Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  Might as well see what happens.…

  My stuffed dog, she typed.

  Correct answer. Welcome, Spirit White.

  A new window opened, full of text. She began to read it, slowly.

  Instructions. Instructions—supposedly—on how to use a code package in a file on this key to do what, so far, none of the school hackers had ever been able to. Get past the firewalls undetectably, and reach outside the intranet and onto the Internet. Into the world.

  Muirin couldn’t have done this. If she knew how, she’d do it herself. If she meant to share it with Spirit, she’d have bragged about it. Spirit’s mouth went dry, and she sat back in her chair, staring at the screen. If this worked, she could talk to anyone—do research—get advice.

  But then the temporary euphoria abruptly vanished. Who would she talk to? She was all alone. She didn’t know anyone. She wasn’t like Muirin, who had contacts everywhere and knew how to make more. Everyone she knew, everyone she cared about, was right here.

  And if it was a trap—would it be a trap laid by the Oakhurst insider? Ms. Holland could have planted this in her bag. What would happen if it was a trap? Could you use a computer program to do magic? Would it bring a Shadow Knight straight to her? Or had whoever put this in her bag figured she did have friends outside the school, and intended to use her to find them?

  She stared at the screen for a good minute before finally unplugging the drive and throwing it back in the drawer.

  It was no use. She was alone, afraid, and without allies. She got undressed, went back to bed, turned off the lights, and cried herself to sleep.

  TWELVE

  Spirit woke up with a start—with someone’s hand clamped over her mouth. She froze. Her body couldn’t seem to move even though her brain wanted her to leap out of bed and—

  “Don’t scream,” came a hissing whisper. “It’s just me, Elizabeth.”

  The hand came away, and before she could get a good breath to let out a shriek, the light over her bed clicked on. It was Elizabeth, looking pinched and anxious. Spirit struggled up into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes, still sore and sticky from crying. “Elizabeth, what are you doing in my room?” she asked angrily. What was wrong with her? “It’s after hours. You’re going to get us both in trouble.”

  The girl shrank away a little and sat down on the floor beside the bed, breathing shakily. “I had to talk to you,” she said. “You’re the only one that doesn’t seem all sucked in by the Breakthrough people.”

  She was actually wringing her hands. Spirit had never seen anyone wring their hands before. It looked strange. “I’m not buying into it,” she said, cautiously. “You were there when the Shadow Knights turned up, and they were wearing Oakhurst rings. A week later, these guys are here—but you can’t just pack up and ship building crews and tons of stuff in a week, so I don’t buy that they came running when Doctor Ambrosius called last week. From what one of the Radial kids said, it sounds like they’ve been in Radial for weeks, setting up this move. So … maybe Doctor Ambrosius called them a couple months ago, and it’s just strange timing that they turned up now, but … I don’t like it. It just seems all wrong.”

  Elizabeth was shivering, but looked up sharply. “The Shadow Knights! You know what they’re called!” she exclaimed, her eyes darkening.

  Spirit blinked, startled. “Uh, what? Burke just made up that name.…”

  “But it’s the right name for them! The Shadow Knights—they’re the ancient enemies of the Knights of the Grail!” Elizabeth clutched Spirit’s arm; her hands were freezing. “It all goes back to Arthur!”

  “Arthur?” It took Spirit a moment for her brain to come up with the right association. “You mean King Arthur? Camelot? Excalibur? Merlin?”

  “Yes!” Elizabeth had her arm in a death grip. “Listen, it’s all deeper, all larger than you think. It’s not just Oakhurst, and it’s not just now, this is a war that’s been going on for centuries, and now it’s getting near the end—”

  And then, the words just poured out of her, as if they had been kept behind a dam all this time. More words than Spirit had heard Elizabeth speak in the entire time she’d been here. As Spirit listened, caught in a kind of bemused numbness, Elizabeth spun a story so wild that it belonged in a book, not real life. Spirit’s friends had been calling her paranoid for weeks, but even though she was dead certain they were all in danger and smack in the middle of some horrible conspiracy, even she hadn’t come up with anything this crazy. And Elizabeth wasn’t exactly making it easy to follow her story.

