Lake in the Clouds

by Edward Willett

  And even the attempt to escape Major was in peril of failing. Major had a lead. He knew where she’d been, on a specific date. And he had the resources to track her down. How far along her trail was he? Would Major take Ariane's mother hostage next?

  And if he does, Wally thought uneasily, there won’t be anyone in the right place at the right time to find out where she is and rescue her the way I rescued Aunt Phyllis. If Major finds her, Ariane will give up every shard she has and help him find all the others to save her mother – no matter how the power of the sword fights against that urge.

  Which means…

  He sighed. Which means, once we’ve sorted out the third shard, we have to start looking for Ariane’s mother ourselves. We need to find her first.

  The cliché: it never rains but it pours came to mind. Wasn’t one quest enough? Now they’d have to deal with two.

  Not unless we keep that third shard from Major, he reminded himself. First things first.

  He squeezed Aunt Phyllis’s shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he said. “We’ll find her before he does. We have to.”

  Aunt Phyllis nodded silently.

  Wally eased himself away from her and stood up. “I need to go back down to the business centre,” he said. “Will you be all right?”

  Aunt Phyllis reached for a tissue from the box on the table by the chair and blew her nose. “I’ll be fine,” she said with a wan smile. But when Wally went to the door and glanced back, he saw her reaching for another tissue, as she sat in the chair staring at the picture he had given her.

  He closed the door quietly and went to the elevator.

  I’m only fourteen years old, Wally thought as he rode down to the lobby once again. How did I end up being the one in charge?

  There was no answer to that except that someone had to be, if Rex Major was going to be stopped.

  In the business centre, Wally sat down and called up the flight-tracking website he’d discovered. He typed in the tail number of Major’s private jet, and…

  There it was. The plane had flown to Vancouver. It currently showed no new flight plan. Wally frowned. Flight plans could show up anywhere from twenty-four hours to thirty minutes before the flight took place. If Rex Major were planning to fly to Australia for certain, he’d have expected the pilot to have already filed the flight plan. But he hadn’t.

  Did that mean Major didn’t know for sure where he was going next?

  And if that was the case, why had he flown first to Vancouver?

  He thought about it, hard. He’s planning to fly to Australia…or at least somewhere down there. Another country. He has Ariane with her. And Ariane…

  Ah.

  Ariane doesn’t have a passport. She lost it in the cave in France.

  Which meant Major was stuck in Canada until he could get her one, and even the most urgent request could only get a passport within about twenty-four hours. Wally had another day, at least.

  What he really hoped was that Major’s pilot would file a flight plan as soon as his boss told him where they were going. In which case, there was a fighting chance he could actually get to wherever Major was taking Ariane before they did.

  But until the pilot filed his flight plan, there was nothing he could do.

  He yawned. Except sleep.

  Which, suddenly, seemed more important than anything else.

  He pushed away from the computer desk and headed to the elevator. He was leaving the elevator, thinking about the photo he’d left Aunt Phyllis staring at, when a horrible thought struck him with so much force he stopped dead in the hallway, feeling sick.

  The photo had been taken from a security camera. Merlin’s magic wove through computer networks worldwide. Clearly he had been monitoring security cameras for people of interest, or he never would have gotten that photo of Ariane’s mother.

  Wally didn’t think his magic was in every network – not every network used Excalibur Computer Systems software. But enough did that you could never be sure.

  He had just used an ATM. And ATMs had security cameras.

  Was an alarm even now going off on Rex Major’s computer – or in his head, through magic?

  Rex Major had operatives in Saskatoon. There would be a branch of Ochrana Security for sure, and even failing that, there was his own staff. In Regina he’d Commanded his district sales manager to try to kidnap Ariane. If he discovered through the security camera that Wally was in Saskatoon, he would send someone to try to find him – no question. He might dig deeper into other computer networks he had access to. And that might lead them right to the hotel.

