CHAPTER SEVEN

The Ponytailed Man

The Learjet bucked like an angry horse as it descended through the clouds above Yellowknife, jerking up and down and from side to side as though determined to throw out its sole, white-knuckled passenger.

Rex Major gripped the arms of his seat and gritted his teeth. He hated flying – or rather, he hated flying in these cursed contraptions held up by nothing more substantial than air flowing around their wings, without a whiff of good solid magic. When he did have to fly – and in this strange age, it was necessary in order to conduct his business – he usually took Excalibur Computer System’s Boeing 737, whose massive size he found comforting. But on this trip, the “optics,” as his public relations advisor called it, dictated that he use the Learjet, whose luxurious interior was a plus but whose small dimensions he found alarming. By his using the Lear, owned by him personally rather than Rex Major Industries, his PR staff hoped to enhance the plausibility of his claim that he was making this trip purely out of curiosity. As it was, the stock price of Thunderhill Diamonds Inc. had risen because of speculation that he was about to invest in the company. If he’d flown to Yellowknife in the ECS Boeing, complete with entourage, that price might have skyrocketed – and made it that much more expensive for him if he did decide to invest.

At the peak of his powers, he had loved to fly, sometimes putting his mind into a bird and soaring through the clouds on two honest, feathered wings – not like the ugly, rigid metallic things now holding them so tentatively in the air – sometimes simply rising from the ground in human form, using his magic to counteract the constant, hungry sucking of the Earth...gravity, they called it now.

Once he had re-forged Excalibur, claimed it as his own, and forced open the doorway between Earth and Faerie, he would fly like that again. But right now his powers were so diminished he couldn’t even ensure that the metal monstrosity in whose belly he rode didn’t immolate itself and him in one final angry plunge. If that happened, he would die, and all his ambitions with him. Though all-but-immune to aging, he could still be killed. And if he were, the Queen and Council of Clades might continue their tyranny over Faerie for another millennium, without challenge.

A lurch made him gasp and squeeze the armrests so hard his fingers turned white, but it was immediately followed by a second, softer lurch, and then the roar of the jet’s engines, and he realized that while he had been busy convincing himself he was about to die, they had landed.

He looked out the window for his first glimpse of Yellowknife and saw nothing but swirling snow, lit intermittently by the flashing lights of the plane, as they taxied to the tiny terminal. A few moments later he was out in that storm, flipping up the collar of his overcoat and muttering two-thousand-year-old Faerie curses (the old ones were the best ones).

After that unpleasant interval, the terminal seemed almost homey. Its warm yellow walls were offset by hanging banners the color of northern skies and ice, a reminder that they weren’t in the soft southland any more – as if the storm raging outside wasn’t reminder enough. A tall, heavyset man with no hair on his head but lots on his chin approached, his hand outstretched.

“Mr. Major?”

Major shook the proffered hand. “Victor Ursu, I presume?”

“That’s me. Vice-president for investor relations. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Ursu’s deep voice, as big as the rest of him, boomed through the terminal. Major saw people turning to look, then whisper to each other, and knew he had been recognized. He sighed. As Merlin, he had often gone about his business incognito, but a millennium and a half ago he hadn’t had to deal with mass media and the Internet splashing his photo all over the place.

Of course, he consoled himself, he was still incognito in the most important sense: nobody knew who he really was.

“What time tomorrow will we leave for the mine?” he asked.

Ursu shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think we’ll be able to go tomorrow at all. This storm is going to get worse before it gets better. They’re closing the airport. You made it in just under the wire.”

Major was glad he hadn’t had that knowledge a few minutes earlier, when he’d been gripping the arms of the Learjet’s seat. He felt a flash of annoyance at hearing it now. In the old days, no storm could have delayed him. “Then when is it expected to clear? I’m a busy man.” It was a foolish thing to say. He knew Ursu could no more control the weather than he could…now. But his new persona as a hard-nosed businessman was so ingrained that phrases like that came to him almost automatically. They usually got results.

Not this time, of course. “I know you are, sir. And I’m sorry things turned out this way. But they’re saying this storm won’t let up until tomorrow night. It’s a big one. Best we can hope for is to get out to the mine Monday morning.”

