The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3) (3 page)

Chapter Four

I looked around trying to see who said that and realized it came from me. Possibly the last place I wanted to go was down there. Yet, there it was.

“No, I’ll go.” Alric looked around for somewhere to tie his rope.

I hadn’t even noticed he had a rope.

Most likely, the enterprising former thief stole it as we moved between houses on the way here. Good to know he kept his skills up.

I hadn’t meant to volunteer myself, but I knew why I did. “I need to go. I’m the best one at rummaging through debris and rocks. Especially considering where Qianru has me digging lately.” I tried to take the rope, but he moved it out of reach. “I’m the trained digger, remember? You’re just the trained spy and tracker. Not so helpful here.”

“I’m stronger than you, both physically and magically. If there is anything unexpected down there—”

“I’ll yell for help.” I yanked the rope out of his hands. He had already secured it around a heavy gapen tree that looked far enough from the newly exploded ravine to still be stable. I wished I had my digger tools, but we couldn’t waste time going back for them. The Hill council were politicians at heart, which meant they’d be arguing about the collapsed museum, and how to get their stored treasures out of the mess, for a while. It might take time before they looked to check on their shields on the mine. However, we couldn’t be sure that other folks didn’t make the same connection Alric had.

Alric and Harlan held the rope and let it out as I slowly descended. The walls of the pit were jagged and uneven, a testament to their violent birth. I dodged a giant tree root blocking my path and focused on the dig. This was just a dig. I was looking for an artifact in a dig, not the body of my murderous former boyfriend.

I figured if I kept telling myself that eventually I’d give in and believe it.

The metal corral that Jovan and Glorinal had used to keep their kidnapped prisoners contained lay in a massive twisted heap not far below the exposed tree roots. Although he couldn’t see them from the top, I was sure Harlan would be glad to hear of their demise.

I was almost to what could be considered the bottom—there were a lot of layers here— when a second, thinner rope dropped down along side of me. Followed moments later by Alric. The rope didn’t look strong enough to hold him, and it was an odd green color, faintly glowing.

“First off, I said I was doing this. You were going to stay up top. Secondly, what the hell is that?” I swear the rope was slowly moving of its own accord, even caressing Alric’s hand when he let go of it.

“I never actually said I would stay.” Alric smiled and looked around where we landed. “And the rope is made up of magic and tree leaves, something you might be able to make in a few dozen years or so.” He pointed to the rope near me. “I stole that one for you.”

I settled on giving him a scowl and turned toward the collapsed cavern before us.

A deep half-dome carved in the wall ahead of us looked like a likely place to start. It looked fresh, as if the recent explosion had cracked it open. It was also so dark that nothing beyond the first few feet could be seen. I waited for Alric to magic us some light; finally I turned around to him. “We don’t have much time, remember?”

“I think you should try casting a light spell. It’s one of the first ones we teach babies.” He handed me a small rock. “It helps if you have a focus to pin it on.”

I shifted the rock in my hand and shook my head. “I seriously doubt you elves trained babies to fling lit rocks around. What if something goes wrong? I could have a massive headache and pass out.” Granted, that hadn’t happened yet, but whenever he’d tried to get me to do magic without dragon bane, it sure felt like it would.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m with you, isn’t it?”

I wanted to smack the grin off his face. Instead, I turned my back to him and focused on the spell for light. It had some long-winded elven name that meant luminesce. I called it glow magic. I shut my eyes—something else Alric was trying to break me of, but my back was to him for a reason—and pulled in energy to fuel the spell. My temples started throbbing first, and then a buzzing filled my head. I took a deep breath and concentrated on the spell, just the spell, the spell was all.

“Another problem of closing your eyes.” Alric’s voice was right next to my ear and I almost jumped a foot in the air.

I also opened my eyes. The blinding glow bathed the entire area in an eerie greenish gold light.

“What’s going on down there?” Harlan used his yelling but trying to be quiet about it voice.

Which meant they probably heard him back in town.

“Taryn is playing around. Nothing to worry about.” Alric covered the hand holding the rock with his own and muttered a few spell words. The pressure in my head lessened and the glow dimmed down to a manageable level.

“We probably want to move along before Harlan brings in the whole town,” Alric said as he started into the dark cavern.

I swore under my breath at his back and followed him in.

And swore some more after about ten minutes of scrambling over rocks. The ones near the entrance were jagged and blown outward. But further in…even to my magic-novice eyes it was clear magic caused the condition of the cavern. Neither tools nor nature molded rocks this way. It was as if a giant bubble had forced the rocks to curve around it. The further we got, the more evidence of magic showed in the rocks. Something, or someone, had magically pushed a giant bubble into the rocks as the mine had fallen in on itself.