  Finally, when Elizabeth ran out of air, Spirit tried to get it all sorted out so it was more or less coherent. “So … all this is about King Arthur and the rest of those mythical people. First, there are these Shadow Knights. And they’re serving Mordred. Mordred has been reincarnated, or else he never died, you’re not sure which. But some of the Shadow Knights are people who served him, or were his allies before, and they are all reincarnated over and over. And Mordred wants the usual Evil Overlord stuff, and the Shadow Knights are going to help him get it. Right?”

  Elizabeth nodded and opened her mouth to start again. Spirit held up her hand. “Whoa. Wait. I’m still trying to get this straight.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and watched her expectantly.

  “But the Shadow Knights have never been able to defeat the Grail Knights, who were the ones that served Arthur and Merlin. And the Grail Knights haven’t been able to defeat the Shadow Knights, either. Which is why they all keep getting reborn.”

  The girl nodded. “And Arthur, too. Arthur is reborn.” She faltered. “Merlin and Mordred, I am not sure. I am not part of their story, so I do not know these things, I only know what I have been a part of myself—”

  Wow, now she’s even starting to talk … odd. Like someone who’s not really from around here … as in a zillion years ago not from around here.

  “Wait! I’m still—Okay, so now we talk about Oakhurst. Some of the Oakhurst people are Shadow Knights. Some are Grail Knights.” She paused, trying not to think about how absurd this all sounded. “Some aren’t anything, except magicians. And you can’t tell which is which.”

  “It is all part of the curse that fell upon Britain when Mordred betrayed Arthur and sold himself to the Dark,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “Everyone involved in any way with Arthur’s kingdom is doomed to be reborn over and over until either the Shadow or the Grail triumphs. One must destroy the other. But I do not recognize any of the people here at Oakhurst, because I did not know them in the past.”

  “So why doesn’t anyone remember all this?” she wanted to know.

  “The Shadow Knights do, but only once they turn to the Dark. Their master, Mordred, wakes their memories. I do not know about the Grail Knights.” She looked as if she knew that part of the story sounded pretty weak. “Possibly Merlin wakes theirs as well. But when they are reborn, they have no memories of their past lives.”

  “But—I don’t get it, if they’re reborn over and over and fight the war over and over, why hasn’t anyone noticed until now?” Spirit shook her arm a little, and Elizabeth finally noticed she was holding on to it and let go.

  “Because until the spirit in the Tree was freed, they had no leader and no direction,” the girl said simply. “Their conflicts were random, skirmishes rather than battles, and since none of them recalled their pasts, they did not even know why they fought with each other. That Tree is the one here in the Entry Hall. That is why we are all here, because of the Tree.”

  “And the spirit was freed when lightning hit it and killed it?” Spirit replied.

  Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know, but that is a good notion. I’m not part of that story. I know I keep telling you that, but all I can tell you is what I know—I was just a tiny part of the original story. I never met Arthur, or Lancelot—I only ever knew a few on the side of the Grail or the Shadow.”

  “Wait—you—”

  “I am a Reincarnate,” Elizabeth said quietly,
but with conviction. “I am—was—Yseult of Cornwall. Iseult the Fair. Isolde.”

  “Wait, what—Tristan and Isolde, that Isolde?” Spirit’s jaw dropped a little. This was getting crazier by the minute.

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Prove it,” Spirit demanded.

  Elizabeth looked off somewhere over Spirit’s shoulder, her eyes unfocused. “Ol an tekter a wylys ny yl taves den yn bys y leuerel bynytha. A frut de ha floures tek menestrouthy ha can whek fenten bryght. Avel arhans ha pedyr streyth vras defry ov resek a-dyworty worte myres may tho whans,” she said.

  Well, it sounded like another language, and not gibberish. And it sure didn’t sound like any language Spirit knew. She had a smattering of Spanish, some French—Oakhurst insisted you learn Latin and Greek, so she was getting those now—it wasn’t any of those. And it didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard people speak, like Italian, German, Japanese, or Russian.

