The meal finished, I started to feel a bit better. I set down my glass and looked over at Delph.
He finally gazed back at me, while Petra looked back and forth at us.
“We were almost goners last night about a dozen times,” he said.
I nodded weakly, my spirits turning even bleaker, if that was possible.
“I feel awful,” I said. “You don’t suppose we got some jabbit venom in us somehow?”
Delph said, “Vega Jane, if we’d done that, we’d be dead.”
“That’s true,” I said thoughtfully.
“It seems to me that the thing was a prisoner there,” said Delph. “And if it was, maybe it’s an enemy of the Maladons.”
I shot him a glance. “Then that might make that thing an ally of ours.”
He nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“It was in the Tower Room guarded by jabbits and magic,” said Petra. “That certainly sounds like it was a prisoner.”
“Maybe we should have rescued it and brought it back here,” said Delph.
I shook my head. “Too risky. Don’t forget that the damn thing nearly got us killed. And the Maladons are quite tricky. It might have been a trap. If we brought the thing back here, it could have destroyed the spells that keep Empyrean safe and led the Maladons right to us.”
Delph nodded. “ ’Tis true enough.”
I slapped my forehead and leapt up.
Delph jumped out of his chair. “Vega Jane, what is it?” He looked at me like maybe I had swallowed some jabbit venom.
I ran upstairs, grabbed the coat I had worn the night before and ran back into the kitchen. I put my hand in the pocket and drew out the miniaturized bottles.
“Bloody Hel,” said Delph. “I’d forgotten all about them.”
I set the bottles on the floor, drew out my wand and made the reverse incantation.
The bottles immediately returned to their full size.
“They’re all slaves now,” I said in a hollow tone.
Petra glanced over at me. “But why did the Maladons not just kill them, like they done to Daphne? Why keep them alive at all?”
After the look I had seen in her eyes the previous night, my suspicions of Petra were running high. I said heatedly, “Because to them killing is nothing special. But to rob their enemies of their magic? And then enslave them? Make them do their bidding? Treat them like cow dung? Now, that would be something truly special for those monsters.”
My unspoken thought was: Monsters maybe like you!
We all stared down at the bottles, each representing a shattered life.
“We learned a lot last night,” I said. “About how the Maladons operate, how they get their victims right where they want them. And we’ve been to the castle.”
Delph said, “We didn’t see that bloke you talked about. The one on the throne that made the air turn solid.”
“And I’m glad we didn’t. He makes Endemen look positively harmless.”
I picked up one of the bottles and looked at it. “I wonder where Clive Pippen is.”
“Why?” asked Petra.
I held up the bottle to show the name CLIVE PIPPEN engraved on the side. “Because I’d like to return this to him.”
“You can do that?” she asked, her voice full of wonder with a smidge of disbelief.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, that’s a big maybe, that is,” she retorted.
I said, “I don’t disagree, but first thing we need to write down all the names of the people on the bottles. I’ll get an ink stick and some parchment from the library. There’s some in a —”
I stopped talking when Pillsbury came in carrying an ink stick, a bottle of ink and a small journal.
“I happened to hear what you required, Mistress Vega. Here it is.”
“Thank you, Pillsbury.”
The next moment he was gone.
“Helpful bloke, that one,” noted Petra.
Delph said, “Vega Jane, you got nice handwriting from all your work at Stacks. So Petra and I will read off the names and you write ’em down like.”
I settled at the table, filled my ink stick from the bottle and let it hover over the first blank parchment page of the journal.
“I’m ready.”
They started reading off the names and I dutifully wrote them down.
Amicus Arnold, Pauline Paternas, Tobias Holmes, Reginald Magnus, Charlotte Tokken, Alabetus Trumbull, Clive Pippen, Dedo Datt, Aloyisus Danbury, Cecilia Harkes, Sybill Hornbill, Miranda Weeks, Dennis O’Shaughnessy, James Throckmorton, Artemis Dale.
Then they abruptly stopped reading off the names, although I knew there were many more bottles.
I looked up, my ink stick poised over the parchment, and saw Delph holding an especially large glass bottle. He was staring at it, openmouthed.
Petra was doing the very same thing.
“What is it?” I asked.
They both slowly turned to look at me.
“What is it?” I asked again, a bit more gruffly because they were just sitting there looking incredibly stupid.
Instead of answering, Delph simply handed over the bottle.
I took it, a bit put out that he wouldn’t simply read off the name.
I said, “I wonder why it’s bigger than the —”
Then I saw the named engraved on the glass and all other thoughts were struck clean from me.
VIRGIL ALFADIR JANE.
I WAS SO SHOCKED that I nearly dropped the bottle. Then I gripped the glass so tightly that I was afraid I was going to crush it in my hand.
Finally, I just set it down on the table and closed my eyes.
When I opened them the bottle was still there. Part of me was hoping we had all just imagined its existence.
“They’ve … they’ve got your grandfather,” said Delph. “They’ve got Virgil.”
I looked down, trying to gather my wits about me.