There wasn’t much space in the rock bubble. The original mine had been huge, but this was almost like a pocket of it that had stayed near the surface and burst open with the recent explosion. Before that, it would have been dark and almost airless.

Lucky for me, I now had enough light to see the decimated corpse.

From the clothing it was Jovan.

“Was he drained…?” I couldn’t even finish my question.

“Yes.” The anger in Alric’s voice didn’t need any other words to emphasize it. Whoever had been down here had used death magic to drain any remaining energy from the corpse. Even though it most likely happened right after the collapse two months ago, waves of the spells used still permeated the area. A heavy feeling of evil lingered over the corpse and boulders near it.

Three more decimated bodies, all wearing the gray uniforms of Glorinal’s guards, were dumped behind the boulder closest to Jovan’s corpse. The magic stench from their corpses almost made me throw up. They had been fed on while still alive.

If Glorinal had been the one behind the magic rock bubble, he had survived down here for two months with nothing but four corpses and his magic to sustain him.

I so wanted to run screaming out of there right now.

Alric silently turned me away from the bodies, and kept his hand on my shoulder after we moved away. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but I was now glad he had come down here with me. I probably could have handled seeing the dead remains of Glorinal. Dead and drained remains that gave evidence that Glorinal might still be alive, and had used these bodies to stay that way wasn’t really what I was up for.

“He had to have created a magic bubble to survive the cave in, then whoever got him out, inadvertently pushed the bubble to the surface when everything exploded.” Alric walked over to see the remains of a partially collapsed tunnel. Then he went to the end of the cavern, having to scramble over large boulders to do so. He peered down into something I couldn’t see and shook his head. “I can’t imagine he would have gone through all of this only to leave the obsidian chimera behind. So either it is with him, or it’s down there.”

I scrambled over to him. I was a good digger and not afraid of deep finds. However, there was no way any digger could get down there. The huge pit in front of me was so wide and deep that even holding my glow rock out over it, I couldn’t see the far side, or the bottom.

Glorinal was alive. He escaped with help. And he possibly had a little relic of potential world destruction with him.

I wondered if moving to the other end of the world was an option. Maybe some obscure and hard to find mountain top somewhere where Bunky, the girls, and I could raise goats.

Then Alric started swearing.

There had already been plenty of things to swear about in here, so I was almost afraid to see what this newest one was.

He’d moved back toward the collapsed tunnel someone had used to free Glorinal and had brushed away some dust on the right edge of it.

I stepped closer just as he turned to me, his face pale. “We have to leave
now
.” He grabbed my arm, but I pulled back to see what was on the rock face. A two-inch-long dark green shape had been stamped into the rock about as high as my shoulder, with enough force to send cracks radiating out from the design. An odd magical stench gave evidence of how someone embedded it into solid stone.

“A green dragon?” I’d seen Alric face down any number of horrors and laugh them off. However, he was about to pick me up and carry me out by force if I didn’t follow him right then and there.

I let him pull me away this time. “Fine, but why are you so disturbed? It’s kinda weird, I’ll admit. Do you think Glorinal did it?”

“No. I know he didn’t.” Alric pulled me until we were almost running. “It’s not a green dragon, it’s the emerald dragon. The mark of a group called the rakasa. They almost destroyed my people. They were wiped out over five hundred years before the Breaking.”

Chapter Five

That brought mixed feelings. A supposedly long-dead murderous group who liked to kill elves had managed to dig their way through at least a mile of dirt and rock—to free an elf. I knew the elves were mostly still in hiding, at least Alric’s clan was, but that seemed a little extreme.

I blinked as Alric dragged us back into the sunlight. “Um, they weren’t actually dragons were they?” I had a hard time thinking of any self-respecting dragon, if they weren’t just mythological bugaboos anyway, fitting in the remains of that tunnel. Harlan was probably the largest I could see fitting in there. Even Foxy would have been too big.

“No, but they worshipped a large emerald that had been carved into the shape of a dragon, and that was their symbol.” He quickly went over to the ropes and handed mine to me. “You go up first.” He didn’t have his sword with him, but he did have his dagger. I wasn’t sure at what point in our rushed journey he’d taken it out, but it was out now as he turned to face the cavern entrance.

I wanted to ask more questions, and I would, but his fear was something I could almost taste. I didn’t think he was this upset when Jovan tortured him.

