The two girls watching us looked like they might melt, though Cecilia Harkes did look a bit disappointed.
The blokes, Amicus and Dennis among them, just looked embarrassed.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, goodnight, Delph.’
We uncoiled from each other and I hurried into my room and closed the door.
I don’t believe my face was wide enough to accommodate my smile.
Harry Two was already there. He wasn’t asleep, though he usually was by now.
He was perched on my bed looking alert. Which was strange, I thought.
I sat next to him and rubbed his fur.
‘You OK, Harry Two?’ I said.
Usually when I said that he would lick my face. This time he didn’t. He didn’t move or even look at me.
Troubled by this, I undressed, washed my face and climbed into bed.
I lay there staring at the ceiling.
I could tell that time passed, and soon it was the darkest point before the rise of the sun and still I had not closed my eyes.
I might have been thinking about Delph for part of the time. That kiss had confirmed much for me. The memory of it made my heart leap for joy. But though I really wanted to dwell on that, I was thinking principally about Harry Two. He had not moved a muscle. He was still perched in the exact same spot, his body as rigid as marble.
I would occasionally lift my head and look at him, wishing that he would finally lie down and go to sleep. But he didn’t. And I knew that nothing Harry Two did was without purpose. He was my early warning signal and always had been. He sensed things long before I did.
I finally crawled over next to my faithful companion and sat with my arm around him.
I worriedly scanned his face. His eyes were pointed straight at the door. His snout was clamped shut. He looked as serious as ever I’d seen him, even when death was staring us both in the face, in the shape of a garm or jabbit or Maladon.
Finally, I got dressed and was debating whether to go downstairs and prepare for the next day’s lessons when I shot a look at Harry Two. It was clear that his senses had once again been faster than mine, for he had jumped down from the bed and was intently staring at the door to my room.
I rushed over to him.
‘Harry Two, what is it?’ I asked.
He never once looked at me. But his remaining ear had pricked up.
Suddenly he lunged and started to scratch at the door.
I flung it open and he raced out.
‘Harry Two!’
He ran down the hall and then hurtled down the stairs.
I raced after him.
He reached the first floor, turned and bolted out of sight.
I caught sight of him as he galloped down a set of stairs.
I followed in time to see him turn and go down another set of rickety stairs.
Then my heart went into my throat because I knew where he was going.
Sure enough, he reached the little door with the screaming Wug on the doorknob. When I ran up next to him he looked at me and barked, as though to say, Hurry up, will you?
I used my wand to open the door. Harry Two raced in and I followed.
The sound reached my ears as soon as I closed the door behind me.
It was the sound of someone sobbing.
Lights were swirling everywhere, as before, though there appeared to be more of them, and their flight more frenetic than it had been.
I gazed around looking for Uma Cadmus, or Alice Adronis, in her pierced armour and with her mortal wound. But they were not there.
So where were the sobs coming from?
Harry Two was not at a loss, though. He yipped and raced to a distant corner. I ran after him and found that the corner was actually a bend in the room that led to a much smaller room.
And in the very centre of that room was a huddled figure.
I crept forward, unsure who or what it was. I doubted that any of the fifty people we had brought here would have found this place, or been able to access it. Was it one of the household staff? Was it another restless soul I had not met?
‘Hello?’ I said cautiously. ‘Excuse me? Hello? Are you all right?’
When the figure turned towards me, I didn’t know how I kept from fainting, or my heart from stopping.
The ethereal image of Morrigone was facing me.
But I had left Morrigone behind in Wormwood.
So what the Hel—
My breath caught in my throat as my lungs seized up.
Wormwood!
Harry Two and I rushed over to her and I knelt down beside her.
It was Morrigone, but it was a very changed Morrigone.
I had seen her in an image from Astrea Prine’s cottage when I was in the Quag. Even then she had looked different from how I remembered. Always tall, queenly and flawless in all respects, she had looked older, withered, ill even.
The Morrigone I was looking at now was pale and frail, and the look in her eyes, even as recognition sparked there as her gaze fell full on my features, was one of abject horror undercut by a sense of complete despair.
I didn’t know which terrified me more.
‘Morrigone? It’s me, Vega Jane.’
But she knew who I was. I had seen that clearly in her features. At first she said nothing. But her hand reached out and gripped my arm. Or rather it tried to. It simply passed right through.
‘Vega,’ she said in a near whisper.
‘What happened?’ I said. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I am dead,’ she said in the same low voice, as though she barely had the strength to speak.
‘Dead! But how?’
‘They came.’
There really could only be one they.
‘The Maladons?’ I said. ‘They came to Wormwood?’
She nodded.
‘They killed you?’
She nodded again.
I could barely breathe. ‘And . . . and the rest of Wormwood?’
She said nothing. She simply shook her head.
‘It . . . it can’t be,’ I blurted out.
Now Morrigone’s expression turned hard, cruel, loathing in every facet.
‘I told you, Vega. I warned you what could happen. Well, now it has happened. Our deaths are upon your head.’
