“I am not,” he said, but winced as Garbage moved into his space again. “Okay, Kelm and I were to escort Lorcan to join you, then stay on as support. Kelm is a new knight and hasn’t been involved with or had contact with any of the ones from the Dark. He and I are the only two completely cleared at this point.”
From the look on his face you would have thought he was being forced to admit royal secrets.
Lorcan smiled and patted him on the cheek as he walked by. “Good boy.”
“So how did this happen? What happened?” I had my sword in my hand, which didn’t mean we were still in danger. It meant I had no control over my sword.
Padraig’s sword had also vanished.
“The how is what we need to find out,” Lorcan said as he walked closer. “All I know is that two days ago I was drifting about, watching the rebuilding of the palace, and I slammed into a wall.” His grin was huge as he looked around. “I started swearing before I realized the implications.”
Padraig grinned and patted his friend on the back. “It is good to have you back. Between us, we can figure out how to keep you in your body.”
A sharp noise tore into the air and the canyon wall across from us cracked. Whatever it was didn’t cause any rocks to fall and the hairs on my arm stood on end as a flow of freezing air hit me.
Alric pulled me away and Padraig motioned for the others to do the same.
“That’s not natural,” Alric said as he lifted his hand. He normally cast spells without the fancy movements favored by Padriag but he did an elaborate twist with his wrist now.
He pushed us back another step.
Padraig stepped forward. Alric was a tracker, spy, and fighter—and not a weak magic user. But Padraig was by far the stronger. Both of his hands moved so fast I couldn’t see his fingers at all. A moment later, the crack slammed shut and the chill drifted away.
“There was a breach in the magic lines there,” Padraig said calmly. “Something popped through, but I closed the breach.” His voice was calm, but the look he shot both Alric and Lorcan was not. All three of them wiped the concern away quickly, but I knew what I saw.
I didn’t even know magic lines could breach, pop, or do anything of the sort. I was going to need to switch my magic training to Lorcan or Padraig it appeared. Not that I didn’t enjoy training with Alric, but he was avoiding some subjects. Not to mention if we did get any alone time I’d rather not spend it on magic.
“Bored now.” The faeries flew silently over us, and Garbage managed to drop in front of my face before I noticed.
I looked up. It looked like our pack of faeries were there, but Bunky and the gargoyle weren’t.
“Where’s Bunky?”
“He bored too.” Leaf dropped down out of the flock. “He go find another big boom.”
Not boom again. They used boom for everything from major world-changing rips in dimensions to falling out of a tree. And they never could explain things more than boom.
“Which boom, sweetie?” I appealed to Leaf as sometimes she was easier to get through to than the others. Garbage was belligerent just because and Crusty often wasn’t even sure where she was. I hadn’t bonded enough with the rest of the pack to get much information out of most of them.
“That one.” She pointed to where the crack had been. That got everyone else’s attention.
“You knew about that?” Padraig held out his hand and the five closest faeries landed immediately. Then Garbage landed in the middle and pushed the others off. The smile she gave him was maniacal for any other being, but for her a rare sign of true affection.
“Yes. Big boom. You stop. Is good.” She smiled even larger. “Go now?”
Padraig looked over her head to me, but I shrugged.
“I have no idea how they knew. They weren’t even here.” I studied all of the faeries. “Had they known it was there, they would have been flying through to wherever it went.” My watching paid off. Leaf and half of the others all had a flash of guilt across their faces.
“Damn it. Why didn’t you tell us it was here?”
Garbage glared down the rest of her pack, then tried to look contrite. I had no idea how many hundreds or thousands of years old the faeries were—it hadn’t been long enough for her to get that look down. She ended up looking more deranged than usual.
“Shouldn’t be. Needed to see before boom.” Crusty piped up from the middle of the pack. “Not right boom. Bad boom. Telling now.”
Garbage rolled her eyes but didn’t even waste a glare on Crusty. “Only went part way in. Just showed up.”
