“I heard you have a computer station,” Wally said. “I wondered...could I use it?”
Her smile slipped a little. “Are you a guest?” she said.
“No,” Wally said. “I’m catching the ferry later on. But I really need to use a computer.” He gave her what he hoped was a winning smile. “My parents pulled me out of school early for a Christmas vacation trip out here but I forgot to get the homework I’d be missing from my teacher before I left. She said she’d email it to me, but I haven’t had a chance to look. I wanted to work on it during the ferry ride.”
It was a convoluted bit of make-believe, but it contained the magic words “parents” and “homework” and made him sound like a remarkably conscientious young man who clearly had no interest in, say, surfing for porn or playing video games on their precious computer.
He hoped.
The woman studied him for a moment. Then her smile came back. “Of course, dear,” she said. She pointed to an alcove just off the lobby. “It’s in there.”
Wally went in, sat down at the office chair, and cracked his knuckles. Then he called up the website he’d used just a few weeks before to track Rex Major’s flight to New Zealand. As far as he knew, Major had no idea that was how Wally had known where he was going. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered: if he was planning to fly to the Caribbean, his pilot had to file a flight plan. Even Rex Major had to obey some rules.
He still remembered the tail number from Major’s private jet. A quick search, and there it was: Major was flying to – Wally frowned at the three-letter airport designation. It didn’t mean anything to him. He called up a different site, did another search. The answer came back: Cacibajagua Island.
The name didn’t mean any more to him than the airport designation had. But another quick Google took care of that.
Cacibajagua Island, it turned out, was a private island in the Caribbean, and a pretty remote one, a good three hours by boat from the Turks and Caicos. The island, owned by Cacibajagua Island Diving Adventures, featured a small but luxurious resort hotel, its own airfield, and most important, Jujo Cave: a spectacular sea cave which stretched for a full kilometre, its sinuous shape giving rise to its name, a Taino word for “snake.” A mecca for cave divers, it was also, most unusually, accessible to non-divers and large enough that Cacibajagua Island Diving Adventures could pilot a small submarine along its entire length, although only during a three-hour window centred around high tide. At low tide parts of the cave partially emptied, the water in those chambers becoming too shallow for the sub to navigate.
Into the inland end of that cave poured a waterfall of fresh water. The photos of the “Cascade Chamber” were quite spectacular.
If the fourth shard of Excalibur were on that island, Wally was willing to bet it was hidden in that chamber. The freshwater cascade would have given the Lady easy access to it. If she had then simply slipped the shard beneath the cave’s seawater, it would explain why Ariane hadn’t sensed it. As for how Rex Major had located it... Some pesky diver, Wally thought. I wonder if a smartphone can be made waterproof enough so a diver can use it for an underwater camera?
A quick Google for the terms “waterproof smartphone for divers” showed that, indeed, it could be.
That’s it. The fourth shard has to be there. And thanks to Ariane, we can get there before Rex Major.
He checked the time on the computer screen: past 11 a.m. His hour was up. Time to find Ariane and tell her the good news.
Wally left the alcove, smiled his thanks at the desk clerk, and exited into the parking lot. But as he turned toward Roy Street his heart leaped into his throat.
A black SUV had just rolled past in the direction of the bay, and on the side of it had been emblazoned a golden sword and the letters ECS.
Excalibur Computer Systems!
Wally set off down Roy Street at a run.
Chapter Seven
An Old Bridge and an Old Man
Wally had been gone for almost an hour and Ariane had tried every business along Bay Street without success. Her last hope was the Spirit Gallery just a couple of doors down from Troll’s; it had been closed when she’d gone by it the first time, with a “Back in 15 Minutes” sign on the door. Noting that the sign was gone, she ducked inside.
The walls were hung with amazing work by West Coast native artists, and Ariane wished she had time to browse – not that she’d be buying anything, as her first glimpse of a price tag made clear, unless it was a T-shirt – but Wally would be looking for her in a few minutes. The young woman behind the glass-topped display counter filled with jewelry at the centre of the gallery smiled at her as she came in. “Did you try to stop in earlier?” she said. “I thought I saw you as I was coming down the street. I’d just run out to get my coffee mug refilled.” She indicated a red travel mug by the counter. “It’s been such a slow day I didn’t expect anyone to come in. I’m glad you came back.”
Ariane felt a little badly, since she wasn’t really a customer. Maybe I can find something to take home as a souvenir, she told her conscience. Now, stop bothering me. “Actually, I’m looking for someone.” Ariane held out her mother’s photo, more out of a sense of duty than hope. “I know she was in Horseshoe Bay for at least a few days a couple of weeks ago. Did you happen to see her?”
The woman looked at the photo. “Are you with the two men who were down at the other end of the street?”
Ariane’s heart quickened. “What?”
“In the coffee shop, two men were asking Tracy Hoffman if she’d seen the same woman.”
Rex Major’s men! They must be! “What did she say?” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
“That she bought coffee and a muffin last Saturday before boarding the late afternoon ferry to Nanaimo.”
“She’s left town?” Disappointment struck like a blow. “Days ago?”
