Victories

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I’m going to write a stiff letter to the Michelin people,” Loch said, walking across the room to sit down on the bed. It creaked and lurched alarmingly when he did so. “Hey,” he said, shifting sideways. He picked something up from the bedspread, and held it out so they could all see it. “Looks like we’ve come to the right place.”

  Spirit took the oak leaf from his hand. It was fresh and green, like the one they’d found in the van. “Is there anything else here?”

  “Not in this,” Addie said, quickly opening and closing the dresser drawers. “Unless there’s a secret message hidden in the menu of the Alvo Diner,” she added, waving a tattered paper menu.

  “Nothing here but a Bible,” Burke said, closing the drawer of the nightstand. “Not even a phone book.”

  “Who could there be in this entire state that anybody would want to call?” Loch asked. “So, what now?”

  “We wait,” Spirit said, pulling off her jacket and sitting down cautiously on the other bed. She’d like to kick her shoes off, but the rug didn’t look particularly clean.

  “For a while, anyway,” Burke said. He tossed his jacket on the bed, followed it with his tuxedo jacket, and sat down beside her. She leaned into him gratefully and he put his arm around her. “And this is as good a place as any to talk about what we do next.”

  “I didn’t know it was open for discussion,” Addie grumbled. She sat down on the foot of the bed Loch was on, plucking her skirts up fastidiously.

  “Everything’s negotiable,” Loch said mockingly. “First rule of business. So Mordred’s going to start a war, and we’ve been designated by Spirit’s mysterious benefactor as the people who get to stop him. This would seem a lot more stupid if Mordred didn’t have magic and can scrub the brain of anybody we tell about his nefarious plans. Of course, he could also just kill them. That’d work.”

  “Yeah, that’s the point,” Burke said. “We keep talking about ‘stopping’ Mordred and his Shadow Knights. I think it’s time to admit that ‘stop’ means ‘kill.’ Can we do that? This isn’t like the Wild Hunt, banishing demons back to Hell or sending Elves back to wherever Elves live. This is killing people, evil or not.”

  “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few?” Loch asked lightly. But he couldn’t meet Burke’s gaze. “I don’t know if I could kill someone,” he said, staring down at his hands. “Not even knowing.…” His voice trailed off.

  “I can. I can’t just sit here and say I don’t want to get my hands dirty knowing what the world will look like if they win.”

  Spirit’s stomach lurched as she spoke. The sound of her own voice frightened her—she didn’t sound like anyone she could ever have imagined being. Her heart raced even as she knew she’d meant every word. In her mind was the sound of a gunshot, and Muirin falling. To stop that from happening again? Over and over and over—to millions of people?

  She could kill.

  “Maybe there’s another way,” Burke said, hugging her against him. “But I think we should be ready.”

  “Oh, I’m ready for anything,” Addie said bitterly.

  * * *

  They were all too keyed-up to even think of sleeping. There was a little money left from what QUERCUS had left them for gas, so Loch went out to the soda machine and brought back Cokes. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. Everything Spirit could think of to say sounded stupid or useless when she thought about it, and apparently the others felt the same.

  What was there to talk about? Muirin was dead, Mordred’s Shadow Knights were hunting them, and they were here because they were trusting someone Spirit had met in a secret chat room. And the worst part was, there wasn’t anything else they could do.

  She was dozing on Burke’s shoulder when the sound of the door opening brought her joltingly awake. Loch was already on his feet, and as Spirit rubbed her face with her hands—she and Addie had washed off their makeup as soon as possible—Burke stood as well.

  If the woman in the doorway was the rescue party, her looks didn’t inspire confidence. She was stray-cat skinny, her frayed jeans and worn parka looked like dumpster treasures, and her brown hair was short and unkempt. Her expression when she looked at them seemed to say she’d expected to see anyone else here but them, but she covered it quickly.

  “I’m Vivian,” she said. “I’m here to take you to the one you know as Quercus. Let’s go.”

  “Of course,” Loch said fulsomely. “Because we’re so willing to leave with the first person who shows up with the secret password?”

  “That’s right,” Vivian said evenly. “What choice do you have?”

