The Finisher

by David Baldacci

  I looked up at him. “Delph?”

  “What?” he barked, obviously ready for another argument.

  “After the Duelum is done and you’ve won the thing, I’m leaving Wormwood. I’m going through the Quag. My mind is made up.”

  “Okay,” he said, his features calming, but there was a heightened anxiety in his eyes, which I did not like.

  “Are you still coming with me?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Are you a nutter? Course I am.”

  Before I knew it, I had reached up on tiptoes and kissed him.

  “Vega Jane,” he said, his face red with embarrassment over the unexpected snog. And in truth, I had surprised myself.

  I hunched over defensively. “Just to seal the covenant, Delph,” I said quickly. “That’s all,” I added firmly.

  LATER, WE SNUCK around the side of Stacks after leaving Harry Two at my digs. We had taken a meandering route here and even practiced some for the Duelum, which was perfectly legal if anyone was watching. Then I had led Delph down a forest path, which I knew was a shortcut to Stacks. I defeated the lock on the same door as before with my tools while Delph looked on admiringly.

  “Right good touch, Vega Jane,” he said.

  I opened the door and we stole into Stacks. I knew which way to go, which was fortunate. Even though it was still light outside, it was dark and shadowy in here.

  I felt like I could hear Delph’s heart beating behind me as I gripped his hand and led him along. We reached the second floor with no problem. I was listening for the sounds of the jabbits coming, but the only things I heard were my breathing and Delph’s heart hammering. As I’d suspected, the jabbits didn’t seem to come out until dark.

  We walked along the second floor and I reached the wooden door. On the other side was the little door with the crazy Wug doorknob. I didn’t want to go that way again.

  I turned and led Delph in the other direction. I heard no slithers, no footfalls other than our own. I said, “There is at least one more floor up. The only way I can see it being is down here.”

  Delph nodded, though I knew he was too nervous and fearful to be thinking clearly.

  All we found was a solid wall with no evidence of stairs leading up. However, as I leaned out a window, I could see the floor above us. There had to be a way up.

  I shut the window and turned back to Delph, who was standing in front of the blank wall probing every crevice with his strong fingers.

  “Delph,” I began. And then I could no longer see Delph. My mind filled with vapor, as if a fog had rolled through my head. When it cleared, I still could not see Delph. What I saw was a staircase leading up. I shook my head clear and Delph reappeared in my sight line. I rubbed my eyes, but the image of the stairs did not come back.

  “Delph,” I said. “Stand back.”

  He turned to look at me. “There is nae stairs here, Vega Jane.”

  “Step back.”

  He moved away. I put on my glove, drew out the Elemental, thought it to full form, cranked my arm back and threw it as hard as I could at the wall.

  “Vega Ja —” Delph began, but he never finished.

  The wall had disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving a gaping hole. The Elemental returned to my hand like a trained prey bird.

  Revealed in the hole was a set of black marble stairs, just like in the image in my head. I had no idea how I had seen it. But I was awfully glad I had.

  I stepped through the hole, and Delph followed. We cautiously made our way up the steps. At the top of the stairs was a large room with words carved into the stone above the entrance.

  HALL OF TRUTH.

  I looked at Delph and he stared blankly back. We stepped into the room, stunned at both its size and beauty.

  There were stone walls, marble floors, a wooden ceiling and not a single window. I marveled at the craftsmanship that had gone into the creation of this space. I had not seen stone carved so elegantly, and the pattern on the marble made it more resemble a work of art than a floor to walk upon. The beams overhead were darkened with age and were heavily carved with symbols I had never seen before and which, for some reason, gave me a moment of seized terror in my heart. And along each wall were enormous wooden bookcases filled with dusty, thick tomes.

  I reached for Delph’s hand at the same moment his reached for mine. We walked to the middle of the room, stopped, and gazed around like two just-born Wugs first discovering what was outside the bellies of our mums.

