“Because of Merlin,” Trisha guessed, searching all their faces. Lucas was the only one who didn’t look grim, but he just seemed to be one of those perpetually upbeat people. “He’s keeping her out of Avalon.”
“Yes, or so we believe,” Arthur nodded.
“But why doesn’t he let you in?” she asked Nim. “You didn’t turn on him.”
Nim sighed. “He may not know who betrayed him. It’s safer for him, even locked within his prison, to keep all of the Queens as far away as possible.”
“If we can find Avalon and free him, we’ll be able to defeat Viviane once and for all. Without him –” Arthur spread his hands.
“But Viviane’s the one who imprisoned him,” Trisha argued. “You have to defeat Viviane to free him and you have to free him to defeat Viviane. There’s no hope.”
“There’s always hope,” Arthur corrected her gently, “as long as men and women of good heart are willing to risk everything for others. We see Merlin’s hand in the Quests we receive, so we pursue each one in the hopes it will lead us to him, wherever he may be hidden. That cairngorm you risked so much to find may be the key that finally unlocks this puzzle.” He held out his hand. “May I see it?”
Trisha had all but forgotten about the pin nestled inside her hoodie pocket. She dug it out and silently held it out to Arthur. He took it from her hand and held it up in the light between his forefinger and thumb. “Such an ordinary thing,” he murmured, turning it back and forth to see both sides. “Do we know what it’s for? Lucas?”
Lucas shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. It looks exactly like the one in my vision, though.”
“Hawk?”
“It doesn’t do anything, as far as I can tell. There’s writing on it, though, around the edge.”
“There is?” Arthur peered closely at the disk and ran his finger along the faint inscription. “So there is. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, I’m afraid,” he chuckled. “Can you make out what it says, Nim?”
She took the cairngorm from him and stood with her back to the window to catch the light. “These are futhorc,” she said. “Anglo-Saxon runes.”
Arthur’s eyebrows shot up. “Are they? Can you read them?”
“They’re quite worn. I don’t suppose anyone brought a magnifying glass?” she asked, half seriously.
“Sorry, left mine at home,” Lucas grinned.
“One of the labs downstairs should have one,” Arthur said. “Let’s go see what this mysterious message is.”
“It does do something,” Trisha blurted out. They all stopped and looked at her. “The cairngorm. It makes a – a light.”
“A light?” Nim frowned down at the pin resting in her palm. The stone gleamed a ruddy orange, but that was just the fluorescent lights refracting through the crystal.
“On the edge. I saw it last night, in the dark.” Nim looked doubtful and Hawk shook his head with a frown.
“Why didn’t you say anything about it yesterday, Trisha?” he demanded.
“I did! I told you – oh, no, sorry. I told Lionel,” she mumbled, her face flushing bright pink.
“When?” he asked suspiciously.
“When he tried to kidnap me! He saw me looking at it and threatened to kill Mom and Dad if I didn’t tell him.” And then he sent Chantal and Savard after them anyway, she seethed. Why did I ever think he was one of the good guys?
“That doesn’t matter now, Gavin,” Nim said. “What sort of light do you mean, Trisha?”
“A little one, on the side. It’s like a compass. Here, I’ll show you.”
She cupped the cairngorm between her hands and peeked in between her fingers, turning slowly in a circle. “There! Do you see it?” A bright orange glow, barely wider than a pencil lead, slid along the rim of the crystal, pointing somewhere behind her.
Hawk leaned over her shoulder and peered into the narrow gap between her hands. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s right there! Look!”
“Let me try.” Arthur took Hawk’s place, but he shook his head as well. “I’m sorry, Patricia, I don’t see a light. Are you sure it’s not just a reflection?”
Trisha looked again but the gleam was still there. “I see it, it’s there, really! I’m not lying!”
“No one thinks you’re lying, Trisha,” Nim reassured her. “It may just be how the cairngorm works. Let me try.” Trisha gave the pin back to her and Nim held it between her hands. She turned slowly and stopped in the same direction Trisha had stood. She didn’t say anything but her eyebrows drew together.
