The Keeper

Quadraginta quattuor: Death Becomes Her

I didn’t know what to expect when I hit the water. Well, I supposed I thought it would be cold and miserable, but it really wasn’t. In fact, it felt warm and comforting.

When I broke the surface of the water that changed.

I took a breath. At least I tried to. But when the air hit my lungs, I thought my brain would explode. I gasped and writhed and when I was about to lose consciousness, I did the only thing I could think to do. I dove under the water.

After nearly suffocating above water, my mouth was still open when I went under. The liquid poured into my lungs and I knew then that I would die when my lungs filled like buckets.

But I didn’t die. The pain in my head went away and I gulped breath after breath and as the water poured through my lungs, I felt strangely replenished. I lit my wand and looked around. The water was so murky that even with the illumination, I could see only a few feet in every direction. I swam on, gliding smoothly through the water. I wanted to make sure that I was heading in the right direction, so I broke the surface again and stared ahead. But it was so dark and the pain in my head became so fierce that I had to dive back under again.

A cold chill invaded my insides, even as my outside felt warm and comforted.

If I can’t breathe out of the water, how will I escape this place? Was this the due that Rubez demanded? The sacrifice that most would be unwilling to make?

Me imprisoned in the Obolus forever?

I pushed these troubling thoughts away and swam on, hoping I was traveling in the right direction.

Rubez had said that things in here needed sorting out. I had no idea what he meant by that. I assumed that there were vile creatures lurking in the water that would do their best to kill me. If so, I was as prepared as I could be.

I held out my wand and said, “Crystilado magnifica.”

What I had expected were water demons whose ferocity and lethality would match those that walked the land. That, I could understand. That, I could fight, and perhaps win. But that wasn’t what I saw.

“Nooo,” I moaned. I stopped swimming and started to sink to the bottom of the foul river.

The great battlefield on which I had been given the Elemental by Alice Adronis and then nearly killed lay before me. Only, this time I was part of the great battle. I was astride a muscled steed. I was outfitted in chain mail. I carried a great spear in one hand as I flew through the sky. Just as Alice had done.

I had seen this same image before in a dream, thus I knew what was about to come. The blow hit my image full in the chest and I tumbled off my steed. I fell, and as my image fell, it happened.

The image and myself became one. And we were both falling so fast and so far that my breath was torn from me. I looked down at my chest and there was the wound, deep and bloody. And the pain pierced me so badly that I cried out and my mouth instantly filled, not with water but with blood. My blood. And then I felt no more.

And that scared me more than anything else had.

For there is only one reason a wounded person feels no pain.

This was no dream. This was no image.

This was my death.

Me, Vega Jane.

I was no more.

I hit the bottom of what I supposed was the Obolus River and then a remarkable thing happened.

I kept falling. It was as though the riverbed there had opened, the dirt moving aside, allowing my plummet to continue to a place that was somehow even deeper.

My eyes had been closed all this time because my courage had reached its limits. But now I had to open them. I heard the heavy staff strike the stone floor. I looked up at the tall, lean, near-cadaverous figure.

It was Orco. With his great, long nose, which had three openings. His totally black eyes looked me up and down. His awful mouth opened, revealing both his black teeth and the long tongue with the trio of arrow ends. He hissed and struck the stone again with his cudgel.

This caused me to spring bolt upright and stand before him. I looked down at myself. My clothes were as dry as if I had never stepped foot in the water.

I looked to my right and there it was.

The wall of the dead. The mouths were open, the eyes the same. No sounds came from the mouths, but in the pleading eyes I heard more misery than I could possibly bear.

I looked back at Orco. He was smiling in triumph. And I knew why.

I looked down at my chest and saw the gaping hole there, my stilled heart right underneath. I put out my hand toward it but then drew back. I could not bring myself to touch my own mortal wound.

I looked up at Orco.

“Certe,” he hissed, a triumphant look on his features.

Was I really dead? But how could I be? I had never really been on that battlefield. So how could I have been mortally wounded?

“I am not dead,” I said firmly.

In response he pointed with his clawed fingers to my chest. “Certe.”

I shook my head stubbornly. “I am not dead.”

He pointed to the wall and raised his cudgel. I felt my feet leave the stone floor. I was hurtled across the space and slammed into the wall. I could now hear the words spewing from the poor souls imprisoned there.