  “Lotta books,” noted Delph quite unnecessarily.

  I had no idea there were these many books in existence. My first thought was that John would love this room, followed by a pang of depression. He was not the same John, was he?

  “What do we do now?” asked Delph in a hushed voice.

  That was a reasonable question. I supposed there was only one thing to do. I stepped toward the closest bookcase and slid out a book. I wish I hadn’t.

  The instant I opened the book, the entire room transformed into something as unlike a room as it was possible to be. Gone were the books and the walls and the floor and the ceiling. Replacing them was a hurricane of images, voices, screams, slashes of light, vortexes of movement, Wugs, winged sleps, an army of flying jabbits and the vilest creatures dirt-bound. Garms and amarocs and freks hurtling over and through piles of bodies. And then there were non-Wugs, colossals, warriors in chain mail, things with peaked ears and red faces and blackened bodies, and shrouded shapes lurking in shadows from which streams of light burst forth. And then came explosions and kaleidoscopes of flames and towers of ice plummeting into abysses so deep they seemed to have no bottom.

  My heart was in my throat. I felt Delph’s fingers fall away from mine. In this maelstrom of Hel, I turned and saw him running away. I wanted to flee too, but my feet seemed rooted where they were. I looked down at my hands. Still there was the open book. Out of the pages was pouring everything we were seeing.

  I am not so brilliant as my brother, but simple problems sometimes have simple answers. I slammed shut the book. When the two halves smacked together, the room was once more just a room. I stood there out of breath, though I had not moved an inch.

  I turned to see Delph bent over gasping for air, his face pale as goat’s milk.

  “Bloody Hel,” he yelled.

  “Bloody Hel,” I said more quietly, in agreement. I wanted to yell it too, actually, but my lungs lacked the capacity to do so.

  “The Hall of Truth. All these books, Delph. Where did they come from? They can’t all be about Wormwood. It just isn’t that, well —”

  “Important,” Delph finished for me. He shrugged. “Dunno, Vega Jane. Can’t make head nor tail of it. But let’s get outta this place.” He started for the stairs.

  And that’s precisely when we heard it coming. Delph retreated to stand next to me. By the sound it was making, we were not about to be confronted by jabbits.

  I thought this a good thing. Until I saw what came through the entrance.

  Then all I could think to do was scream. And I did.

  I would have preferred the jabbits.

  WHEN THE CREATURE stepped into the room, the vast space seemed too small to contain it. I knew exactly what it was. I had seen a drawing and description of it in Quentin Herms’s book on the Quag. His illustration did not do it terrifying justice.

  It was a cobble.

  Not nearly as large as the colossals I had been pitted against, it was still horrifyingly huge. And it looked to be made of rock. But that was not the most alarming element of the thing. It had three bodies, all male and all attached, shoulder to shoulder. It had three heads and three sets of tiny wings growing out of its muscular backs. And when I looked down at its hands, I saw three swords and three axes. When I looked at the three faces, they each held the same expression: hatred fueled by fury.

  “You trespass here,” one of the mouths said. Its voice was like a shriek crossed with a thunder-thrust.

  I would have sai
d something back, only I was so scared, words would not form in my throat.

  Another mouth pronounced, “The punishment for trespassing is death.”

  The cobble took a step forward, its immense weight threatening to crush the marble floor. I barely had time to jerk Delph downward before three axes soared over the spot where our heads had just been. They flew across the room and embedded in the far bookcase, knocking it and two of its neighbors over. As books toppled to the floor and flew open, the room was once more engulfed in the fury unleashed from their freed pages.

  I grabbed Delph’s hand and jerked him to cover behind one of the fallen bookcases. For a sliver, I ignored the images cascading around us, although it wasn’t easy. A banshee screamed away in my ear. That creature too had been in Quentin’s Quag book.

