“The legendary companions of Charlemagne?” Josef asked.
“Well, yes,” she replied. “That is how they are known here on Earth.”
I kept quiet. I heard vague rumors attached to that name when Alaric and I walked the realms.
Cassiel spoke for the first time. “The Order of Paladins is more than a thousand five hundred years old. It was created by white mages who banded together to work for order and against chaos. At this time, most of us are halflings, and about a third of us are realm walkers. You asked about pay. Over time, the Order has amassed enough wealth that our members don’t have to worry about our next meal.”
He smiled at Göndul. “When we met, she was wandering through the realms, not really going anywhere, or knowing what she was looking for. One night we got drunk together, and she told me she was looking for a purpose in life. Over the next few months, we got to know each other, and I recruited her.”
Göndul took up the narrative. “Someone—Mondranar is a major suspect, but not the only one—has stolen a number of Dragon eggs and dropped them into multiple realms. The number of thefts has alarmed some of the elders in Draegar. As a result, they’ve sent out several realm walkers of their own to try and track down the eggs.”
“Well, that’s just bloody lovely,” Valinir’s voice came from behind us. I had heard him come in the back door, and I knew Josef had allowed him through the wards. “How nice of you to inform the people who live here of all this.”
I had to agree. “You wouldn’t happen to know how many Dragons are knocking about this realm, would you?” I asked.
“We think just one,” Cassiel said.
I snorted. “I hope just one. You will have to forgive me, but I was recently told that a full circle of Elven battle mages shouldn’t have any trouble capturing or killing one Dralf, and that didn’t turn out very well. Goddess help us if we have to go up against a Dragon, let alone two or three.”
That got me dirty looks from everyone except Josef.
“I also think it would be wise to spread the news about what we’re up against a little more widely,” Josef said.
That did not go well with the others, either. I understood that they didn’t trust Humans—especially Human governments—and Human mages were unpredictable.
“Have any of you ever seen a Dragon?” I asked.
No one volunteered.
“It took a full circle of battle mages to kill the one I saw in Midgard when I was young,” I told them. “I guess that makes Mondranar tougher than a Dragon, doesn’t it?”
Only Josef thought that was funny.
“But if there are more than a single Dragon, then we’re in trouble,” I said. “And if Mondranar has more mages he can throw at us, then we’re in bigger trouble.”
Göndul said, “That’s one of the things we’re afraid of. Mondranar has become a magnet for mages who are outside society.”
I had to laugh. “Is that what you call agents of chaos? Outside society? Sweet Danu, you could give Elves lessons in tact. Prietnar is a dark blood mage, and Mondranar is his agent. I would not want to be inside any society they felt part of.”
Cassiel and Göndul went on to share their revelations concerning the Order of the Paladins with Valinir. I served coffee and slices of a cake I’d baked, then I excused myself, went upstairs, and called Selinger.
When he answered, I asked, “Did you do a full scan of Valinir and the others we recovered from Transvyl?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he replied.
“You woke them up and healed them,” I said, “but did you check to see if they were under any spells?”
He was silent for at least a minute. “Why do you ask?”
“Valinir is carrying a tracking spell that he didn’t have before he went to Transvyl. There is also the stench of blood magic around him. Whether that is simply residue from the potion Mondranar gave him, or something else, I think it’s important to find out why.”
“I agree. Bring him back out to the farmhouse.”
“I’m going to bring the healer as well,” I said.
“Yes, that might be a good idea.”
I went downstairs and announced that Selinger had asked for all of us to go out to the farmhouse. I included Josef and Göndul, because it seemed logical that the more kinds of magic we had at our disposal, the stronger we would be.
At the farmhouse, Selinger and Elminira drew me aside.
“I discretely scanned those who came back from Transvyl,” Elminira said. “Something isn’t right about them. It’s subtle, though.”
I nodded. “I didn’t sense anything strange about Valinir yesterday, but I was tired. This morning, I noticed it as soon as he walked into the room.”
“Well, let’s have you and the Angel see what you can find on a scan,” Selinger said.
“He’s a Nephilim,” Elminira said.
“Whatever,” Selinger said. “He’s a very strong healer.”
In the farmhouse’s sitting room, I explained to Valinir and the other three mages who had been captured in Transvyl what I suspected. All of them stripped to the skin, and we inspected them.
“I can feel the tracking spell,” Göndul said.
“Can you remove it?” Cassiel asked.
“I think so,” she said. “Let me try.”
Aesir and Elves are closely related, and both practice rune magic. Göndul sketched a rune in front of Valinir and spoke a Word. Immediately, the stench of blood magic increased.
Göndul wrinkled her nose. “I think I removed a masking spell as well. I can detect blood magic now.”
“Do you know what it is? What it does?” Selinger asked.
Both Göndul and I shook our heads. “No,” I said, “but whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
I had Valinir lie down on the floor and ran my hands over his whole body. When I finished, I checked the other three. All of them had a small crescent-shaped scar on top of their left buttock.
Cassiel repeated the same scan. “Yes, there is something inside their bodies,” he said.
