The Stars Below, page 2
part #4 of Vega Jane Series
I had just finished my meal and Mrs. Jolly had just left with my dirty dishes when Petra walked in. Our eyes met, and in that look, there was much that was communicated. It just seemed to be that way with Petra and me.
She was about a year older than me. And like me, she too appeared older still. The shirt she wore had no sleeves and I could see the marks and scars up and down both arms. My gaze ventured to her burned hand from a wand mishap, and then to the gap between her fingers, where one of them 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, those gits are far from our biggest problem.”
“I know that,” I said a bit abrasively. For whatever reason, I was constantly on my guard with Petra. I always felt instantly combative with her. The fact was, she brought out the absolute worst in me at times, though I knew she would die in order to save me. It was quite an odd relationship.
“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.”
There was a subtle barrier between us that I assumed would always be there. Maybe it was because we were so similar. Maybe it was because we both cared deeply for Delph. I knew that Petra had actually loved him, and it must hurt her very much to know that her feelings were not reciprocated. She had moved on to another man, Nicholas Bonham. However, he had died a year ago in battle. Unfortunately, with Petra right next to him. I imagined that she felt guilt for surviving. Just as she had when we had lost her friend Lackland Cyphers back in the Quag.
“That makes four hundred of them dead, then,” said Petra, eyeing me so intently, I assumed that this conversation was building up to something of importance, at least in her eyes.
“Just that,” I said.
“We’ll be burying Alabetus tomorrow,” Petra informed me.
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 to let the Maladons know very clearly that we would never yield. That we would kill far more of them than they did of us.
“I know that,” I said. “I will speak of course. He will be terribly missed.”
“As will the twenty others who preceded him,” said Petra, her gaze still on me.
I sat back, and now my gaze held on her. So this was where Petra was going.
“I fully realize that we have lost nearly half our number,” I said sharply.
Petra sat 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.
“But you know we’ve discovered that 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 left 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.”
What she said was undoubtedly true. And yet if we stopped fighting?
“I’ll think about it, Petra,” I said.
She started to say something, a sharp retort I could tell from the look on her face. But she apparently bit back these words, simply nodded, rose and left.
A minute passed while I closed my eyes and tried to push the fatigue from my bones.
A slim figure came rushing toward me. “Vega! Vega!”
I opened my eyes. It was Miranda Weeks. She and her group must have returned from their scouting expedition.
Miranda was the youngest of our number, but she had grown taller and stronger with the passage of time. Initially, she had been timid and unsure of herself, and her magical ability had been pretty much nonexistent. But she and her wand had reached common ground, and now she was one of the best warriors we had. At Delph’s suggestion, I had not allowed her to engage in combat with the Maladons at first. But our shrinking numbers and her heightened skills had led me to reverse that judgment about six months ago.
“Yes, Miranda?”
“You must come.”
“Come? Come where?”
“To the village where we just were.”
I half rose from my chair. “Why? What happened?”
“The villagers saw her.”
“Who did they see?”
“Your mother.”
PETRA WAS ON my left, Miranda on my right, as we appeared out of clear air on the outskirts of the small village.
My wand was in my hand, and I motioned for the others to hold theirs at the ready.
“Show me,” I said tersely to Miranda.
I followed her along a winding path until I saw smoke curling upward from a chimney.
Petra was ten feet behind me, guarding our rear flank. We went into every situation like this with the thought that we would have to fight our way back out.
“There,” Miranda said, pointing to a small thatch-roofed cottage about fifty feet in front of us. “The woman in there was the one who told me.”
I marched up to the door, half expecting a trap. My thoughts went briefly back to the wall in my bedroom, and to how many more slashes I might add to it before the day was done.
I rapped on the door and listened, my wand twitching expectantly as the sounds of footsteps approached.
Petra and Miranda were on either side of me, about eight feet away. From there, they could see any attack coming and take action to defend our position.
The door opened, and an old woman peered out. Her gaze dropped to my hand, and when she saw my wand, her eyes widened.
“Y-you’re not them blokes?”
I looked at her, momentarily unsure what she meant. Then it struck me.
“No, I’m not like them. I hate them. I’m here to ask you about someone.” I pointed at Miranda. “You talked to her about a woman you saw?”
The old woman swiveled her gaze to Miranda. She nodded. “That’s right.”
“And did the woman call herself Helen?”
She nodded.
