Lake in the Clouds

by Edward Willett

  Ariane blinked at that, but reached for her own belt. “Why?”

  He shuddered. “It’s all based on science, not magic. I don’t trust science.”

  The whine of the engines increased. They began to taxi, bumping across the tarmac. Ariane twisted her head and looked out the window. The Transwest Airlines turboprop that had just landed had discharged its passengers. There weren’t many of them. And one of them…

  She blinked.

  One of them was short and slender and had bright red hair.

  It can’t be Wally, she thought. He’s in Toronto. It’s just someone who looks like him.

  Looks a lot like him.

  Confused, but not wanting Merlin to know what she’d seen…if she’d really seen it…she twisted her head around again. “If we crash on takeoff,” she said, “what happens to the shards?”

  “Someone finds them in the wreckage,” Major said sourly, “and either puts them in a museum or, more likely, they end up in a landfill. The door to Faerie slams shut and magic vanishes forever from this world. So let’s hope we don’t crash.”

  I don’t know, Ariane thought. It might solve a lot of problems.

  All the same, she was glad when they made it safely into the air. As they winged their way west, she looked out the window at the clouds far below, and wondered if she had really seen what she had thought she had seen…

  …and if she had, what it had meant.

  Chapter Eight

  Knight in Shining Armour

  Wally stood on the tarmac of Glass Field, watching Rex Major’s private jet dwindle into the distance. He had seen Ariane getting aboard it as they had taxied to the tiny terminal. What is she doing with Major? he thought, staring at that rapidly shrinking dot. And where are they going?

  “Hey, kid, keep moving,” someone yelled at him. “You can’t stand there.”

  “Sorry!” he shouted back, and trudged on toward the terminal. He had no baggage to wait for, so he walked through the building to the front entrance, where two taxis waited. He got into the first one in line.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “The public library,” Wally said.

  “Really?” the driver said. “You don’t look like the studious type.”

  “Actually I’m looking for a computer with an Internet connection,” Wally said. “I’ve lost my smartphone.”

  “Hashtag FirstWorldProblems,” the driver said, and Wally groaned inwardly. Was there anything worse than a grown-up who thought he was cool?

  Well, yeah, he had to admit upon reflection. A grown-up planning to take over the world and threatening little old ladies to do so. He forced a laugh. “I know, right? But when you gotta Snapchat, you gotta Snapchat.”

  “What’s Snapchat?” the driver said curiously, and Wally gave up.

  The John M. Cuelenaere Public Library proved to be a low-rise modern structure of tan brick with big glass windows that flooded the interior with light. He quickly located the free public Internet terminals: ten desks set up facing each other, five to a side, each with a flat-screen monitor and mouse on top and a keyboard neatly tucked away on a sliding tray underneath. There were only a couple of people using the terminals. Wally sat down in the one farthest from anyone else and slid out the keyboard. First things first, he thought. Divert attention.

  The idea had come to him during the flight from Toronto. If Major hadn’t heard yet about what had happened at the condo he would soon. The last thing Wally wanted him thinking was that he’d not only fled the condo, but he’d left Toronto and headed west. So a little misdirection seemed in order.

  He called up his webmail home page again. There was the usual spam offering the same offers to share millions of dollars with mysterious Nigerians and cut-rate drugs to address problems he didn’t expect to have for another half century or so. There was still nothing from Ariane: he hadn’t really expected there would be.

  He clicked the NEW MESSAGE button, and typed in Rex Major’s address. Then he wrote: Dear Mr. Major. So sorry for what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just wanted to get out of the condo. Then I got scared and I ran. The police are probably looking for me. I’m hiding out downtown. What should I do? Help! Sorry sorry sorry. Wally.

  Not bad, he thought. He took a deep breath and clicked Send.

  Now for my next trick…

  He had spent his time on Major’s computer well. He knew Major’s email address and password…and how to access Major’s email via the Web. Which he now did. He’d also set up a fake “Rex Major” account, but he didn’t dare use it for this. Whomever “Frank” might be, he might be suspicious if he suddenly got instructions from a different account. Using Major’s real account was a bit risky in its own way, but safer than the alternative. He flexed his fingers, thinking for a moment, then typed in the address he had first seen in Major’s condo office: frank@ochranasecurity.com.