Major sighed. “I assume my hotel has high-speed Internet access?”

Ursu nodded. “We made sure of that, sir.”

“Then at least I can get some work done. Where are my bags?”

An extra day, he thought as Ursu led him to the baggage claim area. A stuffed polar bear snarled at him from a plaster ice floe at the centre of the carousel. Major bared his own teeth at the long-dead predator. I’ve waited fifteen centuries. What’s one more day?

His hotel was nice enough, in a generic sort of way, though it fell far short of the plush accommodations to which he was accustomed. His usual hotel suites put the royal apartments in Camelot to shame – although in one sense, even the lowliest motel could say the same, since unlike Arthur and Guinevere’s drafty rooms, modern motels had both running water and central heating.

And he had to admit, as he returned to his room late that night after a leisurely supper with Ursu in what he was told was the city’s best restaurant, followed by a few drinks in the hotel lounge, that both food and wine were better in this age than they had been in Arthur’s.

Feeling pleasantly stuffed and just a little tipsy, Major set up his laptop and checked his email. There were, as was usually the case after he’d been offline for a few hours, dozens. Several were flagged as urgent, but his eye immediately went to one from Keith Pritchard.

Pritchard had told him, the last time they had spoken by phone, that the magical program Major had sent him for his smartphone had worked like a charm, homing in on a young girl named Ariane Forsythe, little more than a child, the power of the Lady that clung to her drawing the magic in the smartphone app like a magnet. If she were the same person the Lady had tried to contact two and a half years ago, Major suspected the Lady’s previous failure had been due to her young age. And the fact she was still so young, he’d thought, would make her easy to intimidate. He’d sent Pritchard another magical program, one that would deliver a terrifying warning right to the girl’s computer. Major had fully expected that to be the end of the matter.

He opened the email, and discovered he was wrong. I delivered the warning. I don’t think it worked. The girl and that boy I told you about, the one she’s been hanging out with, spent the evening on her computer. The tracer you had me put on her computer usage shows they were researching you.

Then, after the boy left, something very strange happened. There was a surge of magic, and then the girl vanished from the scanner completely. A few minutes later she showed up again, from outside the house, even though I never saw her leave.

I await your instructions. Pritchard.

Major stared at the email, feeling a sudden unfamiliar sensation: worry.

They spent the evening researching me? Then they’ve figured out I’m Merlin. And they must know I’m heading to the Thunderhill diamond mine. And that means...

“She knows,” he whispered. “By the Tree, she knows where the shard is!”

And a surge of magic, followed by her disappearance, and then her return from an unexpected direction? It could only mean translocation.

Major swore. She didn’t just have a little of the Lady’s power. She had all of it – or at least much of it. He nervously fingered the ruby stud in his ear. Magically, she’s probably stronger than I am. She is the Lady of the Lake in this time and place, while I...

While he, until he had Excalibur, could barely claim to still be Merlin.

But non-magically...non-magically, she was only a girl. And if she would not heed his warning...well, there were other ways to dissuade her.

The most direct method would be to have her killed, but that was impossible. The power of the Lady and the power of Excalibur were inextricably bound. Now that she had the Lady’s power, if she were to die, at his hand or even accidentally, the power would die with her. Excalibur would become nothing but a rusting sword, the door to Faerie would slam shut, and he...

He would still be Rex Major, powerful, wealthy...but no longer ageless. Trapped outside of Faerie, with the door to its magic no longer even ajar, he would live out a normal human lifespan – then he, too, would die.

Killing her would be killing himself and all his hopes.

He was going to pull that ruby right out of his ear if he didn’t quit fingering it. He forced himself to place his hands palms-down on the desk and hold them still.

Since he couldn’t kill the girl, he could see only two possible ways to remove the threat she posed. One was to sequester her until it was too late for her to act against him. In a way, he liked that better than killing her: it echoed his own centuries-long imprisonment, imposed on him with the help of the Lady of the Lake. The Lady might be beyond the reach of an appropriate revenge, but her heir was not.

