The Finisher

QUADRAGINTA NOVEM: To the Death

THAT NIGHT IT was no surprise that I found it difficult to sleep. At the fourth section, I gave it up as a bad job. I pulled out my cloak and, using strong thread, sewed Destin into the garment’s sleeves and across its shoulders. This would hide my chain from view and also prevent it from being torn off me too easily. I put the Stone and the Elemental in my pocket, and set off with Harry Two.

I had fashioned a harness and a cradle of sorts, using scraps of leather and metal from Stacks. When we were safely away from Wormwood proper, I tied the shoulder straps around me, placed Harry Two in the cradle and buckled him in against my chest. I had bound him up like this before and he had taken to it good-naturedly.

I took a running start and soared into the air. This might be my last chance to leave the ground and feel the wind in my face, let it lift my hair. This light could very well be my last one. That made a Wug think.

I flew along for a great many slivers with Harry Two dangling happily underneath me. I don’t know which of our grins was bigger. But there was a melancholy behind my smile, for obvious reasons. And as I looked down at Harry Two from time to time, I could sense the same with him. It was as though what was in my heart was magically transferred to his. Canines were indeed curiously marvelous beasts.

We landed on the dirt, and I freed Harry Two from the harness. I had a cookie in my pocket, and I broke it in half and gave my canine his share, which he wolfed down while I took my time with mine. I chewed methodically, probably because I wanted to slow every sliver down now. It was all very morose and I wished I didn’t feel this way, but I did.

Many things passed through my mind. I wondered if it hurt to die. I thought back to how Tilt looked when the blow from Ladon-Tosh had hurried him on to the Hallowed Ground. To tell the truth, I don’t think Tilt ever realized he had died. It had happened just that fast. So maybe there was no pain. But you were still dead. So the consolation was not simply small, it was nonexistent. At that moment, I happened to look up at the sky and felt a sudden thrill when I saw it.

A shooting star. It raced across my point of view while all the other winks of light remained stationary. It had soon left them all behind. A sudden thought occurred to me.

It seemed lost, that star. And alone. In such a big place as the heavens, I guess this was always a possibility. I harkened back to what my grandfather had said. When you see a shooting star, it meant change was coming for some Wugmort. I had to believe that the change was finally coming for me. Whether it would be my death or my escape from here, only this coming light would tell.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the shooter. The little tail of fire kept going, powering the thing to, I’m sure, unimaginable speeds. I had never really believed my grandfather, just as youngs often don’t believe their elders when they’re trying to teach something. Yet now, sitting here, I somehow knew that Virgil had been entirely literal when telling me this. Change would come. It just would. Maybe he knew that one light, it would come for me. I kept sitting there and kept staring at the little pulse of brilliance. Since I had never glimpsed one before, I had no idea how long it would be visible. For some reason, in my head, I desperately wanted to keep it in sight. If it disappeared, it seemed to me, then so might I.

And it was there, for the longest time, until something came to dispel it for good. Or at least from my eyes. The break of the first section of light.

When the glow finally vanished, I rubbed my eyes and stretched my limbs. I picked up Harry Two and settled him into his cradle. I soared into the sky, performed a long dive and then came swooping back up into the lightening sky. Harry Two seemed to love this maneuver and barked happily.

I landed on the outskirts of the Delphias’ property. I didn’t wake them, though they would be up soon enough. I had brought a bit of parchment with me and used my ink stick to mark a few words down and then slipped it inside the Delphias’ door.

I bent down and gave Harry Two a long hug. It was hard to leave Wugs. It seemed just as hard to say good-bye to a beloved canine. I told Harry Two to stay with the Delphias. That the note would be read and they would understand.

In the note I had asked Delph to take in Harry Two if I was killed this light. I knew he would. My canine would make a wonderful addition to the lives of Delph and Duf and that was a good thing. And I didn’t feel bad about this. Harry Two had given me much happiness in the brief time I’d had him. I hoped I had at least done the same for him. Other than Harry Two, I really had no instructions to give. I had nothing left that anyone would care about. John was provided for. My parents were gone. My digs would go back to being empty. Another Finisher would take my place at Stacks. Life in Wormwood would go on, just like it always had.

