The two tiny arrows hovered over his hand and flickered slightly. “That is an excellent trick, but they won’t last long,” Nasif said as he took the lead to take us through the entrance.
I felt a strange tingle as I crossed and saw my friends react as well.
“One more safety item. Getting out would be extremely dangerous for anyone without our approval.” Dueble said proudly. “If someone makes it inside, we want to make sure we can deal with them before they leave.”
Lorcan and his arrows, along with a few of the faeries, took the lead. They kept an eye on the arrows as we detoured to the house to get our things ready and wait the short time until night fell. It had been a short consensus, but it was determined we’d be less noticeable trooping around in the dark, instead of daylight. I seriously doubted anyone in Null would notice, but it did give more time to pack supplies.
The horses and wagons had been in a stable on the side of the house. Alric readied them but kept the horses in light tack.
“I’m not sure that we can come back for them when we leave. Travel would be much easier with wagons, but I don’t know that we want to leave them wherever Nivinal is. I’ve set a spell, if we’re not back in twelve hours, the horses will be able to get out. I’ve told them to find Rue. He’s a good soul, even if he was mixed up with Mackil.” He rubbed the nose of one of the horses.
I’d forgotten about Mackil’s assistant. He’d seemed nice enough and the horses should help him get out of Null.
Once we’d finished, we all stood together while Lorcan held up the arrows. I’d figured Nivinal was probably near the edge of town. He and Reginald might not have started there, but after their partnership fell apart, being on the edge was safer. But why were they both still here if Nivinal had the relics? Reginald would be trying to get them back, but Nivinal could have continued on to the Spheres.
“Do we know where the basilisk is?” I asked, as we started moving closer to the town center than I’d expected. Since the faeries and the arrows agreed, I wasn’t one to argue.
“Not fully, but I think you’re thinking what I’m pondering,” Nasif said. “Why else would Nivinal stay here once the geas was broken? You would be a good trinket for him to grab, and he will come for you again, I fear.” He looked to my cheek where the manticore was hidden. “But there has to be more than that. They came here for a reason.”
“Avoiding coming here was impossible for us.” Alric dropped in alongside us. “Whatever that entrapment spell was, it was incredibly powerful.”
Nasif took a short bow. “I’m glad you found it as such. It didn’t work as I’d intended, and I had nothing to do with the geas around Null. I created the trap to keep the curious from the Spheres. There are too many things, energies and the like, that can’t be explained. It was supposed to simply send the adventurers a few hundred miles away. I had armies of knights, fighting syclarions, rampaging minotaurs, and the like.” He beamed as if someone had complimented him on his newest handicraft. “Which did you hit?”
Alric raised his eyebrow, and then shook his head. “The syclarions. Taryn finally beat them, but we all were dumped over here anyway.”
“Oh, Flarinen and Kelm had seen an army before that; it was before we’d gotten into the plains, and none of the rest of us saw it.” I’d almost forgot about that.
Nasif’s smile dropped. “That’s not good. I lost control of the spell years ago, but there shouldn’t have been any escaping of the images. They should only block the path from the plains.”
“They shouldn’t be sending everyone to Null, either,” Dueble said, then clapped Nasif on the shoulder. “He’s gotten stronger over the decades, but still not as much control as would be liked. Not to mention, I think Null, as it previously was, messed with the transport spell.”
Nasif didn’t take offense at Dueble’s words and even nodded. “True. I am disturbed to hear the images are moving out of their areas though. Maybe when we have fixed this little relic issue Lorcan and I can try to join forces to shut them down.”
A thought struck me. “You didn’t happen to also create some weird flying purple flower creatures that knock people out, did you?” We’d never seen them again after the one time, but I’d feel better if they were part of Nasif’s defenses.
He shook his head. “Not mine. How large were they? Did they attack at night or in the day?”
