Covey’s eyes narrowed and she looked at each one as if they were her students coming in late to class. She then turned to me. “You should continue with that urgent project we discussed. I shall address this situation.” She focused all of her professorial annoyance back on the five in front of her and I made a run for the ruins.
Last night may have been the first job of one of the changelings. Granted, Alric was a thief, former or not, and he stayed in practice. Nevertheless, stealing gold out in the open like that wasn’t his style.
I picked up speed as the voices behind me increased in volume. Bunky took off with me, but made a small chirp, then buzzed off a different direction. Most likely he had gone off to find the girls. It might be time for the first cat race of the day.
I briefly looked back down the street. There may only be one Covey and five of them, but The Hill folks were grossly outmatched. I was confident in Covey getting far more information out of them than they got out of her.
Which left me walking quickly back toward the ruins. I didn’t want to walk past the watcher bird and guard, so I snuck around the side Covey and I had come back down.
This side area was far darker and creepier than the rest of the ruins. It hadn’t been that noticeable when Covey and I were chasing the changeling and finding Alric’s secret magic elf house. But it was palpable now.
I found myself looking up to see if any trees were askew thanks to the explosion, but the further I went in, the darker, heavier, and less likely to be moved by something as trivial as an underground explosion they got. Some of these monsters looked like they would swallow the explosion and spit back ash.
Looking up as I was, it wasn’t too unexpected when I tripped over a smaller root, and crashed to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-One
I fell right in front of a nasty long gash in the ground. It went as far as I could see in either direction. Granted, that wasn’t very far in this thick part of the jungle, but I could see enough to freak me out. It wasn’t more than two feet wide, but the crack looked like it stayed that wide the entire distance I could see.
Had I not tripped on the root, I likely could have found myself lost down a narrow pit. I shivered and scooted back. I was right about the trees though. None of them seemed in the slightest bit disturbed by the crack running through the forest. And it managed to avoid hitting any of them. I’d have to be nice to all the trees out here. If they could manage to deter an act of nature, I had a new respect for what they could do to us mere mortals.
I couldn’t see anything in the crack, and it wasn’t useful—like, say, a trail to free a raving murdering lunatic out of a collapsed mine would be. Which meant this was a radiating crack side effect of whatever had caused the explosion.
It could be a natural earthquake, but those odds were slim, and getting even more so with each explosion we had.
The split seemed to point like an arrow further into the old ruins. Of course, the other end pointed toward the city and a lovely pub that I’m sure missed me terribly. I didn’t think about it for more than a moment. There had been a time I would have run toward The Shimmering Dewdrop. Hell, I wouldn’t have been out here in the first place. But like it or not, it seemed that something big was coming our way. And my friends and I had somehow landed right in the middle of it. Actually, I knew how. Alric. Life was so normal before him. Another thing to have him answer for—again—once we rescued him.
The crack maintained the same width as I walked alongside it. The trees for the most part stayed clear of it. I swore the crack zigged to avoid a monster gapen tree.
It took a few minutes to start seeing the old ruins. The trees had created their perpetual twilight even though it was still early in the day. Unlike the ruins that were under exploration through the Antiquities Museum, these were older and deeper. Towers only stuck up a few feet in the air for the most part, and I found myself again wishing for a patron who would buck tradition enough to dig out here. Qianru was quirky enough to do it, but she was still following her own agenda that she wasn’t sharing with me.
The trees, excessive rocks, and bad condition of the visible ruins were the reasons for no digging. However, what I could see strongly implied stylistic differences between these and the ones in the main ruin area. That might be an angle; the academic side focused on what was found in the regular part of the ruins. However, if I could convince them to believe there were cultural differences between the two sets of ruins, or even just a rumor of them, they might be the force needed to get this section open.
I’d have to work on Covey when the rest of this mess settled down. If anyone was stubborn enough to push the academics into demanding exploration of the old ruins, it would be her. Then we could work on nudging Qianru that direction too.
The crack I was following stopped at a boulder to the left of me. The crack actually had gone under the rock, and part of the rock had fallen in. However, the crack was far wider now.
Behind the massive boulder was what had to be the source of the explosion.
The crack funneled into a large pit, and if I had had even the slightest thought that the most recent shake was an actual earthquake, this destroyed it. The ground had vanished in a large, almost circular, pit, with only the largest of boulders staying stuck in the ground, but bearing wounds to mark the force of the explosion. It had been concentrated and focused, that and the distance out from town, was most likely why no one in town seemed to notice it.
The edge near me had some paper shreds. I picked up a few for Covey and Harlan, but they looked like the ones found at the mine and the museum, a combination of explosives and pre-packaged spell wrappers. The spells were what was controlling the explosions most likely and meant the people behind this probably weren’t strong magic users themselves. I didn’t have the training to control something like an explosion, but someone like Alric would have found it an easy task.
I peered down into the pit, but aside from scarred boulders and tree roots I couldn’t see much. I shouldn’t have let Bunky take off. He would be very helpful right now. I didn’t have a rope, and Alric hadn’t taught me his make a rope out of leaves trick yet.