  For a second Wally thought he’d have to tell Aunt Phyllis to get dressed, tell her they were leaving the hotel for somewhere else…but he couldn’t do that. Not after the day she’d had. He won’t send people into the hotel to roust us out, he thought. He’ll have them waiting for us when we leave. If he even figures out where we are.

  They’d have to leave early in the morning, get out of the hotel through a back exit, find somewhere to hide Aunt Phyllis that was safe from Major…but the clock was also ticking for Wally. He had to race Merlin to wherever the wizard was going, try to get to Ariane while he was there. Once she knew Aunt Phyllis was safe, she could use her powers to escape.

  One night in a nice hotel, Wally thought. One night. We can spare one night, for Aunt Phyllis, and for me.

  He took a deep breath to try to slow his racing heart, and carried on to the room.

  “Hi, Aunt Phyllis,” he said as he entered. “How about we order dessert from room service?”

  Two hours later, Aunt Phyllis was in her bed, and Wally, the piece of pie he’d eaten sitting rather uneasily in his stomach on top of the pizza he’d had in Prince Albert, was lying fully dressed on his. Rex Major’s men won’t come knocking in the middle of the night, he told himself as he lay there, staring up in the darkness. You’re being silly.

  But sleep was a long time coming just the same.

  •••A prickle of magic woke Merlin in the middle of the night. He blinked up at the dim-lit ceiling, then sat up, frowning. Wally, he thought.

  The magic told him Wally had come in contact with one of his networks, but he couldn’t tell which one. He just sensed the boy’s presence in his mind, as though he had come into the room. I wish he was in the room, he thought as he got up and pulled on the robe he had left at the foot of the bed. It would make it easier to strangle him.

  He sat at his desk then opened a program his IT gurus would have been utterly bewildered to see, since only part of it involved the usual sort of computer operations conducted by countless on-off switches and a connection to the Internet, while the rest involved the tug and flow of magic and a connection to the frustratingly thin trickle of power he received from Faerie. From their point of view, it would have seemed to do nothing at all. But for him…

  A globe appeared, a representation of the Earth. It spun until the western hemisphere was front and centre. The view zoomed down until Canada filled the screen. Major tugged again with his magic, expecting the view to zoom to southern Ontario, and then on down into the city of Toronto.

  Except it didn’t. Instead, it zoomed in on Saskatchewan…then down to the city of Saskatoon.

  He had tendrils of magic in networks all over the city, but the one that had brushed up against Wally was one he had used before, when he needed to find someone – as in his recently launched search for the whereabouts of Ariane’s mother, who had refused the Lady’s power and thus was no threat to him, but who would certainly be the ultimate hostage to ensure Ariane’s further cooperation. Emily Forsythe had remained remarkably elusive, though he had captured a photo of her from a security camera, and it was a security camera network that drew his attention now: not the one where he had found an image of hers, which was connected to a chain of convenience stores, but a much higher-level network, the one used by the Royal Bank of Canada to keep an eye on people using their ATMs.

  He zoomed in farther, found the specif
ic ATM: the main branch of the bank, right in the heart of downtown. He clicked buttons that would have been dead links to anyone else, and an image appeared: Wally Knight, in Saskatoon, using an ATM some hours before. But where is he now?

  His magic couldn’t tell him. If Wally had used any other computer networks, his magic did not reach them.

  He’s on the run, he thought. He thinks the police are after him because of what he did to the guard in the condo. And he’s run back to the province he knows best, but not to his hometown, because he doesn’t want to be recognized.

  The bank’s internal network for managing money was not, unfortunately, something he could access, so he couldn’t see exactly what Wally had been doing at the ATM, but he could guess: taking cash out of his account so he could keep running without leaving a paper trail for anyone to follow.

  He said he’d be checking email, Major thought. He opened his email program, sent a note. Wally, I know you’re in Saskatoon. You don’t have to keep running. Everything is settled back in Toronto. Call my cell phone and I’ll arrange for you to go back to my condo. There’s nothing to worry about. RM. He clicked Send, then frowned at the screen a moment longer before getting up and going back to bed.