It was all so overwhelming I could barely breathe, much less actually think.
I glanced at my arm where the creature in the Tower Room had grabbed me.
Then I glanced at the mark of the hooks on the back of my hand.
The mark was burning brightly.
“What is it, Vega Jane?” asked Delph, who was watching me closely.
“I don’t know. It just feels really odd. And my mark looks stronger than before, don’t you think?”
“Maybe it does.”
Petra interjected, “So what do we do? If they can beat your grandfather, a bleedin’ Excalibur, what chance do we have?”
“It’s not clear that they have beaten him,” I said defensively.
She looked at me like I had gone barmy. “Really? And what, he just gave up his bloody magic all on his own?”
I fought a serious urge to pull out my wand and empty Petra of all her magic!
“All I’m saying is that we don’t know for certain.”
“Well, it seems certain to me that he don’t have no more magic,” she retorted. “It’s in that bottle.”
As much as I didn’t want to agree with her, I had to.
Delph said quietly, “Do you think your grandfather is one of them slaves, maybe in Greater True?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think he is, Delph.”
“You can’t know for certain,” said Petra, throwing my previous words back in my face. She was so very good at making me absolutely furious.
Blimey, it was like we were sisters!
I picked up the bottle holding my grandfather’s magic.
“I’ll tell you what I do know. This bottle is larger than the others. That’s a lot of magic. An Excalibur level of magic, I reckon.”
“So?” said Petra.
“So I don’t think they would treat him like all the others because he’s not like all the others. They would give him extra special treatment, and not in a good way. I mean punishment. Terrible punishment.”
Delph said, “I’m not sure I know
what you mean, Vega Jane.”
I took a deep breath. Even I was not totally sure what I meant, or I didn’t want to be. “I think my grandfather was the faceless creature in the Tower Room.”
I held up my arm.
“He touched me here and it burned like mad. But my mark also became more pronounced. And why else would it have let me go when Harry Two licked his arm?”
Petra of course did not look convinced. “Why would they keep him alive? Why not kill him like they did Daphne?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they want to keep him alive for some other reason.”
“Like what?”
I slowly lowered my arm. “I don’t know!” I felt my face flush. “You always have lots of questions, but never any answers,” I added emphatically.
She gazed steadily at me. “I came to this whole thing a lot later than you. I don’t know anything about your grandfather, or this place called Wormwood, or the Maladons or even magic really. I … don’t like not knowing things. Maybe that’s why I ask so many questions. But I guess it’s not fair to always expect you to have all the answers.”
She looked away, and I thought that was as close as I’d ever likely get to an apology from Petra Sonnet.
Yet back in Wormwood I’d asked lots of questions too, because I also liked to know things. So maybe Petra and I were a lot more alike than I cared to admit.
Delph broke the silence. “They could be trying to get information from him.”
“What sort of information?” I asked.
“Well, he’s from Wormwood. Don’t you think these Maladon blokes would just love to get to Wormwood and kill everybody there? I mean, we’ve all been in hiding there, though most of us didn’t know it. They may believe that Virgil can tell them how to get there.”
“Through the Quag?” I said. “Good luck with that.”
“But Virgil didn’t go through the Quag, did he? He was able to bypass it somehow.”
I said, “We don’t know for sure what he did. We just know that he disappeared from Morrigone’s home in a whirl of flames. And I believed that was the case when my parents disappeared from the Care too. I just later assumed that he had summoned them somehow. Maybe they were all captured.”
Delph shook his head. “Your grandfather left a long time before your mom and dad vanished. Why would he wait all that time to bring them to him? And remember, the Maladons are on the lookout for your parents. So I don’t think they’ve been caught.”
Petra said, “Well, if they were captured your parents could have escaped but Virgil somehow didn’t manage it.”
Delph shook his head. “I’m not sure how likely that is.”
I was sorely confused now. “But, Delph, if my grandfather summoned my parents and they either appeared here or traveled through the Quag, they would have been together. So if the Maladons have Virgil, which appears likely since his name is on this bottle, and the bloke in the Tower Room might well be his shrunken, faceless self, and they’re still looking for my parents, then they must have escaped somehow. Perhaps my grandfather held off the Maladons while they got away.”
“Now, that’s possible,” conceded Delph.
Petra added, “So I wonder where your parents are now? If they are magical, we could certainly use a couple more wands.”
I sat there staring at the tabletop. I didn’t know where my parents were. I had no idea if they were magical, or if they even had wands.
I took out the picture of them and looked down at it. The Maladons must have at least seen my parents somehow, otherwise how could they have made a picture of them?
But what I was most thinking about was my grandfather. Was that really him up in the Tower Room? That faceless, shrunken, pitiable creature?
Had I been so close to Virgil that he had actually touched me on the arm? The Wugmort I had been searching for all this time might have been right next to me. And I had managed to leave him behind.
I rubbed my eyes. Despite my recent sleep I felt so weary I was afraid I might topple over.
But there was one fact staring me in the face. And it did not bode well for our chances of beating these fiends.