Even though I had no way of reaching Bunky, I might have a way of getting the girls. I had no idea how close they had to be for our little mind-calling trick to work. I was at least a few miles out of town, and if they’d moved their cat-racing track where I thought, then they were at the opposite end.
I tried calling for them in my head, gave it a few minutes, then sat down when they didn’t respond. I cleared my head. Maybe Covey and her meditation practices might be right. I focused on the faeries, ale, chocolate, the hole in front of me, and me.
Ten minutes later, I was about to give it up and go all the way back into town for some rope when I heard the lovely sounds of faeries arguing, and a loud buzzing overlaying it all.
“Is true! This where happened!” Leaf flew up front near Garbage.
“You wrong, that no happen.” Garbage flew faster, but for once, Leaf wasn’t dawdling. The fact that she was managing to not only keep up with Garbage, but was flying ahead enough to try to keep arguing—not to mention the fact she was arguing with her—said a lot about Leaf’s normal pace on things.
She was the slow one because she wanted to be.
The two pulled up a bit before they got to me, but Crusty and Bunky ignored them and kept flying forward.
“Yummies?” Crusty looked around for anything that warranted her being called out here, but then shrugged when she didn’t see anything. “No yummies. You right.” She patted Bunky and he buzzed happily.
Crusty wasn’t upset about the fact I’d used nonexistent treats to get them to come out here, and Garbage and Leaf were still arguing over goddess knew what. It was as if they hadn’t expected any treats well before they got here. I knew the faeries and Bunky communicated somehow, but I’d never looked into it.
“Bunky, did you hear me call them?” He did his version of a headshake and Cru
sty started giggling.
“He no hear like we do from you, but I share with him. He say no treats but we should help.”
Wow. Leaf asserting herself with Garbage, and now Crusty was thinking. My faeries were changing. This could be good. Or very bad.
I looked back at the other two, but they were still flying around various trees, pointing at things only they saw, and arguing. Once Garbage got going it would be a while before she backed down. I was impressed with Leaf keeping up with her though.
“Okay, so just you, Bunky, and me on this.” I nodded to Bunky and wished I had my gloves with me to scratch him. I’d have to start carrying them around. “I need you two to fly down there and tell me what you see.” I was a bit unsure of using Crusty for this, she being the least observant of the three. Hopefully, whatever connection she and Bunky had would work.
Bunky hovered over the pit, slowly tilting from side to side in the air. He buzzed a question and Crusty nodded and turned toward me. “He says bad, little, little men do this. But they gone again.” She frowned as he added to his original message. “He said they be back.”
I wished I could understand Bunky directly. However, I’d have to take my information filtered through a tiny faery brain. “How does he know all of that?”
“He taste it.” Crusty answered as if I’d asked her what the large tree behind me was. Obviously, there was more to it than that, but Crusty wouldn’t be able to explain. I’d also need to nag Covey about more research on constructs.
“We’ll go with that.” I looked up, but the other two faeries had moved even higher in the air, the only real way to tell they were there was by their voices. I turned back to Crusty and Bunky. “Don’t go down real far, but see what you can find.”
Crusty nodded, and jumped on Bunky’s back, and the two of them looped up in the air, and then dove down. I wasn’t sure why she rode him, but in this case, and with her track record of smashing into things, this might be safer.
The sound of Garbage and Leaf continuing their animated debate was the only sound in the forest. I hadn’t noticed the animal and bird sounds until now that they were gone. Now granted, the faeries and even myself could have made the wildlife go to ground, but faeries came through the forest regularly. The wild ones still spent a fair amount of time somewhere out here, so they should be well known to the local animals.
I looked down the pit but Crusty and Bunky were out of sight, and Garbage and Leaf were now above the leaf line.
It could be nerves, now that I was aware of the silence, but I swore the woods started to feel darker and colder too. I moved closer to a glouster bush and convinced myself I was being paranoid when I crawled down under it and settled myself inside.
The shuffling started to my right, just as I started to think about crawling out from my hidey-hole. Now there was a chance that Covey could have finished up with the committee folks and followed me out here, but as far as I knew I had never heard Covey shuffle in her life.
Then the trees to the right started to move.
The ground had broken open and those trees hadn’t budged at all. Nevertheless, something was bending them as if they were saplings. The shuffling sound got louder, and I shrank into the bush covering me and sent a silent prayer to all three of the girls to stay where they were and to stay quiet.
Then I heard the sounds again, just in time for something to break through the trees on that side of the clearing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The shuffling sound was coming from a creature easily ten feet high, but it looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. Long, black, decaying strands of something I hoped wasn’t flesh dripped off the form as it moved toward the pit. I couldn’t make out any features, so I couldn’t even tell if we had another troll zombie on our hands. However, if this thing was a zombie, the original owner had died many years ago.
There wasn’t much of a wind this deep in the thick forest, but unfortunately what there was changed direction. I was wrong. That thing had died long before even the elves had taken off and had been kept stored in a giant pickling jar of rotten produce. That was the only way I could explain that odor.
The thing twitched as it moved forward, then almost stumbled, but pulled itself back upright, and shambled closer to the pit the explosion had made.