The next thing that happened to me was the most dreadful of all.

I was sinking into the wall. It felt like I was being dissolved from the inside out. I could feel myself... vanishing, parts of my being disappearing from me. As I looked wildly around, I somehow knew that once my mouth and eyes were the only things left visible of my being that I would be lost, trapped here forever.

My thoughts turned fleetingly to Delph and Harry Two. And even to Petra and Lackland.

And then as I sank farther into the stone a voice came into my ear.

It was not from the death wall.

It was a voice from inside my head.

Vega, death is only fear. Without fear, there is no death. Without death, there are no bars. Without bars, there is only freedom.

A voice speaking in my head at this moment should have driven me completely mad. But it didn’t. For some inexplicable reason, it gave me pause. Then it gave me calm. And then it gave me something much, much stronger. Perhaps the strongest thing of all.

It gave me hope.

I looked at my hand, which was still visible. And in it was clutched my wand.

And I recalled that in our first meeting Orco had feared my wand.

Which of course meant that he feared me.

Vega Jane.

I was a sorceress. I had a wand. I had a need. Thus, as Silenus had informed me, I could come up with a spell to fill that need. The exact words weren’t important. It was the mind, body, spirit all coming together as one, just as Astrea had said. Just as I had done spontaneously back at her cottage, without even a wand to aid me.

My entire being concentrated on only one thing. I made a slashing motion with my wand and screamed out with all the breath I had left.

“I am not dead!”

There was an enormous crack, like a thunder-thrust, and the wall broke right down the middle, freeing me.

I stepped clear of the rubble, my wand held high.

For the first time in the presence of Orco, I felt no fear. The bars of my prison were truly broken. But in him I saw, with satisfaction, uncertainty in those cold black eyes.

He and I squared off on the stone, circling each other. When he raised his cudgel, I raised my wand, bracing to throw off his attack. He lowered his cudgel, but I kept my wand pointed right at him. He glanced down at my chest. I did the same.

I gaped. The hole in my chest was gone.

I looked up to see that cruel face staring at me.

I could not help myself.

“Certe,” I hissed.

And then I was hurtling upward, through stone and dirt and into the crush of water. Up, up, up I went until I thought the pressure I was feeling all around would smash me flat. The next instant, I sputtered and spit and thought I was going to drown. And then I realized something.

I was breathing air once more, not water.

I looked across the surface of the river in all directions. It looked the same to me, which meant I did not know which way to go. I was flopping around in the water, suddenly exhausted from my struggle down below. I went under the water once but managed to push myself back to the surface. Then I went under again. And I didn’t know if I could find the strength to keep fighting.

Something grabbed me and I kicked and thrashed to free myself. I tried to point my wand, but my arms were pinned to my sides. I broke the surface of the water, and stopped struggling.

“Delph!”

He was facing me, holding me up in his strong arms.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Are you mental? What the bloody Hel d’you think? I’m savin’ you.”

He turned on his back, held me under my arms and kicked off.

“Do you know which way to go?” I asked, immensely relieved by his presence.

“We lit a fire on the shore as a landmark. Heading right for it.”

“I’m sorry I had to cast a spell over you,” I said.

“Figured that’s what you done when I came outta it.”

“Have you been searching for me long?”

“Long enough.”

At last my feet bumped against something and I realized we were in the shallows. Delph helped me to stand.

I looked back in time to see Rubez and his blackened vessel drift past us.

I locked gazes with the creature. After staring down Orco, I knew this bloke could hold no horrors for me. I pointed behind me at the Obolus.

“Oi, Rubez, I think I’ve got it all sorted out. Thanks.”

His face was a mask of loathing. And I didn’t care a jot.

We continued on until our feet hit level ground.

Then something leapt on me.

It was Harry Two. He licked my face and pushed his snout against my cheek.

Delph picked me up in his crushing embrace.

“You made it,” he said quietly, his breath touching my cheek. His sense of relief was palpable.

“I made it,” I said weakly. “Where are the others?”

“Over by the fire.”

As we started to walk toward the firelight, he said. “Was it bad swimming across?”

I looked up at his wide, happy face.

“Not that bad, Delph. Not that bad a’tall.”