I was disturbed enough for both of us.
The faeries looked to me, even Garbage. That was new. “Stay back. Alric’s got this under control.” I worked to keep my voice from ascending into a freaked-out screech.
She gave an intense nod, and then all of them hovered above us. Now that they were closer, it was clearly just our twenty-three; she hadn’t pulled in the wild faeries. Bunky and Irving stayed up there with them.
Cirocco watched us, then took a deep breath and shook himself. The wild animal on the edge look was gone, and while it was disturbing to watch, I was glad the red fled from his eyes. “What you just showed me was troubling. Even more upsetting was that the creature behind this left it there to be discovered. I have to believe he or she deliberately attached my watch to the body as well.”
“I’m not sure what you and the rest of the criminal element thought you were working toward, but the people behind this are trying to destroy this world. That bit you saw was their idea of perfection.”
A tiny part of me wanted to see what could raise such a snarl on Cirocco’s face. The more rational side of me said I could wait and get a summary from Alric. I had no idea why Alric was telling Cirocco all of this; it had saved us from a messy fight, but there was something more.
“We were misled. Thaddeus recruited us not long before your lady found the glass gargoyle. We’d been looking for it since he claimed it could make us more rich and powerful than our imaginations. But then you destroyed him.” He shrugged and seemed to relax. “Then Largen brought in Rosicathin, the mayor of Kenithworth, to come meet with us. When those damn elves—no offense—moved in, he rallied us to join forces with him. Largen and he have been leading this entire attack.”
“Is there another woman on your side? A powerful one?” I’d gladly let Alric take the lead on this, but something the people who had been holding Foxy said stuck with me. Not to mention my recent visitor.
“No, in fact there is another group working against us. They seem to be led by a woman, but no one has actually seen her.”
“So, if someone replaced Largen, and the woman is on the other side…who is acting as Largen now?” Covey loved puzzles but she didn’t look happy about this one. Having all the bad guys on the same team made it easier to keep track of them.
“Someone who will be dead once I get back to my camp, I assure you.” He smiled more to show his elongated fangs than out of any warmth. We might have just solved a problem that he didn’t know he had, but we were not friends. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, and honestly, I don’t care at this point. I will not tell them where you are, but I have a feeling things will be getting ugly around here soon.” With a nod to Alric, Cirocco turned and vanished into the forest.
The faeries swarmed the dead body, but pulled back quickly and waved their hands in front of their faces. “Is boom.” Garbage kept them flying backwards, but not taking their eyes off the body.
“Bad boom,” the faeries yelled out. Even Bunky and Irving flew out of the range of the clearthin glows.
“Guys, I think they really mean explode this time.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I grabbed Covey and Padraig—Alric was out of reach—and started pulling backwards. Alric threw a spell bubble toward the body, one open at the back so it gave the rest of us more protection.
And not a moment too soon. The body, and a few good-sized trees over it, exploded.
Alric’s spell held. Those bubbles were hard to create, and often unstable. I needed either him or Padraig to show me how they could make them strong enough to hold off explosions.
He dropped it once the debris stopped raining down.
“So much for us being sneaky,” I said as I shook my head. Whatever spell had blown up that body had been far too loud for anyone to have missed it. Hell, the elves in their enclave probably heard it.
“I blocked the sound,” Padraig said. “He handled the parts; I trapped everything else. No one would have heard it, but strong magic users might have felt it. We need to move quickly.” He and Covey went toward the area of the explosion, leaving the faeries, constructs, and me to hang back.
“But we don’t know…” I dropped those words when I saw them shoving trees and dirt out of the way. “You deliberately put the body where the chest supposedly is?”
Alric looked over his shoulder and shot me a smile. “Yes, but I really didn’t think it would blow up that quickly. There were some odd spells on it, that’s why I hid it the first time. I think whoever planted the watch on it was trying to take out Cirocco.”
