Lake in the Clouds

by Edward Willett

  Just as before, she felt an enormous surge of power in the shard when Wally had hold of it with her. It was almost as though the sword belonged as much to him as to her, but that made no sense. She was the Lady of the Lake, and he was just a kid who’d happened to be on the shore when she’d first heard the Lady’s song.

  Except, clearly, he was more than that. But how that could be, she had no idea.

  All that mattered, though, was the power: power enough to keep both of them aloft long enough, she hoped, to make it across the Pacific.

  There was no possibility of taking a direct route. She had to leap from cloud to cloud when they were scattered, though she could race in a straight line through overcast skies. She could hear in her mind, distant but clear, the song of the first shard she had claimed for herself, nestled in its hiding place, and she used that as her compass.

  Time had no meaning. Everything narrowed down to the journey, the steady flow of power from the shard into her. She knew Wally was with her, but they could not speak in any fashion. She just hoped he didn’t let go of the shard. If he did, she didn’t think she could save him.

  But even that fear seemed remote. When she was using the power of the sword, everyday human concerns grew distant. There was always – always – the urge in the back of her mind to simply let herself go into the clouds, let her mind dissolve with her body, become one with the water. She wouldn’t give into it. She’d already fought and won that battle. But it was there, and if someday things changed, or things became so desperately bad in her life she could not endure it, she could always…

  She caught herself. The magic’s self-destructive urge was insidious. Even as she was thinking she’d resisted it, it had snaked its way into her mind.

  It was a sign she was getting tired, her will weakening. The power of the shard seemed as strong as ever, but her ability to use it was fading. For the first time in a long time she tried to take stock of what lay beneath them.

  She could tell it was dark, and with her own eyes she would surely have been blind, but somehow the magic let her see, or at least sense, what lay beneath them. There was ice in the ocean. How far north had they come? There was no fresh water down there to materialize in. But ahead…she could sense something…

  Land. A town. A pool.

  Good enough.

  Thirty seconds later they emerged, spluttering, in an empty, darkened swimming pool. The glow from a few blue nightlights revealed high walls, steel beams holding up a metal roof. There were windows high up in one wall, but only a hint of reflected streetlight came through them.

  They hauled themselves out onto the pool verge and Ariane dried them. “Where are we?” Wally said.

  “Kvimarvik Swimming Pool,” Ariane said.

  Wally blinked. “How do you know?”

  She pointed over his head. He twisted around and saw the name on the wall. “Oh.” He twisted around again. “And where is that?”

  “Either Alaska or B.C., I think,” Ariane said. She heaved a sigh. She felt exhausted. “I have to rest before we go on. Food would be good, too.”

  “Your wish is my command,” Wally said. He dug in his backpack and hauled out a handful of granola bars. “Courtesy of Rex Major. I stole them from his condo kitchen before I escaped.”

  Ariane took them eagerly. After the first one she felt much better. After four she thought she could almost manage to get them moving again. But she still needed a few more minutes’ rest. She told Wally.

  “Suits me,” he said. He shuddered. “That is not a nice way to travel as a passenger. Give me a business-class seat in a 747 any day.”

  “Hey, I could have left you in New Zealand,” Ariane said, feeling obscurely stung. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Maybe not for you,” Wally said. “You’re driving. I was just…there and not there.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I like magic.”

  “Magic likes you,” Ariane said. “It’s only because you’re holding the other end of the shard I have enough power to move us both. What’s that all about, anyway?”

  Wally sighed. “I really have no idea.” He hesitated. “But I can…sense…the shard, too. Probably not as strongly as you can, but when I got to Lake Putahi…I knew it was on the island.”

  “You’ve definitely got some connection to the sword,” Ariane said. “I just wish I knew what it was.”

  “You and me both,” Wally said. “Merlin kept telling me there was something special about me, that my involvement in all this isn’t an accident. But he never explained. Doesn’t seem likely he’s going to now.”

  Ariane laughed a little. “Probably not.” She stretched, and stood up. “All right,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”

  Wally groaned, but stood. “Can’t see the clouds from in here.”

  “We’ll take the waterways,” Ariane said. “As far as we can, anyway.” She frowned. “I wonder where Major is.”

  “Assuming this is the same day – or the day before, I can never remember how the International Date Line works – we left New Zealand, he should still be flying, shouldn’t he? How long did it take you?”

  “Maybe…eleven or twelve hours in the air. But he’ll have to stop to refuel. And that was from Vancouver. If he’s heading to Saskatchewan it’ll be another three hours or so on top of that. He shouldn’t be there yet. Anyway, like I said, it shouldn’t matter. He doesn’t know where the shard is.”

  “You keep saying that,” Wally said darkly. “But I wouldn’t want to bet money on it.”

  Uneasily, Ariane realized he was right. What if Major had some way to find the first shard? What if her having the third one didn’t block his use of the second, and he could hear it singing?

  “Let’s get moving,” she said.

  They plunged into the pool and away through the pipes. She kept to streams and rivers and lakes as much as she could, though twice she leaped them up to the clouds and down again when that seemed more direct.

