I kept my laugh to myself. Nasif wouldn’t have liked it, and explaining would have taken too long. But having travelled with Covey, Padraig, and even Lorcan for a few days had brought me a good understanding of the aggressively academic.
“Would anyone else in the palace have seen them go? Or know what they’d been doing, aside from packing, before they were taken?” Alric ran his hand through his hair. “Assuming they were taken and didn’t panic and leave. Yes, these pages wouldn’t have been left behind by any rational sort. At least not one who was planning on coming back.”
Nasif nodded. “Good point. I was basing my hypothesis on the assumption they would want to come back. But maybe they knew they couldn’t and just had to flee.”
“How long ago did they come here?” I asked.
“A little bit over three years ago,” Siabiane said, but she too was now trying to find answers in the left-behind pages.
“When did the king die?” I kept my voice low.
Siabiane paused and looked up. She frowned. “About two months after that.”
“No, that was an accident, nothing more.” Nasif’s automatic response died even as he said it. “If it wasn’t an accident, do you think Ghilonious could have been behind it?”
“If they came back to our time for a reason, it would need to be a big one wouldn’t it? Dueble asked. “And look at this list.” He waved the paper around so much that no one could have looked at it. “The ambassador’s syclarions were mating with all of the local syclarion women. He had a list of who was supposed to go with whom. I recognize all of these names…they are all with child, or have recently given birth.”
Okay, that added an ewww factor to whatever else they had been up to. Along with possibly causing the death of the elven monarch, they were trying to breed themselves into the local time?
“But why? What would that do?”
“Change the genetic make-up of the syclarions in our time, at least the local hatches,” Dueble said. “Our country is far from here, so any changes here wouldn’t affect them.”
Damn it, this could be the syclarions helping the Dark as well as trying to increase their breed to survive the upcoming battles. Except that kids and babies being genetically stronger wouldn’t help in a fight.
Which meant they had no idea exactly when the attack from the Dark was going to happen. This entire time thing was really messing with my mind.
Siabiane shook her head at me. I hadn’t spoken out loud, but my face gave me away. “Leave the what and the why our syclarion friends were back here to us. We need to get you both out of here. I fear the changes impacted on this timeline by the syclarions might have already caused problems in this time period.”
Nasif had gone back to the sheets, but he was looking for something specific. “Give me some time, I can figure this out.” He looked to Dueble. “That is if you don’t mind spending the afternoon here helping me?”
Dueble looked up with a happy nod. His people might be simple farmers, but he wasn’t.
“What should we do?” Alric asked.
“First, can you re-glamour me? If those syclarions were disturbed by me even when I was glamoured, I don’t want to take a chance on being seen as a human.”
Siabiane smiled and touched my face. “I do think you are quite lovely without the elf disguise, but I agree that we can’t have people noticing you.”
I was about to say thank you when three blurs of color came tearing into the room. Through the wall. They’d re-discovered that trick of theirs a few weeks ago, but it seemed to only work sometimes. Apparently, this was one of the times.
“Bad, bad, bad!” Garbage got the words out first but the other two were saying them as well. All three had their war feathers on and were waving their war blades.
“What? What’s happened?”
I heard a thunk behind me and looked back to see Nasif standing over Dueble. “I believe he passed out at their unique arrival.” Nasif’s voice was calm, and he didn’t look ready to collapse at all. He did look concerned.
Not that I blamed him when it came to the faeries—I felt he was concerned about the wrong thing.
“We no do, things are wrong.” Garbage looked so frightened she was scaring me.
I waved her over and held out my hand. “Okay, slowly. What happened?”
She took a deep breath to tell me when an explosion of sound engulfed us. My bones felt like they were being rattled apart. It stopped for a brief moment, but slammed back into action less than a minute later.
I turned to Siabiane but she looked almost as scared as the faeries. Then she shook it off and raised her hand. The sound wasn’t blocked completely, but enough to keep my brain from turning to goo.
“What was that?” I knew my voice was probably too loud but my ears were ringing so badly I couldn’t tell.
“That was the royal alarm, wasn’t it?” Alric had picked up the same look the others had. Dueble and I were the only ones more confused and in pain than terrified.
“Yes it was.” Siabiane turned to me. “The queen or the children have been attacked. I must go to them.” She grabbed my shoulders. “You must stay here.” She looked up and faced Alric and the faeries. “You are outsiders, and an attack that triggered that alarm means fatal or serious.” She nodded to Dueble. “You need to stay here as well, particularly if your ambassador or his people were behind this.”
He opened his mouth, most likely to defend his people, but a quick nod from Nasif had him close it.
I could tell Alric wanted to be there, fighting to destroy whoever had done this. His sword hand twitched even though the weapon hadn’t reappeared.
“We will stay here,” I said. “All of us.” I watched the faeries, their little popping through walls trick wasn’t making them trustworthy. “The girls know they could endanger others if they went out.”
“We fight—is bad.” Garbage had flown back to the other two, but her words were fiercer than her face. That reaction was more telling to me than the alarms. Finally she nodded. “We stay. Protect.”
