He sighed. “Fine.” He turned and went out.
Ariane grabbed her bathrobe and put it on under the covers, then slipped out of her bed and padded barefoot into Major’s room. He was already seated at his computer. “It is New Zealand,” he said. “South Island. The Lakes District of the Southern Alps. Look.”
He turned the screen toward her and she saw a photograph of the same lake she had seen in her dreams a moment before. “The name means, roughly, ‘Cloud Lake.’ Or maybe ‘The Lake in the Clouds.’” He typed some more. “It’s an hour or so from Queenstown…which has an airport we can land at. Perfect.” He turned the computer back toward himself. “Go back to bed,” he said without looking at her. “I’ll contact the pilot.”
Ariane stared at him for a moment, then returned to her room. She tugged off the bathrobe and slipped back under the covers. New Zealand. All she knew about New Zealand was that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies had been shot there. And something about kiwi. Is that a fruit or a bird? She couldn’t remember.
I can’t believe I’m going to New Zealand, she thought; and then, I can’t believe I just told Rex Major exactly where the third shard of Excalibur is.
But as long as he had Aunt Phyllis, what else could she do?
It still felt like betrayal. Only this time, instead of being betrayed by someone else, she was the one doing the betraying. Betraying the Lady. Betraying herself. Even betraying the sword Excalibur, which had reached out to her to tell her where the third part of it was.
I’m doing what I think is right, she thought.
So was Wally, a small voice murmured.
That unsettling thought followed her down to sleep.
Chapter Ten
The Bus and the Bank
I’ve killed her! Wally thought, staring down at Aunt Phyllis in horror. Heads were beginning to turn all around the bus depot. A security guard took a step toward them.
But then, to his immense relief, Aunt Phyllis blinked, straightened, and looked around her. “Where…where am I?” she said. She glanced up. “Wally? Is that you?”
“Of course it is, Aunt Phyllis.” Wally gave the guard what he hoped was a bright reassuring grin, though he suspected it had a slightly frantic look to it. He gave up, wiped it away, and sat down next to Aunt Phyllis. “Don’t you remember? I came and got you in a taxi…?”
“From the cabin?” Aunt Phyllis said faintly. Then she frowned. “No…I was somewhere else…” She put a hand to her head. “It’s all so confusing,” she said. “Did I have a stroke?”
“No!” Wally hastened to reassure her, putting his hand on hers and giving it a squeeze. “Nothing like that. You’ve been…” This is going to sound weird, he thought, but he couldn’t lie to her. “…under a spell.”
She blinked. “A spell?” And then her eyes widened. “Rex Major. He came to the cottage. He…” She blinked again. “What did he do to me?”
“He used magic on you,” Wally said. “This thing he does, called the Voice of Command. He can tell people what to do, and they have to do it. And he told you to believe that you were visiting him in a very nice house, and that he was your friend, and everything was all right. But really you were in an old camper in an abandoned quarry, being held prisoner.”
Aunt Phyllis shook her head. “I can almost see it…” she said. “I can see the house I thought I was in, but that’s fading, like something from a dream. A camper…two men…” And then her eyes flew wide again. “Ariane! Ariane was there! What –”
“Major was holding you hostage,” Wally said. “He was holding you hostage to force Ariane to help him. They’ve gone in search of the third shard.”
“Gone? Gone where?” Aunt Phyllis said.
“Australia, I think,” Wally said. “I’ve got to find out.”
“And where are we now?” Aunt Phyllis stared around. “Oh! I know this place. It’s the Prince Albert bus station.”
“That’s right,” Wally said, and the mere fact she knew that made him feel much happier. “We’re heading to Saskatoon to start with.”
Aunt Phyllis looked at him with something like the usual twinkle in her eye. “To start with? Does this mean we’re on the lam?”
Wally blinked. “The lam?”
Aunt Phyllis sighed. “On the run. Don’t you ever watch old movies?”
“Sure. I’ve watched the original Star Wars twenty times.”
