into some sort of trap, designed to keep travelers from finding the Spheres. I won the fight but we got dumped here. And there’s a spell around this place to keep people complacent?” I looked around at the supplies. We’d had plenty because of our trip, but if people never left? “And how is everyone out there not starving to death?’

  “More spells,” Padraig said. There was more admiration on his face than I wanted to see. “The shops have the necessities to survive, yet I’ve never seen people bringing in supplies. Whoever created this place was a power far beyond any magic user today. They made sure no one would leave.”

  Covey paced and fingers flexed and relaxed. She might not have noticed the lethargy creeping in, but she was pissed about it now. “I’m not a magic user, but I know enough that we can find a way to break the spell. We need to force ourselves to stay active like Flarinen and Kelm have been. The weather was bad, but not dangerous, yet all of us stayed in here unless we were specifically out looking for Taryn or the faeries.”

  “All excellent points. But I think we’re missing another one,” Padraig said. The prior admiration for this long-lost spell caster faded. “If we fell into this trap, we have to assume our prey did as well.”

  10

  I had been starting to push away from the table, but slid back down to the bench at Padraig’s words. Nivinal and Reginald, the two mages we were trying to catch. Realizing they might be here didn’t make me feel as good as possibly catching them should have. In fact, the stew didn’t seem quite as happy in my stomach as it had been.

  “We should have thought of that days ago. We must find them and destroy them, immediately.” Flarinen seemed livelier than he had been a moment ago. If we could keep him mad enough he might be able to get us out of here.

  I knew I didn’t feel like facing the mages down and judging by the looks on the faces around me, no one else did either. Even Flarinen’s excitement slowly ebbed from his face.

  “This place is even doing that to us,” I said. “I don’t want to find them. I want to stay here and shuffle along and do nothing. Considering the entire reason we’re out here was to get those relics back from those two, not wanting to do that is a problem.” I turned to Lorcan. “We have to break this spell or we’ll stay here forever.”

  I hadn’t seen or heard much from the faeries since I banished them to get drunk. “Girls? Can any of you fly?”

  Half a dozen brightly colored heads popped over the loft railing to look down at us. About half had their flower petal hats on.

  “Is good. Where go?” Garbage raised herself up on her arms, flapped her wings a few times, and tumbled head over ass out of the loft. Good thing she fell near Alric and he had fast reflexes.

  She waved at him then climbed over his thumb. “Nope. Was wrong. Boom.”

  There went the idea of using them to see if they were affected by whatever this spell was. “What about Bunky and the gargoyle? Were they with you the last four days?” They’d both flown over to the loft when the girls started their drinking party.

  Padraig looked up toward the loft, but aside from the few faeries near the edge, passed out it looked like, there was nothing to be seen.

  “They were, but we told them to stay in here after the first day,” Covey said as she peered up as well. “There was some unsavory interest in them.”

  “Same with the girls when I was trying to find you. That’s why I sent them to you all.”

  Alric nodded. “Which would have been more helpful if they had told us where you were when they got here. All they would say was you brought them here.”

  “How’d you know to come looking for me?”

  “I’ve learned to fill in the gaps when they speak.”

  I shook my head, but nothing new rattled out. “It might be the spell speaking, but I have no other ideas.”

  Garbage was conscious, albeit barely, and rolled around in Alric’s hand. “Sing song place, she brought us to the sing song place. Here we stay, here we wait.” She briefly opened her eyes and stared intently at Alric. “You need wait back there. No leave. Stay, wait.”

  Crap. Every once in a while, one of the faeries spouted something that vaguely sounded like prophecy. Not that I really believed in those things, but there was too much weirdness to ignore them completely. And that sounded like a prophecy.

  Alric looked down at her and nudged her with his finger. “Hey, sweetie, can you explain what you said?” His voice was soft and melodic, like one would use with a skittish horse.

  Garbage pushed herself up but didn’t stand. Even from where I stood I could tell she was looking serious—or rather she had on what she believed was her serious face. Then she opened her mouth and let loose a belch that would have made a pub full of miner dwarves proud.

  “Dunno. What say?” Then she blinked a few times and collapsed back into the palm of his hand.

  “She passed out, didn’t she?” They hadn’t had enough time to get that drunk. At least I wouldn’t have thought they did. Of course, since they carried their ale with them in their secret magic bags, they could have been drinking the entire time they were watching me and the male faery.

  Alric had time to nod. Then the wooden door behind us exploded.

 
; Pulling back the curtain revealed it hadn’t actually exploded and was standing. But something hard had slammed into it.

  Alric and Flarinen both stepped forward and paused. I almost fell over when Flarinen nodded and waved Alric forward. I really needed to find out what had happened between the two of them while I was out cold.

  Alric removed the chains they had locking the doors. He kept his right hand near his dagger as he peered outside.

  Night had fallen far quicker than I would have thought, although with those heavy clouds from when I’d been out there before, judging the time of day would be iffy at best. There was something tacked to the door. Alric took a step further, looked up and down the alley, then grabbed the note off the door and slammed it shut. He might have added more chains and locks to the prior collection but I wasn’t sure.

  “Someone knows who we are, or at least what we’re after,” he said as he stepped back into the room. “But they don’t know we have you back.” He handed me the badly scribbled note. It demanded the gargoyle, the chimera, the dragon, and the manticore or they would kill the girl. The drawing was really badly done but looked enough like me that it was obvious who they were talking about.

  “I don’t look that bad, do I?” I handed the note to Covey then patted down my hair.

  Covey’s laughter died when she read the note. “They are clearly clueless when it comes to where Taryn is, so we can assume they simply knew she was missing based on our inquiries. The fact that they are aware of the relics indicates it’s either our mages or someone who has been talking to them.” She scowled at the note then looked to Lorcan. “Do you feel any different?”

  He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he did so. “Not at all. I really would have thought that being near my brother might cause a reaction. Since I was afraid it would be something bad, I have to admit I’m grateful to feel nothing.”

  “Could he have taken another body?” I asked. I had no idea how Lorcan’s body got snatched in the first place, but it did seem odd that after hundreds of years as a ghostly spirit, Reginald suddenly found a way to steal his brother’s body.