by C. A. Gray
“Good thing, too,” came Dan’s voice. He still sounded rather tense. “If Sully had been unconscious mid-warp, who knows where we’d have ended up!”
Peter struggled to sit up onto his forearms. “Cole?” he croaked. “Jael?”
“Cole is still receiving treatment,” frowned Dr. MacDouglas. “He will be fine, but it will probably take the rest of the day to restore his energy. Isdemus told me what he did for you. It sounds as if he gave you an equivalent amount of energy as that which would have been required of your own body to heal over a period of months…”
“Jael was just knocked out, like you were,” said Dan. When Peter very carefully turned his head, wincing as he moved, he saw Dan tenderly stroking Jael’s hair from her face. She had not yet opened her eyes, but she was obviously breathing. Finally, she blinked up at him.
“What – what happened?” she murmured, and Dan beamed with relief.
“You’re gonna be so mad you missed it!” he crowed. “The place went up in a chain reaction, and literally the whole fortress collapsed into the water –”
“Here, drink this,” said Dr. MacDouglas to Peter, interrupting his eavesdropping on Dan and Jael. The doctor pushed an amber bottle towards Peter’s lips. Obediently he took a long drag, but then began to cough: at first, it tasted like honey, but the aftertaste was spicy, like ginger and cumin mixed together. A second later, the smell hit him, which was overwhelmingly foul.
“Cole is receiving the same elixir intravenously,” said the doctor.
“Sucks to be him,” Peter said, making a face. “What is it?”
“Think of it as liquid potential energy,” the doctor replied with a wink.
Peter opened his mouth to ask what in the world that meant, and whether it was just extremely high in calories, but Lily cut him off before he had the chance.
“You can ask how it works later,” she said bossily. “Just get better first!”
Peter saw Brock watching him from the corner of his eye with pursed lips and a very odd expression. Suddenly Peter felt uncomfortable; given their history, he wasn’t exactly sure what to say to him. “Er,” he started. “All right, Brock?”
“Sure,” he said.
“You – saved all our lives, you know,” Peter said awkwardly. “We never would have made it out if not for your footbridge.”
Brock shrugged. “Yeah, well. Same goes for Lily’s forcefields. We’d still be trapped there if not for her.”
She turned and smiled at him. Then she tried to deflect the compliment. “We couldn’t have done it without Dr. Stewart’s photons either, though – we’d never have gotten away without that –”
“Or without Peter’s unlimited energy,” said Bruce softly.
“I wouldn’t have had any energy to give if not for Cole,” said Peter. “And we would have died in that explosion if not for Sully’s quick thinking.”
“Indeed, we were all dependent upon one another,” Isdemus said. “Even Kane was indispensable to our survival…”
At the mention of Kane’s name, Peter felt as if a rock had dropped into the pit of his stomach, and suddenly all of the Watchers’ faces grew somber. In the relief of their narrow escape, they had briefly forgotten what had happened in the fortress.
“Kane was with you?” said Dr. MacDouglas, looking around curiously, and then he seemed to register that something was wrong as his expression grew troubled. “Where is he now, then?”
“He’s… dead,” said Lily at last, and the doctor’s jaw dropped.
“Dead! I don’t believe it. Bring him here, and we’ll see if I can’t fix him up right as rain –”
“We can’t,” Bruce cut him off, and managed to choke out, “He... he jumped into the water.”
The doctor looked confused and said, “Well, couldn’t you just pull him out again?”
“It wasn’t that kind of water,” Peter said finally. “It’s not the kind you can come back from.”
“Are you saying…” said the doctor incredulously, looking from one of them to the next, “Are you trying to tell me he killed himself? Kane would never do that. Not that boy!”
“No,” said Isdemus unexpectedly. “Kane did not kill himself.”
“I don’t know what else you’d call it,” said Dan. “Maybe you couldn’t see what was happening over where you and Jael were, but all of us watched him do it. He jumped!”
