The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5)

by Marie Andreas

  “I should be mad, and I might be, I haven’t sorted things out yet.” I shot him a glare just to be sure I was covered later. “How could both of you use the faery bags? I’ve tried and they wouldn’t work for me.” Alric probably used some magic on them, but Flarinen refused to use magic on principle.

  “I got them drunk and asked them for one and they made it usable for me,” Flarinen spoke before Alric did. “They are agreeable for a price. What happened to them?” That was the first inflection in his voice since he’d come in. He was leaning toward the table where the faeries lay.

  “I did the same, more or less,” Alric said.

  “How could I have not thought of that?” I looked to the table where Bunky and the gargoyle were standing watch. “The last rakasa, the one who somehow knew where the relic was, cast a spell on them.”

  Flarinen shook his head. “I am so sorry. I will leave you all and wander until I have found absolution.”

  “No,” Alric said. “I was wondering if this was going down that path. You do not get to be the failed knight who wanders the land. We already have tales of those. You fell prey to a vicious relic. That’s all. I know you knights don’t believe it, but you are only elven.” He got up and went to the kitchen and came back with a pair of ales. He handed one to me, and sat back down with the second. “You’re tied up because we’re afraid you’d do something dramatic and overwrought. Not because we were going to hurt you.”

  “Well. Some of us wanted to hurt you,” Covey said as she flexed her fingers again. “But I’ve always disliked you, so this isn’t new.”

  Kelm had stayed silent, but watching.

  “What of Kelm? You can’t seriously believe he can continue his training and this task with a fallen knight as his leader?” Now Flarinen was showing some emotions.

  “You aren’t fallen,” Kelm said softly. “No one could have fought that relic. I felt the pull last night, and while you were on guard, I took it out and held it. I would have tried to steal it tonight.”

  Flarinen’s emotions were reengaged and he went from shock to concern to anger in the time of a single faery wing beat. I cut him off before the words reached his mouth.

  “There we have it. The dragon relic is strong, it took down two of our most dedicated people. Can we now move on? The rest of the relics are possibly in town and not with Nivinal. Not to mention a missing and hopefully dying rakasa.”

  Kelm recovered faster than Flarinen. “That creature vanished in front of our eyes. It was slowing down. You did it grievous injury, Lady Taryn,” he nodded to me, “but before we could catch it, the being was gone. It was less than five feet ahead of us, there was no way we could have missed it.”

  Crap. “Was there a hole?” The rakasa were ground dwellers and could create tunnels under the ground.

  “No,” Flarinen said. “The ground was solid.”

  “The ground here is probably too rocky for them.” Padraig said.

  “Then we have to presume Nivinal grabbed the relic and the rakasa,” Lorcan said.

  29

  “Great, so he got the relic back, but we don’t even know how he lost it in the first place, or if the other two relics are roaming around?” I noticed Bunky nudging one of the faeries so I walked over. The others started debating where, when, and how the relics got separated.

  Garbage had flung one arm across her face and was moaning.

  This was only the second time I’d seen any of the faeries act as if they had a hangover. “Honey? Are you okay?” I’d kept my voice low, but the twenty-two other faeries all cringed and covered their heads.

  “Bad man.” Garbage tried to roll to her feet without actually removing her arm from her face. “Took ale.”

  There were five partially full ale bottles sitting on the table where they’d left them. “They’re right there.” I didn’t think diving back in after being spelled so hard that they passed out was a good idea, but if they thought it would help I was willing to go along with it.

  “No. Ale out us.” She was rolling around and I finally picked her up and put her on her feet.

  “Did he take your bags?” I was at a loss and everyone else was debating the relics. Even Flarinen seemed to forget he was tied to a chair and engaged in the conversation.

  “No, no, no. Ale. Not us now.” She finally removed her arm from her face. I’d seen that look before but never on a faery. She was seriously hung over.

  “He made you sober?” Being sober shouldn’t cause the look on her face, nor the slow creeping around on the table by the other faeries. Maybe if it was done suddenly though? Forced sobriety as a spell? Faeries’ metabolism was unlike that of any other creature.

