Song of the Sword (15 page)

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.