Vega jane and the end of.., p.1
Vega Jane and the End of Time, page 1
To Spencer and Collin, this series was always for you and
so it is fitting that the final chapter is dedicated to the both of you.
I love you and love that you both are READERS!
CONTENTS
1: AT LAST
2: AN UNEXPECTED ALLY
3: ONCE MORE, THE PRINES
4: THE RIVAL
5: A GODDESS
6: THE PAST OF MY FUTURE
7: THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME
8: A VISIBLE EVENT
9: HER, FINALLY
10: A FRIEND IN NEED
11: LIGHT NOT SO BRIGHT
12: A DASH OF HOPE AND TROUBLE
13: THE PROBLEM OF THE RING
14: EON REDUX
15: AN OLD FRIEND WHEN NEW
16: COLIN SONNET
17: FULL CIRCLE
18: STONES IN WATER
19: A TIME FOR WORDS
20: NOTHING
21: THE END OF ENDEMEN
22: NO WAY OUT
23: TWINING
24: AN ANSWER FROM BEYOND
25: BEYOND WORDS
26: GROUNDS FOR RESISTANCE
27: A STRANGER IN OUR MIDST
28: THE UNMARK
29: WAND INTO THE WATER
30: EMPCHON
31: ELYTHIA
32: THE END OF THE DAY
33: A SINGULAR REQUEST
34: JOHN’S INCANTATION
35: REUNITED, TWICE
36: A MEMORY FROM METAL
37: THE LEDGER FALLS
38: THE OTHER ARMIES
39: THE WORST OF TIMES
40: THE TOLLING BELL
41: AS ONE
42: A FACE RETURNED
43: WHAT ARCHIE WANTED
44: A TALK WITH A FAWN
45: RETURN TO EMPYREAN
46: ALL IN
47: THE ULTIMATUM
48: BACK TO THE BEGINNING
49: DEATH FINALLY COMES
50: THE TRUTH
51: ANOTHER BEGINNING
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Guide
Cover
Title page
Contents
Dedication
1
AT LAST
I cried out, ‘Rigamorte!’
My cast spell impaled the Maladon directly in the chest, cleaving it as though fine steel had been my weapon of choice. However, the incantation was far deadlier than even the purest of forged metals. He toppled forward to the dirt. He would never move again. He would never hurt anyone else again.
I felt a smile creep to my lips.
I did not like killing others. But I had no problem with vanquishing evil.
I turned my attention to my remaining opponent. He was backed against a wall and was looking at me murderously but with an underlying expression of fear.
He raised his wand and shot a spell at me.
I flicked it away with a wave of my wand, the Elemental. He shot another spell at me and then another.
I blocked them easily, almost casually.
His wand now quivered in his shaking hand.
‘Who are you?’ he screamed at me. ‘What are you?’
I advanced on him. I was no longer smiling. My face was iron, my will the same.
I said, ‘My name is Vega Jane. And I’m the last thing you will ever see, Maladon.’
My wand moved so fast that he had no ability to block my spell.
‘Rigamorte!’
This battle was over.
I looked around at the five bodies.
They were all Maladons and they were all dead.
They thought I was walking into a trap, but the trap was all mine, carefully conceived and flawlessly executed.
As was my habit after battling these creatures, I confiscated all their wands and crushed them to bits with an Impacto spell.
Killing had once been very difficult for me.
Yet in war, you either killed or you died. And we were very clearly in a war.
I was nearly eighteen now. I had been gone from my hometown of Wormwood for almost three years. It felt like three hundred.
I looked around at the darkness of night. I was about five miles from the town of True, near a tiny village that I had used to set my trap for my enemies.
I had brought no one with me for the simple reason that I needed no one else. I preferred to rely on myself with tasks such as this one. That way I only had myself to worry about. Besides which, our numbers had fallen considerably, and I did not want to risk more losses if I could avoid it.
I cast the Pass-pusay spell and tapped my leg with my wand. I was instantly transported back to my ancestral home, Empyrean.
It looked just as it had when I had first seen it. Built of stone and wood, it was enormous and rambling. To me it was also a pillar of strength and stability.
And refuge.
I passed through the front door and entered the massive front hall.
Empyrean was grand and immense. The ceilings were twenty feet high, the rooms large enough to hold a hundred people easily. The stone walls were bedecked with the portraits of long-dead men and women, all of them powerful sorcerers and sorceresses. The furnishings, though centuries old, were of the highest quality. The rugs were colourful and luxurious, so thick your feet couldn’t help but sink into them. There were nooks and crannies throughout where one could find privacy and peace.
The entire property was kept sparkling clean by the staff, headed up by the suit of armour named Pillsbury.
The occupants of Empyrean had changed since we arrived. We had started out with just me and my friends Delph Delphia and Petra Sonnet – and, of course, my faithful dog, Harry Two. Then we had found and recruited an army of fifty former slaves to help us fight the Maladons. They had fought, well and good.
But now nearly half of them were dead.
The air of loss hung deeply over Empyrean, as did the smoky smell from the fires we conjured in the massive fireplaces. We had all trained together, lived together, eaten together and fought together. And now, died together.