  “I mean, that’s all I can do,” Elizabeth said apologetically. “I can speak Cornish, old Cornish, and no one’s been able to do that in hundreds of years. I speak what we now call Irish-Celtic. I could tell you where to find landmarks in Cornwall and Ireland. But things that I knew are probably not even two stones on top of each other now. The ruins at Tintagel aren’t even from my … lifetime.” She shrugged helplessly. “I know this sounds mad. You look at me and see an American, a sixteen-year-old girl, but I have been Yseult—known I was Yseult—nearly the whole of my life. I thought I was crazy when I first started getting my dreams, except I finally figured out they weren’t dreams after all. They were memories. That’s when I started seeing the Shadow Knights, too. I think they were looking for me.” She shuddered. “I—Yseult, I, we’re the same person, don’t you see? There is no Elizabeth Walker. There’s only Yseult of Cornwall, and I wasn’t on either side originally, and if the Shadow Knights can get me to choose them—that’s more power for them. Plus my Gift. I can see things, past and future, and that would be really useful to them. I think that’s how I ended up waking my own memories, because I saw my parents dead, and I was trying to find out how they died and warn them, but … I got all this other stuff instead.”

  Spirit licked dry lips. “So … Breakthrough … Mark Rider, all of them…”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, sounding desperate. “I know some of them are Shadow Knights. I think Mark Rider is, but that’s only because—well, I don’t have any proof. Maybe I think he is only because he’s one of those guys you know would run over you then sue you because you ruined their tires. And you don’t have to be a Reincarnate to become a Shadow Knight; they’ll recruit anyone who’s a magician, so even if he is a Shadow Knight, he might not be a Reincarnate. Reincarnates are the most powerful, but anyone who is a sorcerer is useful. So Mark Rider could be a new recruit, he could be a Reincarnate, I could be completely mistaken about him. I mean, the only way I can find out for sure is to get close to them, and if I do, and it’s someone I recognize and a Shadow Knight, then that person will recognize me, too, and then they’ll know I’m more than just someone with a Gift.” She looked up at Spirit, shivering again. “If they do that, I’m dead. Either they’ll kill me because they can’t get me to join them, or they’ll—well, it won’t be me anymore, so I might as well be dead.”

  Suddenly, she raised her head. “There’s someone coming. I can’t be found here.”

  She was on her feet faster than Spirit would have believed, had the door to the room open and was out into the hall before Spirit could react.

  Spirit jumped out of bed and ran after her. She paused in the hall, trying to remember which way Elizabeth’s room was. Before she could remember, she heard footsteps and a flashlight shone in her face.

  “Spirit, what are you doing out here?” Kelly Langley demanded.

  “I thought I heard something.” Lame, but it was the only thing she could think of. “Like someone dropped something out here.”

  Kelly panned her flashlight around the hallway, which was, of course, empty and clean. “You were having a nightmare or something,” Kelly said firmly. “Go back to bed. Now.”

  There wasn’t exactly a choice. Spirit nodded, and went back into her room. She thought about trying an e-mail to Elizabeth, but … well, probably not a good idea. Besides, Kelly was probably waiting outside the door to make sure her light went out. With a sigh, she got back into bed and turned it off.

  Fat chance getting any more sleep tonight.

  * * *

  “Merlin. And Arthur.” Burke shook his head. “It sounds like a bad fantasy movie.”

  “Or a manga, or an animé, they’ve got plots that screwy,” Muirin said. “Ha. Park Place, Addie. Pay up. Seriously, Liz needs to market herself to Japan, they’d eat that kind of thing up with a spoon.”

  “I know but…” Spirit had woken up this morning with the conviction that, as utterly unbelievable as it had all sounded, that was exactly the reason why it must be true. If Elizabeth had been making something up, she surely would have gone for a story that was a lot more plausible.

  “Look, Spirit, if it makes you feel any better, how about if I go find her?” Burke asked. “I’ll go get her right now, we can talk to her, and we’ll—” he paused. “Not interrogate her, but if she really made all this stuff up, unless she’s psycho, we can probably point out enough holes to make her admit it.”