“Well?” Arthur prompted her. “Do you see it?”
“I see – something, just on the very edge of my perception,” she said carefully. “If I weren’t looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all. Very curious.” She uncovered the pin and weighed it in her hand thoughtfully. “You say the light always points in the same direction, Trisha?” Trisha nodded, relieved that someone believed her story. “Which way is it pointing now?”
Trisha took it back and peered at it again, turning around until the gleam was on the opposite side, directly away from her. “That way, I think,” she said. Her finger pointed right at one of the blank monitors mounted along the wall.
“What’s there?” Hawk asked, scowling past her.
“Liberty Tower across the street,” Arthur mused. “The entire length of Long Island after that.”
“And then Martha’s Vineyard across the sound,” Lucas added, “not to mention the Atlantic Ocean on the other side.”
“And then England,” said Nim quietly. They all fell silent as they absorbed that thought.
“Avalon?” Arthur asked her, as if he barely dared to hope it might be true.
“Perhaps. We should see what that inscription says before we get ahead of ourselves. But if the cairngorm can lead us to Avalon –” Nim’s blue eyes sparkled in anticipation. “We may win this battle yet.”
69
They rode down together to the 27th floor. Trisha looked anxious, as if she didn’t think she belonged with the rest of them, and Hawk touched her hand gently. She started and looked up at him and then flashed him a grateful smile. Nim noticed their silent exchange – her eyes rarely missed what was happening about her – but her only reaction was a quirked eyebrow and a speculative look.
The lab was directly across from the elevators, behind an imposing pair of doors with a security panel similar to the ones in the Boston office. A sign to the right of the entrance proclaimed this to be the Antiquities Research and Analysis Lab, along with the stern warning Restricted Access, Authorized Personnel Only.
Arthur used his pass key and code and the door locks clacked loudly. He opened the right-hand door, revealing a short length of hallway and another pair of doors just like the first at the far end. He waited until everyone filed in before he strode to the next security panel, letting the outside door close behind them with a solid clunk.
“What’s in here?” Trisha whispered nervously, looking around. There was nothing in the hallway except a fire extinguisher behind a glass panel and a copy of the sign beside the inner doors.
“Antiquities.”
“I figured that part out,” she hissed at him, thumping him in his ribs with her elbow. “What sort of antiquities? Grecian urns and Egyptian mummies, or what?”
“Quest objects, mostly. A lot of the stuff we pick up is pretty obscure, so the team here evaluates them and tries to figure out exactly what they are and, more importantly, what they’re for.”
“Anything that hints of Merlin or Avalon is set aside for Nim to look at,” Arthur explained over his shoulder, tapping out his code again. “Her special skills often pick up things the instruments can’t detect.”
“You’re talking about magic, aren’t you?” Trisha asked hesitantly. Arthur just smiled as he opened the door, letting out a waft of cool, dry air.
Nim led them into the lab, striding quickly down a wide central aisle that stretched the entire length
of the room. Long benches sat on either side, most of them occupied by men and women of all sorts of ages and ethnicities, every one of them wearing a spotless white lab coat. Bright lights illuminated the objects they were working on – a faded parchment scroll, a statue of something that looked like a cat, a tarnished sword without a hilt – while computer screens showed digital renderings, detailed photos, and dense, unreadable text.
Their passage created an expanding ripple of surprised looks and whispered exchanges that Nim ignored. Her path took her straight to another bench, larger than the others, situated at the far end of the room. A man with thinning hair and thick glasses peered through a large illuminated magnifying glass mounted on an articulated arm. He inspected a fragment of stone between his gloved fingers, just one of an entire wheelbarrow’s worth of broken stone scattered across the bench.
“Dr. Trelawney.” Nim’s voice finally caught his attention and he looked up, blinking at the small crowd that suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Madame Nim!” he exclaimed. He had a strong British accent. “And Mr. Pendragon! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you come in. I’ve made some progress on the tablet, as you can see.” He waved his hand at the stones, which were arranged neatly but haphazardly, except for two small sections where the fragments were stuck together with modelling clay. It looked like he was trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle made out of gravel. “We may be missing some pieces, I’m afraid.”
