In the aftermath of the defeat, I had thought I had heard her name mentioned once as having been held in reserve by Baranak, should additional forces be required to deal with me. Perhaps. And perhaps she had only agreed to such an arrangement so that he would leave her alone, and leave her out of it.
Rumors upon rumors. The same with all of us, really. We lived in a never-ending swirl of doubtful fact and demonstrable fiction; of innuendo and gossip, layer upon layer upon layer, dragged out over millennia.
How to strip away the layers of this woman and know her heart when, for so many of us, the great fear was that peeling away so many layers might give way at last to nothing? No, I did not know her. Innumerable centuries had passed, even before the revolt, during which I had not encountered her in the City or elsewhere. Let it be, then.
Vodina. Emerging from the waters of her lake, she was as a clean slate to me.
“I do not know who it was,” Vodina was saying, “but they very nearly killed me. And that is no easy task.”
She was sitting up, leaning against a large rock, my coat pulled up to cover most of her torso, mainly out of deference to the expressed preferences of Evelyn. Her eyes, a radiant blue-green, flashed vividly in contrast to her pale skin and bare scalp. Out of the water, she seemed somehow less statuesque, less impressive—even the vivid green of her skin had faded to a pale imitation of itself—but she was still a being of unquestionable power and radiance. I had not seen her for many years even before my exile, and I admit I had nearly forgotten how impressive she was.
I squatted in the sand opposite her, studying her. The humans stood to my left, probably still fuming over the grudging and abbreviated introductions I had tended.
I had resolved to gain as much information from Vodina as I could, while she was still disoriented and confused. Doubtless she would become much less willing to volunteer intelligence once she was herself again.
“Where were you when you were attacked?” I asked, as casually as possible.
“The World Sea,” she said, her eyes distant. “On my island. I believe whomever did it must have been waiting there for some time, as I spend most of my time beneath the waves and do not often emerge.”
I nodded.
“The Sea. That is a long way down the line.”
“Indeed.”
“Fast time, right?”
“Somewhat. I can dwell there for months and miss little that happens in the City.”
I realized then that she probably did not know about the murders. Truthfully, I was afraid to tell her. Afraid of what might happen if she were so shocked that she lapsed into a coma again—and I had no way of judging the delicacy of her condition. Perhaps more that that, I was concerned that she might instantly draw the same conclusions regarding my guilt that Baranak and the others had. I did not fancy another twelve rounds with her furies.
“Excuse me,” Evelyn said then, “but I’ve never heard of a ‘World Sea.’”
“You wouldn’t have,” Vodina said. “It is not within your capacity to experience. At least, not without a guide.” She smiled up at the woman. “It seems that you have found one, though.”
“It is in a pocket universe claimed by Vodina,” I explained quickly, suddenly uncomfortable. “It lies… one might say below your human plane.”
“Like subspace,” Evelyn said, making the connection. “So time there flows slightly faster than in normal space.” She frowned. “So, you’re saying there are other layers to subspace?”
I did not wish to be distracted into delivering a physics lesson—nor a metaphysics lesson—while the opportunity yet remained to pump the water goddess for information. But, I reasoned, perhaps a few basics would shut them up for a bit. So, “Somewhat,” I replied hastily. “Better to say that the ‘subspace’ you use for fast space travel is but one layer, one plane among many, both ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ your own. It lies in the Below, the faster but less powerful direction, while our Golden City lies in the slower but more powerful direction, the Above.”
Cassidy leaned toward Kim.
“That does fit with some of our theories,” he said. “It would sort of explain how our ship ended up where it did.”
“You’re not seriously listening to this guy, are you?” Kim snorted. “I still say we’re jacked into some sort of Outworlder brain sim and they’re just waiting for us to get comfortable and hand over everything we know.”
“That should not take terribly long, I would imagine,” I muttered, before returning my full attention to Vodina once more. “So, did you get any sort of a look at your attackers?”
“No,” she said. “They must have been extremely good at concealing themselves both from me and from my remote defenses.” She squeezed her eyes closed tightly, as one who battled a growing migraine. “Which among our number excel at concealment?” she asked.
I hastily turned the conversation away from this direction and back to the attack.
“How were you hit? What did they do to you?”
She gingerly flexed her left shoulder and winced.
“A blast in the back. It knocked me senseless. I remember little afterward.”
Her luminous eyes turned upward, as if searching the cave’s ceiling for answers.
“I do not know if they tried to finish me off and failed, or thought I was already dead, or simply let me crawl away to die. Somehow I escaped, though I was extremely weakened, barely alive. My subconscious mind must have driven me here, to a hidden refuge of water I had discovered long ago. I am sure it also caused the generation of my water sprites. They simply lashed out at anyone who might prove a threat to my recovery.” The corner of her mouth turned up in something of a wry smile then. “I apologize for their… zealousness.”
I did not like to think of the watery manifestations of Vodina’s power that had nearly taken me out as “sprites.” “Sprites” did not seem to me like creatures that could nearly rip your head off. “Furies” seemed a much better name for them—but I let it go. Something important occurred to me then.