I didn’t fly back to my digs. I walked. By the time I got there, it was nearly time for me to go to the pitch. I would get there neither early nor late but rather right on the sliver. I was surprised to see some flowers that Wugs had left in front of my door with parchments attached containing hopeful words. I took them all inside and placed them on the table, where they looked awfully fine.

I sat alone in my chair in front of the empty fireplace and counted off the slivers in my head. I turned to the window when I heard footfalls outside. Wugs were headed to the pitch. I waited a bit more and then rose and checked to make sure Destin was securely sewn into my cloak. As I touched the chain, it was warm. I took that as a good sign. I’m not sure why. Then I reached my hand in my pocket and touched first the Stone and then the Elemental. For luck? Again, I wasn’t sure.

I went around the room and touched everything I had found here. The stacks of clothes and papers. And the drawings I had made as a very young. I looked over every square inch of what used to be my home and was once more where I dwelled. As I opened the door to leave, I took one last look around. Then I stepped outside, closed the door and headed to the pitch.

It seemed that every Wugmort in Wormwood was here this light. I had truly never seen the pitch fuller. When I looked over at the betting boards, I was stunned to see not a single wager had been placed. Litches McGee and Roman Picus did not seem especially bothered by this. In fact, they were together mumbling things, their hands free of parchment bits.

When Wugs saw me coming, something truly extraordinary happened. They started to clap. Just a few at first, but then others took it up and within a sliver, the pitch was thundering with the sounds of hands coming together. As I continued to march forward and the sea of Wugs respectfully parted so I could pass, I felt my face redden and my eyes moisten.

Selene Jones, who ran the Noc Shop on the High Street, stepped forward and said excitedly, “Did your future reading last night, Vega. And guess what.”

I looked at her expectantly. “What?” I finally asked.

“Well, let’s just say I see bloody stacks of coins in your future, luv.”

I smiled appreciatively, yet her words did not hearten me much. To my knowledge, Selene Jones had never made one correct prophecy in all her sessions.

Darla Gunn came up seemingly from nowhere and wrung my hand. “You are so brave, Vega, so brave. But I still wish you weren’t doing this. I mean, we just got your hair looking so nice, didn’t we?”

I laughed and it did my spirits good. “You got my hair looking nice, Darla. I had nothing to do with it.”

I looked away when tears filled her eyes. I was not going to let myself cry. Ladon-Tosh would probably just kill me harder.

Since there was only one bout this light, I was directed to the very center of the pitch where a special ring had been laid out. It seemed so small that I wagered Ladon-Tosh could simply stand at one end and kill me with one blow without either of us moving our feet. The strategy Delph had laid out was a good one, but right now it seemed absurdly inadequate. My confidence had totally deserted me.

The referee was old Silas, whose eyesight had apparently worsened over the last few lights and nights, because he was standing at one end of the ring and looking the wrong way for the last two combatants to arrive. He remained that way until Thansius emerged from the crowd and gently pointed him in the correct direction.

I next watched as Bogle and the carriage rattled up, and out stepped not just Morrigone but John. I caught her gaze for an instant but then she looked away. John’s eyes lingered on me. I had hoped to see something in them, something that told me … I wasn’t exactly sure what. But he dutifully followed Morrigone onto the platform and took his seat while the other members of Council sat in a row below.

Krone was seated at the end of this row with Duk Dodgson next to him. They both seemed self-satisfied, as though my fate had already been decided.

Their superior smiles made every muscle in my body tighten. Ladon-Tosh might end up killing me, but the lout would know he had been in a fight.

Delph showed up a sliver later. He had Harry Two next to him. He caught my eye and held my canine up as if to say firmly, I’ve got him till you come to take him back.

I smiled and then had to look away before the tears started to fly. I was here to fight, not cry. The clapping for me had continued all this time and then it abruptly stopped. A moment later, I knew why.

Ladon-Tosh came striding down the path to the ring. He had on a plain shirt and a pair of old, dark trousers. He was barefoot. His eyes looked neither right nor left. Wugs pushed against each other trying to get out of his way. As I watched him approach, I felt Destin start to grow cold against my skin and I panicked. Was my chain abandoning me at this critical time?

