The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3) (5 page)

Great. Most likely this was another one of their mysterious powers they had a long time ago, like hiding people, that was now coming back. I wasn’t sure how I felt about these powers popping up. Not to mention I was still weirded out about them being in my head. I focused hard on thinking of a huge pile of sweets next to a giant bottle of ale.

None of the faeries even responded.

I added them to the thought by name.

“You give us now!” Garbage was an inch in front of my face in an instant. The other two were not far behind her.

That was reassuring. So they could hear me in their heads, but only if I thought of them. I’d have to watch my thoughts.

“Can you hear everybody?”

Garbage, realizing that I wouldn’t magically supply them with sweets and booze in the midst of a bunch of trees, pulled back. “No. Was we could. Now. Boom. No.”

“We hear
you
.” Leaf added.

Clearly, that was the extent of their answers. We were back to boom. For a second I thought about running and telling Covey, but then I remembered her taking off was part of why I’d been in that tree in the first place.

“You give us now!” Garbage wasn’t letting go of the sweets and alcohol idea. I should have made my test thought a little less appealing.

“I can’t. The Shimmering Dewdrop is closed right now, and I don’t know if they’re done with the house yet.” The final repairs should have been finished today, but knowing the crew I had working on it, they probably took a two-hour break after the earthquakes. A repair job that should have taken about two weeks ended with almost a full, two-month-long rebuild of my entire house.

The reasons I’d been in the tree all slammed back into place. Damn. I’d managed to push the fact that Glorinal was possibly alive and running around with a bunch of murderous rakasa out of my head.

“Girls.” I waved all three faeries closer and lowered my voice. “Have you ever heard of the emerald dragon cult? Or of the rakasa?”

Crusty looked studiously blank. I’d say it was an act but I wasn’t even sure she heard me. Leaf and Garbage looked worried for the merest of seconds, and then both shook their heads.

That was something new. They were deliberately lying to me. Most times they were too vague for others to understand, but they didn’t outright lie.

“Not cult, no.” Crusty paid attention after all. And judging from the tiny glare Garbage shot her, she told me the truth.

“So you have heard of the emerald dragon then?”

Crusty, suddenly realizing that she said something she shouldn’t, took a deep breath, as if she was holding it under water, and then did a backwards summersault away from me. The other two quickly followed, then flew off over the trees.

Life was so much easier when all I had to do each day was dig through elven ruins.

I drifted back toward the ruins. Not where the standard dig sites were, but the side near the Forgotten Plains. The plains were unnaturally created eons ago when a bunch of bad magic went horribly wrong. Or so some of the stories went. Other stories stated that the plains were natural, and the land around them had been flung five hundred feet in the air. However, no one had evidence of any disaster having caused them. Of course no one who tried to go through them ever came back out to say one way or another, so who knew what the truth was.

Until recently, this area had been off-limits as the cliffs weren’t stable. Last month some dilettante patron had paid to have the whole area magically shored up, then vanished. Leaving a nice big mostly unexplored area for folks like me to wander about.

The trees here weren’t as big as the gapen trees in the rest of the ruins, and there was little evidence that any big finds were out here. However, it was nice and quiet.

I’d found a nice area and was just starting to relax and let my annoyance at Alric wander off when Covey burst into my clearing, looking like she’d just done battle with an army.

Chapter Seven

“Do you have any weapons?” She looked around the trees, then tossed me one of her daggers when she realized there weren’t any weapons hanging around. Her eyes were wild and her short hair stuck up in ridiculous clumps. “Come on, we have to stop them!”

She stopped dancing around long enough for me to grab her arm. The cliffs over the Forgotten Plains were only about ten feet behind us; I didn’t want her to decide to race in that direction. It had only been about an hour since she’d taken off, but her clothes were ragged and streaks of blood ran across her face and arms.

She’d found something.

“You found,
him
?” I didn’t want to say his name out loud. I wanted Glorinal’s body to be lying dead in the dark depths of that pit in the cavern. Even though that dream was fading, I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet.

“The sahlins are coming!” She pulled free of my arm and looked around a pair of trees.

Sahlins? I couldn’t pinpoint where I’d heard the name, but I was sure I had. Maybe ages ago, growing up. However, I couldn’t think of what they were or why their coming would cause someone like Covey to fall apart.

Covey froze as someone rustled the bushes to the side of us.

“Hello? What’s all this about then?” Harlan’s voice entered the clearing a second before he did. Just in time to get a knife flung at him.

The world slowed down as I realized Covey might be impaired, but her aim wasn’t. I immediately reached out with my magic to grab it, then threw both Covey and I to the ground as the knife spun back toward us and thunked into a tree.

I looked up to see Harlan crouching behind a tree. “I thought you were mad at Alric, not me.”

Covey shook her head and looked around as if just waking up. “What is going on, and why did you tackle me? I mean it, if there is a chance that bastard is still alive I need to find him.”

Harlan and I looked at each other as she got to her feet. She looked far more like herself than the hysterical and raving woman she’d been moments before. Except for the fact that she didn’t act as if she knew she’d been gone for an hour.

Harlan studied her for a few moments, then came out from behind his tree. “You left us an hour ago, looking for the rakasa and Glorinal if he’s still alive.”

Covey shot Harlan a look that university students everywhere feared—the ‘what lies are you trying to feed me now’, look.

Harlan was made of far sterner stuff than the average student was and glared right back. “It’s not my fault you forgot what you were doing.”

“I didn’t forget. I was.…” Covey rocked back on her feet and really looked where she was. “We were in my office. Why are we in the ruins?”

Harlan scowled. “She doesn’t remember anything after leaving the office.”