Aunt Phyllis laughed. “Never mind.”
The announcement came over the public address system that the bus for Saskatoon was loading. Aunt Phyllis got up. “We’ll talk more on the bus,” she said. “You can tell me exactly what that man did to me…and what’s happening with Ariane. And then you do whatever you have to to help her. You hear me, young man?”
“Yes,” Wally said meekly. “I hear you.”
Feeling immensely relieved, he followed Aunt Phyllis to the bus, put her suitcase down to be loaded into the cargo area, and showed the tickets. He realized as he followed her aboard that he still hadn’t made a hotel reservation for them in Saskatoon. Hopefully there’s not a big convention on and we won’t have any trouble finding a place, he thought.
They sat about halfway back, where the sound of the bus would drown out their voices. As they rolled out of town and down the highway for the hour-and-a-half journey, Wally told Aunt Phyllis everything that had happened – including how he had come to betray Ariane in France, and why.
She listened silently to that part, then put her hand on his. “I understand, Wally,” she said, and for some reason his eyes suddenly felt hot and wet. “You care about Ariane, more than you care about this insane quest the…Lady of the Lake” – Wally had the distinct impression she’d intended to add a probably colourful adjective before the Lady’s name and had thought better of it – “set you on. And Rex Major can be very persuasive…”
“But he didn’t Command me,” Wally said miserably. “I’m immune to it. I don’t know why.”
“He can be persuasive without magic,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Or he wouldn’t be as good a businessman as he clearly is. He told you just enough truth to make you think that everything he said was the truth, so that when he switched to lies, you’d still believe him. He played on your biggest weakness: your feelings for Ariane.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Wally said automatically. And probably never will be now.
“I didn’t say she was,” Aunt Phyllis said. “But she’s still your friend, and what he told you about the sword changing her is clearly the truth. She did hurt your sister. She hurt you, getting the second shard. I don’t think she meant to do either one, but the power she has…how could it not be changing her?”
“I think it’s changing me, too,” Wally said. “Whatever this…secret…about me is that Rex Major wouldn’t tell me, it’s connected to the sword. And there have been…weird things happening. And not just my being able to break you free from Merlin’s spell just now.”
He told her what Ariane had told him about the two shards singing in perfect harmony when he held them, but singing discordantly when she held them, so that she could not use them together. He told her about his sudden surge of fencing skill, which had so impressed Coach Mueller she’d intended to send him to the big Chinook Open fencing competition in Swift Current. And then he told her what he’d done to the guard outside Rex Major’s condo. “I may have killed him,” he said. “I hope I didn’t, but I may have. And I did it without thinking…just the way Ariane hurt Flish. It’s got to be the sword’s influence. But why is it affecting me?”
Aunt Phyllis shook her head. “I don’t know, Wally. But I don’t see any way to stop it. You’ve just got to push ahead…you and Ariane…and get the shards of Excalibur before Merlin can.”
“I know,” Wally said. He sighed. “Ariane has the first one. Merlin has the second one. And Ariane thinks he still has you hostage. She’ll find the third one for him and give him the first two unless I can somehow reach her, tell her you’re free. If I don’t…hi
s power must be growing, too. Look what he did to you! With all three shards in his hands, we won’t stand a chance.”
“What will you do?”
“If they’re heading to Australia, I need to get there, too,” Wally said.
Aunt Phyllis sighed. “I helped you get to France, but I can’t pay for a trip to Australia, Wally.”
Wally smiled then. “You won’t have to,” he said. “As long as we get to a bank machine in time, Rex Major will.”
“Really?” Aunt Phyllis laughed. “I’m not sure how you’re going to make that happen, but I heartily approve.”
“The bigger problem will be figuring out exactly where they go,” Wally said. “Australia is a big place. But if I can get to a computer, I can at least figure out which airport they’re flying to. After that…” He sighed. “I guess I wing it.”
“You’ve done pretty good so far, Wally,” Aunt Phyllis said, patting his hand again. “I have every confidence in you.”