  “It’s already got more holes than Swiss cheese,” Muirin muttered.

  “No, I’ll go,” Addie said, getting up. “I’m almost out of Monopoly Money anyway, what with Moneybags Muirin there owning every property on the board that I land on. If she’s in her room, you couldn’t go there anyway, Burke. I’ll try there first.”

  But Addie came back only five minutes later, and she had a very strange look on her face.

  “What?” Spirit demanded.

  “She’s gone.” Addie shook her head. “I mean, completely. The name tag is gone from her door, the room’s been cleaned out. And there wasn’t any announcement or anything—”

  “Well, there’s your proof she was delusional, Spirit,” Muirin said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I bet Kelly caught her wandering the hall looking for Excalibur, sent her to Doc Mac, and he shipped her away. I mean, think about it. Mark Rider said we’re under attack, and the last thing you want here is someone damaged like that. She wouldn’t be safe here, and who knows what she’d do if she decided she didn’t like the protections? And there wasn’t an announcement because—well, who’d care? It’s not like she had any friends.”

  Spirit was more than a little shocked by Muirin’s callousness, but … if Muir was right, then … well, Muir was right. Poor Elizabeth was safer somewhere else, and Oakhurst was safer without her. But …

  If Muirin was wrong … had the Shadow Knights found Elizabeth, just as she had feared they would? Was everything she had said, crazy as it sounded, actually true?

  * * *

  The next day, all classes were canceled while the new schedules were made up—but that didn’t mean they were free. In fact, they were even less free. Divided into groups—and, of course, none of the five of them was in the same group—they were tested in every way possible. A battery of physical tests—not just physical fitness: Their reflexes were tested and timed, their proficiency in anything like a martial art underwent the scrutiny of Anastus Ovcharenko and his two underlings—were interspersed with academic tests. By the time the day was over, Spirit was too tired even to think, and she wasn’t the only one. The Refectory that night was extremely quiet, people dully shoving food into their mouths as if they were too tired to taste it. Even Muirin was too tired to complain.

  “I’m going straight to bed,” she announced as she got up from the table. “Thank God there’s no homework.”

  Burke, who was sporting a fine crop of bruises as well as looking as if he had packed a hundred pounds up a mountain, nodded. “Me, too. Just check your e-mail; Mr. Krandal told me they’d send our new scheds after supper.”
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  “No argument here,” Addie groaned. “I just hope there’s hot water with everyone wanting baths.”

  Spirit and Loch just nodded; she was so exhausted she found it hard to concentrate on even the simplest of things. It took her two tries to get at her e-mail, and she must have stared at the screen for fifteen minutes before she figured out which e-mail was the right one.

  She was unsurprised to see that music and art classes had been canceled “until further notice.” They’d been replaced with new language courses and new literature courses. Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian had joined Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, and German. The new “literature” classes were all folklore, intensive studies in mythology—of course, this was Oakhurst, so “myth” wasn’t so “mythical.” Celtic, French, German, and Italian had already been on the list, now there were Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek, Ancient Persian … the list was enormous, and the notes said it didn’t matter if you were the only one that wanted to study a particular culture, you would be accommodated.

  Everyone was taking marksmanship, which was going to cover every possible weapon you could shoot.

  Oh, that’ll make Loch happy. Not.

  Everyone was taking something called Systema. Since Ovcharenko was teaching it, it was probably a martial art. Spirit’s morning “conditioning” class remained; her Art class was now a class in Celtic language, her Music class was now her choice of mythologies. She picked one at random, sent the e-mail back, and went to see if there was hot water. She almost fell asleep in the tub, and when she did drop into bed, she was out without a chance to even think about anything.

  * * *

  It seemed very strange to see Madison Lane-Rider standing where Ms. Holland should have been. Up close she was even more impressive than she’d been on the stage. A long fall of thick red hair so perfectly smooth and shining it looked like it was Photoshopped dropped to just below her shoulders and was parted on the side. Her pale skin looked Photoshopped, too. With that hair and skin, Spirit would have expected green eyes—but no, she had eyes of a very strange gray color.