Nasif shook his head. “It’s fine. They are our friends and I have a feeling they are far more in the thick of events than we are.” He turned to us. “Although we have a low profile here near Null, both Dueble and I have become well known academic scholars. It is other academics that we wish to hold back the information from.”
Covey tilted her head and squinted her eyes. “You wouldn’t be writing articles under the name Doublenasier would you?”
“You know us!”
I would have thought that almost a thousand years might have slowed some of Dueble’s enthusiasm. That didn’t appear to be the case. He practically bounced with excitement.
Nasif nodded and went to the closest kitchen, since there were now two, and started bringing out ales. “You have heard of us? We try to keep our identities unknown to anyone even in the academic community. But these findings must be shared.”
Covey laughed. “That explains why your papers were so spot on for the elven history components. Although, you really didn’t do much for the study of elven linguistics.”
“True, we had a slight advantage over the rest of the world on anything elven. But I thought my people were gone for certain. I didn’t want to submit too many works that would get people asking about where my information came from. I could speculate from findings from others in the field. But not enough work had been done on the language for me to work on those in public.”
Covey looked truly excited, something I’d not seen in a while. “I do wish I was in my office. I have many of your articles and would love to discuss them.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate academia, because I do.” Alric’s tone said anything except that. “But have you found any way to get the rest of the relics? What makes you think they didn’t cause the destruction of the Ancients? They seem to cause a lot of trouble even now.”
“Oh, we believe the item created by those relics getting together caused the end of the Ancients; we are simply stating it might not have been intended as a weapon against them.” Nasif beamed and bounced his look from person to person, but no one seemed to share it.
“How can it have caused their destruction, but not have been a weapon?” Covey had her predatory academic face on now so I wasn’t going to get in her way. No one who valued their limbs would get in her way when she looked like that.
“That is what’s so interesting,” Nasif said as he scuttled over to a pile of scrolls. “These make reference to the Wathin period. The time of great affluence before the Ancients were lost. It appears that they had been doing many studies on the elements and how to contain them.” He leaned forward. “It is here believed that during this time the syclarions found out what they were doing.”
“I’m afraid my people at the time were extremely warlike and greedy. They would have wanted what the Ancients had,” Dueble said. The fact that he chose to stay with Nasif instead of going to find his people said a lot about how he felt about most of his people.
“So the idea that the Ancients somehow genetically damaged the syclarion race could be true?” Now Alric was getting the academic fever. Although I knew that for him it was all about what was going to happen when those relics got together and how to stop it. He’d never elaborated on the other dimension he was flung into while destroying the glass gargoyle—before we realized that it could come back. But the few things he had said definitely made me not want to visit. If there was any chance of that reality invading ours, I was all for stopping it.
If the gargoyle could do that, who knew what the entire thing put together was capable of.
“What? When did that come about?”
“Who said that?”
Lorcan and Covey spoke almost at the same time. Padraig hadn’t said anything but his face showed he was thinking it.
“It was what the syclarions believed before the battle with the Dark—or at least some of them.” Nasif looked fondly at his friend. “Until Dueble told us about it, before the time of the Dark, I’d never heard of it. I’m thinking that after we vanished getting Alric and Taryn home, you didn’t have many syclarions around. And the ones that were, wouldn’t have been inclined to discuss it.”
Lorcan shook his head. “None at all. I recovered not too long before Siabiane came back, but neither of us recalled what happened beyond the queen being attacked and some sort of attack on the city. Many people fled at that point, mostly everyone but the elves.” His eyes became hooded. “Within a week the battle with the Dark began.”
Covey started pacing—one advantage of the combined stone cabins; she had more room to stomp. “So, these relics combined into something, but not necessarily a weapon. The Ancients genetically damaged the syclarions, but then either the syclarions or some other people destroyed the Ancients.”
Nasif nodded. “That is our theory. It is weak and I was hoping you’d have one of the relics, at least, for us to study.”
I was about to tell him we did have one, just not an accessible one, when a war cry came from outside. The faeries all fled from their bottles and flew to the door, but, unlike before, this time they waited for me to open it. Like them, I knew that war cry.
The faeries inside the house flew past me to mingle with Garbage, Bunky, the gargoyle, and the remaining four faeries. That Garbage and the other four were in war feathers wasn’t surprising given their yells upon arrival. The rest of the faeries flew back into the house and I knew they’d be back out in full war feathers, which I was sure they kept in those mysterious black bags of theirs.
“Garbage, what happened?” Had Nivinal come back to get me and managed to overpower Flarinen and Kelm instead?
“Them gone. Bad men,” Garbage said. “We tell you, then go get.” She waved her war stick in the air, a move echoed by the rest of the faeries as they came out of the house.
“Who took them?” Alric was right behind me with everyone else standing around the doorway and out of the faeries’ way. Not that I blamed them—the girls all got excited when they had the chance to wear their war feathers.
“No take, they go.” Garbage growled the last word and I realized Kelm and Flarinen had managed to ditch the faeries.
“What did they do?”
“New game, nice drink. Who drink more? We won, they left.”