“Let’s worry about that later,” she said briskly. “May we borrow your magnifying glass?”
“My –? Oh, certainly!” He swiveled it across the bench towards her. “What do you need it for? Perhaps I can be of some help.”
“Perhaps. How’s your Anglo-Saxon, Doctor?”
“Oh, well, I’m a bit rusty,” he confessed. “Dr. Harper does most of our Old English translations.” A older woman at a nearby bench straightened at hearing her name, but Hawk touched Nim’s sleeves.
“Perhaps we should keep this to ourselves for the moment,” he murmured in her ear. “Lionel was waiting for us in Boston, remember.”
Nim nodded, surveying the room thoughtfully. “I’ll bear that in mind, Doctor. Could you give us some privacy? We shouldn’t need the room for more than half an hour.”
Trelawney looked doubtful. “Are you sure, Madame? We’re right in the middle of –”
“I think the staff can afford to take a short break, Doctor,” Arthur told him firmly. “We won’t disturb anything they’re working on.”
“Well, all right. I suppose a cup of tea would hit the spot.” He clapped his hands as he raised his voice. “Attention, everyone! Please save your work and lock down your stations. We’re taking a half-hour break. Please don’t leave the building, however! We still have a lot to do today.”
The researchers looked at each other and shrugged resignedly, apparently used to the random quirks of management. There was a flurry of typing and mouse clicks and the bench lights went off one by one as the staff filed out under Trelawney’s watchful eye. When the door closed behind the last one, he turned to Nim with an expectant look.
“You too, Doctor,” she told him. He blinked rapidly, as if that statement made no sense at all, but he finally nodded jerkily and swept his hand through what remained of his hair.
“All right, well, you have my number if you need anything. Just ... don’t touch anything, please,” he grimaced, passing his hands over the broken stones on his bench. “It’s taken me a week just to get this far.”
“It will be safe, I promise, Doctor,” Arthur assured him. “Thank you for your patience.” Trelawney nodded, thrust his hands in his coat pockets, looked around with a frown, and then walked over to one of the benches near the wall. He rooted around in the drawers underneath and finally straightened with a small black case in his hand.
He noticed them watching him and he held up the case briefly before stuffing it into his pocket. “My other glasses,” he explained with an awkward smile. “I can’t see ten feet in front of me with these.” He tapped the spectacles on his face and then hurried to the door. They waited until it closed behind him and the sounds of the locks echoed in the eerily empty lab.
“Do you think someone in the lab informed Viviane of Lucan’s Quest?” Arthur asked Nim with a frown.
“I was here helping Dr. Trelawney with the tablet when Lucas called me,” Nim said carefully. Despite Arthur’s promise, she picked up one of the stones and turned it over in her hand with a frown. “I left as soon as I realized he was talking about a Quest, but I may have said something that gave it away.”
“Who was nearby?” Hawk asked. “Dr. Trelawney, I assume?” He glowered suspiciously at the lab door.
“And two or three others. There were several of us laying out the pieces.”
“What is this thing, anyway?” Lucas asked. He touched one of the larger fragments but didn’t pick it up. There were letters carved into its pitted surface: AVM.
“We’re not entirely sure. Bors found it in Turkey and had it shipped to Paris, but we managed to intercept it and bring it here.”
Hawk snorted. “Serves that bastard right. I bet Viviane wasn’t very happy with him when it disappeared.”
“Who’s Bors?” Trisha asked hesitantly.
“He’s one of Viviane’s Chevaliers,” Arthur explained. “We think this is a Quest object but we won’t know for sure until it’s reassembled and translated.”
“Wait a minute, I thought only you guys had Quests.” She looked to Hawk for confirmation but he shook his head.
“We both get them,” he said. “They’ve been split pretty evenly between us, near as we can tell, except we had a long dry spell before Lucas’s Quest.”
