Lake in the Clouds

by Edward Willett

  “Can we start with breakfast?” Aunt Phyllis said. “I’m famished.”

  Wally’s stomach rumbled. “Absolutely,” he said. “Breakfast.”

  •••The next bus to Regina left at 1:15 p.m. Aunt Phyllis would have to spend an hour and a half in Regina before leaving for Estevan at 5:30, arriving at 8:15. After breakfast in the hotel dining room, they’d walked over to the bus depot, where Wally bought the tickets with cash. Aunt Phyllis had already phoned her friend in Estevan, who was delighted she was coming and hoped she’d stay as long as she could.

  They waited at the bus depot, eating lunch in the Robin’s Donuts located there. Shortly after 1 p.m., feeling as if a huge weight had been taken off his shoulders, Wally watched Aunt Phyllis board the bus. He’d promised to keep her posted – she’d given him her friend’s telephone number. He just hoped Rex Major would have a hard time finding her down in Estevan, because sooner or later the sorcerer would discover she had slipped his grasp, with Wally’s help, and then he’d be after her again: she was the only way he had of keeping Ariane in line.

  Of course, even after Major learned the truth, he wouldn’t tell Ariane. His leverage over her would hold only as long as she thought he held Aunt Phyllis. So Wally’s next trick would be flying halfway around the world, catching up with Major and Ariane without Major finding out about it, and somehow getting word to Ariane that Aunt Phyllis was safe without Major preventing it.

  Which meant he needed a computer.

  He couldn’t go back to the hotel, since they’d checked out, but the public library was open and an easy walk from the bus depot. He found an open workstation next to a window and, keeping one eye on the street just in case a black SUV suddenly pulled up, full of private-security goons with kidnapping on their minds, checked the flight-tracking website.

  This time, he hit pay dirt. Major’s pilot had filed his flight plan. He would leave Vancouver at 8 p.m. that evening to fly to Honolulu.

  After his first burst of elation, Wally’s heart sank. He doubted he could even start his journey until the morning flights out of Saskatoon. There was no way he could catch them.

  Except…

  He looked closer. The date for Rex Major to fly out of Honolulu wasn’t tomorrow. It was the day after. For whatever reason – business, Wally guessed – Rex Major was stopping in Hawaii for more than a day.

  And when he left, he was flying to Queenstown, New Zealand, arriving early in the afternoon.

  Queenstown, Wally thought. I’ve got to get to Queenstown before Rex Major.

  He called up a travel-planning site, and checked available flights.

  He would have to leave at 7:45 the next morning. The first leg would take him to Calgary. He would wait there for almost four hours, then fly on to Los Angeles. He’d be stuck there seven hours, leaving at 9 p.m. for an overnight flight that would put in him Auckland at 7 a.m. the next day…or kind of the day after that, since they’d cross the International Date Line, but whatever. Then another three hours and he’d leave for Queenstown. New Zealand required foreigners without a visa to have a return flight booked before they could even enter the country, so he’d book the return for five days later. Whatever was going to happen would surely have happened by then. The total cost was around $3,000, but Aunt Phyllis had left him her credit card and told him it had more than $3,500 available on it. So he could afford it. And thanks to that mysterious layover in Hawaii, he would get to Queenstown before Rex Major, by a couple of hours at least.

  After that...

  After that, he’d have to play it by ear.

  He snorted. As opposed to the detailed planning I’ve been doing so far.

  He sighed. Looked as though he was stuck in Saskatoon for another night. Back to the hotel?

  But then he frowned as a thought struck him. By the next morning, Major would know he hadn’t flown to Toronto. In fact, he’d know later that afternoon. And probably by the time he discovered that, he would have checked on Aunt Phyllis and discovered she’d been freed. By the time Wally was due to fly out, Major would be on high alert.

