The Stars Below, page 5
part #4 of Vega Jane Series
“So what would explain their absence?” I asked.
“I don’t have a definitive answer for you, Vega, but I do have a theory.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“Necro had a wife.”
“And a son, Jason.”
“Yes, Jason. Necro’s wife I knew well. Her name was Elythia. She loved Jason more than life itself.”
“And did she love Necro?”
Astrea didn’t answer right away. “I think that Elythia understood what Necro was, or at least what he had become.”
“You mean he wasn’t always … evil?”
“I won’t go that far. But there are degrees of evil. And Necro exceeded all of them by the time war came. But there is something else.”
“What?”
“I can’t be sure of this, you understand. When it was evident that the war was to commence, I had very little contact with Elythia. But I did see her one final time; this was after Jason had been found dead. As I told you before, they blamed his death on us.”
“But you think it was Necro who killed him. You told me that. To ensure that the war started.”
“That’s right. And I wasn’t the only one who thought that.”
“You mean on our side?”
“No, I mean that’s also what Elythia believed as well.”
I was dumbstruck by this. “How do you know that?”
“Because she came to my home on the night that Jason’s body was found. That was the last time I ever saw her. She was inconsolable. And she told me that she believed Necro had murdered his own son, though she had no proof.”
“Okay, so she knew her husband better than he probably thought she did. But how does that connect to the Maladons having no women and children?”
“Elythia was chosen by Necro to be his wife primarily because of a belief about Elythia and her past. It was long rumored that Elythia was actually not only a sorceress of exceptional power and skill, but also … a goddess.”
I looked at her blankly. “What is a goddess?”
“I guess I can explain the difference by this: We were born with magical ability, and we worked hard to harness that ability and increase our skills at it. A god or goddess is also born with supernatural ability, but they need not expend any energy in gaining skill or power. It is simply there, and at exponentially more powerful levels than any sorcerer or sorceress possesses.”
I thought about this. “My grandfather was an Excalibur. He was endowed at birth with certain powers and knowledge of his past. It’s sort of like that?”
“Yes, though we are and your grandfather was human, Vega.”
“And goddesses are not?”
“Let’s just say that they are something more than human.”
“So their power is infinite? They can do whatever they want?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? If Elythia is all-powerful and she believed that Necro killed her son, why didn’t she simply destroy Necro?”
“I don’t know, Vega. I just don’t know.”
“Did Necro know this about Elythia? That she was possibly a goddess?”
“I’m sure that Necro was aware. And to his thinking, having a mate with such strength must have been intoxicating. I have no doubt that he desired very much to see if he could siphon her power and place it onto himself.”
I thought this sounded very much like what the Maladons had done to my grandfather and the other magicals they had captured. Sucking out their magic and placing it in those blasted bottles. Perhaps to use later.
Astrea continued. “To my knowledge, he never succeeded in that. Though Elythia let Necro lead his people, I believe that she knew exactly what he was. She was not about to let him gain access to her powers. And I believe that she found a way to get back at him for what he had done.”
“How?”
She paused for a moment. “This is my theory.” She paused once more, her features growing strained. “I believe that she used her powers to make all female Maladons barren from that point on. No more children for them after her husband had taken from her the only child she would ever have. And shortly after Jason’s death, Elythia simply vanished and was seen no more.”
I took a few moments to absorb this stunning information. “Okay, that would explain why there are no young Maladons. But not why there are no female Maladons. I mean Necro is still alive, so he must be taking something like the Elixir of Life. All of his followers must have too since they couldn’t have children.”
“Think about it, Vega. Necro, for all his evil, was and is a very smart person. He eventually had to discover what Elythia had done. And so what does he do in retaliation?”
As the truth hit me, my jaw fell.
“Are you saying … ?”
She nodded. “I’m saying that Necro killed all the Maladon women, who, after Elythia’s curse, he saw as being useless to him.”
“Useless?!” I exploded. “The git. Does he not know that women make exceptional warriors? Look at you. And Alice! You two could best any Maladon out there.”
She shook her head. “For him, women were only good for bearing children, male children preferably.”
“Then he’s not only evil, but stupid beyond belief!”
Astrea and I shared a knowing smile.
Two women perfectly attuned to dwelling in a world dominated, for no good reason, by men.
“And that,” said Astrea, “will be his downfall.”
IT WAS VERY late as I stared into the depths of the lingering fire in the library.
All others had long since retired to their beds, except for Harry Two, who sat alertly next to my chair.
Yet I could not sleep. I could barely think. But think was the very thing I had to do. Perhaps more deeply than I ever had before.
The revelation about Elythia and her curse had supplanted my anger at Astrea for her trying to usurp my authority and leadership. Though I well knew I would have to revisit that issue with her later.
