Even through his anger, Wally’s mind remained wondrously clear, his thoughts arraying themselves in perfect order, like bullets in a magazine. What Major had just said meant Flish was down in the water – and she had the shard. She had it...not Major.
And Major, who had Commanded an innocent man to come after Wally with a gun, had just moved to the top of the ladder, the only part of the platform that didn’t have a railing, to help Felicia climb out.
Without thinking, it seemed, or else thinking thoughts shaped and sharpened by Excalibur itself, Wally hurtled across the platform and slammed into the centuries-old sorcerer who had threatened him and the girl he loved.
He hit him low and hard. Merlin toppled into the water, and Wally followed him.
Still driven by the strange, sharp knowledge of exactly what he needed to do, Wally twisted like a fish the moment he hit the sea and struck out for his sister, who had stopped in the middle of the cave, treading water, her eyes wide. He knew she had the shard on her and it wasn’t in her hand, so it had to be in her swimsuit. He dove beneath the surface, and saw it glimmering against the skin of her left flank. She tried to twist out of his way, but like his thoughts, his swimming ability had grown sharp as the shard itself. He snatched it from the waistband of her bikini, feeling cloth give as he did so, and struck out for where the water of the cataract foamed against the surface of the seawater.
She grabbed his foot, but he kicked, hard, and broke free. A moment later he was clambering out onto the boulders of the cataract, and climbing out of the cave, rain and wind in his face, lightning splitting the sky, thunder cracking and growling and rumbling. He glanced back. Felicia remained in the water, screaming at him, though he couldn’t hear her; for some reason she hadn’t tried to follow him up the rocks. Major floundered his way back to the ladder.
Wally knew exactly where he had to go with the shard: up the zigzagging path to Lake Tanama. Wherever Ariane had gone, she would be back for him, and she would appear in the lake. He only had to keep out of Merlin’s clutches until that happened, and then Ariane would have her three shards – and Major would be done. With the power of three shards, Ariane would be unstoppable. They’d have the hilt within days, and take Merlin’s shard from him soon after.
He reached the path and ran, the rain still pouring down in sheets, sluicing around his body. His wounded shoulder ached. The stones, sharp beneath his feet, had to be cutting them, too, but pain seemed unimportant with the shard in his hand. He felt nothing but strength and razor-sharp mental clarity.
Lewis no longer lay where he had fallen; presumably he’d woken up, and, free of Command and no doubt horribly confused as well as injured, staggered back toward the resort.
Wally reached the bottom of the lake trail, now its own mini-cataract: water poured down it, lit every few seconds by flares of lighting. He didn’t hesitate: he knew he had the skill to climb it, knew he would not slow or slip until he reached the top, knew that his plan was sound and Ariane would be back for him, knew it all with an absolute confidence that would have seemed utterly foreign to the Wally Knight who had begun the Lady’s quest, or even the Wally Knight who had arrived on the island just a little over an hour earlier – but that Wally seemed to have vanished, subsumed by this new, improved version: less Wally, a lot more Knight.
He glanced back as he reached the first switchback in the path, to see Merlin at the top of the stairs, Flish with him, a towel wrapped around her waist. He resumed climbing, reached the second switchback, glanced back again to see Merlin and Flish at the bottom of the path. But Major stopped Flish there. He was shouting up at Wally, Wally could see that, but he couldn’t hear the sorcerer, and he didn’t care. They couldn’t catch him, and he could elude them forever in the jungle covering the island – or for at least as long as he had to, until Ariane came back.
And she would come back. For the shard, and for him. He was certain of that, too.
He reached the third switchback, the last place from which the bottom of the path was still visible before trees hid it.
The world turned white.
Wally felt himself flying through the air, head ringing like a hammer-struck bell...
...and then the world faded from white to black.