“The watch was a trigger.” Covey continued to move plants and dirt away, but her tools were set aside. So much for anything close to a proper dig. Of course, I usually didn’t blow up potential ruins either.
“So they were trying to destroy Cirocco?” I started elbowing my way into the dig area.
“Or they just figured anyone would pull the watch. But I don’t understand what that spell was doing,” Covey was digging with her bare hands since the claws were still in place.
“I think Alric should share that when we’re back at the pub. We shouldn’t speak of whatever it was out here.” Padraig stood aside to let me in to dig. I noticed he and the constructs were watching the area around us, and that there were more clearthin glows than before. He was more worried about some powerful magic users having felt the muffled explosion than he’d let on.
I looked at the hole we were digging in. Even with four of the glows hovering over it, it wasn’t easy to see. “There’s no way we’re finishing this tonight. I mean, it’s great that Alric used an exploding body to speed things along. But this chest has been down there for a fair amount of time. Digging isn’t fast, folks.” There was a larger clump of dirt so I shifted my small shovel under it. And hit something.
“I might have spoken too soon.” I tapped the lump a bit and more dirt dislodged itself. I reached in and started brushing. Tarnished bands, the type on an old wooden sea chest, glinted faintly in the weird orange glow from the clearthins. “It’s a chest.” This was good and bad. Good in that hopefully we could get back behind the hedge and be on our way; bad in that it was so close to the surface, I really had a hard time believing it was what they thought it was.
It took four of us over an hour to pull it free. Using magic around relics was a bad idea, so we had to take turns digging around the sides of it. It might not have been very deep, but that thing was embedded well. The faeries had grown bored when there were no more booms, so they flew back to the pub. Bunky and Irving kept up their patrol of the skies.
I finally worked enough of it free to see most of it. It was about two feet wide by three feet high and had that rounded top that sea chests have. It was also heavier than it looked, especially if it was actually empty. “It’s free, but it’s too heavy for me to get out alone.” I could probably lift it, but there wasn’t a lot of room in the hole. Alric jumped down on the other side and with the other two pulling, he and I pushed it up and out.
I had been hoping that once out of the hole it would suddenly appear impressive. No such luck. It looked like a thousand year old sea chest buried in the ground for a long time.
“It’s very heavy to be empty.” Covey’s words echoed my earlier thoughts.
Padraig kept looking at it—all of it. The sides, the lock, the metal bands. He finally shook his head. “I’m not sure what, if anything, is inside, but we shouldn’t open it out here.”
“Take it back to the pub?” I rubbed my arms and looked around the dark ruins. I knew Cirocco said he wasn’t going to tell the others about us being out here. But I didn’t trust that; and if he found us, someone else could too.
“No, if this is a trap, we don’t want to hurt anyone else,” Alric picked up the chest and turned toward the back of the site. “My cave isn’t large, but if things go bad, hopefully it will contain any explosion.” He didn’t wait for agreement, but he did look back briefly to make sure we were following.
Covey, Padraig, and I quickly gathered the tools we’d brought out and followed the clearthins into a grove of trees. I’d been to this cave of his, albeit briefly. But it looked far more ominous in the dark—especially with the weird orange tint from the glows.
Bunky and Irving hovered right outside the entrance. I wasn’t sure if it was to keep an eye out for us, or they really didn’t like the look of Alric’s cave.
There was a battered heavy wooden table in the middle of the cave and Alric had set the chest on it. He was already working on picking the lock as we came in.
“Good to see you’ve kept the skills up over the years.” Padraig shook his head and waved another glow toward Alric. “He was the master lock-pick of the enclave. Nothing was safe around him when he was growing up.”
“I think at some point, once everything has settled down, I need to hear many more tales of his childhood.” I grinned at the brief flash of concern on Alric’s face as he looked up.
“That, my lovely lady, is a deal. We can fill many evenings discussing this hooligan’s exploits. Always did wonder who taught him to pick locks though.”