So that crack had recently appeared, but they’d had time to fly through before we even knew it was there.
Alric had been ignoring the faeries and was focusing on the patch of rock where the crack had been. “We need to get moving now. There’s a weird magic residue, and I don’t think we want to be here if that thing opens again.”
4
The rain started the moment we got moving. Flarinen and Kelm rode a bit ahead, something Alric had been doing since we started this trip but he gave it up without a word once Flarinen claimed it. I knew it wasn’t because of any thought of Flarinen leading; it was that Alric was already looking for ways to build distance between them.
Instead he tied his horse to the back of the larger wagon and drove Lorcan’s smaller one with Padraig and Lorcan inside. That was a bit of a fight. Lorcan insisted he could drive, even in the chilling rain. Padraig talked him out of it and Alric had to talk Padraig out of driving as well. None of us had any idea how long Lorcan would keep hold of his body. I had to assume his brother wasn’t pleased about losing it. Padraig and Lorcan needed to find out how he’d gotten it back and how to keep it. They both needed to spend the time traveling reading spell books.
Which left Covey and I flipping a coin for driving our wagon—as in who would have to. Of course, Covey won. Never play games of chance with a trellian—they always win. I’d never been able to catch her cheating. And that wouldn’t go with her personality. But I also never won.
I covered up as best I could against the rain and drove our wagon behind Alric and the others. The ravine we were passing through was widening a bit, now it was wide enough for four wagons to ride side by side, but the scenery hadn’t changed.
Watching the slowly moving gait of the horse in front of me gave me plenty of time to reflect. Especially after my first attempt at starting a conversation with Covey in the back lead to a loud snort followed by snoring. Not that I could blame her, all of us were tired.
Growing up, all I wanted to be was a digger. Have a chance to find out what really happened to the elves. Having to bounty hunt during lean times led me to Alric—and pretty much the end of life as I had intended it.
A twinge of guilt hit me about the town that had been my home for fifteen years, and hopefully would be again. Beccia was rough and shabby, but it was home. And, like me, it had taken some hits over the past few months. Some might even say it was because of me and the relics that the town had taken those hits.
My guilt came from not thinking about them recently. The mayor of Kenithworth had shown an unhealthy interest in Beccia. Unfortunately, I was focusing on the rest of the relics, along with a bunch of rakasa, syclarions, and some seriously misguided elves. Sending my friends to go check on Beccia backfired as they turned around and followed after Alric and me anyway.
Which left me in the cold rain and having guilt about my friends.
The rain stopped soon enough—a good thing as a flash flood could wipe us all out—but my guilt continued.
“You’re thinking so loud that a body can’t even get proper sleep,” Covey said from the window behind the wagon driver’s seat.
“I’m thinking how I seemed to have managed to doom all of my friends, and I’m not even sure what for.” My wallowing was in full force.
Covey’s laugh was always startling, usually because it was so rarely heard. “Yes, you forced all of us to follow you on this.”
Her smile faded. “I don’t know how long that would last. I’ve been looking at Padraig’s books and they fill in a lot of gaps from the scrolls I’ve been able to translate in the last few months. This wasn’t random. The relics coming back into the world, people knowing about them.” She scowled. “This seems to be preordained. Not our participation in it, but the coming back of things from the past. It’s almost as if they are on a trajectory to return, but there’s no way to really pinpoint the timing.”
I knew how much that admission annoyed her. The idea that events were preordained, that we didn’t have a say in them at all, wasn’t a concept that set well with her. Or me.
“Yeah, but if we’d stayed in Beccia we might have had a few more years of ignorant bliss.” I shook my head as the reality of things hit. “It doesn’t matter, we’re here now. And there’s a slim chance we might make a difference.”
“I wondered how long it would take you to realize that. Now, try not to think so hard, it disrupts my sleep.” Covey gave me a smile, and then dropped the curtain.