As the flames flickered in front of my eyes, an idea occurred to me.
In my mind, I said her name. I called out to her that I needed desperately to speak to her.
The next moment Uma Cadmus was hovering next to me, the daughter of Bastion and Victoria Cadmus. Her beauty was something beyond belief. Her face was flawless, every element in perfect proportion to its neighbor. Her blond hair was thick and luxuriant and pooled down over her shoulders as though laid precisely in marble. Her eyes, though, were like chips of ice that the sun had struck at just the right angle, producing a fiery blue that one could literally not draw their gaze from.
And she was also dead.
She had once told me that she was neither ghost nor spirit, but merely represented the emotion of regret.
“Yes, Vega?” she said to me now.
I looked at her curiously. She was always a bit misty, and in spots one could see right through her. But she seemed more transparent than ever.
“Uma, are you all right?”
“I am neither all right nor not all right,” she replied dully.
I didn’t bother to argue about such a starkly contradictory statement. “I just meant that, well, you look a little less visible tonight.”
She looked down at herself and then back up at me. “I am fading,” she said simply.
“But why?”
She appraised me sadly. “ ’Tis no matter. What is it that you want, Vega?”
I decided to plunge ahead. I told her about what Astrea had said about Elythia, the women she presumably struck barren and there being no young Maladons.
She hovered there without speaking for a few moments, the beats of her heart represented by a pulsing of light from her somewhat transparent chest. She was right — she was fading. Even her exquisite eyes, her most remarkable feature in my estimation, were not quite as striking as they had been. It was as though the light that forged them was dying out.
“What do you want to know from me?”
“First of all, is Astrea correct in what she says?”
“I have no way of knowing. I was dead by the time it would have happened. I killed myself with stones in my pockets when I found out my love, Jason, was dead. The ends of our lives were only separated by a few minutes.”
I looked askance at her. “But you’re not really dead, Uma. You’re here. You can talk to me. You see things. At least tell me about Elythia.”
The pulse in her chest beat ever brighter. It was as though the light was returning to her for a bit.
“Jason was far more like his mother than his father.”
“She was a good person, Elythia?”
“I admired her, and also pitied her.”
“Being married to Necro, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Why would she choose such a mate?” I asked.
“Necro wasn’t always like he turned out to be. Or if he was, he hid it well. I was told that he was kind as a boy, gentle as a young man. But then something happened to him. By that time, he and Elythia had married. It was too late.”
“What do you think happened to him, to make him so terrible?”
“I think that magic brought out all the most awful impulses that he had. He thirsted for power. Before he came to lead what are now the Maladons, there were no divisions between our people. We were as one. But Necro slowly changed all that. He created the Maladons in his own fiendish image.”
“And Elythia? What did she think of all that?”
“She loathed the man her husband had become. But she was wedded to him for life.”
“But that makes no sense to me,” I replied heatedly. “Astrea described her as a goddess with powers far beyond the magic that we and the Maladons possess. Such a person could do as she pleased. And if she loathed Necro, she could easily be rid of him.”
“What you say makes perfect sense, Vega. Yet I have no answer for you. I do know that Elythia chose not to leave him. Or harm him.”
“Okay, go on.”
“And then there was Jason of course. That was what she focused her entire life on: making sure that Jason did not become like his father.”
“And she succeeded.”
When Uma said nothing, I repeated, “And she succeeded, right?”
“Jason was the love of my life, Vega.”
“I know. You’ve told me that.”
I fell silent waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, I said, “Do you believe that Necro killed Jason?”
“It is an accepted fact.”
“But you said you were dead only a few minutes after he breathed his last. How could you know who had killed him? Did someone tell you that it was Necro?”
She glanced up at me, anger flitting across her features. “We have spoken before about this.”
“Not really, no. I have been told by others what might have happened. That Necro murdered Jason and then blamed it on our kind so that war would be sparked. But no one has provided me any evidence to support that. Pillsbury told me that Necro slit Gunther Adronis’s throat, and the facts seem to back that up. But you and I have not spoken about exactly how Jason died.”
“He was stabbed.”
“I know that! But if not by Necro, then by whom?”
“I don’t know, because I wasn’t there!”
“You suspect no one?”
“His father, Necro. But you know that.”
“I know that Elythia thought he had done it. Which is why she cursed the Maladons, barring their women from having children.”
“What does it matter exactly how Jason died?”
I studied her, never having seen Uma this agitated before.
“Have you ever seen him after his death?” I asked.
She froze. “What?”
“You came here after your death, and I can see you. Alice Adronis is here. Morrigone is here, at least in spirit, or something like that. That means that the dead can come back. So, has Jason appeared to you?”
The next moment, Uma was gone.
