“Do not be afraid of them, they won’t touch you unless I say.” Luckily he thought my terror was at the two behemoths in front of me. Up until he spoke, it had been. Now it was focused solely on that unseen voice in the corner. The voice was rich and subtle, but the chill crawling through my bones had nothing to do with the icy stone floor I was lying on.
I forced myself to nod slowly. I didn’t trust my voice. The rag had been gone when I woke up but now it felt like it had disintegrated in my mouth.
“Here is the situation. My boys here say that you shot at them. A number of black fletched arrows to be exact. They claim you ran off when they saw you, but sought shelter before they could ask why you were trying to kill them.”
I knew this was the part where I needed to speak, but my voice was doing its damnedest to crawl out through my toes. Wait, I shot at them?
“I didn’t shoot anyone, someone shot at me.” I looked around wondering who was speaking with my voice. Crap, it was me who spoke.
“Now see? That wasn’t so hard. Who shot at you?”
I bit my lower lip, but it did no good, the urge to speak was strong enough to crack my teeth if I didn’t obey. “I don’t know. They just fired at me on my way to my new job. I’ve been unemployed for a long time. I hate it when I don’t have a patron, then I have to—”
“Stop now.”
I shook with gratitude when he said that. When he asked me a question, I had no choice but to answer. Being forced magically to do anything wasn’t a common feeling for me. But he had no trouble. I would have told him my deepest secret and not even hesitated.
“Do you have any other information about the attack? Only about the attack, mind you.”
I shook my head. I almost started crying with the need to tell him what he wanted, but there was nothing to tell. Finally the feeling passed.
“Fine. I am satisfied that you are as innocent as my employees in this arrow shooting. Please accept my apologies.”
Before I could respond, the first syclarion had slipped another spell sack over me and everything went black. Again.
***
“Is mine!”
“I found it first, no you.”
The high-pitched cries were a welcome change from the horrific rumblings that awoke me previously. But I was still getting tired of waking up and having no idea how I got there. At least the sound of faeries screeching told me where I was.
I tried to open my eyes and found that the right side of my face was smashed up against the floor. The residual numbing from the spell bag had left me so I didn’t feel it. But clearly they had just dropped me on the floor when they brought me back. I guess I should be grateful they brought me back at all.
“Girls, can you please shut up?”
“She took my war blade!” Leaf flew up and landed on my shoulder, ignoring my attempts to roll over on my back.
“What war blade? What the heck is a war blade anyway?” I pushed myself up slowly, my limbs were all pins and needles.
Leaf fluttered up then tried to land on my nose. I wiggled it until she moved.
“That one, one from High Queen Mungoosey.”
I couldn’t see where the other two faeries where, nor what she was talking about…but I could guess.
“That wasn’t for you girls. I need to have Covey and Harlan take a look at it.” It finally dawned on me they must have been talking about the stick the purple faery gave me. Some part of my fragmented mind recalled Harlan calling it a war stick. “Who is Moongoosey?”
“High Queen Princess Buttercup Turtledove RatBatZee Growltigerious Mungoosey, Empress of all,” Garbage Blossom said from out of my line of sight, as if that should resolve everything.
“She’s our leader,” Crusty answered, also out of my line of sight. From the sadness in her voice, I knew which one had probably taken the stick.
“Is she purple by any chance?” The sleep spell from the spell bag was wearing off. Unfortunately that also meant that I was now feeling every bruise I’d gotten recently. My captors hadn’t been gentle bringing me home.
All three faeries flew closer as I pulled myself up on the sofa.
“Silly, everyone knows Princess Buttercup is gray. She is the only gray faery.”
“I thought her name was Mungoosey?” Here was a race of beings that rarely kept track of names for anything, and their so-called ruler had more than I could keep track of.
“Yes, High Queen Princess Buttercup Turtledove RatBatZee Growltigerious Mungoosey, Empress of all.” Crusty landed on the sofa next to me. I’d never actually seen Crusty be serious, but she was now. “We love her. All faeries love her. She gave Garbage a war blade.” With a sad frown she flopped back on the sofa.
I wasn’t going to try and figure out the name. Whoever it was, she wasn’t the faery I’d gotten the stick from. “That wasn’t who gave me that stick, or blade, or whatever. A wild purple faery gave it to me.”
“No, no. Empress Growltigerious gave the war blade to Garbage Blossom, it is right there in her hands,” Leaf said as she sat down next to Crusty.
I would be the first to agree that the faeries made little more sense to me now than they did all those years ago when they came to live with me, but they were reaching new heights of insanity at this point.
Garbage had flown close enough that I was able to snatch the stick from her hand while she glared down the other two faeries. ““Let me explain this. I received this from a wild purple faery. She wasn’t gray. I need you to tell me what you know about the wild faeries. Why are they here?”
Garbage scowled at me but sat down next to the other two. I waved the small stick around and found three sets of golden eyes watching it closer than a cat watches a lame, one-eyed mouse. Interesting.
“They come for boom.” Leaf said sadly.
The faeries’ communication skills weren’t ever good, but Leaf lost me on that one. “What is boom?”