  Again, she didn’t know how long it took, but suddenly they were there, in Wascana Lake, in the dark. She materialized them and they clambered out through a thin skein of ice onto the shore: right at the place where it had all begun, at the foot of the parking lot at the lake’s northeast corner. She dried them. The song of the sword sang to her. “Wait here,” she said to Wally. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

  She stepped back in the water, became one with it. Her senses expanded. Now that she wasn’t travelling, she could use her power in another way, the same way she had used it back at Lake Putahi to find Wally’s backpack. She could sense everything in the lake: every grocery cart, every beer bottle, every strange object that had made its way into Wascana since the Big Dig that had deepened the lake when she was little. But none of those mattered. What mattered was the joyful song of the first shard of Excalibur, the one she had held the longest. In all the muddy detritus at the bottom of the lake, it stood out in her mind like a shining diamond…no, more than that, a star, a point of pure white fire.

  She gathered it to herself, returned to her body, rose dripping and triumphant from the water at the foot of the parking lot with the shard in her hand…

  And stopped dead.

  Wally was where she had left him, but he wasn’t alone. A man, a fat man, breathing hard, had an arm around Wally’s chest, pinning his arms to his side. The man’s other hand held a knife, just pricking the skin below Wally’s right ear. Ariane saw a streak of dark blood running down Wally’s neck.

  “I’ll take that,” the man panted.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Knife to the Throat

  Wally stood in the cold, arms wrapped around himself, breath coming in clouds lit white by the lights of the empty parking lot behind him. He wondered what time it was. The city was never entirely silent, but the traffic noise was as little as he’d ever heard it. 3 a.m.? 4 a.m.? Whichever, the park was deserted.

  Ariane had simply vanished. He half-expected her to emerge on Willow Island, but there was no sign of
her anywhere. He sighed and stamped his feet. Maybe he could spend the night in his own bed. That would make a nice change.

  And then, with no warning at all, someone grabbed him from behind. Shocked, he didn’t even struggle as an enormous flabby arm wrapped around him, and then it was too late. Something cold touched his neck below his right ear, then stung. Warmth dribbled down his neck.

  “What –” he said…or squeaked, really.

  “Shut up,” said a man’s voice. “Or I stick the knife in farther.”

  Wally shut up.

  As suddenly as she had vanished, Ariane returned. She appeared in the water in an explosion of spray, got her feet under her, started to wade ashore…and froze when she saw Wally and his captor in front of her.

  “I’ll take that,” said the man.

  The water behind Ariane swirled and began to rise up into tentacles, and the man’s grip on Wally tightened. “None of that,” he growled. “Mr. Major told me about your tricks. I see anything coming out of that lake besides you, your boyfriend loses an ear.”

  “If you kill him, I’ll kill you,” Ariane said in a voice so cold it made Wally’s eyes widen in surprise.

  “Who said anything about killing him?” the man said. Wally could feel the man’s heart pounding in his chest, hear his breath coming in gasps. He’s scared, Wally thought. But it didn’t seem to be stopping him. “I can cut him up plenty without killing him. How long are you willing to watch that before you give me the shard?”

  “How do you know about the shard?” Wally gasped. “Who are you?”

  The grip never slackened. “Anderson Bukowski. District sales manager, Excalibur Computer Systems.”

  Wally groaned. What was it with Rex Major and his district sales managers? He’d Commanded the last one to try to kidnap Ariane before they’d even found the first shard. They’re like Hogwarts’s Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors, he thought.

  “Let him go,” Ariane said. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because Mr. Major told me to,” Bukowski said.

  “He told you to attack a fourteen-year-old kid?”

  “He told me to watch Willow Island,” he said. “He told me if you showed up, to stop you from getting the shard of Excalibur you hid in the lake. He told me what you could do with water and told me to be creative if I had to try to stop you.” He jerked Wally back against himself, hard. “I’m being creative.”

  Ariane stood frozen, indecisive. I guess she’s almost decided she can trust me, he thought. Otherwise she’d already be gone. That’s a good thing.

  But nothing else about the situation was good. It was the opposite of good.

  More than that, it was infuriating.

  The anger rising in Wally seemed to be coming from outside himself, flowing to him from some other source. It only took him a second to realize what that meant.

  The sword was calling to him. Excalibur was…speaking? singing?...he couldn’t quite describe what it felt like, but one thing he knew. The sword knew him. The sword wanted to help him. The sword was giving him power just as it gave Ariane power.

  But not the same kind of power. Mostly, it was filling him up with anger – and a sudden confidence that the bumbling, overweight, would-be murderous, district sales manager holding him was no match for what he could do.

  What can I do?

  This.

  He let the power singing in him take over. He stomped down on Bukowski’s foot. Bukowski swore, his grip loosened, and that was all Wally needed. He twisted, down and out from under the big arm, spun around and with a roundhouse kick knocked Bukowski’s feet out from under him. Bukowski thudded to the ground, breath whooshing! out of him, arms flung wide. The knife skittered across the pavement. Wally leaped on it, spun, planted his knee on the man’s chest, pulled back the knife to drive it into Bukowski’s throat…

  And then a tentacle of water slapped across his ribs and sent him tumbling away from the district sales manager, whose face was purpling as he struggled to breathe. Spluttering, enraged, Wally got to his feet, turned back, knife still in his hand, ready to attack Bukowski once more…and suddenly realized what he was doing. He dropped the blade in horror.