  “Well,” Loch said, as if he was considering the matter, “we could stay here. Or you could tell us why we should trust you.”

  Vivian huffed in exasperation. “Because no matter what you think you know, rich boy, some kids did escape from Oakhurst. I did—twenty years ago. Your parents did, too,” she added, looking at Burke.

  “My parents were murdered by Mordred’s Mafya hitman,” Burke said, taking a step away from Spirit and toward Vivian.

  “By Agravaine. Yes,” Vivian said, nodding. “But I’m talking about your birth parents, the people who left you in a church, hoping that holy place would protect you, and went willingly to their deaths, knowing they were leading the hunters away from you.”

  “You knew my parents?” Burke demanded. “My other parents?”

  “No,” Vivian said. “But Quercus did.”

  “That’s disturbing,” Loch said after a moment. “Considering he apparently couldn’t protect them.”

  “You’re a chess player,” Vivian shot back. “You’re aware of the concept of sacrificing a piece to gain the victory.”

  “Funny,” Loch said. “On my planet we call it ‘hanging your friends out to dry.’ And we’ve seen a lot of it from the Shadow Knights lately.”

  “Good for you,” Vivian said, sounding even more irritated. “But I don’t intend to stand around here all day dispelling your ignorance. I’m here to take you to Quercus. Now get moving. Or don’t, and wait for them to catch up with you. Your choice.”

  Addie glanced from Loch to Vivian, her mouth set in a thin line of resentment. Spirit looked up at Burke. He was frowning, but he looked more confused than angry.

  “Come on,” Spirit said with a resigned sigh. “We don’t have a lot of choices. If she was a Shadow Knight, she’d already have tried to kill us. Or something.”

  “If—” Addie began. “I—”

  “Move it,” Vivian said. “If you want to hang around outside here like idiot bait, I don’t.” She turned around and walked out, leaving the door open.

  “Nice lady,” Loch said, but he was already reaching for his coat.

  When they got to the van, Vivian was already in the driver’s seat. “Back’s open,” she said.

  They looked at each other. “I’ll ride up front,” Loch said. “That way we can find our way back here if we have to.” Loch’s primary Gift was Shadewalking—the ability to move silently and undetected—but he had a secondary Gift of Pathfinding: the ability to always know exactly where he was, and to find his way unerringly from place to place. He climbed into the van on the passenger side, and the rest of them went around to the back. Burke helped Spirit and Addie up into the van and closed the door.

  “This is our only vehicle,” Vivian said, over the sound of the engine. “I’ve been in the area since last night. I wanted to make sure they weren’t using Scrying Mages to set up an ambush. We’re good, though. I’m guessing they don’t want any of their people getting a peek at the endgame.” She backed and turned the van, and then they were heading down the road again.

  “If the van is your only way of getting around,” Addie said, “and you left it for us, how did you get back here?”

  “Hitchhiked,” Vivian said. “If you were expecting G.I. Joe and his secret underwater base, think again.”

  “‘Knowing is half the battle,’” Burke muttered, quoting. He sounded w
orried.

  They drove for another hour. Vivian ignored all of their attempts to find out anything about her, about QUERCUS, or about what was going to happen next. They stayed on the back roads, and the countryside looked even more deserted, if possible, than what they’d driven through to get here. If Omaha was somewhere around here, it was doing a good job of hiding.

  At last Vivian turned down a narrow side road, and they could see they were approaching something that looked military.

  And abandoned. There were faded and splintered NO TRESPASSING signs everywhere. The only fence was a tangle of rusted barbed wire, and nothing was paved. Vivian drove through a gap in the coils and up to a cluster of tarpaper shacks that looked like they’d been deserted since before Spirit had been born: doors open or missing entirely, holes in the roof, siding stripped away to expose the framing beneath.

  Spirit’s heart sank. What if this is all some kind of … delusion? What if QUERCUS doesn’t exist? All I have to go on is the Ironkey, and Vivian could’ve made that. She could have been QUERCUS, too. There’s no way to know. And if she’s crazy, if this whole idea of taking out the Shadow Knights is just some kind of … fantasy.…

  Vivian pulled up behind one of the shacks. “End of the line,” she said. When everyone was out of the van, she picked up a camo net hanging from the back of the shack and dragged the loose side over the van.