As I moved through the front hall, Tobias Holmes walked in. One of his legs was of wood and metal, to replace the leg he had lost to a Maladon curse. He was tall and good-looking, with curly brown hair and an angular face, with large and luminous blue eyes. He met me with a smile.
‘Good hunting, Vega?’
I nodded. ‘It all went well, Tobias. Five fewer Maladons. How are things here?’
‘Petra just got back with Artemis and Regina. Miranda and some others are still out, but it was just a scouting expedition, as you know, so no worries there.’
‘How did it go with Petra?’ I asked, heartened by the fact that he would not be smiling if there had been another loss.
‘The mission was a success,’ replied Tobias. ‘The Elite Guard posted on the northern end of Greater True will have to make do without their guns.’
I nodded and moved on.
Pillsbury was the next one to greet me. His armour appeared to be, if anything, shinier than when we had first met. He and Mrs Jolly, a cook in the form of a broom, kept Empyrean running like a finely tuned instrument.
‘Delighted to see that you have returned safe and sound, Mistress Vega.’
‘Thank you, Pillsbury. Everything all right here, I trust?’
‘No problems, unless you count an oven reluctant to warm itself to the degree of perfection demanded by Mrs Jolly. She’s making the bread for breakfast.’
‘I am amply confident that Mrs Jolly will soon sort it out.’ I proceeded up the stairs and down the hall to my room.
Awaiting me there, as he often did, was Harry Two.
He sat up on my bed and watched me with his mismatched eyes, one blue and one green. Part of his ear was missing from when he had saved my life, which he very often did.
I rubbed his damaged ear and pushed my nose into his thick, soft fur, filling my nostrils with his scent. Even a bad day could be partially cured by this simple measure. My dog seemed to calm me whenever I needed it.
I undressed, because killing blokes was a dirty business and I needed to wash up.
Across my shoulders and down the backs of each of my arms was Destin, my magical chain, which greatly increased my physical strength and, more importantly, allowed me to take flight.
I used to wear it around my waist but had magically embedded it into my body some time ago – it seemed more prudent. If others ever needed it, it was but a simple spell to free it from my skin.
The links moved silently and fluidly as I rolled my shoulders to ease the tension there.
I moved over to the looking glass and studied myself.
I had grown to my full height now, my shoulders broad and my arms roped with muscle. I had scars on my arms, legs and belly from Maladon strikes. There was one at the nape of my neck from a wound that had very nearly done me in. I could perhaps have magically removed them, but I had chosen not to try. They were all marks of battle, and I wanted my skin to chronicle every one of them.
There was another, more practical reason for retaining them. They all represented near misses from death. I never wanted to forget how close it was to me. To all of us here. We all carried the marks of battle. This made us realize that we had to be perfection itself to survive.
I examined my face closely. Though I hadn’t yet celebrated my eighteenth year alive, it seemed to me that I looked older. Far older. Tiny lines had whittled themselves around my eyes, forehead and mouth.
&n
Next, I moved over to one wall and studied the marks I had placed there.
I knew exactly how many of them were cut into the plaster. I raised my wand and added five more slashes to the wall, representing the Maladons I had dispatched this night.
I stepped back and surveyed the wall.
It was simply rows of marks, yet each represented a life taken.
I suddenly had to turn away before the sight sickened me. They were Maladon deaths, it was true, but they were still dead. And while I could smile when they fell at the tip of my wand, I would not celebrate their destruction.
I washed, changed into my nightclothes and then fell asleep in my bed.
In what seemed like minutes, but I knew was actually hours because the sun was well up, I heard the sound of a knock on my door.
It was Delph. He was my best mate from Wormwood.
He was also very tall, and very handsome.
Delph was not magical like Petra and me. But he was a fighter and had qualities, talents and skills that neither Petra nor I possessed. He was calm while I was excitable and thought things through in ways that I never could.
‘Pillsbury told me you were back, but I wanted to let you sleep.’ He glanced at the wall. ‘How many?’ he asked.
I sat up, resting my back against the enormous wooden headboard. ‘Five,’ I replied tersely. ‘Why?’
He sat on the bed and scratched Harry Two’s ear.
‘You never really told me about Wormwood,’ he said abruptly.
This was not the first time he had said this. It might have been the hundredth.
‘I told you all you needed to know, Delph. It’s gone. They’re all gone. They killed everyone, including your father. I saw their graves. I buried Thansius.’
‘That’s not exactly so,’ he countered. ‘They killed everyone except your brother.’
‘There was no grave for my brother. That’s all I know.’
These words caught at my heart, and I had to look away from him. I had lost many friends in the war and that had hardened me. Yet John was my brother. My family.
Delph stood. ‘You think they might have taken John. Why would they?’
I rose from my bed and faced him from a foot away. Though I was tall, Delph was six-and-a-half feet high, so he towered over me. ‘I’ve asked myself that a thousand times, Delph. I keep coming up with a thousand different answers.’
Delph said, ‘It would make sense, in one way.’
‘What way?’ I said bluntly.
