The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3)

by Marie Andreas

  “What is wrong with my ears? They show I am of the highest family in my clan, someone to be respected and honored.” Orenda pulled back away from me as if I was going to rip off her ears here on the street.

  I wouldn’t go after her ears or her hair, but she backed right into Covey and her nice knife. With a single swift movement, Covey sliced the leather cord holding back Orenda’s hair.

  Orenda let out a meep-like squeak and grabbed the cord as it fell. Her red hair tumbled around her face making her look even younger than she already did. “Why did you do that?”

  We were starting to see more people, and in minutes we’d be going down the pub lane. I held on to her arm and stopped her from trying to pull her hair back without a cord or ribbon. “Quickly. Until recently, the people of this town thought the elves were all dead or vanished. This city is built upon the ruins of your people. We found a few elves. One, Alric, we think is on our side.” I ignored Covey’s raised eyebrow at that. “But the other two were brutal murderers. One a member of the Dark, another, an elder from before the Breaking who had helped the Dark in the end. They hurt a lot of people in this town and killed dozens, so I wouldn’t go around advertising you’re a pure-blooded elf around here.”

  Orenda was duskier than Alric, but her skin faded to the color of milk when she heard the word ‘dark’. Her people may have a messed-up history, but some things got preserved.

  She nodded once, pulled down her hair until it practically covered her face, and seemed to hunch down into herself.

  She stayed silent through the rest of our trip. Covey skirted the pub lane, but I liked to think it was because it was faster to cut through side streets than any fear on her side that I would wander into The Shimmering Dewdrop.

  Harlan was leaving his flat as we approached. He had moved up in his abode choice; the last time he’d picked his own place it had been a falling-down wreck on the poor side of town. This neighborhood made me feel very outclassed.

  Orenda started relaxing the further we got into the nicer side. Most of Beccia would be a rude shock for our elf.

  “Hello, ladies.” Harlan gave a short bow that was strictly because of Orenda, and that was without even knowing she was an elf. He was always looking for new ladies to charm. “I was about to run some errands, see what exploded this time, that sort of thing...hello?”

  As he spoke, I reached up and pulled back Orenda’s hair.

  Harlan grabbed her hands in his and shook them like an elected official on voting day. “My dear, a real live elf woman. Such a nice change from those men, not that they weren’t lovely.” He scowled as who he was talking about caught up in his head. “Well Alric isn’t bad.” He shook his head. “But you, oh, you must come inside and tell me your story. I’m Harlan by the way.”

  Orenda was looking overwhelmed and I wondered if her people had any history that included chatalings.

  “She’s Orenda, not from Alric’s or the others clan, and new to the area.” I looked up at Harlan’s flat. I knew he had multiple extra rooms. “And she needs a place to stay.”

  “I couldn’t possibly.” Orenda’s voice came back but she was still watching Harlan shaking her hands.

  “Of course you can. Where else would you go? Back into the ruins? I can assure you, you wouldn’t find them a good place to sleep.” Covey jumped in, telling me she felt we’d dawdled enough.

  Harlan had already started turning Orenda around and leading her toward his front door. “I can brew some tea and we can have the biscuits my wives delivered, and you can tell me all about you and your clan.”

  The tea and biscuits might have started her moving, but the chance to talk about herself got Orenda’s feet running for the door.

  Covey didn’t even wait for them to get to the door, before she swung me around and started back down the street.

  “What are you so impatient about?” Tea and biscuits sounded lovely about now. Too bad I hadn’t thought of raiding Alric’s little house for food.

  Covey was still pulling my arm, and considering her legs were about six inches longer than mine were, it was fast enough to make me run to keep up. “I saw him.”

  “Who him?”

  “Alric. However, I think it’s the second changeling again. Just down that street, came around the corner, saw you and me, then took off.” Covey was on the prowl; her head went down a little bit and every few dozen feet she’d slow down.

  I followed behind, but my thought was on the last quake. And Alric. I didn’t think the two were really connected, but both were starting to freak me out. I completely agreed with Covey on getting rid of Orenda, but we needed to get back out in the ruins and find out what was going on.

  There wasn’t much I could do about finding out about the most recent quake if I wanted to keep up with Covey. She was already a few feet ahead of me. My magic wasn’t much but she might need it if this changeling gave her a bad time.

  Covey had darted around a corner, and I did as well, granted, still a few feet behind her. And right into an unconscious Covey with Alric standing over her with a large stick.

  “Alric?” It was safer to let the changeling think I was fooled. “Are you okay?”

  The changeling spun to me and lowered his stick. The relief on his/its face was a nice touch. “This is a changeling. I don’t know where the real one is.”

  I sighed. Yup. It was a changeling. There was a tinge of fear in the voice. The changeling had the same bag. I wondered what the real Alric had in the damn thing, and if I’d ever see him again to find out. I shoved that thought back into some dark corner. It took a few tries. Now that my mind had grabbed a hold of Glorinal potentially being alive and roaming free, and with Alric now missing, it was coming up with horrific scenarios faster than I could squash them. I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I just crawled into a corner weeping.

