The Diamond Sphinx (The Lost Ancients Book 6)

by Marie Andreas

  “Where are the faeries and the constructs?” I was really hoping I could get in a quick shower before we left to go defend a city. But I needed to know where the hooligans were.

  “They went to go do recon of a sort. The faeries were driving me crazy with questions, so I sent them to make sure the way out of here was secure. I sent your flying construct friends to watch them. They’ll join us on the way.”

  “Do you think I have time?” I pointed toward her shower room.

  “By all means. Who knows what we’ll find in the city?”

  After my shower and Mathilda’s methodical locking and spelling of the cottage—no one was getting inside there without her—we were on the trail. After the first few minutes my flying friends appeared.

  “Is good. Beccia bad. But trail good.” Garbage had resumed her in-charge position.

  “You went to the city?” I looked to Mathilda but the scowl on her face indicated she wasn’t happy with that either.

  “Is trail,” Leaf said with far too smug a look. They knew Mathilda hadn’t intended for them to go that far, but they’d done it anyway.

  “Fine. So what did you see?” They shouldn’t have risked going all the way there. If it was the Mayor of Kenithworth and his syclarions—they knew I traveled with faeries. I wasn’t being overly self-centered; I knew he’d wanted me to dig for him for a reason.

  “Green!” Crusty had been flying upside down as we talked but finally turned right side up. “Green.” She threw out her tiny arms and spun until she almost dropped to the ground.

  Beccia was a lot of things, and while there were a lot of trees outside of it, there weren’t many within the city itself. Certainly not enough to warrant just seeing only green.

  “Green what?” Mathilda kept us moving at a good clip, but she wanted to know what the faeries had seen as well.

  “Green.” The three girls said at the same instant, backed up by some fly-by gronking from Bunky and Irving.

  “Yeah, that’s about all we’ll get. Hate to say it, but I’m afraid we’ll find out what it is when we get there.”

  Mathilda opened her mouth to try again, saw the look on my face, and shut it. With a nod, she increased our pace even more.

  I’d been surprised at how close I’d walked to Beccia during my month of travels. Maybe while I had been wandering I was naturally homing in on my favorite bar, the Shimmering Dewdrop. Or the girls had been subtly nudging me that way. Even though the faeries had been living wild for hundreds of years, mine had definitely gotten a taste for city life. At least a taste for life with more bars.

  The path was silent—too silent. No people, but no animals either. If we’d left closer to when the farmers had run through here, I’d think it was a reaction to that noise and ruckus. But we were far enough behind that it shouldn’t have been an issue.

  “You know, if we had traveled in your house, we’d have a place to hide if things go bad.”

  “My cottage doesn’t move well,” she said and ignored my snort. “It really doesn’t. When I sent you and the faeries off fifteen years ago, I’d only made it a quarter of a mile away. I was using a disguise spell so you couldn’t see me. It would be too awkward to walk it to Beccia from here.”

  There went that plan, such as it was. The path wasn’t bad, I just hated going into what could be a battle without enough defenses. My sword was at my side in its scabbard. But who knew how long it was planning on staying. I hadn’t tried any magic since I’d run away from the Spheres, and had no idea if it was even working.

  A stabbing cold sensation on my left cheek brought me out of my mood. I rubbed my cheek but the feeling stayed. The sapphire manticore relic trapped inside of me was a defender. It did so via freezing things—starting with my face. I dropped my hand to the hilt of my sword and tried to look deeper into the forest around us. I didn’t see anything moving, but I thought I felt the dirt beneath us move. “Hold up.” I grabbed Mathilda’s shoulder as visions of those tiny monsters, the rakasa, ran through my head. I’d really hoped that the basilisk had finally destroyed them, but I knew my luck wasn’t that good.

  Mathilda didn’t question me but froze immediately. The faeries and the constructs overshot us, but Bunky gronked softly and they flew back. I felt silly standing there with nothing but the wind gently flowing around to show for my concern. Better safe than sorry though.