  Frank, he typed. Change of plans. I’m sending a taxi for our guest. There’ll be a boy with it: she knows him and will go with him willingly. I’ve got my own people waiting for them in town. Clean up the camper and take it back. Thanks for all your good work. RM.

  He studied the email. It sounded like Rex Major in the many other emails he’d sent to Frank, and he always signed them RM.

  Still, he hesitated. Once he sent this email, he was cutting off all ties with Major for good, even if, as he hoped, he managed to string him along a while longer. Was that really what he wanted to do? Major – Merlin – had talked such a good game, all about how he wanted to use magic to heal the ills of the world and bring an end to war and poverty and pollution and – well, you name the problem, Merlin had intimated he could solve it with magic.

  But if he got that much power, Wally had always known, he would also have the power to become the worst tyrant in history. And tyrants were not known for worrying about the little people they had to crush in order to achieve their goals. Wally had convinced himself that Merlin wouldn’t be like that, that the ancient wizard would be wise enough to make the world a better place without abusing the power at his command.

  He’d been a fool to think it. Merlin couldn’t be trusted. He’d lied to Wally…and he was using Aunt Phyllis as a hostage. Which meant he was threatening to hurt or even kill her to make Ariane do what he wanted.

  I don’t need any ties to a man like that, Wally thought, and sent the email.

  It only took five minutes for Frank to respond. Understood. She’ll be ready. Frank.

  Wally smiled. Then he deleted the email from Major’s Sent folder, and the reply from Frank from the Inbox, emptied the Deleted folder so no trace would remain – at least not in any easily accessible place – went to the front desk and phoned for a taxi.

  The taxi driver, a huge man with a white beard who probably moonlighted as Santa Claus at the local mall, was more than a little suspicious when Wally told him where he wanted to go. “That quarry shut down six months ago,” he growled. “Are you playing a prank?”

  “No, sir,” Wally said. “My…uncle is looking at taking over the quarry and he has my aunt with him. But she’s not feeling well so he asked me to come get her and ride with her back to the hotel.”

  “Hmmph.” The driver didn’t sound completely convinced, but he put the car in drive and pulled away from the library. “Gonna be an expensive trip,” he said over his shoulder. “Twenty minutes out and twenty minutes back plus waiting time.”

  Wally shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got lots of money.” Lots of “Uncle Rex’s” money.

  They drove out of town and in the process left behind well-paved roads for what Saskatchewan people knew as a “thin-membrane” road: a gravel road with a very thin layer of asphalt on top of it. Most of the old thin-membrane roads were being allowed to return to gravel, and this one appeared to be halfway along the process. Wally held on to the strap by his seat and tried to keep his teeth clenched so he didn’t bite his tongue. The taxi driver, like every other taxi driver
Wally had ever ridden with, seemed to have a sense of road-appropriate speed completely at odds with that of any normal person.

  After about ten minutes of bumping through the forest, the driver turned left onto a gravel road that passed through an open gate. They trundled slowly down the rutted track between close-set trees until abruptly they emerged at the very edge of the quarry, where the road turned left and then sloped down to the snow-dusted quarry floor. “Stop here for a second,” Wally said, and the driver complied. Looking out his window, Wally took in the old brown-and-cream Winnebago and the two black SUVs parked next to it. A big man in a dark suit looked up and waved. Wally took a deep breath. “Looks like they’re expecting me,” he said. “Let’s go on down.”

  The driver grunted and eased the taxi down the track into the quarry. Two minutes later they rolled up to the SUVs. Wally got out. “Frank?” he said to the big man.

  “Stanton,” the man said. “Frank is inside helping the…” he glanced at the taxi driver, who was watching with interest. “Helping your…aunt?”

  “That’s right,” Wally said. This is actually going to work! he thought, though his heart was pounding. “Aunt Phyllis. I’ll go in and –”

  But there was no need. The camper door opened. Another man, slightly smaller than Stanton, but not by much, and wearing an identical dark-blue suit, stepped out and then offered his arm to Aunt Phyllis. He was carrying a blue suitcase.