Covey rolled her eyes and looked a little less rattled. “I can speak for myself you know. Moreover, I do remember a bit more, slowly bits are coming back. Leaving the campus and heading toward the Antiquities Museum.” She shook her head. “Or rather what’s left of it. You weren’t kidding that it was destroyed. I don’t recall anything after that except Taryn tackling me.”

I really didn’t want to stay out here having this discussion. “How about we go somewhere else?”

“Sure, Foxy and Amara should be back by now,” Harlan said as we walked out of the ruins.

I nodded. Some serious food and a nice glass of ale would settle this day down nicely.

Covey had been scowling at the trees around us, then aimed the scowl at us. “This is wonderful. However, I have somehow lost an hour of time, I have scrapes and cuts that I have no memory of getting, and I need answers. I’ll even go to that place, if it will get you two to talk.”

Covey wasn’t a big fan of pubs in general, and The Shimmering Dewdrop in particular, since she felt I spent too much time there.

She didn’t wait for either of us to respond, but stomped down the path to the pub.

Neither Harlan nor I were motivated to try to catch up with her. She was in a foul mood and those were never healthy for folks around her. Maybe, if I was lucky, Alric would be at the pub and she could take him down a few pegs.

“Where did you leave Alric?”

“I knew you weren’t that mad at him,” Harlan said with a chuckle. “But I was about to ask you how you managed to stop that knife, since I don’t think that would be good talk for the pub.”

Damn it. “I’d hoped maybe you hadn’t noticed that.” I lowered my voice. “Yes, I used magic. No, I have no idea what spell it was. Yes, you’re welcome for saving that thick head of yours.”

Harlan gave me a polite sniff. “No dragon bane?”

“Of course not. I didn’t know Covey would turn into a knife-flinging monster before my eyes. I….” I let my words drift. No dragon bane, yet no fire ants in my skull. That was an improvement. And hopefully not the start of some new side effect that just hadn’t shown up yet.

“Ah.” Harlan’s smirk told me all I needed to know—he made the connection too since I wasn’t bitching about my head.

“We can talk about it later.” Much, much later, if I had my way. I had no idea where this magic came from, or what I could do with it. Harlan was certain I would become some mighty mage and live a life of power and wealth. Or something equally ridiculous.

“Now where’s Alric? Did he find anything of interest?” We were approaching the pub so we both had to watch our words. Not that it would last long with Harlan. He could spread gossip faster than an entire henhouse of grandmothers.

“He found something. But he wouldn’t tell me what it was; just rolled up the scroll he’d been looking at and left.” Harlan held the door to the pub open for me. “I had to put the mess away, but I will not be the one telling Covey about the missing one.”

“He stole another scroll?” Obviously, the hopes I had for a reformed Alric were completely unfounded.

Harlan scowled but the way he tapped his teeth told me he was scowling about something in his head, not me. “He muttered something. No, I simply can’t recall it.”

Covey had gotten to the pub first and commandeered one of the best tables. From the disgruntled but trying-not-to-let-her-see-it looks on the faces of the people at the tables around her, it may not have been empty when she took it.

I couldn’t blame folks for getting out of her way. She had clearly been trying to find her missing time on the walk over here, and just as clearly hadn’t been able to. She looked ready to spit nails, and then hammer them into someone with her fist.

“This is acceptable?” At the nods from both Harlan and me as we sat, she nodded as well. “Then talk. I already told Foxy to bring you both whatever it is you drink. But you need to talk now.”

Harlan jumped right in. “You left your office, then an hour or more later, you threw a knife at my head in the ruins.”

“That was not helpful.” She started to turn toward me but then twisted back to him. “I do apologize about the knife however. I wonder how I missed.” She wasn’t saying she had hoped to hit Harlan, although if she knew he didn’t stop Alric from stealing another scroll, she probably would change that thought. However, Covey had impeccable aim. She turned to me. “I see you and I may have more to talk about, later.”

The look she gave me said that she may have lost time, but like Harlan, she had an almost obsessive issue with my magic. She knew darn well why she missed.

Foxy walked up then, bringing two ales and one very clear water in a fancy glass. “Fresh spring water from the Longhan Mountains. Amara sends it with her best regards.” He put the water in front of Covey. Then gave Harlan and me the ales. He looked ready to chat, but a ruckus from the kitchen pulled his attention and he nodded and left.

I didn’t know when he’d be back, so I quickly told Covey about her sudden appearance in the ruins.

The telling of it had been brief, it all had happened in a few minutes, but Covey’s face changed from annoyance to worry.

“Sahlins?” She took a long drink of the spring water before her. “Are you certain? That was the exact word I used?”

Now she was making me worried. I hadn’t been sure if I heard of the term before, but when she used it I was trying to get her to stop throwing sharp weapons around. “As far as I know, yeah, that’s what it sounded like. You said they were coming and we needed weapons.”

Covey drained the rest of her glass in a single gulp, and then studied the drops inside as if they had answers.

“The sahlins were desert dwellers. None survived after decades of being hunted by my people—before we became civilized. They were mindless, vicious things, little more than animals that could talk. And kill. Tales were passed down to trellian children that one day the sahlins would come back and repay our race for what we did.”

The three of us were silent. First, a cult thought to be extinct, but one that had tried to destroy the elves, left evidence they were back. Now nightmares from a long-lost trellian past were haunting Covey. Of course, since Covey had no idea what had happened to her during her missing time, there was no way to know if the threat from them was real or not. Or if the two were connected.

Harlan coughed and looked embarrassed. “Ah, this isn’t pertinent to this discussion, but I just remembered the other thing about Alric. He was going to break into your patroness’ home.”