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.”
Quadraginta quinque: The Lost Souls
We were in the Fifth Circle now, the last. And it was not lost upon me that this would be our greatest and, hopefully, final challenge.
Petra had offered to take the first watch. Lackland and Delph were asleep. I lay on my lumpy bed with Harry Two beside me.
I had not told the others what happened to me back in the Obolus River. What would have been the point? And besides, what could I say?
Right, so anyway I died from a bloody wound to my chest, but I’m back from the dead now and everything’s just smashing. Would you like to see the spot of my mortal wound? It was quite something!
I groaned and put a hand over my face. Then I lowered my other hand to my chest. I had been terrified to do this before, but now I had to. I reached under my clothes until I could feel my skin. I knew exactly where the wound had been. I was scared that I would feel remnants of the awful spot, but my skin was as smooth there as it had always been.
I withdrew my hand. But still, I felt unclean somehow, changed forever. And — the hardest part of all — I felt immeasurably different from my companions.