The Diamond Sphinx (The Lost Ancients Book 6)

by Marie Andreas

  “No! Foxmorton will rend me limb from limb!”

  “It’s that or she lets the faeries have you,” Covey said.

  He looked from us to the gang of unstable looking faeries paying far more attention to him than anyone could ever want. Didn’t even take ten seconds. “Foxmorton, please.”

  We left him tied up with the faeries and told them to watch but not touch unless he moved, then Covey and I went and grabbed the supplies we’d come for. Once we’d finished, and Covey had done a final check through, she darted out the front door.

  She came back a minute later and parked a wheelbarrow outside the door. “Grab that old blanket I have in the closet, we can toss him in the barrow, cover him, and get him disposed of.”

  “I heard that!” Grimwold yelled from the back room.

  “To the pub!” Covey rolled her eyes.

  Loading him into the wheelbarrow was easier than I’d expected since the faeries stayed right near him the entire time.

  We locked up her house and I put a spell of warding over it. It wouldn’t hold nearly as well as one of Alric’s, but it should keep the brownies from returning.

  No one noticed as we pushed the wheelbarrow down the road and down the alley behind the pub. It was early, but there could be patrons inside, so dragging Grimwold through the back was a better idea. Neither of us trusted him so his gag had gone back on and he wasn’t happy.

  I was glad to see Amara’s tree had finished its recovery and that there were no squirrels. I know the girls said the ones from this morning had been on our side, but after those maniacally possessed ones tried to destroy this tree, I wasn’t sure if I trusted any small furry critters.

  As if my thoughts brought it into being, a flash of white flittered among the branches. Could be an albino squirrel, and it was too far up there to tell, but my money was on the minkie. Of course the girls paid no attention to it.

  We couldn’t fit the wheelbarrow through the alley door, so Covey and I lifted Grimwold up. We kept the blanket on him and the three of us shuffled into the pub.

  It looked like old times. Well, old times if you regularly came in during the daytime drinking hours. The tiny pack of daytime drinking gnomes were in place, and Foxy was regaling them with some tale. He nodded and tilted his head when he spotted Covey and me walking in a blanket-covered person.

  “Foxy? Can we talk to you in the back?” I had both hands on Grimwold, so I pointed with my elbow to where the hidden bar room was.

  Foxy wiped his hands on a towel, excused himself from his audience, and followed us into the room.

  As I’d expected, everyone except Mathilda was there. Alric and Padraig were arguing over something on one of the more recent maps, while Lorcan was quietly working through about three books at once. Unlike the other two, he looked up when we walked in.

  “Ladies, and who do we have here?” His words were pitched perfectly to get the other two to stop whatever they were arguing about.

  “A friend,” Covey said as she pulled off the blanket.

  “Grimwold? What in the hells ye be wearing?” Foxy was the closest to us and Grimwold’s outfit hadn’t gotten any better looking during the awkward trip here.

  “We found him and a gang of brownies in Covey’s house,” I said. “He was working for Cirocco and Largen.”

  Alric came closer and shook his head. “Were you trying to make the brownies think you were one of them? You’re a bit too tall.” He removed Grimwold’s gag.

  “I was improvising; too many things are changing around here. If you let me go—”

  “He was going to grab Amara, then his bosses were planning on blowing up the town.” Covey stepped back as she spoke, which was a good idea considering that as soon as the words were out, Foxy took one giant step and lifted Grimwold to the ceiling.

  “Ye was going to do what?” Foxy could bellow if need be, and his face certainly looked angry enough to do so. But his quiet controlled voice was even scarier.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt her. I just needed to get that hedge of hers down…but she would have been safe from being blown up.” His head dropped. Even he realized, yet again, he’d said the wrong thing.

  Foxy shook him and made some sort of odd growl that I’d never heard before. Maybe Grimwold should have taken his chances with the faeries.

  “I know how to get the diamond sphinx!” That yell got everyone’s attention, and Foxy lowered Grimwold down to his eye level.