“Can you remove it?” Selinger asked me.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m not a healer.” I hadn’t inherited my mother’s healing gift, much to her displeasure. She had trained me as an apothecary, something akin to my interest in alchemy. My friend Carolyn, who I had lived with for twenty years, was a witch, an apothecary, and a pharmacist. I could mix almost any concoction, but healing was beyond me.
Cassiel placed his hands on either side of Valinir’s scar and chanted an incantation. I had seen healers do that dozens of time, and when he did it with the bullet wound the day before, the bullet fragments floated out of the man’s body.
This time, a black ball about half an inch in diameter exploded out of Valinir’s muscle, leaving a hole the size of my fist. Valinir screamed and passed out. Black liquid and red blood splattered Cassiel and flowed freely from the wound. The dark magic in the room made me gag.
Selinger spoke a Word, and the black ball froze in midair.
“Elminira,” he said, “get a containment box. I don’t want any of these things getting away or touching anyone.”
Elminira and Cassiel were working on Valinir, attempting to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. I reached into my bag and pulled out a containment box about the size of a cigar box. Walking over to the hovering ball, I opened the box and captured the ball.
“I’m an alchemist,” I said by way of explanation. “I always have a few of these lying around.” After all, such boxes were created by alchemists. I handed Selinger the box and fled. Outside in the yard, I vomited up my breakfast.
The other three mages were taken away. It took Cassiel and Elminira over an hour to stabilize Valinir, who was still unconscious. They put him to bed upstairs with one of Elminira’s assistants watching over him. The rest of us retired to the kitchen, where Selinger poured glasses of agavirna for everyone. I noticed that the healers’ hands shook a little as they raised the glas
ses to their mouths.
“That is one nasty piece of work,” Elminira said.
Cassiel nodded. “I’m not looking forward to removing it from the others. I wonder if there’s a way to shield it first.”
“What happens if you leave it in?” Selinger asked. “We can have a plane here tomorrow to fly them out.”
Elminira emphatically shook her head. “They have to come out today. That thing had already started taking over his body. If you let it spread its tentacles much deeper, we would probably kill them when we remove it.”
“We removed so much corrupted flesh from Valinir,” Cassiel said, “I’m not sure if he’ll ever be whole. I think he may be able to walk again, but that’s not assured. I have no idea what that thing might have done to his magic.”
Josef spoke up. “There are dark magics that can turn a person into a zombie. I would consider that as a possibility. How else is Mondranar going to control a battle mage?”
Cassiel and Elminira worked the rest of the day and into the night on the other three mages. I stayed in the kitchen and did my best to keep them fed. I’m sure my potions were the only reason they stayed conscious enough to finish. By the time they were led away to sleep, both were pale and shaking. The horror in their eyes made me want to cry.
A private jet was dispatched from Ireland to pick up the four mages and take them home to convalesce. Although Cassiel assured me that Valinir was doing fine, I didn’t have a chance to talk with him. He was still unconscious when they loaded them on the plane.
The following day, I sat down with Selinger, Cassiel, Göndul, and Josef to discuss the Dragon’s egg. Earlier that morning, I had spoken with the Paladins about the search.
“Altinir told me to assign one of the mages with me to replace Valinir,” Selinger said. “I’ll speak with some of the men later today.”
“Thank you, but I don’t think that will be necessary,” I responded. “I’ll be joining forces with Göndul and Cassiel. When we find something, I’ll call Altinir and let him know if we need any help.”
“We would feel better if a battle mage accompanied you,” Selinger said, waving his hand as though to dismiss what I’d said.
“With all due deference, my lord, we had to rescue the previous battle mage you assigned to me. Göndul and Cassiel are concerned first and foremost with finding the egg, which is my charge. I don’t need another mage who is too easily distracted by your conflict with the Dralf.”
Selinger stiffened. “I’m not a lord,” he muttered.
“You’re certainly sounding like one,” I replied. “If you were offering me a cutpurse who specialized in glamour and illusion, spoke thirty Earthen languages, and had a few decades of experience sneaking into castles to gather secrets, I might consider it. But I think between Göndul and me, we have enough swords, and I don’t plan on assaulting any more Dralf. I have enough difficulty being inconspicuous, and I’m only a head taller than most Humans. We’ll travel easier with a smaller party.”
It was obvious that Selinger wasn’t happy, but after another hour of arguing, he had a driver take us back to Josef’s shop.
“You know,” Göndul said as our group sat down to dinner that evening, “that description of me sounded almost disreputable.”
I chuckled.
She and I had spent an hour together in the morning before Cassiel woke up. Before joining the Paladins, she had worked as a spy for a noble house in Valhalla. She demonstrated her illusion magic for me, and I was thoroughly impressed.
“If you tell me you never cut a purse, I’ll apologize,” I said.
Cassiel barked out a laugh.
“I’ve only cut purses, picked pockets, and burgled houses for the most idealistic and selfless reasons,” she said, giving us all a wink. “As to any rumors of bank robberies, there isn’t a shred of proof that I was ever involved in such activities. And besides, bankers are all thieves, so a bank robbery technically shouldn’t be illegal.”
