CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A Thing of War

During the approach to Yellowknife, the minute he had cellphone coverage, Rex Major called the Learjet’s pilot and asked him how soon they could depart for Toronto.

“No sooner than six this evening,” the pilot said. “I was expecting more downtime, so I’ve been doing some routine maintenance checks. Sorry, sir.”

“No problem,” Major said, though the delay grated at him. He glanced at Ursu. “I’ll go back to the hotel until then. I have some business to conduct anyway.”

Ursu beamed. “I radioed my staff before we left the mine,” he said. “They’re already preparing a draft agreement. I’ll have them send it over to the hotel and we can go over it before you head south.”

Major admired the executive’s decisiveness. If Pritchard was more like this one, he thought, the girl would have been taken care of in Regina. He would have his human resources people make an approach to Ursu in a few weeks. Until he re-forged the shard and took power, he would need talented people around him.

So it was in the lounge just off the lobby that the hotel’s manager found Rex Major, sitting with Ursu, papers spread on the table before them. White-faced, his hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles had turned white, the hotelier said, “Mr. Major. There’s been...an incident.”

Major stared at him. “An incident? What sort of incident?”

“With your luggage...”

Major felt cold. No! She couldn’t have...

“What happened?” he growled.

The manager led him into the offices tucked out of sight behind the front desk and mutely pointed to his suitcase, lying on a table. Next to it were the broken remnants of the locks he had put on it before he left.

Major stepped forward and unzipped the suitcase, telling himself it didn’t matter, that the protective spell he had placed on the sock he had wrapped the shard in would still have prevented Ariane from...

...but he knew even as he reached inside that it had not. Like the locks, the spell had been broken. It had vanished as if it had never been...and so had the shard.

“How did this happen?” he snarled, turning on the hapless manager, who shrank back with real fear in his eyes.

“A couple of kids, one said she was your niece...somehow they tricked the janitor into...” The manager’s voice trailed away. “Mr. Major, I can’t apologize enough. I haven’t contacted the police, I didn’t know if you’d want that, but if something was stolen I –”

Much as part of him wanted to strike the grovelling manager down where he stood, as he certainly would have in Arthur’s day, that wasn’t an option for Rex Major. “Nothing was stolen,” he said, injecting icy calmness into his voice. “I don’t keep anything of value in my suitcase. But I trust you will review your security procedures. And rest assured that neither I nor any member of my organization will ever stay in this establishment again.”

He turned and strode out of the office while the manager was still trying to fumble for more ways to apologize.

The flight to Toronto was long, and Major spent it brooding.

As soon as he had settled in his seat, he checked his email and discovered a note from Human Resources telling him that their Regina sales manager, Keith Pritchard, had been arrested for breaking and entering. A middle-aged woman, one Phyllis Forsythe, armed only with a baseball bat, had nabbed him the moment he had crawled through her second-floor window. He was also accused of stalking a teenage girl. He had of course been suspended immediately and his assistant sales manager had taken over the local operation. Communications was handling the public relations fallout, but didn’t feel it would need a statement from him since the matter was purely local.

Ariane had ignored the first warning through her computer. She had somehow escaped Pritchard’s attempt to abduct her on the street. Even the “Lizardoid” hadn’t scared her off.

Major shook his head. He had exhausted himself preparing that spell which, installed in the girl’s computer via email, had opened a passage to the demon world, allowing one of its denizens to take the form of a monster from a computer game...but that attack had depended on Ariane’s computer remaining connected to the Internet and thus to his power. The connection had been broken before the demon fully materialized, hurling it back into its own world.

The demon would not have killed her – he’d made sure of that in crafting the spell – but it could have killed the boy, or her aunt. Just the presence of such a thing in her bedroom should have terrified her into giving up...but it hadn’t. She’d not only found the shard, she’d claimed it before he had – and stolen it back from him after he’d extorted it from her. Now he faced the unpleasant fact, one he hoped she didn’t realize (as she had the truth about his inability to kill her), that he couldn’t take it from her by force. He couldn’t have pulled it from her hand in the mine pit even if she had been in his grasp instead of the boy.

The shard wanted to be with the Lady of the Lake. And now that it was in her possession again, it would cling to her as it had once clung to Arthur, to whom it had been freely given – and as it would never cling to him, who sought to claim it against its creator’s will. Not until I re-forge it! Then it will be mine. But to re-forge the sword, he needed all the scattered pieces of the sword, and to get the first one back, he would have to once again persuade Ariane to give it up of her own free will, as she had in the pit.