  “Where are we?” Burke asked, looking around.

  “Nebraska,” Vivian said. “I don’t suppose any of you know history, but a long time ago—before any of us was born—the US was expecting to go to war with Russia.”

  “I have heard of the Cold War,” Loch said dryly.

  “Then you know they figured on fighting it with missiles,” Vivian said. “Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles—ICBMs. They launched from silos. There were hundreds of them—thousands—all over the country. The areas they were located in were called ‘missile fields.’ About thirty years ago, they started decommissioning the missiles. They were obsolete. But there isn’t much you can do with a former missile silo.”

  “Except call it home,” Burke said.

  “Got it in one. Come on.”

  She led them into the shack she’d parked behind. It was completely trashed—broken windows, holes in the roof, leaves, glass, and unidentifiable trash on the floor. There was an old steel desk in one corner, turned on its side. The linoleum floor had been ripped up in places, and underneath was a concrete slab. Addie held her skirt up carefully, and Spirit wished she was wearing something sturdier on her feet than sandals.

  Vivian led them into the second room. It was dark—there were black plastic garbage bags taped over the windows—and in the middle was a large hole in the floor. It looked to Spirit like one of those big storm drains—the opening was more than three feet across, and there were steel rungs set into one side.

  “Who wants to go first?” Vivian said.

  “None of us,” Addie said fervently.

  “I’ll go first,” Loch said. “You next,” he said to Addie. “Be careful in those shoes.”

  Addie made a face.

  Loch walked over and just jumped in. Spirit yelped in dismay until she saw he’d grabbed one of the rungs before he could fall. “There’s lights at the bottom,” he called up, then they heard the scraping of his shoes on the rungs as he climbed quickly down.

  “Showoff,” Burke muttered. “I’ll lift you in,” he said to Addie.

  Her face was grim, but she nodded. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing, and lowered her carefully until she could grab the rungs. She looked up at him, nodded, and began to descend.

  “Maybe you should go next,” Burke said to Vivian.

  “Maybe I should stay up here to make sure you two don’t bolt,” Vivian said. Burke just shook his head and turned to Spirit. “Ready?” he asked.

  She forced herself to nod. He picked her up and held her over the opening in the floor the way he had Addie. The sense of emptiness under her feet, the knowledge that Burke’s grip on her arms—and hers on his—was the only thing that kept her from falling—maybe to her death—was terrifying. She forced herself to let go and reach for one of the rungs in front of her. It was cold and a little slick under her hands. She kicked until she had her feet placed securely, took a deep breath, and Burke let go.

  It’s just a ladder, Spirit told herself. You’ve climbed a lot of ladders.

  But not blind, and not in the dark. She forced herself to feel for the next rung, and began her careful descent. When she’d gone down a few feet, the light from above was blocked as Burke followed her into the shaft, and a few seconds later she heard Loch call up that he’d reached the bottom.

  It seemed like a long way down. When she got there, she saw the bottom of the shaft was lit by wire-covered lights on the walls. In the wall there was a metal door standing open. It looked like it belonged on a submarine. Loch and Addie were standing just inside.

  “I know what this is,” Loch said, as she walked in. The room was fairly large—maybe twenty feet long—and the ceiling was so far up Spirit couldn’t see it clearly. “It’s a launch bunker. It’s where the missile crews would wait for orders to launch—see? There’s the computers and the monitors,” he said, pointing at a bank of equipment on one wall. It looked like something out of an ancient Science Fiction movie.

  “Their regular tours were only twelve hours, but in the event of actual war they would’ve had to stay down here for days. So there’s a whole apartment down here.” Loch gestured toward a battered couch on the wall opposite the computers. On that wall there were two doorways that clearly led to other rooms.

  There was no one else here.

  “How is it you know these things?” Addie asked.

  “I’m a guy,” Loch said, shrugging. “I thought it was kind of cool. You know, in an Armageddon, nuclear holocaust, Planet of the Apes way.”

  There was a thump from outside, and Burke walked in. “Whoa,” he said, looking around.