  Covey was down, at least for now. However, I doubted I could keep the changeling here long enough to wait for her to wake up. I didn’t want to seriously hurt it, not until we got more information out of it. But I needed to get it away from Covey.

  I dropped my head and let out a long slow breath. Hopefully if I calmed my breathing down enough, I wouldn’t have my head explode from fire ants when I tried this spell. Or so Covey kept insisting. She’d become an advocate of meditating recently, even if she herself didn’t use it much. I think she’d spent too much time with those nuns during her recovery after the battle for the glass gargoyle.

  On my final exhale, I pulled in the power, said the spell words, and reached out for the changeling to come away from Covey.

  Problem with spending one’s entire life as a magic sink and suddenly getting powers? Very little control of those powers. The spell I used wasn’t, or rather shouldn’t have been, strong enough to do anything except move the changeling a few feet away. Even that was stretching it, as it was a cantrip used for small objects.

  Instead, I cast the spell, and then backed up frantically as the changeling and his bag, slammed into me.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was more than a little disturbing having what looked, sounded, and felt like Alric squirming to get off me.

  I got both my legs under him and kicked up as hard as I could. It worked, sort of. I got him free of me, unfortunately the changeling landed right on Covey.

  The good thing was, the impact was enough to wake her up, and she came up fighting. The writhing changeling was tied up with an abandoned clothesline in no time.

  We’d tried one route of questioning earlier, now for another tactic. We’d left this one’s spell ball in Alric’s secret cottage, but now I wished we had it for negotiation.

  “Tell me who hired you.”

  The changeling tried looking away but Covey held him still.

  “You know what? I don’t like you not answering. I also don’t like you wearing Alric’s form. So change out of it now, or I destroy your spell bubble. Yes, we still have it, and I can destroy it as easily as I brought you to me.” Total
lie, but hanging around Alric had a benefit—I was getting better at lying.

  The changeling panicked something I decided did not work well with Alric’s features. It slowly nodded and changed into one of the small shimmery gray forms I’d seen in Covey’s house. I was glad Orenda wasn’t around. She seemed like a screamer, and we didn’t need folks coming back here.

  “Quickly tell me who hired you.” I kneeled down to get closer to him. “Or I will crush your escape ball.” I held my hand in the air as if holding an invisible ball.

  Covey didn’t say anything, but the small nod she gave me encouraged me.

  “You have less than a minute, then that spell bubble is gone.” Most of my life, I’d sat back and let other folks be the strong and aggressive ones. Between all the changes I’d gone through physically, as well as the fact that I was getting tired of these people messing around with my life, I was no longer waiting for others.

  The changeling looked at me, then at my hand. Distress was clear on his face, but what was also clear was a set to his jaw.

  “What do you think, Covey? Can I destroy it in one spell?” This might be better than actually having it; I wouldn’t have wanted to destroy the spell ball. Not yet anyway.

  Bunky gave a warbling cry as he came through a gap in the fence and flew toward us. He wasn’t doing goat impersonations this time, but had clearly been hanging out with some of the songbirds deep in the ruins.

  The changeling almost jumped out of his skin. Actually he did jump out, if you call flashing through a dozen different faces, most of them elven but a few distinctively not in about thirty seconds, jumping out of your skin.

  “Keep the construct away.” The changeling tried to scramble away from Bunky, who was still buzzing around overhead, completely unaware of the effect he was having on the changeling. “I tell you what I know. I will!”

  Good to know, elves feared faeries, and changelings feared constructs.

  Covey was practically sitting on the changeling to keep him from slithering away, but she seemed as interested in his answer as I was. Predators. Always looking for weaknesses.

  “Unclean. Unclean.” The changeling was frothing at the mouth now and contorting himself to stay as far from Bunky as he could. He really didn’t like constructs.

  “Now, who hired you and why?” I waved Bunky a little bit closer. The changeling started to shake in time with Bunky’s buzzing.

  “I can’t…ai! Keep it away from me!”

  Bunky was a quick study and had caught on to the game of scare the changeling. He flew forward with a dangerous sounding buzz and hovered right over my shoulder.

  “They wore masks. Small.”

  I tilted my head toward Covey to see if that sounded like anything to her. She shrugged.

  “They wore small masks? What did they look like? Where did you meet them?” I had a feeling we weren’t going to get a wealth of information out of this thing, but I had to try.

  “No. Small men. In masks. Hire us. For someone else. Don’t know who else.”

  Covey’s brow went up at that one. We were beginning to see more and more evidence of a bunch of small men. Whether they were the rakasa, the brownies, or something else still remained to be seen. Nevertheless, anything that popped up more than twice wasn’t a coincidence.

  “So it wasn’t the elves? I thought your people lived with the elves?” I hadn’t even known of changelings until recently, but Covey and Harlan said they lived with the elves.

  The changeling started twitching and hacking. I stood back in case this was some self-destruct thing.

  Then I realized it was laughing. Not a happy laugh.

  “Elves. We don’t live with them.” The changeling spit off to the side in case his tone hadn’t been clear. “They left us behind. We are free now.”