  “I think we’re fine. I thought I felt something underground.” I patted my cheek. There was a glamour spell hiding the small, blue manticore tattoo-like mark, but I was sure Mathilda saw through it. “The relic is acting up. It senses something.”

  “You were thinking of the ground creatures.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head, as if listening. Then opened her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing underneath.”

  We’d just started walking again when the three faeries burst into war cries. They grabbed the tiny black bags they carried and pulled out their war sticks but with whatever was coming, they didn’t have time for their feathers.

  “What is it?” I yelled to be heard, as their voices grew louder. Bunky and Irving flew in a wider circle around us, as if looking for the source of the faeries’ agitation.

  “Do you sense anything?” My magic senses weren’t great even when used regularly, but Mathilda was a powerful spell user.

  “No. And I should. Something is blocking whatever is coming.”

  I pointed to the yelling and circling faeries. “Then what are they sensing?”

  “Faeries don’t do magic; they are magic. Whatever is coming is blocking us, but it can’t block them.”

  A screech louder and more horrific than the faeries slammed into us a second before a dozen long flying shapes came from the trees. Sceanra anam. Flying snakes from the distant past that had come back to destroy the future. Wonderful.

  Bunky and Irving flew to meet them. Chimeras were the enemies of the sceanra anam and a fleet of Bunky’s chimera friends had fought back a massive attack at the elven enclave. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a fleet.

  But the faeries had also taken down their share of the toothy flying monsters in the past, so hopefully we were okay. What was I thinking? Mathilda could fry them all with a single spell.

  “You want a shot at them?” I’d turned to watch the forest, so I wasn’t facing Mathilda. But her silence surprised me. The flyers were engaged, but already a few of the sceanra anam were going around our faeries and constructs. And a quick glance backwards told me Mathilda was frozen in place.

  Chapter Six

  She remained standing. One hand raised as if casting a spell, the other holding her staff up. But not even a blink of her eyes to show she was alive.

  “Crap!” I yelled as two of the sceanra anam got past our flyers and headed my way. I took a step backwards to keep me closer to Mathilda. She hadn’t fallen over, and I was hoping if something really bad had happened to her, she wouldn’t be upright. Not that being under attack, over-matched, and losing a major magic user wasn’t bad.

  I had my sword out and awkwardly sliced at one of the monsters. The move was enough to make the sceanra anam pull back, but didn’t even come close to hitting it. Thanks to Alric and my friends, I could actually use my sword. But it would be hard to tell right now, the angle it had come in at was awkward to say the least. Luckily, I swung short and was able to pull back for the second one who was coming in fast.

  Everything felt like it slowed down. The sceanra anam dove toward my face. I knew I wasn’t going to hit this one either, but there was no way I’d trust my magic right now.

  The relic inside of me had a different opinion. My face felt like it cracked open and a shard of ice shot out. The sceanra anam zigged to avoid the magic ice and my sword sliced it in half. I dropped to one knee as pain from the ice hit me. There was no time to stay down. More of the sceanra anam were coming out of the forest. The last time there was a group of sceanra anam, both the wild faeries and a flight of chimera had come to help. A quick glance around the skies to
ld me that wasn’t happening this time.

  My faeries and constructs were holding on, but there were already too many of the sceanra anam. Mathilda was still frozen. I was out of options.

  My magic was questionable at best, but after the Spheres, I had no idea what it would do. My best spell was push; however, shoving the sceanra anam onto someone else wasn’t a good idea.

  I kept batting them aside, using my sword more like a club than a blade at this point, while I tried to modify the spell. Maybe I could push them so far up they couldn’t come back. A drunken alchemist had once cornered me in the Shimmering Dewdrop. He’d claimed that the breathable air only went up so far.

  Time to test that. I took a deep breath, reaching out to sense the sceanra anam in the area with my magic, and at the same time I tapped into whatever odd awareness was in the manticore relic. Then I aimed my spell. I pushed every sceanra anam I could sense as high as the spell would go.