Frightening her hadn’t worked. But threatening someone she loved...it had worked at the pit. It could work again.

And there was something else he could do. The Lady, he was certain, could no longer manifest herself physically through the tiny sliver of an opening left in the door between Faerie and Earth, not after he had pushed her back out of the world on the day she had contacted Ariane. But she would not give up trying to communicate with the girl through dreams. Staring out the window at unbroken clouds far below the plane, Major smiled. In that realm, dear sister, I have power too.

“Mr. Major,” said the pilot’s voice over the cabin speaker, “we’ve started our descent into Toronto.”

Soon he would be back in his penthouse apartment, forty stories up in a glass tower on the shore of Lake Ontario. There he would give his servant from the demon world his orders. If the Lady came to the girl in a dream...it would be a dream neither would soon forget.

He would have that shard back. And in the meantime...

Now that the first shard had been found, the second would make its presence known. Next time, he would not underestimate his opponent. And there were two more shards of the blade and then the hilt to be found after that. With each shard he gathered, his power would grow.

He rubbed the ruby stud in his ear. His victory was still certain. Excalibur would be his.

As the pitch of the engine changed and the plane nosed down, he settled back in his seat.

For once, he looked forward to landing.

~ • ~

Wally spluttered as chlorine-flavored water filled his mouth and nose. Another swimming pool! He reached for the bottom, but couldn’t find it. And the deep end this time! Panicking, he floundered...but then relaxed when he felt Ariane grab him under the arms and kick for the surface. They broke through into the air, and he coughed and choked as she swam him to the nearest ladder.

Holding on to it, he looked around. It was dark. The only light came from the red exit signs over the doors, but he recognized the pool. They were in Oscana Collegiate.

Not that he’d spent much time in the school swimming pool, or he wouldn’t be drowning every time they arrived somewhere. Time to sign up for swimming lessons, he told himself. First thing tomorrow morning.

After he’d somehow explained why he’d missed a whole day of classes...

They climbed onto the tiled lip and Ariane immediately ordered the water off them. The next instant she sagged against Wally, almost tipping them both into the pool again. He grabbed her shoulders and did his best to keep her upright. “Sorry,” she murmured. “So tired...”

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

~ • ~

Although the swimming pool was closed, the school itself was not. Exhausted almost to the point of fainting, Ariane clung to Wally and tried to look as though they were simply taking an innocent stroll. They received strange looks from the people they passed, and there were far more of them than Ariane expected – or wanted. The school’s facilities were frequently rented out to community groups in the evenings, and a number of events seemed to be underway. In one room they passed, two little girls in kilts pranced around pairs of crossed swords to the taped music of a bagpipe. At the sight of the blades, Ariane put her hand on the pocket where she had placed the first piece of her own sword. Soon enough, Major would know that she had it, if he didn’t already. He knew who she was. He knew where she lived.

What would he do next?

As they moved deeper into the school, heading toward the exit on the east side of the building, the one nearest Ariane’s house, they left the community groups behind and moved through deserted hallways, past closed, locked classroom doors, their footsteps echoing on the tile floors.

And then, as they entered the final hallway ending in the exit to the school parking lot, the door banged open – and they found themselves suddenly face to face with Shania and Felicia and...and...whatever-the-other-two-girls’-names-were.

The members of the coven weren’t wearing school clothes tonight. They were in sweats, and carrying badminton racquets, obviously on their way to the gym. The girls were chattering among themselves, but both the chatter and their forward movement stopped dead when they saw Ariane and Wally. Ariane groaned inwardly. Great, she thought. This is all I need. She didn’t think they’d try to do anything to her in the school, but if they forced her outside, she was too exhausted to draw on the Lady’s power to drive them off like last time. Isn’t it bad enough I’ve got to battle Merlin? Do I have to keep fighting high-school bullies, too?

“Let us by, Flish,” Wally said.

“Shut up.” Felicia didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were riveted on Ariane. Her face cycled rapidly from white to an unlovely shade of red, verging toward purple. “I owe you.” She hefted her badminton racquet as if it were a weapon. “I think we should all go outside and...talk.” Her friends moved closer. Wally’s grip on Ariane’s arm tightened.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Ariane said softly.

Felicia snorted. “I’ll bet you don’t.”

Ariane couldn’t stall long enough for her power to regenerate. And without that power, she was helpless. What if they found the shard? If Felicia guessed it was important to Ariane, she would take it, just because she could.

