Chapter Four

A Kiss on the Cheek

Ariane waited in the nebulous nothingness of the strange watery realm into which she dissolved when she travelled using the Lady’s power. She knew Wally was with her; she always interpreted the sensation as him holding her hand, as he had been when they’d left Gravenhurst, but of course they didn’t really have hands in any material sense at the moment. As far as she knew.

One thing that always felt just as solid and sharp as ever was the shard of Excalibur she carried. Since she had two to Major’s one, she could draw on the power of this one. Through it, she could also sense the second shard in her possession, though it was currently tucked away under the mattress of her bed at Barringer Farm. She couldn’t call on the power of both shards, not unless Wally was holding them. Somehow, his connection to King Arthur also gave him a connection to the sword, through which it transmitted even more of its power.

She didn’t need any of the shard’s power for this little jaunt halfway across the country using waterways and water systems. But that sharp, constant presence protected her in another way. Whenever she used the Lady’s power, she felt the water’s distant and insistent call: to let herself dissolve, to release the spark that made her an individual and join the mindless flow of water around the world. She had to guard against that dangerous, insidious urge every time. The shard helped. It had no intention of letting itself vanish into liquid darkness. Its steely determination – literally steely – helped her hang on to herself – and to Wally.

Now, with the finer control of her powers that had been developing over the past few weeks, she held the two of them in limbo, waiting for the pool below the waterslides at the Medicine Hat Lodge to clear. The moment it did so, she brought them into it, the surge from their arrival masked by the ordinary rush and roil of water.

They made their way to the side of the pool, tossed out their backpacks – Ariane ordering them dry in the same instant – and then climbed, still sopping wet, out onto the brown tiles of the poolside, just as a small boy came squealing off the end of one of the slides and splashed into the water behind them.

They hurried away from the pool. In one of the many plastic chairs around the edges of the big open room, close to the almost-empty leisure pool and beneath an entirely superfluous beach umbrella, sat Emma, reading a book, two fluffy white towels on the table beside her. She looked up at them, marking her place with her finger, as they plodded wetly over to her and grabbed a towel apiece.

“You took longer than I expected,” she said quietly. “I was beginning to worry.”

“Rex Major,” Ariane said. She rubbed her hair vigorously. She would have preferred to just wish herself dry – she never used a towel any more when she showered – but for the sake of appearances she supposed she could put up with this more primitive method for the moment. “He twigged to the fact Wally was there. We barely got away.” She didn’t mention the chloroform or the fact Wally had clobbered Emeka with a tree branch.

Emma looked alarmed. “Does he know where you’re hiding out?”

“I don’t see how he can,” Wally said. “Even our pool search was done a long way from the farm.” He sounded tired and a little shaky, and Ariane, looking at him in the light, suddenly realized how pale his face looked. Every freckle on it – and there were quite a lot, even though the summer’s sun was now barely a memory – stood out like a brown dot on white paper.

“Is it still storming?” Ariane said. She looked up at the windows that surrounded the pool courtyard just below the high ceiling, but could see only darkness.

“It is,” Emma said. “Worse than ever. We’re stuck here overnight.” She gave Wally a long hard look. “You look terrible. What exactly happened?”

“Later,” Ariane said hastily. “Wally needs something to eat. So do I. And sleep.”

“I’m all right,” Wally said, but he didn’t look all right. And then he blinked. “I almost forgot,” he breathed. “With everything else that happened... Ariane, I’ve got a lead.”

“A lead?” For a minute Ariane didn’t understand what he was talking about, then she gasped. “Mom?”

Wally nodded. “Just before Emeka showed up in the library. I found a couple of photos. A face, out of focus, in the background, but the software thinks it’s her, and so do I.”

“Out of focus, in the background, where?” Ariane’s heart pounded, raced in a way it hadn’t even when she was running from Rex Major’s men. “Wally, where?”

“Horseshoe Bay, B.C.,” Wally said. “Where the ferries leave for Vancouver Island. She was there two weeks ago, anyway.”

“We have to go find her!” Ariane looked back at the pool, already thinking about plunging back into it, heading west, finding Mom...

Mom, who had shown up wet and disoriented on the doorstep after her walk around the lake two years ago, and ended up in the psych ward at the Regina General Hospital. Mom, who had pretended not to know her daughter when Ariane had gone to visit her. Mom, who had somehow escaped the hospital and disappeared, leaving Ariane to the care of a series of foster parents until Aunt Phyllis had recovered from her cancer treatments enough to look after her...

Someone grabbed her arm. She felt a surge of anger at the touch and the water in the leisure pool swirled and gurgled, eliciting sharp cries from the small children there. “Ariane!”

