“To your own private cosmos—eventually,” he replied.
“You mean…?”
I looked through again, then back at him.
“Your hideaway,” he said. “Quite so.”
I eyed him suspiciously.
“That would be my secret hideaway,” I said, wondering which of them he meant.
“Secret to most,” he replied, “but not to all.”
I could not help but laugh.
“And you’ve known about it all this time.”
“Certainly,” he replied, “though I’ve told no one else.”
He shrugged.
“I had made preparations either way when you launched your insurrection. I saw wisdom then in preparing closer ties to you as well as to Baranak and his clique. Just as I do now.”
Wisdom. Yes. I nodded slowly, then smiled at him.
“Thanks. Your kindnesses will not be forgotten.”
“Good luck,” he replied, as I raced through the breach, the humans close behind.
The light from Malachek’s castle winked out as he sealed the portal behind us. Blindly we raced into the darkness.
CHAPTER THREE
Blackness surrounded us, wreathed all in echoes and drenched in claustrophobia. Some of my contemporaries doubtlessly would have maintained that such an environment suited me perfectly, but I begged to disagree. At the moment, I would have given quite a lot for a simple night light—along with a hot bath, a soft bed, and a week or two of uninterrupted sleep. Not to mention that case of whiskey.
Circumstances being what they were, though, I forced such thoughts from my mind and ran on into the night. Were the three humans still behind me? I would find out in due time, and felt no particular compunction to check before then.
Part of the way along, I had risked the expenditure of a small portion of my reserves to generate a tiny ball of lightning—no great shakes, and about the best I could do at short notice on that score—and, sending it on ahead, I had managed to determine that we were in a straight, narrow, earthen tunnel that ran in an extremely straight line. After some distance, the ground beneath my feet angled up, and a short while later a faint glow appeared ahead, growing as I continued on. Soon it became obvious that the tunnel was opening out into a somewhat illuminated area. Emerging from the tunnel, I saw that I stood on a natural rise at one end of a vast, subterranean lake. The walls of the chamber that housed this lake, a weak glow radiating from them in patches, reached several hundred feet high and ran on for an indeterminate distance around the periphery and into the darkness. Waves gently lapped at the shore below me, their soft, rhythmic sounds a noticeable counterpoint to the more rapid beating of my heart. Looking around, I could not immediately determine whether this cave represented a natural or man-made feature, but I knew I had not encountered it before. Malachek may have known about my refuge, but he had found his own pathway there.
Footsteps sounded behind me as the three humans emerged from the tunnel. Pointedly ignoring them, I made my way down closer to the shore and peered out across the placid waters. I could barely make out a concentration of the greenish light emanating from a single point and radiating up from the depths, about a hundred yards out. Something about that light tugged at an old memory, albeit one that refused to dislodge from the depths of my mind and reveal itself.
As I continued to study the odd radiance, footsteps crunched behind me. Moments later, Cassidy stood to my right.
“So—where are you leading us?” he asked, almost casually.
I did not turn, preferring to continue my visual inspection of the lake.
“I don’t think he knows, himself,” Kim said, as he walked up on my left.
The captain, if she was even back there, remained silent.
“I think he’s as lost as we are,” Kim went on.
I continued to ignore them. The green glow in the water was starting to concern me. I knew now that I had encountered it before, somewhere, a long time ago.
“He’s no god, he’s just an Outie,” Kim snorted. “This is just some kind of trick. Everything we've seen so far—somebody’s screwing with us. It’s an Outie trick—they’ve set us up.”
“You are a fool,” I told him, before stepping into the water up to my knees. Bending, I ran my right hand across the surface. Cool but not cold. Not entirely unpleasant.
“Maybe we’ve all been drugged,” Kim went on. “Maybe we’re all in some Outie military prison, hooked into a brain jack and being fed all this crap.”
“An interesting theory,” came the voice of the captain, her boots crunching up behind us.