  I hope the brat doesn’t get himself into any serious scrapes while I’m away, he thought. Then he chuckled a little. Although he is Arthur’s heir. It’s not like Arthur didn’t get himself into – and out of – far more serious scrapes than anything Wally is likely to fall into.

  The brat’ll be fine. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. And once I have the entire sword…

  He let that pleasant thought take him back into sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Travel Plans

  Wally jerked awake to a noise in the hallway. He sat up.

  Grey light was beginning to creep into the room around the edges of the thick curtain. Aunt Phyllis still slept. He felt grimy, and his skin felt as rumpled as his clothes after sleeping in them all night.

  What had he heard?

  He got up, crept to the door, and pressed his ear against it.

  “…have to hurry if we’re going to…” the voice faded toward the elevators.

  Wally took a deep relieved breath, and then turned back to the room. “Aunt Phyllis,” he said.

  She muttered, but didn’t wake.

  He went over closer to her, leaned over. “Aunt Phyllis.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. For a moment she looked confused and frightened and so aged and frail that Wally thought his heart would break. But then her old spirit somehow came flooding back into her face, and she smiled. “Good morning, Wally,” she said. “Is it time to get up?”

  He nodded. “I think we should leave as soon as we can,” he said. “I’m afraid Rex Major may figure out we’re here.” He jerked his thumb at the door. “I’m going back down to the business centre to see if his pilot has filed a flight plan yet.”

  “That will tell you where you’re going,” Aunt Phyllis said. She sat up, and scooted back against the headboard. “But where am I going?”

  Wally shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. Which was a pretty glaring hole in his plans, now that he thought of it. He’d pictured them just checking into a hotel in Saskatoon, where Aunt Phyllis could stay comfortably while he went haring off after Major and Ariane. But if Major really did know where they were…

  “I have a suggestion, then,” Aunt Phyllis said. “I have an old friend in Estevan whom I don’t see often enough. She’s been wanting me to come stay with her for ages, but it’s simply been too difficult because of having to look after Ariane.”

  Wally’s heart leaped. “It would be awfully short notice,” he said. “Would she really let you just…show up?”

  “I’m sure if I phone her from here, tell her Ariane is away on a…a school trip…and I have a few days free, she would be delighted.”

  “Aunt Phyllis, that sounds perfect,” Wally said, immensely relieved. “As long as you stay off the Internet and are careful about staying away from places with security cameras, Rex Major will have a very hard time figuring out where you are. I’ll check the bus schedule right now while I’m at the computer.”

  “And I’ll get dressed,” Aunt Phyllis said.

  Wally, after a detour to the bathroom for a quick shower, headed downstairs a few minutes later, hair wet but feeling much more human than he had when he’d first woken up. He sat down at the business centre terminal and checked his email first. His heart thumped when he saw that one was from Rex Major…but he was grinning after he’d read it.

  Major knew he was in Saskatoon, but clearly didn’t know where. And he still thought Wally was running from the events in Toronto, which meant he hadn’t heard about Aunt Phyllis’s escape yet. Major wanted him to call. That meant he was unlikely to have anyone actively searching for Wally in Saskatoon, at least not yet. And that meant they really did have a chance to spirit Aunt Phyllis away.

  Wally considered Rex Major’s email. His grin widened. He wants me to call him, he thought. Wally Knight, how good of an actor are you?

  Good enough, he decided, and reached for the phone.

  •••

  Rex Major had left Faerie more than a millennium ago, had lived a long life in the era of Arthur, had spent hundreds of years trapped in time within the hollow tree where Viviane had imprisoned him, watching the decades flit past. He had lived in this era many years more. And yet…when he dreamed, it was always of Faerie, of the palace where he had grown up with his sister, now the Lady of the Lake, of his parents, who had long since vanished from the land of the living, of plants and animals and music and food that did not exist on Earth and that he had not seen or heard or tasted in centuries.