“Boom.” Garbage looked pointedly at the stick in my hand, then stuck out her hands as wide as they would go. “Big boom, everyone knows about boom.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn’t deal with this. I still needed to get some sleep and try and have a normal life tomorrow. Maybe Harlan could make some sense of them. “You know what? I’m going to keep this stick, er, war blade. It was given to me as a gift, and that means you don’t touch it.” I walked over to the small locked canister I kept my money in, when I actually had any. The stick made a forlorn sound as it hit the empty bottom. Making sure they saw me, I locked the canister.
“But you not want hear about what we find?” Crusty had perked up from the loss of the stick the fastest. Out of sight out of mind for good old Crusty. “We get good finds.”
Normally I’d play along and coo over their collection of mutilated leaves and odd animal droppings, but I’d had it for the night.
“I’m sorry, girls. I’m really done for. I promise that I’ll look at them later.” Patting the girls on their heads, I went for bed.
Chapter 26
My second day at work started much better than the first. I didn’t have to deal with any harridans from the Antiquities commission, and no one shot any arrows at me, black fletched or otherwise. The events of my little enforced meeting with a creature out of my nightmares the night before I chose to steadfastly ignore.
That syclarion was way too powerful for me to even add him to my list of troubles. He seemed to believe me that I had nothing to do with the attack on his men, and that was that. I was definitely not going to think about what his men had been doing in an open dig site, and just who was shooting at us.
The other event of last night had gotten me thinking however. Something was up in the faery world. I didn’t know if I’d luck out and get another wild faery visit, but I’d stolen a variety of sweets from the girls’ larder in the kitchen. They’d been gone by the time I woke up, so hopefully they’d stay out of trouble for the day.
Pockets loaded down with lumps of sugar,
I trudged into the dig site. Thaddeus was nowhere to be seen, but the equipment was there. I wandered around to where he had set up his day tent, cookies and tea were laid out. A thin trail of steam wafted up from the tea pot. Wherever he went, he couldn’t be far.
Call it my paranoid mind, but based on the recent events, I didn’t want to yell out his name. If something bad was happening to him, it would be better if no one knew where I was.
I would inform the guards as I ran past the front entrance, but that was as far as my risk taking was going at this point.
The tiny self-protecting part of my mind yelled at me to just run. Leave now, then if he was fine I could apologize to him tomorrow.
The more rational part of my brain said he was fine, just maybe called away somewhere.
I picked up a cookie to nibble on while my brain decided which side it was on. The tea smelled heavenly so that followed, and yet one more cookie to fill in the edges.
I’d go find him.
I really wasn’t a coward, but too much had happened lately to not leave me a little paranoid.
Even a blind ogre could see the thin trails leading away from the back of the tent. Heel marks. Someone had been dragged.
The screaming to run away grew significantly louder in my head, but emboldened by my tea and cookies I forged on.
The trail led to a small clearing not more than a hundred yards from the dig site. A small mound lay off to the left covered in wild flowers.
I made a move toward the flowers, and they rose up as one and flew up in a blaze of color.
They weren’t flowers at all but at least a hundred wild faeries, all different colors. Thinking of my conversation with the girls, I looked for a gray one in the fleeing group, but I couldn’t find one.
They didn’t seem concerned about me, but at the same time they weren’t going to stick around. Most were long out of sight when I remembered the sweets in my pocket.
“Wait!” I fumbled with my pockets, finally shoving my hand up with whatever came out.
There were still three faeries in the clearing, and all three froze. They had been facing away from me, and I knew they didn’t understand my cry. The intense sense of smell my faeries had must be even more acute in their wild cousins. The bright steaks darted over my head, then whirled around me. No purple this time, but one was yellow, one red, and one a deep green.
The green one seemed to be the leader of the small group.
With a high-pitched cry, she dove into my hand and came back with two lumps of rock candy. The other two circled two more times before becoming brave enough to drop down and each took one.
“You, take him. He not well. Something wrong about him.” The words the green faery spoke trilled with extra letters, and I could only understand her after years of living with my three domesticated faeries. But I was surprised she spoke anything I understood at all.
She continued to watch me, then pointed at the lump they’d been sitting on. Finally I stopped staring at them long enough to follow her tiny arm.
Thaddeus was lying there on his side, bound, gagged, and unconscious.
By the time I looked back to the faeries, they were gone.
Shoving the rest of the candy into my pocket, I ran to him and carefully rolled him over. He was breathing. And there were no gaping holes or bloody wounds that I could see. A bruise was darkening on his right cheek, and his clothing was completely covered in grass, although that could have been from the hundred or so faeries that had been standing on him.
Had they attacked him?
A look at his wrists answered that. I had no doubt of faeries’ ability to take down things much larger than they, especially with that many of them. But I did have problems with the heavy rope intricately knotted that bound his wrists and was echoed on the one binding his ankles.
“Thaddeus? Are you ok?” I shook him gently, not sure what had been done to him. One brown eye squinted open before I got his gag completely out.
“I will be all right. Once I find those hooligans who did this and give them a thrashing! Dwarves of the mountain clan are not to be trussed up like game hogs.” He wiggled his hands for emphasis and I loosened them quickly.