  So it wasn’t Glorinal. The changelings may have pretended to be an elf, but it was clear none of them would have taken a job directly from one. Of course, a strong magic user could glamour himself not to look like an elf. However, I’d wager the changelings would be able to tell—them being master change artists themselves.

  “What else can you tell us?” Bunky had stayed in position over my left shoulder, but I waved him forward. He got within a foot of the changeling and hovered menacingly.

  “We are wanderers. We get work where we can. This time a group of small men in masks hired us. They brought us here. We saw elf to copy, we copy. They tell us to make sure elf being seen all over.” He winced, then continued. “Elf being taken north and we needed him to be seen here. My brother was sent to gather information from you, I had other tasks.”

  “What was your specific task?” Covey got up and paced around then she spun toward him, making sure she looked as predatory as possible.

  “No.” The changeling settled into himself and clammed up.

  I nodded for Bunky to pull back a bit. Maybe we could play good digger, bad construct and get some real answers. “What did they ask you to do? And where did you see the elf you were copying?” That might help track down Alric.

  “I was told to run around doing things and make sure people see me with the bag.” The changeling shrugged. “Stupid idea, bag just rags. We were given his imprint to copy, but we saw the elf in the ruins; he had a cave that got destroyed. He was supposed to go with it. That didn’t happen, so guess he got taken.”

  He started shaking, but from the look on his face, he wasn’t doing it. Covey tried to grab him, but his eyes went wide and a second later, he vanished.

  Bunky buzzed around the area that the changeling had been in, but all he found was the laundry line Covey had used to tie him up. It was sliced through in two places as if a sharp blade had cut it. One that cauterized the ends.

  Covey and I looked around as well, but saw nothing. We were in an alley of sorts, but the other end of it was nothing more than a narrow walkway between two houses whose owners had obviously been building out over the years. No one could have come through there without us noticing.

  I was keeping an eye on Bunky, in case his little construct eyes could see something we couldn’t. He kept circling around a spot of stubby grass about a foot behind where we’d kept the changeling. I moved closer. The ground was an odd color, as if it came from somewhere else and didn’t match.

  I looked around, grabbed a stone and threw it at the grass. I’d like to say I was surprised when the stone passed right through the grass with a slight flicker, but the fact was, Beccia was getting weirder. It was taking more to surprise me these days.

  Bunky dove forward and before I could pull him back, he’d vanished into the hole. I ran forward to stick my head in, Covey right behind me, but Bunky flew straight up out of the hole.

  He’d almost smacked me in the head so I rocked back on my heels. He kept buzzing around the hole as if he was sniffing, but then as soon as he thought Covey or I would come closer, he buzzed us off. After a minute or two, the image of the stubby grass vanished and the ground bubbled up like water.

  Not unlike the way the holes from the chimeras and sceanra anam filled in after they burst out. However, this wasn’t a burst out so much as something had come out, grabbed the changeling, and dropped back in before we could see him. Then got away before the tunnel filled in.

  The changeling had looked surprised, so that told me it wasn’t expecting that sort of rescue, but since it didn’t even know who or what hired it, that wasn’t helpful. It was probably whoever was behind hiring the changelings and they didn’t want us finding out the truth. Whatever that was.

  “That was interesting.” Covey was studying the area. “I’ve never seen a hole fill back in before.”

  “I have.” I told her about the chimeras. Bunky did his nodding bobbing behind me. He’d been long gone by the time the holes that birthed him and the others closed, but he was obviously familiar with it.

  “We’re still not getting any closer to finding out what happened to Alric.” I wasn’t as worried, now that it looked like someone
else had taken him and not Glorinal. That was a sad statement, but he had messed with my emotions enough over the last few months, and I figured he could get out of most things. I was still worried, just not full panic worried.

  “Nor where the beings who took Glorinal out of the cave vanished to. We have to assume that they have Glorinal and they have the obsidian chimera.” Covey only growled a little when she said his name, so that was an improvement of sorts.

  I didn’t add that we also had no idea where she’d vanished to yesterday, and why she had insisted we were under attack from mythological beings, but then recalled none of it. I’d have to ask her later if the sahlins of her past were small men.

  “True. I think we have to consider that whoever is behind this is probably behind the ground shaking.” I hated to keep saying explosions.

  “I agree.” She scowled. “There were no indications that the rakasa were underground dwellers in the past, but they were never a focus of my study. I think our best course is to track down the most recent underground disturbance. We know they went under to get him out, and they went under to try to kill Alric. It can also be assumed that they went under to get their changeling back.”

  “Where is he?” The voice was loud, demanding, and far closer than it should have been.

  Covey and I turned around and found that while we had been discussing going in search of the latest explosion, a walking explosion had snuck up on us.

  Or rather a posse of entitled rich snobs snuck up on us. Specifically, the Hill Committee. Five of the richest and most annoying folks you’d never want to meet and they were all looking right at Covey and I.

  “I said, Professor, where is that elf? He explained to us late last night that he needed funds to launch a full-scale excavation of the Antiquities Museum. He took our gold fast enough but failed to meet us at the site this morning as planned.” The tall, overdressed woman seemed to be ignoring me. In fact, they were all fixated on Covey as the focus of their annoyance. “He mentioned that you would be supervising.”