Lake in the Clouds

by Edward Willett

  A visit to the local office’s website had given him the name and email of the manager there, a fellow named Carl Paulsen. He’d smiled as he’d looked at the address. I knew that secondary email address I set up in Rex Major’s name while I was in his computer would come in handy. Any email he sent using it would still be sent by ECS’s servers, would still appear to come from Major – but Major, even if by now he had blocked Wally’s access to his main account, would know nothing about the second one unless he went digging. And why would he?

  Wally opened up ECS’s remote email system and, using the account he’d created, composed a very brief email to the manager in Auckland. Please confirm arrangements and copy me on all relevant documents at this email address. – RM, he typed. Then he sent it.

  Carl Paulsen would have to be very observant to even notice that the address associated with this email from Rex Major was rexmajor@ecs.com, rather than rex.major@ecs.com. And even if he did notice the missing dot, so what? Major might have any number of reasons for having more than one email account.

  He didn’t have to wait long before the answering email popped up. He grinned as he looked it over. As he’d suspected, Major knew exactly where he was going once he got to Queenstown, and he’d conveyed that information to those making his transportation arrangements. Driver will be awaiting your arrival at 1:15 p.m., the message read. He will convey you and your companion to Lake Putahi as requested. Two men from our security division will meet the flight from Auckland on which you expect the teenage mule carrying your stolen files to arrive, and will intercept and detain him until you can talk to him. Hope you’ll also have time to drop by the Auckland office – I know my staff would love to meet you. Have a safe flight! Carl Paulsen.

  Wally’s flight was due to arrive in Queenstown at 12:05. Carl Paulsen’s men would be waiting for him, but they didn’t know he knew they’d be waiting for them. All he had to do was slip past them and grab transportation downtown. After that…

  After that, he thought now, as he yawned and straightened his seat back in preparation for landing in Queenstown, I just have to find this Lake Putahi.

  The Queenstown airport was surprisingly large for such a small town. His stomach grumbled as he came into the terminal, and he felt a rather overpowering need for caffeine, so he stopped at the Patagonia Chocolates stand and ordered ice cream and coffee. Both were delicious. Feeling more human, he tossed the ice cream container into the trash and made his way to the exit…WAY OUT, it read above the door, which he thought was pretty funny.

  “Excuse me, son,” said a voice behind him, and his heart leaped into his throat. He didn’t even turn around. Instead he dashed through the WAY OUT. The voice shouted at him but he grabbed the door of the nearest of the line of taxis waiting for the disembarking passengers and slid into the back seat.

  “Lake Putahi,” he said to the driver breathlessly.

  “Can’t do it, mate,” the driver said. “That’s a special request.”

  “Then take me to your leader,” Wally said. He looked out. There were two big men in suits converging on the taxi. “Now would be good.”

  The driver pulled away from the curb, leaving the ECS security guys glaring after them. Wally twisted around and saw them running across the road toward the parking lot. No doubt they’d try to follow. But a minute later they were out of sight.

  He twisted around again. “Let’s take the scenic route,” he said. “Down by the lake.”

  “Suit yourself,” the driver said, and turned down into the town. A moment later they were diving through a residential area close to the lakeshore. Wally kept looking behind them, but didn’t see anybody following – not obviously anyway.

  “Pretty town,” Wally said.

  “We like it,” the driver said. His New Zealand accent sounded strange to Wally. He’d met a few Australians, and this accent was similar, but not identical. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the difference. Something to do with the vowels…

  “So who were the blokes chasing you back there?” the driver said. “You in trouble, mate?”

  Wally blinked. He hadn’t realized the driver had noticed. “No,” Wally said. “Not really. They work for my father.”

  The driver laughed. “Slipping the leash, are you?”

  “Something like that.” He decided to change the subject. “So can your company take me to Lake Putahi?”

  The driver shrugged. “Sure, mate. For a price.”

  “I’ve got the money,” Wally said.

  “Then talk to the boss.”