Before I could say anything in response, she faded away to nothing.
I could only stare at the spot where she had been. My mind had gone blank.
When it was filled with thoughts a few moments later, they were all terrible ones indeed.
Wormwood. My home.
They had killed Morrigone. They had killed . . . everyone?
I bent over and vomited up my dinner.
Next instant I jumped up and ran all the way to my room with Harry Two right behind. I was so out of control that I bounced into walls and crashed over furniture. It was a wonder the whole house wasn’t awoken, but I reached my bedroom without anyone seeing me.
I put on my cloak, slipped Destin around my waist and put the harness around my shoulders. I snapped my fingers and Harry Two jumped into the harness as he had done so many times before.
We passed by first Delph’s and then Petra’s rooms. But this was something I had to do.
Alone.
We stepped outside of Empyrean and I tapped my leg twice with the destination firmly in mind as I said the spell.
A moment later Harry Two and I arrived at the spot where we had left the Quag so long ago.
It was dark and dreary.
When I walked over to the spot I raised my wand and said, ‘Exposadus.’
There it was: the magical dome that had entombed both Wormwood and the Quag. On it was the very slightest of impressions, like an exposed seam in a garment.
We had come out here.
I looked down at my ring. I had used it to open the dome, allowing us to escape.
A useful magical element.
Those were the words that Endemen had spoken to me in Major Nelson’s bedro
om. Now I fully knew what he meant. I had used my ring to cut a seam in the dome to get out.
The Maladons had used my ring to get in.
I remembered being at the castle and seeing all the pell-mell activity. That must have been when they found the spot where we came out. By making the seam, we had exposed the location of the spell wall protecting both the Quag and Wormwood. It had been pristine and thus completely invisible. They had never been able to find it before. With the seam marring the perfect surface of the dome, they at least knew what they had to break through. But they hadn’t been able to get in.
Until they got hold of my ring.
My heart crumbled to bits.
I used my ring to pierce the wall. Then I tapped my wand against my leg and muttered ‘Pass-pusay’ holding the image of the place of my birth singly in mind. I certainly knew it better than any other place.
The next moment my feet touched down on the high street in the town square.
I had been gone from here for what seemed like an eternity.
And it looked as though an eternity had passed.
The buildings were destroyed. The cobbles ruptured.
I walked numbly towards the Loons, where my brother, John, and I had lived after our parents had gone to the Care.
The building was a shell now, the doors and windows blown out.
I walked to the end where the majestic Council building had been located. I stared, for there was only an enormous blackened hole in the dirt where it had once stood.
I wandered the streets in a daze.
Steeples was burned, the pretty glass melted. The hospital and the Care were similarly gutted.
I flew to Duf Delphia’s cottage.
Please, don’t let it be. Don’t let Duf be . . .
As I drew close, I noted with horror that all of the beasts that Duf typically trained lay dead in the paddocks around the cottage.
I landed and crept up to the porch of the cottage. The door was gone, the windows simply gaping holes.
With a thrill of horror, I saw it.
A pair of wooden stumps leaned against the wall.
Duf Delphia was gone.
I backed away, with Harry Two still in the harness, and pushed off the ground.
I soared above and landed in front of my old family home, where I had gone to live after Morrigone had taken in John. Surprisingly, nothing was touched there. I walked in the door and looked around in wonder that they had not demolished this place, especially this place.
Then I saw the mark of the Maladons burned into the wall.
So they had been here.
I raised my wand and blasted their mark away.
I ran out and lifted off into the sky, and moments later landed at Stacks.
The towers were toppled, the massive gate caved in. When I walked inside I saw that everything had been destroyed.
When I reached my old worker station where I had been a Finisher, I saw that the brass nameplate with Vega Jane on it had been savagely defaced.
I pointed my wand at it, and wiped the marks away so that my name and my name alone was visible.
I went to Julius Domitar’s little office. The furniture had been overturned, his precious ink bottles smashed to bits.
I headed up the stairs to the second floor and from there to the door with the screaming Wug as a doorknob. None of it was there. The door and the Wug doorknob were gone. The only thing there was a blank wall.
I left Stacks and flew next to my tree house.
It was still there with the boards intact against the trunk of the tree. One of them was still blackened from when the garm had attacked me here. I leaped to the top of the planks. Again, like my home, it was undisturbed, except for one thing.
Burned into the planks was the symbol of the Maladons. I took out my wand and uttered, ‘Eraisio.’ The mark vanished.
I lifted off, and Harry Two and I next arrived at Morrigone’s home.
The beautiful gates were torn apart. The ornate door was blasted open.
All the fine things she had possessed, the case clocks, all the wonderful books, the china, the paintings, the lovely rugs, the splendid-looking glasses – they were all gone.
And my brother?
I ran up the stairs to where I knew his bedroom was.
I opened the door, terrified of what I might find.
What I found did terrify me. But not for the reason I had dreaded.