“About the size of the back of your hand, and they hit at night,” Padraig said. “I fear they might have been gloughstrikes.” He’d not mentioned what he thought they had been to us, just that he wanted to research them. We hadn’t really had much time after their attack, but clearly he’d found time to discover something.
“Gloughstrikes?” Dueble stumbled over a rock in the road. “Surely they aren’t anything more than myths?”
“I don’t know. These creatures came in the middle of the night and would have taken us all if not for Taryn. The faeries helped us recover, but I fear that’s what they were.” Padraig said, but his voice dropped as a drunk stumbled past us. “And there was a time fracture in the rock wall next to us the next morning.”
I happened to be watching Nasif, so I saw all the color drain from his face. No one had mentioned a connection between the weird nighttime flying things and the odd crack in the walls that closed up on its own.
“Crap, a time fracture? So this time stuff is spreading outward?” I was not okay with time things going around. There had been time waves surrounding Null, until Alric and I supposedly fixed them by going back in time. Now we were finding out there had been time problems before we even got near anything time messed up? I was quickly falling into the, ‘let me go back home and get drunk’ idea. That I had no idea which way Beccia was, how far away it was, or how I would get there were problems I was willing to overlook.
In theory. I looked at the people around me, and thought of the others I cared about. All of whom were giving up their normal lives to stop whatever was happening with the relics. I’d become a magic user, was in love with an elf, and had a weird manticore relic inside me—I shouldn’t be too weirded out by time fluctuations.
Then I looked at Nasif who was paler than any living being I’d ever seen.
“You know about them.” I didn’t ask a question, but Nasif nodded anyway.
“The time cracks mean events are advancing far faster than we thought. Than we predicted. Those were most likely gloughstrikes; they flock to hard time slices. The ones that force their way into the past. Or future.” He shook his head. “There’s no way to know which ones those were, but it is not a good sign.”
“But that is,” Alric said. Ahead of us was a distillery, one that looked like it might have been one of the first buildings in Null, and closed down before I was born. Both arrows were pointing at it and vibrating so hard that the hairs inside each one bounced.
“He’s hiding here in public? Where anyone can find him?” I had to admit, while I wanted to get the relics back, and find a way to destroy him, I really didn’t feel up to facing Nivinal at this time. “And how are we treating Flarinen and Kelm? Captured prisoners? Or willful participants?”
The faeries had been quiet up until now. “We take.” Garbage and her band started forward. Subtleties were often lost on the faeries. All they cared about was that Flarinen and Kelm had tricked them when they were supposed to be watching them. Notions like against their will meant nothing.
“No!” Lorcan had been looking at something on the side of the building but his yell was enough to stop the faeries in mid-flight. “It’s a trap. Nivinal knew we’d find our men one way or another.”
He said a few nasty sounding words, causing all three of the other strong magic users to cringe. A mark appeared on the side of the wall—the mark of the Dark.
“You need to warn us when you’re going to use that language, my old friend,” Nasif said as he shook his head. “That’s going to be bouncing around in my skull for a few days.” Both Padraig and Alric looked to be in the sam
e state.
“So how come I didn’t react like the rest of you?” I seemed to be the only one not affected. Dueble and Covey didn’t show any reactions, but neither were magic users.
“It might have something to do with your odd magic,” Alric said. “Or your tag-along friend. You didn’t feel anything when he said those words?”
I shook my head. “They sounded like rusted metal grating, but nothing else.”
“I’m afraid we can’t deal with this now.” Padraig pointed to the sigil on the side of the building as it started to glow. “We’ve triggered something.”
Even the faeries flew back as the rest of us moved into the street. The sigil glowed red, then died down. I waited a few minutes for whatever the big thing was that was going to destroy us. Nothing happened.
Alric muttered a few words that I first thought was swearing but then realized was a spell. The difference between his words and Lorcan’s earlier ones were painfully clear. The red letters reappeared.
“So any magic will trigger it, yet what else was it supposed to do? Our men are in there and whether they went of their own volition or because of that emerald dragon, we need to get them out.” Alric had loosened his sword and didn’t look happy.