  Wally looked out the back window again. All clear. Then he glanced at his watch. It was 12:30 p.m. local time. He couldn’t even begin to figure out what time that was back home. Middle of the night from the way he felt. Or maybe really early morning. Whichever, Rex Major would be landing within the hour, and heading straight to the lake. He needed to get there first.

  “Step on it,” he said to the driver, and grinned to himself. I’ve always wanted to say that to a cabbie.

  But this cabbie disappointed him by saying, “Gotta obey the speed limit, mate,” and continued at a sedate pace through the quiet neighbourhood. No driver ever says that in the movies, Wally thought disgruntedly, but Queenstown – well, technically, this was Frankton, if he remembered the maps he’d looked at correctly, but Frankton was just a suburb of Queenstown – was so small it was still a very few minutes before they pulled up in front of the taxi company’s office which, rather to his surprise, was located on a street filled with boutique shops and restaurants. Wally got out and paid the driver, looked up and down the street, and went in to make his rather odd request.

  Twenty minutes later he was rolling out of town and heading up into the mountains. It would be very expensive, he’d been warned: Lake Putahi was more than an hour from Queenstown. But he’d paid up front, using the New Zealand dollars he’d exchanged his own Canadian cash for back in Auckland, and that had gone an amazingly long way toward allaying the despatcher’s doubts.

  The driver didn’t say a word, which suited Wally fine. He leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, and fell instantly asleep.

  “Turning off to the lake now,” the driver said an indeterminate time later. Wally jerked up and looked around. They were in a steep mountain valley. Low clouds hung on the slopes. They’d obviously climbed a considerable distance since leaving Queenstown, and now they were turning onto a narrow road that wound up toward the hidden mountain peaks. The driver stopped. “Not much of a road up there,” he said. “Not much to see, either. Just a parking lot. Not even a picnic bench. Pretty enough lake but not the prettiest, and we’ve got a lot of lakes in the Lakes District. As you’d expect.”

  Wally stretched. He’d developed a crick in his neck. “What time is it?”

  “Quarter to two.”

  Rex Major and Ariane were already on the ground and headed his way. The last thing he wanted was for the cab, going down, to meet Major’s limo, headed up. “Can I walk up?”

  “Bit of a steep go, but yeah. Trail head right over there.” The driver pointed out a sign to the left of the road a little farther ahead, where there was a turnout. “Drop you there, then?”

  “Please,” Wally said.

  The driver pulled up to the sign and turned around. Wally got out and took a look at it. It was green with yellow letters. “Lake Putahi, 3.6 km, 1 hour,” he read. He hitched his backpack up and buckled the chest strap. He’d have to hurry to get there first. At least it wasn’t hot: New Zealand was heading into summer just as Regina was heading into winter, but neither had quite arrived at the next season yet. And the low clouds kept the sun away. If anything, it was on the cool side.

  “You right, mate?” the driver said. “Dangerous hiking alone. And looks like it’ll be foggy higher up. Could be raining. Not much to see in the fog and rain.”

  “My dad and sister will be along soon,” Wally said. “They’re driving up to the lake. I want to surprise them.”

  The driver
shrugged. “Your funeral. I’m off, then.” He rolled up the window and drove off in a cloud of dust.

  Wally turned his attention to the trail, took a deep breath, and began to climb.

  •••

  Ariane stared out the window of the limousine that had met them at the Queenstown airport. Just before they’d landed, Rex Major had taken a call in his office aboard the jet – a call that clearly had put him in a bad mood. He kept looking around as they walked from the jet to the car as though expecting someone to jump out at them.

  There was a second vehicle behind the car, a black Range Rover with two men in it and the Excalibur Computer Systems logo on its doors. Major told Ariane to get in the back seat of the limo, then went over to talk to the men in the Range Rover. She watched him through the car window, wondering what he was saying to them. They simply nodded in response. When the limo pulled away, Ariane, glancing behind, saw the Range Rover was coming with them.