“Your attack—it must have been either before the Power failed, or after the Fountain was restored,” I surmised. “Otherwise you could not have escaped to this place.”
She closed her eyes, as if deep in thought, then nodded.
“I know of such events only as a consequence of their impact upon me,” she observed, “but I had surmised as much.”
She sighed.
“When the Power first went away, I retreated to the depths of my Sea, and remained there with my court for the entire time of its absence. When I felt its renewal, my first thought was to swim to my island and make sure it was still secure, and to attempt to contact the City, to find out what had happened. No sooner had I emerged from the waters there than I was attacked.”
“That was not terribly long ago,” I said. “I was dwelling among the human worlds when the Power returned, and the journey back to the City took…” I attempted the math, factoring in different rates of time flow and different distances traversed within each plane along the way, then quickly gave up on that idea and settled on a rough estimate. “…perhaps two days. Another day in the Dungeon, and then the journey here. In all, your attack happened barely more than three days ago, as time flows in the City.” I smiled at her. “You have made a fast recovery, especially if we are still in the Above, as I assume.”
She nodded.
“Higher power, though. Closer proximity to the Fountain.”
“You know, I hate to interrupt all this talk,” Cassidy exclaimed at that moment, “but none of this is getting us any closer to home.”
My face hardened, and I began to rise.
“At ease, Lieutenant,” Evelyn said, stepping forward. “That approach clearly doesn’t accomplish anything.”
Cassidy stepped back and settled down with obvious reluctance. Kim started to say something undoubtedly ignorant and unhelpful, but I cleared my throat and said, “The lieutenant is quite right. We have spent enough tim
e here. We need to be moving on.”
A tinkling sound like water falling on small rocks came from behind me. I realized that Vodina was laughing.
“Lucian, your pets hold quite a sway over you. I am amused.”
Anger swelled up within me, and I bit back a retort.
“Ah. I do believe that I am becoming myself again,” she said then, rising to her feet.
A quick inventory of my emotions revealed to me why my reaction to her jibe had been so subdued. I was nervous. Antsy. Was Vodina about to become a problem again, or was it something else, some new threat? Whatever the cause, an extreme sensation of impending danger swept over me. It was true—it was time to move on.
Tossing my coat back to me, Vodina pranced about in a circle, stretching her arms and legs. A warm, greenish glow now radiated from her naked skin, and her very stature seemingly had increased from moments before. The humans all stared openly at her. I could not blame them.
“Okay, well, it is good to see you are feeling better,” I told her hurriedly, pulling my coat back on. “We can see ourselves out—that looks like another tunnel a bit further around the shore, yes?”
Without a reply of any sort, Vodina whirled and, in three quick strides, reached the water’s edge. Her leap and dive was a thing of exquisite beauty. It scared me to death.
“Go,” I said to the humans. “Move.”
Clearly confused, they nonetheless sensed the edge in my voice and hustled like the soldiers they were. We skirted the shoreline hurriedly, all the while keeping an eye on the placid surface of the lake. As we reached the cave mouth, I thought I heard a splashing sound behind me, but I did not look back. The humans were already racing into the tunnel ahead, and I followed on their heels with all possible haste. My immediate goal was simply to put as much distance as possible between Vodina and myself—just in case.
The glow from the lake faded quickly behind us, leaving us surrounded by total darkness. Generating a small blue globe of luminance, I set it to hover alongside us as we ran.
After a short while, Evelyn dropped back to jog along beside me.
“You didn’t tell her about the murders,” she said.
“I saw nothing to be gained from it,” I replied.
“For you to gain, you mean.”
I glanced at her as we jogged, but could not read her face.
“Vodina has already been attacked once and, now that she is recovered, is on her guard,” I said. “It will be extremely difficult for anyone to take her by surprise again.” I shrugged. “So I have left her in no worse a situation than I found her—and, in fact, may have hastened her recovery.”
Evelyn appeared to be considering this.
“You think she was going to attack us again, anyway. Why?”
I frowned.
“Because she has probably already decided I am the most likely suspect for her attack. And why do I think so?” I shrugged again. “Just a feeling. But my feelings about these things are right more often than I would like.”
“Godly insight? Some kind of omniscience?”
A wry grin crossed my face.
“I like that. Yes. I am great and mighty. Fear me.”
The sound Evelyn made then is best left not described.
Ignoring her, I turned my attention to the nature of the world around us. We had run far enough; it was time to depart this plane and continue on toward my own private cosmos. My mind pushed beyond surface appearances and I reached out with my senses, examining the weave of reality around us, studying it with my mind, getting a feel, as best I could, for its strength, its density, its texture—and what lay beyond it. A portion of that same Power that radiated out from the Fountain in our City to all levels of reality flowed through me, there in the tunnel. I began the process of pushing through the barrier separating this level from an adjacent one. I envisioned within my mind’s eye a portal opening for us, and in response a blue glow flared just ahead. I smiled. The barrier was surprisingly thin here. I hardly had to expend any energy at all to open the way. Perhaps we would make it after all.
