I was grateful there wasn’t any sound.
Rather than watch the drama being reenacted before us, I memorized everything I could about the killer. It really didn’t take a lot of concentration to brand his face on my mind. Tall if he were a Human, almost my height. Square shoulders, estimated weight around two hundred pounds. Dark hair pulled back and held with a silver ring. Dressed in black leather, rather flamboyantly cut, his knee-high boots had two-inch riding heels. He wore his sword across his back.
I hadn’t seen a Dark Elf on Earth before, but the man Josef’s magic revealed was definitely Dralf. What he wanted with dragonet eggs was anybody’s guess. The thought of what he might do with a Dragon’s egg made me shudder.
The end of the divination caught my attention. Instead of killing Novotny with his blade, the man motioned with his fist and spoke a Word. Novotny’s heart exploded, leaving the gaping hole in his chest we had first noted. The Dralf gathered the eggs into a box filled with shredded paper and stepped out of our sight.
Josef snuffed the candles, and I thought he looked a bit shaky. He packed up his things and walked out to the front of the store where he spoke with Marcus Novotny for several minutes. Then he motioned to us, and we followed him out of the store.
“I could use a drink,” he said when we got outside, “but not in this part of town. Come, and we’ll discuss what we saw.”
We climbed into a new Volkswagen, and he drove back across the river. He parked the car at his shop, then led us down to the corner of the street and into a pub.
A waitress came to our table, Josef ordered, and she went away. When she came back, she sat three glasses half full of amber liquid in front of us, along with a beer each.
Valinir sniffed his drink, and I said, “Slivovice. It’s a plum brandy.”
Josef held up his glass, we clinked ours to it, and Josef downed half of his glass. Valinir followed his lead, but I only took a sip. As a result, I wasn’t left gasping for air with my eyes bulging out of my head like Valinir. I had drunk slivovice before.
“What a nasty business,” Josef said. “Even after all I’ve seen, it still astonishes me how much evil there is in the world.” He sighed. “So, was that effort worth anything?”
I nodded. “The man you saw wasn’t Human. There are three different types of Elves. I guess you would call them races or ethnic groups. Valinir and I are High Elves, often called Mountain Elves. Then there are Wood Elves, and Dark Elves. The differences are really minor physically, but we each tend to have different kinds of magic. In our home realms, a war is currently being fought by the High Elves and Wood Elves on one side, and the Dark Elves and Dwarves on the other. The man you showed us is a Dark Elf, or Dralf.”
“And if he is looking for a Dragon’s egg,” Valinir said, “he knows exactly what would happen if it hatched in this realm. Understand, Dragons are intelligent creatures, but they are also forces of chaos. As Elves and Angels and Humans worship the gods, Dragons worship the archdemons. This Dralf, obviously, is chaotic.”
Chapter 9
The following day, we ventured out through Smichov again and headed to the market in Bertramka. It was a bright autumn day without any breeze, and the sun gave it warmth as long as we stayed out of shadows.
The locals seemed to enjoy the day. As we walked through a park, we saw several couples openly engaged in bedroom activities on the grass. Combined with the trash lying about, I thought it set a perfect prelude to Bertramka.
The farther we walked, the more decrepit the surroundings became. Even the buildings that looked nice from a distance turned out to be dirty and poorly maintained once we got close. The men standing around smoking outside a pub with a broken sign looked as though they hadn’t changed clothes or shaved in days.
A group of street urchins, mostly teenagers, began to track us. I could see them on rooftops, flitting from alley to alley, and following us at a distance. Soon a couple of them became brave enough to catcall us, mostly about our looks and our clothes.
We rounded a corner and found ourselves in a small square surrounded by dilapidated buildings. Other than about thirty or forty ragged young Humans blocking our way, no one else was on the street.
“I don’t think there’s any need to hurt them,” I said.
Valinir shrugged. “Fine with me.” He sketched a couple of runes in the air and linked them, then spoke a Word.
A fierce gust of wind blew out in all directions from where we stood, scouring the street clean of trash and debris. When it reached the kids surrounding us, it blew them off their feet, tumbling the smaller ones across the ground like the trash.
Once the gust passed, everything was calm. We walked on, and no one molested us again.
“Very nice,” I said.
He smiled back. “Glad you approve.”
The market was located near the Bertramka villa, which had once contained a Mozart museum. The area had an air of abandonment and sadness. The once-ornate gardens were overgrown, and the few businesses in the area that survived conveyed a feeling of desperate decline.
We walked through a small gate in the villa wall and down a dark tunnel wide enough for a small truck. Magelights on the wall every few yards weren’t enough to dispel the gloom. The smell wasn’t very pleasant, either, sort of concentrated from what we had encountered above ground.
About fifty feet after we entered the tunnel, we encountered a veil of resistance that was easy to push through, but I knew an Earth Human without magic would have seen it as a solid wall. Another fifty feet, and the tunnel took a sharp left, then opened up into an area that seemed to be above ground. A blue sun hung in the sky, and the temperature was much warmer than it had been in Prague. We took off our coats as we looked around.