“I don’t question the narrative, merely the conclusion,” said Isdemus. “I do not believe that Kane is dead.”
“We all saw that water,” Sully argued. “Even the penumbra that fell in didn’t come back out again!”
“I realize that,” said Isdemus, “but that water wasn’t what you think it was.”
“It wasn’t a point of no return?” asked Sully.
“It may have been,” Isdemus admitted. “Then again, it may not.”
“Why did he jump in in the first place?” Brock interrupted. “I saw him. He was obsessed with the water from the moment he got into the fortress. It was like that was his primary objective all along! Sorry, Peter, but I don’t think he really came with you to try and help rescue us…”
“I agree with you, Brock,” said Isdemus quietly.
“Well, then, why did he go with Peter in the first place? What did he want with the water?” Lily asked.
Peter had intended to vocalize the same question, but had been mid-gulp of the amber elixir, too busy grimacing to speak.
Isdemus’s face took on a faraway expression, and Dan said knowingly, “Here we go. Story time.”
“According to legend,” said Isdemus to Lily, “after the Battle of Salisbury Plain ended, Merlyn knew that, after protecting Cecily and Arthur’s unborn child, the most important mission was to bury Excalibur somewhere it could remain undisturbed for millennia, until the birth of the Child of the Prophecy.
“He and Cecily found Lancelot and sent him back to help Arthur and the remaining Knights of the Round Table, but by the time Lancelot arrived it was too late. The battle was over, but the carnage still littered the battlefield – the bodies of men, the fallen bodies of penumbra, and most importantly, the weapons they had used to kill one another.
“Lancelot immediately found Arthur’s body, and Excalibur, still embedded in Mordred’s corpse. They were still warm, which as you can imagine made it much more difficult for Lancelot, knowing that had he been only a little faster, things might have turned out differently. Before he could bury them, however, he retrieved Excalibur, hid it in his own sheath, and enlisted the help of the one knight left standing, named Girflet, to help him in his final quest.
“Lancelot and Girflet took the sword all the way to the Continent in search of somewhere to properly dispose of it, which is part of why there are so many legends regarding the final resting place of Excalibur. Lancelot and Girflet considered many possible locations along the way, and there are tales that pertain to each one. Finally on the banks of the Straits of Messina –”
“Italy?” Lily interrupted, and Isdemus nodded.
“On the banks of the Straits of Messina, Lancelot and Girflet saw the mirage of a castle. Rumors had already reached the mainland of the legend of Morgan le Fay, known to them only as the Fairie Queen, whose castle in the sky had lured many sailors to their deaths. Lancelot knew when he saw it that it must be the Fata Morgana about which they spoke, and that it was a part of another world – which, to him, was the perfect resting place for a sword he wished never to be found. With all his might, he hurled the sword at the castle, and watched as it plunged into the waters just beneath it.”
“Excalibur must still be off the edge of the Italian coast, then!” said Brock.
Isdemus shook his head, and Sully said, “The Watchers have scoured the water for thousands of years looking for Excalibur. It is nowhere to be found.”
Peter sat up on his forearms a little further. “You’re saying it fell beneath the waters of the Fata Morgana? How is that possible? If the sailors couldn’t get there, th
en how could Excalibur?”
“Remember that the sword appeared from nowhere in the middle of the Enchanted Forest at precisely the moment when Arthur arrived on the scene and needed some claim to legitimacy of the throne,” said Isdemus. “Remember, too, that the sword serves as a barrier between the world of the penumbra and our world. As long as it remains intact, the Shadow Lord cannot return to the world of men.”
Lily and Peter looked at each other, and Lily shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Excalibur was never just a normal sword,” Dan clarified. “It always belonged to both worlds.”
“So you’re saying Excalibur was in the lake of Avalon? Where we just were?” Peter demanded.
“That is what we’ve all assumed for the past 1500 years, since we have never been able to locate the sword nor the Fata Morgana. Until now, obviously,” said Sully.