34
“No talk!” Garbage charged forward with her war stick waving and a fleet of crazed faeries behind her. I’d never seen any of them go through a solid object that quickly. They were gone before I could even yell at them.
“We can’t let them go in alone.” Yes, I knew they were damn close to being indestructible, and I certainly wasn’t. But I couldn’t take a chance on them actually being hurt.
Bunky and the gargoyle flew around us bleating and gronking furiously. They couldn’t follow their little friends unless we opened the door.
“I can’t sense anything on the other side,” Padraig said. “Not even the faeries.” He shook his head and dropped his hand toward his sword.
“There could be anything on the other side.” Lorcan was starting to walk to the side of the building. He was looking up, clearly for another way in.
I wasn’t waiting that long. “Come get me if I don’t come back out.” I didn’t give anyone a chance to stop me as I ran for the door. My sword wasn’t out, although it was still along for the ride. Instead I held one hand out, trying to mimic both Padraig and Lorcan to focus my push spell.
Apparently anger, and in my case fear, focused more than just the faeries abilities to go through solid objects. I blew both doors off the building and a good swath of wall on either side before I even got near it.
The inside was one huge room with the upper floors reduced to nothing but a ledge that circled the main area. The faeries had already started tormenting Flarinen and Kelm, both of whom were hanging upside down from the top rafter. However, neither of them seemed to notice, as they were both swinging to reach the emerald dragon, also hanging from the ceiling.
“Seriously?” I looked around at the trap. Such as it was. This looked far more like something Reginald would come up with rather than Nivinal.
Bunky and the gargoyle flew over my head and circled the faeries. They both were more concerned with protecting the girls than tormenting the knights.
Neither knight had their armor on, and both were covered in scratches. None of them looked deep and I figured they’d done it to each other.
I hadn’t been subtle about getting inside, and my friends were right behind me.
The knights kept fighting each other, the faeries kept poking them, and nothing happened beyond that.
“Shouldn’t there have been—” My words were cut off as a small shape tore out from behind the refuse of the interior of the building and slammed me into the ground.
The rakasa before me wasn’t the one I’d fought before, but he was fast and agile. He got a bite in, but barely scratched my arm before I rolled free. I got both my knife and my sword out and sliced his head off.
Didn’t help as much as I’d hoped, as a dozen more swarmed out from the hiding spaces they’d been in. Yes, Null was too rocky for their regular mode of underground travel but that didn’t stop them from being excellent at sneak attacks.
Both Alric and Padraig had their swords out as more rakasa flooded the room. We might have been wrong about who had control of the emerald dragon and who created the trap.
Dueble screamed and ran forward with his sword out. “I wasn’t expecting them to be so vile.” His strikes weren’t as clean or effective as Padraig and Alric’s, but he managed to kill the one that was closest to him.
Unfortunately, there weren’t that many near him or any of the others because they were all closing in on me.
Covey was closest to me and started ripping the rakasa apart with her bare hands. Lorcan and Nasif were fighting to get to the knights who were still fighting with each other, and Dueble had gotten closer to Alric and Padraig. He was fighting, but the other two were far better fighters.
I sliced through two rakasa who’d gotten too close, but didn’t kill either one. They were holding back, trying to damage me but not kill me. That wasn’t as reassuring as it could be. We’d thought the rakasa had only been working with Nivinal and that might have been a serious error on our part. We’d also thought the rakasa wanted the emerald dragon as a religious relic of their past. By the way they kept looking where I knew the manticore’s mark was hidden on my cheek, that was wrong too.
I’d forgotten something else too.
“Girls?” I couldn’t look away from the rakasa closing in on me, but I heard the faeries yelling at the knights over my head.
“What? You say we yell…” Garbage’s voice dropped as she finally noticed the swarming rakasa. The faeries could be a bit single-minded at times.