“Lorcan,” Alric said. Then he pulled back from the chest, rubbing his arm. Right where the geas mark lay. “In case we were questioning that this chest is somehow related to the relics and whatever happened to the Ancients, I think we’re sure now. My geas mark tried to rip off my arm as soon as I cleared the lock.” The glow from under his sleeve was already fading, but that had to be uncomfortable at the least.
I started to move toward the chest, and then held back. I had no idea if that chest could do anything, but visions of the Dark chest flashed through my mind. My hands had been stuck to it magically and it almost killed me. Not something I wanted to replicate.
Padraig patted my shoulder and walked forward. With a nod toward Alric, he lifted the lid. Then he started patting the obviously empty inside walls. “Nothing. But it definitely feels like—” His words were cut off as a light came from the chest and slammed him against the cave wall.
I ran to help him. I wasn’t happy he got flung, but I was glad that for once it wasn’t me.
Alric leaned over from the side. “There are scrolls in there now.” He reached in with his non-geas marked arm and pulled out a large collection of scrolls.
Padraig got to his feet and slowly came back. The chest didn’t respond. “That was too heavy for just scrolls, and they weren’t there when I looked inside.”
Covey was already pawing around in it, but I didn’t want to touch it. I did lean forward to confirm its empty status. The scrolls in Alric’s hand looked solid, but I also believed Padraig.
Irving came flying into the cave with Bunky gronking behind him. They circled the chest, then Irving opened his jaws and something dropped into the chest. The glass gargoyle. He choked, almost like a cat coughing up a fur ball. The golden basilisk was being stubborn. Irving finally shook his head, closed his mouth, and he and Bunky zipped back out of the cave.
We peered into the chest. The gargoyle just sat there. I slammed the chest shut. I thought I felt some weird images begin to form in my head, but I didn’t hold on to the chest long enough to find out.
“Why did your construct do that? And why not the second one?” Covey kept looking at the chest, but I noticed her hands stayed firmly locked behind her back.
“I have no idea on either count. It did look like he was trying to get the basilisk out; it must’ve put up a fight.” Hopefully, being in the chest would keep the gargoyle hidden and away from trouble.
Alric tucked the scrolls he’d kept under his arm, then moved his hands over the chest and I saw a soft light settle on it. “Until we can get in a spell-safe environment, this thing should stay closed.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out one of the faeries’ tiny black bags. “And hidden. Agreed?”
We nodded. Alric put the spell-bubble-enclosed chest into the bag. He took out another one and tucked the scrolls into it. Both went inside his pocket.
“Just how many of those do you have?” And the rest of that question; why didn’t the faeries let me have any?
“A few. You just have to ask them for a bag at the right time. I think they have a never-ending supply.”
I grumbled a bit as we left the cave. I should have asked during the month we were on the run. Even Garbage seemed to feel bad about what had happened to me; they might have given me one out of sympathy.
It was still night, and the clearthins followed us out of the cave and bobbed along over our heads. Irving seemed to be extremely focused on one bobbing near me.
“Don’t eat it, Irving. Bunky, tell him he can’t eat the lights.” Irving’s eyes were growing larger and he was moving closer as I spoke. He didn’t seem to react to what I said, but a soft gronk from Bunky got him to pull back.
Great, this construct was becoming an eater. A former neighbor of mine had a goat she kept in her apartment and took out for daily walks. Damn thing ate everything it could reach.
We were silent as we approached the hedge. We’d found the chest, but no answers to what it was, aside from the fact Irving threw up the gargoyle in it. The revelations of Largen and Cirocco were both bigger issues in my mind right now.
True to what Amara said, the hedge opened at Padraig’s touch. The path was narrow, but the clearthin lights strung themselves out along the length of us.
Beccia had a few more lights than outside of the hedge, but not much. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it looked like every other glow lantern was dark. There might actually be someone in town who was trying to ration things for a long siege—that spoke of planning, which most Beccians weren’t keen on.