  At first, my own flyers appeared to be going with them and I cut the spell off. Then I realized they were doing it on their own.

  “Let them go! Come back to me.” I hoped I’d yelled loud enough but I was tracking the spell, the manticore, and my rapidly shrinking victims—I couldn’t track much else.

  Bunky and Irving got the faeries to turn back, and I kept pushing. I stopped a good two minutes after I couldn’t see the sceanra anam anymore.

  I had no idea when I’d crumpled to the ground.

  I was shoving myself up when Bunky and the rest came down. The constructs flew to me, the faeries flew to Mathilda. She still hadn’t moved.

  My legs were shaky as I got to my feet. At some point I’d dropped my sword, but I managed to gather it and myself and stagger to her. The faeries were circling her, but not landing.

  “No is home.” Crusty looked confused as she waved a tiny hand in front of Mathilda’s locked open eyes.

  “Broken.” Leaf nodded.

  “Sceanra anam! Everyone duck!” Mathilda suddenly yelled, causing all three faeries to tumble backwards in mid-air, including Crusty who managed to slam back into me. I went down, Bunky and Irving went into defense mode, and Mathilda blinked her eyes as she realized the flying snakes were gone. “What happened? Did I just have a waking nightmare?”

  I got back up again and dusted off my pants. “No, they were here. But you were frozen. It looked like you were reaching for a spell, then nothing.” My sword hadn’t vanished yet, so I put it in the sheath.

  She ran her hand over her forehead. “That’s not good. Not good at all. Well, neither is good. That those things were here, or that I froze. Something triggered it, but we don’t have time to find out what.” She started walking down the path, then turned slightly when I jogged to catch up to her. The flyers stayed closer to us now. “But how did you get rid of them?” I quickly explained, along with the admission that I wasn’t sure if what I’d tried even worked. Like her situation of freezing, it was something we could figure out later.

  “We have to assume that whoever is behind the attack on Beccia is also behind those creatures. Do you know who is controlling them?”

  “No. But they had appeared before on their own.” There was always a chance that they’d just been passing through. Even I didn’t believe we’d be that lucky.

  Neither did she. “They would have someone behind them or many someone’s. Sceanra anam are fierce killers, but they aren’t great thinkers. Someone is pulling their strings.” She picked up the pace. I was starting to recognize the area as we came out of the mountains. The hills were softly rolling and filled with meadows. In the distance I could see crumbling elven building remains sticking out of the deep grass.

  We were at the south end. The digger council had never authorized digs out this way as most of the elven buildings appeared to be smaller homes. Over the past few months I’d dreamed about returning to Beccia and my normal life. It wasn’t much, a shabby little town that had only gained stature because of the relatively new digger trade. But it was home.

  Rushing to the rescue was not how I wanted to return. At least not without an army of elven knights at my back.

  We would be seeing the outskirts of the town as we rounded a final hill, so I mentally prepared myself. Whatever happened, we could fix it.

  I was not prepared for the massive wall of green as we rounded the hill.

  Seriously. The girls had been right—just green. A giant hedge, at least three stories high, and so thick I couldn’t see through it, surrounded the city. At least what I could see on this side.

  We stopped. The flyers had seen it before but seemed to be enjoying watching our reactions. I’m sure I looked as stunned as she did.

  “Was that caused by whoever attacked it?” I wasn’t sure if I was ready to get closer to it. As I watched, vines from within the hedge undulated along the top as if daring someone to try and pass through.

  “I have no idea. I must admit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a thing. And I’ve seen about everything there is to see.” Mathilda lifted her staff and muttered a soft spell. A golden light came from the staff and bounced off the green wall. “Very good thing that I didn’t try a harder spell. In fact, this beastie might be what shut me down when the sceanra anam attacked. Don’t use magic, my dear. It didn’t get you before. Possibly because of that relic inside you, but this close it would be too risky.”