Ripples began to spread across the water from a point roughly corresponding to the source of the light. I watched them intently. None of this rang a bell for me so far.
“And now he wants to go for a swim!” Kim laughed harshly. “Captain, I suggest we forget this guy, forget this whole thing, and fend for ourselves from this point on. This stuff can’t be real—I’m betting it can’t hurt us.”
“By all means,” I said then, turning back to flash them a thin smile, “do fend for yourselves. I am certain you will fare quite well.”
“We don’t have enough information yet to make a decision like that,” the captain said. She faced Kim directly, waving an arm about to indicate our strange surroundings. “Where would we go? I have no idea. Do you?” She frowned, looking at me now. “Sure, he’s not the most friendly tour guide we could wish for…”
I looked back at her, wide-eyed, hand to heart.
“You wound me, lady. Truly you do.”
She rolled her eyes.
“...But he’s done nothing to harm us, so far. And for all we know, he could have already saved our lives once, by getting us out of the City.”
“Don’t tell me you’re buying into this, Captain,” Kim growled.
Turning back to the lake, I ran a hand through the water again. It was noticeably warmer. The greenish light had intensified; the ripples had become more violent. None of this encouraged me. I backed out of the water, leaving uneven footprints on the gray sand.
“I’m really getting sick of your attitude,” Kim was saying to me, even as I backed past him and summoned up the first of several invisible defensive spheres about myself.
The ripples in the lake became waves, tossed as if by a storm. This finally got the attention of the humans, and they retreated a few steps as well, their pace quickening as they went.
It clicked for me then. Water. Green light. Of course.
“Vodina,” I whispered. “Uh oh.”
The lake, now blazing with green fire, erupted and spewed forth five columns of water. Instead of splashing back to the surface, the columns hovered in midair, spun about like miniature waterspouts, and then each congealed into a distinctly human shape.
“Now what?” Cassidy muttered. Wide-eyed, he backed away from the shore as well.
Each of the five water figures, female in form and wreathed in green flame, extended an arm over its head. Blazing swords formed in each of the hands. Hovering above the waters, they glared down at us like avenging angels of the apocalypse.
“You were saying you’d like to fend for yourself, Mr. Kim.” I smiled a crooked smile even as I redoubled my shields. “Have at it!”
The five figures streaked forward, flames trailing in their wake, bearing down on us. They raised their swords high.
Kim gawked at them, then at me, then turned to run for the tunnel mouth.
“Wait,” the captain ordered. “We stay together.”
She looked at me. Her face bore an imploring look.
I sighed.
“Get behind me!” I shouted, extending my sphere to encompass them. A mere instant later, the five furies crashed against my outermost screen.
Emerald flames engulfed us there within our bubble. It lasted less than a second, and then the five furies were past us, reforming and swooping high into the air once more.
Backing up a few more steps, the humans huddling close, I position
ed us so that the wall of the cavern protected our rear. This allowed me to devote more energy to the forward portion of my screens; something for which I was grateful moments later as the angelic forms swooped down again, slashing with their swords. Once again we found ourselves engulfed in flames, as the swords dissolved into sheets of green fire, surrounding us in a cocoon of light and heat. Just as quickly, the flames vanished as the water-women swooped upward to regroup for what seemed an inevitable third strike.
I will give the humans credit. For once, they had the sense to refrain from immediately pelting me with questions. Then again, perhaps they were simply too frightened. In any case, I was grateful to be able to devote all of my attention to finding a solution to our problem.
Retreat seemed the wisest course, but then I realized that whomever had been approaching Malachek’s castle—likely Baranak, in pursuit of us—could very well have found our escape route, and be approaching from that direction. Malachek himself revealing the bolthole did not seem entirely out of the question, given his openly pragmatic policies. Thus I filed away the idea of going back up the tunnel as our last option.
We could not simply stand there and absorb a pummeling from the green furies until my screens collapsed. That left one direction—forward. And as I considered it, new possibilities occurred to me.
