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Now I knew my oldest friend had lost it. How could she tie the fact that I was allergic to a certain alcohol to me becoming a different being? “It’s an allergy, Harlan. Nothing more. You are allergic to chicken and Covey can’t use sheep’s wool. Same thing.” They’d been excluding me for three months because of an allergy? “Alric can tell you, it was an allergic reaction.”

“I know.” Now Harlan gave me the look one gives to a small child who is about to have her childhood fantasies ripped out from under their feet. “He told us about it when we were in the pub one evening. He said you attacked him and were far stronger than you should have been. He also thought you were actually using magic on him.”

“I am a magic sink, Harlan. You’re one of the few people who know that. If magic doesn’t work on me, how can I use it?”

“Really? No reactions to magic at all?” Harlan rarely moved quickly, and given his size it wasn’t something one would expect. But in a flash, he flipped open the luggage he was standing by and threw a piece of the sarcophagus at my head.

Had it not been an artifact, I would have ducked. But it was, so I did what any proper digger would do and grabbed it with both hands.

And crumbled to the floor as strange images and the same buzzing voices I’d heard in Harlan’s apartment slammed into my brain. I dropped it to the floor next to me, but the damage, such as it was, had been done. I had no idea why it had hit me so much harder this time. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Harlan dusted the piece off and put it back into his luggage without saying a sound. But an entire army of silent words hung in the air between us.

“What? You threw something at my head, and it unbalanced me.” I got to my feet and dusted myself off. I knew that wasn’t what dropped me to my knees and judging by the look on his face so did Harlan.

“I think we should deal with this another time. We’re both tired.” He began moving things off his bed. Usually when Harlan had proved a point he invested a good two or three hours developing a full gloat over it. But this time he almost seemed embarrassed.

“Look, I’m just tired, and the piece startled me.”

Harlan sighed. He obviously felt like he was trying to take it easy on me and I wasn’t helping. “You didn’t see anything, or feel something? Like you did in my apartment last night?”

Crap, I’d hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“I saw a piece of sharp metal being flung at my head.” I laughed, but neither of us believed it. He didn’t want to keep prying, at least not now. And I found I didn’t want to either. The images unsettled me, even though I couldn’t get them to slow enough to actually see what they were.

Harlan always got the last word in, but for once he just nodded and I left in silence.

Chapter Thirteen

Harlan’s silence bothered me almost more than the images. I made it back to my room, and I shut and locked my door. I normally didn’t lock it, and I really didn’t think Harlan or Alric would try to come in tonight. But I needed to be alone.

Avoidance of what went on in my head was something I was an expert at. I’d come to Beccia fifteen years ago from a small town a few days ride and a long boat trip to the north named Hilth. My parents had drowned in a boating accident that I alone survived. That disaster, and my scattered memory loss, led me to move here. I’d never gone back. Every once in a while strange memories drifted to the surface, but usually only when I was really drunk. Odd things that I assumed were part of my past, but since the accident that killed my parents left me with few memories outside of coming to Beccia, I wasn’t sure.

Since I’d moved here I spent most of my time working to become a digger, then being a digger, and sticking with my close circle of friends. I just wanted to live a quiet life and dig in the ruins.

And Alric shattered that three months ago and was now back to destroy any remains.

I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about it a bit. I could try and find answers about my supposed changes, or I could try to keep living my life as it was. I usually was fine with answers, but in this case they weren’t very appealing as they would probably only lead to more questions. And what if Covey, Harlan, and Alric were right, and there was something wrong with me? A chill walked through me and answered it for me.

Nope. Status quo had been fine the last fifteen years, and it was still fine. I’d convince the others they were wrong, and we could go back to normal. As in worrying about other peoples’ disasters and not me.

I started to get ready for bed, but I still felt agitated and annoyed. All of these problems started when Alric came into my life. I unlocked my door and went out into the living room. There was enough light to see into the living room from the low-level glows I kept around the kitchen to keep me from smashing my toes if I got hungry in the middle of the night.

Alric was sleeping the sleep of the dead. He looked peaceful as I got closer. His high cheekbones and square chin looked even more handsome when he wasn’t awake.

I studied him for a few more seconds, then punched him in the arm. Hard. “That is for messing up my life.” I knew he couldn’t hear me; he hadn’t even stopped snoring when I hit him. Based on how quickly he healed from the beatings he’d been taking, he probably wouldn’t even have a bruise.

But I felt a little better.