  I was going to kill him, he thought. I would have killed him if Ariane hadn’t stopped me. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone in my life! He looked down at his hands as if they belonged to a stranger. How did I do that? Why did I do that?

  The sword. Now he understood how Ariane could have hurt his sister so badly. He understood how much effort it had taken her not to hurt his sister worse.

  Whatever his connection to Excalibur was, the connection Merlin would not tell him about, it was as a warrior.

  Wally the Warrior.

  Once the thought that he might actually be a warrior, a knight in more than surname, would have excited him. But remembering that moment when he had planted his knee in Bukowski’s chest and been fully prepared to drive the dagger into the man’s throat, he felt only terror.

  Excalibur was in pieces yet it was already making its power felt. What would it be like when it was whole?

  One thing was certain. They couldn’t let Major have it. What he would do with that power…

  “Wally!” Ariane cried. “Hurry up! Let’s get out of here.”

  Wally realized he’d been simply standing, staring at his hands, which had started to tremble. He clenched them into fists and ran over to Ariane. She grabbed his arm, they stepped into the water, and then they were gone.

  •••

  Rex Major was still in the air, an hour short of Regina, when the call came in. Anderson Bukowski, the only man he’d had available for the job, had lost the first shard. Somehow, though Major would have sworn it was impossible, Ariane had made it back to Regina ahead of him. Not only that, she’d managed to bring Wally with her.

  Major, furious, came within a heartbeat of Commanding Bukowski to drown himself in the lake from which he’d let Ariane escape. But he’d drawn quite enough attention to Excalibur Computer Systems in Regina already, what with his last district sales manager having been arrested for climbing into the bedroom of a teenage girl. So he reined in his temper and instead Commanded Bukowski to forget everything he’d seen and been told to do. Any lingering memory he would dismiss as a dream, for he would immediately go home and go to bed.

  That done, Major leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and brooded.

  Ariane’s feat could only mean one thing: now that she had two shards, the fact he still held one was not blocking her use of at least one of them. Though he still didn’t understand how she’d managed to apparently use both of them.

  Unless…

  He sighed. He’d wanted absolute proof that Wally carried the blood of Arthur in his veins. Apparently he had it. The sword had recognized the connection. It had provided Wally with the skill and strength he needed to defeat Bukowski.

  The blood of Arthur in his veins. Major shook his head. That was the way they would have talked about it back when Arthur still walked the Earth. These days they would more likely talk about “genes.” But the truth was: it had nothing to do with either blood or genes. It was magic. This many centuries down the line from Arthur, his genetic material would be spread among thousands of descendants. But only to this family, in this time, had the magic attached itself, just as the Lady’s magic had attached itself to Ariane’s line.

  This family…

  Wally had a sister.

  Not only that, Wally had a sister whom Ariane had already made into an enemy. In fact, from what Wally had told him, she was still in the hospital recovering from the injuries Ariane had inflicted. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t need Wally.

  They’d be on the ground in an hour. The computer on the airplane had a satellite Internet connection. He did a quick Google search. Regular visiting hours at the Regina General Hospital began at 11 a.m. He’d have a quick nap when they got in, then attack the problem from a fresh new angle.

  The fourth shard wi
ll be revealing itself soon, he thought. I won’t be thwarted again. Ariane can be manipulated through hostages. I’ve proved that more than once. I just need a better hostage.

  He doubted Ariane would let him get hold of Aunt Phyllis again. She’d be tucked away somewhere his magic wouldn’t reach. Fortunately, he had an ace up his sleeve Ariane knew nothing about.

  He activated his remote access to his home computer back in Toronto, and opened the file folder he remembered. There was the photo from the Carlyle convenience store. Emily Forsythe. Ariane’s mother. Ever since that first contact, he’d had someone looking for her, and all his computer feelers extended. The computers had turned up nothing: she was doing an excellent job of staying off the grid. But just a few days ago there had been a new development from his man – woman, in this case – on the ground. She had a lead. A woman answering Emily Forsythe’s description had been admitted to hospital in Yorkton. Major had already dispatched his operative to check it out.

  If Ariane’s mother were still alive – and if he could get to her – then every attempt Ariane had made to keep the shards from him would come to naught. He knew the girl well enough now to know she would give up everything to keep her mother safe, even if she had all the shards – even with the sword screaming in her ear, as he knew it would, to serve its needs instead of her own.

  He could still win this battle. He could still win even if he didn’t find Ariane’s mother, if he could find the fourth shard before she did.

  He fingered the ruby stud in his ear. Once all four pieces of the blade had been found, he was certain the final piece, the hilt, would also make itself known. With it, and two of the other shards, he could bend the sword to his will. In that scenario, the shards themselves would force Ariane to give them up.

  But he’d rather convince Ariane to just hand them over. It would be simpler, and cleaner. He didn’t want to hurt anyone he didn’t have to. But he would hurt anyone he did.