The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3) (8 page)

A series of large thumps came from the wall around Covey’s kitchen, then over the top of the roof, then slammed through the front door.

At least Covey didn’t have to worry about the kitchen window any more. Of course there was now a hole in the door.

And a still-bouncy Garbage zipping around with something in a bag that logically could not have fit through that hole.

The bag squirmed, but I couldn’t tell if it was an animal, or if Garbage had tracked down a wayward cherub.

She flew in a circle and dumped out the bag.

A pissed-off brownie faced us all. Large for one of his ilk, and they were rare this far south, preferring the colder northern climates. But we had two and a half feet of angry, beard-jutting, pointed-hat-wearing brownie looking like he was already planning what part he would cut off first from each one of us.

Before he could act though, Garbage darted forward, grabbed something from him, managing to stay clear of some fast moving hands on his part, and came to the kitchen and dropped a rock on Covey’s table.

She also noticed the chocolate for the first time and swooped down to get it.

“No!” I grabbed the bag the brownie came in and ran for the kitchen. “Don’t let her eat that! She needs to take that thing back first!”

I was too late.

Chapter Twelve

Garbage spun in a winding circle like a wobbling flying top with chocolate all over her face. She’d only been about a foot over the table, which was good, because when she crashed, she crashed hard.

She landed next to the rock she’d brought in, and I admired her ability to focus on it with the tea and chocolate battling for control of her head.

“Is good,” she said as she doubled over in laughter—at what I had no idea—then leaned her entire body into the rock to push it my way. The tea must have previously helped with her strength, since she’d had no trouble stealing the rock from the brownie. Or stealing the brownie.

The brownie in question leaned around a lot, but couldn’t seem to move from where Garbage put him. The faeries had some limited spell tricks they could use, and I had a feeling Garbage had trapped him where he stood. Probably a good thing given the words he muttered just loud enough for us to hear. Whoever said wee folks were happy, helpful folks never met one.

I grabbed the rock before Harlan could. Covey guarded her scroll and glared at the brownie. It might be best for his safety as well if he couldn’t break free of whatever Garbage Blossom had put him under.

The rock I snatched out of Harlan’s paw took both hands to hold. It was also very old, and while the edges around it were still rougher than say a stone worn down by water or ice for a few thousand years, they were still timeworn.

I flipped it over and started swearing almost as loudly as our little friend in the front room.

Another emerald dragon.

However, this one looked different from the other two. Like them, the image had been magically pushed into the stone about half an inch. But the image was larger and far more detailed. As if the others we saw were imitations of this one, but no one was around to make one this fancy any more.

I looked back at the brownie.

He was quite a bit smaller than what I’d thought the cult members would be. And while rumored to be vicious in a pack, brownies didn’t have jagged pointed teeth or anything else attributed to the rakasa.

The digger in me wanted to keep things academic, but the rest of my mind screamed that this was a relic from long before the Breaking. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it showed up at the same time we thought a long-dead cult had resurrected itself.

The brownie pulled at his feet when I turned to him, but his shoes must have been spelled. No matter how hard he pulled, he couldn’t get his feet out of them.

“Do you want to explain this?” I waved the stone at him, and then I hooked a thumb over at Harlan and Covey. “Or do I let these two big, bad predators remind themselves brownies were prey?” I was pushing it. Covey was fierce when the mood hit her, but Harlan was more a fluffy lap cat than predator. I doubted the chatalings ever hunted anything larger than a mouse. And brownies were too ornery to be prey for most species, not to mention the whole living in the frozen north bit. But hopefully the two of them were behind me looking fierce.

“You can’t make me talk! I demand to be let free! I demand…keep it away from me!” The brownie almost broke both legs trying to pull backwards to get away from something behind me coming out of the kitchen.

I’d expected Covey to be stalking along behind me, but was surprised when a wobbly Garbage came out walking on the ground. Chocolate was not just smeared on her face, but it appeared she’d rolled in it.

I turned back to the brownie. I had no idea the little things were that bendable. Trained contortionists wouldn’t be able to bend like that. “Keep it away!” he yelled.

“You’re afraid of a tiny faery?”

“It’s the collector of souls! It has the souls of the dead on its face!”