  It was from just such a dream, a pleasant one, that the sound of the cell phone woke him. He blinked up at the ceiling of the hotel room for a moment, the sweet lingering notes of an ancient song played on an instrument humanity had no word for fading from his mind, and then rolled over and picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Mr. Major,” said Wally Knight.

  The last shreds of the dream blew out of his mind like clouds before a hurricane. Major sat up in bed. “Wally,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “In Saskatoon,” Wally said. “In a hotel. I had some money and I didn’t know where else to stay. I checked my email and saw…is it really all right? I didn’t kill that guard?”

  “No,” Major said. “Of course not. Gave him a nasty bump and a cut that needed a couple of stitches, that’s all. No worse than what Ariane did to you in France, really. You didn’t need to run.”

  “I thought I did,” Wally said. He sounded relieved. “I really thought I’d killed him. And I was scared…I don’t even know how I did it. I’m not a fighter! But somehow…” He hesitated. “Does it have something to do with…with whatever you suspect about me? The secret you haven’t told me yet?”

  “Yes,” Major said. “I think it does. But we need to find out for sure. I need you to go home, Wally. I’m tied up on business…I’m in Vancouver, by the way…but I’ll be home in three or four days at most. I want you waiting for me. Then I can finally make sure that you’re whom I think you are.”

  A long silence. “Okay,” Wally said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Major. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble. I just wanted to go out and I thought I’d just push the guy and run past him into the elevator. But…”

  “I understand,” Major said, filling his voice with (entirely phony) warmth and understanding. “I completely understand, Wally. It’s all right.”

  “Thank you,” Wally said in a small voice. Another long pause. “Have you…heard anything about Ariane? Is she all right?”

  Major didn’t even glance at the open door into Ariane’s room. “I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “I’m sorry, Wally.”

  Wally didn’t reply.

  “Cheer up,” Major continued. “I’m sure she’s fine. Wally, I’m going to buy you a ticket back to Toronto. I
’ll email you the information so you can check in. I’ll send a limo to meet you at the airport. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Wally said.

  “Good,” Major said. “Excellent.” He felt relieved to have the matter of Wally settled before he and Ariane headed to New Zealand. “As I said, I’ll be home in a few days, and then I’ll be able to tell you the big secret. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Wally said. “I’ll be waiting. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Wally hung up. Major checked the time. Too late to go back to sleep, he thought. Let’s get the day started. A passport for Ariane…and then off to New Zealand for the third shard.

  He called his pilot, told him to file a flight plan for Queenstown, New Zealand, departing that evening, and then got out of bed.

  It’s going to be a great day, he thought, and headed to the shower.

  •••

  That went well, Wally thought, grinning to himself as he hung up the phone. That went remarkably well. He remembered a line he’d read in a book sometime: the wicked are always surprised that the good can be clever.

  He could tell he’d woken Major from sleep, which made him rather childishly glad. However, it meant Major probably hadn’t told his pilot anything about their plans yet. All the same, he checked the website he’d looked at the night before. Nothing had been added since the flight plan from Prince Albert to Vancouver from the previous day. I’ll get Aunt Phyllis on the bus and then check again.

  He went back up to the room. Aunt Phyllis was dressed and sitting on the bed. “Rex Major thinks I’m going to fly quietly back to Toronto,” he said. “He still doesn’t know about you.”

  “How do you know?” Aunt Phyllis said.

  “I talked to him,” Wally said.

  Aunt Phyllis’s hand flew to her mouth. “Really? Wally, that’s dangerous! His magic…”

  “It doesn’t work on me,” Wally said. “He told me so himself. He can’t make me do what he tells me to do. I don’t know why.” His only regret about not taking Major up on the offer to fly back to Toronto was that he was passing up his final chance to learn the deep dark secret about himself. “Anyway, he’s in Vancouver. He claims he still hasn’t heard anything about Ariane, but we know she’s with him. I don’t know yet where he’s going. So let’s get you safely off to Estevan…and then I’ll see what I can find out.”