Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (22 page)

Pagan felt the blood slow in his veins. ‘I have always loved you, Lae. Always.’

‘Shhhh.’ Her lips pressed against his own again, her tongue hot in his mouth, and Pagan knew as clearly as if she’d slapped him that if Lae lost her maidenhood to him in this fashion there would be no future between them.

Though her soft hands, now unlacing his breeches, drove him from his senses, he would not sacrifice his love for such a temporary reward. ‘I cannot do this,’ he said and rolled away from her, rising awkwardly from her fragrant sheets, feeling the insistent throb of his desire impeding his movements.

Silence from the bed.

‘Lae, I …’ Pagan struggled to put his feelings into words.

‘Love me too much to join with me? Am I your sister?’ she demanded, her voice trembling, whether with thwarted passion or anger, he wasn’t sure.

‘I will not despoil our love with —’

‘
Our
love does not exist,’ she spat at him from the darkness. ‘If there is any love, it is on your side, yet how you lay with another woman and loved me still, I do not know.’ There was scrabbling and the curtains parting on the opposite side of the bed. ‘Leave me,’ she said. ‘If you cannot do this simple thing for me then I do not want you in my presence. I will find another man. A younger man who may have the stamina you lack.’

She brushed past him and Pagan simply stood, staring at her naked silhouette as she limped from the room. His future collapsed around him. Hope, which had kept him at Lae’s side, struggling to find a way back to her love, was dashed.

A younger man.

Lae had no further use for him. Perhaps he should return to Sarah and his duty in Magoria. He had a son there.

S
TAY
. It was the voice of the Great Guardian.

Why? Pagan wanted to ask. There is nothing for me here. But in his shattered state he simply did as he was told, turning on leaden legs and retracing his steps out of Lae’s rooms. He did not see or hear her, and wondered whether she had gone in search of a more willing partner. Was she even now in the guardsman’s quarters selecting a bedmate — one of the Be’uccdha males who shared her dark colouring?

Sickness more insidious than poison invaded Pagan’s mind and it was all he could do to force himself to return to his quarters where he lay on his bed and stared up at his own bed drapes. Could she still love him? Could her grief be causing this cruelty? In all the years they had sniped at each other, before love had grown between them, Lae had never wounded him as she had this night. Her blow had struck his heart like an axe, opening a deep gash out of which his vitality bled, leaving a shell of a man whose only remaining emotion was jealousy.

Could he simply lie in his rooms while another man claimed his beloved? Her soft, fragrant curves moulded by another man’s hands? Her hot mouth searching out another man’s secrets? Was Pagan the most foolish man alive to have refused her?

‘I will die of this,’ he whispered to himself, and in that moment he felt for the first time a kinship with Lae’s unbearable grief — a sure knowledge that he would go mad if he could not alleviate the burden of it from his mind. Yet he would not make himself forget her. He would kill himself first.

P
ATIENCE
, the Great Guardian said.

But Pagan had to ask.
Will Lae ever be mine?

The Great Guardian chose not to answer, and in desperation Pagan sought the only relief he had available to him, the relief he should have offered Lae — the oblivion of a forced healing slumber. Yet even as his mind closed down, his last thought was of Lae, and of love, but not of hope, for in Pagan’s mind, all hope was gone.

Firde found Lae on the floor in her bathroom, curled up behind a pile of towels. She was asleep but the maid could tell from her lady’s damp lashes and tightly clenched fists that she had cried herself to sleep. Again.

And what of the Guardian? Firde had discreetly searched her lady’s chambers and he was nowhere to be found. Had they quarrelled? Or worse, had her lady refused to see him?

‘Poor child,’ Firde whispered to herself; yet as she bent to lift Lae’s light body from the cold marble floor to return her to her bed, she acknowledged that her mistress was not a child. The Dark was a woman, with all the emotions a woman must bear, and many that no woman should have to.