I looked to Bunky and the gargoyle. The girls might have fallen prey to a trick from Flarinen, but the constructs were immune. “How did they get away from you two?”
Both of them dropped lower and while it was hard to tell on their impassive faces, both seemed annoyed.
“He lock them up. I wake up, get them out. Bad men gone.” Garbage was as pissed as I’d ever seen her. I’d feel sorry for the two knights except I was pissed too. Alric kept fingering the hilt of his sword and I had a feeling that images of slicing through Flarinen were running through his head.
“Okay, now you don’t know they left. They could have been taken against their will.” I couldn’t believe that I was defending Flarinen. Not to mention the odds really didn’t look like they were overwhelmed. He’d locked up the constructs and drugged the faeries. He’d even won their favor by inventing a game before we left. “Never mind. That wouldn’t have happened.” I answered myself before anyone else could.
“Where would they have gone?” Padraig asked.
“Where else? To get the relics.” Alric adjusted two of his knives and then added two more that Nasif brought out. “They weren’t only here to help, and I should have seen it from the start. They are trying to get the relics. For who is a damn good question. Could be trying to save face with the king and queen, or it could be worse.”
“Now, I know you two boys have never gotten along,” Lorcan said. “But I don’t believe Flarinen and Kelm have ill intent.”
“I hate to say this, but you also didn’t realize your own brother had ill intent until he almost killed you.” Covey put her hand on Lorcan’s shoulder. “There could be some truth to this. We don’t even know if they are working with Nivinal or Reginald.”<
br />
Lorcan looked ready to argue, then shook his head. “You might be right. Nasif, you are lucky you didn’t go through aging all of these years. Old age makes one question the world around you, and your own judgement. But they both were affected by the emerald dragon—there is a chance it is a continuation of that.”
“My friend, you are as sharp as ever, and you trust the people around you. And that’s not a bad thing.” Nasif looked to us all. “I will say that Siabiane trusts your two knights; she told me when we were there. Either the dragon is pulling harder on both of them than we expected, or the captain is trying to regain honor with the royals.”
Everyone adjusted or re-attached their weapons as the girls flew around our heads yelling.
“Stop!” I finally yelled at the faeries. “We know you’re mad, so are we. But yelling war cries isn’t going to help anything. If you want to yell them around our missing knights when we find them, be my guest. Repeatedly. And loudly. But not at us, and not now. Got it?”
The faeries kept zipping across the glen and waving their war sticks, but they kept their cries to a lower volume. That was fine by me. Especially if they saved that noise for Flarinen.
“I don’t understand how the dragon could be pulling them from a distance though.” As much as I wanted to think Flarinen was a nasty bastard, there was also a scary thought—could the emerald dragon work from a distance?
Nasif and Lorcan both nodded in unison.
“You have been studying the relics as well now?” Nasif asked. “You were all about the power behind magic when I knew you.”
“And you were about time travel.” Lorcan smiled at his friend. “Padraig became one of the foremost researchers on the relics. He and I have been examining every text we can about them.”
Padraig had been discussing something with Bunky, but turned at his name. “As for the emerald dragon, if Nivinal got back, or never lost, the obsidian chimera, he could use it to boost the dragon’s power.” He frowned. “Particularly for those who had recently held it. He might not have been able to reach Taryn since she handled it too long ago. Alric had kept it in a protected bag when he had it. We’d wondered what a relic that was only meant to elicit greed would be as part of the item—it calls people to it. Whatever the weapon or thing was these relics combined to build, it was designed to call someone, or ones, closer to it.”
“So then, Nivinal didn’t lose the relics?” I was missing something, but to be fair I was distracted by the faeries and the flight show.
“Or he did lose them then got them back.” Alric had finished re-arming himself. “He might have even gone so far as to plant the dead bodies and the emerald dragon where Flarinen would find it. Get it in with us, all of us touch it, and he could have easily called us to him.”
“Would that have been bad? We do want to find him and these relics.” Covey adjusted her sword.
Nasif had also armed himself. “Not in this way. The dragon renders common sense invalid. You would have been under Nivinal’s control had you physically touched it as I assume both of your knights did. Which does bring into question, who is Nivinal? Not the old inquisitor who worked with Jovan?”
“Yes, or as far as we can tell,” Lorcan said. “I have my doubts that he was ever who we thought he was, but it appears to be the former inquisitor. There were changes in him during our battle when the shield fell, and Taryn noticed some odd things during an altercation with him at the shield before that. And whoever he is, he is good at projecting himself.”
“Jovan turned out to be one of the Dark—but stayed hidden for the thousand years the enclave was under the shield,” Alric said. “He’d made it to the south, with a group we think were the surviving Dark, after the battle. He was finally destroyed by his own protégé.” He was already heading for the far end of the glen and the way out.
The rest of us followed but there still wasn’t a plan.
“I always disliked that bastard, too prissy for my tastes. Glad he got his comeuppance. Is his protégé alive?” Nasif turned and held his hands out toward the joined houses. They faded a bit.