  For her part, Ariane was just glad to be off the jet for the first time since Vancouver. It might be a luxurious prison, but it was still a prison.

  And there was more. The moment she’d stepped into the open air she’d heard it, with that magical sense that wasn’t really hearing but which she interpreted that way: the song of the third shard of Excalibur, anxious to be reunited with its brothers, excited by the nearness of the magic of the Lady of the Lake, who had had it made and brought it to this world. They were definitely in the right place – or close to it, anyway.

  They made no side stops in Queenstown. Major’s driver immediately headed up into the mountains north of the city. They quickly left the green lake valley behind and were soon winding up steep roads with little traffic. “By all accounts, Lake Putahi is not a particularly popular lake,” Major said. “It will most likely be completely deserted. Which is ideal for our purposes, of course.”

  Ariane said nothing. The shard sang to her, urging her to come to it, to use its power, to join it with the rest of the sword. It hurt to think that she would soon hold it – and then have to hand it over to Major, along with the second shard she wore strapped to her side with the same tensor bandage she normally used for the first, still safely hidden back in Canada.

  I’ll never give him the first one, she thought. He may have two, but he won’t have three.

  But even as she thought that, she knew it was empty bravado. As long as Major held Aunt Phyllis hostage, she would do whatever he told her to, even with the shards urging her to keep them, to use their power to strike him down. She couldn’t give in to that call. Nor did she think an attack on Major – on Merlin – could succeed. He might not have a lot of magic, but he surely had enough to protect himself against anything she might try. And then he would punish Aunt Phyllis for her niece’s temerity.

  The shard sang in her head. It was wild and beautiful as always…and knowing what was to come, she hated it.

  They drove for an hour before turning off onto a narrow gravel track that climbed up even higher into the mountains. The driver slowed. “Pretty narrow, sir,” he said. “Are you sure…?”

  “I’m sure,” Major snapped. “Drive.” He looked at Ariane. “Can you feel it?”

  “I can hear it,” she said. “Stronger all the time. Ahead of us. It’s there.”

  Major nodded. The expression on his face, grasping, eager, would have made him a prime candidate to play Ebenezer Scrooge – a Scrooge that no mere ghosts of past, present, and future could hope to reform. He is the ghost of Christmas past, Ariane thought. Hundreds of Christmases. I doubt he’s celebrated a single one.

  They drove past a green and yellow sign marking the start of a hiking trail to the lake, then began the slow ascent of the switchback road beyond it. Almost as soon as they’d climbed above the valley floor the clouds that had hung over their heads since entering the mountains became fog shrouding them, not so thick they could not see the road, but thick enough they couldn’t see anything else, so that they seemed to be climbing into a grey, featureless void where anything might wait for them.

  In the end, of course, all that awaited them was a tiny parking lot, empty in the mist. They rolled to a stop with a crunch of gravel. The song of the third shard rang in Ariane’s mind like a summoning trumpet. She longed to go to it, but Major growled, “Stay put,” and got out, closing the door behind him. She saw him crunch across to the Range Rover and talk to the two men inside. They nodded and got out, then split up, each heading in a different direction around the lake.

  Making sure there aren’t any witnesses? Ariane thought, but she couldn’t figure out why Major would care.

  He came back to her. “Get out,” he said. “Can you hear it?”

  She nodded. She walked to the edge of the water. The song of the shard was almost frantic. She peered into the mist. At the edge of visibility she saw a dark lump, the small island in the middle of the lake she had seen in her dream, a few twisted trees clinging to it, a mound of tumbled rock at its centre. She pointed. “It’s out there,” she said, her voice sounding thin and strained in her own ears. It was hard to breathe, hard to think with the third shard calling so loudly to her, and with the second shard she wore strapped to her side answering it. “I’ll go get it –”

  Merlin’s hand closed on her arm. “Not yet,” he said. He pulled her away from the water. It felt wrong to be moving away from the third shard again.