I closed my eyes briefly, and focused on Crusty Bucket, danger, and staying put. I made sure the danger thought was aimed at her and Bunky, not me. I didn’t want them flying right into whatever this thing was in a misguided attempt to rescue me.
I needn’t have worried too much. The walking pile of decaying plant life was shrinking as it took its steps closer to the pit. Rather, parts of it were dropping off.
By the time it finally made it to the edge of the pit, there was nothing left except a decaying head of cabbage that rolled unceremoniously into the pit. As long as it didn’t manage to land on Crusty or Bunky, they should be safe.
I was about to climb out of my hiding spot—again—when a troop of brownies came into view. One of them might have been the one Garbage had brought in, but I couldn’t tell for sure. They all looked alike, and even if they hadn’t, they were covered in the same disgusting goop as the creature that just disintegrated had been.
They were yelling at each other in a language I didn’t understand, but many of the words sounded like swear words. One or two words stood out.
A golem. Those crazy little bastards had managed to make a golem out of rotting tree parts.
Seven brownies all waved at the pit and yelled at each other. Alric had been teaching me some fighting skills along with the magic, but even so, I might need back up. Providing a second giant shambling pile of decaying shrubbery didn’t come down the trail, the girls and I should be able to chase them off.
Armed with my knife, I jumped out of the bushes. I also whistled for the girls and Bunky and sent a thought imagining all the brownies as ale bottles.
The brownies turned at my sudden appearance. It was rumored the little guys could smell as well as a bloodhound, but with the layer of ooze on them, I wasn’t surprised they didn’t know that the girls or I were here.
They were surprised, however. “Ah! Magic! Our enemies have found us!” The muck-covered brownie closest to me shrieked and charged forward with a sword that probably had an earlier life holding appetizers in a high-end restaurant.
I kicked him away before he even got within skewering distance. Then Garbage Blossom and Leaf Grub swooped down and did a low fly-by over the slime-encrusted brownies. The girls weren’t arguing anymore, but it could be a temporary truce. Unfortunately, with their memories it could be a long time, if ever, before I found out what they were fighting about.
The brownies screamed again. Perhaps they should use that high-pitched sound as a weapon instead of the cocktail skewers they were waving around; it was annoying enough that it would make people run away.
They were jabbering in their own language and backing toward the pit. Garbage and Leaf were playing with them, enjoying whatever adversarial relationship the two species had. Until Crusty and Bunky came charging up out of the pit.
Crusty was waving a sharpened piece of root in one hand, and a cloth bag dribbling gold coins and rocks in the other. She was also yelling what I was sure she felt was a fierce war cry but mostly seemed to be about minkies doing their laundry in the brownies’ mouths.
I may have misunderstood as the remaining six brownies—the one I kicked was still down but I had a feeling he was faking it to stay out of trouble—all started screeching some more. I had to block my ears with my hands when they hit even higher pitch levels as they got a good look at Bunky.
Crusty swung the bag with the coins and rocks around her head before I realized what she was doing.
“No! Crusty! Don’t throw it!” Most likely that was what was left of the bag The Hill folks were looking for, and equally possibly what the brownies had made the golem to go retrieve. Too late, my excitable, but not always the sharpest cheese
in the pantry, faery had flung the bag at the lead brownie, bowling him into three of his friends. Judging by the size of it, and the way it was leaking, my only satisfaction was that most of the coins that had been in it were on the ground. Not to mention, it looked like it had far more rocks than coins in it when she brought it up.
The brownies grabbed their fallen comrades and raced out of there.
“We win!” Crusty started dancing on top of Bunky, tumbled off, and almost fell back into the pit before she remembered she could fly.
Garbage and Leaf drifted down and started picking up the coins scattered around the mouth of the pit.
“Okay, girls and Bunky, I need you to gather all of the coins and give them to me.” Garbage had her back to me and from her furtive arm movements I was sure she was stuffing one or more coins into one of their bags. The bags could hold just about anything and were so spelled that trying to find anything once it got in there was almost impossible. Unless you were one of the faeries anyway.
“Including those, Garbage.”
She turned, shoved the bag back wherever they went when they weren’t being used, which meant it looked like she shoved it into thin air to me, and brought three coins to me. Bunky didn’t really have arms, so there was nothing for him to grab anything with. His short, stumpy baby goat legs didn’t help gathering them on the ground either.
“Bunky, why don’t you keep an eye on the ground from up there? You can tell us if we’ve missed any, and warn us if those brownies come back.” These couldn’t possibly be the only coins in the original bag. Crusty, or someone, had filled the bag with rocks, with only a few dozen or so coins in the bottom. Judging from what we found anyway. A quick peer down the pit didn’t show any more coins.
Bunky buzzed in agreement and flew up to the lowest branch level over the pit. I still wanted him and the girls to go back into the pit and search it more, but I didn’t want to take a chance with the gold lying about. Whether it was the real Alric or one of the changelings who swindled it, I figured I’d keep it until we figured out why it was taken and what happened to the rest of it. And I didn’t want it going back into cat racing. No one from the criminal world had questioned the faeries’ little side business, but we needed to keep it that way.
The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3) Page 13