Chapter Sixteen
The Waterwoman and Merlin’s Rage
Ariane had never tested exactly how fast she could move through cloud and stream using the Lady’s power. She knew it was faster than the fastest plane, but it had always taken a significant amount of time, nonetheless, to cover a long distance: hours across the oceans, even if far fewer than a jetliner. From Cacibajagua Island to Victoria was a very long way indeed – and yet this time, pulled and sustained by the thread of magic linking her to her mother, driven by fear and anger and love and despair, and powered by the shard in her hand, the journey seemed to take no time at all.
Perhaps, she thought later, the time taken by all her previous journeys had been self-imposed: her rational mind trying to make sense of the non-rational abilities she had inherited from the Lady. After all, her body did not literally dissolve into water or mist and then reassemble itself. The water, the clouds, were mere conduits for her magical power. The real journey happened at the speed of thought, and if she got out of her own mind’s way, that was a very fast speed indeed.
But she was thinking none of that now, as she rushed to her mother’s aid. All she knew was that she had to reach her mother immediately – and immediately, she was there, above Vancouver Island, still gripped in mist and cloud.
But mist and cloud did not allow her to materialize: the restriction on her power that required her to reassemble in water deep enough to submerge her body remained. She found the nearest body of water, a tiny pond in the woods, and exploded out of it.
She could sense her mother just a few hundred metres away. She still held the shard of Excalibur in her hand: she peeled down the top of her swimsuit and tucked the shard back inside the tensor bandage she always wore around her waist. She pulled up the swimsuit again and set off barefoot through the trees, the power within her flinging the tiny droplets of mist away from her skin, keeping her dry though it could not keep her warm. But she gave the chill no thought, no more than she gave to the branches lashing at her bare skin or the wet leaves squishing between her toes.
She reached the edge of the trees, and found herself looking out at a rustic campground, a main building of peeled logs next to an unpaved parking lot, smaller cabins peeking out from the trees on the far side of the clearing.
The parking lot held a single vehicle: a black SUV with the Excalibur Computer Systems logo on the door.
Mom was in the main building. Ariane didn’t have to guess, she knew. She could feel her there, the thread of power she had followed and drawn on now the equivalent of a thick, steel cable linking them. Raw anger raged within her. Rex Major had threatened her mother. The men inside had kidnapped her from her job, were holding her hostage to force her to give up the shards of Excalibur she had already gathered, the shards that were rightfully hers as the Lady of the Lake – hers and her mother’s, for the Lady’s blood flowed in them both.
Her mother might not be able to use the power within her, but it was still there, and through the connection Ariane had forged with her mom when at last she had found her, Ariane could draw on that power as well as her own, use her mother’s power as well as the shard’s to supplement her own flagging energy.
The drizzle pattered down around her. Ariane spread her hands and gathered the water together, from out of the air and up from the wet ground.
A puddle formed in front of her, grew to become a pool. It heaved up in the middle until it was as tall as she was, and then taller; as thick as she was, and then thicker. With fury and power blazing in her mind, she shaped it into a water-woman, a shimmering, living humanoid shape, like the one the Lady had manifested as when Ariane and Wally had met her in the chamber beneath Wascana Lake.
The still-falling rain bounced off of the water-wo
man as though she were made of glass or diamond. Ariane sat down cross-legged on the wet grass, closed her eyes, and threw her consciousness into her new body.
Suddenly she was taller, and stronger, and no longer felt the cold, even distantly. The thread of power from her mother continued to pull on her, even in this new body. She stalked forward. The door might or might not have been locked: it didn’t matter. She drew back her water-heavy arm and punched, and the door smashed inward, the doorframe shattering with the force of the blow. She half-dissolved, flowed into the room beyond, the camp kitchen, then reformed her shape.
Two big men in dark suits stood on either side of her mother, who was tied to a wooden chair. Her eyes were wide and white and frightened above the duct-tape gagging her, but no wider or whiter or more frightened than those of the men, who fumbled for shoulder holsters, swearing.
Guns blazed. Bullets slashed through Ariane’s water-body, shattered the windows behind her, tore chunks from the log walls.