“I can’t believe it!” Lily exclaimed, looking around to see if anybody else had reached the same conclusion she had. “That means all this time, Excalibur has been right under the Shadow Lord’s nose, in the water underneath his very own fortress!”
“How could he not have known that?” Peter asked. “If the Watchers saw Lancelot throw the sword into the Lake of Avalon, why didn’t any of the penumbra see it too, and know to look in the water? If there was even one non-Seer present, then one of the penumbra had to have witnessed it. The Shadow Lord could have sent one of the penumbra in to retrieve it thousands of years ago…”
“He probably tried,” said Isdesmus, “but the water is an interface between worlds. That’s why the Fata Morgana was known as the Isle of Glass – as in, Looking Glass.”
“The mirrors,” Peter murmured.
Isdemus nodded. “That’s why, when the penumbra fell into the water, they couldn’t come back. The Shadow Lord only exists now inside reflective surfaces in that space between their world and ours. They are a no-man’s-land of essentially non-existence. It may be that the Shadow Lord knows exactly where Excalibur is, and it has been right in front of him all this time – but he could not touch it.”
“So if all the Watchers knew that Excalibur was in the Lake of Avalon –” Brock began.
“Not all,” Isdemus corrected. “Only a select few knew enough to suspect that – those of us here, for instance. However, Kane managed to discover an extraordinary amount of information, whether I chose to tell him or not.”
Peter tried not to look at Lily, for fear that their guilty expressions might reveal that they, too, knew about the secret library.
“The conclusion is the same, though,” Brock persisted. “Kane knew Excalibur was supposed to be there.”
“He was obsessed with Excalibur,” said Dan slowly, beginning to understand, “but he knew he’d never find the Fata Morgana unless the penumbra led him to it. And they wouldn’t ever do that – not unless he was with you, Peter. You were his ticket.”
“But why did he want Excalibur?” Lily demanded. “It seems like the best thing to do would be to just let it stay buried!”
“He wanted to find it because according to the prophecy, the Shadow Lord is eventually defeated by the Child of the Prophecy using Excalibur,” said Isdemus.
“So what?” said Peter. “Are you honestly suggesting that Kane jumped into that water to try and find Excalibur? Why would he do that?”
“I can’t speak for the others,” said Sully, looking around, “but I very much doubt Kane ever intended to jump into the water when he first went to the Fata Morgana with you, Peter. I suspect he thought he could summon the sword, or get at it in some other way. I suppose when we were all trying to escape and were about to blow up the fortress, he felt that he’d run out of time, and did the only thing he could think of. Right?” He looked at Isdemus, who nodded.
“That is my guess,” confirmed Isdemus.
“We think he wanted to find Excalibur so that he could destroy it,” Dan added.
“So that the Shadow Lord could return?” Peter demanded incredulously.
“So he could defeat the Shadow Lord,” Dan corrected. “In order to be killed once and for all, though, the Shadow Lord first has to have a body.”
“So Kane thought he could defeat him with a sword he had just destroyed?” Lily challenged, perplexed.
Isdemus shrugged. “That has always been a paradox of the prophecy. Both seem to be true, and yet mutually exclusive.”
“But that’s suicide!” Lily exclaimed, and then added uncertainly, “Isn’t it?”
“Not if he’s the Child of the Prophecy,” said Dan, watching Isdemus’s expression. Isdemus pursed his lips gravely and said nothing.
Peter looked blank. “But he isn’t.” When nobody answered to confirm this, he said, “He isn’t, right? He can’t be! I thought it was either me or Lily!”
“I don’t care what the prophecies say,” Sully interrupted, looking at Isdemus. “Today has wiped away every shred of doubt, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Peter certainly has formidable powers,” Isdemus admitted.
“And I don’t,” said Lily, adding to Peter combatively, “I almost collapsed in there, remember?”
“You are a natural with the Ancient Tongue, though,” Peter pointed out.
“So what, Peter? You blew up the fortress!”