  Aunt Phyllis looked…frazzled. Her hair stuck out in all directions, and there was a vague, unfocused look to her face that Wally hated. But she smiled when she saw him. “Wally!” she said. “How nice! Mr. Major invited you, too!”

  “That’s right, Aunt Phyllis,” Wally said, as Frank helped her across the uneven gravel floor of the quarry. “He’s in town. He asked me to come get you and we’ll go have a nice dinner together.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” Aunt Phyllis said warmly. She patted her frizzy hair, to no effect. “Do I look all right?”

  “You look wonderful,” Wally said, though his heart was breaking – breaking, and in the process releasing a level of anger that was new to him. “Let’s get in the taxi.” He offered his arm in turn, and Aunt Phyllis took it. She leaned harder on him than he expected. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

  “Oh, couldn’t be better,” Aunt Phyllis said. “I’ve had a wonderful time. And doesn’t Mr. Major have a beautiful house?” She glanced back at the old camper. “Better than any hotel.”

  “It’s...lovely,” Wally said. He glanced at Frank. “Mr. Major sends his thanks.”

  Frank snorted. “As long as he sends me my money, I don’t need his thanks.” He put the suitcase into the trunk of the taxi, then turned away. “All right, Stanton, let’s close up the camper and get it out of here. Job’s over.”

  Wally smiled to himself. He had a strong feeling Rex Major would be reneging on his final bill to Ochrana Security.

  The smile faded as he looked at Aunt Phyllis, who was looking up at the clouds overhead, touched pink now by the just-setting sun, her face unworried but her mind clearly…elsewhere. What did Major do to her?

  Voice of Command, he thought angrily. It doesn’t work on me – I don’t know why. It won’t work on Ariane because she has the power of the Lady. But it works on Aunt Phyllis. And I don’t know how to break it.

  “Come on, Aunt Phyllis,” he said gently. “You sit in the back.” He opened the door for her.

  “My, Wally,” she said, “you’re such a young gentleman.” She got in and he closed the door on her, then got into the front seat with the Santa-like driver.

  “Now where?” “Santa” said.

  “Is there an evening bus to Saskatoon?” Wally asked.

  The driver nodded. “Leaves at 6:30.”

  “Then the bus station, please,” Wally said. He glanced at Aunt Phyllis again. He didn’t know how long he had before Merlin discovered what he had done, but he did know he wanted to do his best to vanish before that happened – and the first step was to get out of Dodge.

  By the time they pulled up in front of the Prince Albert bus depot, a low-rise white building with green trim, it was completely dark. Wally glanced at his watch. They still had more than hour until the bus left. He spotted a hole-in-the-wall pizza place next door. (There was also a sushi place, but he’d never really warmed up to raw fish.) Good, he thought. I’m starving. And maybe eating something will snap Aunt Phyllis out of whatever spell Major’s put her under.

  He didn’t know why it should, but then he didn’t know why it shouldn’t. I’m still new to this whole magic-is-real thing, he thought.

  He paid the driver with more of the cash he’d extracted from Major’s account, and then helped Aunt Phyllis out of the taxi while the driver retrieved her suitcase. Wally took it from him while the old woman stared around. She frowned vaguely. “Where’s the hotel?”

  “We’re going to get something to eat, Aunt Phyllis,” Wally said. “This way.”

  The pizza place was just a short hike across the parking lot, past the entrance to the courier/express portion of the bus depot. Wally ordered two eight-inch fully loaded pizzas and got a Diet Coke for himself and a bottle of water for Aunt Phyllis, whose frown deepened as she looked around. “Are you sure this is right, Wally?” she said faintly. “This hotel dining room…doesn’t look very nice.” She was staring at one wall, which featured a rather frighteningly cheerful cartoon character suspended from a red-and-yellow-striped parachute, floating down through a sky of blue tiles while carrying pizza boxes.

  Wally put the drinks on the red-topped counter, and sat down next to her, placing her suitcase at his feet. “Aunt Phyllis,” he said gently, “this isn’t a hotel dining room. It’s just a tiny pizza place.”

  Phyllis blinked at him. “Don’t be silly, dear,” she said. “Rex Major wouldn’t take us to a pizza place.”