  One of the cobble’s swords sliced the bookcase we were hiding behind in half; the blade stopped an inch from turning me into two Wugs. Delph started hurling books at it, but the cobble crushed the bookcase under its two middle legs as I flung myself away from it and slid across the room, crashing into another bookcase and causing a multitude of tomes to rain down on my head. Creatures great and small, long-dead Wugs, and creations I had no way to even recognize poured out of these fat volumes. The room could not hope to contain this maelstrom of mayhem.

  I slipped my gloved hand in my pocket, drew out the Elemental, willed it to full form, drew my arm back, aimed and fired it directly at the middle of the cobble. It connected and disappeared in a huge wall of smoke. When the smoke cleared, the middle body of the cobble was no longer. I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed slightly. However, the other two bodies, freed from their mate, were still standing. Well, actually, they were running directly at me.

  I looked wildly around for the Elemental. Then I saw it. The spear had taken a long arc around the room and was now heading back to me. Then a sword thrown by one of the cobbles collided with it, knocking it violently off course. It slammed with great velocity against a wall of bookcases. They tumbled down and, to my horror, the Elemental became trapped under them. As one of the cobbles surged straight at me, his sword held high for the killing stroke, I saw a blur of motion to my right.

  “No, Delph!” I screamed.

  Delph either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to hear me. He slammed into one of the cobble’s thighs. The creature was so massive that as big and strong as Delph was, he was like a bird crashing against a solid wall. Delph slumped to the floor, the senses shaken clean from him. Before I could move, the cobble had lifted him off the ground and flung him through the air as if he were a bit of parchment. I watched in horror as Delph sailed the entire length of the room and crashed into another wall of bookcases.

  I started to run toward him, but I was blinded by a fiery image that had come soaring out of one of the books flying past my face. I tripped and fell to the floor. On the way down, I turned and saw a sword slashing through the air where I had been standing.

  The cobble was now right over me. It raised the sword above its head and was just about to plunge it downward and separate my legs from the rest of me when I soared straight upward and shot past it. This was my true advantage against my massive opponent.

  Under my cloak, Destin was warm to the touch. I zipped along the perimeter of the wall, heading toward Delph. I wouldn’t make it. I had lost track of the other cobble until it reared up directly in front of me. I had forgotten about the ruddy wings on the monstrous back. It seemed impossible that a set of fragile wings could lift such an enormous weight. But I was nimble while the cobble was not.

  I flew under its arm and then around its back. It spun around, trying to keep me in sight. I kept flying in circles, faster and faster, pushing Destin and myself harder than I ever had. The cobble kept spinning too and started resembling the bonce I would rotate on the ground when I was a very young.

  I shot downward as the cobble continued to spin. I pushed a bookcase out of the way, gripped the Elemental and flung it as hard as I could. The cobble came out of the rotation just as the Elemental found its mark.

  The cobble exploded.

  As the Elemental flew back toward me, Delph screamed, “Look out, Vega Jane.”

  I partially ducked but was still knocked heels over bum and landed hard against a wall. As I slumped to the floor, the remaining cobble swung its great fist back to batter me once more, this time surely into the Hallowed Ground. I had forgotten the warning in Quentin’s book: Woe be to the Wug who forgets that destroying one part of the thing does not equal victory.

  I was too wonky to fly. The Elemental was not yet back in hand. And an extremely large fist was coming right at my head. At the last instant, I sprang up and smashed my own fist into the cobble’s belly.

  The cobble was lifted off its massive feet and flew backward through the air, where it struck the wall opposite so hard it exploded into fragments. I just stood there for a sliver or two looking at what remained of the cobble and then at my fist. I had no idea what had just happened. The Elemental arrived in my gloved hand and I closed my fingers around it.

  I looked once more at the remains of the cobble and then my mind went back to that night at the Care when I had struck Non: My hand was injured delivering the blow. Striking the rocklike cobble, my poor bones should have shattered. There was only one explanation. I lifted my cloak and looked down at Destin. It was an ice blue. I touched it and then hastily withdrew my finger. It was molten to the touch, although all I could feel around my waist was a heightened sense of warmth.

