Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  “Huh,” Burke said. “And all of them say ‘Oakhurst’ on the front. Not his name. It’s like the house was his kid.”

  “The house might have been his child,” Addie replied. “He never married, he never had any children at all, and he died without an heir and without a will. But he doubled his fortune in the war, and when he died in 1939 he was over eighty, and that was really old for those times.”

  “Then I got the oldest of the scrapbooks,” said Burke. “The house was in really good shape when he died, too; the last of the scrapbooks is full of photos he took and developed himself, and it was just amazing. So if there’s some spell on the tree, it explains why Tyniger devoted himself to the house and the tree took care of him,” Burke said slowly. “But then what?”

  “All I found in my scrapbooks were more of those photos,” Loch said. “So I did some research. You had a huge estate here, from a really wealthy man, with no heir and no will. When there’s that much money, the State has to be really careful how they handle everything to make sure there’s no heir, because having one crop up can be really messy. It took Montana over thirty years to settle the estate, and by the time the State determined that they were getting the house, they didn’t want it. It was out in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t really a concept of remote luxury spas back then, and no one wanted to buy it for a personal home, either, considering how much they’d have to spend just modernizing the wiring alone, never mind the plumbing and the heat and air. So it sat for another ten years, and then in 1979, Doctor Ambrosius came along and bought it.”

  “And with that oak right in the middle of it, I can see why he’d want it,” Muirin said, getting back her enthusiasm. “And maybe the reason there isn’t a lot of magic in the oak now is because Doctor Ambrosius drained it all to build the protections around the school!”

  “Oh yeah, I bet you’re right, Murr-cat!” Burke exclaimed. “That makes perfect sense!”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” Spirit objected. “How can you drain magic out of a spell?”

  “Oh, that’s easy enough,” Addie replied dismissively. “Any Energy Mage can do it. It’s an advanced thing, but they can all do it.”

  Spirit stared down at the Monopoly board, reminded forcibly again that she didn’t have any magic.…

  Except Doc Mac said she did. It was just sleeping.

  Well I wish someone would set off the alarm clock, she thought angrily. Then she bit her lip and fought the anger down. This was just one more way that Oakhurst was trying to separate her from her new friends. And she wasn’t going to let it.

  * * *

  They talked until a proctor came to shoo them out of the lounge for lights out. Two things seemed really obvious when they got done going over everything any of them had found in those scrapbooks.

  First, the runes. They had to be pretty important. If they were protective—and they probably were—according to Loch and Addie, they would have been what Doctor Ambrosius used to “anchor” his own protections.

  “The thing is,” Addie said, frowning a little, “you’ll have to take my word for it, but runes can actually change a little if they’re used that way—if they’re incorporated into something other than their original purpose. Physically change, I mean; the runes themselves will kind of get slightly rewritten to reflect the altered purpose.”

  Spirit didn’t ask, “They can do that?” even though she wanted to, because Addie would never have said it if it wasn’t true. So she asked, “How?” instead.

  “Magic is a living force,” Loch pointed out. “It changes. How we use it changes. So the tools we use to manipulate it have to be able to change, too. Things like runes. You can’t rewrite them drastically, but you could take a protective spell that read, say, ‘all that shelter under my boughs,’ and by doing what we think Doctor Ambrosius did, the runes would change to read ‘all that shelter within my bounds.’ If he got specific about what he was protecting against—which would be smart—the runes would change to name those things.”

  “So if we translate them, we can figure out who or what Ambrosius is defending us against, and if we know that, we can figure out how we can help—” That felt better. That felt proactive. Spirit realized in that moment that she was getting very tired of always waiting for something to happen before she could act.

  Burke had been very quiet all this time. When they all finally stopped talking, he spoke into the momentary silence.

  “We’ve gotten distracted by all this,” he said slowly, and waved his hand vaguely. “The runes, the history … even New Year’s … it’s distracted us from what’s really urgent.” Before any of them could ask him what he meant, he continued. “We still haven’t figured out who the inside man is. Who the one trying to kill us from inside the school is.” His jaw firmed. “The more I think about it, the more certain I am. There is someone in here, and it won’t matter squat how much we figure out and how we help Doctor A. guard against what’s outside, when we have someone right inside with us—”

  He might have said more, but just then one of the proctors poked his head into the lounge and spotted them.

  “All right, you dirty capitalists. Time to tally up your ill-gotten gains, figure out who won, and head for your rooms,” he called. “Fifteen minutes to lights out.”

  With a sigh, Addie packed up the board that hadn’t been used all night, and they split up. Spirit only stopped long enough to tug on Burke’s elbow and hold him back a moment.

  “Thanks,” she said, with feeling.

  “For what?” he asked, looking both startled and gratified.

  “For believing me. In me. That we’re still in danger.” She sighed. “I was beginning to feel as if none of you were ever going to see it.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m looking a little harder than the others,” Burke replied, smiling down into her eyes. “Spirit—”

  “Hey!”

