Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  She, who had never ridden until she got here, had at least discovered that she had what the new riding instructor, Mia Singleton, said was “a natural seat.” That at least meant she could stay on the horse and manage to get in rhythm with it so she didn’t get pounded to death. It didn’t mean that she had any idea of how to handle this huge thing, and she always had the feeling that the horses she got took one look at her and started snickering about how they were going to make her miserable.

  At least Addie was in her class, and Loch. Loch was good enough, but Addie had ridden all her life; she’d stick to Spirit like a burr and make sure the horse didn’t run off with her, or stop and not move at all.

  “What’s the point of all this?” she asked Addie in despair, as she fumbled with all the gear that was supposed to go on the monster. “Do they really think we’re going to be charging at the Dark Lord on horses, and when we’re done, camp on the battlefield?”

  “We might have to run for it, and there aren’t exactly a lot of cars at Oakhurst,” Addie pointed out somberly. “At least this way we’ve got a chance of getting away and surviving to get to a rally point.”

  “Oh. Um,” Spirit replied, shivering with both cold and apprehension. Apprehension, because she had the feeling that if it ever did come to that—she’d die.

  “Don’t worry, Spirit,” Addie told her. “If it comes to that, I’ll be right with you.”

  They didn’t have any chance to say anything more, since Ms. Singleton showed up and started her inspections. When everyone had everything loaded to her satisfaction, she whistled shrilly as the sign to mount up, opened the stable doors, and waited for them to line up at the “start.”

  Ms. Singleton didn’t talk much, and generally in as few words as possible. Skinny, tough, hair cut short—if she’d had tattoos, she would have looked like a girl gangbanger. But on the rare occasions she did open her mouth, out came perfect English with a cultured accent. Spirit had never seen her outside of the gym or the barn. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was that Ms. Singleton did for Breakthrough. It was obvious why she was here, though; like the others, she had an Oakhurst ring. Horses would do anything for her—though truth to tell it seemed more a matter of control than because they wanted to. From what Spirit knew at this point, this was one of the things Earth Mages did—Animal Control, rather than Animal Speech. Coercion rather than cooperation. That seemed to fit Ms. Singleton.

  When the kids were lined up—eight of them, including Spirit and Addie—Ms. Singleton whistled again, circling her hand above her head three times and pointing down the trail. They all dug heels into their horses’ flanks and started. Most with more success than Spirit, whose horse snorted and stood there, until Addie came alongside, leaned over and gave him a sharp smack on his butt. Then he lunged forward.

  This wasn’t a horse she’d had before, and he settled quickly into a very hard trot. Fortunately that “natural seat” thing came in to save her. When he figured out he wasn’t going to bounce her off, he snorted and eased into something a little less bone-jarring. By that time they were at least a mile from the school. The others were all several hundred feet ahead of her. Loch turned to see where she was, and pulled his horse to a complete stop, waiting for them.

  “Smack him, Spirit!” Addie called over her shoulder. “Or—wait, this is Pendleton I’m on. I’ll fix your mount for you. Pendleton does hate laggards.”

  Addie wheeled around and came in behind Spirit. Her brown horse (they were all brown, Addie called them by different color names—bay, chestnut, whatever—but they were all brown to Spirit) laid his ears back, and Spirit could have sworn he looked gleeful. He rolled his eyes, snaked out his head, and before Spirit could react, all she could see was a set of big yellow teeth heading straight for her horse’s butt.

  They connected.

  Her horse squealed and lurched forward into a gallop. Pendleton kept pace with him, and whenever he threatened to slow down, those teeth headed for him again. When they caught up to the rest, Addie somehow managed to steer her horse away far enough that he couldn’t bite Spirit’s, but kept him within “threat” distance. Loch joined them, so that he and Addie bracketed Spirit’s horse. Now the only direction he could go was forward. He put his ears back. He was not happy. Well, neither was Spirit; she was already sore, her nose was freezing off, and they weren’t even halfway done yet.