  “Is. very. bad. thing.” Leaf staggered to her feet and looked around bleary eyed.

  “What will make you better?” At the way they all looked I was willing to drop them into as many ale bottles as needed.

  “Uncle Harlan,” Crusty said as she rolled to her feet. She made it much easier than the others, but then again she spent most of her time unbalanced whether she was sober or not.

  “Uncle Harlan is far from here, honey. Remember? He had to go see the other elves.”

  “No, is needing,” she opened her mouth and pointed inside.

  “Sugar?”

  “No, num yum.”

  I hung my head. “Chocolate?” At their nods I waved around the house. “Where are we going to get that here? Not to mention, that stuff knocks you all out, not perks you up.” Tea actually perked them up—maybe I could try that. Unfortunately, it perked them up too much and after everything I’d been through, I wasn’t up to dealing with speeding-out-of-control faeries.

  “We go out, come back right.” Crusty even pantomimed passing out then bouncing to her feet.

  All of the faeries were up now, and from the looks of them, they all wanted chocolate.

  I took a step back into the main part of the room. “Does anyone have chocolate? We need to reset the faeries.”

  The others had not settled on anything about the rest of the relics, at least not that I could tell. But my call cut through the discussion.

  Lorcan perked up. “You know, I actually do. I was hoping to run some experiments on the effect of it on the faeries at different doses, but this is more important.” He went into a small room off of the kitchen and came back with some wrapped packages, some paper and a writing quill. He handed the packages to me.

  “It might be best if you gave it to them. I would like to observe. Once we have sorted out this relic and mad mages issue, I intend to write a comprehensive work on faeries.”

  I smiled. Academics. Whether trellian or elven, give them something to work on and even the potential end of the world seemed trivial.

  The faeries were stumbling around, but the moment I tore the wrapper on the first piece they all perked up.

  I quickly unwrapped the chocolate, piled it around the table, and stepped back. Bunky and the gargoyle looked interested at first, then quickly backed away as the faeries realized what they had.

  My dear friend Harlan had found their weakness for it a few months ago. It mostly put them into a stupor, but since when they were actually drunk, they kept drinking until they passed out, maybe this would take care of whatever side effects the forced sobriety caused. I doubted that was the actual spell the rakasa used, but a forced sobriety wouldn’t have made the faeries happy at any point.

  Or they just wanted chocolate.

  The feeding frenzy was scary to behold as twenty-three tiny faeries swarmed the chocolate. Within a few moments it was all gone. Including the wrappers.

  The faeries were covered in chocolate as they stumbled around the table. Bunky and the gargoyle took to the air to avoid them. I didn’t know if it was the bad reaction to the spell, or the chocolate covering their wings, but while the faeries reached for Bunky as he lifted off, they didn’t leave the table.

  Garbage staggered over to where I stood while trying to keep chocolate free. “You is good. N
o matter what did before.” She gave me a huge smile, shook a finger at me, then went face down on the table. As if that was the cue, all the rest collapsed as well.

  That was cryptic. What did I do before? I wanted to wake her up and ask, but I also didn’t really want to touch her. And I was certain she’d have no idea what she meant even if I could get her to wake up.

  “Could your two flyers do a recon for us?” Kelm seemed far surer of himself than he had since he’d joined us. Perhaps seeing the pompous and self-righteous Flarinen fail so spectacularly was good for the kid’s spirit.

  “Kelm thinks the other two relics are still in town and Nivinal doesn’t have them.” Alric went behind Flarinen and untied him. Their debate must have convinced him Flarinen wasn’t going to go out and mope for the rest of his life.

  “What makes you think that?” I went back to my seat and my bottle of ale.

  Kelm seemed embarrassed now and I realized it might not be all of us that rattled him but just me. There have been men who had a thing for me before, but that wasn’t what this felt like. I think he was afraid of me.

  I smiled and did my best to look non-threatening.