It was late enough that the drunks had mostly gone home, or at least stumbled to a safe spot to crash until their legs started working again. Foxy’s front door was shut, so we went along the alley. The damage to Amara’s tree was barely visible in the glows along the alleyway; it would probably be completely healed by tomorrow.
“Did you ever get a chance to find out about the strange amulets that were possessing those squirrels?” I hadn’t heard anything from Alric about it, but we’d also been busy.
He shook his head, but his hand dropped to a pouch he carried under his cloak. He might have changed clothes, but he was keeping that dead amulet with him. “Just that they were created by a powerful mage who is paranoid. The squirrels who’d been trying to get the glass gargoyle last year were possessed, but I never saw any amulets on them. The one I have is magically advanced and complicated.”
The door to the pub was unlocked, but Dogmaela was dozing right next to it with a heavy cudgel in her hand. She grunted, nodded, and closed her eyes when she realized it was us.
Lorcan was sitting at the main bar with a circle of faeries watching him. Well, listening to him with actual focused interest as Lorcan spun some tale. But as I watched, they slowly laid down and fell asleep. No ale needed. I was certain Lorcan had slipped a spell into his story, but as long as he taught me how to do it at some point, I’d never tell. Bunky and Irving flew around the bar, before settling in on the rafters.
“Ah! Our wanderers have returned early!” Lorcan smiled and nodded to the faeries. “I was just telling the girls a bedtime story. A tale of great hardship and the lengths a young elf went to in order to escape his confines.”
I thought that sounded interesting. Alric turned red.
Padraig looked from one to the other and smiled. “Ahh, he did tell me that you taught him lock picking.”
Lorcan laughed. “I was at my wits’ end. There is nothing worse than a bright, and very bored, child.”
Alric stalked over to claim a seat by the dying fire. The rest of us sat at the bar.
“Can we hear the story, too?” I looked around. “And did Mathilda leave already?” I knew she was going to get her house, but I was surprised she left this early.
“She was wiser than I. She had a feeling your trip would be quick and left for her house less than fifteen minutes ag
o. Amara escorted her and should be back soon.” Lorcan looked at Alric. “Maybe another time for the stories though. I take it the trip was a success? I admit, I expected it to take longer.”
Padraig and Covey filled him in. I stayed at the bar, adding a word here or there, but mostly watching Alric. It was more than just annoyance at having his childhood become fodder for bedtime stories. The edgy anger that had been hovering around him was back.
And he was rubbing the arm where the geas was as he stared into the fire.
I finally joined him. Aside from a brief half smile when I sat down, he didn’t respond. “Maybe you shouldn’t have the chest on you. It’s setting off the geas.”
“No, it’s not.” He looked down. He’d obviously been rubbing his arm without thought. “Damn it. Yes, it is. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
“If you mean being a jerk, yeah, kind of. Having that thing flaring up all the time can’t be good for you.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. There were times I missed the black color he’d dyed it when we first met. But the way the firelight lingered on the blond was pretty impressive. “We should give these to Lorcan anyway.” He got up, held out a hand to help me up, then we went back to the bar.
“Excellent timing,” Padraig said. “I know opening the chest right now wouldn’t be a good idea, but having Lorcan look at the scrolls might be.”
Alric nodded then pulled out both small bags and put them on the bar. “I shouldn’t be carrying anything associated with the relics.” As he spoke he pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and picked up both bags in the hand with the geas. The geas mark flared.
Lorcan took the bags from him and turned his arm to study the geas. He finally let go and shook his head. “We have to find a way to diffuse this mark. I’m afraid I know of nothing to get rid of it completely. Heaven help you if the destroyers of the Ancients are still alive somewhere. You will be completely at the mercy of this mark. But we should be able to make it less reactive with some work.” He opened the first bag and withdrew the scrolls.
The Diamond Sphinx (The Lost Ancients Book 6) Page 16