The official bell rang. Silas beckoned both Ladon-Tosh and me to the center of the ring so he could deliver his instructions. I stepped forward although my legs seemed unwilling to follow the command of my mind to move. Ladon-Tosh stepped right up to the center as though he were going for a stroll. He didn’t look at me, and I could manage only to shoot glimpses at him. My heart was pounding so fiercely in my ears that I could barely hear Silas’s by-now-familiar words.

“Fair fight. Keep it clean. Penalty if one of you falls out of the ring.” Here Silas stopped and seemed to remember what had happened to Newton Tilt. He glanced at me and for the first time I think the wizened old bloke actually saw me. His look of fear for me was not very encouraging. And then from the corner of my eye, I saw Ezekiel stride toward the crowd in his flowing white robe. I assumed he was here to measure me for the box and an appropriate prayer when all was said and done.

Silas stepped back, but before the second bell for the start of combat was sounded, Thansius came forward.

He said, “This bout will determine the champion of this Duelum. As you all know, tragedy struck last time and we all hope that it does not do so again.”

He looked at Ladon-Tosh when he said this part, but the latter’s gaze rested on a spot about six feet above my head. I even looked that way to see what he was staring at, but there was nothing there.

Thansius continued. “If Vega Jane wins, she will be the first female champion ever and more than entitled to the one-thousand-coin reward.” He looked at Ladon-Tosh again, but since the git obviously wasn’t even paying attention, whatever else Thansius was going to say, he apparently decided not to. “Let the bout begin,” he said, and stepped clear of the ring.

Silas motioned Ladon-Tosh and me to opposite ends of the ring and I obeyed with alacrity, naturally wanting to put as much space between us as I could.

Right before the bell sounded, I looked over and saw Domitar. He was staring directly at me. I could swear he was saying something to me. I tried to hear the words.

“All before. Done it before” was all I could make out.

Then my attention snapped back to the bout. The bell rang. Neither Ladon-Tosh nor I moved. For all my feelings of hopelessness, I had my strategy — well, actually Delph’s strategy — and I intended to carry it out.

For two long slivers, we simply stood there staring at each other. My heart continued to beat like a runaway slep as time ticked by. The crowd was holding its collective breath. No one was moving there either.

And then it happened. I have no idea how or when. It just happened.

I saw the fist coming at me so fast it seemed impossible to avoid its crushing impact. But as the knuckles raced at me, I flipped sideways in the air and came down on both feet. The crowd screamed as Ladon-Tosh was suddenly now on my side of the ring.

“Oh my holy Steeples,” screamed Darla Gunn.

I circled away from Ladon-Tosh as he straightened up and looked at his fist as though he couldn’t quite fathom how I was not dead.

He turned toward me. I went into a crouch and studied him. And then another amazing thing happened. Everything, and I mean everything, slowed down. My breathing, the movements of the crowd, the birds in the sky, the wind and even the sounds. They all seemed to be moving at a mere hundredth of their normal speeds. I watched one Wug sneeze and it seemed to take him a sliver to accomplish. Another excited Wug was jumping up and down and it seemed as if he was suspended in the air before he began his descent.

But most important of all was the slowing down of Ladon-Tosh.

The next punch came, but I saw it so well in advance that I had already moved, it seemed, before he even threw it. In fact, I leisurely watched it go by at the spot I had been a moment ago. He whirled around and looked at me. Yes, now Ladon-Tosh was looking at me. I was glad the git had finally condescended to actually see who he was trying to kill. Though when I saw the eyes, I wished he hadn’t. They were terrifying, to be sure. But they were also something else.

They were familiar. I had seen them before; I just didn’t remember where.

I heard a scream. I had lost my focus and I spun out of the way in the nick of time as a fist screamed past me with so much force that it seemed to carry a wake of turbulent air with it. This time I struck. I slammed my fist into my opponent’s back with such violence that I was convinced I had punched a hole right through him.