A warren of winding streets and alleys lined with small booths covered by gaily-decorated awnings spread out in front of us. In some ways, it reminded me of the market in Marrakesh, but far less genuine. A taint of dark magic seemed to hang in the air, but that could have been my imagination.
Valinir looked around and said, “Nice illusion. I’ll bet a lot of people think they passed through a veil into another realm.”
“I think that’s the intended affect. Come on, let’s go see what we can find.”
“You want me to hang back and let you do your thing?” he asked.
“Not here. Believe me, an Elf in here is even more of a rarity than in other parts of Earth. I don’t want someone trying to kidnap and sell me.”
About two hours after we arrived, we found the dragonet eggs. The merchant was some sort of humanoid halfling, but I couldn’t figure out what the halves were. He had several animals from different realms in cages. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. He also had lots of animal parts. The eggs were on a back shelf away from clumsy shoppers.
“What kind of eggs are those?” I asked.
“Dragonet, my lady,” he said. “From Draegar. They are viable and should, with proper care, hatch. Imagine your very own miniature dragon as a pet. Or, of course, you could harvest the scales, claws, or other parts for use in spells.”
I glanced at Valinir, who frowned.
“Oh, wouldn’t that be fun?” I laughed and clapped my hands together.
Valinir’s expression changed to one of alarm. I crowded against him, forcing him to back up off balance. He reached out and grabbed my arm to steady himself. I followed him, trying to make it look like he was pulling me.
“Play along,” I whispered, looking up at him.
“All right. What are we playing?” he whispered back.
I put on an expression that I hoped looked petulant, pulled away from him, and turned back to the merchant.
“He won’t let me bring another dragonet home. He says that replacing the servants is too costly.” I ignored the alarmed look on the merchant’s face and moved to look at one of the other animals, something that looked like a weird cross between a lynx and a rabbit.
“Did the servants quit?” I heard the merch
ant ask Valinir.
“Damned things eat anything they can catch,” he said. “Losing a stable hand or two wouldn’t bother me that much, and you might figure you could just feed them sheep. But when they get larger, it’s difficult to build a cage strong enough to contain one. And it would be difficult to hire replacement servants, considering. Not to mention, children would be very easy for a dragonet to catch. I think that is a bit too much, don’t you?”
“H-h-how did you get rid of it?” the merchant asked, sweat breaking out on his brow and his eyes fixed on Valinir.
“Harpies will hunt them,” Valinir said. “Dragons eat them, too.”
I thought I was going to lose it. I had to leave the merchant’s stall, coughing to cover up my laughter. In typical Elven fashion, Valinir hadn’t told a single lie, but had led the merchant to believe an entire scenario that wasn’t real.
It took an effort, but I got myself under control and went back. Valinir came toward me holding a box in his arms.
“What’s that?”
“Dragonet eggs.”
“You bought them?” I hadn’t asked how much the merchant wanted for the eggs, but I was sure it was exorbitant.
Valinir chuckled. “He practically begged me to take them. I was reluctant, but he finally convinced me.”
I started laughing again. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. I also learned who sold them to him.”
That’s when I sobered completely. “Go on.”
“A Dralf by the name of Mondranar,” Valinir said. “An interesting name, the same as one of Prietnar’s most trusted operatives. Mondranar ap th’Lilinin is a realm walker and a battle mage from Alfheim. I’ve never met him, but I know him by reputation, and that reputation is most foul.”
“Lovely. That’s all we need.”
Prietnar was the Dark Elf king and a dark mage. The concept of an Elven king was unnatural, but Prietnar had murdered his mother and sisters, defied the Goddess, and taken the Dralf throne hundreds of years before. A state of uneasy truce interspersed with bloody battles between the Dralf and their Elven cousins had existed since that time.
But four or five years before, Prietnar had subverted Prince Ragnar of the High Elves, who then followed Prietnar’s example and murdered his mother and sister, installed himself as king, and then pledged fealty to Prietnar. Most of the High Elves and the Wood Elves refused to acknowledge Ragnar, and war had waged across Alfheim and its neighboring realms ever since, triggering the Elven migration to Earth.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. If Elves from Alfheim had come to Earth, it followed that Dralf would come as well.
“What do you plan to do with those eggs?” I asked.
“Take them someplace and destroy them. I can’t see any value in letting them hatch, and given time, they will probably hatch.” A sudden grin lit his face. “I could take them to Transvyl and plant them on a warm beach.”
I barked out a laugh. Transvyl was the home realm of the Vampires. “While that’s tempting, I don’t think upsetting the natural balance there would serve the Goddess.”
“True. So, we’ll destroy them.”
We walked to the river and leaned against a wall overlooking the main city across the way. Valinir methodically cracked the eggs against the wall and dumped the contents out into the river. The dragonets were almost fully formed, about four or five inches long.
“How large would they get?” I asked.
“The females up to six feet, the males four to five feet. They’ll eat their body weight in meat the first three or four years while they mature, and they aren’t picky about what kind of meat. They turn on each other if there’s nothing else available.”
I watched him destroy the eggs and enjoyed the view of the city. The scene was very tranquil, quite a change from the horror of Tomas Novotny’s shop the day before.
