The Sapphire Manticore (The Lost Ancients Book 4)

by Marie Andreas

  The shock that went through my right hand felt strong enough to send it, and me attached, all the way back to Beccia. My sword was still clenched in my left hand, but that was more because it seemed to have glued my fingers around it than any real skill on my part in holding onto it.

  The tingle that vibrated down my arm wasn’t all bad though. Once I got over the initial shock, I actually liked it. It was as if feeling sunshine for the first time in months. If that sunshine also came with enough magical power to make me the most deadly magic user in the land, at any rate.

  The power behind the shield was massive. Channeling the tiny bit I had access to made me see the world in a different way. All of time came into focus at once. I was stuck looking ahead and I had lost all control to move my body. The tree closest to me changed, from bare ground, to a tiny sapling, to a massive monster three times as big as it was now, then a dead and crumbling pile of hollow bark.

  I was very grateful that I couldn’t move my head—what if I looked at my friends and all I saw was them old and dying?

  The voice, Siabiane, hadn’t said how long I had to touch the shield, but nothing seemed to have changed except my perception.

  “Turn to your left.” Siabiane’s voice was in my ear now. I wasn’t sure how I knew that this time I was the only one hearing her, but I knew.

  “I can’t move.” The instant I said it, I found myself turning a tiny bit to the left.

  A rakasa stared at me. It had one clawed hand on the shield, a foot over from mine. It smiled. Rakasa smiles couldn’t even be attractive to other rakasas. There were too many rows of razor-sharp, tiny triangle shaped teeth in that unnaturally huge mouth for anyone to find it attractive.

  This one was way too happy to see me.

  It clenched its clawed hand into the shield and a stab of pain flooded through me. The shield must feel the rakasa this way, but I was too far away from the other rakasa to feel them. The one near me put his other hand up and tightened his grip on the shield.

  It felt like his hand was closing in on my heart.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I was really hoping Siabiane had some answers, because the longer I touched the shield, the worse I felt.

  No response from my friendly, non-elf witch, but a second rakasa came to the shield, stood right in front of me, and slowly touched it.

  My right hand was burning from the inside. I had to let go, but I couldn’t get my fingers to move. I was still stuck.

  If my friends were trying to help me, I had no idea. All I could see were the two rakasa. All I could feel was pain.

  I stared at the rakasa, trying to watch them die horribly so I could at least feel better in my final moments.

  It worked, sort of. Both aged before my eyes, but too fast for true enjoyment on my part. Then they were back to normal.

  There had to be a way to get free. While I was trying to see if I could move my sword hand up enough to pry under my right hand, a shadow fell over me. I still couldn’t move, so I couldn’t tell what it was. Had the blood from that mage come back down?

  “Free.” Siabiane’s voice was faint this time, straining against something. I found I was able to move, just not let go of the shield.

  The first thing I did was look up at the shadow. It wasn’t the blood, nor additional rakasas, nor even a giant badly assembled golem made out of cabbages. It was a man.

  Or rather, a man-shaped creature. The thing before me was shadow-like and I wasn’t even sure if it was really here, or just an image. A huge, billowing, blood red cape flowed around him and a hood hid the face.

  He wasn’t looking my way, so I got a very good look at the cape. It was old fashioned in the extreme, but so detailed with black stitching as to almost seem alive.

  The hood fell back when he looked my way. His face was beautiful and repulsive at the same time. Scaled like a syclarion, but he was no more one of them than the faeries were.

  His red eyes opened wide.

  “My precious, what are you? Why are you not with me so I can delve into your secrets?” The words carried far more evil than their meaning, but they also covered up his surprise and confusion.

  Some part of my mind had suddenly had enough. Or Siabiane did something and didn’t even tell me. With a growl, I slammed my sword through the shield and into the nearest rakasa, then the one next to it.

  “You’re next.” I didn’t know who or what the man before me was, but I hated him more than anything in the world.