I looked back and shared a look with Harlan who simply shrugged. Not only was this new chocolate stuff tasty, and calming to the faeries, it also collected souls. Good to know.

Garbage stumbled a few more steps forward, then collapsed and sat cross-legged on the carpet about a foot away from the brownie. “You tell nice lady what she wanna know.”

I was now nice lady? Clearly, whatever effect the tea had on her personality it was still messing with it.

She gave a huge yawn and stretched. “You tell her now….” And she tumbled over asleep.

There was a lot of weirdness going on right now and I was reaching the edge of dealing with it.

Garbage’s collapse seemed to give the brownie more courage. “I am stronger than all of you! I have the path of the righteous on my side! I have—”

He cut off as Garbage, with what was probably her final burst of energy, woke up, yelled a bunch of vulgar faery swear words and ran toward him waving her arms.

“I found it! I found it! I came looking for
them
. We follow them to take over the world!” He squealed as Garbage jumped for him. “I lie! I lie! I’m just a baker!”

Garbage shook her fist at him, then passed out at his feet, a little pile of chocolate-covered, drooling faery goodness. I scooped her up and took her into the kitchen to wash her off.

I motioned to the other two to join me at the sink. “I believe him. And we’re not going to get any answers out of her until she comes off her chocolate high. I think she stole him because she could sense the emerald dragon rock.”

Covey and Harlan both started talking at the same time, but I couldn’t focus since our brownie friend, emboldened by the collapse of his faery nemesis, was now back to yelling to be released.

Alric had come into the house without any of us noticing and nodded to the screaming brownie. “Why are you collecting brownies? Or is this a special one?”

“Long story, but Garbage brought him as a prize for us, she also cannot have tea ever again, and he had this with him.” I tossed Alric the rock. Part of me didn’t want to because of his recent tricks, but like Covey said, if any new disasters came our way, we needed to have our resident expert on board.

Alric caught the rock without even a slight jiggle of the bag he carried. He looked at it, but wasn’t as impressed as I expected him to be.

“It’s like ones you have, only older. Much older.” I hadn’t expected him to react the same way as he had to the more recent marks, but he acted as if I’d handed him a mildly interesting flower. “He said he found it, and was coming to Beccia to find the rest of them.”

Alric looked back at the brownie, who had stopped yelling for the moment and was intently watching Alric, then went the rest of the way into the kitchen and sat down. “We’re going to see more of them. The new marks are for their followers, not us.” He put the rock in his bag and pulled out two bottles of ale.

“This isn’t the time for drinking, you know.” Harlan’s tail lashed back and forth. Good reason or not, he was not going to forgive and forget about the spell Alric had pulled.

“I thought you might want these two back.” He settled the bottles on the table and I noticed they both were empty of beer, but full of faery.

Passed out little faeries.

“Where did you find them?” I rushed forward to grab the bottles. I’d felt better when Garbage said she could hear them again, but seeing them was much better. Both of them slept the sleep of the justifiably drunk. Even with the lids still on their bottles, I could hear Crusty snoring.

“I wouldn’t open those lids yet, they both just passed out. They were at The Shimmering Dewdrop, drunk like I’ve never seen. Both of them were chittering so fast even I couldn’t understand them. The rest of the bar faeries were in the same shape.”

“So whoever had them just let them go?” I nodded over toward his bag. “You don’t happen to have Bunky in there do you?”

“I guess they got tired of them.” Alric was distracted by trying to slide Covey’s scroll over to him. I’d never seen him be so blatant about his thievery. “What? Um, no.”

A pounding at the front door pulled me away from Alric’s odd behavior. Covey waved her hand for me to get the door. From the way her eyes narrowed as she watched Alric, I’d say I wasn’t the only one concerned.

Bunky almost knocked me over. Only a bit of a dance to the side saved me. His buzz was the angriest I’d ever heard it as he pulled back and studied me from head to toe. His buzz reduced a bit when he realized who I was, but then increased when he spun toward the kitchen.

I was used to Bunky playfully trying to head butt Alric, but there was nothing at all playful in the way he charged forward. His buzzing was loud enough to cause Garbage Blossom to stir a bit on the cloth we’d left her on at the table. He hit Alric with enough force to slam him out of his chair and across the kitchen floor.