The second way was through fear. He didn’t know what the Lady had told her. Quite possibly she didn’t know that he couldn’t kill her; if that were the case he could at least make her fear for her life. After all, just because he couldn’t kill her, that didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt her...badly. And he could also make her fear for the lives of those close to her – the boy, for instance. Her loved ones were not protected by the power.

Abduction first, I think, he decided. Lock her away and she will no longer be a threat.

He had already Commanded Pritchard to obey all his instructions, no matter what the sacrifice to himself, so his minion would certainly do what must be done. Major sighed. A pity to lose him, but I can easily replace him. And lose Pritchard he most likely would. If – when – he was caught, he would serve a very long sentence in prison for kidnapping a teenage girl.

Ah, well. An operative in prison might be useful.

And if Pritchard failed...well, there was still fear. She had a computer, and that computer could serve as a doorway, for him, or for...something else.

He smiled. Then he picked up his cell phone and dialed Pritchard’s number.

~ • ~

Ariane started awake and sat up in bed.

Gray morning light filtered through the curtains. She could hear Aunt Phyllis singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” downstairs, accompanied by Pendragon meowing for his breakfast, but none of those things had awakened her.

What had jerked her out of sleep was a dream. As she had done the night before, she had been rushing through pipes and drains and streams and lakes, water among water, but unlike the night before, she had been unable to find any way home, anywhere where she could re-form her body, and she had felt herself growing thinner and thinner, more diluted, until she had been on the verge of vanishing completely...

She shuddered, and threw off the covers, glad for once to be getting out of bed early on a Sunday.

She pulled on her favourite old jeans and a worn-but-warm Saskatchewan Roughriders sweatshirt. She checked her e-mail. Nothing from Wally.

After a stop in the bathroom – no surprises when she touched the water – she descended to the kitchen. Aunt Phyllis, wearing a pink terrycloth bathrobe over a long flannel nightgown, turned from the counter and held out her favourite rose-patterned teapot. “Good morning, dear. You’re up earlier than usual. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thanks. I’m supposed to meet Wally at the Human Bean for a latte.” Trying to ignore Aunt Phyllis’s raised eyebrows, she hurried on, “We’re going to talk about our project.” She remembered Wally’s request. “Oh, yeah – and can I take some of those cookies you made last night?”

“Of course, dear. But dress warm! It frosted last night and the radio said it’s barely going to get above freezing today. We might even get snow.”

Ariane knew exactly how cold the night had been, having been splashing around in a prairie lake in the middle of it. But she couldn’t very well tell Aunt Phyllis that. “I will.” She gave Pendragon’s head a good scratch, then headed out.

The Human Bean was a coffee shop located in an old house seven or eight blocks from Ariane’s home. It was within easy walking distance of Oscana Collegiate and St. Dunstan’s High, which made it a favourite of the smallish coffee-drinking subset of the high school crowd...but not on a Sunday morning, when most of her fellow students were sound asleep. Ariane didn’t really care if anyone saw her with Wally, but she thought it might be better for Wally if no one saw him with her.

Oh, who am I kidding?, she thought as she headed down the front walk, carrying a dozen of Aunt Phyllis’s cookies in a brown paper bag. A thin layer of frost had made the concrete slippery, and gave it and the still slightly green grass bordering it a pale, washed-out look. Her breath rose in white clouds. The tipsy gnome under the spruce looked as cold and miserable as she had been when she’d crawled out of the lake. Wally and I couldn’t be worse social outcasts if we came down with Ebola.

As she crossed College Avenue she heard a car start up behind her. Ariane stiffened, and a chill that had nothing to do with the frosty morning ran up her spine. From the far side of the street, she glanced back, half-expecting to see a white Ford Focus headed her way. But she relaxed when she saw it was just a blue Saturn, turning onto College.

Nothing to do with me, she told herself as she walked west. Sure enough, the Saturn drove past without slowing down, turned north, and disappeared.

Relieved, she crossed Winnipeg Street at the light, then turned north for one block before heading west again. As she turned the corner, her foot skidded on the frost-covered sidewalk and she almost fell. She gasped, caught herself, and then laughed ruefully. It’d be the height of irony if she broke her leg walking to the coffee shop before she’d even started her dangerous quest.