  He looked at me, half out of the shield as I was. He might have blanched—hard to tell with scales—then vanished.

  There were no footprints, or marks in the dirt to indicate that he’d actually been there, so most likely he was a projection of some kind.

  All the nerves in my sword arm suddenly flared in pain, and I pulled it back within the shield.

  There was a massive popping sound and the sky was filled with ash. All of the rakasas touching the shield had blown up.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. I’d been expecting Alric coming to check on me. But the one grabbing me was Flarinen. Moreover, he was pissed.

  “She’s working with them—that thing knew her.”

  “What thing?” Harlan pushed past both elves. “There was nothing. She put her hand up, the rakasa all burnt to ash, and she fell back.” He put his arm around me this time.

  Harlan hadn’t seen anything? But Flarinen and Alric—judging by both their reactions—had. I looked up and Orenda had a similar worried look to Alric’s, but no one else did. Interesting. Only the magic users caught what really went on.

  Alric scowled at Flarinen. “She was not working with them. She, with help from Siabiane, got rid of a major drain on our shield.” He pushed past Flarinen and led me forward.

  With him on one side and Harlan on the other I felt like a little old lady. “You can drop the sword now,” Alric whispered in my ear.

  I flexed my fingers a bit. I could release the sword, but it didn’t seem to want to vanish. I tried thinking as calming thoughts as I could under the circumstances, but it stayed. Not a great idea since now that the immediate crisis was over, more than a few of the knights were looking too closely at my sword. Having it stay hidden for most of this trip had helped the memory of it fade for them—or so I’d told myself.

  “How do you know she’s not working with them?” Flarinen stepped closer so the four of us were head to head. “You’ve only known her for, what, seven months? Maybe eight? You have no idea what her agenda really is, or who she is really working for.”

  “Wow, so much hostility and I thought we’d almost become friends.” I moved a little closer, a bit difficult, since unlike Alric I didn’t have a scabbard for my stubborn sword. “But I am not working for anyone other than…Qianru? Why is she here?” The last came out with probably the same amount of confusion I was feeling. There she was coming down the path, avoiding the horses, and beaming, as if she’d planned this entire event. She was even holding a parasol, and Joie and the rest of her pack of houseboys trotted behind her with baskets.

  “Captain Flarinen! How wonderful to see you and your guests.” She stopped short, as she finally saw me. “Taryn? Why, dear, whatever are you doing here?”

  “What is she doing here?” Alric kept his voice low, but Qianru heard him.

  “You’re Taryn’s elf friend!” She clapped her hands like a school girl with her first crush.

  “It is wonderful to see you again,” Alric gave a small bow, then dropped his voice so only Flarinen and myself could hear it. “Why and how is she here?”

  “She’s advising,” Flarinen said, but there was clearly something more than that, as the tips of his ears went bright red.

  “This is a wonderful chance meeting,” Harlan said as he came up and shook Qianru’s hands, then started herding everyone toward the wagons and shot a pointed look to Flarinen. “But didn’t you say you wanted us to get to your capital soon? As in, before that does?” Usually Harlan was the
one who got off topic, but this time the rest of us had. He pointed up to the fading, but still moving, red and pink swirls in the shield.

  Both Flarinen and Alric had the grace to look mildly embarrassed.

  “Yes, I’m afraid we won’t have time for one of your picnics, lovely lady. But please allow me to escort you back to town.” Flarinen held out his arm and spun Qianru back the way she came. Her houseboys followed behind like a long wedding train. “The guests will ride back.”

  I looked to Alric, but he seemed to be lost in thought and didn’t even comment about all of us being guests. Flarinen also hadn’t repeated that Alric and I needed to be in separate wagons, so we rode together in the first one.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The landscape where we first came into the enclave was fairly dull, with nothing more than a few tall trees, but mostly shrubs and rocks. Not forest, but not desert. Just boring. However, within fifteen minutes of our slow ride, I already felt the changes. The air was clearer, like the one time I went high in the Gliacian Mountains with one of my first patrons.