  Now they were about two miles from Oakhurst, and outside the “safe” area. Oakhurst was just a dark smear on the horizon. And ahead of them was the first hazard, a big, deep gully with steep, crumbling sides and ice at the bottom. A broad swath of it was marked out with a pair of red flags; that was where they were supposed to cross and they got marked down if they didn’t. Given the competitive spirit at Oakhurst it was a bet that if anyone cheated, three others would tell on him.

  But before they reached the gully, a distant whine of motors and plumes of snow to the right warned Spirit—and everyone else—that they weren’t alone out here.

  Oh hell, it’s Saturday …

  Which meant no school for the kids in Radial.

  Sure enough, as the small horde of snowmobiles headed in their direction, it looked like all the drivers were teenagers. The horses were going to hate this.

  Whooping and shrieking, the Radial kids buzzed the horses, circling them and forcing them to crowd together, bucking and shying. Spirit’s horse backed into Addie’s, who didn’t snap at him this time. Addie was holding him steady, but his eyes showed whites all around, and he was trampling the snow in tight little steps. Spirit’s horse bounced stiff-legged; she tried to hold him in and soothe him at the same time, and it wasn’t working—

  And that was when the sky suddenly darkened. Out of nowhere, huge black clouds just boiled up and covered the entire sky. The kids on the snowmobiles started looking around, startled. The horses all went rigid.

  A sound like thunder came out of the gully. Except it wasn’t thunder. It was the hooves of more horses, twenty or thirty, that came boiling up the steep slope out of the gully as easily as if it was level ground. There were riders on those horses, in gray hooded parkas with gray scarves over their faces. They circled the Oakhurst kids and the snowmobiles both, and as soon as the circle was complete, a wall of wailing wind and snow sprang up behind them, cutting them all off from the rest of the world.

  And then they turned their powers loose inside that confined space.

  Spirit was caught in a maelstrom of screaming horses, screaming kids, wind, ice, fire, and shadow. The earth under them shook and heaved. She saw things—when she could see at all!—that couldn’t possibly be there. Horses bucked, bit, kicked. Snowmobiles careened into the horses. One kid in Oakhurst colors got plucked off his horse before her eyes and thrown about twenty feet into the air; she didn’t see where he landed. She was battered, cut by flying shards of ice as sharp as razor blades, and all she could think of to do was to get as far down on her horse’s neck as she could and cling for dear life while he reared and bucked and screamed. If the others were getting their powers to work, she couldn’t tell. She was crying and screaming with terror herself; she felt blood running down her face from a cut over one eye, and something hit her in the back hard enough to knock all the breath out of her. She started to feel herself falling, hung on tighter. Something smacked her in the head and she saw stars.

  This is it, she thought, in a single moment of fear-sharpened clarity. This is where I die—

  Then … it stopped.

  The wind dropped to nothing. Her horse, exhausted, stopped bucking and stood there trembling. She looked up.

  The circle of gray-clad riders was still there, watching them under a cloud-laden sky that looked like a blizzard was about to cut loose any second. Then, as one, they turned away, rode down into the gully again—

  And disappeared.

  Spirit looked wildly around her. All the snowmobiles were stopped, turned over, one was wrecked with its driver still in it, and from the way he was l
ying …

  Oh my God—he’s dead.…

  People were lying all around, bleeding, with arms and legs going in directions that they shouldn’t, screaming, moaning. The kid who Spirit had seen thrown into the air wasn’t moving, either. She spotted Addie, still miraculously ahorse, with a black eye. She looked frantically for Loch, and saw him on the ground, curled in a ball with both his hands over the back of his neck. She jumped down out of the saddle and ran to him.

  “Loch? Loch!” As she went down on her knees next to him, she was suddenly afraid to touch him. “How are you hurt? Where? How badly!”

  He moaned, and rolled over onto his back. His eyes were unfocused, and one of his pupils was bigger than the other. “Head,” he said. “Hurts. Dizzy.”

  “I’m going for help!” Addie called, and dug her heels abruptly into her horse’s flanks, sending him in a gallop toward the blur on the horizon that was the school.