  “Wo-wo-wotcha, Ve-Ve-Vega Jane?” the voice called out.

  “Delph!” I had forgotten about him.

  I ran to him, used my newfound strength to throw off the bookcases that covered most of him. He was bruised and bloodied.

  “Can you stand?” I asked.

  He nodded slowly and said weakly, “Th-think so.”

  I gingerly helped him up. He was holding his right arm funny and he couldn’t put much weight on his left leg.

  “Delph, hold on to me.”

  I willed the Elemental to shrink, placed it in my pocket and then lifted him up and over my back. He gasped in amazement at this, but I had no time for explanations. I leapt into the air and flew out the doorway, down the stairs, and didn’t land until we were at the door we had come through. I was giving the jabbits no chance to get us. I smashed open the door, flew through it with Delph on my back and we soared into the nighttime sky.

  I didn’t land again until we were at Delph’s cottage. As I set him down, he said in a dazed voice, “How did you lift me like that, Vega Jane?”

  “I’m not sure, Delph. How bad are you hurt?” I asked anxiously.

  “Busted up pretty good,” he admitted. “Cobbles,” he added.

  “You did read the book.”

  “Dinnae figure on meeting one of them on this side of the Quag, though.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I can limp.”

  I slapped my forehead. “I’ve got the Adder Stone. I’ll sort you out in no time.”

  I reached in one pocket. Then my other. I frantically searched every crevice of clothing I had. Then I groaned. The Stone was gone. I looked at Delph with a miserable expression.

  “I must have lost it back at Stacks. I can go and —”

  He gripped my arm. “You are nae going back there.”

  “But the Stone. Your injuries.”

  “I’ll heal, Vega Jane. Just take a bit of time.”

  Then another thought seized me. “The Duelum!”

  He nodded sadly. “Can’t fight with one arm and leg, can I?”

  “Delph, I’m so sorry. This was all my fault.”

  “In this together, Vega Jane, ain’t we? I chose to come, insisted on it, actually. And you saved me life.”

  I helped him into the cottage. Duf was not there. Probably working at the Wall, I reckoned. I got Delph into his cot after cleaning up his cuts and icing his bruises with cold water from a bucket his father kept in the little cav
e. I fashioned a sling for his arm and found a thick cudgel he could use to help him walk.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, tears forming in my eyes.

  He smiled weakly. “No dull times round you, is there? Har.”

  THE NEXT THING I knew, it was light and I was waking up on my cot. I was tired, sore, out of sorts and my head mired in the events of last night. Something licked my hand and I sat up and patted Harry Two on the head. When I looked outside my window, I saw Wugs streaming past in large numbers.

  I took a sliver to realize what was going on. The Duelum! It was at second light. I was late. I jumped off my cot, nearly scaring Harry Two to death, and scrambled into the clothes I had let fall to the floor the night before. I stopped, looked down at Destin where I had dropped it on the floor. With that I could defeat any Wug in the Duelum. I was torn. One thousand coins. It was a lot of wealth, more than I would ever have. But it wasn’t the coins that mattered. Other Wugs would think highly of me if I were champion crowned — the female in the Starving Tove and plenty of others. Like Delph said, I was famous. Wugs knew me.

  Still I made no move to pick up Destin. I finally used my foot to edge the chain under my cot. I didn’t have to win the bloody Duelum. I just had to fight my hardest. And part of me was afraid if I used Destin and its power, I might unintentionally kill a Wug. I did not want that on my conscience. I also wanted to win fair and square. I was a liar, a sometime thief, a pain in the arse on more than a few occasions, but apparently I had some moral tendencies left.

  As I passed other Wugs streaming toward the pitch, it occurred to me that I had not checked the board last night to see who I would be fighting. I arrived as the bell sounded and looked quickly around. Was I in this set of bouts? I spotted the betting board and rushed over to it.