  The trees were both delicate and dense at the same time. The ones closest to the path were smaller, but still the size of some of the gapens back home. The ones further back, so far back the forest must go for miles, were bigger than the largest gapens.

  I knew I’d never seen such trees before and I’d venture no one who didn’t live here had. Nevertheless, I felt an overwhelming feeling of homesickness when I looked at them. They made me happy, but also very sad.

  “What’s wrong?” Alric had finally broken away from his examination of the injured knight and must have picked up on my sigh.

  The sadness evoked by the trees felt too private, so I looked down at my sword sitting awkwardly on my lap. “My sword. It won’t go away, and if it’s going to stay it needs a scabbard.” I dropped my voice. “But I think it sticking around might be a bad idea with all these elves around.”

  Alric tilted his head; he could tell it was something else. He looked down at my sword anyway. “Go.”

  I almost fell out of my seat when the sword vanished.

  “How did you do that?” I’d been asking that damn thing for ten minutes to leave, but he gives one command, and it takes off? An unfortunate thought hit me. “Can others do that?” That would not be good. I wasn’t sure about my sword skills as it was, and if my enemy could tell my weapon to vanish mid-fight, that could be a serious problem.

  “No, others couldn’t. I probably couldn’t have done it under normal circumstances. You wore it down with asking. In addition, something is bothering you, so your connection to it was distracted. I nudged it.”

  His green eyes were calm and soothing. I could tell he wasn’t going to let go until I mentioned what I was upset about.

  I tried looking like nothing was bugging me and managed to hold it under that stare of his for about thirty seconds. I finally gave in. “The trees. I’ve never seen any like them. And yet they make me sad.” I felt weird saying it, how could trees make someone sad? But they touched my soul so deeply it was as if my best friends, all of them, had died.

  He pulled back a bit. “That’s it? I felt something heavy going on emotionally, but it was the trees?” He tilted his head, and then finally shook it. “You’re telling the truth, as odd as it is. You wouldn’t have seen them before. They were a species that was dying by the time of the Breaking, far older than any elf knew. Our founders picked this area since they were here, and they flourished in the last thousand years with our care.”

  That was all well and good, but he’d skipped over some things. “Wait, you could feel I was upset? And you can tell when I lie?” Both of those were going to make a relationship between us really touchy. Especially since it didn’t go both ways.

  Alric blushed. I might not have his super powers or whatever was giving him unfair insight to my psyche, but his non-glamoured face really wasn’t suited for lying.

  “I just gathered…you sighed….” He dropped his head. “Okay, I’ve been noticing that I sense you more since you and Orenda saved me back at Kenithworth. Not her, only you.”

  “And you’re just now telling me?” Hopefully he could sense bad emotions too. Right now I wanted to punch him.

  My aggressive retaliation was cut short by an onslaught of rocks pummeling the top and right side of the wagon.

  I looked out the window to be greeted by Garbage, Leaf, and Crusty all pounding on the glass. They looked completely maniacal and I sort of wanted them to stay out there. I actually wanted them to go far away for a bit until we were sure what our captain Flarinen was planning on doing about them. Clearly, my “fly away and stay out of sight” orders only held so long with them.

  “Oh, the minkies sing, the minkies swing, the minkies like the color green!” Garbage started it, but the other two picked it up after the first word. The rocks I thought I was hearing on the roof, now seemed to be keeping time.

  Dancing faeries. The other nine must be up top.

  “Better let them in,” Alric said.

  I agreed. This new minkies song was even more annoying than the regular one. However, if he thought this meant we were dropping his secret mental spying on me, he had another thing coming.

  I started to crack open the window, but the injured knight lurched forward.

  “What are you doing? You can’t let those things in here.” His face had been pale from whatever our dead mage had done to him, but he was fading so fast I looked to see if he had another injury.