With that I trudged back to my room, after snagging a piece of a new sweet called chocolate that Qianru had introduced me to last week and was vanishing quickly. After locking the door again, I fell asleep.

***

Again, horrifying dreams woke me up. I tried to hang on to them long enough to see what exactly they were, but at the same time I didn’t want to. By the time my heart stopped racing only the terror remained, but not what caused it.

After a half hour of lying there trying to see if I wanted to risk going back to sleep, I finally kicked my way free of my covers and rolled out of bed. Low murmurings that I’d heard for the last few minutes had told me both Harlan and Alric were up. I took my time getting dressed and debated if I could fit out my bedroom window and escape dealing with either of them. Whatever my recent nightmare had been, chances were one or both of them were responsible for it.

I’d gone as far as to unlock the window sash and judge my ability to twist through when a knock came at my door.

“Taryn? Are you awake?” Harlan was using his talking-to-children-and-small-animals voice, but I could also smell that he’d been baking.

I gave the window a longing look, then turned back to the door. “Is that redberry muffin I smell?”

He gave a laugh. “Yes it is, I made a batch just for you, although I had to fight off the girls to save you some.”

He got me. I loved fresh baked goods more than I loved ale. I might have to reconsider letting him move in full-time if he was willing to bake every day for me.

I opened the door and snatched the still-hot pastry out of his hand. I briefly toyed with grabbing it and running away anyway, but the promise of more made me follow him out to the kitchen.

My kitchen wasn’t much, just a small square added in almost as an afterthought with a tiny kitchen table and a small bar on the edge facing into the living room. Harlan had spread his baked goods all over the actual kitchen counters, and Alric was slumped over the kitchen table with what smelled like the world’s strongest cup of Hythian tea.

I pushed some of Harlan’s mess aside and sat up on the bar. Harlan had two teapots going, one was mine, and the other he must have brought along with him. He poured me a cup from mine and I smelled my regular tea blend. Hythian was a strong bitter brew that in my opinion was only good for extreme hangovers. Or waking the dead as demonstrated by Alric.

The muffin was as good as it smelled and I finished it and was reaching for a second before I spoke to either of them.

“So, this is awkward.” I was sipping my favorite tea and eating possibly the best muffin I’d ever had. But I knew as soon as one of them started talking my bliss would vanish. Might as well face it while I was still relatively content.

Alric muttered something that even Harlan couldn’t have heard, then drained his cup of tea. Harlan silently refilled it.

“One of you say something. There is enough silence in this room to gag a cherub.”

I hadn’t intended to get them started but it had to be better than the silence going on right now.

“I don’t know what to say. I have no idea what I’m going to do right now.” Alric shook his head. “I obviously can’t continue my task looking like this.”

“Why are you here, Alric?” I leaned forward. “Not in my house, why are you in Beccia? What’s happened to bring you back here right now?”

It wasn’t random that he came back now any more than it had been random that he had come here when the glass gargoyle had been found. I wasn’t sure how far away his home was, but considering everyone thought the elves were dead or scattered to the far reaches, I had to think it wasn’t close by.

Alric looked to Harlan for support, but Harlan just shrugged and nodded. “I’d like to know that too, my boy. You had everyone sure you were dead, so why come back now?”

I almost laughed at Harlan, a 765-year-old chataling calling a possibly few thousand year old elven lord, “boy”. But Alric didn’t flinch.

“I work for our clan trying to find artifacts that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. I’m the most experienced with the world outside of ours, and I can blend in without calling attention.” He gave a self-depreciating look down at himself. “Or rather I could. I left after the glass gargoyle was regained because we thought that was it. We only have scattered records of the time before the Breaking, but we know our people had been digging into the Ancient ruins below us and found things they shouldn’t have. The Dark took advantage of the mayhem and everything fell apart. When we fled after the Breaking all the artifacts were buried along with the rest of the city. We foolishly thought the glass gargoyle was the only weapon. But there is another artifact that augments the gargoyle. My people didn’t find that out until I brought it back.”

“The gargoyle was destroyed though.” Harlan looked a bit pale under his fur.

“I did destroy it. It came back.”

It was a good thing Harlan had just set down his tea kettle, because from the look on his face he would have dropped it otherwise.

“I told you.” I enjoyed saying that. Not that I was glad the destructive bauble was still around, but I was glad I’d been vindicated. Probably only Harlan and Covey could know I had been right, but I’d take it.

“Yes, it came back. That wasn’t a second one you found, Taryn, but the original recreated.” Alric grimaced as if he’d tasted something more bitter than the tea he was drinking. “I thought it was a new one when I took it from you, but the scholars back home examined it and it’s the same one.”

