Song of the Sword

by Edward Willett

  And couldn’t. She might as well have been trying to lift a building.

  Magic. She tugged uselessly at the sock that held the shard while the janitor continued to jerk the door handle and roar expletives. “Ariane!” Wally yelled. “Quick!”

  Ariane closed her eyes, tried to reach inside herself as she had in the séance – the “meditation exercise” – with the candle in her bedroom. She couldn’t counteract magic with physical strength. She needed her own magical power, the Lady’s power. But how...?

  And then she realized the answer had been right in front of her all along. She quit tugging at the sock and concentrated instead on the shard. Its song was urgent, powerful. As she had in the pit, she felt that the shard wanted to be with her, wanted to come to her. All she had to do was...

  ...call it.

  Into Ariane’s head spilled a new song, her own song, the language of the sword, the music of the water. It welled up into her throat and she heard herself singing out loud. And just like that, the shard released itself, the point slicing through Major’s sock and his spell as easily as a knife through butter.

  Ariane stopped singing and opened her eyes. The shard rested in her right hand. Its song rang in her head, the essence of joy. On impulse, she raised it to her lips and kissed its cold metal before slipping it into her pocket.

  “Ariane!” Wally shouted as the doorknob slipped out of his hands. The janitor slammed the door open and emerged like an angry bull.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” he roared. “You’re coming down to the...” And then his gaze slid to the open suitcase and the pieces of padlock littering the carpet. “What the...?”

  Wally backed away from him. Ariane scuttled sideways to join Wally.

  “Forget talking to the manager, you’re going to be talking to the police,” the janitor snapped. He stepped out of the bathroom, his feet making squishing noises in the soaking-wet carpet.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Ariane said, taking Wally’s hand. She pushed down with her right foot, and heard a satisfying squelch.

  The janitor stepped forward. “Come on,” he said. “Give back whatever you took.” He held out his hand...

  ...and Ariane let the water in the carpet take them away, into the bathroom, into the overflowing toilet, down into the sewers.

  Ariane regretted for a moment that she wouldn’t be around to hear the janitor try to explain to his boss exactly what had happened to the two kids who had been giving him trouble all morning...

  ...or to see what happened when Rex Major returned.

  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 th
e 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?”