That can’t happen! Ariane shoved her hand into her pocket, gripped the shard in her fist...and gasped.

Power flooded her – not the Lady’s, not her own, but one she didn’t recognize, foreign, yet familiar. She felt like a fading flashlight hooked up to a new battery. And more than that, she felt angry. Vengeful. After everything she had been through, these children dared to challenge her, the Lady of the Lake?

“You don’t want to fight me, either.” Something must have changed in Ariane’s voice, because Felicia’s eyes widened.

“Says who?” Shania said. She had obviously decided to back up Felicia. She raised her own racquet. She probably meant it to be menacing, but to Ariane, flooded with the power of the shard, she just looked silly as she said, “I’d fight you with one hand tied behind my back.”

Enough of this! Ariane smiled. “Will you also fight...them?” She exerted a little – so little! – of the new energy suffusing her. An ancient trough-like water fountain hung from the wall on her left. All four spouts suddenly turned on. At first the water arced and splashed in the trough – but the arcs grew higher and higher, and then the ends of the arcs pulled free of the drain. Snake-like, the water slipped over the edge of the trough, poured onto the floor, and slithered toward the gang of girls, who stared at them with wide, white eyes.

“It’s a trick, just like last time,” Felicia yelled. She took a step forward, fist tight around her racquet. “It’s just water. It can’t hurt you!”

Ariane’s smile grew to a teeth-baring grin. “Can’t it?” There was something different about this power, something harder and tougher than the Lady’s, something that made her want to strike, to break, to bruise, to shatter. The Lady’s power could be used that way, but it didn’t exult in it. This power wanted to be used that way, to be used in battle...

The soft round ends of the tendrils of water sharpened and hardened into needle-like points of ice. Fast as a striking rattlesnake, one snapped across the corridor, centimetres from Felicia’s nose, and hit a locker door with a sound like a rifle shot. It recoiled just as fast, leaving a round hole in the metal.

“Ariane!” Wally cried from behind her. “Stop!”

Ariane heard him, but his plea could not prevail against this new energy filling her. The ice-pointed tendrils rose above the girls, and hovered. “I think you should leave,” Ariane said. Her voice trembled. It took all her waning strength to hold back the tendrils. The power wanted to rend and tear, and part of her wanted to let it. “I think you should run!”

Felicia’s glare didn’t waver. But Shania and the other girls had had enough. As one, they turned and dashed away, banging out through the exit and vanishing into the darkness beyond. Felicia looked around, then back at Ariane. “I don’t know how you’re doing that,” she said, “but this isn’t over.” She pointed her badminton racquet at Ariane. “You hear me? This isn’t over!”

The water-spear inched closer to her. She swatted at it with the racquet, but the mesh simply cut through it without disrupting it at all. Felicia’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a trick,” she said again. “I’ll figure it out. And when I do...” She backed away, never taking her eyes off Ariane...and then she turned and walked, with deliberate casualness, after her friends.

Ariane heaved a deep sigh. The tendrils collapsed, splashing to the floor. With an effort of will, she loosened her aching fingers, releasing the shard of Excalibur. As its power deserted her, she slumped against the lockers. Two boys came around the corner, heading to the exit, and gave them and the puddled water puzzled looks as they passed.

Wally, eyes wide, stared at Ariane as if he’d never seen her before. “You could have killed them,” he said. “I thought you were going to.” He sounded angry, as he had when she had threatened Felicia in the Knights’ pool room, but scared as well. “Ariane, she’s my sister. You can’t...please. Don’t hurt her.”

“It wasn’t me.” Ariane pulled her shaking hand out of her pocket. “It was the sword. It wants battle. It wants…blood.” She turned and looked at the hole the water tendril had punched in the metal of the locker. “We have to keep that out of Major’s hands. We have to.”

Wally put his finger into the hole. “This isn’t going to end well,” he muttered.

Ariane didn’t reply.

They walked home in silence, going first to Wally’s house. Ariane stopped at the end of the front walk. “What will Felicia do to you?”

“Nothing she doesn’t do all the time. Don’t worry about me.” Wally put his hand on her arm. The gesture almost made her cry. I must be tired. “What about you?” Concern warmed his voice. “Will you be all right? Won’t Major come after you again?”

“I don’t know.” But that was a lie. Yes, he will...and after those I love. And there were other shards out there, somewhere. This one, the sword’s point, had been the first. Now that it had been found...would she hear the call of the next? She could hear nothing now, with her power drained...but her power would return. And if she heard the call of the second shard...