Siabiane turned to Dueble and gently touched his cheek. He collapsed. “I’m sorry my friend, but I believe you had plans to go out and fight.”
I looked from the pile of Dueble to Siabiane. “You read his mind?” That was more than a little disturbing.
“No, my dear.” She smiled. “But he is more honorable than many of his people—it was clear on his face.”
Siabiane and Nasif both left after that. When the doors opened I heard the full force of the alarms going, but once they shut the sound was muffled again. It took a powerful mage to keep multiple spells running without being around them.
Alric started pacing and rubbing his forehead.
“This didn’t happen…before. Did it?”
“No. When Siabiane said the king was killed, I wasn’t sure. There was so much lost in the fighting and afterwards that not all of the history of right before the war made it to us. But I knew somehow he didn’t make it to the founding of the enclave. The queen did. She was the one who led the rebuilding—her name was on many structures. She died before I was born, but she was there.”
“And the children?”
“Queen Jelinath and her sister, Bethise. Jelinath made it to the enclave, obviously. Her sister didn’t, but she was alive when the fighting started. Damn it, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. Padraig’s collapse was off as well. Granted, Lorcan was the source of my information and we can’t really ask him in this time. But the timing seems wrong.”
Someone, or something, pounded on the main door with enough force to rattle glasses in here. Then we heard an explosion as the main door to Siabiane’s pair of suites blew open.
I pointed to Dueble lying defenseless on the carpet and yelled to the faeries, “Hide!”
No arguments, although Garbage clearly wanted to fight. All three landed on him, and he and they became invisible.
Alric’s sword was in his hand immediately. Mine took a few s
econds longer, but I could have kissed it when the willful thing appeared in my hand. I might have been imagining things, but it felt like the sword really wanted to fight. At least that was one of us.
We stood ready as more pounding came from the door before us. There was nowhere for us to go to, and we were far too high to jump out the window.
Like the outer doors before it, the inner door exploded in a rain of splinters. Two battered and bruised syclarions looking far more like the ones from my time than Dueble, jumped through the shattered wood.
In fact, they looked enough like the ones from my time that I was glad for Siabiane’s elf glamour. I didn’t recognize them, I’d really rather they didn’t recognize me.
They both looked around the room, more like we weren’t who was expected than assessing for any other combatants. That took an entire handful of seconds, then they charged us.
Alric had moved forward so he took the first one and even tried to partially block the second one from getting to me. Sweet, but it didn’t slow him down much.
My sword hand went up to block a blow that could have taken off my head. Then I pushed the attacker’s overextended arm back. My sword dipped and got a strike in, not a fatal one but gut wounds always hurt.
It felt like the sword and I were moving as one—unfortunately it seemed to be leading me. The good thing was that it was a better fighter than I was.
My sword training was enough to get the job done, but not gracefully. Now the sword and I were moving with more ease. A few more strikes by the syclarion and I was actually turning to attack instead of only defense.
Alric and his attacker tumbled over the back of one of the sofas, and my syclarion glanced over for a split second. The sword and I darted forward and embedded it in his chest.
The syclarion had tried to defend too late but he still got in a slice on my arm. His eyes went wide as his brain told him he was dead.
A second later he and my sword vanished.
I screamed. I finally come to terms with my crazy weapon and it gets taken away? Not to mention people shouldn’t vanish in front of you.
Alric had his syclarion trapped and disarmed. He held his sword to his throat. “Tell us what is going on. When are your people from?”
The syclarion had a few wounds, none life threatening if he got help soon. He watched both of us. Then he started yelling and trying to force a way out through the wall behind him. “No, it’s you. You’ve ruined everything, you bitch. Everything.” The moment he decided that since escape wasn’t going to happen behind him, maybe he could rush us, was clear in his muddy eyes. Or maybe not.
I wasn’t in direct line with the door, but the syclarion was aiming right for me. Even with his wounds he had no trouble covering the short distance from the wall to my throat.
I had no weapons, there was no way Alric would get to me before the syclarion. The reflex was automatic as the push spell came out. I was afraid I’d be causing a syclarion-shaped hole in Siabiane’s wall.
That didn’t happen.
Nothing happened at first, the syclarion froze in mid-leap with Alric almost on him. A second later, he vanished. No explosion. No hole. Just gone.
Alric’s momentum was too much for him to stop but he turned so he only partially tackled me to the carpet.
“What just happened?” he asked as he rolled to his feet and helped me up.
“I was going to ask you that!” I looked around, hoping against hope there would be two dead or dying syclarions lying there and they hadn’t just vanished into thin air.
“Yours vanished as well? What did you do?”
“The one who charged me had it coming. I know we need to watch our magic usage here, but I didn’t have a choice. I used the push spell on him. As for the first, I don’t know, but he took my sword with him when he…vanished.” I felt something drop on my feet and was glad to see my sword back. It didn’t even have any blood on it anymore.