  No security goons in a black SUV had pulled up outside the library, but he’d be willing to bet they’d be waiting for him at the airport by tomorrow morning. Especially since he was now going to have to book his ticket to New Zealand. Major might not be looking for his name in airline databases right now, but he would be the minute he heard Wally had not used the ticket to Toronto – even if he hadn’t heard about Aunt Phyllis.

  Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t go back to the hotel. He was a minor. He wasn’t sure he could even try to check into a hotel without running the risk of the cops being called. And he couldn’t exactly sleep on the street – he’d had no practice at being homeless and didn’t want to start now.

  But the airport was open twenty-four hours. And if he was already in the airport, there was no way Major’s men, even if they were looking for him and even if they spotted him, could keep him from getting on his airplane.

  Aunt Phyllis was safely out of the way. He knew where Merlin was headed. He had a fighting chance of getting there first. He had no one to answer to but himself.

  A night in the airport didn’t sound like fun. Especially not when it was to be followed by almost a day and a half of travelling and more hours spent in airports. That which does not kill me makes me stronger, he reminded himself. So I should be really strong when I get to New Zealand.

  Also really smelly.

  He sighed. Better get a taxi.

  As he got into a cab outside the library a few minutes later, though, he did smile at the thought that their quest for the shards of Excalibur was about to land Ariane and himself in the stand-in for Middle Earth itself, New Zealand.

  If Elijah Wood and Martin Freeman can pull off impossible quests in New Zealand, so can I, he told himself.

  Although they’d had the advantage of reading the scripts first. He didn’t even have a chance to rehearse. And if I ever do meet the writer of this particular quest tale, he thought as the cab pulled away from the library, I’ve got a few choice things to say.

  He settled back for ride to the airport. His long, long journey to redeeming himself in Ariane’s eyes had finally begun.

  •••Ariane awoke to the sound of the door being opened. She looked sleepily over to the right, to see Rex Major, dressed in his usual impeccable grey business suit, turning from the door with a plastic clothes bag bearing the hotel’s logo in his hand. The morning light streaming through the window struck a spark of red fire from the ruby stud in his earlobe as he walked over to the chair on the other side of the bed and placed the clothes bag on it. “Your clothes are clean,” he said. “Get up, get dressed. We have to get to the passport office as soon as it opens and we have to get your passport photo taken first.”

  He went out, though he left the door open. Nervously aware of that open door at her naked back, Ariane slipped out from under the covers, the room’s refrigerated air cold on her bare skin, unzipped the bag, and with great relief pulled on her clothes. Then she went into the bathroom and made use of all the other toiletries she’d requested the night before. Feeling much more human, she emerged to find Rex Major waiting impatiently. “Put your shoes on,” he said. “We have to go.”

  She had the strong urge to dawdle just to annoy him, but she wasn’t four years old anymore, so she pulled on her socks and shoes at the usual speed and then followed him out into the hallway and down to the elevators, and thence to the waiting limousine in front of the hotel that took them downtown…albeit slowly, through the worst traffic she’d ever seen in her life. Vancouver traffic is not like Regina traffic, she thought.

  At the photographer’s, she wondered what would happen if she casually mentioned that Rex Major was holding her aunt hostage and had forced her to fly halfway across the country with him and had every intention of taking her halfway around the world…it would be a scandal, Major would be disgraced, and then…

  …and then the
men he had waiting in the quarry back in Prince Albert would hurt Aunt Phyllis. And Major would still be in control, because of his damnable ability to Command people by magic.

  In fact, it wouldn’t even get that far, Ariane thought bitterly. He’d just tell whomever I told to forget the whole thing.

  Defeated before she’d even tried to fight, she sat sullenly through the process of photos – which worked well, since you weren’t allowed to smile for them – and then, at the passport office, the filling out of forms. She saw Rex Major lean forward and whisper something to the clerk, who blinked and then nodded. He came back to her. “There’s no problem with your lack of documentation,” he said. “And I have it on good authority that even though we would normally have to wait until tomorrow to get a rush passport, they will be sending yours out by courier before the office closes tonight. Which means we can be on our way to New Zealand by 8 p.m. as planned.”