It hadn’t felt the same to me. “The second one, or the first one re-born, was a different color though. The first one was green, the second one, or the reincarnation, was clear. It was denser than the original too.”

“But…but it was destroyed.” Harlan shook his head and bounced his look of fear between Alric and myself. “That thing isn’t alive, is it?”

The grimace on Alric’s face grew a bit darker but he stayed silent.

“It’s stronger now, isn’t it? And if you don’t control the chimera they could get together and become worse?” Suddenly my worrying about whatever mysteries my past did or didn’t hold wasn’t a big thing.

“Yes Harlan, it was destroyed. It exploded—I felt it.” Alric shuddered at whatever else had happened at the same time. “No, it isn’t living, not in any sense we’d recognize.” His eyes shadowed a bit. “And yes, the gargoyle is more powerful now and will become even more so if the other artifact is found. Rather, if we can’t find it and neutralize them both.”

I didn’t like the look on his face. “You guys do know how to do that? You know how to take care of them. Right?”

Alric didn’t answer. But he took an extended interest in pouring himself more tea.

“Your great elven scholars have no idea how to stop them, do they?” Harlan had been unbalanced at Alric’s words, but finding out they didn’t know what to do seemed to help him regain it.

As opposed to me who wanted to run as far away from Beccia, the ruins, and elves as I could get.

“We will. We just need to find the second part, a small artifact called the obsidian chimera.”

My stomach seriously thought about getting rid of all the muffins. “Do you have idea what these chimeras might look like?”

“There’s only one, and aside from small and black, and chimera-like, we’re not really sure.”

“So there couldn’t be, say, twenty or so of them? Hatching out of the ground perhaps?”

“What?” They both yelled it at the same time.

I looked at them and chewed my lip. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about whatever had happened at the dig site, but I figured telling the person who might be able to stop the end of the world was an exception to the rule.

“Something happened at the dig site yesterday and my patroness knew about it before it happened. She’d had me digging in various patches of dirt all of the day before, then yesterday a lot of those patches had deep holes in them. About twenty total. It was as if something had come up from a really deep level very, very fast.”

“Twenty?” Alric shook his head in relief. “This artifact isn’t alive, nor is it multiple and flying out of the ground. But what happened to the creatures? Did you see one?”

Harlan was still looking at me with an open mouth. But said nothing.

“I didn’t see any of the ones that made the holes, but my patroness had been expecting them and she called them chimeras.” I frowned. “But she was expecting more than one.”

“She did, did she?” Harlan’s brain finally adapted to the situation and he started pacing. “You’re working for Qianru, correct? New to Beccia, from the south, lives on The Hill and has a taste for rich and imported foods?”

“Um, yes on who I work for. As to the foods, I’ll take your word for it. She does like chocolate though.” And more importantly, she liked sharing it. I had a feeling that it was going to become the next big thing in Beccia, and I would be first in line to buy the stuff.

He nodded as if he’d known what was going on all along. “I’ve been through her trash. She hadn’t been the focus of any of my studies, but I now see she should have been. Can’t trust those southerners after all.”

“Never mind where she is from. How did she know about the chimera, or chimeras, as the case may be? Our scholars are the best in the world for this, how could she have had more information than them?” Alric was starting to look like his old self, or at least I was getting used enough to his looks that as he started behaving more like himself, I could see the old Alric even with the pointed ears and blond hair. “And while I’ll agree it is odd, I seriously doubt an Ancient artifact is related to a bunch of creatures flying out of the ground. Most likely it was some odd insect hatching.”

“She has scrolls the type I’ve never seen,” Harlan said before I could.

“Let me guess, you’ve been breaking into her house too?” I couldn’t imagine her scrolls ending up in the trash. She didn’t hold them in as high esteem as Covey, but she still wouldn’t throw them away.

Harlan was deep in thought now and absently shook his head. “No, no. Of course not. She is having problems with them losing their edges and she’s dumping bits of them in the trash. But a bigger worry is where did they come from?”

“Has she shown you any of them?” Alric was intense now, something that magnified his elvishness. Knowing what he was did explain a lot about why he was such a pain in the ass.

I leaned back to get a bit further from his intensity. “Yeah, but only briefly. But I don’t read elvish, remember? And I think the information was actually on one she keeps at home. A codex of something. She’s working with someone, but I’ve no idea who.”

Both of them shared a look at my first comment, but it was Alric who pounced on the second.