The faeries flew over to us, sniffed at the sword, scowled, then flew around the areas the two syclarions had vanished from. Finally all three stopped in the air in front of me.
“You did boom.” Garbage looked like she was confused, mad, and sad all at once. A look I’d never seen before. I’d also never been accused of boom. Overall, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
“What boom, sweetie? There was no boom.” In fact, it was an anti-boom. Had the spell worked as I’d planned it, there would have been an actual boom.
“You boom. Change things.”
Leaf shook her head. “Things changed. She put back.”
“No, change.”
“Is good.”
“Is bad!”
The two were going chest to chest in the air. Crusty hung behind them looking vaguely amused.
“Do they always fight like that?”
I’d forgotten about Dueble until his groggy voice came from behind us.
“What happened to me? He got to his feet slowly, but his eyes were on the shattered door the entire time. “More concerning, what did I miss?”
I looked to Alric and tipped my head toward where our rooms were. I needed to find out what the faeries were jabbering about, as it might actually be important. If I was understanding them, Garbage thought I’d caused a big problem because I sent the syclarions somewhere. Leaf also thought their vanishing was my fault but felt it was a good thing.
“Dueble, why don’t you come with me?” Alric asked. “We were attacked and I want to make sure the attackers really left.”
Dueble looked groggy but he followed after Alric. “Who are we looking for?”
“A pair of the ambassador’s cronies, I’d guess.”
Dueble paused, then moved faster. It was good to see him stepping up but hopefully that wouldn’t come back to haunt us.
I waited until I heard the door on our suite close, then grabbed Garbage and Leaf and walked over to one of the remaining intact and upright sofas and sat down. Crusty spun a few circles around us, then sat down next to me.
Leaf and Garbage had stopped their argument, but both were still mad. I held on to them. “Girls, this is important. There is some bad stuff going on, some more boom. I need to know what you two are fighting about.”
Both started chittering in native faery, talking so fast obviously the only purpose was to get more words out than the other faery.
“Stop. Now. STOP.” All three faeries looked at me like I’d said I hated ale. “One of you. Tell me. Not in faery. What is going on?” When both took deep breaths to start their rant again, I looked over to Crusty. “Never mind. Crusty, I want you to tell me. I know you can.” Crusty wasn’t the brightest of the faeries, and she drank way more than any of them. But she also had no ego, and right now both of the faeries before me were running on way too much of that.
The other two shut up, in part because I still had them in my hands and I closed my pinkie fingers around their mouths. But also, neither were used to Crusty being asked to do anything.
Crusty looked around the room, her blue head swiveling around as she checked to make sure there wasn’t another Crusty around that I could be talking to. Finally she moved closer and sat crossed legged on my thigh.
“You is time. Bad men don’t want you here, mess up their time. But they no be here. Not their real time.”
I smiled at Crusty and rubbed the space between her wings. That was the most coherent I’ve ever heard her. Now I had to figure out what it meant.
“So the bad men, the ones that broke in here,” I waited for her to nod, “they were from another time?” Again a slow nod. “Were they from our time? Our time before we came back here?” I’d seen her eyes start to cross but she relaxed when I clarified.
“No our time, no.” She gave a tiny pleased smile.
“But they knew Alric and I were from a different time?”
A happy nod.
“So they were trying to kill Alric and I because we were from the future?”
A stab to my right pinkie finger
reminded me who I still held. I let go of Garbage and then a moment later, Leaf. They both flew up then settled down next to Crusty. Very well behaved considering what I’d done to both of them. Garbage glared at me of course.
“Kill you. Not him.”
There went that illusion. This reinforced what Nasif had found.
“Me, why me? How am I time?”
Garbage stomped over and sat on Crusty to make her shut up. “Is always time. But now you time here, is bad. She say is good,” she pointed to Leaf, “because bad men no be here.” She shook her head. “But you no be here either. Need go now. But not go wrong time.”
There was pure worry on her tiny orange face. I’d only seen her look like that once, when Leaf and Crusty had been kidnapped and she couldn’t sense them.
“Do you know what the right time is, or the wrong time?”
“Need go now.”
Even though they’d been muffled, I’d heard the alarms in the background. They stopped.
The girls noticed it too. Garbage grabbed my finger and pulled toward the door. The other two did as well.
“Leave now.”
“Girls, we have no idea how to get back.”
“We take, she magic, you go.” Leaf was almost as concerned as Garbage and she pointed behind me.
Siabiane looked anything but her usual pristine self. Even during the battle in the enclave—some thousand years from now—I’d never seen her so disheveled.
Her gown had tears all along the bottom third and there was blood on her sleeves. The small dagger on her hip also looked to have blood on it.
“Is the queen…?” I didn’t want to say the words.
“She is alive for now. The attacker was a syclarion, and he hurt her badly, but I have stopped the bleeding.” She looked like all of her years had crashed down on her in that moment. “The faeries are right. I can’t say how I know, but the attack on the queen should never have happened. We need to get you out of here immediately.”
The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Page 18
