Vega Jane and the Rebels’ Revolt

by David Baldacci

  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 picked up the bottle holding my grandfather’s magic.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said slowly. ‘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.

  ‘It 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 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!’

  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 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.’

  I thought that was as close as I’d ever likely get to an apology from Petra Sonnet.

  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. ‘Remember, the Maladons are on the lookout for your parents. So I don’t think they’ve been caught.’

  Petra said, ‘Unless they were captured but your parents somehow escaped.’

  Delph shook his head. ‘I’m not sure how likely that is.’

  I was sorely confused now. ‘All we know is if that creature in the Tower is Virgil, then the Maladons have my grandfather, but not my parents, since they’re still looking for them. Perhaps my grandfather held off the Maladons while my parents 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 I had found in that bloke’s pocket 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?

  And 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 left 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. So don’t short-change 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 unexpected in his eyes that made my heart beat faster. I found myself flushing.

  ‘I’d bet on you too, Vega,’ added Petra, breaking the moment.

  Delph coughed and looked away.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  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. We get the magic back to those people.’

  ‘We don’t even know where they are.’

  ‘I think a lot of them are in Greater True. From what you said, that seems to be where the hoity-toity live.’

  ‘OK, let’s say they’re in Greater True. Let’s say we find some of them. Say we manage to get them back here and restore their magic. What good does that do? The Maladons will realize the magic is gone and their slaves are missing. They’ll be on their guard and we’ll never be able to free anyone else. They might just kill the lot, like Endemen did with Daphne and the others.’

  In answer Delph held up a 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.’

  26

  THE PATH AHEAD

  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 my 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 the 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?

  I looked beyond the name to the dust contained in the bottle. Not only was the bottle different by virtue of its size, but t
he dust inside 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.

  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 odd bloke who lived on paper in the Quag.

  His face instantly appeared on the page. ‘Yes?’

  ‘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. 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 got 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 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.’

  Silenus nodded. ‘I can see how that would be a dilemma of significant proportions,’ he said sombrely.

  ‘Right,’ I said, a bit irritably, for I already knew that. ‘Do you have any ideas on how we could do it?’

  Silenus was silent for some time. I waited with increasing anxiety, never taking my gaze off him. If he didn’t have an idea, what was I to do?

  Finally, he said, ‘You will recall, Vega, that we once spoke of the true purpose of magic; the probability of improbability, let us call it.’

  I nodded. ‘You told me that spell casting came out of necessity.’

  ‘Yes, I did. What is magic but the will of the owner of such power to accomplish something which is desired? You say you want to match the bottles to the people? And then return the magic to them?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Silenus now stared over at the bottle of dust containing my grandfather’s magical remains. ‘If that does indeed contain the magic that once flowed through the spirit of your grandfather, then all that you need is within those grains.’

  I said, ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘You believe the creature in the Tower Room is Virgil Alfadir Jane?’

  I nodded and said eagerly, ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘You are wrong.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said, half in anger, half in disbelief. ‘I’m wrong about what?’

  Silenus said, ‘The creature in the Tower Room is simply a husk, the remains of an animal carcass; only in this case the carcass still breathes.’ He eyed the bottle once more. ‘There, in that vessel, is your grandfather. He is with you now.’

  I looked at the bottle, feeling the first flickering of hope.

  ‘So how do I get him out of the bottle?’ I said.

  ‘That is largely up to you. And your wand. But the key element, Vega, is that you must believe. Even a smidgen of doubt and it will not work.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I have seen what doubt can do, Vega. It can wreck the best-laid plans.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Is it that hard to really believe in something?’

  Silenus smiled the weary smile of someone who had seen this very thing over and over.

  He said, ‘It is actually the hardest thing of all.’

  And with that, he vanished from the parchment.

  I sighed.

  Well, that was clear as dung.

  Why couldn’t the bloke give me a piece of uncomplicated advice just ONCE!

  I looked at my wand and then at the bottle.

  I raised my wand, pointed it at the bottle and said, ‘Virgil Alfadir Jane, please come to me.’

  Exactly nothing happened.

  I refocused. I willed myself to believe that my grandfather truly was in that blasted bottle.

  I waved my wand again, touching the tip of it against the glass of the bottle.

  ‘Come back to me,’ I said.

  My eyes widened slightly when I saw just a little pop of light at the end of my wand, but then it quickly died out.

  I tried several more times, but nothing else happened.

  I put the bottle in my pocket and slid the journal in the drawer of my cabinet.

  I went back to the library, walked over to the fireplace, gripped the edge of the stone mantel and bowed my head.

  How was I supposed to have no doubt – when doubt was all I’d had ever since leaving Wormwood?

  As I stared into the flames, I felt the tears creep to my eyes. I had fought so hard. Come so far. And now it appeared that I could go not one inch further.