  “You lie, I will smash you.” Foxy put him on his feet, but not before another solid shake.

  “Where is it and what is your source?” Padraig asked. He and Lorcan had held back, but the word sphinx had gotten their attention.

  “I don’t know where, but I know how.” He tried to move an arm to point, but since he was still tied he only fell onto Foxy. “Your map there, Cirocco described it to me repeatedly before I came in here, so I could grab it. He said it’s spelled.” He beamed as if he’d invented cheese.

  Now it was Alric’s turn to glare him down. “We already knew that.”

  “You knew it could take you through the veil into a hidden realm and to the sphinx? Then why are you still here? Cirocco said once it’s been triggered it will only work for a short time.”

  That we didn’t know. At least I didn’t know, and judging by the looks on the other’s faces, they didn’t either.

  “The sphinx is in a tir cudd? One of the fabled hidden realms? How can this map take us to it?” Lorcan’s voice was low and he looked like a kindly old elf. The glint in his eyes said he wasn’t.

  Grimwold could be pompous, but he wasn’t always stupid. “I…I don’t know. Cirocco knew how, but wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even the mayor. It’s spelled to show hidden things. If you’re not seeing the way yet, maybe it’s not triggered. He warned me not to use magic anywhere near it.”

  Lorcan turned back to the map and shook his head. “I’d say he told someone how to break it, or he wouldn’t have been killed.” He pointedly looked at Grimwold. “We probably want to get him out of here until we sort this out.”

  “There’s nowhere to leave him that he won’t escape.” Grimwold had enough connections that I was sure he’d get out of jail in hours. Providing there was still a functioning jail and that we could get him into it.

  “He be staying here,” Foxy picked him up with one hand and marched for the door. “Amara and I will make sure he never escapes.”

  “But I can help!” Grimwold twisted in Foxy’s grasp.

  Alric stepped closer. “What do you know that can help?”

  I figured if Grimwold knew anything else he would have yelled it out, but he just hung there. “Maybe you need another magic user? I’m sure mine will come back soon.”

  I felt a flare and an odd brush of magic as I’d never felt before from all three elves. Pure power flowed over me and, more importantly, Grimwold. If there was ever even the slightest doubt of the power of those three, it had just been shot to hell. Show offs.

  “I think we’re okay on that front. Lock him up, Foxy.” Alric turned back to the map.

  We crowded around the map as soon as Foxy shut the door behind him. It looked just as it had before. The marks of the chest and words in the corner were visible, but nothing else.

  “What was that thing you three did? And was it a good idea considering Grimwold said no magic around the map?”

  “It was a self-indulgent show of power, and we probably shouldn’t have engaged, but I dislike that man immensely.” Lorcan didn’t even look up. “I have a feeling Cirocco just didn’t want Grimwold using magic near it.” He shook his head. “I can’t feel anything else to it, no other layers. We might have to find Nasif and have him show it to us.”

  Covey glanced at the map, and then shook her head. “But I thought we knew where to go? You had tracked the thing down, somewhere to the north. Why do we need the map?”

  I was thinking the same thing, but she beat me to it.

  Padraig slid over another, smalle
r, and more normal looking map and tapped at some mountains at the top. “The research indicates that the diamond sphinx is in this providence in the far north. But it also states that it is hidden and only the strongest magics can find it. We’d figured that part could be addressed once we got there, but apparently Nasif had something already in this map. A tir cudd is as hidden as anything can get.”

  “I don’t understand why he didn’t tell us any of this?” Covey had given up looking at the magical map and was studying the mundane one. I knew we wouldn’t need it now; she’d have memorized the entire thing.

  “Nasif is brilliant, but he’s also easily distracted. And to be honest, when he hid this map, it might have only been to hide the chest. I really feel nothing else of him from it.” Lorcan shook his head.

  “We have to leave soon,” Alric had been standing back from the maps but I knew he’d visually take them apart later.