  “Don’t pass out,” Spirit urged Loch. “I’ll be back.” She began methodically checking on the others.

  She might not have magic, but at least she had first aid.

  * * *

  “My God,” Muirin said, her eyes wide and her face blank with disbelief. “One townie dead, three of us…” For once she had nothing snide, catty, or amusing to say. “I—I’ve got nothing.”

  “Stitches, concussions, broken bones…” Burke shook his head. “I should have been there.”

  Loch blinked at them all groggily; he’d been concussed and had a cracked collarbone. Spirit had eleven stitches in the cut across her forehead and another fifteen in one across her scalp that she hadn’t even felt till they got back to Oakhurst, and they’d gotten off lucky. Addie was in a sling: a torsion fracture of her left arm. As for the rest, aside from the four dead, there were broken arms and legs, concussions, and lacerations enough to fill the tiny Radial emergency room twice over. But, of course, only the townies had gone there, in a fleet of vans supplied by Mark Rider and the town’s two ambulances. All the Oakhurst kids had come straight to the Oakhurst Infirmary. It wouldn’t do to have the townies see Earth Mages healing people by magic.

  Besides their own Mages, Mark also seemed to have his own group of three people that could just do that—plus Madison, who made four.

  Now most of the injured were resting and recovering in their own rooms. Spirit’s cuts were half healed already. She had no idea what story Mark had told the townies about what had happened—but she had seen Ms. Singleton going from one stretcher to another, briefly putting her hand on the occupant’s head, muttering something. She had no doubt that Mark’s story had replaced whatever the kids themselves had seen. She had a guess that animals weren’t the only things Ms. Singleton could control.

  “If that’s what a mage-battle is like,” Loch said thickly, “we are seriously outclassed. I couldn’t even get myself organized before the horse threw me, and all I could do was try and protect myself.”

  “Well, I was about as much use as a beach ball,” Spirit replied, wincing a little as the cut on her head pulled and hurt. It would be fully healed by morning, but with so many injured, the Healing Mages had been forced to ration their power. “How do you fight stuff like that?”

  “I should have been there,” Burke muttered again, looking guilty and worried.

  Muirin fiddled with her ring and with the snake-bracelet on her wrist. “All right, there’s an elephant in the room, and I’m going to talk about it,” she said. “The Gatekeepers. Mark Rider’s group. Would joining them be so bad? I mean, I know Dylan’s being scouted for it and you guys don’t like him, but if the alternative is what just happened? Come on! At least they know what they’re doing!”

  “We can’t choose a side until we know what’s going on,” Burke insisted stubbornly. “Muirin, I know you don’t want to hear it, but so far … well, we don’t know anything about them, except that they’re rich and Oakhurst Alumns. But we do know that the people who attacked Spirit and Loch and Addie were Oakhurst Alumns, too.”

  “So the Gatekeepers are also the Shadow Knights?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh come on!”

  “The point is not that they are, or that only some of them might be, but that we don’t know!” Burke said earnestly. “Do you see the difference?”

  “Yeah. I guess,” Muirin replied.

  “I need to go lay down,” Loch said, looking a little green. “They said I was going to feel sick and dizzy for a while and … I’m feeling sick and dizzy.” He got up and wobbled out, Burke going with him to give him an arm.

  “Me, too,” Addie replied.

  “Too sick for chocolate?” Muirin asked, looking oddly hopeful, then crestfallen when Addie nodded. “Spirit?”

  Spirit had the oddest feeling that Muirin was … lonely. Maybe she was all BFF with Madison, but maybe that was just on the surface. “I’d rather just hang out with you,” she said. “’Cause right now, you know, I want to hang with a friend.”

  Muirin lit up like a Christmas tree. She immediately tried to cover it, but not that successfully. “Let’s get Addie to her room then.”

  The two of them helped Addie get into bed, and Spirit got her a glass of water and some pills she said were for pain. “I’ll be glad when this is healed tomorrow,” she said, as she tried without much result to find a position that didn’t hurt. They turned out her light and left her to try and sleep.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Muirin said as they headed for her room.