A little more carefully, she carried on. Once she was past the hospital, she turned north again. The Human Bean was just a couple of blocks ahead.

To her right, red and orange leaves, interspersed with shrivelled, purplish-black berries, still clung to a high hedge. Behind it rose a dilapidated two-storey house. Just before she reached the hedge, the blue Saturn shot out backwards from a driveway behind the hedge and jerked to a tire-chirping stop, blocking the sidewalk. The driver’s door burst open, and a tall man, gray-bearded and ponytailed, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, burst from the driver’s seat and dashed around the back of the car.

Ariane froze, but the frost saved her. The man’s foot slipped out from under him and he fell against the car, grabbing the side-view mirror for support. Ariane regained control of her muscles and ran into the street. The man swore and charged after her. She could hear his feet hitting the pavement just three or four metres behind her. His legs are longer. He’s faster than me –

 – but maybe not as agile!

She cut left into an empty driveway. A leap over a hedge landed her in a weed-grown backyard, and she scrambled over a low fence of weathered wood into the alley beyond. Her pursuer dropped back. A clatter and a curse suggested he had fallen over the fence, but before she reached the end of the alley, she could hear the crunching sound of his feet grinding against gravel. Once again he was drawing closer and closer.

She burst onto a street. Tires squealed as a car braked hard to avoid her. She dodged around its tail and ran into the alley across the street. She was hoping her pursuer wouldn’t follow her with a potential witness in the car, but he didn’t stop. Still, the car had blocked him long enough that she gained a little ground. Halfway down the alley she spotted a narrow path leading between two houses on her right. She darted through it, dashed across another street, and plunged between two more houses into the next alley.

When she glanced back, she couldn’t see the man anymore. She slackened her pace, trying to catch her breath. Twenty more steps...thirty...no sign of him. She slowed even more, looking back down the alley as she came abreast of a dilapidated garage with leaning walls and peeling green paint. She became aware of something in her hand, glanced down, and laughed shakily when she saw that she was still clutching the brown paper bag containing Aunt Phyllis’s cookies.

But then she screamed and dropped the bag as the man burst out from behind the garage. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, then clamped his free hand tightly over her mouth, choking off her scream. He forced her arm up behind her back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he growled in her ear, though he already was. “But you have to come with me.”

She tried to struggle, but he jerked her arm up higher, making her gasp. He began dragging her down the alley, back toward his car. She rolled her eyes, searching for water...if she could find water, she could do something...but there wasn’t so much as a puddle.

“Hey!” someone shouted. “Let her go!” The man twisted them both around, and her heart leaped when she saw Wally charging toward them, carrying something that looked like a sword.

~ • ~

Wally had arrived twenty minutes earlier than he needed to at the Human Bean. He had long suffered from the curse of punctuality, so he was used to waiting for other people to show up. And getting out of the house early was always the best way to avoid crossing paths with Flish, especially on weekends.

When he reached the Human Bean, Wally decided to wait for Ariane on the sidewalk. He only had enough money for one cup of coffee, and he didn’t want to finish it before Ariane got there. The rotund proprietor of the coffee shop was okay with kids lounging if they had bought stuff, but he didn’t much care for them “just hanging out.”

Wally didn’t mind the chill in the air – he’d always kind of liked the cold. He amused himself with a broken hockey stick he found lying in the gutter, practicing fencing moves with it, although of course it was much heavier than an epée or even a sabre, and the balance was all wrong...not that he was a good enough swordsman for that to matter. His recently sprained wrist didn’t even twinge. That was good, he supposed, except it meant he’d have to go back to gym class.

After a few minutes, he wandered to the corner, still clutching the hockey stick, to see if Ariane was in sight. He looked down the street and up the avenue, but didn’t see her. He was about to return to his post on the sidewalk when he spotted a familiar figure in the alley – Ariane? Just as he was going to call out to her, a man with a gray ponytail leaped out from behind a garage and grabbed her arm. Ariane’s scream broke off abruptly. “Hey!” Hefting the hockey stick, Wally charged across the street. “Let her go!”