  They both jumped, instinctively separating, and both stared guiltily at the door, where the proctor was shaking his head. “Rooms. Now.”

  “Right,” Burke said, and hurried out the door. Spirit could only stare after him a moment, wondering what he had been about to say, before she followed Addie and Muirin back to the girls’ side.

  * * *

  The names still hadn’t been posted for the field trip, but a chance remark by Doc Mac had engendered—well, Spirit wasn’t sure what to call it. Other than tempting fate …

  Although she hadn’t been there to hear it, evidently when one of the teachers had lamented the debacle of the New Year’s Dance, he had mentioned some Scottish celebration that happened the week after New Year’s that involved setting fire to a barrel of tar or a Viking ship, or both. “It’d give the kids something to get their minds off the bad experience,” he’d said, and for some reason the entire faculty had taken the idea and run away with it, combining this Scottish-Viking thing with the need to take down the Winter Carnival.

  So now there was going to be a big nighttime gathering featuring a bonfire with a Viking ship on top of it, a competition to take down the ice-works fast (of course there had to be a competition, this was Oakhurst) and what wasn’t ice was to get tossed on the bonfire. The refreshments that didn’t get used New Year’s Eve had been thriftily saved or frozen; they were going to be served at this thing, along with grilled hot dogs and bratwurst. Muirin was already in heaven at the prospect.

  Personally, Spirit thought this was a really dumb idea, not the least because it meant they were all going to have to go outside in the freezing cold, in the coldest part of the year, at night.

  * * *

  The night of the thing, she went out bundled up to her eyebrows, and within moments of stepping out into the snow her toes and fingers started to freeze. The electric lights strung for the Carnival were all on, providing plenty of light.

  She watched Addie and Muirin’s team reducing an ice sculpture to powder snow. It was actually kind of fun to watch; the whole thing basically crumbled away
like something right out of a movie. Like a vampire getting hit with sunlight, or a mummy crumbling away. She felt someone come to stand beside her, turned a little, and saw that it was Elizabeth, also bundled up.

  “This is a bad idea,” Elizabeth said, sounding very unhappy.

  “I’ve seen better,” Spirit said cautiously. “Somebody’s going to get frostbite if they aren’t careful.” She glanced over at the pile of wood with a cardboard-and-wood Viking ship on top of it. “I don’t know if that bonfire’s a really good idea, either—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Elizabeth replied, then shook her head.

  Spirit waited, but Elizabeth was silent. “Well, what did you mean?” she prompted, as Addie and Muirin’s team moved on to the next ice sculpture, leaving a pile of tiny sandlike ice particles behind.

  Elizabeth glanced around nervously. “It just seems like a bad idea. You know, like this might attract … something.”

  Spirit shivered as she felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with the weather go down her back. She looked up at the moon in a mostly clear sky. “Well,” she replied, with a lightness she didn’t feel, “if you’re thinking it’ll attract what happened at New Year’s, even if the lights go out, there’s no way whatever it was is going to be able to put out the moon. So we won’t be in the dark and we will be able to see it.”

  Elizabeth gave her a dubious look. “If you say so,” she replied, in a tone that said clearly she didn’t believe it.

  Some of the snow sculptures, like the castle, had been built on wooden scaffolding. With the packed snow evaporated by another team, Burke and several others were tearing the scaffolding down and piling it on the unlit bonfire. The thing was going to be huge. They’d probably be able to see it in Radial.

  At least it would be warm.

  She got a cup of hot cider from the knot of kitchen staff setting up the grills and the tables with food on them. They didn’t look very happy, and she didn’t blame them. But at least once they got the grills going, they’d have a little warm patch where they were. She wrapped her cold fingers around the cup and sipped slowly. The cider tasted … thin, somehow. As if some vitality had been drained out of it.

  She rubbed her eyes and stared at Addie’s team. There seemed to be a gray fog between her and them, and the sounds they were making as they took down another ice sculpture weren’t as loud as they had been a moment before. And were the electric lights getting weaker? She rubbed her eyes again. This was weird, very weird; it was like everything was getting dimmed down.

  Someone shouted; she turned, and saw a line of cloaked and hooded riders silhouetted against the night sky, just beyond the lawn of the school. There was something wrong about them; it wasn’t just that they were wearing black, it was that the light somehow was sucked into them. She felt cold, horribly cold, staring at them.

  Is this some prank from the kids in Radial? Please, let it be a prank …

  But of course, she knew in her heart it wasn’t—which was only proved a moment later when one of the Riders let out a piercing whistle and they all plunged toward the students.

  Someone screamed. That made everyone turn to look.

  Spirit just knew that the terrible, paralyzing fear was going to clamp down over them all. She even braced herself for it, getting ready to fight it, even though fighting it hadn’t worked very well the last time.

  But no—no, all that erupted was just plain old-fashioned panic.

  People started shouting hysterically, and there was more screaming as the students scattered before the charge. As Spirit darted out of the way, something whistled over her head. A club of some kind, heavier than a bat, but swung expertly. It missed her, but not by much, and it forced her to take a tumble in order to escape the deadly hooves of another horse.

