Authors: Marie Andreas
I shook my head and noticed he was leading us toward the woods. The trees stopped about fifty yards from the edge this side of town. In the nicer parts of Beccia the tree line was kept well away from civilization, but down here no one really cared. Besides, having that many trees nearby meant better places for drunks to go sleep it off. Or romantic trips through the forest.
“No siblings, my parents were older when I was born. Of course I had friends, we did things.” I shrugged, but the fact was I had very limited memories of my childhood. Just general vague images that could belong to anyone. The witch who’d saved me after I’d been attacked when I first got here said it was most likely a combination of the loss of my parents and being mugged. But then again she was also the one who stuck me with the faeries, so her wisdom was a bit suspect.
His laugh filled the street. Well, it seemed to me like it did. A woman nailing up a poster about her missing cat looked up with a scowl, but she wasn’t his intended audience anyway.
“You cannot expect me to tell you the history of my people when you return such meager fare.”
He did have a point, but I really didn’t have anything to give him. Then an image hit me. A sunny field. Not much, but I could work with it. “I used to play in a big field with my friends. We would take turns rolling a ball around for goals, and I usually won.” It was odd though, my memories must be very jumbled— the ball looked more like a boulder when compared to the trees I was rolling it toward. Not when compared to myself or the two people I could hear running behind me.
“That is something.” He waved at the trees as we passed underneath. “These weren’t here when we were. None of this was. It was all open meadow with elegant buildings rising out of the ground. My people like to be as close to nature as possible, so we built with that in mind. Our homes started underground then reached toward the sun like the trees they mimicked.”
I couldn’t help but stop in my tracks. We’d always suspected that the passage of time, and really aggressive plant life, had buried the elven ruins and pushed most of them underground. To find out they started that way made a huge difference.
“This could be huge! Especially if most of the buildings were here instead of where we’re digging. We need to—”
Glorinal spun me around and kissed me. I had been thinking of what it would be like to kiss him, but I hadn’t expected it to be so soon. The kiss was good, but not full of the fumbling passion that drove the really great ones.
When we finally broke I looked up at him. “What was that for?”
“You become so passionate when excited about your work, I was simply caught up in the moment.” He caressed my cheek with the back of his hand.
Even though the kiss wasn’t as exciting as I’d expected it to be, it and he were still enough to melt me where I stood. I shook my head. Granted not many folks came out here—at least until we told the patrons and the Antiquities Museum where they needed to be digging—but still I’d rather not be caught making out in the forest like some kid.
I’d keep my making out indoors thank you.
That being said I didn’t try to stop him when he bent down for another kiss. I didn’t have to. The chimera that slammed into the back of his head did that.
Glorinal had just started to bend down, so the chimera only partially hit his head. But there was still enough force to knock him into me and tumble both of us to the ground. Which was probably a good thing, since two more chimeras came in fast from both sides and would have hit him had the first not been a few seconds ahead of them and so badly overbalanced Glorinal that we fell.
All three of the shiny black little monsters were buzzing around like drunken beetles. It was almost hard to tell if the first one had hit Glorinal on purpose, or just by accident. Every summer Beccia was inundated by swarms of iridescent beetles who couldn’t fly straight if their little bug lives depended on it. These chimeras flew just like them. Each was shiny black, and all three had wings, but that was where the similarity ended. The one who had slammed into Glorinal had huge bat-like wings and looked to be part cat and part horse. Both of the other two had dissimilar wings and one had a snake for a tail, and a goat’s head coming out of the middle of his back. That one was the closest to what the mythological chimeras looked like—minus the wings.
Except they were the size of a very large and round cat. Considering the way they flew, I was glad they still seemed the size they must have been when they came out of their holes.
Glorinal rolled off me and started swatting at them like they were flies. “Constructs! I will protect you.”
I noticed that he’d actually moved a bit away from me, but it didn’t really matter as the flying monsters followed him and were pretty much ignoring me.
One even hovered over me as it watched the other two dive bomb Glorinal. It was as if it was protecting me from Glorinal.
Part of my mind said these were dangerous creatures and running away wouldn’t be a bad idea. But the nosy digger part of my brain was fascinated. Glorinal had called them constructs— animals made by extremely powerful mages eons ago. They certainly moved like living beings, but even up close they looked to be made of black glass.
A squawk pulled my attention away from the one hovering over me. Glorinal had managed to grab one of them and was trying to rip its head off. But the remaining two dove in like hawks and freed their friend. With a loud caw, they circled Glorinal’s head, then flew high above the forest and vanished.
Glorinal turned to me. They may not have wanted to hurt me, but they really went after him. Four long scratches marred his handsome face on both sides and his shirt was torn in multiple spots.
