The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) (21 page)

He had me there. I did tell him to get some insight, I just wasn’t planning on the level of his interest.

“I have no idea what he did.” I shoveled the last of my meal in and swallowed. “It started not long after I found Alric beat up and dragged him back to my place.” I wasn’t planning on telling him about that, but I felt bad about him and the faeries.

I should have just let him feel bad about the faeries. While what I really wanted to do was finish my last ale and crawl into bed, what I got to do was spend the next hour filling Harlan in on as many details as I felt safe about the last few days. Unfortunately, the ability to judiciously edit wasn’t strong after three ales, and I know I let loose more than I wanted.

Finally I’d told him all I could, or rather, all I would.

“Look, unless you have some amazing way of making sense of all of this, I really need to go to bed. I need to get back into the swing of things and that means not being late for work tomorrow, which means getting to bed tonight.”

“But I still have some questions…” Harlan let his voice trail off when I gave him my best glare. It wasn’t one I used often, but I was tired.

“Can you put all the pieces together?” He gave me a sheepish look, puffing out his upper lip and whiskers to do so. “I didn’t think so. When you can, we’ll talk again.” I got to my feet, using a handy chair for support, and said goodnight.

He was still lost in thought, or maybe he was trying to figure out if his wives would miss him if he went to visit that kitten on 55
^th
, or else I’m sure Harlan would have noticed that I was listing far more than I should be after only three ales. I noticed it but just wanted to get home.

Unfortunately, the two tall, dark, and ginormous gents who grabbed me as I left the Dewdrop had noticed it as well.

Chapter 25

I had enough time to smell brimstone before four vises gripped onto my upper arms. Even if I hadn’t been groggy from ale, I wouldn’t have been able to fight them off. But I would have had enough sense to scream before the goon on the left stuffed a dusty rag in my mouth. I spun as well as I could, hoping to twist free to at least get the rag out. But the slab of meat on my right dropped a bag over my head. A spell bag. My fogged mind had enough coherence to realize what it was right before the lights went out.

***

“She’s waking up.”

I heard the rumbly voice before my mind could process the words. But it was deep, low, and dirty. Not crude dirty, but it just sounded as if the speaker had a mouthful of dirt and a few rocks when he spoke. The accent was odd too. Common Beccian wasn’t his native tongue by a long shot.

“Give ‘er another ‘it then.”

This voice was even lower and it took me even longer to process the words. When I did, it was all I could do to keep my breathing slow and my eyes shut. If someone was going to hit me again once I woke up it was in my best interests to not wake up.

On the plus side, neither voice was Alric.

Boulders clomped toward where I lay. “Yous idiot sallenthras.” That word didn’t come in clear at all, I had to assume either my brain had given up or he was speaking his native. I had no idea rocks had a native tongue. “The boss wants her awake. Quit knocking her out, glottherins.”

A rustle of more boulders told me one of the other two took offense to whatever those two terms were. “Glackthian frillo.” The second voice yelled before either being swallowed by a small avalanche, or getting into a fist fight with the third voice. My body bounced as the two creatures threw each other around. Taking a chance, I went ahead and squinted one eye open. Beccia was a melting pot, far more so than any town in the kingdom, but I didn’t recognize the accents or the swear words. I hadn’t seen much when they grabbed me.

Luckily for me the instant I peeked, the third voice smashed the first voice into the ground. Literally. There was now a deep divot three-feet from me in the rock floor. The scent of brimstone drifted my way and the cave we were in rumbled. Which was good because I’m sure my scream went unheard when I saw who had grabbed me. Three syclarions. Well, two if the one smashed into the ground didn’t get back up.

I found myself wishing Alric would do his annoying habit of popping up right now. No matter how hard I wished for it, there was no smug-sounding pretty man barreling in to save me. Not that even he could do much against a pair of syclarions.

Letting out another breath to try and slow my heart, I cracked open my other eye. Yep, two of them, looking down at the third who still hadn’t moved. They were far cruder than the one I had seen in the ruins in both looks and speech. I had always heard that syclarions were an elite race, but obviously they had cast offs and thugs just like every other race.

Before the one in the ruins, I’d only seen one in drawings, but these looked far more solid and blunt than the images I’d seen.

“I knows you awake, girly.” The first pile of reptilian-covered boulders said as he lumbered closer. He poked an inch-wide finger into my side. Luckily his claws were blunt. “Boss want to know why you shoot at us.”

“Boss is going to use you skin as rag if you keep talking.” The third, and obviously more aggressive judging by the still form he stepped over, syclarion said as he smacked the one next to me.

“I may have to dispose of both of you and that will not make me happy.” The voice came out of the dark corner behind the others, but the body didn’t follow. “Forgive my employees, they are rather uncouth.”

Absolute terror froze my heart as I tried to keep my face still. I knew that voice. It was the voice of the syclarion I had heard at the dig a few days ago. The one who had butchered his foreman and possibly Perallan’s former digger.

“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.