“Technically the prophecy doesn’t say anything about power,” Dan cut in.
Peter snapped impatiently, “Wait a minute, can we please get back to Kane? Is he or isn’t he a candidate?”
To Peter’s surprise, all of the Watchers suddenly turned towards Bruce, very pointedly. Peter followed their eyes, confused. “Dad?”
Bruce grappled for words, but Isdemus stepped forward to save him. “You were going to find out eventually anyway, Peter, and I understand you had already begun to suspect. I – don’t know that this was the time and the way to tell you…”
“Tell me what?” he said, his heart beating faster. He wasn’t sure what it was that he should have suspected, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear it.
“Would you mind… just giving us a moment…” said Bruce. He seemed nearly overcome.
Dan obediently got to his feet and offered his shoulder to support Jael, and they shuffled off to the castle behind the doctor. Lily also stood to her feet uncertainly, but with one nod from Sully, she turned to follow him, pulling Brock with her and casting one last glance over her shoulder at Peter. Dr MacDouglas said loudly, “Well, I think I will go back to the castle and check on young Cole…”
Isdemus was the last to go. “I will be in the garden if you need me.”
When at last they were alone, Peter looked at his dad, and felt a dull emptiness creep into his stomach even as his heart raced.
“Well, this can’t be good news,” he managed to joke. But Bruce could not smile back.
Chapter 33
Bruce turned to look at Peter, and said with an almost pleading expression, “The truth is, I lied to you, Peter. Not just about Carlion, and about your identity, but even about what happened to our family. I did it for your own protection, though –”
“What do you mean?” Peter interrupted, his heart beating faster.
“Your mother... Peter, she didn’t die in childbirth.”
“What?” he said, confused.
“We were divorced when you were a year and a half old, because she wasn’t a Seer. She thought I was crazy, and that all the Watchers hanging about to protect you were just as batty as I was. She didn’t just leave me, though. She tried to take you with her. Well, not just you...” He stopped himself, and then muttered to himself, “One thing at a time, Bruce.”
“She tried to kidnap me?”
“She tried, because she knew that if the Watchers knew where you were, they’d never leave you unprotected. It was Sully who recovered you, actually. She got away, though. I found out years later that she was killed by the penumbra.”
“If I was with you, then why would they bother killing her?”
; “We don’t know the whole story,” said Bruce. “The best we can figure is, the person who told the Shadow Lord who she was had incomplete information.”
Peter closed his eyes, and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Bruce sighed. “For thousands of years, the Shadow Lord believed that there was no longer a line of the king. He didn’t know that Cecily was pregnant when Arthur died – he thought that when Mordred and Arthur killed each other, the line of the king was ended. That was why the Watchers formed – to protect William, and then to track his firstborn male descendants down through the ages and make sure they were kept safe until they, too, had children. As it turned out, they should have been tracking the firstborn descendants regardless of gender, which is how we lost track of Lily... but I digress.
“There was never any opposition to this mission because the Shadow Lord and the penumbra did not know that there was anyone they should be looking for – until you were about four. At least that’s when we figure it happened.”
Peter squeezed his eyes shut. “Why does Isdemus think there was an informant? Who would do that?”
Bruce shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. He never explained. There are a lot of things that Isdemus keeps to himself – and even more now, since Penny’s death,” he added, referring to Peter’s mother.
“So he thinks the informant was one of the Watchers?”
“He thinks there’s a traitor somewhere in the castle, yes,” Bruce nodded. “Ever since that time, he became extremely selective about which of the Watchers he trusted with what information, and made sure that even within his inner circle, nobody but himself had all the facts.”
“The inner circle – meaning Jael, Sully, and Dan,” said Peter.
“And me,” Bruce added. “But he keeps things even from us, obviously – like the identity of the person he suspects of being the traitor.”
“It was Isdemus who told you to tell me the legends, too.”
“Yes, but I would have done that anyway.”
Peter sank onto his other knee and then sat back down on the ground.