Well, that makes one of us, Wally thought, and settled back in his seat. He stared out the window into the darkness. I wonder where Ariane is right now?
•••There was a Hilton Garden Inn within a block of the Saskatoon bus depot. After arriving, Wally and Aunt Phyllis walked across the street into the big parking lot that served both the hotel and the Midtown Plaza shopping mall, Wally carrying the suitcase, and made their way to the hotel’s lobby. “Do you have a reservation?” the pretty, brown-skinned young woman behind the counter said in a pronounced East Indian accent.
“No,” Aunt Phyllis said. They’d decided it would be less suspicious if the grown-up did the talking. “We didn’t know we were coming until today. Do you have any rooms?”
“Well, we’ve been pretty full, but you’re in luck,” the woman said, checking her computer. “We’ve had a cancellation. If you don’t mind sharing…?”
Okay, that’s awkward, Wally thought, but Aunt Phyllis simply said, “That will be fine.” She handed over her credit card. Wally hoped she’d managed to pay off enough of the France trip that it would still cover the hotel room. Apparently it did; a few moments later they were riding the elevator to the sixth floor.
The room was nice enough, with two double beds. Wally said, “Before we do anything else, I need to get to a bank machine to make that transfer we talked about. There’s a Royal Bank not far from here…”
Aunt Phyllis nodded. She opened her big black purse and pulled out a green fake-alligator-skin wallet. She held out her bank card. “You remember the PIN number?”
“7556?” The last four digits of Aunt Phyllis’s phone number. Not the most secure choice, but he didn’t say anything about it. His own PIN number was 1701, from NCC-1701, the registry number of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. Although come to think of it, anyone who knew him well might be able to figure that out. Logically, I should probably change it, he thought, and grinned to himself.
“Will this really work?” Aunt Phyllis said.
“If Rex Major hasn’t caught on yet that I’ve drained most of his personal account, then it should,” Wally said. “I left enough so he shouldn’t run short making ordinary purchases, and I would think he’s been a little too busy to check his banking statement, so I think there’s a real good chance.”
“Well, be careful.”
“I will,” Wally promised, though he wondered what he was supposed to be careful about. Admittedly it was dark, and downtown Saskatoon could be a little sketchy, but it was still early evening. And Major clearly still hadn’t caught up to what was going on, or – as Wally had secretly feared would be the case, though he’d said nothing to Aunt Phyllis about it – there would have been hired goons in a big black car waiting for them when they came out of the bus depot.
At least she cares, he thought as he took the elevator back down to the lobby. That’s more than my own parents do.
Thinking of his parents made him wonder how Flish was doing, and he felt a pang of guilt as he realized that he hadn’t called her again since that one uncomfortable conversation after he’d come home from France.
She’s never going to forgive me, either.
He crossed 22nd Street, then 1st Avenue. The Royal Bank was on the corner of 1st and 23rd, directly across from the main entrance to the Midtown Plaza. He went to the ATMs. The first thing he did was check the balance in his account. If Major had somehow managed to reverse the transaction, then…
But, no, the balance in his account was larger than it had been in his entire life. It didn’t come close to the total in his trust fund, of course, but he couldn’t touch that for another seven years. It was certainly more than enough to get him wherever he needed to go.
He dug into his backpack and took out the cheque.
He’d made plans for this before he’d left Major’s condo. In fact it had been far easier than he’d anticipated. He’d thought he’d have to somehow get to a bank and get a supply of emergency cheques, but when he’d been poking around on Major’s computer he’d discovered the computer magnate printed his own cheques as needed. A tweaking of the software to put his account number, name and address on the cheques instead of Rex Major’s, and he’d been able to print out fifty of them with no trouble at all.
Cheques, he’d reasoned, would be harder to track than online transactions of any kind. As long as they actually go through. He looked down at the cheque. He’d had to Google to find out how to fill it out: he’d never written a cheque in his life.