Alric shot me a grin. “I seriously doubt it. In fact, I know he isn’t.”
“I sort of exploded him.” I gave a shrug. I wasn’t up to explaining everything that had been involved with Glorinal.
Covey watched the houses fade as Dueble, also loaded with weapons, joined us. “I thought you two couldn’t go into Null?”
“It’s not a good idea,” Dueble said, as he gave a wistful look at the fading homes. “But we can be there for a while. Not to mention, it does appear some things changed when Taryn and Alric came back. We won’t be comfortable, but we can be there.”
“This is a crux moment.” Nasif raised one hand as he walked. “Both Dueble and I seem to sense these odd moments in time. This is one. I’ve protected the glen as well as I can but we won’t be back here for a while. Mark my words, something big is coming and we’re going to be a part of it. Most likely whether we want to or not, so my vote is we be prepared.”
“Aren’t we back where we were? Nivinal now has Flarinen and Kelm, and possibly the other three relics. I know we tossed around me as bait,” I rubbed the cheek where the manticore was hidden, “but I don’t think that’s the best idea. And not only because I don’t want to be caught by Nivinal.”
Padraig had been silent but he’d taken out a sheath of papers from his pack. “We need to stop by the house and get things ready to leave quickly. One way or another we’re not going to want to stay here after this. But I think I have an idea where the golden basilisk is.” He scowled at the top page in his hands. “It’s not going to be easy to get even once we find it—according to this, it’s a construct and does act as a basilisk.”
Covey stopped walking and started swearing. “Seriously? Who in their right mind would create something like that and then make it able to move around killing people?” We’d kept walking, albeit slowly, so she caught up. “By acting like a basilisk, you mean the myth, right? Reptile thing that kills people with a look? Is it the spitting fire kind or not? Mythology has both.”
Padraig shrugged. “It doesn’t break down which mythology was used to create it, nor why it would be a construct and the others not. But I think we should be prepared for both possibilities.”
Covey was muttering under her breath. “Not only did the creator of this weapon succeed in destroying the Ancients, they’ve managed to piss me off. Maybe after all of this is resolved we’ll figure out a way for me to go back in time and have a talk with our insane creator.”
Nasif laughed, but there wasn’t a lot of humor in it. “I don’t know that I’d want to meet that person. Insane they might or might not have been, but they were far more powerful than any magic user I’ve ever heard of. The skill to make these relics—and whatever it is when they are combined—is far beyond any skills known to any surviving race. They would make someone even as powerful as Siabiane look like a magic sink.”
Alric had led us to the entrance of the glen, a much farther distance from the house than had seemed when we came in. I started to ask Nasif, but he beat me to it.
“Yes, another defensive trick. The distances are changeable. I have been stretching it as we’ve gone. Anyone managing to get in here would have a long winding trip to find our homes.”
“No talk. Need do.” Garbage had been quiet, at least for her, as the faeries flew high above us. That was changing now as the entrance was within sight. War sticks were up and waving around again.
Bunky and the gargoyle buzzed down close. “Are they wearing war feathers?” They both flew high again after their quick pass, but I’d seen something stuck all over their sides.
“Yes. Is good.” Leaf flew down close and patted my hair. There was a slight pull, as she must have pulled her hand back with an extra hair or two. “See? Flyers have feathers.”
I reached up and felt a mass of something that felt like feathers and tree sap in my hair. No wonder some of my hair had
stuck to her hand. I couldn’t pull it free, at least not without losing a chunk of hair. “But I don’t fly on my own.” One more tug at the feathers and I gave up. They weren’t moving.
“Not yet,” Leaf said, then tumbled in the air as Garbage slammed into her.
“Now time to get back.” Garbage growled after subduing Leaf, then turned toward the exit. It was odd seeing a desert on the other side of a tree-filled glen, but definitely not the oddest thing I’d ever seen.
Lorcan held out one hand for Garbage to land on and she did with a grace I was surprised to see. “Now, my powerful little friend, you can find the knights, can’t you? You will lead us to them?”
She slowly nodded her head. “We do.”
I was shocked. I’d figured the only reason the faeries had come to find us had been that they couldn’t find Flarinen and Kelm on their own. That they had actually obeyed a command and came to get us, even when they were so mad, was startling.
“How can they…” I let my comment die as Garbage slowly pulled out two strands of hair from her tiny black bag. One short and red, the other long and blond.
“We no trust.” She reverently placed the hairs down on Lorcan’s open hand. “You use now, we no need.” She flew up to join the others without even a mention of wanting a sweet for her work. This new Garbage was impressive and scary at the same time.
“So they used those hairs to find where they are?” Covey patted her own hair. Actually, if they could do that with anyone we’d never lose track of each other.
Lorcan studied both hairs, then put one hand over the other and softly spoke a few words. “Somewhat, they are regaining their tracking abilities. But I think in this case there was some faery saliva involved—and the level of Garbage’s anger might have bumped up her abilities some.” He removed the hand that was covering the hairs and two small golden arrows hovered there. “Excellent work, ladies. Between you and these we should have no trouble finding them.”
The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Page 27