Were they all born to suffer and die, not knowing a moment’s happiness? Without The Catalyst to intervene, the Maelstrom would eventually kill them all, though Firde knew those safe within the anchored castles would be the last to die. Yet The Dark did not acknowledge this and seemed unable to plan for their future, or even to address the people’s fears. Her only expression of duty was the ritual of the Altar Caves where, like her father before her, she recited the ancient words and then read the auras of those who attended. Less each day. For they all knew the past and now looked to receive guidance for the days ahead.

Alas, The Dark knew no future, though she spoke the word. Her lady had admitted her mind was locked in the past, into the horrible moment in time when her son had fallen into the Volcastle mouth. Like a scene with actors, it replayed over and over behind her eyes, each time accompanied by the same breath-stealing horror and heart-pounding shock. These repetitions wore her to threads, until at last lament and the release of tears would lull her to slumber, only to wake and begin the cycle anew.

‘Let him love you,’ Firde said as she slipped her mistress between the sheets of her overlarge bed. ‘The Guardian is your only hope.’

But Lae did not wake. Her exhaustion was complete.

‘W
here have you been?’ Vandal asked his mother again, part of his attention listening for footsteps on the back stairs. The wind was picking up. He had to find Petra and get her home, but the mystery of why his mother was covered in dirt needed addressing. Had she been gardening? At this time of night?

‘Mum? Where —’

‘Digging a grave.’

Vandal blinked, knowing he must have misheard her. Weird how the mind played tricks on you when you weren’t properly awake. ‘Sorry,
what
did you just say?’

‘Digging a grave,’ she repeated, her head wavering as she struggled to hold his gaze. ‘Making sure she doesn’t take you away. Like she took him away’

The jeans and bra fell out of Vandal’s hand. They landed silently on the kitchen floor. ‘Where is she?’ he asked, barely able to hear his words over the deafening pounding of his heart. ‘Where’s Petra?’

‘
She’s
not Petra,’ his mother said, looking at him as though he was a fool. ‘She’s that Be’uccdha whore trying to trick you. But I know. I can see through her. Lying little … bitch. Trying to talk her way out of it —’

Vandal took three steps forward, grabbed his mother by the shoulders and shoved her against the wall. ‘Where is she!’ he bellowed, shaking her, making her head wobble and her eyes close. ‘What have you done with her? Tell me where she is.’ He let her go and she started to slide down the wall. ‘Show me,’ he shouted and grabbed her arm, dragging her out the back door onto the verandah where the rising wind caught his hair and threw it into his face.

‘You’ll never find the slut,’ his mother said, her spittle spraying his cheek. ‘I buried her in Fielding’s paddock.’

Vandal looked down the back stairs into the moaning shadows as trees bent and slapped against each other. Fielding’s paddock next door had just been ploughed. It would take hours to find Petra in the dark, and Guardian power could only revive the newly dead. Glimmer’s mother had been dead for barely five minutes when Talis — the strongest Guardian ever — had found her, and he’d struggled to revive her. Vandal wasn’t even an apprentice, and how long had Petra been dead? Long enough to be buried and for his mother to stumble back to the house — half an hour? An hour?

He turned to look at his mother, despair overwhelming him, making his lips numb and his tongue heavy. ‘You killed my love,’ he said, and the words made it true. Petra was dead. His lungs clawed at breath and his vision blurred. He grabbed his mother’s arms and shook her until her head rattled. ‘You killed my love!’

‘Hours ago,’ his mother shouted back. ‘She’s dead, and neither of you can save her’

‘No.’ Vandal looked around the verandah, his heart beating so wildly he thought the Maelstrom was inside it. ‘She’s not dead. She can’t be dead and you live. That can’t be.’

‘He’ll come back for me now,’ she said, her eyes closed in ecstasy, her lips pursed as though expecting a kiss. Her oily hair blew around her head like clawing tentacles.

Vandal had never seen an uglier or more evil creature in his life. He thrust her away, as though to stop her contaminating him with her foul presence, and she tripped, her arms flying out too late to catch the railing. He watched her fall backwards. Her head struck the steps halfway down, and the cracking sound was like a watermelon splattering on concrete. Dead.