  “So, no idea if it’s good or bad?” There were some serious magic users in Beccia, but most of them were on the wrong side of the legal system. I really couldn’t see any of the mage crime lords doing this. And the ones who lived on The Hill were rarely in residence. If this was an attack on the city, it was an odd one.

  Mathilda walked closer but didn’t touch anything, then came back. “Those farmers said they were attacked because someone was trying to destroy supplies. I’d say this is some sort of defense.”

  “Aside from no one that I know of being able to do that, couldn’t things like the sceanra anam just fly over?”

  “No fly. Get zapped.” Crusty threw out her arms and shook to demonstrate. “I try.”

  “Told not to,” Garbage said with a shake of her head.

  “So flyers get zapped? Who could have done this?”

  Mathilda didn’t answer at first but moved back to the hedge. “I might freeze up again. If so, just move me somewhere safe.” She closed her eyes and sent another spell. I felt the tendrils of it move out; it was slowly flowing toward the plant wall. Not an aggressive spell, but stronger than the golden one she’d sent before.

  She didn’t freeze this time, but she did rock back and land on her butt. Her eyes flew open. “It’s a dryad defensive spell, but the likes of which I’ve never heard of before. All of that came from a single tree and an extremely annoyed dryad. The people inside are prisoners as much as they can’t get out any more than we can get in.”

  There was only one dryad I knew living in Beccia. Dryads needed to be near their trees, so cities and towns weren’t good for them. But Amara had been blackmailed to help Glorinal and Jovan try to destroy Foxy, Beccia, and pretty much the world as we knew it. But true love won, Foxy and Amara fell in love for real, and he found a way to bring a seedling of her former tree to town. I had a feeling I was seeing the fruits of that labor before us.

  “I do know a dryad living there, and she does have her tree with her. But she’d only react like this if…something happened to Foxy.” My gut tightened. Amara was extremely passionate, but Foxy kept her in check. Who knew what she would do if he was injured, or worse? “We have to get in there.”

  “I got zap again!” Crusty started to fly to the hedge. Knowing her, she liked getting fried by whatever came out of the hedge and attacked flyers.

  “No! Crusty, we need to stick together. I might need you to try and fly over in a bit, but plans first, then zaps. Okay?”

  She sighed and drifted back down with a nod.

  “What is your plan?” Mathilda looked more tired than she had before casting the second s
pell.

  “I’m trying to figure that out. Are you feeling okay?”

  She shook herself, then spun on the hedge and shouted a sharp word. The greenery pulled back into itself. The color returned to her cheeks.

  “I am now. Somehow your dryad friend has managed to make her plants pull in a magic user’s life force when a spell is cast. I didn’t notice it the first time. She is a very powerful mage.”

  I thought of the Amara I’d known. Pretty, flighty, emotional. Powerful magic user wasn’t in that line-up. Then again, love and fear can do amazing things.

  “There’s no way around the hedge; we have to find a way to reach Amara.” I moved a few steps closer to the hedge. Without magic, it was far too solid to work our way through. I stepped away from it when I began to feel it looking back at me…and the branches near me were waving in a wind that was nowhere else.

  Mathilda was studying the hedge as well, from a safer distance. “There’s no way either of us should try to use magic. I’m not sure what our options are.”

  “We help!” Leaf had been dancing with the moving hedge branches, but flew back to us.

  I shook my head. “Crusty got zapped by that thing when she tried before.”

  Crusty nodded and silently reenacted her zapping.

  “Fly faster than before. Find tree lady,” Garbage said. She flew straight up until she was level with the top of the hedge. She kept closing one eye and tilting her head back and forth. Then she held out her left arm as if sizing up dimensions.

  “If they’re willing to try?” Mathilda shrugged. She knew, even better than I did, how tough the faeries were.

  I looked at the three faery faces. “Okay, but you need to find Amara immediately. Tell her we can help but we need to get inside the city. And you need to avoid being seen by any syclarions that might still be there.”