As Petra had said, if they could reduce a mighty Excalibur to that, what hope was there for us to prevail?
I looked up to see Delph staring at me. The way he looked, it was almost as if he could read my thoughts.
“You escaped from them, more’n once, Vega Jane. And you took Endemen’s wand from him after blasting him with a spell.”
My eyes widened, for it indeed seemed that Delph had read my thoughts.
“So don’t shortchange yourself in any fight with them blokes. Like I did back at the Duelum, I’d bet on you to win against them.”
“Thanks, Delph,” I said quietly.
When I looked at him, I saw something in his eyes. Like he wanted to hug and then snog me. I mean really snog me! My skin started tingling as I realized I wanted to snog him too!
“I’d bet on you too, Vega,” added Petra, breaking the moment.
Delph coughed and looked away.
I turned and smiled compactly at Petra, nearly convinced that she had done this on purpose to interfere with whatever was going on between Delph and me, rather than meaning what she’d said.
“Thanks,” I said coolly.
I glanced at Delph. “I thought the hard part was getting through the Quag. Now that seems the easiest bit of it.”
Delph said, “Way I see it, we need help if we’re going to beat the Maladons. Lot more of them than there are of us.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But how do we change that?”
Delph pointed at the bottles sitting on the table.
“I think the answer lies there.”
“How do we get the magic back into all those people? We don’t even know where they are.”
“We have to find them, don’t we? And I think a lot of them are in Greater True. From what you said, that seems to be where the hoity-toity live. Sort of like blokes on Council back in Wormwood. And I didn’t see no ‘slave’ types like you described when we were in True.”
“Okay, let’s say they’re in Greater True. How do we go about finding them? Just wait on the street and see them coming?”
“Well, that happened to you, didn’t it?”
“Delph, I don’t think you get it. Let’s say we find one. Then what? We take the person, bring him or her back here and restore their magic? Okay, but they’ll know the person is gone. They’ll probably figure out the magic dust has been taken. They’ll put both things together and deduce what we’re doing. And then they’ll be on their guard and we’ll never be able to get to any more of these enslaved blokes. They might just kill the lot like Endemen did with Daphne and the others.”
In answer Delph held up a single finger. “We can start with one, Vega Jane. Just one. And we’ll figure out a way so they won’t know what we’re doing. But we have to make sure that we can restore the magic. That’s the point of all this.”
I shook my head, still confused. “What exactly is the point?” I asked.
Delph glanced over at the bottles once more and then back at me.
“Why, they’re going to be your army o’course.”
THAT NIGHT I couldn’t sleep. The thoughts in my head were swirling so fast it was like there was a blizzard in my brain.
Groaning, I rose from bed, put on my cloak, snagged my wand and, leaving a sleeping Harry Two behind, made my way to the library. I shut the door behind me, conjured a fire in the fireplace and sat down in the desk chair facing the flames.
I opened the journal that I had put in a drawer there earlier. We had finished writing down all the names from the bottles, which were lined up on a broad shelf across from me.
I gazed at the bottles. To me they weren’t simply glass and dust; they represented flesh-and-blood people whose lives had been savagely ripped from them.
I opened the journal and read down the list of names.
The problem was matching t
he names and the dust in the bottles to the actual people. How did we find them?
In frustration I slammed the journal shut and slumped back in my chair.
I rose and held the bottle with my grandfather’s name on it, peering closely at the letters forming his name.
How had they known he was Virgil Alfadir Jane? Had he been forced to tell them? And how had they gotten a picture of my mother and father? Again, was the source my grandfather? I couldn’t believe he would give that up voluntarily. Was that why he was in such a horrible state? Because of torture? Why couldn’t they simply use the Subservio spell on him? Or, being an Excalibur, was he somehow impervious to its effects?
I looked beyond the name to the dust contained in the bottle. Not only was the bottle different by virtue of its size, but the dust was slightly different as well.
I looked more closely. It was a fine texture, when the dust in the other bottles was a bit more granular.
I had a sudden awful thought.
What would my magical dust look like if the Maladons were able to do this to me?
Depressed, I stared into the flickering fire.
Suddenly I had an idea. I raced back to my room and opened the drawer of my bedside cabinet where I kept my enchanted piece of parchment and pulled it out.
“Silenus?” I had discovered this bloke in the Quag.
His face instantly appeared on the page.
“Silenus? I have a problem.”
He looked expectantly at me.
“Tell me, Vega.”
I explained to him what had happened at Greater True and then my two excursions to Maladon Castle. And the possibility that my grandfather might be a prisoner there.
Then I held up the bottle and told Silenus what it contained and how it had gotten there.
He looked as repulsed by my tale as I felt telling it.
“The thing is, Silenus, we would like to be able to get this dust and all the other bottles back to their rightful owners. Only we don’t know how to do that. Their names are on the bottles but we don’t which persons go with which bottles. And we have no way to track them down. And if we do find them, we don’t know how to return the magic to the people. I know of no spell to do that. The Maladons might know, but they’re not going to tell me.”
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