...she would have to go after it. She’d have no choice. The Lady’s power, the power she had willingly – foolishly? – accepted into herself, would insist on it: would not let her rest until she once more followed the song of the sword.

But those were problems for a new day. What she needed now, more than anything else, were food and sleep.

Wally looked as though he were about to say something else, but he seemed to think better of it. Instead he squeezed her arm, then released it. “Good night. Call me tomorrow.”

He went inside.

Ariane walked home through a thickening mist. She ran her hand over a parked car as she passed, her fingers skidding over a thin, rough layer of ice. Winter is coming...

A warm yellow light glowed in the windows of Aunt Phyllis’s house. She went inside to find her aunt sitting in her favourite chair in the living room, watching the local news with Pendragon curled up in her lap, the announcer’s voice booming, “Police are continuing their investigation into the shocking case of a respected local businessman allegedly caught breaking into the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl...”

“Hi,” Ariane said.

Aunt Phyllis started, then jumped to her feet – much to Pendragon’s annoyance – and ran to Ariane, enfolding her in a hug that suddenly, achingly, reminded Ariane of her mother. “I’m so glad you’re back. I was getting worried...”

“I lost all our camping equipment.” It was the first time she’d thought about it.

Aunt Phyllis laughed. “As if that matters!” Her laughter died. “Did you get...it?”

Ariane hesitated, then pulled the shard of Excalibur out of her pocket. She felt that greedy surge of aggressive power again – both revolting and...attractive. She held up the shard. “Here it is.”

Aunt Phyllis looked with wide eyes at the piece of pitted steel. “Oh, my!” She reached out to touch it...and then pulled back before her fingers made contact, as though aware of its menacing power. She looked back at Ariane. “But now what?”

Ariane shook her head. “I don’t know.” She tucked the shard away. “Is there anything to eat?”

~ • ~

Wally had a surprise – hardly the first one of the night – when he entered the living room. Instead of Ms. Carson, whom he expected to find sitting ramrod-straight on the couch watching reality TV, and for whom he was already preparing an elaborate story explaining why he’d missed school that day, he saw a portly, balding man with a thick salt-and-pepper beard sitting in the corner armchair, reading the newspaper. A glass of dark beer rested on the table by his right hand. Wally stopped dead. “Dad?” Then he ran to the chair. “Dad!”

His father lowered his newspaper and smiled at him. “Hey, son. Miss me?”

I always do, Wally wanted to say, but something like shyness held him back. His father was so seldom around anymore, it seemed too intimate, like telling a stranger he loved him. He settled for, “Yeah, I guess. Is Mom here too?”

“Ah.” His father folded the newspaper with great deliberation, and set it beside his beer. “I think you’d better sit down, Wally. There’s something about your mother and me that you need to know...”

Ten minutes later Wally was sitting on the frost-covered grass in the back yard, his back pressed against the big tree that had shaded every summer of his life, his knees pulled to his chest. His cheeks were wet from more than the thick, freezing mist. He heard footsteps in the grass, and turned to see Flish, still in her gym clothes, wearing an expression so hard and frozen it wouldn’t have looked out of place on an ice sculpture. To his astonishment, she put her back against the tree and slid down into the grass beside him.

“You heard?” he said.

“I heard,” Flish said in a voice as cold as the mist. “But I already knew.”

“How?” Wally had never guessed. He’d known his parents weren’t home much, and that they were travelling separately, but he’d thought it was just work. He’d never dreamed...

“Because I live in the real world!” Flish snapped. She glared at him, her eyes glittering hard and sharp as diamond in the light spilling into the yard through the kitchen window. “Because I’ve been paying attention. I knew about Dad’s twenty-something bimbo months ago. In fact, I told Mom about her.”

“Months –” That was when Flish had started to change, to become so distant and cold. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I figured you’d take Dad’s side. You’ve always been his favourite.”

“That’s not true!”

“That’s what it looks like from here.”

Wally didn’t want to fight, not now. He looked away, softened his voice. “So what do we do?”

“I’ve already done it. I’m moving out.”

Wally’s head snapped around to face her again. “What?”

“I’m old enough. Dad can’t keep me here against my will. Shania already lives on her own. I’m moving in with her. Tomorrow.”