My scramble up the rope probably wasn’t graceful, but it got me up the side of the rocks in record time. I looked back and Alric was still watching the cavern mouth. “I’m up.” He nodded but didn’t look toward me for a few tense minutes, then turned back to the cliff face, sheathed his dagger and quickly, and with disgusting grace, climbed up the rope. His boots barely touched the rocks.

“Did you find the artifact?” Harlan had clearly been bored while we were down there as he’d been making little designs in the dirt.

Alric said nothing, but untied the rope I’d used, and then said a few words over the rope he’d created and it dissolved into a pile of leaves. He then used his foot to wipe out all of Harlan’s dirt doodles. “We were never here. No one can know we were here.”

Harlan opened his mouth to ask probably the same questions I was about to, but Alric stopped us both with a look. “Not. Here.” He turned and headed down a narrow, unused trail. One that didn’t seem to be heading back toward town.

Harlan looked at me but I shrugged and followed Alric.

I could almost feel Harlan’s bottled-up questions pushing at my back as we made our way through the trees. Alric changed trails at least five times, one time leading us through a stream to do so. Harlan was not amused.

Finally, the city was within sight, and Alric slowed down. “I’m sorry, but we needed to get away from there immediately and without anyone seeing us come from there.”

“I have a question—wait, that’s not true; I have a lot of them. And Harlan here is going to explode with them. But my first one is how can a race of people who have forgotten a lot of things since the Breaking have such a vivid memory of …them?” The look in Alric’s eyes told me I didn’t want to say dragons, green, or rakasa out here.

“Because they were that horrible. I’ll explain more when we find Covey, but the story of the rakasa and their green dragon cult,” he even winced when he said it, but he also dropped his voice, “was one so traumatic to our people it was never forgotten. They almost slaughtered the entire elven race.”

Harlan’s eyes got round at that and I did fear he would explode if he couldn’t ask his questions. I leaned forward and whispered in his ear as we headed toward the university. “Glorinal had been down there until recently, but some group found him. We don’t know if they took him or killed him.” I thought about that crater in the cavern; if they had dumped his body down that, we wouldn’t have seen anything. “They are from the elves’ past.”

“Oh! But—”

Alric turned and shook his head at both of us. “Not now.”

We stayed silent until we got to the campus, but at least Harlan didn’t look quite as ready to explode now. He did look like his brain was working overtime on what I gave him though.

The university was a beautiful place—providing school wasn’t in session. Few students roamed the halls on weekends and even fewer faculty. However, Alric thought as I did—Covey would be there.

Harlan’s tail lashed and a full scowl had grown on his face by the time we got to Covey’s office. “Can we talk
now
?”

“Almost.” Alric looked around each corridor we crossed as if he thought we’d been followed. Finally, we reached Covey’s office and he knocked on her door.

I thought she wasn’t in there at first. Her office wasn’t that big, and she didn’t respond for two full sets of knocks. Eventually, the door swung open.

“Covey?” I stuck my head in, as while the door had opened there was no one behind it. She was already going back to her desk, her nose buried in a book. Covey was a trellian, a reptilian-based biped race that lived in the deserts for the most part. Her limbs were longer than an average person, and although extremely slender, she was insanely strong.

“Yes, yes, go ahead and clean the room, I’ll stay out of your way.”

Alric shoved me into the office, with himself and Harlan close behind, then shut and locked the door behind us.

Covey still hadn’t looked up.

“Covey, we apparently need to talk to you,” I finally said.

She looked up and it took a few moments for her brain to pull itself free of whatever she was reading, and focus on all of us standing in her tiny office.

“Do you have anything on the emerald dragon cult, the rakasa?” Alric wasn’t beating around the bush on this one. However, it was good that he looked a tiny bit less upset.

“I can’t say I’ve…wait a minute.” That was Covey, didn’t even ask why we were there, or what this cult was. Ask her about something she could research and she was like a hawk with a mouse.

Alric followed Covey to a new painting with a heavy frame. Which was weird, Covey never decorated her office; she focused on packing it full of scrolls, books, and relics. The question was resolved when she pulled the painting away from the wall and revealed a safe.

“People keep taking things of mine that they shouldn’t.” She shot a look over her shoulder at Alric. The first time they’d met had been when he stole a scroll from her. They were friends now, but she did like to remind him of it from time to time.

“It’s odd that you mention an emerald dragon. I don’t think I’ve seen anything about a cult, nor anyone called the rakasa, but there’s mention of a relic. It’s an older scroll, probably a good thousand years before your people vanished from here.”