‘Petra,’ he gasped, unable to comprehend for the moment that he’d killed his own mother. He had to find Petra. Had to make Petra be alive. He turned around and looked back into the house. The screen door rattled in the wind.

Torch. He should grab the torch. No. Better than a torch. He ran back into the kitchen and snatched up a packet of matches before slamming back out the door and racing down the steps, jumping over his mother’s still body, his feet pounding the ground as he ran past the thrashing swing and through the vegetable garden. At the furthest edge of their property was a withered row of corn. Vandal took out the matches and broke two before he managed to light one and start a yellowed leaf burning. The wind blew it out but three matches later the fire took hold. A gusting wind sent it racing through the corn patch, illuminating a good quarter of their neighbour’s paddock. Vandal knew the fire would follow the fenceline into the hay on the other side. Half the district might burn, but at least he would see to find Petra.

He jumped the fence and was surrounded by newly turned dirt. How to find a small grave?
Quickly.
There wasn’t much time. If his mother was right and Petra had died an hour ago, there was no time. But Vandal couldn’t believe that. He had to believe that Petra would live, that her last moments hadn’t been spent in terror arguing with a mad woman before … How had his mother killed her?

Vandal closed his eyes and fell to his knees. He’d never find her. And it was already too late. She was dead. Petra was dead.

He waited for the knowledge to break him in two but it didn’t — it wouldn’t stick. Instead he started scrabbling in the dirt like a mad dog, up one furrow and down the next. The wind howled around him and threw dirt in his eyes but his tears washed them clean. At last his knuckles struck something hard and his breath caught on a sob. He scrabbled around it and pulled up a hard narrow … bone. He cried out in horror, then realised it was too big. A dog’s bone? His sobbing was worse after that and it took him a moment to find the courage to go on. But he did, his cold fingers biting into the dry earth as he continued up that furrow and down the next.

Should he have started on the other side of the field? His arms ached and despair breathed hot in his face. Then his clawing fingers struck something soft. Pliable. This time he knew. He brushed away the dusty soil and found a leg, scrabbled further and found an arm. Pulled out the near-naked body of his love. Earth came off the bloodied hair on the back of her head in muddy clumps. He pulled her into his arms and sobbed. Then he saw her opened eyes crusted with dirt and he howled, unable to move past the horror of her death.

It was too late.

But still he tried. Fire raged around him and the wind threw ash and sparks across his face, but Vandal was oblivious to that as he laid his trembling hand on her forehead and struggled to focus. It took so long, but finally he managed to calm himself enough to gather the white ball of power behind his eyes, and though his control was ragged he sent it into her body, willing it to heal her, to bring back the Petra he had loved.

Again and again he tried. But she didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She was dead. Forever.

The regional fire service found him hours later when the storm had died out and they had mopped up the fire he’d started. Vandal still had her cradled in his arms as he rocked and sobbed. The police came next and still Vandal wouldn’t let her go.

They got close enough to look at her, though, and the blonde hairs they found under her fingernails matched the body at the bottom of the stairs. Vandal’s Aunt Melissa arrived, declaring Sarah insanely jealous, psychotic, and capable of anything. The police dealt with dozen of deaths every day, most due to the Maelstrom. There simply wasn’t time any more for detailed investigations. Sarah was their perpetrator, but as Vandal rocked they still took fingerprints, confiscated a shovel with blood on it and searched his house.

The ambulance arrived and Melissa, who had been talking to him coaxingly and trying to loosen his fingers, finally demanded he let Petra go. ‘Her daddy’s here,’ she whispered. ‘He wants her now.’

Vandal raised his glance a fraction and saw in front of him a pair of neatly pressed trousers smeared with dirt and ash. Above these were trembling black hands clutched together so tightly the knuckles were pale. His breath caught on a sob and he let Petra go. Melissa deftly extricated her from his arms and Mr Mabindi took her. Vandal looked back down into his lap.

He had nothing. He was nothing. Empty.

‘Did Sarah kill herself, honey?’ Melissa whispered while the others were a distance away. Her imitation French perfume overshadowed the earthy smell of the loose soil in which they sat.