“You didn’t happen to glean any information about where that Mondranar fellow might be found, did you?”
Valinir winked at me. “As a matter of fact, he did leave a way to contact him with that merchant. Just in case the merchant caught wind of a Dragon’s egg for sale.”
“Really?” For a second, I got excited, then wondered what good that information did us. “But, he’s looking for the egg, too. How does that help us?”
“I’m not entirely sure. We know who to look out for, we know how to find him, and we know he’s willing to murder for the egg. We might also assume he wasn’t the murderer in Dublin, or he’d already have the egg.” Valinir shrugged. “It’s a piece of the puzzle, but we don’t know if it’s an important piece.”
“Personally,” I said, “I would rather not deal with a battle mage. I harbor no misconceptions as to how I’d fare if I had to face him. He wouldn’t even have to resort to magic. My sword work may be good enough to deal with a Human or a Demon, but I’m not a trained warrior.”
Valinir shook his head. “I’m not anxious to test my mettle against a warrior with Mondranar’s reputation, either. Do you think it’s worthwhile for us to sniff around that market some more?”
“I doubt it. I think Mondranar has probably scoured every corner already. And if he spread the payment for those dragonet eggs effectively, anyone with news of a larger egg will be seeking him out.”
“So, maybe we should watch him?”
“Discreetly, from a distance.”
The merchant at the market had given Valinir the name of a tavern in the Old Town as a place to contact Mondranar. Valinir donned a glamour and left word with the tavernkeeper that he might have information about a special kind of egg.
Then we sat back to watch. In six-hour shifts, one or the other of us sat on a roof across the way, keeping an eye on the tavern.
Near the end of my morning shift the following day, Valinir came over the roof from behind me, sat down, and offered me a sack. I dug out the sandwich and the bottle of cold fruit juice inside.
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“There was a child playing with a dog and a ball. They were rather entertaining, but then his mother yelled at him for playing in the street,” I answered. “The whore and the client who wouldn’t pay her last night were more exciting.”
“You get all the fun shifts,” he said. “All I got early this morning were drunks staggering home.”
I ate my sandwich, then said, “Suppose he comes through the back door?”
“Then we’ll still get a phone call,” Valinir said, holding up the burner phone we’d bought. “We’ll set up a rendezvous and not show up, then follow him.”
He shifted his position and leaned in front of me, looking past me down at the street.
“Kellana, see that woman walking this way?”
I saw her. Tall, with red hair, dressed all in black and very curvy. Her posture and her strides displayed confidence.
“Yes?”
“She was at the market when the merchant gave me the eggs.”
The woman entered the tavern we were watching.
“She’s not wearing a glamour, but she is a mage,” I said. “I’m not sure she’s Human. Maybe a halfling of some sort, but not an Elf.”
The woman emerged less than five minutes later, looking around wildly, and then hurrying back along the street the way she came.
“You stay here and watch for Mondranar,” I said, jumping up and skidding down the roof to the edge, where I grabbed the rain gutter and wheeled over the side. The building had lots of fancy architectural decorations protruding from the wall, in addition to balconies on every floor. I managed to make it to the ground with only a few scrapes and bruises and without breaking any bones. The redhead was just disappearing around the corner a block away.
Throwing caution to the wind, I raced after her, not caring if any Humans saw me running that fast. Rounding the corner, I saw her halfway down the block ahead of me. I slowed when I got within fifty feet of her and answered my phone, which had been ringing most of the time since I jumped off the roof
.
“Are you all right?” Valinir asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Did you catch her?”
“I’m following her. She’s in a hurry and not paying any attention to her surroundings as far as I can tell.”
I could almost hear the smirk in Valinir’s voice as he said, “You might consider donning a glamour if you’re planning on following her without being noticed. Let me know if you need any help.”
Smartass. But he was right. I assumed the glamour of a woman in her forties with brown hair, much shorter than me, and much rounder. It was a common disguise that I used. Absolutely ordinary, with nothing that people would notice or remember.
I followed the redheaded mage for six blocks, then hurried to catch up to her and barely managed to get on the bus she boarded. I hadn’t noticed where the bus was going, and the route map on the bus didn’t help since I didn’t read Czech. Pulling out my phone, I called Valinir.
“Hi. We got on a bus heading north. I have no idea where I’m going. If I disappear, find Josef and have him scry where I am, okay?”
Valinir chuckled, which irritated me. I wasn’t trying to be funny.
“Remind me to put a tracking spell on you,” he said. I wasn’t sure that was something I wanted, but he did have a point.
Before we got to the river, the redhead got off, walked a block, and waited at another bus stop. After waiting for fifteen minutes, we boarded another bus heading east. We made one more transfer, and I took the chance of walking away, out of her sight, and modifying my glamour. Eventually, we ended up in a residential area on the far eastern edge of the city.
She walked to what looked like an old farm, but as we got closer, I saw it had been converted into a hotel. It must have been a very prosperous farm at one time, because as I followed her, I realized the place was huge. It was also rather maze-like. For someone like me, who preferred nature over concrete, it would be a great place to stay.
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