  “Rex Major doesn’t know we’re here,” Wally said. “We’re running away from him.”

  “What?” Phyllis shook her head. “No, Wally, you’re wrong. Why would we run away from Mr. Major after he’s been so nice to us?”

  “He’s not just Mr. Major, remember, Aunt Phyllis?” Wally said. “He’s really Merlin. He’s a sorcerer. And he’s put some kind of spell on you.” He looked at the workers in the kitchen, and a woman with a small child in tow who had just come in and was ordering at the counter, and lowered his voice. “Aunt Phyllis. He wants the shards of Excalibur. Ariane is trying to get to them first. The Lady of the Lake gave us a quest. We went to the Northwest Territories and to France to try to stop him. Remember?”

  “But that was just a big misunderstanding,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Mr. Major explained it to me. It was just…” Her voice faltered. “…a…” She frowned. “…a…game?” Her expression cleared. “Yes, that’s it. It was just a game. A reality show. Like The Greatest Race. And Mr. Major won, and then you went to visit him in Toronto, but he came to visit me at Emma Lake, and then he invited me to his place in Prince Albert, and I was having a lovely time but then you showed up and brought me here.” Suddenly her eyes widened. “Wally! Did you lie when you said Mr. Major wanted me to come with you?”

  “No,” Wally said hastily. “No, Aunt Phyllis. Mr. Major sent an email to Frank at his…house…and told him I would be coming by taxi to pick you up. Frank would never have let you go with me if Mr. Major hadn’t told him it was all right, would he?”

  “No…no, I suppose not.” But Aunt Phyllis, staring at the parachuting-pizza-deliveryman cartoon again, still looked confused. “But this hotel…”

  “The hotel we’re meeting Rex Major at isn’t in Prince Albert, it’s in Saskatoon,” Wally said. If he were somehow going to free Aunt Phyllis from Rex Major’s powerful Command, a pizza place in P.A. clearly wasn’t the best place to attempt it. “We’re going to take the bus to Saskatoon, and we’ll join him there.”

  “Oh,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Well, that’s all right then.”

  The pizzas arrived. Aunt
Phyllis ate hers with evident relish, but Wally, to his surprise, found he wasn’t nearly as hungry as he had been.

  He’d hoped, once he had Aunt Phyllis free of Major’s men, that she’d snap back to normal. But now he was wondering if anyone could bring her back to normal except Merlin. And if that were the case…then Aunt Phyllis still wasn’t free – and Merlin still had a hostage to force Ariane to do what he wanted.

  He still has a hostage as long as Ariane doesn’t know she’s free, too, Wally reminded himself. I have to get word to her somehow. But I don’t even know where they’re going.

  Unless…

  “Aunt Phyllis,” he said cautiously.

  “Yes, dear?” Aunt Phyllis said, after swallowing her last bite of pizza and wiping her mouth delicately with her napkin.

  “Have you seen Ariane recently?”

  “Of course, dear,” Aunt Phyllis said. “She came to visit me at Mr. Major’s house.” She frowned. “Although I only talked to her for a moment. I dozed off.”

  “Did she or Mr. Major mention…anywhere in particular?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Wally.”

  “I mean…going somewhere. Like…planning a trip.”

  “I’m afraid I slept through it if they did,” Aunt Phyllis said apologetically. “The only people I heard talking about a trip were Frank and Stanton.”

  “Yeah?” Wally said. He leaned forward. “Where were they planning to go?”

  “Oh, I don’t think they were planning to go,” Aunt Phyllis said. “They just said they’d like to go, and something about ‘lucky brat.’ Rather rude of them, but I don’t know who they were talking about.”

  Ariane, Wally thought, heart leaping. “Where did they say they wanted to go?”

  “Australia,” Aunt Phyllis said. “By private jet.” She laughed. “As if anyone could just hop in a private jet and fly to Australia!”

  Australia, Wally thought. They’ve gone to Australia.

  And then, I need a computer.

  Wally prided himself on knowing his way around the Internet…and one site he had stumbled on months ago allowed anyone to track any flight, private or public – as long as you knew the number on the plane’s tail.