She took five steps forward, and tossed the men aside.
The one to the left hit the legs of a heavy wooden worktable. They broke in two, and the tabletop thudded down on top of him. The one to the right hit the stove so hard he dented the door and smashed the tempered-glass window.
Neither of them moved after that.
Water-Ariane looked down at her mother, saw her mother’s terror, and let her body dissolve. Real Ariane scrambled to her feet and ran into the building, splashing and skidding through the puddles her water-body had left on the linoleum. She pulled the gag from her mother’s mouth.
“Ariane?” Emily Forsythe gasped. “I knew you were coming. I told myself it was just wishful thinking, but I knew...I could feel it.”
Ariane struggled to untie the knots holding her mom to the chair. “We have to get out of here,” she said. Suddenly she hesitated. “I’m still carrying one of the shards,” she said. “The last time I got close with one...”
“I can...feel it,” her mom said. “But it’s not like before.”
Ariane wondered what that meant, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it. The knots came loose at last. Her mom was free.
The man under the table groaned, and the tabletop moved. Ariane grabbed Mom’s hand, ran out into the rain, and let the clouds take them away.
<•>
Enraged, momentarily helpless, and in serious danger of being pulled under by his clothing, Rex Major floundered in the water. As he finally struggled over to the ladder and began hauling himself dripping up to the top of the platform again, he saw Wally clambering up the slippery boulders at the base of the cataract, making his escape through the cavern’s natural entrance. Major swore, turned, and shouted down at Felicia, who was treading water in the middle of the pool, “Get out and get after him!”
“I can’t!” Felicia shouted.
“Why not?” What on earth was wrong with the girl?
“Because when Wally grabbed the shard it cut the waist band of my bikini bottom.”
“So?”
“So I’m practically naked!” The girl sounded as furious as he was. “Half my swimsuit is on the bottom of the pool!”
“You think I care about that?” Merlin roared at her. “Get after him!”
“I care,” Felicia shouted back. “I’m not getting out while you’re there.”
Merlin swore again, spun around, spotted the towel Felicia had dropped on the platform before she had jumped into the pool, and kicked it to the top of the ladder. “Get out, grab the towel, follow me,” he ordered, then turned and ran for the stairs.
The storm that had threatened as he and Felicia made their way to the cavern along the shore path had broken in earnest. Lightning and thunder played cat-and-mouse across the black sky and the rain fell in such torrents he felt half under water again. He ran across the wooden bridge that spanned the cataract just above the cave mouth, and then to the bottom of the path leading up to Lake Tanama, where at once a flash of lightning showed him Wally, climbing. The first part of the path was exposed, but within minutes the boy would be under the trees and lost to sight – and Merlin needed him in sight.
Wally had the shard, and Merlin would not let him get away with it.
He turned his head. Where was the blasted girl? In another flash of lightning he saw Felicia picking her way toward him, towel tied around her hips. “Hurry!” he shouted at her.
She reached him a minute later and stared up into the rain. “What’s Wally doing?”
“Trying to get away with the fourth shard,” Merlin growled. “And failing.” He pulled the second shard from his pocket and held it out. “Grab hold.”
Felicia took it.
Instantly the tiny thread of power that ran from Faerie to Merlin thickened, filling Merlin with more magic than he had had in a very long time: still the merest shadow of the power he had once enjoyed, a flickering candle compared to the conflagration of his former sorcerous strength, but enough.
Once he could have summoned a storm such as the one that howled above Cacibajagua Island at will, and hurled it against his – and Arthur’s – enemies. That power still eluded him, but with the storm already in place, with the electricity leaping like startled deer from cloud to cloud and from cloud to ground, and with his knowledge of the True Name of lightning, he did not need all the power he’d once owned. He needed only the power that was his, here and now, thanks to the one shard he carried, and the touch of Arthur’s heir upon the blade, to do...
...this!