“But if the Quests are sent by Merlin, why would he give any of them to Viviane’s side? He doesn’t want her to find Excalibur first, does he?”
The others looked at each other before Arthur answered, looking very serious. “We don’t think Merlin knows who’s on whose side. He was imprisoned before Camelot collapsed, remember.”
“So he might accidentally give them clues about how to reach Avalon?” Trisha asked incredulously.
“He doesn’t have much of a choice, unfortunately,” Nim sighed. “If he does nothing, the world will inch towards its own destruction. Given a choice between Viviane as Queen of Earth and Armageddon,” she shrugged, “perhaps she is the lesser of two evils.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?” Hawk asked her.
“With any luck, it won’t come to that. Perhaps we already have the answer in our hands. Trisha, if you please.”
Trisha removed the cairngorm from her pocket and gave it to Nim, looking anxious and eager at the same time. Everyone leaned in as Nim held it under the magnifying glass, until she moved them all back with a stern look. They waited impatiently as she tilted the pin under the light.
“Some of the characters are nearly worn away,” she said after a moment, “but I believe I can make them out. Someone find me something to write on.”
Hawk and Lucas searched the nearby benches, but most of the researchers used their computers to keep their notes. Lucas finally found a pad of paper and a pen halfway down the aisle and hurried back with them, placing them into Nim’s waiting hand. She set the cairngorm down on top of a flat stone fragment and adjusted the magnifying glass. She started scribbling letters across the paper without looking, pausing periodically to rotate the pin.
Finally she straightened and frowned at her transcription. The letters looked like they had been written by a grade schooler and she rewrote them in a much neater hand. Hawk stole a peek over her shoulder and read the cryptic message: LLAMDOMU MSUAMUBI EGOEXPEC TATOEUIS INMANUSR EGINAMON ILEDUCITI.
“What the hell does that mean?” he asked. “Are you sure you’re translating that properly?”
“There are no spaces between the words and no indication where the inscription begins,” she told him irritably. “Give me a moment.” She ran the tip of the pen along t
he letters, her lips moving silently. She started placing marks between some of the letters, scanning the result with her lips pursed, and then drew a double line just past the halfway point. “Ah, here we go.” She rewrote the text again, studied the result, and then handed the paper to Arthur.
“In manus Regina monile ducit illam domum suam ubi ego expectato euis,” he recited. “Interesting.”
“Is that Latin?” Trisha asked doubtfully. “I thought it was supposed to be English. Or Scottish, maybe.”
“The Romans ruled Britain long before the Anglo-Saxons arrived,” Nim told her. “Latin was the language of the clerics, who were just about the only people who could write, even in Camelot’s time. Most important documents were scribed in Latin, but not always in the Latin alphabet.”
“Does Dr. Trelawney speak Latin?” Lucas asked eagerly. “Get him in here and let’s find out what the message is!”
“There’s no need, Lucan,” Arthur said with a smile. “I’m a bit out of practice, but I still recall most of the lessons Merlin drilled into me.” He cleared his throat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Nim, but I believe this says, In the Queen’s hand, the jewel leads her home, where I wait for her.” He cocked an eye at Nim, who nodded.
“Okay, that’s what it says, but what does it mean?” Lucas practically vibrated with impatience.
“If we assume this is actually a message from Merlin,” Arthur said carefully, “then I think we know who the Queen is.” He looked significantly at Nim, but she shook her head firmly.
“The stone doesn’t react to me, Arthur,” she reminded him. “I’m not the Queen the inscription refers to.”
“Fuck,” Hawk breathed, throwing his head back in frustration. “You mean this belongs to Viviane?”
“Are you kidding me?” Lucas moaned. “If this really is a compass pointing to Avalon, there’s no way we can let her have it!”
“Both of you be quiet,” Nim told them sharply. “You’re forgetting one important fact.”
“What’s that?”
“Trisha can use the stone.”
Gawain (Knights of Excalibur Book 1) Page 36