Still, I had my answer.
She really didn’t know if Necro had killed his son. And she didn’t know why Elythia never retaliated against Necro though she believed him the murderer of her only child.
But I needed to know more. And I needed to ask the question that I had failed to ask before.
I returned to the room in the bowels of Empyrean, where I had first met Alice Adronis. I wanted to ask her several things, including the query I had not gotten around to asking her before she vanished from me last time.
It was dark in here, but it was a curious darkness, one unlike any I had ever experienced before. It seemed to have great depth, with seams of lurking light within the blackness, magically inspired, no doubt.
However, I had not come here to learn how light could be part of darkness.
“Alice? Alice, I need to speak with you.”
When she didn’t appear, my anger got the better of me.
“I bloody well need to speak to you, Alice Adronis. And I’ll wait here for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes!”
I felt the air around me turn to what felt like fire. The only thing I had ever experienced comparable to the sensation was when Necro hardened the air around me at Maladon Castle.
I leapt back.
And there she was, advancing on me like I had seen her — astride a great, flying steed — charge her opponents on that battlefield all those eons ago.
Her face was full of fury. If she had possessed the Elemental, I felt certain it would be pointed directly at me now, a hideously complicated curse on her lips.
“I am not accustomed —” she began.
Before she could finish, I held up the Elemental, not threateningly of course, but as symbol of the connection between us.
“I want to win, Alice. I want to win this war, my war against the Maladons. But I need your help to do so.”
My frank words seemed to drain all the fury from her.
She nodded at me to continue, though her cold features made it clear that she was not necessarily agreeing to help me.
I composed myself and said, “You gave me this, the Elemental, on that battlefield that I traveled to when I ventured back in time. That battlefield was where you died.”
“This of course I already know,” she said tersely.
“But what I don’t know is how you knew my name. You called me Vega. You gave me this, as though it were predestined that I should possess it. But I went back in time, Alice. I hadn’t even been born yet, not for over eight hundred years, when you called me by name. When you gave me this, apparently certain that I was the rightful possessor of it. So how did you know all that?”
She gave me an appraising look, as though weighing what I had just said against how much she should reveal in answer.
“ ’Tis a complicated question, Vega,” she said in a low voice. The tone astonished me because it seemed to carry with it an element of uncertainty, something I had never associated with the woman.
“Then I’ll try my best to understand it,” I said quickly.
“Time is a tricky thing indeed. It separates generations, but it also connects those from different eras.”
I looked at her curiously. “How can time separate but also connect?”
“We are family, Vega. My blood runs in your veins. You must have noted the resemblance between us.”
I looked down at myself and then back up at her.
“We do look alike.”
“But that is not all of it. It is far more than how we look. Though we are separated by the eons, there is a strand of even more powerful connectivity between us that we refer to as Empchon.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means. And it doesn’t explain why you knew my name.”
In answer, she put her hand to her chest, where her gaping, mortal wound was plain to see.
“Do you think it was mere coincidence that you appeared on that battlefield on the very day that I perished?”
I had never thought about this before. I thought it had just been happenstance.
“Due to the laws of Empchon, what you needed to see in the past is what you saw. And you needed to see … me. On the very day of my death. So I could give you that.”
She pointed at the Elemental. “It is not merely a wand, as I’m sure you have learned.”
“It’s saved my life more times than I can remember,” I said. “Both as a wand and as a spear.”
“You would not have survived your time in Wormwood, then, without it?”
“No,” I said. “If not for the —”
I stopped and blanched as what she was trying to tell me finally dug its way into my apparently slow-moving thoughts.
“You gave me the Elemental …”
“To allow you to survive, Vega. So you could one day be here.”
“To fight the Maladons,” I said.
She nodded. “It is Empchon. Sometimes known as the Fates. It is preordained. No one can control it. One must obey it. That is all.”
“So, you knew when you saw me on the battlefield that I was the one to lead us now?”
She nodded. “It was why I fought to keep you alive that day. I took risks that I otherwise might not have taken.”
The message underlying her words took a bit of time for me to grasp.
The color slowly drained from my face. Took risks you otherwise might not have taken? “Alice, are … are you saying that if I hadn’t appeared on the battlefield that day that you would not have … ?”
I pointed at her mortal wound.
She stared at me, seeming unwilling to answer my query.
“Alice!”
“ ’Tis a small price to pay, Vega. Our war was lost at that point. We all knew it. Though some of us stubbornly refused to admit it,” she added. “Myself included.”
“But how could you possibly have known my name?”
In answer, she snapped her fingers, and in the palm of her hand appeared a delicate tiny bird, nearly as transparent as she was.
“What is this, Vega?”
I looked at the creature. “It’s a bird.”