I needed to make sure, so I pulled something from my pocket.
It was an engraving of my mother. I held it up for the woman to see.
“Is this her?”
“Oh, yes, that’s her all right.” She looked from the engraving to me, and her jaw slackened.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well, it’s just that she looks like you, dearie.”
I was taken aback by this until I realized it was perfectly natural that a mother and daughter should resemble each other.
“We’re family,” I said vaguely, putting the engraving away. “When was she here?”
“Yesterday, it was.”
“Can you tell me anything else about her? Why was she here? What did she want?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Petra keeping a sharp lookout. On the other side of me, Miranda was doing the same. Their wands were pointed in front of them, and they made arcs with them in the air, ready to fire at anything threatening.
Their consummate training and attention to detail allowed me to concentrate fully on the woman.
She said, “Well, this Helen was looking for an herb. Healing herb I call it, though she used a different name. I didn’t quite catch it.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Healing herb? Why? Was she injured?”
“Not so’s I could tell. I mean she looked all right enough. Though she was terribly thin, and her face was quite, well, careworn. Poor thing.”
“Maybe the herbs were for someone else. Are you sure she was alone?”
“Well, there was no one else with her that I could see.”
“Did she mention someone else’s name? A man? Hector?”
“No, nothing like that.”
I held up my wand. “Did she have one of these?”
The woman shuddered, and a hand flew to her bosom.
“No, she did not.”
I studied her. “Did other people show up with these? Around the time Helen was here?”
The woman nodded. “Bloody men in them suits and hats. Awful people.”
“What did they want?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly what they wanted. But they were asking questions left and right, about any strangers hereabouts.”
“And what did you tell them?”
Her features became confused. “I … I don’t really remember. That’s all right fuzzy.”
I nodded. I could easily see what had happened. They had no doubt cast the Subservio spell over her and magically compelled her to tell them all that she knew. And then they had performed a spell to wipe out her memory. I took heart that their spell had not been entirely successful.
“This healing herb, did you have any of it?”
The woman shook her head. “But I told her there was plenty growing down by the river.”
“Where is the river?”
She pointed to her left. “Down that way about a half mile. Can’t miss it, dearie.”
I rushed off before she even had the chance to close her door.
Petra and Miranda were right behind me.
“Take my hands,” I said when we were out of sight of the village.
They gripped me, and we all three rose into the air.
After a short flight, I spotted the winding water and set us down next to it.
I looked around, uncertain whether my mother was nearby or not.
Miranda said, “I bet these are the herbs she was talking about.”
They were green-and-red leafy plants growing all around the riverbank.
I barely looked at this vegetation before my gaze returned to the trees across the river. The waters were calm. The woods silent. This put me on my guard.
Just about every fight I had been in had commenced with near silence.
“So the Maladons showed up when your mum came to the village,” said Petra.
I nodded, still studying the trees. “She must have the mark on her. They tracked her that way.”
“Well, if she has the mark and has done nothing to cover it, it’s a wonder the Maladons haven’t captured her after all this time.”
“I agree. But they haven’t, so she must be doing something to circumvent that.”
“And your father?” asked Miranda.
“If my mother was uninjured, the healing herb might have been for him,” I noted, worry creeping into my voice. If my father was injured, was it serious? Could he even now lie dying?
I bent down and gathered some of the healing herbs and put them in my pocket. When Miranda looked at me quizzically, I said, “Just in case she didn’t have time to collect it herself.”
“Oh, right.”
“What do we do now?” asked Petra. “Look for them, I suppose.”
I didn’t answer her. I was still staring at the trees. Was something in there?
Someone?
“Vega?” said Petra in a firmer tone.
I came out of my musings and turned to her.
“Do we look for them?” she asked again, though I had heard her the first time.
I nodded and took their hands and we soared over the water, landing gently on the opposite bank.
The three of us stared at the dense forest facing us. I’m sure we were all thinking the same thing: Are there Maladons lurking in there, just waiting to strike? That’s what constant battle does to you. It makes you untrusting. It makes you bloody paranoid.
Before the others could move, I charged forward into the dense thicket, my wand at the ready. They immediately followed but spread out into a triangle pattern, as I had trained them to do. If we had been clumped together, one spell could have finished us all off. We had gone about a hundred feet or so into the forest when I spotted it.
The piece of cloth fluttering in the breeze. As I cautiously approached, I could see that it had snagged on a prickly bush.