‘I killed her,’ he replied, staring vacantly now at the burnt corn. ‘I pushed her down the stairs.’

She took a slow breath, then said, ‘Tell them she fell, honey,’ followed by an awkward pat on his shoulder. ‘You don’t deserve to be punished for this. It’s all your father’s fault.’

Vandal shifted his head, looking directly at someone other than Petra for the first time since they’d found him. ‘My father’s fault?’ he said, gazing into his aunt’s reddened eyes, yet even before Melissa replied there was a certainty to the idea that lodged in his brain.

‘He’s the one who unbalanced her,’ she whispered. ‘He drove her mad. She was fine before he left.’

Vandal looked away. His mother had been fine. Sane, loving, happy.

‘She never told me why Pagan left her,’ Melissa said.

Vandal knew. His father had gone back to his betrothed, the woman his crazed mother had thought she’d just killed. The woman who should have died. Lae of Be’uccdha. Not Petra. Not his beautiful love who had done nothing to deserve …

He looked down at his empty arms. Blinked. ‘She’s gone.’

Melissa scrabbled up to crouch beside him, her enormous hips almost splitting her jersey dress. ‘She’s with her family now. They have their own … rituals.’

Petra was really gone. He’d never see her again. And yet somewhere in the universe, his father was laughing and kissing and making love to Lae of Be’uccdha.

‘It’s not fair,’ he whispered, still gazing at his empty lap.

‘I know, sweetie. But there’s nothing we can do.’

Vandal blinked again. There was something he could do. He could go to Ennae and do the same thing to his father as had just happened to him. Take away the woman he loved. Wouldn’t that be justice? What else did he have to live for?

He raised his head, looked around at the smouldering hay field, the policemen near their cars, the ambulance driver speaking to Petra’s father, the sun cresting the horizon. ‘I need to go for a walk,’ he said, and pushed himself up on dangerously wobbly legs.

Melissa scrabbled to her feet. ‘Wait, honey, let’s get you cleaned up first.’

He pointed to the lawn cemetery. ‘I’ll swim in the billabong. I just need … to be alone.’

‘You’ll come straight back?’

‘I promise,’ he lied, looking right into her eyes.

She smiled. A sad smile. ‘Okay, honey You have a swim. I’ll wait here.’

Vandal turned and walked off. He heard a shout behind him, one of the police officers, and then Melissa’s conciliatory voice. Nothing after that but the sound of his own footsteps crackling on the burnt grass.

Power built inside his head and he wondered whether his anger alone would propel him into the next world. He strode straight into the middle of the billabong, waist deep, and spread his arms. No preparation. No need, even, to take a last look at his world. He wasn’t coming back.

‘I am the light that warms the tunnel. I am the door that opens the way,’ he said, his voice hard and emotionless. Almost instantaneously he felt a jolt as his outward surge of energy connected with Ennae. He pushed out even more energy, more anger, and said:

‘Ancient powers, take from my hand the sacred element of our land.

‘This water that gives Magoria its hue, will forge a way betwixt the two.’

A wrenching sensation pulled on Vandal’s mind but he was so focused, so sure that his anger would carry him through, that he simply let the circle draw his life-force into it, shouting, ‘From life itself I would unfurl the water of this otherworld.’

A crashing roar echoed outwards but Vandal remained still, intent on finding his father and oblivious to the beauty of what he could see in his mind. A tingling sensation ran across his shoulders and the water around him shimmered with unearthly light, but Vandal was already sinking into it.

By the time the first policeman ran up to investigate the crash, there was only the faintest ripple on the billabong. When Melissa arrived, puffing, even that was gone.

They were talking into mobile phones after that, believing he’d run off, and that perhaps he was responsible for one of the deaths after all. But Melissa knew Vandal was innocent. She also had a terrible feeling that he wasn’t coming back. She had lost her sister and her nephew in one day.

The desire to slide to the ground in an undignified heap and cover her face with her hands was strong. She wanted to cry and never stop crying. But instead she said to the sergeant, ‘I’ll be at the house,’ and turned to retrace her steps. It all belonged to her now. She’d better work out what to do with it.