“But –”

Flish got to her feet. “You’re stuck. Too young. Too bad.” She put her hands on her hips and stared down at him. “One word of sisterly advice. Stay away from that bitch Ariane. I don’t know how she’s pulling those tricks, but they won’t save her forever. And if you’re with her when we take her down...well, don’t come crying to me.” She walked into the house without looking back.

And Walter Arthur Michael Knight the Third, Companion of the Order of the Lady, Sidekick to the Seeker of the Shards, the lucky boy who had found himself on exactly the kind of quest he’d always dreamed about, living the kind of adventure he’d thought only existed in books and video games, put his head down on his knees and bawled like a baby.

~ • ~

Ariane dreamed.

She stood again on the shore of Wascana Lake, staring at that impossible opening in the water. Again she descended the watery stairs and saw the Lady on her throne.

“You have done well,” said the Lady. “And now that you have the first shard, I can reach out to you more easily in dreams, to help you as I can. But understand that this is only the beginning. You must find the remaining four pieces of Excalibur: three more shards of the blade, and then the hilt. You must find them before Merlin does. With each piece you possess your power will grow...but with each piece he possesses his power will grow. And beware: once all the pieces are found, if Merlin holds the greater part of them, he can call the rest of the sword to him and everything you have tried to achieve will have been in vain.”

“I don’t like the power I get from Excalibur,” Ariane said. “It frightens me.”

“It is the power of war. The sword is only happy when it is being wielded in battle. Even when it dwelt with me, I seldom used its power. I feared I would come to love the taste of it too well and seek to rule, as Merlin seeks to rule, instead of to protect. I feared it so much that when I scattered the shards, I even hid them from myself. I cannot tell you where they are. You must listen for them with your power. Listen for the song of the sword, and shard by shard, Excalibur will be yours. But do not use its power unless you have to. It may destroy more than you wish to be destroyed.”

“Did it corrupt Arthur?”

“Arthur was incorruptible, or as near incorruptible as a mortal man may be. No, Excalibur did not corrupt him. It empowered him. He remade his world, and gave birth to a golden age. But he was still human, and that was his undoing. Guinevere betrayed him with his best friend, the kingdom fell into civil war, and his bastard son Mordred fought against him. Both fell and Excalibur returned to me. I broke it and scattered it. The golden age of Camelot fell into chaos and bloodshed. A dark age descended. But not as dark as the age which awaits your world if Merlin re-forges the sword.”

“She liesss,” a new voice said from behind Ariane, a voice as soft as silk and as sibilant as a snake’s hiss. If she turned around, she would see the speaker, but so horrifying was the voice, she feared coming face-to-face with its owner. “Liesss...my massster bringsss order in place of chaossss...he will thrust thisss world to greatnesss and remake hisss own...give him the shard...help him find the othersss...he will reward you well...”

“How came you here?” the Lady thundered. “This is not your world! Begone!”

“I think not.” The voice held a hint of a cold chuckle. “Thisss is not your world either, Lady. And the door isss almossst closed. Your power is ssstretched too thin for you to command me. Though my massster’s power hasss waned with the agesss, he dwellsss in thisss world, on thisss ssside of the door to Faerie. It isss you who mussst begone, Lady. For now, and for alwaysss!”

A flare of red light like that of a bonfire, a hiss like water falling on hot coals, and the Lady cried out and vanished in a thick cloud of steam that erupted all around Ariane, wrapping her in dim grayness.

She turned and turned and turned again, seeking an exit. She saw a dim glow and stepped toward it, but as she did so it resolved into two red gleams, side by side.

Eyes!

“I cannot touch you, Lady,” said...whatever it was. “You know thisss...the sssword, until my massster takesss it from you, protectsss you...

But know thisss, too, Lady. My massster will take it from you...sssoon. And when he doesss...I will be here, in your dreamsss...and you will be mine!”

And then suddenly, with no transition at all, she woke up, staring at the dark ceiling of her room, her heart pounding.

She rolled over and looked at the shard, lying on the table beside her bed.

Do not use it unless you have to, the Lady had said in her dream.

But she had also said, It is a thing of war...and like it or not, she was in a war, a war between ancient powers who had somehow reached forward through centuries and across whole worlds to ensnare her in their conflict.

Her half-night’s sleep had replenished her powers. Deep inside, she could hear a distant song, faint, diffuse, impossible to pinpoint yet, but definitely there – the song of the second piece of Arthur’s legendary sword.

She had won a battle, but the war...

...the war was just beginning.

She put the first shard of Excalibur under her pillow, stared into the darkness, and waited for the morning.