The Finisher Read online

  I ran as fast as I’d ever run, even as I could see the shadow of the colossal blocking out the light and reaching ahead of me by a handful of yards. I was never going to make it, not while carrying both the Elemental and Harry Two. And I was unwilling to sacrifice either one.

  And then it occurred to me. “You prat,” I told myself.

  As the shadow of the falling colossal engulfed me, I lifted off the ground and soared straight ahead, barely a yard in the air. I needed distance now, not height. I half closed my eyes because I was still unsure if I was going to squeak past. The thunderous crash that occurred right behind me jarred my eyes fully open. I glanced back. The dead colossal had missed me by less than two feet.

  I soared upward, but this only made me more of a target. Streams of light were coming at me from all directions. Harry Two barked and snapped at them, as though his teeth could defeat the threat they each carried. I used the only tool I had: the Elemental. I did not hurl it because I was not practiced at aiming it while flying. Rather, I used it as a shield. I didn’t know if it would block the lights coming at me, but I found out quickly enough.

  It did. The lights ricocheted off. One deflected blue streak knocked a rider clean off his steed. A purple streak struck one of the remaining colossals squarely in the chest and he dropped to his knees and fell face-forward, digging a hole ten feet deep in the ground with the force of his impact and crushing a rider and his steed underneath.

  All I knew was, I wanted to get the Hel out of here. But to do so, I had to find the gates. And I had no idea where they were.

  As I flew, I looked ahead and saw my own death speeding toward me. Six abreast they were. All huge males wearing chain mail. They were riding steeds with withers as wide across as I was tall and they had upraised swords in hand. Yet they didn’t wait to get close enough to swing them at me; they brought them down in a slashing move and out of each sword blasted shafts of white light. I gripped the Elemental like I had seen the dead female do. In my head I knew what I wanted the thing to do, but I had no idea how to make it happen.

  I hurled the Elemental with all my strength, but I didn’t throw it straight at the oncoming shafts of light. I threw it to the right side of the shafts with as much backspin torque as my poor arm could muster. The spear turned to the left, gained speed and shot straight across the air. It hit the first white shaft, then the second, the third, and then the remaining three. It caused them to bounce off and head in reverse, like an orb thrown against a wall.

  When the deflected shafts of light struck the wall of riders and their steeds, there came the loudest explosion I had yet seen on the battlefield, even louder than when the first colossal had fallen. Harry Two and I were knocked heels over arse as waves of concussive air pummeled us. When the smoke and fire cleared, the riders and their enormous steeds had vanished. I did not dwell on my improbable victory. I had righted myself in time and had caught the Elemental squarely in my gloved hand as it reversed course and soared back to me.

  As I pointed downward and looked toward the ground, I saw them in a valley miles away and partially obscured in a sea of mist. But they were still unmistakable to me: the flaming-red gates. I went into a dive. I had to. For a new peril had emerged from the heavens. Right behind me was a creature I can only describe as a jabbit with wings. And if it were possible, the vile thing was even more terrifying than the dirt-bound variety. And as fast as I could fly, the winged jabbit was swifter.

  I looked at the Elemental. I knew I could not throw it as the chain-mailed female had. But she had said that, when I had no other friends, it would be there for me. Well, friends are supposed to be good listeners. I looked back at the jabbit. It was now or never.

  I spun in the air, faced the oncoming jabbit and threw the Elemental. In my mind, it flew straight and true at the target.

  The jabbit exploded and the Elemental flew in a graceful curve right back into my gloved hand. I landed, set down Harry Two and we ran full tilt toward the gates. I’d had quite enough of the past. As soon as I passed through the gates, everything became black.

  I knew where I was. I could feel the grass around me. I heard Harry Two’s yips, the impact of his four paws with the ground near me. Part of me just wanted to lie there with my eyes closed for the rest of my sessions. But I slowly sat up and opened my eyes. Stacks was in the distance. I looked to the sky. Hardly any time had passed. It was still light, though growing darker by the sliver. The only things to tell me I had not imagined it all was the glove on my hand and the Elemental gripped in that hand.