It was Emma. Ariane came back to herself and forced her anger down. The sword was fuelling it; her mother had rejected the quest to reforge Excalibur, and the sword knew it – and resented it.

I control the sword, Ariane told herself. It doesn’t control me. The water subsided. Confused chatter erupted from the parents. Ariane ignored it, staring into Emma’s warm brown eyes.

“You can’t go off half-cocked,” Emma said softly. “You have to plan.” She glanced at Wally. “And look at Wally. He can’t go anywhere tonight anyway. We’ll eat, we’ll talk, we’ll decide what to do, we’ll sleep on it.”

“But you will let us go,” Ariane said. She supposed it should have been a question, but it came out as a flat statement. No one was going to stop her from going to look for her mother. No one.

“Of course I will,” Emma said. Then she smiled a little. “As if I could stop you.” She closed her book with a snap and stood up. “Let’s go to our rooms. You need to get dressed. Then food.”

Ariane slung her backpack over her shoulder, Wally took his, and together they followed Emma out of the pool room. It wasn’t a long walk: Emma had gotten them two rooms on the main floor – apparently the Lodge wasn’t very full at the moment. Emma gave Wally his key, and he went into his room while Ariane went into hers and Emma’s to change back into her clothes. Once Wally emerged from his room, dressed in his normal geek-culture clothes and not quite as pale as he had been, they all went down the hall to the lobby and then into the hotel’s buffet restaurant. Ariane felt ravenous, as she usually did after using her powers, and filled her plate to overflowing, although she found the brown/ochre/orange colour scheme of the dining room unappetizing. Another side effect of the Lady’s powers, she suspected. Red used to be her favorite colour. Now she gravitated toward blues and greens.

Wally, though usually just as big an eater as the stereotypical growing teenage boy was supposed to be – and he was growing; at least five centimetres since the adventure had begun – took very little, almost as little as Emma, who ate like the proverbial bird.

They didn’t talk much while they ate. With several other people in the restaurant, discretion was in order. They returned to Wally’s room once they were done. Since it had only a single bed, there was space in it for a big armchair, a sofa and a coffee table, whereas Emma’s and Ariane’s room had only a couple of chairs nestled up to a small round table by the window.

Emma and Wally sat on the couch, while Ariane plopped into the chair. “I phoned Phyllis and told her we’d be spending the night, and that Wally made it back safely,” Emma said. “I didn’t tell her about Rex Major’s men almost nabbing you in Gravenhurst. No reason to worry her when she’s all alone except for the dog and cats.”

“Did you tell her Wally spotted Mom?” Ariane said.

Emma shook her head. “No. And I won’t until I know more.” She looked at Wally. “So tell me more. What did you find, and how did you find it?”

<•>

Wally had never felt more tired in his life. Tired, and strangely shaken. He’d taken down both of Rex Major’s trained bodyguards with nothing more than a stick. He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing. He hadn’t had to think about it. The moves had come naturally to him, as though he had practised them all his life.

Sure, he’d taken a high-school fencing course, but he’d never been all that good at it – not until the first shard of Excalibur had been found. Then suddenly Natasha Mueller, his fencing coach, had been all prepared to send him off to the Chinook Open tournament in Swift Current. Instead, he’d fallen on some ice and knocked himself out, so that had been the end of that. Plus then there had come the trip to France and his betrayal of Ariane, then the move to Toronto with Rex Major, followed by his escape from Rex Major and the rescue of Aunt Phyllis in Prince Albert and the recovery of the second shard in New Zealand and the flight to Cypress Hills, and now the series of trips to libraries in towns with swimming pools.

Suffice it to say, he hadn’t exactly been practising.

Yet he had no doubt that if he were given a sword right now, he could compete with the best fencers in the world. He frowned. Except, of course, he’d be disqualified. You couldn’t duck under someone’s guard and clobber them from behind in competitive fencing, as he had done with Emeka. Or, for that matter, hit them below the belt as he had the first guy. In retrospect, he cringed a little in sympathy. But he’d felt no sympathy when he’d attacked: nothing but righteous anger and determination to rescue Ariane.

The damsel in distress, he thought, looking at her now. Although, with the powers of the Lady of the Lake at her command, she was about as far from a shrinking-violet, days-of-yore maiden as you could get.

That hadn’t changed how he’d felt, though, when he’d gone at Rex Major’s two henchmen.

He remembered the solid thud when his branch had hit the back of Emeka’s head, the way the impact had shivered up the wood into his hands. He could still feel it. He remembered the blood. It was like the business with the security guard outside Rex Major’s condo all over again. That guy he’d hit with a poker. He’d thought he might have killed him. Rex Major had assured him he hadn’t. He hoped he hadn’t killed Emeka. He didn’t want to kill anyone. But with the sword now singing in his blood as well as in Ariane’s, though in a different way, he was afraid sometime he would act without thinking, and...