I freed the cloth and held it up. As Petra and Miranda drew closer, I sniffed it. “This belongs to my mother.”
“You’re sure?” asked Miranda in a small voice.
I nodded and pressed the cloth fragment against my nostrils again, once more breathing in her scent. Though it had been years since I’d seen my mother, with that one inhale of breath, memories of her came flooding back.
But when I turned the cloth over, the breath froze in my lungs.
There was blood.
Petra observed this and said, “She might have used that cloth to dress his wound, or maybe some got on her when she was helping him. And then it got snagged on that bush when she went to seek the herbs.”
While they were speaking, all I could see was my father lying gravely injured in the woods.
“Crystilado magnifica,” I said, pointing my wand in front of me.
All I saw were more trees close-up.
Until something flickered in front of my sight line.
The spell came at me so fast I barely had time to deflect it.
It hit a tree and exploded, burning a deep hole in the wood.
I didn’t have to tell Petra or Miranda what to do. It had become second nature to both of them.
They each assumed a defensive posture about ten feet on either side of me and slightly behind me. Next, I tossed the ring of invisibility that I wore at all times to Petra. She slipped it on her finger and spun it around, activating the invisibility shield. She used her wand to cast a golden lasso connecting herself to Miranda, ensuring that the youngest member of our army would be invisible too.
I soared into the air to make myself a target.
This would give the pair of them the opportunity to rain spells upon our opponents once they gave away their positions by firing at me. This had been a tried and true tactic of ours.
I shot spell after spell into the trees, hoping that one of them would find the enemy. Regardless, they would have to return fire at some point, I thought.
But nothing happened.
I looked down at where I knew Petra and Miranda were. Their gazes would be fixed on the tree line, awaiting the spells to come upward at me so they could draw down on their targets.
I stared back at the trees. This was bewildering. Had the Maladons figured out our strategy and were now using it against us? Lying in wait for us to reveal ourselves?
I used another magnification spell to see well into the trees below. But I could make out nothing useful.
This was getting bloody frustrating. I wanted to attack and decimate the Maladons, not hover in the air, waiting for something that might never come.
But then I thought two could play at this game.
I flitted to the ground and used a spell-cast lasso to attach myself to Petra and Miranda, thereby rendering myself invisible as well.
Petra whispered, “Who do you think is out there?”
I was about to answer, when my chest seized up. Bloody Hel, had I just fired spells at my parents? Were they the ones in the forest, perhaps hurt or ill? Had I just added to their misery? And were they simply casting spells to defend themselves, perhaps thinking that we were Maladons?
I thought quickly. How could I communicate with them? I had to be careful. If Maladons were out there, I didn’t want to somehow give them the upper hand.
Finally, an idea hit me.
I used my wand to draw something on the cloth I had found. It was a picture of my mother’s favorite flower. She’d kept one in a vase at our home back in Wormwood. It had a very distinctive look, and I was sure she would recognize it. Underneath the drawing I wrote, I love you, Mum. Vega.
I willed my wand to its full golden size so it resembled a lance. I attached the cloth to the Elemental and said, “Take this to my mother, if she’s in there.”
I tossed the Elemental into the air, and it soared away.
As it disappeared into the distance, my breaths started coming more rapidly. I had felt this way when I had finally found my grandfather Virgil. I prayed that I would have far more time with my parents than I’d had with him.
A minute passed and both Petra and Miranda exchanged anxious looks with me.
Had I just made a colossal blunder?
Then I saw the Elemental heading back. Though I was invisible, that didn’t deter the spear from finding me and landing right back in my hand.
The cloth was still attached. It had not found my mother. And it would have if she were in there. So, it had to be someone else. Someone magical.
Maladons? Or … ?
I willed the Elemental to wand size.
And not a moment too soon.
I lashed out with it just in time to stop the spell. It ricocheted off my wand’s shield incantation and went spinning off into the trees. I stared out ahead of me.
How in the world? They couldn’t see us. Or could they?
“Move,” I called out to Petra and Miranda. We took to our heels and fled a hundred yards to the left.
I waited, my breath coming in bursts.
Who the bloody Hel was out there? Might they have seen the Elemental leave or return to the invisibility ring and targeted us that way? But why had they waited so long?
The next moment, a voice shouted, “No,” just as another spell headed our way but fortunately passed well to our right.