The room had not been damaged at all. The horrible pictures that I had once seen on the walls were gone, but everything else was like he had just walked out of the room.
I did not know what to make of it. I simply didn’t.
I had saved my next destination for last.
My feet hit the dirt at the entrance to the Hallowed Ground, where Wugs buried their dead.
With a sense of foreboding, I walked through the gates.
I found exactly what I thought I would find.
New graves were everywhere, with headstones and names etched on them.
The Loons were all lined up in a row.
Julius Domitar and Dis Fidus were buried side by side upon a little knoll.
Roman Picus, my old landlord and nemesis, rested at the end of one row, his garm-skin boots dumped on top of the pile of dirt covering his grave.
Tears spilt from my eyes when I saw Duf Delphia’s plot.
To the right was Herman Helvet, who owned the confectionery shop. Next to him were Jurik Krone and Non. There was the foul Ran Digby, who Delph had beaten in the Duelum. Ted Racksport, who had shot himself in the foot. Darla Gunn, who had sold me my first set of nice clothes at Fancy Frocks.
Down near the end of another row was the grave of Ezekiel the Sermonizer, who presided at Steeples.
On and on the graves went.
Until I located the last new one.
I stared at the name engraved there.
Morrigone.
There was one more thing.
Every grave had been marked with the sign of the Maladons. Everywhere I looked, those terrible eyes stared back at me.
There was one grave missing.
My brother, John, was not there. I had searched everywhere for him, terrified that the next gravestone I would find would have his name etched on it.
But it was not here.
And I did not know what that meant.
I remembered Morrigone’s parting words to me when I had left Wormwood. They made sense now.
She had been afraid. I had originally thought she had been afraid that I would fail and perish in the Quag.
But the opposite had been true.
She had been afraid because she thought I would succeed and escape the Quag.
I looked around the graveyard.
And this . . . this was why she had been afraid.
What she had feared would happen, had happened.
Why had I never thought to come back here before now? To rescue my fellow Wugs? Well, it was too late for that now.
I hung my head so that my tears spilt on to Harry Two’s fur.
I had never felt this miserable, this lost, in my entire life.
Lost; that was the exact right word.
For I had lost everything.
I was the reason all these Wugs lay dead. My fellow Wugmorts, wiped out. No more.
I was so numb that when Harry Two licked my face, I started back and refocused.
That was when I heard it.
A sound off to my left.
My wand ready, I ran that way with Harry Two next to me.
It was coming from behind a tree.
I reached the spot, and with my wand at the ready I charged around the tree, ready to strike.
I stopped dead.
‘Tha-Thansius?’
How could I have missed noticing that he had no grave here?
Our mighty Wug leader looked as I had never seen him before. His fine robes were filthy rags. His great chest and broad shoulders had fallen in. He wasn’t much more than a skeleton
.
He lay on the ground, a shovel next to him.
I knelt next to him and lifted his head with my hand. ‘Thansius. It’s me, Vega Jane. Can you hear me?’
He looked a thousand sessions old, withered and grey. When he opened his eyes I saw, with horror, that his pupils were gone. They were simply white, like the slaves back in Greater True.
‘V-V-Vega?’
‘Yes, it’s me. What . . . what happened?’
‘D-dead. All d-dead. E-except for me.’
‘But how did you survive?’
Even as I said it I thought I knew the truth. I looked at the shovel lying next to him.
He touched his sunken, bony chest as though in great pain.
I unbuttoned his torn and stained garment.
Underneath, burned into his skin, was the mark of the Maladons.
When my gaze fell upon it, my eyes filled with tears.
‘Thansius, I am so sorry.
I’m so very sorry.’
Thansius had been so strong, so indomitable and so . . . noble; we all had looked up to him. That was the only reason the Maladons had done this. To humiliate him. To show him as weak, inconsequential.
Leaving him to dig the graves of his fellow Wugs.
‘Thansius, do you have any idea what they did with my brother?’
‘T-took him.’
‘Took him where?’
He gasped for breath. I looked around and pointed my wand at a tree and mouthed the spell to draw water from it. I conjured a flask to catch it and then held it to Thansius’s mouth.
‘Here, drink this. I can help you. I’ll take you with me. I’ll nurse you back to health myself and everything will be just . . .’
I drew the flask back, for he had stiffened. And like Lackland Cyphers, he drew one last breath and then fell limp in my arms.
Thansius, mighty Thansius, who had stood for all that was good about Wormwood and Wugs in general, was dead.
I let go of him and rose.
With my wand I dug him a grave under a large, beautiful oak. I magically lay his body in it and covered it over with both dirt and a shield spell. I crafted the tombstone and placed it at the head of the mound of dirt.
On it I wand-wrote, HERE LIES THANSIUS, THE BEST AND MIGHTIEST WUG OF ALL.
Then I went to each of the tombstones and removed the mark of the Maladons. Finished, I kicked off and rose into the air. I flew over a place that no longer existed.
Vega Jane and the Rebels’ Revolt Page 26