The bolt of lightning Major summoned didn’t strike Wally directly: not because Rex Major any longer cared what happened to the boy, but only because he did not know what that much power would do to the precious shard Wally carried. Instead, the lightning struck the trail just above Wally, the eye-searing flash burning a purple path through Major’s eyesight, the crack of thunder striking him with physical force. Flish gasped and let go of her end of the shard, cutting him off from the bulk of his power, but the lightning had done its work: Wally, hurled through the air by the explosive force of the strike, tumbled backward down the slope and thudded to a crumpled, motionless heap, water sluicing around his pale body, blood running from a wound in his shoulder, the fourth shard of Excalibur lying just centimetres from his slack, outstretched hand.
“You’ve killed him!” Flish screamed.
“Probably not,” Merlin growled, “but even if I have, it’s no more than he deserved.”
“You –”
“Quiet!” Merlin roared the word, and enough power remained in him that his voice, in that moment, was louder than the storm. He could not Command Felicia, but she was only a girl and he could cow her. She stumbled back from him, hands over her ears, as he turned and splashed up the path to Wally’s motionless form. He snatched up the shard and, without a second glance at the boy, returned to the path that led back to the resort...and his private jet, fuelled and awaiting his return.
“Follow me,” he ordered Felicia.
“What about Wally?” she said. She stared up at her brother, her face pale in the almost-continuous flashes of lightning. “He’s my brother...”
“He belongs to the Lady of the Lake,” Merlin snarled. “Let her look after him.” He grabbed Felicia’s wrist, and she grabbed her soaking-wet towel as it threatened to slip off. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Two shards on his person, and Ariane’s mother his hostage: he would soon have the entire blade, and with that in his possession, and much of his power returned, finding the hilt would be a simple matter.
By summer the sword Excalibur would be complete and in his grasp, and the subjugation of Earth – and subsequent liberation of Faerie – could finally begin.
“Walk faster,” he snapped at Felicia. “We’re going home.”
She said something but he paid no attention, just kept his grip upon her arm and strode through the wind and rain. Toward victory, he told himself.
Chapter Seventeen
Vows of Vengeance
&n
bsp; Ariane materialized with her mother in the pool at the bottom of the Medicine Hat Lodge waterslide without regard for the startlement of anyone who might be present. Once again the transition had been almost instantaneous: her subconscious – or the Lady’s magic – somehow finding the route through cloud and stream and pipe to her chosen destination without her having to consciously think about it, as she always had before.
She, at least, was wearing a swimsuit, whereas her mom still wore her Empress Tea Lobby uniform of slacks and vest and long-sleeved white shirt. But people didn’t linger at the bottom of the waterslide, and they’d lucked out: no one was actually in that part of the pool at the moment, though Ariane could hear children shouting somewhere up above her. She guided her mom to the edge. Her mother, clearly shaken and bewildered, moved almost mechanically, climbing out onto her hands and knees just as a boy shot off the end of the waterslide and splashed into the pool behind them. He surfaced, spluttering, and gave Ariane and her mom a startled look.
“She fell in,” Ariane said, smiling brightly. “Nothing to worry about.”
The boy nodded, wide-eyed, and then hurried to the other side of the pool to make his own exit as a little girl came squealing down the slide.
Ariane clambered out herself, took hold of her mom’s arm, and ordered the water off of both of them. Dry again, and arm in arm, they walked the length of the pool to the lobby, and from there to Emma’s room.
Emma had promised to stay at the hotel until she heard from Ariane and Wally, and although to Ariane it seemed weeks since she had made that promise, it had actually only been the day before. Emma answered the door at the first knock, and her eyes widened as she saw who stood there.
“Emma, this is my mom, Emily Forsythe,” Ariane said. “Mom, this is Emma Macphail.”
“Hi,” Mom said. Then she burst into tears.
Emma stood aside as Ariane guided her mother into the room. Mom sat at the end of the bed. Emma sat beside her and put her arms around her while she wept as if she would never stop. Emma looked up at Ariane. “What happened?”
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