  Lorcan sighed and rolled up the map. “Agreed. Let’s get everything in the bags. I’d rather be ready to leave quickly if we need to. I’ll send the faeries to warn Mathilda when we’re on the move.”

  I would have helped with the storing of the scrolls, maps, and books, but the three of them were fast so both Covey and I stood back in case we accidently got shoved in a bag too. “One thing that’s been bugging me,” I said. Actually, there were a lot of things bugging me, and there had been ever since I first brought in Alric as my bounty over a year ago. “If the Ancients were gone and the syclarions diminished, how did all of the pieces of the weapon get scattered everywhere? And why is the sphinx in some sort of secret magic land and the rest weren’t?”

  “Ah, well, the best theory is that when the weapon was created, its maker didn’t want it to be used against them, so they cast a spell to scatter it once it was used.” Lorcan whipped out another map, this one from his cloak pocket. “See where all of them have been found? In a scatter pattern, but some had been moved. The sapphire manticore had been found by some ruin thieves before the Breaking, and apparently they smuggled it into the enclave without us noticing until it found you. I’ll warrant that the relics had protection when they were scattered but it’s broken down over the centuries. I plan on writing a paper once we’ve resolved this.” His grin was pure crazy academician as he rolled up the map and dropped it back in his cloak pocket.

  I shook my head and went with Covey to get everything else ready. We were facing forces that were trying to destroy the world as we knew it, and possibly could be able to pull it off, but he was thinking of his next academic paper. “Academics.”

  “That sounded like a swear word,” Covey said as we gathered everything from the drunk room. Foxy must have taken over the other one for Grimwold as all of our belongings were now in this one.

  “It was. Seriously, how do you not worry about what’s going on? The focus is on papers?” Most of my things were together, so I finished and made sure the other bags were ready. The days were shorter this time of year, so we should be able to hit the road in a few hours. Maybe I’d sneak a nap in, or sit in the pub and pretend my life was normal again.

  “Oh, we worry. We all do. But for those of us with the bent, the finding out is what is important. And once we find something new, we can’t wait to share it.”

  I gave her a sideways look. “And gain some academic fame?”

  “That never hurts.” Her smile was predatory. “One of the ways to get through things like this is to talk about and visualize life after this is over. If you believe life will never be good again, even a new good, you’re not going to survive anything.”

  I pulled back at that. Covey was one of the brightest people I knew—even hanging around these crazy elves—but she’d never been that self-aware before. “The training with the nuns?”

  She laughed. “In part. I continued their training after I left them. Especially as I saw how dangerous things were getting.” She paused and looked me in the eye. “Taryn, I have a feeling things are going to get a lot worse, and you’re somehow in the middle whether you want to be or not. This could eat you alive.”

  I think it had already started. “I’ll admit that I could use something. Maybe we can try the meditation again and I’ll try not to fall asleep. And it would be nice to imagine a mundane existence again.” All of the bags were bundled by the door.

  The words had just gotten out of my mouth when the wall to the outside exploded.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rather, it was the wall from the room next to us that had exploded. Our section shook, and a crack formed under the small window, but it stayed in one piece.

  “Grimwold.” Covey and I said at the same time as we ran to the room next to ours. There was no way, even if his magic had been working right, that he would have had enough power to blow out a wall.

  Foxy had beat us to the door and unlocked it as we got to him. Yup, the entire outer wall was gone. Judging from the rubble, it had been pulled out, not exploded out. We ran through the room and out to the street but there was nothing to be seen. Except one pair of full-sized footprints and a bunch of tiny ones.

  I picked up a rope lying on the ground and followed it to a small hook that had wall rubble on it. “The brownies? Why in the heck would they have rescued him? And I thought they were hibernating?” I looked up and down the road again, but saw no other sign. The only footprints were the ones close to us, going through the destroyed wall; once they got to the street there was nothing to be seen.

  Beccia wasn’t back up to its normal self, but there were some curious folks coming out of the nearby businesses and pubs. Alric, Padraig, and Lorcan came out as well. Amara stood near the door with a pike-wielding Dogmaela right behind her.