The cheque was made out to Phyllis Forsythe, for $50,000.
He removed his card from the machine, inserted hers, put in her pin number, chose Deposit, followed the instructions, inserted the envelope.
The machine accepted it.
He was limited in how much money he could transfer from the account into which he had just deposited the $50,000, but he paid off as much of her credit card bill as he could. The rest might take most of a day – and might not transfer at all if Rex Major twigged to what was going on.
Better spend it before he does, Wally thought.
Walking back to the hotel, Wally was uneasily aware he still wasn’t being completely honest with Aunt Phyllis. There was one thing he’d discovered on Major’s computer he still hadn’t shared with her: the blurry security-cam photograph of her sister. He wondered if he should tell her. There was nothing she could do about it and she might be hurt to think that her sister hadn’t even been in touch since her disappearance, while she struggled with illness and then the challenges of looking after Ariane…
He caught himself in mid-thought. Who was he to withhold information like that from Aunt Phyllis? Who was he to decide what was good for her and what wasn’t? It was the same mistake he’d made with Ariane. He’d tried to protect her and only made things worse. If he’d just trusted her and acted like her friend instead of trying to protect her as if he were her father (or boyfriend, but he shied away from that thought almost as soon as it formed), they would have had both shards and gone on to find the third. He’d let Major convince him that the shards were changing Ariane in dangerous ways. But now he’d discovered the shards were changing him in dangerous ways, too, and he’d also discovered it didn’t matter. There was no going back. And there was certainly no giving in to Major, who had revealed his true colours by kidnapping Aunt Phyllis, holding her hostage, and threatening to hurt her if Ariane didn’t do exactly what he wanted her to do.
All five shards of Excalibur would be discovered. Clearly there was no way to prevent it. That meant the only question was who would have the sword in the end – Ariane (and the Lady of the Lake), or Merlin. And now that Merlin had belied all the fine words he’d plied Wally with, there was clearly only one answer to that question.
Just as there was clearly only one answer to the question, Should I tell Aunt Phyllis about her sister or not?
So when he got back to the hotel, the first thing he did was go to the business centre, access his email, and print the photo of Emily Forsythe he
had found on Major’s computer and forwarded to himself. Then he rode the elevator back up to the room. He had other things he needed to do on the hotel computers, but this came first.
“Did it work?” Aunt Phyllis asked as he came in.
“Yes,” he said. “I couldn’t transfer all of it because the cheque has to go through whatever mystical process banks put cheques through, but I paid off a couple of thousand dollars of your credit card. Which should give you enough credit to get me to…wherever I have to go. I still need to figure that out. But, Aunt Phyllis…there’s something else I need to tell you first.”
Aunt Phyllis was sitting, in nightgown and robe, in the armchair by the window. “What is it, dear?”
Wally pulled the office chair out from behind the desk and turned it around so he could sit facing her. “I found this on Rex Major’s computer.” He held out the photo he had just printed.
Aunt Phyllis took it, looked at it. For a moment she didn’t seem to understand what she was seeing…then her eyes widened. “Oh…” she said softly. “Oh.” And then her eyes filled with tears.
Feeling awkward, but also feeling that he couldn’t just sit there, Wally got up from the office chair and squeezed next to her on the armchair and put his arms around her. She leaned into him. “Oh, Wally,” she said softly. “I was so sure she was dead. I thought I was over it. I thought…how can she be alive? Why hasn’t she contacted us?’
Wally had no answer to that. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think she must be very afraid.”
“Of Rex Major,” Aunt Phyllis said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Of Rex Major,” Wally agreed, but wondered how much of her fear was of Major, and how much was of the Lady of the Lake. The Lady had approached Emily Forsythe first, tried to get her to take her power, and she had refused it. Ariane had not. Who had made the right choice?
She doesn’t even know about Ariane, Wally thought then. She doesn’t know her daughter accepted the power she refused. She left to try to protect Ariane, and it didn’t work out any better than when I betrayed Ariane to try to protect her.
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