Kneeling, I sought about me on the rocky shore for a stone of sufficient size. Finding a chalky gray one with black streaks, about the size of my fist, I stood and clasped it in both hands, closing my eyes. The procedure would have been considerably easier had I not been in middle of simultaneously maintaining our defensive shields. As it was, I managed to pour what I hoped was a sufficient charge of energy into the stone before the furies attacked again.
“Here,” I told Evelyn, handing her the rock, which had taken on a bluish glow.
Cassidy looked at it, frowning, then looked at me.
“We’re supposed to throw rocks at them?” he asked, incredulous.
“I would not throw that rock, if I were you,” I replied. “It should shield you for a time. Long enough, I hope.”
“Long enough for what?” Evelyn asked, clutching the stone to her chest.
“We shall see,” I replied, turning and walking back down the slope.
I could hear the furies swooping down again, behind me, toward the huddled humans, but then Evelyn shouted, “Look out!” I whirled, barely in time to raise a hand as one fury that had separated from the others struck out with her sword. The flames crashed into my hastily erected screen –probably the only thing that kept my arm from being severed—but the force of the impact hurled me backward, flailing about in midair before tumbling into the water.
Surfacing, I gasped for breath. The water was cold. Pushing my long hair out of my eyes, I looked up and saw the fury circling, about to attack again. I reached a decision then. Spinning around, I dove under the water, swimming away from the shore and downward.
Just behind me, I heard the fury plunge into the spot I had occupied seconds before. I braced for impact—for my theory to be proven wrong. It was not. The fury vanished, apparently dissolving back into the waters that had given her form. Encouraged, I swam on, deeper into the murky darkness.
After some few seconds, a greenish light became apparent ahead of me, somewhere on the bottom. I redoubled my efforts, and though I have never spent much time training as a swimmer, desperation spurred me on. Thinking back on it, I did feel confident the sword-wielding sisters up above could not reach me there, but I hardly could spend the rest of eternity holding my breath—and the humans’ plight may have provided some small motivation as well, though I doubt I would have shed a tear if Cassidy or Kim had met the business end of a green-flaming sword right about then.
I seemed to be moving at some velocity, for the light grew brighter quickly. Soon I was circling over its source. Despite the glare, I could just make out a tall, slender woman, stretched out in repose on the lake’s bottom, bald and naked and seemingly asleep—or dead. Every inch of her body radiated nearly blinding green luminance, as if she were a neon bulb.
As I’d had no time to prepare for such an environment, my lungs were demanding air. I had to act quickly. Swimming down to the lake’s bottom, I scooped the woman up in my arms—there was no overt sensation of heat—and then pushed off, rising as fast as possible while also angling for the shore.
Breaking the surface, I gratefully breathed in the air, then rolled over and swam on my back. I clasped the lady to my chest to keep both of us above the water—though, admittedly, that did not seem like as much of a priority for her as for me. This angle also afforded me a view upward, and I could see no signs of the attackers. As we reached the shallows and my feet touched bottom, however, I heard shouts and cries from near the tunnel mouth, and knew that the humans were still alive, and still under attack.
Evelyn must have seen me then, and apparently she was not the only one, for she cried, “They’re coming!”
I sensed the five furies’ arrival above me, but, aside from conjuring a force sphere around the two of us, I ignored them. Leaning over the lady’s limp form, I ran my right hand down the side of her face, and spoke her name.
“Vodina?”
The furies circled about a dozen yards over my head, and I could sense their raw, primal anger. They did not attack yet, however. Glancing up, I saw them darting this way and that, clearly upset but now lacking in that single-minded drive to kill that they had appeared to possess previously.
“Vodina!” I repeated, louder, stroking her forehead and her cheeks. “Can you hear me?”