He realized Emma and Ariane were looking at him expectantly. He blinked at Ariane. “What?” he said.

“Tell us how you found the pictures of Mom,” Ariane said impatiently. “Honestly, Wally, what’s wrong with you?”

Wally felt a flash of uncharacteristic anger toward her and almost snapped something he’d almost certainly have regretted – but bit it off just in time. That, too, felt like the sword talking.

Rex Major had been able to convince him to give up the second shard of the sword, retrieved from a cave complex in southern France, because Ariane had badly hurt Flish and because Wally had been afraid Ariane wouldn’t be able to control what the sword wanted her to do – to become. Now he knew exactly how she’d felt. “A thing of war,” the Lady had called it, and there was no doubt that was exactly what it was, and how it wanted to be used.

“I’m just...tired,” he said. He’d talk to Ariane about what he was feeling in more detail sometime later, when they were alone. Emma didn’t want Aunt Phyllis to worry, but Wally didn’t want Emma to worry. The grown-ups couldn’t do anything to help. They had no part in this war – and he guessed that war was what they were waging – but to provide logistical support. If they exposed their location, they’d simply become hostages.

“Okay,” he said, gathering his thoughts. “So I used that photo you gave me and plugged it into this new image search engine I found...”

When he had finished explaining, Ariane got up. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go right now. Rex Major could already be –”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Emma said. “Rex Major probably doesn’t know where she is.”

“If I can find her using the Web, he can,” Wally said.

“Maybe. But you haven’t really found her, have you? You’ve found where she was two weeks ago. You don’t know where she lives, what name she’s using, anything that will really help you find her. Ferries leave Horseshoe Bay every day, and for more places than just Nanaimo. It’s also close to Vancouver. She could be anywhere in the world by now. You need to plan what you’re going to do when you get there, how you’re going to try to find her if she’s there, or find out where she went if she isn’t.” Her voice softened. “Besides, Wally is exhausted. Look at him. You need to replenish your energy, too. And what could you possibly do to find her in Horseshoe Bay in the middle of the night?”

“But we know where she is,” Ariane cried. “How can I just sit here knowing that? How can I sleep?”

“You know where she was,” Emma said.

“I think there’s a pretty good chance she’s still there,” Wally said. “Since she was there long enough to show up in two different pictures a few days apart.”

“Then she’ll still be there tomorrow.”

“But if Rex Major does know where she is, every second may count,” Ariane protested.

“He can’t find her in the dark either,” Emma said.

“And at least we know he doesn’t have her yet,” Wally put in.

“How?” Ariane demanded.

“Because if he had her, he wouldn’t have tried to grab us both in Gravenhurst,” Wally said. “He would have just given us a message: give me the two shards you have or...” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Ariane pressed her lips into a stubborn frown. “Still...”

“Sleep,” Emma said. “Rest. Go in the morning. See what you can find.”

Wally was suddenly seized by a huge, jaw-cracking yawn. When he could talk again, he said, “Please, Ariane.”

Ariane’s expression softened. “All right,” she said, albeit still reluctantly. “Tomorrow.”

“Still nothing on the fourth-shard front?” Wally said.

Ariane shook her head. “No,” she said. “Wherever it is, I can’t sense it.”

Wally chewed on his lower lip. “I wish I could say that means Major can’t have a lead on it either, but I can’t. All it would take is someone with an Internet-connected smartphone to get too close to it, and he’ll feel the tug like a spider feels its web vibrate when an insect lands on it.”

“No way for us to know,” Ariane said. “Either I hear the shard singing to me and we go get it before Major does, or Major finds it...and then I hear it and we steal it back from him. We can’t worry about that right now. We have to worry about Mom.”

Wally nodded, but he hardly heard her. He’d suddenly had an idea. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea. In fact, he thought it might be a spectacularly bad idea. Which was why he wasn’t going to tell Ariane about it. He wasn’t even sure he was going to act on it.

That’s a lie, he told himself then. You know darn well you’re going to act on it. “I really need to get to bed,” he said out loud. He yawned again, though more for effect than because he needed to; the surge of adrenaline accompanying his idea had momentarily rejuvenated him. “What time do you want to get up?”

“We’re two hours ahead of the West Coast right now,” Emma said.

“And you’re right, there’s no point in getting there in the dark,” Ariane said reluctantly. “Let’s head out around ten.”

“I can almost sleep in, then,” Wally said. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”

“Good night, Wally,” Emma said. She looked at Ariane. “Coming?”

