Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (8 page)

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 waterproof 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.

In the aftermath of the defeat, I had thought I had heard her name mentioned once as having been held in reserve by Baranak, should additional forces be required to deal with me. Perhaps. And perhaps she had only agreed to such an arrangement so that he would leave her alone, and leave her out of it.

Rumors upon rumors. The same with all of us, really. We lived in a never-ending swirl of doubtful fact and demonstrable fiction; of innuendo and gossip, layer upon layer upon layer, dragged out over millennia.

How to strip away the layers of this woman and know her heart when, for so many of us, the great fear was that peeling away so many layers might give way at last to nothing? No, I did not know her. Innumerable centuries had passed, even before the revolt, during which I had not encountered her in the City or elsewhere. Let it be, then.

Vodina. Emerging from the waters of her lake, she was as a clean slate to me.

“I do not know who it was,” Vodina was saying, “but they very nearly killed me. And that is no easy task.”

She was sitting up, leaning against a large rock, my coat pulled up to cover most of her torso, mainly out of deference to the expressed preferences of Evelyn. Her eyes, a radiant blue-green, flashed vividly in contrast to her pale skin and bare scalp. Out of the water, she seemed somehow less statuesque, less impressive—even the vivid green of her skin had faded to a pale imitation of itself—but she was still a being of unquestionable power and radiance. I had not seen her for many years even before my exile, and I admit I had nearly forgotten how impressive she was.

I squatted in the sand opposite her, studying her. The humans stood to my left, probably still fuming over the grudging and abbreviated introductions I had tended.

I had resolved to gain as much information from Vodina as I could, while she was still disoriented and confused. Doubtless she would become much less willing to volunteer intelligence once she was herself again.

“Where were you when you were attacked?” I asked, as casually as possible.

“The World Sea,” she said, her eyes distant. “On my island. I believe whomever did it must have been waiting there for some time, as I spend most of my time beneath the waves and do not often emerge.”

I nodded.

“The Sea. That is a long way down the line.”

“Indeed.”

“Fast time, right?”

“Somewhat. I can dwell there for months and miss little that happens in the City.”

I realized then that she probably did not know about the murders. Truthfully, I was afraid to tell her. Afraid of what might happen if she were so shocked that she lapsed into a coma again—and I had no way of judging the delicacy of her condition. Perhaps more that that, I was concerned that she might instantly draw the same conclusions regarding my guilt that Baranak and the others had. I did not fancy another twelve rounds with her furies.

“Excuse me,” Evelyn said then, “but I’ve never heard of a ‘World Sea.’”

“You wouldn’t have,” Vodina said. “It is not within your capacity to experience. At least, not without a guide.” She smiled up at the woman. “It seems that you have found one, though.”

“It is in a pocket universe claimed by Vodina,” I explained quickly, suddenly uncomfortable. “It lies… one might say
below
your human plane.”

“Like subspace,” Evelyn said, making the connection. “So time there flows slightly faster than in normal space.” She frowned. “So, you’re saying there are other layers to subspace?”

I did not wish to be distracted into delivering a physics lesson—nor a metaphysics lesson—while the opportunity yet remained to pump the water goddess for information. But, I reasoned, perhaps a few basics would shut them up for a bit. So, “Somewhat,” I replied hastily. “Better to say that the ‘subspace’ you use for fast space travel is but one layer, one plane among many, both ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ your own. It lies in the Below, the faster but less powerful direction, while our Golden City lies in the slower but more powerful direction, the Above.”

Cassidy leaned toward Kim.

“That does fit with some of our theories,” he said. “It would sort of explain how our ship ended up where it did.”

“You’re not seriously listening to this guy, are you?” Kim snorted. “I still say we’re jacked into some sort of Outworlder brain sim and they’re just waiting for us to get comfortable and hand over everything we know.”

“That should not take terribly long, I would imagine,” I muttered, before returning my full attention to Vodina once more. “So, did you get any sort of a look at your attackers?”

“No,” she said. “They must have been extremely good at concealing themselves both from me and from my remote defenses.” She squeezed her eyes closed tightly, as one who battled a growing migraine. “Which among our number excel at concealment?” she asked.

I hastily turned the conversation away from this direction and back to the attack.

“How were you hit? What did they do to you?”

She gingerly flexed her left shoulder and winced.

“A blast in the back. It knocked me senseless. I remember little afterward.”

Her luminous eyes turned upward, as if searching the cave’s ceiling for answers.

“I do not know if they tried to finish me off and failed, or thought I was already dead, or simply let me crawl away to die. Somehow I escaped, though I was extremely weakened, barely alive. My subconscious mind must have driven me here, to a hidden refuge of water I had discovered long ago. I am sure it also caused the generation of my water sprites. They simply lashed out at anyone who might prove a threat to my recovery.” The corner of her mouth turned up in something of a wry smile then. “I apologize for their… zealousness.”

I did not like to think of the watery manifestations of Vodina’s power that had nearly taken me out as “sprites.” “Sprites” did not seem to me like creatures that could nearly rip your head off. “Furies” seemed a much better name for them—but I let it go. Something important occurred to me then.

“Your attack—it must have been either before the Power failed, or after the Fountain was restored,” I surmised. “Otherwise you could not have escaped to this place.”