  And the bulge in my cloak pocket was the Adder Stone.

  I rose and held the Elemental tighter. What was I to do with the thing? It was as tall as I was. I couldn’t carry it around Wormwood. I couldn’t really hide it.

  And as though the thing could read my mind, it shrunk down to the size of an ink stick. I stared at it, dumbstruck. And yet it seemed that I was growing accustomed to inexplicable things happening to me as they mounted in number.

  It occurred to me that I had not returned to Eon even though he had said time travelers did. Yet then again I was not supposed to be seen, heard or harmed while I traveled back in time. I looked at a burn on my arm. Well, I had been seen, heard, injured and nearly killed.

  I touched the burn and pain shot all the way down my arm.

  “Oi, Eon,” I called angrily out to the air. “You need to rethink your rules of time. They’re a bit dodgy.”

  I took out the Stone, waved it over my wound and thought good thoughts. The pain eased some, but the burn did not heal fully. I sighed resignedly and put the Stone away.

  “Figures,” I said to myself. “I guess this is a burn from the past that the Stone can’t sort out all the way. Thanks loads, Eon.”

  I walked along, thinking about so many things that I finally couldn’t think at all. My head truly felt like it would burst at any moment.

  Bloody Hel, Vega. Bloody, bloody Hel.

  I SPENT THE NEXT few nights practicing my flying with Destin and my tossing with the Elemental. During the lights, I kept the Adder Stone and the Elemental hidden under a floorboard at my digs. Destin always rode around my waist. I would never dream of removing it at this point because I never knew when taking to the skies might save my skin.

  The next light, I was walking along the forest path to my tree before Stacks when I was confronted by Non wearing his metal breastplate. I looked behind him and there was Nida, who no longer guarded Valhall. The prisoners had been released and then bound into servitude to help build the Wall. But Nida had his shuck with him, and the great beast was growling and snapping its immense jaws.

  Harry Two started snapping his jaws and growling right back. My canine had grown surprisingly fast since I had taken him in. His chest, neck and legs were thick and powerful. I put a hand down in front of his face and Harry Two immediately sat on his haunches and grew silent.

  Non and Nida paired together were bad enough. But next to Nida was Cletus Loon holding his morta and sporting a malevolent grin.

  Non held out a hand. “Pass parchment.”

  I gave it to him. He flicked a gaze over it and then flung it back at me.

  He leaned down and said, “What are you doing, female?”

  “What I’m doing is I’m going to my tree to eat my first meal,” I said, holding up my battered tin box. “Would you like to see for yourself?”

  I shouldn’t have made the offer because Cletus snatched the tin from me and opened it.

  “Good stuff in here,” he said. He pulled out a hard-boiled egg, popped it into his mouth and swallowed it whole. The next instant, he was on the ground holding his belly because that’s where I kicked him.

  Non snagged my arm to hold me back. “We’ll nae have that.”

  “He just stole my food!” I shouted.

  Cletus was on his feet now and appeared to be about to point his morta at me. But Nida smacked him in the head and sent him sprawling again. Nida never said much, but when he hit you, y
ou knew it.

  Sprawled on the ground, Cletus moaned in pain and grabbed his head. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Simmer down, Loon,” advised Non. “Or he’ll have the shuck on you next and then you’ll be begging for a clubbing on the head ’cause a shuck don’t club, it bites.”

  Cletus stood, looking embarrassed, his cheeks red. I didn’t feel sorry for him. I didn’t care about Cletus. I snapped, “I’ll be coming round and taking that egg from your meal portion at the Loons.”

  “The Hel you will,” he shot back. “I was testing it to see if there was something in it what shouldn’t-a been.”

  I pulled my little knife and smiled wickedly. “You want me to check your belly then, to make sure?”

  Cletus leapt back, got his feet tangled and fell on his head. Non roared with laughter and the shuck growled at the sudden noise, but Nida held him back on the chain. I grabbed my tin off the ground where Cletus had let it fall.