A much louder round of faery war cries descended upon the room as all twenty-three dove down to meet the rakasa. An interesting note: their yells themselves caused the rakasa nearest me to flinch and grab their ears.
“Yell louder! Sing if you have to.” I was able to slice through another rakasa but the second one stumbled close enough to grab me.
I pulled back but it was hanging on. Bunky bleated from above then he and the gargoyle slammed into the rakasa with enough force to dislodge him. Bunky emitted a bolt of light and the gargoyle pushed the rakasa into it. The rakasa ended up a pile of burnt ash.
I’d seen the mass of chimera constructs attack the rakasa in the battle of the enclave, but I hadn’t seen what they did up close. Having ashes of what was once a rakasa scattered on me was a little too close.
The rakasa were being slowed down by the faery yelling and singing, but it wasn’t stopping them.
Alric was fighting toward the center of the room, I assumed to help Nasif and Lorcan. Both of them were fighting to get to the knights, but it was slow going. Alric started cutting a path.
“Garbage, take some faeries and help Alric. Use your sticks.” I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t used them yet; they were still just waving them about. They did seem to be more focused on the yelling at this point.
I didn’t know if she’d heard me over the din, but she and five faeries broke off and flew above Alric. They kept yelling but were also whirling their war blades. Then they dove as a single unit and struck a rakasa. It froze, and then shattered. Interesting. When they’d done that to other creatures they usually turned to ash. Maybe they didn’t want to step on Bunky’s skill set.
A bleating pulled my attention back to my own fight. A group of rakasa had managed to get a net and had thrown it on Bunky. The gargoyle was buzzing around but Bunky was so distressed he wasn’t charging. Or maybe he had a limit. There were three piles of ash around me.
The rakasa nearest us were focusing on Bunky, but I was boxed in away from the door so they hadn’t forgotten me. They were going for a bonus grab by bringing in Bunky as well.
“Help him,” I yelled to the faeries around me. They obeyed and took off. Leaving me facing two annoyed rakasa. They also had a net and I had a feeling i
t was for me.
I held my sword and knife ready. Both the rakasa were fighting the effects of the faeries’ yells, but I’d dispersed the faeries too well helping the others and none were near me. They charged and I raised my sword—and it vanished. I swore as my empty hand swung out and I quickly jabbed out to force back the attacking rakasa with my knife. I got in a good strike, but I wasn’t as proficient with the knife as I’d like. Orenda had left before we’d gotten far in my knife training. I was able to force back the first rakasa but the second kept moving forward.
A number of things all happened simultaneously. The faeries freed Bunky, the rakasa managed to get the net over me, and Lorcan cut the rope holding Flarinen and Kelm in the air. He also cut the line holding the emerald dragon in the air.
Every rakasa in the building, including the two trying to get a net on me, ran forward as the emerald dragon fell.
Nasif was there first. He’d put on some sort of gloves and grabbed the emerald dragon a foot before it hit the ground. He finished the roll he started and then threw the relic to Padraig. He also had the odd gloves on and the second he caught the dragon he dropped it into one of the faeries’ bags.
The bags must not only protect the handler from the effects of the relic, but also cut off its influence on those previously affected by it. All of the rakasa still standing stopped, shook their heads, and then turned toward me.
I’d gotten free of the net, but my sword hadn’t reappeared. Bunky was now free and he and the gargoyle tried to save the day as they led the faeries in a massive dive at the rakasas coming for me. They weren’t going to make it.
Three rakasa hit me and dragged me to the ground before Bunky and his flight of faeries could get to me. They did get there before any more could attack.
The three who’d landed on me were trying to subdue, not kill, so that was a plus. I heard Alric yelling and one of the rakasa on me suddenly learned to fly. I don’t think it was something it would repeat though, as the flying lesson came from Alric throwing it, and a number of faeries followed it and stabbed it with their war sticks. Pieces of rakasa rained down upon Nasif and Padraig at the far end of the room.
The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Page 28