  “Those things, as you called them, are my friends. And I will be letting them in. They aren’t going to hurt anyone.” Alric blocked the knight as I opened the window and all twelve faeries flew in.

  And attacked the knight.

  The way they’d been singing and acting, I figured the worst I would have to deal with would be a bunch more singing and possibly very bad belching. I’d noticed one of the new faeries, Penqow, had a serious belching fetish. How the amount of noise that tiny black and white faery could make was able to come out of someone so small, I had no idea.

  War blades were pulled out and held high as they charged the injured elf.

  He screamed and fell back under the onslaught of bright colored wings and pissed-off faeries.

  “Girls! Stop it!” Trying to stop twelve tiny faeries in a small, moving wagon was not easy.

  “Bad.” Garbage actually growled as she poked the knight in the cheek with her war blade.

  Their war blades looked like nothing more than modified sticks, but the faeries gave them some sort of power. Or they simply focused their power through them. Either way the outcome was usually not good for any being that they went after.

  I was going to try to throw myself over the knight if need be when I noticed that the spot she’d hit on his face was turning black.

  That was new.

  “What do you mean bad?” Alric leaned forward as well, but unlike me he didn’t seem concerned for the knight.

  “Is full of nasty stink.” Leaf narrowed her eyes and darted forward to poke him on his hand. Again, it started to turn black.

  The knight had been trying to get away from them at first, but then dropped his head down.

  When he looked back up his eyes had gone completely black.

  “See? Bad!” Garbage motioned all of the faeries forward, but the knight held up his hand and they froze.

  “I don’t know who you are, child. Nor why I feel I know you.” The voice that came out of the knight wasn’t his, but low and gravelly. The same as that damn mage who’d been controlling the rakasa outside the shield. Those black eyes were staring into my soul. “Yet that may be resolved after you are gone.” Smoke started coming from where the faeries poked the knight. Whatever had been talking through him collapsed and he fell back, but he was still grinning and his eyes were still black.

  The faeries came forward and started swirling around the knight, poking him dozens more times.

  I’d seen this part before. They creat
ed some sort of vortex, which could dissolve their enemies. But I had a bad feeling the smoking knight was going to take us out first. Cracks and lines appeared on all of his exposed skin. And they weren’t caused by the faeries.

  I grabbed Alric. “We need to get out. Now.”

  He was muttering some spell under his breath and facing the smoking knight, but he jerked back a second later as if burned. He pounded on the front of the wagon, but the knight driving wasn’t stopping.

  I swung open the door. We weren’t going very fast, but it was still going to hurt if we jumped. The faeries could fly but unfortunately for me, that spell hadn’t come up in my tutoring rotation yet.

  “We need to stop the wagon. There’s a bomb in here.” I couldn’t see the knight driving, just his arm, but luckily he heard me and slowed down.

  Not fast enough.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The faeries were whirling so fast they were nothing but a blur. The knight had now become a column of smoke and, under that, flame. We were out of time.

  “Jump! We all need to jump off now!” The knight driving our wagon looked down at me as if I’d just grown three heads

  “NOW!” I put as much spell strength as I could behind that word, trying to focus the spell tightly.

  Not sure how, but it worked one way or another. The knight bent down to release the horse, and then dove from the slowing wagon. Alric shoved me out ahead of him and we did the same.

  He protected me as we rolled but I was still very grateful the wagon had slowed even a little bit. Both of us were going to have some bruises.

  The wagon following us veered to the right, almost hitting us, in its effort to avoid our slowing wagon. Then our wagon blew up.

  I pulled away from Alric and rolled to my feet. The faeries had still been in there, and while I knew they could manage to make things vanish, that explosion hadn’t been theirs. I ran toward the flaming wagon. The force of the explosion had blown off the entire top and half of the sides. The smoke was so heavy I couldn’t see anything except licks of a rapidly growing flame.