  “Strategy.” Kelm looked toward the others. “We know Reginald betrayed Nivinal at some point. Alric told me about his friend Mackil and that he’d been sold out by someone who hired him. What if Reginald brought in Mackil, with the plan of stealing the relics and trapping Nivinal here? He lost Lorcan’s body, but also stole and lost the relics.” He got up and waved his hands as he worked his way through his thoughts. As long as he didn’t look at me, he seemed to be doing fine. “Mackil became his most recent body-snatching victim because he thought taking him over would give him the knowledge he needed to get out. Nivinal set a trap that you two fell into that sent you back in time and changed Null.” He’d been speaking so fast no one said anything as it took a bit for our brains to catch up. He looked a bit embarrassed when he stopped. “Or I could be wrong.”

  “He has some good points,” Padraig said. “We’re not any closer to figuring out how Lorcan got his body back, so if Reginald and Nivinal fought, a spell could have loosened Reginald’s hold on the body.”

  “Nivinal obviously has control of the rakasa, although I do wonder if the one Taryn fought off was going back to join him originally or trying to keep the dragon himself.” Covey had retracted all of her external berserker appearance, but she looked more aggressive than usual. I’d have to ask her about it later. “The rakasa’s sudden vanishing indicates he went back whether he wanted to or not.”

  A yawn took me over and again I was reminded that Alric and I had been up for a long time. Maybe not the full thousand years that we’d travelled, but it felt close to it right now.

  “I hate to say this, but if there’s nothing we need to fight off right now, I need to sleep.” I looked at the faeries, they weren’t going anywhere for a while.

  “Agreed. Your body’s sense of time is going to take a while to get used to the changes.” Lorcan made more notes. “At least that’s what Nasif would have said. I believe I’ll work on an exploration of time travel after all of this is wrapped up as well.” He frowned. “I do wish I could do some traveling myself.”

  “Since we are fairly sure Nivinal used the time waves to focus his spell, and they’re all gone now, I don’t know that even your friend could have made it possible to travel back again.” Padraig had pulled out one of his books and had been reading it while debating the location of the relics. He didn’t even look up as he spoke.

  “They are all gone? Then nothing from this side helped us return? It was all Nasif?” Alric asked. He seemed more interested than I was. They, like the spell around the town, were what kept us here. Kept everyone here. At least in the old Null…or if Garbage was to be believed, the false Null.

  “Taryn is about to fall over.” Covey came and pushed me up the stairs then nodded to Alric. “And you should be too. We can plan for whatever it is we’re going to do tomorrow, but she’s done.”

  I opened my mouth to say I was okay, but a yawn came out instead. “I’m agreeing with this on the advice of my body.”

  Covey led me down the narrow hall and to a small room. I’d gathered that all the rooms up here were small as the space between the doors wasn’t much and there were a lot of doors.

  She gave me a look, one that was far more old abrupt academic Covey than new hugging and berserker Covey. “Now, how are you really?”

  “How am I? You just went berserk without a thought. What happened to meditating the family secret away?”

  There were two small beds in the room, one had Covey’s belongings all over, the second had my belongings neatly stacked on the end of the bed.

  “And how did you guys move from the stable which doesn’t exist now to here?” I lifted some of the items; my clothes looked even more worn than I recalled. I’d have to find the satchel we brought back.

  “The location changes occurred slowly.” She sat down on the end of her cot. “When you two went missing, Lorcan and Padraig tracked down what happened with some help from Alric’s ghost friend, Mackil. Once they realized you’d gone back in time, they set us up in a bubble. As soon as the stable began to fade—a disturbing occurrence, let me tell you—he moved us here. Which had also changed by then.”

  I took off my boots and flopped back on the cot. Either I was more tired than I thought, or for a cheap looking place, they had really good beds. “Everyone saw it change?” That couldn’t have been good, nor mentally healthy.

  “No. Lorcan’s bubble spell changed our perception. But it’s unnerving. Particularly now that we know something did slip through, such as the non-leaving spell.”