The man twisted around to face him, holding Ariane’s arm pinned behind her with one hand and keeping his other hand over her mouth. “Mind your own business, kid!”

“She’s my friend!” Wally skidded to a stop and gripped the hockey stick tighter, pointing it at the man. “Let her go!”

“I’m warning you...” the man growled – and then yelped when Wally whacked his left elbow with the stick. He released Ariane in surprise, and grunted when the stick jabbed his stomach – Wally had meant to hit him harder, but his target had pulled back.

Ariane darted to one side, out of the man’s reach. Wally advanced en garde. “Next one is below the belt!”

The man spat out an expletive and tried to grab the stick, but Wally danced aside, and as the man’s hands closed on empty air, he stumbled, falling to his hands and knees. Wally kicked one arm out from under him and gave him a backhanded whack to the rear. The man fell down face-first.

“Didn’t say where below the belt, did I?” Wally said.

Ariane’s attacker staggered to his feet and raised a hand to his bloody nose. Wally held the stick ready in case he attacked again. The man gave Wally one last glare, and then ran away without a word, ponytail bouncing.

Wally hurried back to Ariane.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. Considering her pale face, Wally was pretty sure she was lying. “He didn’t hurt me. In fact he promised he wouldn’t.”

“We should call the police...”

“No!”

Wally stared at her. “No? A strange man just grabbed you and you don’t want to tell the police? What if he grabs someone else?”

Ariane shook her head. “It’s only me he’s after.”

“You sound like you know him.” Wally felt a sudden surge of suspicion. “He’s not a, a drug dealer or something like that?”

Ariane’s laughter carried only a slight tinge of hysteria. “You watch too much TV.”

“Only news, documentaries and science fiction,” Wally said, relieved. “So who is he, then?”

“I don’t know his name, but I know who he works for.” Ariane took a deep breath. “Rex Major.”

Wally stared in the direction the man had run off. “He was the guy who was parked outside your house when the computer went crazy?”

“Unless there are two old guys with ponytails stalking me, yeah.”

“But you should still call the police! Even if he’s not a threat to anyone else, he’s a threat to you.”

“If we have him arrested, Rex Major will know we know he’s after us. I’d rather keep him in the dark.”

“Don’t you think he already knows we know he’s after us?”

“He may know we know Merlin is after us. But he may not know we know he, Major, is Merlin.”

Wally groaned. “My head hurts.”

“Look,” Ariane said, “right now Merlin has all the advantages. So anything I know that he doesn’t, or at least that he doesn’t know I know...maybe it will help. Right now he may not even know that I know he’s Rex Major. I’d like to keep it that way.”

Now that the adrenaline was draining away, Wally felt a little shaky. If he could see himself, he might even be as pale as Ariane. What if that guy had had a knife? Or a gun? His heroics with the broken hockey stick could have gotten them both killed.

For the first time, Wally realized that a quest in the real world might involve real danger. Uncomfortable things, adventures. Might make you late for dinner...

...or worse.

But he was only the...the sidekick. Ariane was the freaking Lady of the Lake. The decision was hers. Wally’s First Law of Sidekickery: The heroine is always right. He grinned, but the grin dissolved in dismay when something close to his feet caught his eye: a brown paper bag, ripped and stepped-on, from which spilled...

“Oh no! Don’t tell me!”

Ariane followed his gaze, and sighed. “I’m afraid so. Aunt Phyllis’s cookies.”

“That was going to be my breakfast!”

“Cheer up!” Ariane gave him a friendly shove back up the alley. “There are cinnamon buns at the Human Bean...and I’m buying.” She grinned. Colour had returned to her face – she looked more like her usual self. “Because I know something else Rex Major doesn’t know I know.”

“What?” Wally gave the crushed cookies one last, woeful glance over his shoulder.

“I know how to use the Lady’s power to get to the shard of Excalibur. I tested it last night. Major doesn’t know it yet, but he’s in a race – and we’re going to win it.”

“Really?” Wally matched her grin. “Tell me about it...over cinnamon buns.”

He led the way back toward the Human Bean. But he didn’t let go of the broken hockey stick.