  I slumped down to the floor and curled up into a little ball.

  As the timekeeper on the mantel ticked away, I just lay there, not moving.

  This is not helping, Vega.

  This is stupid.

  You’re stronger than this.

  I rose and turned away from the fire.

  I had to do something – anything – to feel like less of a failure.

  I picked up the bottle with my grandfather’s dust in it. I put my face right next to the glass. I closed my eyes and envisioned my grandfather as I had last seen him.

  I opened my eyes and gasped.

  My grandfather was in the bottle.

  He was hovering in miniature above the pile of fine dust. Suspended in air.

  When I blinked, he was gone.

  I had only imagined it.

  There was nothing there. There never had been.

  I set the bottle down and sat back down in the chair.

  Empyrean was very quiet. I knew Delph and Petra were asleep. I didn’t know if Pillsbury actually slept; I wasn’t sure that a suit of armour ever got tired.

  As though in answer to my thoughts, Pillsbury appeared next to me, so fast that I nearly tumbled off my chair.

  ‘Do you require anything, Mistress Vega?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ I gasped. ‘No, I’m . . . I’m fine.’

  His visor quivered just a bit.

  ‘May I be somewhat impertinent, Mistress Vega?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I replied uncertainly.

  ‘You have a great deal of burden on your youthful shoulders. If you don’t mind me saying, it would overwhelm someone far older and more experienced.’

  ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘But I can’t use that as an excuse to fail, Pillsbury. I really can’t. It’s not like I’m going to get another chance to make it right.’

  ‘I recall that Mistress Alice had a similar predicament when she lived here.’

  I glanced up.

  ‘What sort of predicament?’ I asked.

  ‘She knew that war was coming with the Maladons. I remember seeing her sitting in the very chair you’re in now, far into the night, thinking and worrying, thinking and worrying.’

  ‘Did she tell you what she was thinking about?’

  Pillsbury nodded. ‘I appeared before her, something I did not do lightly. She was a very forceful person, was Mistress Alice. One did not like to intrude.’

  He hesitated and rubbed his metal mitts together.

  ‘Go on, Pillsbury, please.’

  ‘Well, I could sense that she might need to talk to someone, or at least voice her concerns out loud. So I provided a way for her to do that.’

  ‘But surely she had her husband, Gunther, to do that with.’

  To my surprise, Pillsbury slowly shook his head.

  ‘Master Gunther kept very much to himself on such matters.’ He paused once more and then plunged on in a rush. ‘He did not want war. Would have avoided it at all costs. All costs.’

  I slowly revolved this around in my head. ‘You mean, even if it meant the Maladons would take over and rule them?’

  Pillsbury nodded.

  ‘I could never imagine doing that!’ I said forcefully. ‘I would much rather
die.’

  ‘As would Mistress Alice. As she did,’ he added sadly.

  ‘Was she worried that Gunther might do something foolish regarding the Maladons? Something that might hurt Alice and her allies in the war to come?’

  ‘I think she was worried about a great many things,’ Pillsbury said diplomatically. ‘And I daresay that might have been one of them.’

  ‘You said that Necro came here before the war . . . How soon before the war started?’

  ‘As recently as the night Master Gunther died,’ said Pillsbury.

  I slowly stood. ‘Pillsbury, I have seen Gunther’s body in the coffin here. His neck was slit. Are you telling me that . . . ?’

  Pillsbury nodded, and I saw a solitary tear emerge from under the visor and meander down the metal skin.

  ‘That foul Necro came here late that night. Mistress Alice didn’t know. Necro told my master they would try and avert war. They met in this very room. Just the two of them. And when I came in later to see if they needed anything, there lay my poor master in a pool of his own blood. And the fiend Necro was nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘He murdered Gunther?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pillsbury. ‘As sure as I’d seen him do it.’

  ‘And what did Alice do?’

  ‘She would have killed him, I’m sure of it, or tried to. But the Maladons declared war the very next day.’

  ‘You said that the war started because Uma Cadmus and Necro’s son, Jason, had fallen in love. And then Jason died.’

  ‘That’s only partly true. Necro blamed Jason’s death on our side. Said that we’d had him murdered. That Uma had done it after bewitching Jason at the behest of her father. That Master Gunther was a coward who had slit his own throat because he knew his side could never defeat the Maladons.’

  ‘What a pack of lies!’ I snapped. ‘Total rubbish.’

  ‘Of course it was. But nevertheless, the Maladons wanted a war and they got it.’

  ‘And they won it,’ I reminded him miserably.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his gaze on the floor.

  We both stood there in silence for a bit.

  ‘Pillsbury, there’s going to be another war,’ I said.

  He didn’t look at me, but his visor went up and down.