She groaned then, ever so softly. As if in response, the furies swooped down, straight for me. Their impact on my defensive screen was so fierce, it caused me to drop to my knees, but my attention remained with the lady. As they unleashed a barrage of assaults upon my shield, I felt my resistance weakening, but I continued to focus my efforts on reviving the woman.
As the situation grew serious, my reserves starting to ebb, my shields on the verge of crumbling under the pounding they were taking, Vodina finally showed signs of life. Her eyelids fluttered, and then her entire body jerked, her limbs lashing out. This lasted only a moment, and then she seemed to relax again. With a sudden gasp, her eyes came open.
The furies halted their attacks but grew even more agitated, if less focused. They thrashed about in midair like fish dropped on dry land.
Vodina’s eyes met mine then, and she blinked.
“Lucian?”
“Yes. I have you.”
She still hadn’t entirely focused on me.
“The nightmares,” she whispered.
Suddenly she looked about wildly, then back at me. “Where—where are we?”
“I will tell you all I know,” I said, “but first…” And I gestured at the green furies convulsing over our heads. “You are under no threat. So…?”
Looking confused at first, her face conveyed a quick shock of recognition, and then a small frown.
“Begone,” she said.
The thrashing furies high above came to a sudden halt, hovered momentarily in midair, then collapsed into five columns of water that splashed harmlessly to the ground.
Relaxing, I dropped my tattered screens. The humans, seeing the threat in abatement, made their way down to the shore. They looked on as I leaned over and called Vodina’s name once more. Her eyes had lost focus again, and I feared her furies might reawaken if she slipped back into catatonia. I clasped her left hand, which had grown cold, between both of mine and rubbed it gently.
Evelyn nudged me on the shoulder, and frowned when I looked up at her.
“Your coat,” she said.
I realized then that the two men behind her were attempting to take in the sight of the naked goddess while pretending to look anywhere and everywhere else.
“Right.”
Shrugging out of my long navy coat, the texture of which had transformed at some point from wool to a lighter and seemingly more wate
rproof material, I laid it over Vodina’s slender form. The goddess scarcely seemed to notice.
Evelyn knelt beside me, studying the green woman in amazement.
“Who is she?”
The goddess’s eyes had focused on mine once more, and her strength seemed to be growing. I realized I had been holding my breath for some time, and exhaled in relief.
“Evelyn Colicos, meet Vodina of the Waters.” I smiled. “Our Lady of the Lake.”
Vodina.
Even among those so individualistic and jealous of their privacy as we, little was known of her. Seldom seen at court--or anywhere else within the realm of the City, for that matter--rumors always took the place of fact with regard to fair Vodina. And the rumors were not always kind.
One of Baranak’s former lovers? Perhaps. Cast aside by him, and thus bitter and resentful toward him, toward all of us, toward the City itself? Probably not, given so many other things I’d heard with regard to her strength, her will, her independence. Though I had heard tales of alienation and resentment whispered from time to time about a number of the golden god’s supposed conquests, contradictory stories inevitably followed. No one knew what to believe about Baranak and his love life any longer. And, aside from strategic considerations, I had never much cared.
Other rumors carried with them the virtue of at least being more colorful, if no less believable. Grenedy had once claimed, for instance, that Vodina was hiding out away off in her own pocket universe, building an army of mer-people, and dreaming up schemes to take power in the City for herself. This one in particular appealed to me, for obvious reasons; though, if it had proven true and she ever did manage such a feat, it would only mean she, instead of Baranak, would eventually fall to my next assault.
As far as I knew, though I had fully expected to have to confront her in battle, she had not been present at the time of the revolt. Baranak doubtless would have welcomed her participation, for her strength and her Furies would have served his cause well during my main, failed assault. Perhaps I would have been defeated even more quickly, though that scarcely seemed possible at the time, from my vantage point. The image of Rashtenn and the others bringing down the cosmic flame upon my supporters before we had hardly begun to fight haunts me still, and constitutes a dismal memory from which I shall never be free.
Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (The Above Book 1) Page 5