“In a minute.”

“All right.” Emma went out.

Ariane looked at Wally. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For tonight. When Emeka grabbed me, put that cloth over me...If you hadn’t been there...”

“Your knight in shining armour,” Wally said. He felt both warmed and strangely embarrassed by her praise.

She leaned close. He suddenly knew how a deer in the headlights felt. She kissed his cheek, her lips warm and soft against his skin. She leaned back again. “Good night.” She got up and went to the door. “See you in the morning,” she said, and went out.

Wally wanted to say good night, but his throat wouldn’t work.

Well, he thought. Well.

Well.

He shook his head violently. It was just a kiss on the cheek, he thought. It wasn’t a kiss kiss. Even Flish used to kiss me on the cheek...back when she still liked me.

But he could feel the touch of Ariane’s lips lingering against his skin.

He took a deep breath. He still thought the idea that had come to him while he was talking to Ariane and Emma might be a really, really bad one. But he was going to try it, anyway.

He went to the room phone, lifted it, and dialed nine. When he heard the dial tone, he punched in *67 – so that the hotel’s number wouldn’t show up on Caller ID on the phone on the other end, which he had good reason to think Rex Major would be monitoring – and then a number he hadn’t called in weeks.

One ring. Two. And then...

“Hello?” said a man’s voice on the other end.

Wally hesitated another moment. Then he said, “Hello, Dad.”

<•>

Ariane licked her lips as she walked to her room next door. She hadn’t even known she was going to do that until she’d done it. But it had felt right.

Actually, it had felt great.

It was just a peck on the cheek, she thought. A thank-you kiss. Nothing else.

And that was true, but it had felt like more than that to her. And she suspected it had felt like more than that to Wally, too.

She let herself into the room. Emma was in the bathroom. Ariane walked to the window and looked out into the pool area. She could feel the tug of the water, could sense everybody still swimming in it. Even from there, she could have reached out and pulled that water to her, drawn it into tentacles, used it to defend herself from any of Rex Major’s men who might make an appearance.

Not that that was likely. Major had no way of knowing they were in Medicine Hat.

Did he?

She sighed. Paranoia ran deep when your adversary was rich, powerful and a legendary sorcerer. She wouldn’t have thought he could have figured out Wally was in Gravenhurst – but he had.

She closed the curtain and turned back to face the hotel room, but she wasn’t really seeing it. Instead, she felt the bright power of the shard of Excalibur strapped to her side, and heard the more distant song of the second shard, tucked away at Barringer Farm. She couldn’t sense the one Major had, but just the thought of it in his possession angered her. It wasn’t right, Major having one of the shards. It wasn’t what the sword wanted. It wasn’t what the Lady had wanted, the Lady who had forged the sword to begin with.

And it definitely wasn’t what Ariane wanted, now that she was the Lady.

Yet for all her power, she could not simply attack Major and take the shard from him. He had power, too, more than he had had when this all began. Simply having three of the shards of Excalibur once more at play in the world had allowed more magic to seep through the opening between Faerie and Earth. Major had healed Flish’s broken leg. His power of Command could weave complex illusions around ordinary people, like Aunt Phyllis and, presumably, Wally’s parents, or anyone else he needed to influence. And, of course, he was also one of the richest men in the world, with all the security arrangements and resources that came with that. Attacking him directly would surely be disastrous, and that was without even considering the fact he had Flish at his side, and Flish, however much she hated Ariane, however estranged she might be from Wally, was still Wally’s sister.

Not only that, Flish was, like Wally, an heir of Arthur’s. And if Wally had developed surprising fighting skills due to the power of the sword, who knew what his sister was now capable of?

No, Ariane’s and Wally’s path remained the same. They needed the fourth shard. With three in her possession, Ariane was confident nothing would keep her from finding the final piece, the hilt, and with every piece of the sword but one in her possession, she would be able to simply draw the final shard to her, no matter what effort Merlin expended to keep it from her.

But the fourth shard remained invisible to her. It could be anywhere: Antarctica, the Himalayas, Zaire, the Amazon. The world was a very big place, and the Lady, Ariane knew – for she had proven it herself – could have travelled anywhere around it.

At least we’ve got a lead on Mom, she thought fiercely. Who cares about Excalibur if I can just find her?

Wearing her long flannel nightgown, Emma came out of the washroom. Ariane started toward it to change into her pajamas, but she didn’t get far; there came a knock on the door, frantic, urgent.

She went to it, looked through the peephole, and saw Wally, wide-eyed and wild-looking, on the other side. She opened it, and he burst in.

“I think Rex Major knows where the fourth shard is!” he said. “And I do, too!”