“I thought you said this was a cult and somehow related to Glorinal possibly being alive?” Harlan had been incredibly patient on the way over, but he’d finally had enough.

Only years of training kept Covey from dropping the pile of scrolls she had taken out of her safe. She did, however, fling them at me and turn to Alric.

“That bastard is alive? And you’re doing research? We need to find him. Kill him.” That was very Covey. Most academics were meek and stayed in their world of academia. Covey was a hunter at heart, and occasionally that prey was living. Granted, she only went after people who deserved to be killed, but she had no problem doing the deed herself.

From the look in her eyes she was already planning Glorinal’s demise. Along with kidnapping Harlan, Glorinal had also taken Covey. She had extreme control issues, and Glorinal had shown that he, most likely with a lot of magical back up from Jovan, had been able to render her immobile. Their victims could only move when one of the two elves commanded it, but they were aware the entire time of their capture. Covey had been furious that a cave-in had taken out Glorinal before she could rip him into shreds.

Alric glared at Harlan. “We have no idea if he is alive or not. He
was
alive, but the people that might have found him hate elves. Most likely his body was in that cavern somewhere. The focus here needs to be on this cult and that they very possibly have the obsidian chimera.” He briefly explained everything that happened in the cavern, and what we thought happened a few days ago. That went well.

“Two days?” I wasn’t sure who said it first, but both Harlan and Covey looked ready to bust a vessel.

“Their spells triggered a delayed explosive collapse. That’s what caused those earthquakes.” Alric grabbed Covey as she started to push past him. “They have a two-day lead, and we have no idea where they went.”

Covey usually didn’t use weapons. Although fully trained in multiple forms of combat, she was enough of a weapon by herself. She shook free of his grasp and raced around her office, pulling out small knives and throwing stars she had hidden away and stashing them upon her person. “If there is even the slightest chance that murdering bastard is alive and not being tortured as we speak, I need to find him. I will find him. You said they escaped by the Antiquities Museum? That’s where I’m starting. Take what you need of the scrolls, lock up afterwards.” With that, she vanished down the hall.

I started to go after her, she was my best friend after all, and we shouldn’t have let her dash off like that. When I turned to ask Alric and Harlan how best we could stop her I noticed both of them were busy reading the scrolls I’d dumped on her desk.

“Don’t you two think we should stop her? Those rakasa things are probably dangerous to everyone, right?”

Harlan looked up briefly, and then went back to skimming one of the smaller scrolls. “I have no idea how to stop her.”

“She won’t listen and needs to get it out of her system.” Alric spoke without looking up. “Besides, her people used to hunt the rakasa for sport. At least once the elves fought them off and chased them out to the Trellian desert.”

An awful thought crossed my mind. “You didn’t only come here for the scrolls, you came here in hopes Covey would do just what she did.” In the last two months, I’d begun to think Alric had toned down his spy life. He seemed like he treated us, all of us, like people he cared about, not pawns. I started to believe there might be a chance for us to build a relationship. This blew that to hell.

“I needed to see these scrolls, or at least see if they gave us any clues.” He looked contrite, but I noticed he hadn’t denied my accusation.

“Look me in the eye, and tell me that you never thought of using Covey to find those rakasa.” Even Harlan looked up at the tone of my voice, but it took Alric a few moments longer.

“I can’t.” He shook his head. “Well, I could, but as you point out on a regular basis, I lie. Yes, I did think she might react the way she did. Having a pissed-off, semi-berserker trellian hounding the rakasa might make them sloppy.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I’d accused him of it, but somewhere in my mind I’d hoped I’d been wrong. I couldn’t play this game anymore. He was risking my friends’ lives as well as my heart. “You know what? Why don’t you go back to your damn elven kingdom and play your games there. Death and destruction have followed you around since you came stalking through here, and you don’t even care. You push people around like playing pieces to get what you want at any cost.” I turned for the door. “I’m done.”

“Taryn,” Alric dropped the scroll to follow me, but I spun on him.

“No. You stay and see what you can find. I need to be somewhere else.”

His beautiful green eyes looked hurt, but he was a damn skilled actor, so I wasn’t taken in. Without saying another word—I couldn’t think of any I could say without yelling or crying—

I stomped out.

Part of my brain said that even though Alric was still first and foremost a scout for his people, he also wasn’t the soulless bastard I was making him out to be. And if I was honest with myself, my money was on Covey in any fight as long as death magic wasn’t involved. However, it was the principle. Not to mention if he was manipulating her, was he still doing that to me?

I was so annoyed and concerned, I didn’t even notice the sceanra anam until it hit me in the face.