She was right, or rather, I was. Any of us could have stopped this hell-bent trip at any time—and none of us did. I did spare a good thought for Foxy and Amara back at the Shimmering Dewdrop in Beccia. Good people and a good pub with good, cheap beer. I sighed.
The canyon we were riding through grew curvier, but fortunately stayed at its wider space. I heard the horses coming toward us long before I saw them.
Alric stopped his wagon at a slightly less curvy section, and we waited for the riders to come to us. My assumption was Kelm and Flarinen, but my assumptions weren’t always working out.
That my sword suddenly appeared, in my hand this time, wasn’t a vote of confidence in my assumptions either.
It must have been because of the curves in the canyon, it took forever for the riders to appear. It was Flarinen and Kelm, but they appeared to be chasing Bunky and the gargoyle.
Bunky flew low over my head and dropped down next to me. The gargoyle overshot but swung around wildly, gronked, and landed almost on top of Bunky. The gargoyle was a construct, made of metal to look like a relic made of glass that was fashioned after a gargoyle made of stone. Yet the emotions of panic were clear on his little metal-glass-stone face.
Flarinen and Kelm had to stop at Alric and the wagon, but they didn’t seem to really be chasing my friends. The faeries had gone ahead as well and I really hoped the fact they weren’t with Bunky meant they’d found their own mayhem to get into.
“Defend! They are upon us!” Flarinen did look impressive with his armor glinting in the bit of sun, his sword raised high above his head. And I was sure had we been a battalion of knights we would have roared back in agreement.
As it was, Lorcan, Padraig, and even Covey came out of the wagons, armed and ready. Alric stayed on his seat, but his sword was out.
Flarinen spun and waited for whatever he thought was following them. Had I not seen how disturbed Bunky and the gargoyle were, I’d think Flarinen had been drinking. He’d reacted as if the enemy was at his heels, but there was only he and Kelm.
I looked down at the two constructs. The way they were watching Flarinen, it might have been he and Kelm who scared them unintentionally while they were running away from whatever they were running away from.
We waited a few more moments. My sword stuck around, so at least something believed Flarinen.
Finally, Alric jumped off the wagon, handed the reins to Padraig and stalked over to Flarinen. “What are we defending against? Or did that rain upset you?”
Flarinen spun back and forth, then shook his head and got off his horse. “I’m not imagining things. There was an entire battalion directly behind us. I saw them and heard them. They changed direction toward us once they spotted us.” He took off his helmet and his eyes were looking a little wild. “They were right behind.”
Kelm also took off his helmet and nodded. “It’s true. I’ve no reason as to why they aren’t here, but I saw them as well. The walls shook with their horses’ hooves.” He wouldn’t look at any one of us for more than a second. He finally settled on Lorcan as the safe person to talk to. It made me wonder what Flarinen had told him about us.
“Then where are they now?” Alric got too far into Flarinen’s space. “I know we had one magical crack in the canyon appear, are you saying there was another and it, what, swallowed the entire battalion?”
“No. But I know what I saw.” Flarinen took a step closer and the two were almost bumping chests.
This pissing match between these two was already old. I looked down at the constructs, both were settled down now, but neither were resuming their flying. “Did Bunky and his friend take off when you started after them? Or before?”
Flarinen shook his head. “We were not chasing them. They had been ahead of us, but they turned back and flew past us as the battalion came into view.”
“I trust Bunky and the gargoyle,” I said after watching both for a moment. “They were more disturbed than I’d ever seen them, and I don’t think it was because of Flarinen and Kelm.” Based on his reactions, I’d gathered a while ago that Bunky understood me, I just couldn’t understand him. He demonstrated that by lifting off the wagon seat, followed by the gargoyle, and both flew over to Flarinen and Kelm. They didn’t land on them, but they also weren’t afraid.
“Where did you first see them?” Lorcan asked, then turned to Padraig, “I think we need to see this area.”