Pain shot all the way up my arm and burst into my shoulder. I had never hit anything so hard in my life. Not even the rock cobble had been that hard. And I had exploded him. I hadn’t exploded Ladon-Tosh, though I had accomplished the seemingly impossible.

I had knocked him flat on his face. A great cheer rang from the crowd.

But as I stood there, my right arm dangling like a limp rope, I had nothing much to cheer about, for Ladon-Tosh was getting back up. I had hit him as hard as I possibly could and he was getting back up with no signs of permanent damage. I had forgotten Delph’s instructions. Tap-tap. Don’t hit him hard at first. But I had. And it was an enormous mistake.

I had an instant to glance toward the platform and shuddered as I saw Morrigone staring directly at Ladon-Tosh, as though she were willing him to stand. And then I knew I couldn’t win. I knew that Ladon-Tosh had an ally I couldn’t defeat.

He came at me again. With my right arm totally useless, but my senses otherwise intact, I easily sidestepped him. Instead of hitting him with my good hand — since it would be good no longer — I spun around, supported by my one able arm, and flicked my feet against his buttocks as he flew past me. This propelled him out of the ring and into the crowd. Wugs ran hither and thither trying to get out of his way. He was like an enraged creta, only a hundred times more powerful and a thousand times more murderous.

Old Silas toddled forward and said, “Wug out of ring. Penalty against Ladon-Tosh. Free blow for Vega Jane. Well done, lass.”

Fortunately, Delph snatched Silas out of the way before he was crushed by Ladon-Tosh leaping back into the ring to attack me.

He was now throwing punch after punch with astonishing speed. I dodged them all and then I started to employ my other tactic. I started to race in a circle around him. He spun too, punching at me but landing nothing. I told myself that he had to tire at some point.

When I glanced over at Morrigone, she still had her gaze fixed on Ladon-Tosh, yet I could see the rising panic in her eyes. She was upset that I was not yet dead. She was afraid I might win. Well, I just might.

I ran one more circle around him and then leapt and kicked him in the head with my left foot. Again, the shattering pain swept down my limb. Again, he went down hard. I noted with satisfaction that he took longer to rise this time. But rise he did.

And I had made another even more egregious mistake. I could run with one arm. I could not with one leg. “Damn!” I screamed, so furious was I with myself.

Then I smacked myself in the head with my good arm.

The Stone. The bleeding Adder Stone. I snatched it from my pocket and, concealing it in my hand, I swiftly ran it up and down my damaged limbs.

They were damaged no longer, but I once more lost my focus. I heard the crowd collectively scream and I felt the blow hit me across my shoulders. I was knocked fifty feet into the air and crashed hard well outside the ring.

Ladon-Tosh did not wait for me to reenter it. He leapt and came down hard with his elbow pointed downward right on top of me. Or where I had been an instant before. He struck the ground so hard, it dug a hole in the dirt three feet deep, and about twenty Wugs toppled over from the ground, shaking with the impact.

I raced back to the ring, turned and breathlessly waited for him to come. I knew the only thing that had saved my life when the blow had struck was Destin. Its links still felt ice-cold to the touch as though it had absorbed almost all the energy of a blow that a few lights ago had easily killed a fully grown male Wug.

If I couldn’t hit my opponent without crippling myself, how could I win? If this kept up much longer, one of his blows would land squarely on target and it would be over. Despite my tactics, he was not growing tired.

But I was. My lungs were heaving and my heart, I believed, had reached its maximum pumping capacity. I could not last much longer.

Ladon-Tosh stood there frozen, but I could sense the tremendous building up of energy coming from him. He was about to put everything he had into one blow that would hit me so hard, there might be nothing left. I felt my heart in my throat, and my stomach gave a sickening lurch.

I glanced over at Morrigone. Her gaze was only on Ladon-Tosh. I had never seen her face look so hard, so … unrelenting. She had obviously made her decision. I was to die. And Ladon-Tosh was the tool with which she would kill me. Newton Tilt had doubtless been a mistake for which she had grieved mightily. I doubted she would be nearly as saddened by my passing.

I looked back at Ladon-Tosh and knew the moment had come.