  “Best secret clubhouse ever,” Loch said, deadpan.

  “I thought we were supposed to stop a war, not start one,” Burke answered.

  “You are,” Vivian said. She pulled the metal door closed behind her. From the way she moved, it was heavy, but it moved silently. There was a wheel in the middle of it on the inside, just like in every submarine movie Spirit had ever seen.

  “Where’s QUERCUS?” Spirit demanded. “We’re the only ones here, aren’t we?”

  “I need to tell you a story,” Vivian said, not answering her directly. She pulled off her jacket and walked over to the couch.

  “If this is some kind of trick.…” Burke rumbled threateningly.

  “Why would I bother?” Vivian demanded angrily. “If I’d wanted you dead, all I’d have to do would be make one phone call while you were waiting for me to show up. I get that you don’t trust me—I spent two years at Oakhurst before I figured out what was going on. I know what it’s like.”

  Spirit moved over to Burke and took his hand. She didn’t know what to think. She didn’t believe this was a trap, not really, but when she’d decided to trust QUERCUS’s escape plan, she’d been counting on there being something more substantial at the end of it than an abandoned missile silo. Set against the resources of Oakhurst, of Breakthrough, this was … nothing.

  “How did you find out?” Addie asked unexpectedly. “About Mordred, and … everything?”

  “I’m a Water Witch like you,” Vivian answered. “One day several of us were practicing down at the pool. One of my teammates hit me with a waterspout. It knocked me off my feet. I fell into the pool, hitting my head on the way in. I pretty much drowned before someone pulled me out. And after that, I … remembered.”

  “You’re a Reincarnate,” Spirit said.

  “If I hadn’t been, I’d be dead,” Vivian said. “I’d known Mordred … before … but I didn’t recognize him at first. None of us do, I think, even after we remember. He isn’t a Reincarnate—Merlin’s
spell made sure of that. But he possessed some biker named Kenny Hawking. That’s the body he’s wearing now.”

  “That part we’d pieced together ourselves,” Addie said. “But—”

  “Merlin? Spell?” Loch interrupted.

  “Look, if I don’t tell this in order you’ll be even more confused than you are now. Long story short: I knew who I was, I figured out who he was, I ran like hell and went looking for Merlin. It helped that Mordred hadn’t gathered as many of his Shadow Knights as he has now. I wouldn’t have been able to escape if I’d had to do it today.”

  Spirit shuddered. They’d only gotten away from Oakhurst with a lot of help, and being away from Oakhurst didn’t mean safe.

  “And you found Merlin,” Spirit said. “QUERCUS. QUERCUS is Merlin, isn’t he?”

  Vivian nodded. “Yes. But let me start at the beginning. It’s a long story. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Addie sat down on the couch beside Vivian. There were two chairs in front of the computer console. Loch took one, and Spirit took the other. Burke remained standing, his arms folded across his chest.

  “You probably know something about King Arthur and Camelot and all that, but what you know isn’t the way it really was. There were two great Queens who ruled over the land: the Bán Steud and the Cú Dubh.”

  “The White Mare and the Black Hound,” Addie said. Certainly Oakhurst had crammed their heads with enough languages that a little Gaelic wasn’t much of a stretch.

  “Yes. In those days the Power ran hot and free in the pillars of the earth, and it was the birthright of many, and so Guinevere, the White Mare’s Daughter, and Morgause, the Black Hound, were both women of power. Britain was Guinevere’s by ancient right, and Morgause meant to take it from her.”

  “Sounds like Mists of Avalon to me,” Loch said. “Where does Arthur come into it?”

  “He was the brother of Morgause and the uncle of Mordred,” Vivian answered. “Morgause had always meant to rule Britain through either her brother or her son, but she lost Arthur to Belcadrus—to the army, you would say—and after a time he became Diuc Bán Tir, Duke of Britain. When Arthur passed beyond her influence, Morgause concentrated all her arts upon her son. Mordred became a black necromancer, steeped in the darkest sorceries, but his uncle knew nothing of this, because Mordred concealed his true nature, believing he would be named Arthur’s heir—as much as Arthur could have an heir, since he wasn’t king.”