“Bunky! Knock it off!” I ran forward as Harlan and Covey ran to stand between Alric and my pissed-off chimera. They blocked Bunky for the time, but I had a feeling unless we were willing to disable him, we couldn’t stop him for long.

Alric staggered to his feet and clutched his duffle bag to his chest.

I had seen Alric in many different moods in the five months I’d known him. Cowardly and terrified were not ones I was familiar with. Nor did it look good on him.

“Everyone back off.” I grabbed the two bottles that held the faeries. Harlan picked up Garbage and came to my side of the table. Covey was still scowling and trying to block an increasingly agitated Bunky from an increasingly frantic Alric.

“Covey, you too. Alric? Why is Bunky trying to hurt you?” I debated opening up the bottles and seeing if a dunk in cold tea could revive Crusty and Leaf. Something was wrong here and even hyperactive faeries might be more of a help than none at all.

“Trying?” Alric pulled his terror-filled eyes away from the enraged chimera before him for only a second, but it was enough. With a speed I’d never seen him exhibit before, Bunky dove forward and ripped the bag out of Alric’s hands with his teeth. He then flew to me, dropped it at my feet, and flew back to hover over Alric. Every single move Alric made, Bunky matched.

Covey had gotten bit by the spell Alric had on the bag previously. There didn’t seem to be any spell on it that I could feel now, but I was still careful as I opened it.

To find a bag full of rags.

“I told them I couldn’t do this!” Alric, or whatever was pretending to be him, started shrinking and growing thin and gray. Huge, eerie, green-blue eyes took over half of its face, and the look of fear and terror looked much more at home there. His gray skin was covered by a shabby-looking coat made up of rags and pockets and he reached into pocket and pulled out a spell ball before I could move to stop him.

“Bunky! Get him!” I made a dive for the former-Alric just as Bunky dove down at him. Neither of us caught him as he slammed the spell ball on the ground and vanished.

Chapter Thirteen

“I know I’m new to the whole magic thing, but still, what just happened?” I knew for a fact that Covey had a spell breaker ball in her window, one possibly as strong as the spell Alric, the real one, had put on my house a few months ago. The disguised creature should have been exposed the minute he came inside.

Instead, the only thing that exposed him was my little chimera construct. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a pair of thin wool gloves, then called Bunky over to me. He was still buzzing around the area the stranger had been in, but came rushing over when he realized I had the gloves on.

For some reason, if I touched Bunky I ran the risk of getting knocked ass over head with a slew of images. They didn’t always hit, nor did anyone else seem to be affected, but after the third time of being knocked on my butt, I never touched Bunky without gloves. However, he deserved some scratches for what he did.

“I’d say we saw an elven changeling.” Far from being disturbed about having someone come into her home and pretend to be Alric, Covey seemed fascinated. She went to her spell breaker ball, and then shook her head. “He didn’t even rattle it. Amazing. Or rather it didn’t. Changelings don’t have gender, as we know it. Fragile beings, I would have thought they wouldn’t have survived the Breaking.”

I kept patting Bunky. Focusing on him kept the screaming words away. “If that thing replaced Alric, where is the real one?” Or almost kept them away.

“If Covey is right and that thing was a changeling, then I’d say Alric is long gone.” Harlan said. “The whole point of changelings, from a historical view, was to fool other species into taking one of them in, thus giving the elves a chance to get away with the real one. The rumor had it they usually took children. But someone must have taken Alric, then left a replacement.”

Covey shook her head. “Those were unfounded myths, most likely created to scare chataling children. None of the current races, mine excluded, were advanced enough for the elves to have cared about taking them.”

“But still—”

A wild scream coming from the brownie in the living room cut off Harlan’s defense. Which woke up Garbage who also started screaming and running toward the brownie—like earlier, for some reason she didn’t fly. The brownie had managed to free itself from its shoes which were still stuck solidly to the living room floor, but that didn’t slow him down as he raced in his stocking feet for the door.

He got there before she did, then ran out into the late morning.

Garbage skidded to a halt, then turned and flew back to us. She was still a little groggy from her bout with the chocolate, but her flying was straight.

“Why didn’t you fly after him?” When your legs were only a few inches high, running was not a great mode of transportation.

“Then what do with him?” The look she gave me told me the old Garbage was back in place. “He not good. Just wanted rock.”