I raised my glass in a toast to her. Considering the company I kept between Midgard and Earth, I was the last person to get overly moral and judgmental about a little theft. Alaric had supported me for five years by stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down. I didn’t consider myself a thief, but I hadn’t walked away from him.
Chapter 15
Josef woke me the following morning before sunrise. “Kellana, I’ve just had word from Paris. One of my contacts there tells me there’s an egg for sale.”
I bolted upright. “You’re joking.”
“No, I put out some feelers, letting it be known that I have a client willing to pay for a Dragon’s egg. This man in Paris is reliable, and he says there is an egg for sale.”
“Out of curiosity, how much do they want for it?”
“A quarter of a million euros.” He shrugged. “Not such an outrageous price. I think many collectors would pay that much for such a unique object.”
I got up and grabbed my clothes and a towel. “I’m beginning to wonder if a pretty bauble is all people are interested in. There’s entirely too much death attached to that egg.”
Josef frowned. “You think people want to hatch it? Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Hubris. Stupidity. Humans have limited imaginations. Why would anyone want to bind a demon? If I was going to bind something—” I bit my tongue. I had almost blurted out that I would bind a Nephilim. I fled for the bathroom, where I didn’t use any hot water to take my shower.
Over breakfast, Josef told us everything he knew about his contact in Paris.
“I met Marcel’s father after the war,” Josef said. “Like Kellana, he was an alchemist and a trader in magical goods. I’ve known Marcel since he was a baby. He’s taken his father’s business and built on it. He sells alchemical products throughout Europe, as well as other magical artifacts.”
“Has he seen the egg?” Cassiel asked.
Josef shook his head. “He sent me a picture of it, which is what he was shown. I have it on my computer.” He shrugged. “Who knows if the picture is doctored? I think you would have to have some money before the seller would allow you to see it. Too many mages are, shall we say, unreliable.”
“You mean dishonest,” Göndul commented.
“Too little concerned with conventional ethics,” Josef said.
I called Altinir. After another discussion concerning the merits of having a battle mage tagging along with me, he agreed to deposit two hundred fifty thousand Euros in a Swiss account. If I managed to acquire the egg, I would transfer the money to the seller’s account. We assumed the seller would have an account. Hell, even I had a bank account.
“How do you plan to get to Paris?” Göndul asked. “Cass doesn’t like to fly.”
“Really?” I felt a smile spread across my face.
“He doesn’t trust airplanes and if you get him on one, he’s a pain in the ass the whole time.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “We can take the train.”
Göndul looked like she’d tasted something bad. “I guess we’ll have to. Trains are so damned boring. The only things to do are sleep or read.”
I didn’t tell her that sounded absolutely wonderful. I had two novels I’d picked up in London, and I hadn’t had a chance to open either of them.
Possibly the best thing about Humans was also their worst—their ability to lie. They made up some wonderful stories, wrote them down, and sold them for people to read. I found myself in awe of their imaginations every time I picked up a novel. In Human languages, they labeled such stories as fiction, a word that had no analogs in Elvish. The best translation to Elvish would be, ‘I wrote down a lie. Would you like to read it?’ Elves also didn’t have insane asylums, but they would invent them for someone who said that. When I landed in Earth, Human fiction was a totally foreign concept, but I had fallen in love with it.
I sometimes wondered if the Humans in Midgard produced fiction for themselves, and just didn’t tell the Elves about it.
&
nbsp; I didn’t want to hang around in Prague in case Mondranar decided to come looking for us. Josef provided me with a letter of introduction, and we took the train that evening, booking three adjoining private compartments. When I awoke in the morning, we were pulling into the station in Mannheim.
After we changed trains, I pulled out my novels and took a look at them. One was a romance, and the other a science fiction book. I paged through the romance a little, then set it aside. It was pretty steamy, and those kinds of ideas were the last thing I needed with Cassiel being so close.
A glance out the window showed low clouds and a bleak late-autumn landscape. It looked as though it might rain, but if it got much colder, it might even snow. I took a sip of hot tea, burrowed down in my seat, and opened the science fiction book.
I loved Paris for the food, the architecture, and the museums, but not so much for anything else. The people tended to be either arrogant or clueless. At least we weren’t there in summer, when there were more tourists in Paris than Parisians.
Josef’s friend Marcel had a shop in Montmartre, not too far from the magical market in Pigalle. We checked into a small boutique hotel in Marais that I had used before. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and private. I called Marcel and set up an appointment for the following morning.
That taken care of, I led my companions to one of my favorite restaurants, a place that treated fresh fish with the same reverence my mother did. The sauces were French instead of Elvish, but one takes what one can get in a foreign land. The only way to get a meal on Earth as good as my mother’s cooking required doing it myself.
Paris had always been a little dangerous—a favorite place for Vampires and Werewolves over the centuries. I discovered that parts of the city had become paranormal enclaves in the years since the Beltane disaster. On our way to the restaurant, I noticed that the deeper we walked into the neighborhood, the more it smelled like dog. That made sense because far more than half the people on the street were Werewolves.
That didn’t worry me too much, as I generally preferred the company of Werewolves over Vampires. They smelled kind of funny, but at least they didn’t try to bite me and drink my blood.
Dragon's Egg (Dark Streets Book 2) Page 12