“What happened?” I rocked back and sat down on the ground while he freed his legs.
“I was sitting there having my tea, not five minutes ago, when these two thugs approached. Being a proper dwarf, I offered them tea. To which I was rudely insulted. Without so much as a how are you today, they picked me up, dragged me back here, and began interrogating me!”
“Two thugs, eh?” A nasty little crawling feeling crept up my neck. “Any race I’d know?” I hadn’t meant to say that. But I also didn’t want to say syclarion in case one of them was within hearing.
“Yes, two of those vile syclarions. But these must have been the low backwoods cousins. They were far cruder than the examples of that race I used to see in the Capital.”
There was no way that there could be four of those guys running around. While I was trying to decide how much to tell Thaddeus, my face gave me away.
“What is it, child? Don’t tell me you ran afoul of the beasts as well?”
I know some people can read faces better than others, but I couldn’t believe my face had been that transparent.
“No, actually I haven’t. But I heard a lady mention something about them yesterday in the pub.” I gave my best clueless shrug and smile. “But they didn’t grab her, just scared her.”
Thaddeus looked ready to pursue it further. Was my face sending out secret codes or something? I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone, about my encounter with those two syclarions. Mostly because of the one they obviously worked for. Even sitting in the sun, in an open meadow, a chill took over me if I thought of the vile and cultured voice.
“What is it, my child?” Thaddeus wasn’t going to let this go. I knew he meant well but it was for his own safety that I kept my previous night’s encounter to myself.
“Nothing. I just had a long night.” I quickly rose to my feet and held out my hand to help him up. “You don’t know what they were after? They must have said something.”
Thaddeus shook himself off and led the way back to camp. “Not at all. Well, they did ask about a gargoyle of some sort. Something about something hidden or stolen. Their accents were so heavy I couldn’t understand them at all.”
I had to fight to keep my face calm when I heard the word gargoyle. What was all of this about? Ancient scrolls? Impossible artifacts?
“It was a good thing you chased them off when you did.” He had continued talking while my mind went into panic mode. “Although I don’t see that you are carrying any weapons?”
Caught off guard, I even looked down at my own empty hands. My stun cuffs were in my back pocket, but they hardly counted as weapons. “I don’t have any. There was no one around you when I arrived. Well, except for about a hundred wild faeries.”
I found myself walking alone as he stopped in his tracks. “Faeries?” He pulled at his shirt that was covered in grass stains. “These are faery tracks? Wild faery tracks?”
“I guess so. They all flew off when I came into the clearing. But they were all over you when I first showed up.”
“The purple one?” His eyes glowed, giving off a golden rim to his brown irises that vanished an instant later.
“I’m not sure, they were in a giant swarm.” For some reason I didn’t want to tell him about the three I’d given the sweets to. Or that the green one actually spoke common. I didn’t have much in life that was just mine, but communicating with wild faeries was too special for me to share. Not right now anyway. “They left as soon as I arrived. But what were the syclarions after? And why did they tie you up if you were already unconscious?”
“Those, my child, are some good questions, which we may never find the answers to.” He settled down and poured some tea for both of us, handing me the cup I’d helped myself to earlier. Clearly we weren’t going to get to the dig until he had
his proper tea time. “But for now, I need to relax and recover from my ordeal. Why don’t you tell me about your previous patrons? I’m sure you have many interesting stories.”
***
The rest of the day picked up once we had a nice hour break for tea. One problem with someone who didn’t worry about money, he also didn’t worry about wasting time. I was almost ready to tell him about everything, Alric, the syclarion, the scroll, Covey, anything, if he would just let us get to the dig.
Luckily for both my sanity and my secrets, he came around before that happened.
“It sounds as if this Perallan was a wise man. Very sad that he died so suddenly,” Thaddeus mused as he led the way down to the golden door of the day before. “Did he leave you any gifts? Any parting remembrances?”
There was an odd tone to his voice, but I was in worse mental shape than him after my encounter with the two gruesome brothers and they didn’t even hurt me. Of course it was the voice behind them that scared me. Still, Thaddeus was justified in having a bit of an edge.
“Not really. He gave me a castle for the girls, but it wasn’t from these ruins. He’d done some research and thought there might be another outpost in Airthain.” I kept my shudder from showing—with my luck Thaddeus was a fan of the place. Airthain was a predominantly dreg city, and they weren’t fun to be around in large numbers. Or even in small numbers for that matter.
“I can’t say I’ve even heard of any major finds there. Not that I would be interested even if they were. We dwarves have fine ears, and what dregs do to song is a jail-able offense in my home mountains.” He picked up a fine brush out of his kit and began working on removing debris from the doorway. “You don’t know what he was looking for there?”
I caught myself staring. I still was not used to a patron getting his hands dirty. I shook my head and went back to my own dusting. “I have no idea, to be honest. He didn’t tell me at the time and we only spent a few weeks there. The only find was a hundred-or-so-year-old farmhouse buried under debris and he let my faeries keep a doll castle as their own.”
The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) Page 20