“Are you okay?” I scrambled to my feet and rushed to him. “Why did they just go after you?”
“I am so glad they didn’t harm you.” He winced when I took his arm. I hadn’t seen one of the claw marks.
“They weren’t interested in me at all, but they really went after you. We need to…get back to the pub. Amara will probably have something to help with those cuts, and we need to warn people.” I’d almost offered to take him back to my house, then I recalled the menagerie currently squatting there. Even before Glorinal drew Alric’s face I didn’t want those two to meet. Now I really didn’t.
Glorinal started to shake me off, then a rustling came from the tops of the trees. He quickly nodded.
He took my arm again as he had coming out here, but there seemed to be a bit more of self-preservation behind it as opposed to romantic leanings.
“Do you know why they didn’t go after me?”
He watched the road ahead of us for a bit then looked down. “You don’t have magic, do you?” He said it softly, as if he knew it would be a sensitive subject.
“No, I’m a magic sink.” I tried to swallow the words as they came out. I liked him a lot and was very attracted to him, I just didn’t want him to know my big secret. Not yet anyway. We hadn’t even had a proper complete first date yet. But it came out anyway.
“It’s all right, Taryn. Your secret is safe with me.” There was a softness in his silver eyes. Even though he was in pain, he was trying to comfort me.
“Thank you. Almost no one knows for obvious reasons.” I wasn’t going to go into those reasons as they just freaked me out when I even thought about them. Magic sinks couldn’t be affected by most spells, so not letting people know what I was would be handy if I was attacked by a moderate-level magic user. But also, there were darker tales of how evil mages had been able to use magic sinks for long ago. Basically, they used them as walking weapons of mass destruction, loaded them up with spells that no normal person could hold, and sent them into enemy camps to explode.
Only my messed-up life could turn a romantic stroll into an attack and a gab fest of things I really didn’t want the new guy to know.
“I will be all right, I promise.”
I’d gotten lost in my thoughts about why my life was so messed up, and Glorinal had taken my silence as fear about him. Take what works, I always said.
“They could have killed you. But how could constructs still be around after all these years?”
We were almost to the pub now. I’d been lost in my dark thoughts longer than I’d believed. And Glorinal pulled us up and off to the side of the sidewalk. He looked around then bent down as if to kiss me.
“We can’t let anyone know they are constructs. It would be better if no one knew they were out there at all, but there have been attacks by the sceanra anam, and I know people have reported seeing the chimeras as well.” He looked around, and a serious look marred his face when he finally turned back to me. “We have to be very careful, Taryn. Someone called forth these creatures and sent them after us. I’d guess it’s the same bastard who sent the zombie after the pub.” He grabbed my shoulders and stared down at me. “We need to be careful.”
Then Glorinal kissed me. This one was much better than the first and quickly chased out any other thoughts.
A cough brought me out of the kiss, and I again kicked myself for making out like a schoolgirl in public. I wasn’t sure what Glorinal had in terms of power, but he sure as heck was able to muddle my common sense.
I’d been expecting Foxy or another patron to be subtly giving me a bad time. I hadn’t been expecting Covey to be standing three feet away and shoving what looked like a head into her bag.
What I had thought was a cough was actually the sound of whatever she was shoving in her bag scraping against whatever else she had shoved in her bag. Which, considering she was coming away from the abbey and heading toward my house, was probably her scrolls.
Which raised the serious question, what could be so important that she would risk damaging the scrolls to take back?
“Covey? Fancy seeing you down here. How have you been?” I needed to get her and the scrolls out of here and away from Glorinal. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. Well, it was that, sort of. Mostly, I just wanted to keep him out of whatever this mess was as much as possible. We had enough to deal with with some crazed necromancer attacking the pub, we didn’t need my other issues coming along for the ride.
She straightened up and flashed a smile, but only after she patted her bag and flung it back over her shoulder. To the casual watcher her movements seemed relaxed and unconcerned. But the tell-tale signs of tension were in her sharp face. She was concerned for her scrolls, yes, but whatever she’d just scooped into her bag had her even more concerned.
“Busy as ever, Taryn.” She marched up and held out her hand to Glorinal. “I’m Professor Covey Ghrelin.”
I was really glad she had gotten over her elf worship before she met Glorinal. She would have been mortified to have gone elf-crazy in public. “Oh forgive me, Glorinal, this is my friend Covey. She annoys students for a living.”
Glorinal recovered nicely from the sudden interruption of our kiss and bent over Covey’s hand. She’d clearly held it out to shake his, and when he bowed over it, a bit of the elf worship surfaced again in her eyes.