  Who are they? She got no time to think about it. The Riders were turning and coming back again. There were people on the ground now, knocked down and maybe hurt. And the Riders were between them and the school buildings. There was no way to get to safety except through them.

  She heard a shout of rage in a voice she recognized. Burke! She looked around for him and couldn’t spot him. A moment later, something white shot through the air and hit one of the Riders in the shoulder. It couldn’t have been a snowball; the missile didn’t disintegrate when it hit. The Rider cursed, grabbed for his shoulder, his club dropping out of his hand. Whatever Burke was throwing was pretty solid.

  Burke’s famous fastball … It was followed by another, this time to the head. The Rider reeled—but the others charged.

  But Burke’s rage had infected her. Furious, she spotted a metal scaffolding pole in a pile of others and ran for it. It was just about the length of her kendo staff, if not the same weight. She seized it and turned to face the Riders, screaming at them at the top of her lungs.

  She wasn’t the only one. Addie, Muirin, and Loch had taken up Burke’s tactic, and now Spirit realized what it was Burke was using as a weapon.

  Ice balls.

  Addie was making them; Burke, Muirin, and Loch were throwing them. Murr-cat and Loch didn’t have the lethal precision Burke did, but they were making up for it with volume, and aiming, not at the Riders, but at their horses.

  The horses didn’t like getting pelted one little bit. They fought their bits and their Riders. Spirit took advantage of this and charged, screaming like a banshee.

  At least three of the horses won the fight with their Riders and bolted.

  Spirit ended up beside the unlit bonfire; the remaining Riders milled around, fighting for control of their horses. Some of the other students were helping the ones on the ground; the rest responded sluggishly, as if they weren’t quite sure what they should do. In that moment of uncertainty on both sides, Spirit glanced over at the bonfire and saw two things: an empty gallon of kerosene, and a fireplace lighter. Someone had been about to light the bonfire when the attack started.

  Horses liked fire even less than they liked being pelted with ice balls.

  Time to finish the job!

  She dropped the pole, grabbed the lighter, and struggled with it for a moment, trying to get it to light. When she finally succeeded, she saw some of the wood gleaming wetly, reflecting the flame, and smelled the kerosene fumes, thick and choking. She bent down and put the flame to the kerosene-soaked wood.

  The bonfire went up with a roar; she jumped back barely in time.

  She took another glance at the Riders; now the horses were rearing and bucking, whinnying shrilly. That made up her mind; she seized a piece of burning two-by-four and charged them, waving the end that was on fire in front of her in wild arcs.

  The Riders couldn’t hold control of their mounts now. The horses had had enough. More of them peeled off, racing into the west. The leader fought his own horse for a moment, then must have decided to give up. He whistled shrilly and gave his horse its head. It galloped off after the first escapees, and the rest of the Riders followed.

  Spirit dropped the burning board into the nearest snow pile, and sagged to her knees.

  * * *

  Mr. Bowman, Ms. Holland, and Mr. Krandal, the three teachers supposed to go on the field trip, were all hurt. Not badly, but they’d been ordered to the Infirmary along with the students who were injured. Most of those seemed to be Proctors.

  Spirit sat with the others in the lounge, both hands wrapped around a big cup of hot chocolate, sipping at it. Her stomach was feeling very queasy after that confrontation. Murr-cat was on her third cup; evidently fighting didn’t harm her appetite in the least!

  Spirit watched the door, waiting for Addie to come back from the Infirmary. “There she is,” she said, as Addie appeared in the doorway, a neat bandage on one hand.

  Addie made her way over to them. “No one’s seriously hurt, but they could have been,” she said as she sat down with them. “One of the Proctors has a concussion. Those people wanted to hurt us.”

  Spirit nodded, and started to say something, but Addie forestalle
d her.

  “I don’t know if those Shadow Riders have anything to do with the Wild Hunt or New Year’s—but I can tell you how the magic crossed the wards,” she continued with venom. “I saw some of their hands. They were wearing Oakhurst rings. And since we were all accounted for, they have to be Alums!”

  “Could they have just stolen the rings?” Spirit asked timidly.

  “Unlikely,” said Burke.

  “Then we are so doomed.…”

  TEN

  Ever since the attack of those mysterious shadowed figures, there’d been a curious sense of the surreal about Oakhurst. On the one hand, almost all the physical classes had abruptly shifted into physical defense. Any time you looked outside, you’d see a teacher or staff member working on … something magical. Defenses, presumably. It wasn’t obvious what was going on, but there was often some visual component, lights or vapors, or mysterious fleeting images.

  On the other hand—unbelievable as it was, they were all expected to carry on as if nothing had happened. Even the ones that had been hurt. Bandages, casts on arms, and all. After her second night of nightmares, Spirit had tried to get an appointment with Doc Mac … but he was seeing people from six in the morning until midnight, and she just couldn’t justify trying to muscle out someone who was in worse shape than she was.