  Non gripped my arm and leaned in close. “One lucky strike nigh means nothing, female,” he whispered in my ear. I glanced at the dent I had made in his breastplate but said nothing. He continued. “Krone has told me the lay of the land. You and Morrigone. She will nae always be there to protect you.”

  I ripped my hand free. Around my waist Destin felt on fire. “I didn’t need her to do that, did I?” I shot back, pointing at the dent.

  Before he could say anything else, I hurried on my way. I didn’t like being stopped by Wugs with mortas. I didn’t like having my stuff male-handled and my food eaten. I didn’t like that lout Non threatening me. But that seemed how Wormwood was going to be from now on.

  I reached my tree, gave a searching look around to make sure no one was watching, picked up Harry Two, gave a great leap and landed neatly on my planks.

  We sat and I divvied up our meal. I was parceling out the small harvest from the little garden I kept next to my tree. My crop was not much. A few vegetables, some lettuce leafs, a bit of basil, parsley and witch’s ear, which brings heat to any food you might make. But I was supporting myself and living on my own.

  Still, I was worried about the fact that Krone so obviously wanted me in Valhall. I had to protect myself from discovery because I intended to keep practicing with Destin and the Elemental. I had studied the map of the Quag on my skin every night. I now knew it by heart. I had to keep the Adder Stone and the Elemental a secret, obviously. It was fortunate that the Adder merely looked like a stone. And the reduced Elemental could have been an ink stick. Destin was a chain. Unless they saw me flying around with it, there was no cause to throw me in prison over it.

  That’s when I sat bolt upright.

  The book. Quentin’s book of the Quag. I needed to study it as closely as I had the map. It would give me valuable information about creatures in there, information I would need to survive. I couldn’t believe I had neglected it this long. I had to rectify that as soon as possible. Without the book, I could not flee this place. And this place, I now promised myself, I was going to flee.

  That night after I finished work I snuck from my lodgings, leaving Harry Two sleeping, entered the forest, looked to make sure no Wug was around and then I started sprinting and leapt into the air. I caught an updraft of wind and soared high. The breeze sailed through my hair and over my body. It felt cleansing, like I was taking a long bath under the pipes.

  I reached the Delphias’ property in record time and dropped to the ground with little sound. The creta Duf had been working on was gone now, taking its muscle to the building of the Wall. The whist hound was nowhere to be seen. The young slep was still here being trained up proper for a place on Thansius’s carriage. And the adar was also here and asleep, its leg still attached to a peg in the ground. But its vocal cords and speech capabilities, I was sure, were much enhanced since my last visit.

  In the darkness and with very little Noc to guide me, I suddenly realized I had a problem. I couldn’t remember where I had buried the book. I walked past each pine tree, examining the ground underneath for the little pile of needles I had placed over the hole I’d dug. Of course, after all this time, the little pile of needles had been blown away by the wind or else carried off by creatures to construct their nests. I was cursing myself again for being so blindly stupid, when I heard it. Or rather, heard him.

  “Wo-wo-wotcha, Vega Jane.”

  I turned slowly around and saw Delph standing there. “Hello, Delph,” I replied. He drew even closer. He looked tired and while his hair was no longer white because he had not been working in the Mill, it was long and scraggly and right dirty black.

  He held up my book.

  I stared at it and then at him, unsure whether I should claim ownership.

  “C-c-can I c-come t-too, Ve-Vega Jane?”

  I STARED AT DELPH, dumbfounded.

  He drew closer and held the book up even higher. “To the Quag, I’m meaning, eh,” he said in a too-loud voice.

  “I know it’s the bloody Quag,” I said fiercely, finally finding my voice. “And you don’t have to tell every Wug in Wormwood about it. Where did you find it?”

  In a far quieter voice, he said, “Box in the ho-hole you d-dug.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Wa-watched you, di-didn’t I?”

  “Have you read it?” I asked in a whisper.

  “N-not all. But it don’t s-say h-how a Wu-Wug gets th-through it,” he said.

  He eyed my waist. Rather, he eyed the chain around my waist.

  “You ca-can fly,” he said. “’Cause-a that thing?”