“Lovely lady, if the students here are the same as my homeland, they annoy the teachers, not the other way around.”
“Thank you, kind sir. Are there others like you in your homeland?” And academic concerns trumped elf worship.
Glorinal’s smile grew wider. “Yes, actually we survived and have a small town to the far south from here. It was the wisdom—or mistake in my opinion—of our elders which kept us from rejoining the rest of the world until now.” He held my hand high then kissed it. “I am hoping to change that with this lovely lady at my side.”
I was moving up fast in his opinion if even after no real dates I was someone to stick by his side. A situation I found kind of pleasing. But Covey’s smile faded into a concerned scowl when he turned to face me. She resumed smiling when he turned back to her, but I was certain of what I saw.
Now that was odd. Covey, like a number of my friends, had been hoping I’d start dating someone. And here I was involved with a real live elf, and she was looking like someone spiked her oatmeal with the juice of a dozen lemons.
But that was the least of my worries, for now anyway. A cloaked, shambling form, walking with a cane and with everything including his hands covered, was hobbling toward us. Luckily he was across the street, but he looked ready to head for the pub.
“Covey, I believe your uncle got out of the home again.” I had been saying Alric was my uncle but since I’d just told Glorinal I had no relatives that would need to change.
Covey turned and spotted Alric, then nodded toward Glorinal and me. “Nice to make your acquaintance. My ill and mentally deranged uncle shouldn’t be out and about. Please excuse me.”
Without waiting for a response from Glorinal, or me, she clutched her package tighter and intercepted Alric. Judging by the wild hand gestures on both sides, and the fact Covey basically strong-armed him away from us and the pub, I had no doubt who won.
“Is your friend always like that?” Glorinal took my arm and led us toward the pub doors.
I wasn’t going to even ask like what, as whatever he was thinking, it was probably true. I was just glad she’d been here to stop whatever in the hell Alric was doing.
“Pretty much, but her uncle has been quite a worry to her. We just can’t get him to stay where he belongs.” I glanced back over my shoulder right before we walked inside, but Covey had led Alric down a side street.
The pub was nice and zombie free, and lovely aromas filled the air. All I wanted to do was sit down and have a nice romantic dinner with this handsome elf who for one reason or another seemed to be taken with me.
But first, the aforementioned gentleman needed some looking after. “How is your head?” He’d seemed all right on the way back, but as I’d been so close to him when the chimera hit I knew how hard that had been. Had he not been leaning down to kiss me at that second it could have knocked him out.
He rubbed it and winced a bit. “It might do with a bit of ice. But first I think it needs some time with a lovely lady.”
I was just starting to flag down Foxy, when the doors to the pub flung open. A guardsman, his uniform tattered and sooty around the edges, looked wildly around the room.
“Gather everyone here who can swing a bucket! The Hill is on fire!”
Many things had interrupted Glorinal and I having any sort of a date, but this was possibly the most dramatic.
“What ye be yelling about now?” Foxy came barreling out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron and looking annoyed.
The guardsman ran up to him and grabbed ahold of his tunic. He was aiming for Foxy’s collar, I was sure, but Foxy was too tall for that to really work. Instead, the guardsman just looked like a child grabbing his father’s waistcoat.
“The Hill. It’s on fire. A dragon attacked it! We need to get up there and fight the flames.” His eyes were looking a little white-rimmed and I was wondering if there was really a fire or he was just crazy.
“A dragon? Really. Did you see this creature?” Glorinal was calm but he too looked more annoyed at the guardsman than concerned. “Could it perhaps have actually been a syclarion?”
The guardsman snapped out of his panic for a bit. “I know what a syclarion looks like. This was a dragon. A really, tiny, black dragon.”
That wasn’t good, especially if it was true. There were no such things as dragons. The syclarions could change into a dragon-like biped, but that was about it. Rumors had it that dragons had been alive in the time of the Ancients but must have vanished when they did. I’d never found any evidence of them, so if they were real, they probably lived far from here.
However, I knew of some small black creatures who might look like a dragon. If the three we’d seen were an example, none of the chimeras looked exactly the same.
I was closest to the door, so I nudged it open and looked in the general direction of The Hill. There was too much of Beccia between us and The Hill, but I could see what looked like a dark storm cloud rising quickly from that direction. Then the noticeable whiff of burning wood hit my nose.
He might be hallucinating about small dragons, but he was right about something burning up on The Hill.
“What did this dragon look like?” I had a feeling I didn’t want to know, but might as well check.
“Like a dragon! Small, black, wings, had flame shooting from its snout…a dragon!” The guardsman looked behind the bar, finally pulling out the mopping bucket. “Do you have more of these? We need help, the fire brigade is passed out.”