  “Yay,” Ariane said.

  “We’ll wait at the hotel,” Major said.

  And that was that. If she had been going to do anything to stop him, it would have had to have been during the trip to get her passport. And she’d done nothing. She could do nothing. She was helpless, and trapped, and she didn’t even have Wally to help her…because Wally had betrayed her.

  Still think that was for my own good, Wally? she thought. But she didn’t even have the small satisfaction of being able to tell him that in person.

  •••Ariane’s passport arrived at the hotel shortly after 5 p.m. Two and a half hours later, Major led the girl aboard his jet for the second time. This time the flight would be much longer: four and a half hours to Honolulu just to start. He hated the fact they would then have to wait more than a day before continuing on to New Zealand, but business was business, and not all of it could be conducted remotely.

  Although some of it could. “Make yourself comfortable,” he told Ariane. “I have to make some phone calls.”

  Ten minutes after he’d settled himself at his desk, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom, telling both passengers to strap in. Major buckled the belt built into his seat and continued working. Once he’d caught up on email he checked the time. The first flight back to Toronto he’d been able to get Wally on had left Saskatoon less than an hour ago. He’d have to check in with his men in Toronto about halfway through his own flight to Honolulu to make sure the boy had done what he was told.

  But he could check in with his men in Prince Albert now. He called up the number for Frank LaFebvre, his contact at Ochrana Security.

  Frank answered at once. “Ochrana Security, Frank speaking.”

  “Hi, Frank, it’s Rex Major,” Major said. He was multi-tasking, calling up the balance sheet for his fledgling games division while he talked. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Frank said. “Everything went smoothly.”

  “That’s good…” Major said absently, and then frowned. Wait, what? “What do you mean, everything went smoothly? All you have to do is keep Phyllis tucked away.”

  “And we did, sir,” Frank said. “As requested.”

  “Good,” Major said. He scrolled through the spreadsheet. “Good.”

  “Right up until you sent that boy for her.”

  Major’s finger froze on the mouse wheel. “What? What boy?”

  “Wally Knight,” Frank said, sounding puzzled. “You emailed us, said he would be coming to pick up Phyllis. He showed up right on schedule and took her away. We’ve already cleaned up the site and returned the camper.”

  Major heard a distant roaring that had nothing to do with the sound of the jet taking off, just as the sudden weight on his chest had nothing to do with the acceleration pushing him back into his seat. Wally Knight had betrayed him. Lied to him. To him, Merlin. Not only that, he’d clearly hacked into his email account. Who knew what damage he had done?

  “When was this?” he asked, fighting to betray nothing of his fury in his voice – and succeeding: Major was very good at hiding his true feelings. It was one reason he had succeeded both as the power behind the throne of Camelot and as a modern businessman.

  “Yesterday evening, sir,” Frank said. “Around five o’clock, just as the sun was setting.”

  When Wally called me last night, he had already stolen Aunt Phyllis, Major thought, the rage in him burning ever hotter. He’s not on the plane to Toronto. He could be anywhere by now. And so could the old woman.

  “Frank,” Rex Major said, and maybe he did let a little bit of what he was feeling into his voice, because he heard Frank LaFebvre’s sharp intake of breath, “Wally Knight did not have my authorization to take Aunt Phyllis away. The email you received was a trick.”

  “Sir?” Frank said. “I’m sorry, there was no way –”

  “I’m not blaming you,” Rex Major said, though he wanted too very much, so he’d have someone to punish in lieu of Wally, “but I need you to make it right. Find out where Wally went. Find out where Phyllis went. Find them both. And let me know the minute you have either one of them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Frank said.

  Major disconnected. He stared at the spreadsheet.