Padraig gave a tight nod and looked expectantly to Flarinen.
“About a fifteen-minute fast ride from here. The canyon opens up at that point into a wide valley. Kelm and I were checking the perimeter when they appeared.”
Lorcan nodded and he and Padraig got into their wagon.
“I think we all need to be ready for wild magic,” Alric said as he climbed back into the driver’s seat of their wagon, “we’re getting closer to where it’s been reported.”
I hadn’t gotten off my seat during the exchange and was surprised when Covey climbed up next to me.
“There’s no way I’m missing this, especially if it’s involving wild magic.” She had the deranged intense academic on the prowl look that usually only appeared when she was about to dive into a few hours of digging through a bunch of books.
Flarinen turned and he and Kelm lead us down the canyon at a brisk walk.
Alric had started his wagon forward when Covey took the reins out of my hands and clicked to the horse to move.
“I was going to do that, you know.”
“Yes, yes, but we can’t take a chance that we’ll miss it.” She was far too excited for this to be good for me. I hadn’t heard of the term wild magic unless it was Alric aiming the words at me and my inability to always control my spells.
“Do I want to know what wild magic is?”
“Pockets of magic that get trapped in time. Completely unpredictable and powerful. The scholars of Kherin claim there used to be far more of them and they have dissipated over the centuries. I’ve never seen one, but if that is what we have, it must be incredibly strong to have survived this long.”
I waited for more. When no clearer information was forthcoming, I shook my head. “For simple folks like me? What is it?”
The toothy smile she turned on me with would have made a normal person jump off the wagon.
“Ghosts. We might have magically powerful ghosts. Right here, in the land where the Ancients once lived.”
5
“Isn’t that wonderful?” she added with the same enthusiasm that I would have used if I found a lovely pub with free drinks.
It took me a few moments to come up with a reply that didn’t involve me screaming, jumping off the wagon, and running back to Beccia. We’d run into ghosts back in the elven enclave. Covey had only seen them briefly
as we fled Qianru’s home. I’d seen them far closer than I ever wanted. Ghost elves fighting a long-lost battle, but somehow turning that battle into trying to destroy us. Yes, there were some magical things going on that were probably behind the direct attacks on us, but that wasn’t much comfort.
“How can you be excited about more things that might be out to kill us?”
Covey was impatiently jogging our horse to move faster. But unless she was planning on riding over Alric’s wagon, we were stuck until the canyon widened out again. There was room for two wagons side by side here, but barely, and there was rock and plant debris along the sides. “Just because they’re ghosts doesn’t mean they have to try to kill us.” She let go of the reins with one hand to give a flippant wave. “Aren’t you the least excited that there might be ghosts of the Ancients, not only elves or the other races, but the Ancients out here?”
The chill that went through me had nothing to do with my damp clothing. “I’ll agree that I obviously am interested in who and what the Ancients were, but I’d rather find out by discovering some new ruins. Intact ones preferably.” There was simply no way ghosts could be good. Judging by the reactions of both elven knights, these weren’t warm and friendly beings. Granted, they’d thought what they faced was flesh and blood at the time.
“But think of what we could ask them. What really happened?” The gleam in Covey’s eyes was so strong I was afraid she’d not only ride us over Alric’s wagon but into the abyss itself for the chance to find out what really happened to the Ancients.
I’d thought that since we found the elves she might settle down and become less academically aggressive. I was wrong. All she did was push her energy onto the long-lost Ancients.
Unlike the elves, who history had originally said had simply vanished, it was pretty well known that something huge, fast, and nasty destroyed the Ancients. They were supposed to be incredibly powerful beings who were wiped out in a single moment.
That moment was over 2,500 years ago. Their supposed power was mostly a thing of myth and legend since little had been left behind, but it made for great stories. Huge, powerful, immortal beings snuffed out in a moment like a cheap tallow candle.
The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Page 3