  “And?” I stayed lying down.

  “And what? You came back.”

  “The berserker bit?” I did prop myself up on one elbow at that point. Hopefully this wasn’t something that had changed. That would have been far deeper than a spell on a town we’d just arrived in.

  “Padraig helped with that while you were gone.” She gave an embarrassed shrug—something I couldn’t ever recall seeing her do before. “We really didn’t have much to do in here while you two were off muddling the past. Anyway, he pointed out that it was a gift, and the more I used it, the more in control of it I’d be.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “So you and Padraig have become close?” I tried to smile but a yawn attacked instead.

  “Not that way. I just want him for his mind.” She got up quickly. “Now go to sleep.” Before I could say another word, she left and shut the door.

  I didn’t know if it was a side effect from the time traveling, or just the impact of the last few weeks, but I woke up after a horrific dream.

  Before venturing on this journey, I rarely dreamed. Now it seemed to happen often. Most of the time I ignored the dreams, good or bad. But this one had me bolting up in my bed and sweating. I might have screamed, but I wasn’t sure if that was real or part of the nightmare. A quick glance to the other side of the room told me if I had actually done it, Covey slept through it.

  I forced my fingers to let go of my blanket, somehow I’d grabbed it so tightly they were cramping up, and tried to slow down my heart. The worst thing was, the dream, or nightmare, wasn’t even tangible. There were no people or things that I could recall. I had a weird feeling they weren’t even there in the dream. Just an overwhelming feeling of terror. I closed my eyes and tried to push past the emotions. Fear didn’t just come from nowhere—something caused this.

  Slowly images that I hadn’t seen before formed in my head. Thaddeus, my patron and attempted ruler of the world. Zirtha, the landlady who really wanted to suck out my soul. Glorinal as he ran his mentor Jovan through with his sword. The mayor of Kenithworth, but with a face that wasn’t his. Nivinal as he looked when he’d tried to get to me through the elven shield. The purple floating creatures who had tried to take over my friends. The syclarions I’d fought in the trap in the desert.

  All of these wer
e bad, very bad. But they weren’t new. Nothing about them should be causing this feeling. Then another emotion slammed into my gut. Guilt. It was fleeting but devastating and somehow tied to all of the monsters that had flashed through my head. Guilt because this was my fault. All my fault.

  30

  The world shook around me and I realized I had been asleep, but now was being woken up.

  “Taryn, you’re screaming.” Covey’s eyes peered into mine and she called a glow to life. There was not even a glimmer of daylight showing through the thin curtains, so it was probably late.

  “How long?” I meant to ask how long I’d been asleep, but my tongue wasn’t working.

  “At least five minutes. I had just fallen asleep when you started. And who in the hell is Whilthanious? You wanted him to die badly.”

  I shook my head slowly. That name didn’t sound familiar in the least and I’d think someone I wanted to die would be memorable. “No idea. What time is it?”

  Before Covey could answer a soft knocking came from the door. “Is everyone okay?” Alric didn’t wait for a response before he opened the door. Glows in the hall behind him illuminated the rest of our bunch. Minus a pair of knights.

  “I woke everyone?”

  “You were yelling extremely loudly, my dear.” Lorcan pushed past Alric and came closer. “You’re still feeling the vision.”

  It wasn’t a question, but a statement. I nodded anyway.

  “Can you write down everything you remember?” He handed me the paper and quill he’d had before.

  “For a nightmare?” Covey stepped back when Lorcan came in the room.

  “This wasn’t a nightmare. Padraig? You’re a sensitive, what do you feel?” He sat down on the edge of the bed doing his best grandfatherly smile. His eyes were a different story and disturbed me almost more than the nightmare. He looked sad and worried at the same time.

  Alric stepped back to let Padraig enter the room. Covey didn’t leave, but sat on her cot to clear floor space for Padraig to stand. I had no idea what Lorcan meant by calling Padraig a sensitive, but both Alric and Covey appeared to know.