“Oh, yes.” The woman gave Ariane a curious look. “Friend of yours?”
“A...relative,” Ariane said. “An aunt. I’ve lost track of her. I have some...family news.”
“Really?” the woman said. She suddenly sounded suspicious. “Because as it happens, before she went to Tracey’s she spent quite a long time in here. She didn’t buy anything but she was very interested in the art. We had a long chat. She told me she didn’t have any family.”
“Family issues,” Ariane said, thinking quickly. “She didn’t get along with my mother. Look, it’s all kind of private...”
“Oh, of course,” the woman said, blushing a little. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Did...did she say anything about what she was going to do in Nanaimo?”
“Oh, she wasn’t staying in Nanaimo,” the woman said. “She was going to catch a bus down to Victoria.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said she had a job lined up at the Empress.”
Ariane blinked. “The Empress?”
The woman laughed. “The Fairmont Empress. The big old CP hotel in Victoria. Looks like a castle, right down on the waterfront?”
Ariane’s hopes, which had fallen so hard a moment before, lifted again. “You’re sure?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Did...did, um...Tracey...say anything about that to those two men?”
“Tracey didn’t know. She just knew she was getting on the Nanaimo ferry.”
We’re still one step ahead, Ariane thought. “Those men may come talk to you, too,” she said carefully. “Would you do me a favour, and not tell them you heard my...aunt...say she was going to Victoria? To this...Empress? I can’t explain, but my...aunt...really doesn’t want them to find her.”
“But does she want you to find her?” the woman said.
“She doesn’t know I’m looking for her,” Ariane said.
The woman looked at her closely. “She’s not really your aunt, is she?”
Ariane felt something close to panic. “What? Yes! I –”
“No, there’s no way. Y
ou hesitate every time you call her that. And this photo...” She pointed to it, still lying on the counter between them, “tells a different story. You’re the spitting image of her. She’s your mother, isn’t she?”
“We just...it’s just a family resemblance...we...” Ariane’s voice trailed off. The woman clearly didn’t believe her. “Yes,” she said quietly. “She’s my mom. She disappeared two years ago. I don’t know why.” Not quite true – she knew it had something to do with the Lady of the Lake revealing herself to her mother and offering her the same power and quest Ariane had since accepted, but she didn’t think bringing living Arthurian legends into the conversation would do much to convince the woman of her truthfulness. “I’ve been looking for her.”
She watched the woman’s face, wondering how she’d react. To her relief, she saw only sympathy. “I thought it must be something like that,” she said. “And the two men?”
“Private detectives, I think,” Ariane said, stepping away from the glaring light of the truth into the comfortable shadows of falsehood. “Mom owed a lot of money when she vanished.”
“Probably why she vanished,” the woman said. She regarded Ariane for a moment then pushed her mom’s photo back over the glass countertop. “I won’t tell them about the job in Victoria,” she said. “If they ask me. But you know they’ll find her eventually, if they’re this close. Nobody can just vanish in this day and age. You’d have to be magic to manage it.”
“Thank you,” Ariane said. To her horror she found tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” she mumbled again, and busied herself returning the photo to its waterproof plastic bag, and the bag to the pocket of her backpack.
“You’re welcome, hon,” the woman said, her voice warm with sympathy. “Good luck. I hope you find her. I hope she’s glad to see you when you do.”
“Me, too,” Ariane said. “Thank you again.” She gave a tentative wave, then turned and hurried out onto the sodden, misty street. She looked both ways. She didn’t see the two men, but she did see Wally, dashing around the corner of Troll’s. She ran toward him.
“Rex Major –”
“Rex Major –”
They’d spoken at the same instant. They stopped at the same instant, and stared at each other. “Rex Major’s men are here,” Wally panted. “I saw an SUV with the Excalibur Computer Systems logo on it.”
“They’re looking for Mom,” Ariane said. “They had a photo. They knew she’d been here. And they know she left on the ferry for Nanaimo a week ago.”
“We can get to Nanaimo first,” Wally said.
Ariane shook her head. “Not Nanaimo. Victoria.”
Wally’s eyebrows lifted. “Victoria? You know something they don’t?”
“I hope so,” Ariane said.
Wally looked up at the overcast sky. “Well, perfect weather for it, don’t you think?”
“Perfect,” Ariane said. “But not here. In case someone is watching. Let’s go into the park.”
They crossed the street. On a sunny summer day the park that bordered the bay would have been full of tourists. On a grey, foggy December day, it was deserted. Ariane reached out her hand to Wally. He took it.
Car doors slammed. Someone shouted. Ariane jerked her head around to see two men running toward them, men in dark suits, a black SUV parked haphazardly on the street, its doors still open.
Then Ariane let the power of the Lady and the shard of Excalibur she carried fill her, and together she and Wally leaped into the clouds.
<•>
Despite all the times he’d done it, Wally still hated the sensations of travelling via the Lady’s power. Oh, sure, it sounded like fun, dissolving into nothingness and zipping around in the clouds or streams, but in fact – and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it, at least to himself, if not to Ariane – a part of him gibbered in terror every time. In classic Star Trek episodes, every one of which he’d watched at least twice (along with all its later incarnations – Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, even Star Trek: Enterprise), Dr. McCoy occasionally complained about the whole beam-me-up-Scotty-disintegration-reintegration method of transportation, calling it unnatural. Wally sympathized.