The humans, startled at the sight, slowed their pace, but I urged them on towards the light.
“It’s okay,” I said. “That is mine.”
As we neared my portal, we saw that the tunnel extended onward beyond it for only a short distance before ending abruptly in a sheer wall.
“Not to worry,” I reassured them. “We’re in the clear.”
My blue portal blinked out of existence as if a giant had stepped on it.
I believe my chin actually hit the rocky floor, as anatomically unlikely as it might seem.
“What happened?” Cassidy shouted.
Only the dark and shallow remainder of the tunnel lay ahead of us. Shocked, I poured more energy into the space my portal had occupied, trying to reopen the way, but to no avail. Worse, I was certain now I could hear a splashing sound behind us. Some semblance of panic came over me then, I must admit, and I looked around frantically. The humans must have understood something of our plight as well, for they moved into a defensive circle and braced themselves.
At that moment another light flared, this one a bit further along in the direction we had been moving, almost to the tunnel’s end. It was green in color, but a darker green than Vodina’s Aspect. The humans looked at it and then back at me.
“That’s not yours, is it?” Evelyn said.
“No.”
I glanced back in the direction of the lake, but could see nothing that way. Cursing, I attempted to force another portal open, only to be stymied once more. The sensation was bizarre. It was nothing like the long years when the Power was gone, for I could feel the buzz flowing through me. Something simply prevented me from using it to breach the barriers between planes. My frustration was enormous.
“What should we do?” Evelyn said, her eyes moving from me to the green light and back.
“What the hell?”
I started forward. Clearly the green light had some connection with my blocked powers. Curiosity at that point became as strong as any other emotion—not to mention my growing conviction that Vodina was no longer so well disposed towards me as she had been while still in a confused daze. Such is the dark god’s fate—wrongfully accused at every turn. Poor, pitiful me. For I am bound upon a wheel of fire, and like that.
“Something tells me it can’t be any worse than going back the way we came,” I said, and stepped up to the green circle, reaching out a hand to touch it. At that instant it flared open and a fist rocketed out, catching me in the jaw. I crumpled to the tunnel’s floor, muttering something like, “Not again.”
My vision swimming, I could barely make out a burly form hovering over me—though, mercifully, it did not wear golden armor. A shadowy face peered down at me. Recognition dawned as a dim star within the galaxy that currently danced across my vision.
“Turmborne,” I managed, tasting blood.
“Lucian.”
He nodded in greeting, his mouth a tight line.
“You’re really not terribly smart,” he said, “are you?”
I attempted a witty comeback, but instead found myself blacking out, even as massive hands grasped my ankles and dragged me through that green hole in the universe.
CHAPTER FOUR
Good dentistry. Now that is a thing we gods have never taken for granted. Certainly we can direct a sufficient amount of the Power into any trouble spots that might occur with regard to our teeth and gums, and over time all will heal. Unfortunately, such a process tends to be long, unpleasant, and generally annoying. Therefore one thing I had a feeling I was going to miss, if I no longer dwelled among the human worlds, was good dentistry. It felt like at least two of my teeth had been loosened, between going a handful of rounds with Baranak and then taking the surprise shot from Turmborne. Idly I wondered if our wrestler-god, Fuaren, had survived. If he had, it seemed inevitable my chin would encounter his fist soon enough, too.
Coming back to my senses, I looked a
round and tried to take in the situation.
I sat, my back to a tree, within a small clearing in a dense forest. Judging by the substantial amount of light reaching through the thick, overhanging branches, it had to be near midday. To my right, beyond a stack of barrels and crates, the three humans were imprisoned within what looked to be a hastily constructed cage made of stout limbs bound by rope. Across from me sat Turmborne.
Turmborne, our lumberjack god. Our outdoorsman. Green of eye, red of hair, broad of jaw. He of the flannel and the beard and the broad axe. The only one of us all that might survive an extended brawl with Baranak--if he had ever shown any interest in such a thing. He had not, of course. During my time in the City, before the exile, I had scarcely seen him about. He had not even taken part in the battle in the City Square, so far as I knew. He lived for his woodlands and his hunt and his sport. I probably knew less of him than of any of the others, save perhaps Vodina--and, prior to my revolt, I had made it my business to know everything that could be known about all of them. My ignorance in regard to him irked me, and his assault on me irked me further. Plus, I remembered then, he had insulted my intelligence.
Turmborne, I felt strongly, had an ass-whipping coming.
He just sat there, watching me.
I started to rise.
“No, no,” he said then, his voice deep and resonant. He motioned me back down. “Let us converse, you and I, Lucian,” he continued. “The day is young yet. We have nothing but time.”
“Actually, I do not,” I said. “In fact, you are keeping me from important business—“
“You are being inconvenienced, then?” he boomed. “How unfortunate.” His glare beat at me like a physical blow, and I settled back to the ground once more. “But I’m afraid you are not the only one being inconvenienced, these days. I have been extremely inconvenienced recently, in fact.” His eyes narrowed, though he continued to glare at me. “Murder can do that. Mass murder, especially.”
Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (The Above Book 1) Page 6