And yet as he made his final charge, it occurred to me exactly what I had to do. I had to end this. And I had to end it now. He was trying to kill me. Well, that was a two-way path.

Not a natural killer, I steeled myself to become one.

I slipped off my cloak. Underneath I had on a shirt and trousers. But in my cloak was Destin. I gripped the chain at both ends and waited.

When Ladon-Tosh struck with a speed that was beyond a blur, I had already somersaulted over him. When he sailed past me, I turned in midair and flung the cloak and with it Destin around his neck. I landed on the ground, set my feet and pulled with every bit of strength I had.

The giant Ladon-Tosh was lifted off his feet, flew backward over me and, as he went past, I crossed my arm and thus the chain, as I had with the maniack in the looking glass.

The result was not the same as in the glass. In fact, it was not anything like it.

I heard the screech before I saw anything.

I was instantly paralyzed with fear by the sound. But what I then saw made the sound seem as nothing.

Ladon-Tosh was rising slowly. Actually, Ladon-Tosh was coming apart at the seams. His head was gone but his body was now upright. Bloodcurdling screams came from up and down the crowd. Both females and males fainted at the sight.

“Bloody Hels” cascaded through the air like flocks of frightened birds.

But that was not the worst part. I knew the worst part. It was about to happen.

Ladon-Tosh’s body burst open, half his torso going left, half to the right.

“No,” screamed a voice. I looked up in time to see Morrigone yelling this over and over. “No! No!”

I searched the crowd and saw Krone. He was racing away with Dodgson, his face filled with panic and dread. Krone even ran over a very young in his escape. The bloody cowards.

The crowd had turned as one to run. Now they turned back for an instant to see what Morrigone was screaming at. I already knew. The screeches were ear-shattering.

The two jabbits that had nearly killed me at Stacks catapulted from the husk that had once been Ladon-Tosh. How creatures so large had been compressed into the space of one Wug, albeit a big Wug, I couldn’t fathom. They hit the ground so hard that the pitch seemed to whipsaw under our legs. Then five hundred heads and with them one thousand eyes looked at all the Wugs so perilously close, and I could almost see the lustful hunger in the monsters’ sinister orbs.

Every Wug ran for his or her life. Parents snatched up their youngs and very youngs. Screams kept coming, but they came nowhere near to drowning out the screeches that heralded a slaughter of Wugs about to occur.

I glanced once more at Morrigone. To her credit, she had not run away. Indeed, she was waving her hands and it looked like, as difficult as it was for me to believe, she was trying to will Ladon-Tosh back together again. But it was clear that she had not been able to control the creatures with Tilt and it was just as clear that she would not be able to stop them now. As I watched, she glanced at me. Tears were in her panic-filled eyes. She looked desperate.

Cries of “Outliers, it’s the Outliers come” sprang up and were repeated from Wug mouths everywhere.

I looked for Thansius and found him trying to fight his way forward through the sea of Wugs and toward the jabbits. He drew something from under his robe. It was the same sword he had used at the Council hearing. He said he had no special powers, but what the Wug did have in abundance was courage. Yet I didn’t think he would get a chance to use his blade in time.

I thought this because both jabbits had risen up, their innumerable fangs exposed, and they were just about to launch themselves against the nearest Wugs. It would be a bloodbath not seen here for hundreds of sessions.

I looked back once more at Morrigone. She was staring dead at me. Her mouth was moving. She was yelling something. Finally, I could make it out over the screams of the crowd.

“Help me, Vega! Help me!”

I don’t remember reaching in my pocket and slipping on my glove. I really don’t. I willed the Elemental to full size, sprang upward into the air, twisted my body to the left — and the golden spear launched from my grip with as much torque as I could place upon it.

It shot through the air just as the jabbits struck. They attacked in parallel, as I knew the beasts did, which made it perfectly perfect for me. The Elemental hit the first jabbit, passed through its body and collided with the second jabbit a moment later.

There was a tremendous explosion and the shock wave struck me while I was still sixteen feet off the ground. I was propelled forward like a fish by a great wave. It seemed that I flew a long, long way before hitting something extraordinarily hard.

And then everything was gone.