  I felt myself growing angry. “You’re sounding very logical, Delph. Was it all an act before? Because if it was, you are the biggest, sorriest git I’ve ever met.”

  He fell back a step, his face betraying his hurt feelings. “I ca-can talk, Vega Jane, when I want to. But th-things get mu-mu-muddled up here.” He touched his head and sat down on a stump and gazed pitifully up at me, the book dangling between his fingers. My anger faded as I looked at his hurt features.

  “Where’d y-you ge-get it?”

  “I found it at Quentin Herms’s cottage. He was the one who put it together.”

  “So’s he’s b-been through the Qu-Quag?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then th-the Out-Ou — th-the Out —”

  We eyed each other for about a sliver but said nothing.

  He held the book up to me. “Ta-take it,” he said, and I did. “No map-a the Qu-Quag,” he pointed out.

  “I have one,” I replied.

  “Where?”

  “Someplace safe.” I sat next to him on the ground. This actually would be my best opportunity to have my most pressing question answered and I intended to do just that. “I had a vision. Would you like to hear it, Delph?”

  “Vi-vision? What, like Mor-Morri … gone?”

  “Maybe more certain even than that. I went back in time. Do you see?”

  I saw him mouth the words back in time. But no realization spread over his features. “Wha-what, like when y-you was a ti-tiny thing?”

  “Even before that. But when I was younger I saw someone, Delph. I saw you.”

  He looked truly unnerved by this, his face frozen in fear. “The Hel you say.”

  “I saw you at Morrigone’s house.”

  He shook his head savagely. “You ca-can’t ha-have.”

  “I saw you running away from her home. You were so scared, Delph.”

  He put his hands up to his ears, covering them. “’Tain’t true, ’tain’t.”

  “And I saw Morrigone. She was scared too.”

  “’Tain’t true!” Delph exclaimed.

  “And I think I know what you saw.”

  “No … n-no … no,” sobbed Delph.

  I put my hand on his quaking shoulder. “The red light? You remember you told me about the red light? Was it Morrigone’s hair you saw? Was that the red light?”

  Delph was swinging his head to and fro. I was afraid he was going to jum
p up and run off. But I swore to myself that if he did, I would fly after him. I would run him down and make him tell me the truth. I needed to know that badly.

  “She was there, wasn’t she? And my grandfather? At her home? His Event? It happened then and there, didn’t it?” I shook him. “Didn’t it, Delph? Didn’t it!”

  He shouted, “I was there, Vega Jane!”

  “With Morrigone? And my grandfather?”

  He nodded.

  “Why were you there? Why? You have to tell me.” I shook him again. “Tell me!”

  His face was scrunched in agony. He doubled over, but I pulled him back upright. I was out of my mind now. I had to know. I didn’t care if I was hurting him. My whole life was apparently a lie. I had to know some part of the truth. I had to know right this sliver.

  I slapped him. “Tell me!”

  “G-gone to see her new wh-whist hound me dad brung her after he tr-trained it up. H-Harpie. L-loved H-Harpie, I d-did.”

  “Then what?”

  “Th-thought I could h-hear Harpie inside. T-took a peek.”

  “And you went in?”

  He nodded, his face still screwed up in pain, his eyes closed. I kept a grip on his arm. I was willing him to keep going. “D-didn’t see no Wug n-n-nowhere. No Har-Harpie neither.”

  “Keep going, Delph. Keep going.”

  “H-heard a noise. Still n-no Wu-Wug. So’s I w-went up the stairs. I w-was sc-scared.”

  “You were only six sessions, Delph. I would’ve been scared too.” I was keeping my voice level now, trying to force the same calm on him.

  “G-got closer, hear-heard ’em. Argu-arg-arguing.” He finally got the troublesome word out of his mouth.

  “My grandfather and Morrigone?”

  He said nothing. I shook him. “Was it them?”

  “C-can’t do th-this, Ve —”

  “Was it them?” I roared, twisting his face until it was lined up with mine. “Look at me, Delph. Look at me!” I screamed. He opened his eyes. “Was it Morrigone and my grandfather?”

  “Yes,” he said breathlessly, tears dribbling from his eyes.