‘At first I thought they might be using John to blackmail you into surrendering. But they haven’t done that, Vega Jane, though they’ve had ample time. So there must be another reason.’
‘Such as?’
‘Morrigone was teaching John back in Wormwood. She’d taken him under her wing, so to speak, because he was so smart and all with books and such.’
‘But it was terrible stuff that she . . .’
My voice trailed off, and I looked in horror at Delph.
‘Are you saying that they took my brother to . . . to . . .’
I couldn’t say it.
‘To make him into a Maladon,’ said Delph. ‘Could be. Judging by what a sorceress you are, I ’spect that John might make an equally powerful sorcerer. Besides, he – well, he seemed to like those ideas.’
‘You mean he liked all those horrible things that Morrigone was teaching him?’ I said stiffly.
‘Well, you told me that yourself.’
‘But, Delph, he was just a little boy. He didn’t know any better,’ I finished lamely. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was a child with feet too large for him, shuffling along while holding my hand. I would pick him up every day after Learning, and I would bring a snack for him because he was always hungry. My brother had been painfully shy and kind and big-hearted. I knew that he had changed while with Morrigone, but those had been my most lasting memories of him.
Delph interrupted my thoughts. ‘Well, he’s not a little boy now. He’s very nearly fifteen. The same age you were when you ran away from Wormwood with me.’
This was absolutely correct. Indeed, John was far closer to being a man now than he was to being a boy. And, if they’d captured him from Wormwood, my brother would have been with the Maladons for quite some time.
‘You’re right, Delph,’ I said contritely. ‘He is a man by now. I just don’t know what sort of man he is.’ I felt my lips begin to tremble and I turned away from him.
An instant later I felt Delph’s large arm around me.
‘It’s OK, Vega Jane,’ he whispered. ‘We’re going to find him. And . . . and regardless of what sort of shape he’s in, we’re going to bring him back to what he was.’
‘You . . . can’t know that,’ I said haltingly.
‘But I can promise to do all I can to make it happen.’
I turned and looked at him, touched his cheek with my hand. ‘You’re my best friend, Delph. You always have been.’
He smiled. ‘You were the only friend I had, Vega Jane. And a ruddy great one you are.’
Our eyes met. ‘You had better go,’ I said. ‘I . . . I can smell food downstairs.’ He left and I dressed. Later, I walked down to the kitchen and had my breakfast. It had been a long night, and the few hours of rest had done nothing to ease my lethargy. But I had no time to be weary.
I had just finished my meal and Mrs Jolly had just left with my dirty dishes when Petra walked in.
Petra was about a year older than me. And, like me, she appeared older still. The shirt she wore had no sleeves and I could see the marks and scars up and down both arms. She had a burned hand from a wand mishap, and a missing finger. One had been torn away by the Elite Guard back in Greater True.
I said, ‘Tobias told me that you had returned – and that the Elite Guard had lost their muskets.’
She nodded. ‘They’ll make others. But it will take time. However, they are far from our biggest problem.’
‘I know that,’ I said, a bit abrasively. For whatever reason, Petra could bring out the worst in me – though I knew she would die to save me. Perhaps it was because, once, she had cared deeply for Delph too. She assured me that was in the past now.
‘I heard your journey was also a successful one,’ she said, sitting down across from me.
‘If five dead Maladons are any measure, then yes, it was.’
‘That makes four hundred of them dead, then,’ said Petra.
‘We’ll be burying Alabetus tomorrow.’
Alabetus Trumbull had lost his life two days ago, at the hands of a gang of Maladons who had tricked him into an ambush.
That had been the impetus for my journey last night: to avenge Alabetus’s murder. We had sent the Maladons a clear message: we would never yield. And we would kill far more of them than they could of us.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I will speak, of course. He will be terribly missed.’
‘As will the twenty others who preceded him,’ said Petra.
I met her gaze. So this was where Petra was going.
‘I fully realize that we have lost nearly half our number,’ I said sharply.
Petra leaned forward and plunged in. ‘Four hundred to twenty-one. That’s nineteen Maladons to every one of ours.’
‘I can do the mathematics,’ I replied coolly.
‘There are thirty times more Maladons than there are of us. That only leads to one outcome, Vega. We can’t win this way.’
‘We’re still trying to find magicals among the countryside,’ I said.
‘We’ve found none in all this time. None since we rescued that lot from Greater True.’
When I said we were at war with the Maladons, that was true. But there had been no great battles on broad fields. No titanic clashes of sorcery. We simply hadn’t the numbers for such a style of combat. So, our war was a series of small skirmishes. Ambushes, tactical missions, two-on-two, four-on-four. Small encounters, almost all of which we had won. But, as Petra had pointed out, the eventual outcome with such a strategy was inevitable. A war of attrition was always won by those with superior numbers.
‘We can’t attack them outright,’ I said. ‘We can’t try and invade Maladon Castle. We would be slaughtered.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’
‘I’m not sure I have anything to suggest. But I would say that until we figure out our eventual goals, we need to do everything we can to keep what army we do have safe and intact. If we lose even a few more, it won’t matter what we do in the future. We’ll still have lost.’