She flew over to where I’d laid down the bottles and started pulling off a cap. “They need up.”

This was already one of the strangest mornings I’d ever had. I went to help Garbage with the bottles as I tried to think back over Alric’s behavior. How long had that thing been in his place?

I got both bottles open while Covey and Harlan kept their academic debate going. Garbage slapped both of her friends around until they shook themselves out of their stupor.

I turned back to my other two friends. “I don’t care whether changelings are purple, ten feet tall, and run the underground city to the north; we need to find out where Alric is.”

“Is true, they lost high thing.” Garbage nodded to Leaf and Crusty, and then shot all three of us a disgusted look. Clearly, she was
very
much back to her old self.

“Why you lose him?” Crusty’s voice still had a bit of her drunken warble, like at any moment she would burst into song.

Leaf nodded slowly, and then listed to the side. “He pretty, no should be losted.”

Obviously, neither one had gone through their reset or whatever sobering mechanism the faeries had. Both were still quite tipsy.

Garbage marched around the two of them like a tiny and annoyed general. Before any of us could act, she grabbed both by an arm, flew them over to Covey’s teapot, and dropped them in.

I had been thinking of taking that action myself, but only when I thought I might need backup of any sort. The crisis of the moment was over. We didn’t need to find out if tea had the same effect on all three faeries.

Covey had still been arguing with Harlan, but with a hawk-like skill only the really good professors had, she’d seen Garbage’s trick, and felt the same way I did.

She was also faster than me.

“No!” She grabbed the teapot and dumped the tea and the faeries into her sink and was pouring water over them before I even got there.

“They no be this. Must get up.” Garbage buzzed around Covey but not too close.

“Not with tea.” I pulled over Covey’s half-finished coffee cup and dumped it down the drain as well. Better to be safe.

They weren’t hyperactive, but both Leaf and Crusty looked far more sober than they had been. Garbage nodded in approval. “We go find, they lose.”

Without waiting for me to explain that we didn’t lose Alric, and find out more about why she brought in the brownie, and who took the others, all three zipped out through the hole in Covey’s kitchen window. Which had mysteriously become open again. Bunky buzzed to the front door for me to let him out. “Try to keep them out of trouble?” He gave what sounded to my hopeful ears a positive sounding buzz, and then vanished down the street.

“Well, that takes care of that.” I turned back to the kitchen and the others. “So, the question is who took Alric, how did they take him, and when did they take him?” I pulled the rags out of the bag the fake-Alric had been carrying, but found nothing other than the relic emerald dragon stone we got from the brownie. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’d grabbed Alric at some point after he’d started carrying the duffle bag, and had it to be consistent, but didn’t know, or want to replicate, what was in there. Which meant the real Alric still has the real bag and, more importantly, everything in it.”

“I’d say they copied him after he left a few hours ago.” Covey said as she wiggled her injured fingers at me. “That was when he took his bag back. Had they copied him the first time he left, they wouldn’t have needed it.”

“Do either of you know where he went?”

“He said he found where the girls and Bunky were grabbed, but that was all,” Harlan said. “He only came back to see how you were.”

“I know you two don’t agree on what the changelings are.” If we didn’t know where he was grabbed, maybe we could figure out who took him. “But it is agreed that the changelings were part of the elvish community?”

Harlan opened his mouth, most likely to argue judging by the look on his face, but Covey cut him off.

“They were created by the elves long ago, but more as servants. They were similar to being a construct but more autonomous. And as you saw, they are excellent shapeshifters.” She had returned to making a barricade to block the faeries, or any other odd flying creature, from her kitchen window so she missed the flapping tail from Harlan.

“So if only the elves used changelings, then another
elf
grabbed Alric. Alric, who was here as a spy for his people.” I nudged through the bowl of nuts I’d pulled down earlier. “Why? Who took the faeries, and then let them go, and grabbed Alric? And how long was that replacement supposed to fool us?”

As we saw with Jovan and Glorinal elves were more prevalent in other parts of the world than here, but still uncommon. But the closest clan here was Alric’s and they’d been hiding for over a thousand years. Why would they send a changeling out to replace him, when they were the ones who sent him out here in the first place?

Or they weren’t the ones who grabbed him, which was worse.