AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Furious lavender eyes met mine. “The point is that the slave must return to the king’s service and you must find the book you have promised him.” She smiled evilly. “You do not wish to return to Faerie without it. The king is not known for his forgiving nature.”
“Françoise isn’t going anywhere,” I told her, for maybe the tenth time. “And if the king’s wrath is so dreadful, why did you offer to help us escape from him? Weren’t you afraid of the consequences?”
The pixie fluttered her wings agitatedly. “That was different.”
&
nbsp; “Different how?”
“The mage offered me something irresistible.” Her frown faded and her eyes suddenly shone with a softer light. “No one would have blamed me for taking it, not even the king.”
“Offered you what?”
“It doesn’t matter! I can’t find it!” She kicked the jewel cases, then sat on the oversized spool of thread she’d turned into a seat, surreptitiously rubbing a hurt foot.
A memory suddenly clicked into place. “The rune stone. Jera.” One of the reasons I’d managed to survive—barely—my one and only foray into her world was because I’d acquired some battle runes from the Senate. The Consul no doubt wanted them back, because they’d be useful in the war and because I hadn’t exactly asked before taking them. But I thought that at the moment she might want Mircea more. And I couldn’t see what good a rune stone would do her when its only power was making people more fertile.
The pixie glanced up resentfully. “He said he had it. He even showed it to me. It looked real.”
“It is real.” Understanding dawned. “You were willing to risk the king’s wrath merely for the chance to have a child?”
“Merely?” Her tiny voice rose to a squeak. “Yes, trust a human to see it like that! My people hover on the brink of extinction, while your foolish, weak, puerile race, whose only accomplishment is to breed and breed and—”
“Yes, thanks, I get the point.” I looked at her narrowly. “What if I could get it for you?”
A whirlwind of glittering green wings was suddenly in my face. “Where is it? Do you have it? I thought one of the mages—”
I smiled. No wonder she’d been sucking up. “I can get it.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Then you’ll believe it soon. But I want the location of the portal in exchange.”
“I’ll find it,” she promised fervently. “Just don’t think of double-crossing me, human. You’ll discover that I’m even less forgiving than my king.”
Chapter 10
That afternoon I was checking in the convention that the hotel staff had secretly labeled the Geek Squad, a couple hundred role-playing enthusiasts who had arrived with bag and baggage, and in a few cases swords and armor, when I caught Pritkin staring at me. He was across the lobby, leaning against one of the fake stalagmites that erupted from the floor, all beard stubble and mussed hair and strong, lean build. His body looked relaxed, but his face held the same hawkish expression I’d last seen when he was standing over Saleh’s headless corpse.
I scowled and handed a name badge to a guy dressed in a long trailing robe and a pointy hat. He shifted his staff to his other hand so he could pin it on. I didn’t think it likely to help with ID much; he was the seventh Gandalf I’d seen that morning.
“I still don’t understand why we can’t set up now,” the guy at my side whined. His voice was muffled by the mask he was wearing, but unfortunately not enough that I couldn’t understand him. It had taken me a moment to identify the mask since he’d added plastic tusks that made it sag weirdly in front. I guess he hadn’t been able to find a good ogre’s head, because he’d converted a Chewbacca.
“I told you, we’re doing some last-minute cleanup,” I explained for the fifth time.
“They can’t be cleaning the whole room at once! We can work around them.”
“It’s not my call,” I said curtly, watching a bunch of guys in elf ears who were pointing at the large creatures perched near the cavernous ceiling of the lobby. Each was six feet tall, grayish-black, with huge reptilian wings that ended in sharp, delicate claws. They looked like a cross between a bat and a pterodactyl, and most people mistook them for gruesome decorations. But the “elves” had apparently decided to use them for target practice: all three had bows in their hands and one nocked an arrow as I watched.
Before I could battle a path through the crowd, one of the creatures soared gracefully to the top of a stalagmite. Its new perch glittered with crystals in the low light, almost as brightly as the creature’s dark eyes as it surveyed the tourists with predatory anticipation. It caught sight of the bow-wielding gamer and gave a shriek like tortured metal that echoed around the vastness of the lobby, drawing every eye in the place.
“Hey, cool!” the guy with the arrow said. “A yrthak!”
“That can’t be a yrthak,” another gamer said in a superior tone. “It has eyes.”
A shiver of dread crawled down my spine. Once before, the casino’s built-in security forces had mistaken innocent bystanders for dangerous intruders—and dealt with them accordingly. That time, it had been me and Pritkin in the hot seat, and we’d almost ended up dead. I somehow didn’t think the average tourist was likely to fare even that well.
I dove between a couple of hobbits—or jawas or possibly very short monks—and grabbed the bow out of the gamer’s hand. I tossed it to one of the security guys, who had jogged up from the other side. Casanova’s love affair with filthy lucre was going to be the death of us all. “This was not the time to book in a bunch of norms,” I hissed, sotto voce.