  “What?” she demanded, feeling anger rising in her. “It’s right there. I can have it in two minutes –”

  He held out his hand. “First,” he said, “give me the second shard.”

  She stared at him. “What? Why?”

  “Because I don’t trust you. Or it.” He pointed at her side. “You’re already almost hypnotized by the sword. If you have both shards…all three, really, even if you didn’t bring the first one with you…I don’t think you’ll be able to resist its wishes any longer. I think it will force you to flee with it. And that would be unfortunate…for Aunt Phyllis.” He met her eyes squarely, his expression stone-like. “You don’t want anything bad to happen to her, do you?”

  I could vanish into this mist right now, Ariane thought. I could materialize next to the island, grab the shard, take to the clouds. With two shards, I could fly myself all the way back to Canada. With three shards, I could easily claim the remaining two. I could…

  But she couldn’t get back faster than Rex Major could make a simple phone call. And he was holding Aunt Phyllis in a place where there was no water for Ariane to use.

  She forced down the anger. Was it even really hers, or was it coming from the sword? It was hard to tell. She pulled up her shirt and unwrapped the tensor bandage, the mist cold on her exposed midriff. She dropped the shirt again and held out the second shard, the one she had stolen from under Major’s nose in France, only to have Wally betray her and hand it back to him. Now she was the one giving it to him freely.

  He took it. His pupils expanded as he touched it, and she knew that in his own way, he felt its power, too. “Good,” he said. “Now go. Get the third shard. Bring it back here. And then we will return to Canada and you will give me the first shard, too. Because I still have Aunt Phyllis.”

  Ariane wanted to attack him, wanted to kick him, bite him, scratch him. Instead, she turned and trudged back to the water. Now she had two shards singing in her head, the one behind her, the one ahead of her, both calling to her. Their songs did not mesh: the only time they had ever meshed perfectly was when Wally, of all people, had held them both. She still didn’t understand that.

  It didn’t matter. She stepped into the water and let it dissolve her, flashing across to the little island in an instant. Dripping, she rose from the lake, waded ashore, and ordered herself dry. She glanced back. She could just see Major in the mist, watching her. To her right the lakeshore was lost in the fog, but to her left, she could see one of the men from the SUV making his way slowly through the rocks and scattered trees, as though searching for something.

  The sh
ard was practically screaming at her. She frowned. It seemed to be…down, somehow, inside the pile of rocks at the island’s centre. She could see no way through the boulders from this side, so she worked her away carefully around the island’s verge, the footing so uncertain between twisted roots and shifting stones that she nearly pitched into the water twice.

  The other side of the island, however, had a level space, almost a beach. There were wet spots on the gravel that spread from there to the tumbled rocks. She frowned at that. An animal?

  She rounded the rocks. Now she was out of sight of both Major and the man picking his way along the nearer shore. There was a natural opening into the pile of stones. A shadow moved inside it, and her heart suddenly lurched. Did they have bears in New Zealand?

  But the pale skinny figure with red hair that climbed out of that hole a moment later, carrying a length of grey metal, ragged at both ends and with an indentation down the middle, was no bear.

  Ariane gaped at him. “Wally?” she said, disbelieving. “What are you doing here?” And then she blinked. “And why are you naked?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Lake in the Clouds

  The sign had said the trail to Lake Putahi was 3.6 kilometres. By the time he emerged onto the shores of the mist-shrouded body of water he was convinced it was twice that. Mountains, he thought, bending over with his hands on his knees, panting. Why did it have to be mountains? We don’t do mountains in Saskatchewan.

  But after a moment or two his heart rate slowed and his breathing was coming easier, so he straightened and looked around him.

  Lake Putahi did not look any bigger than Wascana Lake. Smaller, actually, since it was more round and Wascana Lake was really an elongated wide spot in the creek. At least, he thought Putahi wasn’t any bigger; he couldn’t really see the far shore. He could barely see the parking lot. What he could see was the island in the middle of the lake, and the boulders piled up in the middle of it.