  Alric stalked around the rubble, shaking his head. “I can’t tell that any magic was used. But something motivated those brownies.”

  The faeries had been off and about but came tearing back down the street. Considering how fast they could fly and how long it took them to get here, they must have been at the far end of town. Or very focused on something.

  “We chase!” Garbage had her current band of faeries with her. They took off down the road in the direction of the vanishing footprints before I could decide if that was a good idea or not.

  Padraig also looked around, and then he threw a spell at it. The rubble re-built itself into a wall and magic filled in the missing pieces.

  We marched back to the pub and moved everything, including way more food than we could possibly eat, into the back room to wait until closer to dark.

  “I’d say someone other than the brownies wanted to get Grimwold out,” Padraig said. “Brownies aren’t the strongest willed lot, and it wouldn’t be that hard to take them over, particularly if they were in hibernating mode. I already warned Amara to fortify her hedge.”

  Alric shook his head. “We might need to re-think waiting for darkness. If they know where we’re heading, it won’t matter if they see us leave or not.”

  “True. And the longer we stay here, the more danger to Beccia’s people,” Covey said. “If it wasn’t that difficult to manipulate magic through those brownies, then they might also try to get them past the hedge. They could use them and Grimwold to do what they want. The sooner we leave, the sooner they, hopefully, will leave the town alone.”

  “We find! Help!” Garbage yelled from outside the door. The faeries had developed an on-again-off-again ability to pop through solid objects. This must be one of their off times.

  I opened the door and got bowled over by a gang of faeries bringing in struggling brownies. Like before, it took two faeries to one brownie, even though the brownies weren’t that much larger than the faeries. Fifteen pairs of faeries came through with their brownies, then a bunch of solo faeries.

  Garbage shook her head as I shut the door behind the final ones. “Not get all. They dug through plant.”

  “They tore through the hedge?” Considering how close Amara was to her hedge, I had trouble believing she wouldn’t have noticed
if it had been dug through.

  “No, under, had hole. We destroy.” Leaf was closer to me than Garbage and punched the brownie she was carrying when he tried to get away.

  “Yes, but big one got out.” Garbage scowled.

  “Grimwold?” Alric came up to where the faeries were hovering with their catch. “Does anyone have a cage for these?” He waved a hand at the struggling brownies and they stopped struggling. “Their metabolism is odd, so I can knock them out for a short while, but whoever is working through them will just wake them up again. And could possibly be gathering information from what they see and hear.”

  There was one hanging a bit lower near me. I reached forward when something red flickered under its vest. “And that would be a yes on all of those counts.” I pulled off an amulet similar to what Alric had taken off the squirrels.

  I handed it to Alric; he said a few spell words and the red light dimmed. Then he said the same words toward the brownies being held. “This isn’t good. We need to lock them up and get out of here, now.” He put the amulet in a pocket, most likely where he was keeping the other one.

  Lorcan nodded and held out a crate he’d found behind the bar. “I’ve spelled this to hold them, for a short while at least. You’re correct; whoever is controlling them is still trying. I can feel the pulling but can’t sense the source.”

  The faeries holding brownies dropped them into the crate and Lorcan sealed it shut.

  “Didn’t want to be interrupting, but is everything okay? I saw the faeries bringing in some friends?” Foxy stuck his head in.

  “We need you to hide this, and keep it safe as long as possible,” Padraig said and pointed to the crate. “We’re not waiting for nightfall and will be leaving now. Are you and Amara ready with the distraction?”

  “Distraction?” That was new to me.

  “Something ye elf friend and I came up with to keep the eyes away from you all leaving out the back and out of town. Aye, Amara and Dogmaela be ready. Give us a nod and we’ll start.” He grabbed the crate then went back toward the door. “I can find a nice safe spot for this. Never you worry.” He left, and everyone started putting on their packs. The horses that Alric and Padraig had bought were magically hidden in an abandoned stable not far off the alley, near the hedge.