He could always feel Ariane with him, his brain – or spirit or whatever remained intact – interpreting her presence as her still holding his hand. He occasionally wondered what would happen if she somehow released his “hand” while they were in the mysterious magical pipeline to wherever they were headed. Then he tried really hard to stop wondering about it, because he had a good enough imagination that the thought occasionally gave him nightmares.
He didn’t understand how his brain could even keep working when it had no body: it offended all his scientific sensibilities. But everything that had happened since the Lady of the Lake had shown up in Wascana Lake had offended his scientific sensibilities, so he supposed he should be used to it.
One thing he could never tell was how much time had passed. He couldn’t see anything, or hear anything, and insomuch as he felt anything, it was like floating in a sensory deprivation tank – not that he’d ever done such a thing, but he’d read about it. All he knew was that the world went away around him – and then it came back.
As usual, it came back cold and wet.
“Pfah.” He surged upward in cold water and spat some from his mouth. It tasted awful. Ariane stood beside him, chest-deep beneath the stone arch of a bridge. He figured Ariane had chosen the spot because it provided some shelter and minimized the chance someone would see them suddenly pop into existence out of nowhere.
He looked farther afield. They were in a shallow, clearly artificial lake, the bridge arching over a narrow spot in its middle. To their left, water sprayed from an aeration fountain like a giant lawn sprinkler, redundantly watering the water. To their right, evergreen trees poked up, spiky and green, from a small island. Bushes and trees grew on their side of the lake, while the other sides looked very open. The mist that had shrouded Horseshoe Bay clung to everything here as well, so that the buildings surrounding the park at some distance loomed grey and indistinct.
Ariane turned and led the way out from under the bridge to the left. They stayed close to the stone wall until they could finally clamber up the muddy bank into a screen of bushes. There Ariane dried them off, and then at last they could stroll out onto the path like any other pair of teens. They walked up onto the old stone bridge.
“Victoria, I presume,” Wally said.
Ariane nodded. “But I don’t know exactly where we are.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to figure out,” Wally said. “It’s a park. There’ll be a sign...somewhere.” They’d reached the middle of the bridge they’d just climbed out from under like a pair of trolls. And we were just at Troll’s in Horseshoe Bay, he thought, his mouth twitching into a smile of private amusement. I think it’s a theme. He stopped and looked around, and then down. A metal plaque right in front of them read, “Stone Bridge. This rustic stone medieval bridge was constructed in 1889, as part of John Blair’s landscape design for Beacon Hill Park.”
“I think we’re in Beacon Hill Park,” he said.
“Thank you, Sherlock.”
“Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“Except that still doesn’t help. I have no idea where Beacon Hill Park is in relation to the Empress.”
“The Empress?” Wally blinked. “Why do we need to go there... Oh,” he interrupted himself, feeling an odd sensation in his stomach, a momentary surge of excitement followed by a sinking feeling. “You should know,” he said, “that when I called my dad last night, he told me he’s in Victoria. And he’s staying at the Empress.”
Ariane’s eyes widened. “Maybe he could help!” she said excitedly. “He might have seen Mom, if she’s working there. Or he could talk to the management for us. They’d listen to him, he’s a grownup, a businessman...” Her voice trailed off, her excitement dying as his had a moment before and, he was certain, for the same reason: she’d realized that however nice it would
be to let a grownup take charge, this particular grownup wouldn’t do. “No, that won’t work, will it?”
“No,” Wally said. “In fact, it complicates things. We have to make sure he doesn’t see us. He’s under Merlin’s Command. He must be. It’s the only way Dad would be willing to let Flish live in Rex Major’s condo and let him fly her off to the Caribbean for a scuba-diving adventure, of all things.”
Ariane blinked. “Scuba diving? What?”
Wally realized he hadn’t had a chance to tell her yet what he’d found out on the computer in the Horseshoe Bay Motel. So while they stood in the mist in the middle of the “medieval” bridge, watching the aerating fountain endlessly spray water into the air, he told her about Cacibajagua Island, Rex Major’s Caribbean destination. “There’s a big cave called Joju,” he said. “It’s hundreds of metres long. Inland, it ends in a chamber that’s mostly filled with salt water at high tide, but empties out quite a bit at low tide. There’s a freshwater waterfall that pours into that chamber. Can you think of a better place for the Lady to have hidden a shard of Excalibur? Or a better reason why you can’t sense it than that it’s submerged beneath salt water?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Ariane agreed, grinning with excitement. “When will Major and Flish get there?”
“The flight plan has them taking off tomorrow morning. It’s only a three-hour flight. They’ll be there before noon Toronto time.”
“Then we have to get there first.”
Wally said nothing. He’d already done the math. Clearly Ariane was coming to the same conclusion he had. He saw her smile dissolve into a worried frown, and wished he could wipe it away. “That means we only have today to look for Mom!” She stared around into the fog. “We have to find the Empress!”
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