  The only reason Ariane is helping me is because she thinks I’ve got her Aunt Phyllis, he thought. If she finds out the truth while she has the second shard…

  She won’t. She can’t. How could she? There’s no way for Wally to know where we’re going. There’s no way for him to contact Ariane. She will retrieve the shard and give it to me, and then I will force her to give me the first shard, as well, and with three shards completely in my power, neither she nor the boy can threaten my power again.

  He frowned. He still had a use for Wally, the heir of Arthur, though.

  Then he smiled, because once Ariane was neutralized as a threat, she would still make an excellent hostage. Just as she would do anything to protect her Aunt Phyllis, Wally would do anything to protect her. He’d made that clear often enough.

  Love, Major thought. The downfall of Arthur: had he not loved Guinevere, Lancelot’s betrayal could never have happened, and his kingdom would not have been so divided and weak that it fell to Mordred and his rebels.

  Major was no stranger to love, but his love was not for any one woman or man. What he loved, the only thing he loved, was his world of Faerie, and especially his home demesne of Avalon. He wanted it to be as great as it once was, as great as it could be.

  He had never loved his parents, who had vanished from his life shortly after he was born, secretly executed, he believed, by the Queen. He had been fond of his sister, but their rivalry had begun very early, and now he felt nothing but anger and contempt toward her. Love would never be his downfall. But it would be Wally Knight’s. Once Ariane had done what he needed her to do, then he would make Wally’s love for her into a leash the boy could never cut himself loose from, until he had served Merlin in the conquest of Earth and the liberation of Faerie.

  He took a deep breath, and then returned to the financial spreadsheet. But a thought lingered in the back of his mind.

  And if Wally Knight doesn’t work out…there may be one other possibility.

  It felt good to have a back-up plan. He tucked the sudden notion into the back of his mind to examine later, and bent to his work.

  Chapter Twelve

  Up in the Air

  When Major emerged from his office an hour into the flight, Ariane sensed at once that something had happened to trouble him. She wasn’t sure how she knew: there was nothing in his expression or bearing that told her. And yet she knew.

  Some sense of the Lady’s? she wondered. I have one shard with me and one hidden away. And he and the Lady are brother and sister, after all.

  “Anything wrong?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant, although considering her situation that was perhaps not the most believable emotional state to strive to project.

  “Nothing at all,” Major said. “Why do you ask?”

  She shrugged. “Just making conversation. And you look
tense.”

  “I have a lot of responsibilities,” he said shortly. “Are you sleepy? Please feel free to use the bedroom at the back of the plane.”

  “It’s only nine o’clock by the time we left,” Ariane pointed out. “I don’t go to bed at nine.”

  Major shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He sat down opposite her, and pulled the book that had been resting on the bench-like seat toward him. Ariane had looked at it while he was busy in the office. Entitled Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, it hadn’t seemed her cup of tea.

  But there was nothing else to read on the plane that she’d been able to find. No magazines, no newspapers, and certainly no thick fantasy novels of the kind she’d always favoured. The plane did boast an elaborate entertainment system, but there was absolutely no content to watch or listen to. Sure, there was plenty of food and drink, but she could hardly fill her time chowing down on Pringles and Coke, and she’d already nixed the idea of getting drunk on little bottles of whisky during the flight to Vancouver.

  “What happens when we get to New Zealand?” she said at last, both to pass the time and to try to figure out what to expect.

  “We land,” Major said. “We get off the plane. You try to home in on the third shard. You find it. You retrieve it. You give it and the second shard to me of your own free will.” He smiled thinly at that. “And then we fly back to Canada and you take me to where you hid the first shard. Once I have three of the five shards, I will easily find the others. You’ve already lost, Ariane…or should I say, my dear sister the Lady of the Lake has lost. We just have to go through the motions now.”

  “Anybody ever tell you you’re crappy company on a long flight?” Ariane muttered. She got to her feet. “Maybe I will take a nap, after all.”