  “Worth that much? Schadenfreude,” Spirit replied. “The kids from Radial. I know I should feel sorry for them, but they showed up and tried to spook our horses. They kind of got what they deserved. Well, not the one that died,” she amended, “but … you know.”

  Muirin blinked at her. “Spirit White, I thought I knew you! You have a dark side!” She opened the door and waited for Spirit to go in.

  “Everybody does,” Spirit said, shrugging. “I just don’t show mine that often. It’s still there. You just … I don’t know, you have to know it’s there, and not so much fight it, as … learn from it. About it. I guess. I sound like a moron, don’t I?”

  “Nah,” Muirin replied. “Well, a little hippie-dippy with a side of Doc Mac, but that’s not bad.” She flipped on the light and, a moment later, placed a small gold box in Spirit’s hands with a triumphant flourish. Even closed, it smelled of chocolate. I bet this didn’t come from Radial, Spirit thought.

  When she looked around the room, it was obvious Madison had been “helping” with the smuggling more than a little. There were new items of clothing in Muirin’s closet that stood out because they weren’t in Oakhurst colors. There was a stack of CDs next to the computer that hadn’t been there before, and Spirit had no doubt that if Muirin hadn’t been so careful about getting rid of the evidence, the little box of chocolate truffles would represent only the tip of the pyramid of junk food she’d been getting in. Briefly, for the millionth time, Spirit wondered how on earth Muirin managed to eat all that and still look good.

  She started to pick up some papers off the bed, when she realized she was holding the picture of the runes on the oak … and a lot, a lot of notes.

  “Aren’t these the oak-runes?” she exclaimed. “Did you finish the translation?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Muirin replied dismissively. “But it doesn’t mean anything. I asked Anastus and Madison, and they said so. Anastus thinks it’s fake, like those Viking runes up in Minnesota.”

  Spirit was horrified, but she grabbed her reaction with both hands and held it down so it wouldn’t show on her face. Muirin was finally acting like her old self for the first time in … well, since New Year’s Eve. “Muir—look, I know I sound like I’m beating the same dead horse, but this is the second time we’ve been physically attacked by people wearing Oakhurst class rings. And this time … people died. Me, Loch, and Addie were hurt. We know there’s someone on the opposition team here, and there’s the chance it’s the same at Breakthrough.” Then she decided to use a low blow. “Besides
… Anastus? Isn’t it kind of creepy, an old guy like him hanging around you? Eww Lolita creepy? He could be saying that just to throw all of us off. Or even just to get you to concentrate on him, you know what I mean?”

  Muirin started to protest, then grimaced a little. “Well … maybe it is kind of creepy…” A brief expression of guilt passed over her face, and she thrust the handful of paper at Spirit. “Here, you might as well have them. Anastus wanted them but … yeah, that’s creepy, why would he want something he said was worthless, unless it’s like some weird souvenir or something.”

  Spirit took the papers. And though it required every bit of her willpower, she stayed in Muirin’s room right up until lights out, listening to her talk about fashion and the latest from her stepmother (who seemed to belong to the Boy Toy of the Month Club) as if there weren’t four dead kids in the county morgue, three of them people they knew. And it actually occurred to her, as Muirin nattered on about Vivienne Westwood, that this might be Muirin’s way of dealing with just that. To pretend it hadn’t happened, and hide it behind a wall of trivialities.

  When she had to leave, it seemed to her that Muirin had been grateful for the company. Maybe it was harder to cope with all this when there was no one to chatter at.…

  But right at the door of her room, a shadow detached itself from the wall. She gasped and started to scream—

  —and stopped herself just in time. “Burke!” she whispered harshly. “What are you doing here? You’ll get in trouble!”

  “I had to talk to you,” he whispered back. “Spirit, I—I don’t know anything anymore, except that you guys are my family now. I can’t bail on you again. Especially not you. You’re—I should have been there. I should have been with you to protect you. I know you aren’t a fighter—”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, and then, felt something strange, like anger, but not like anger, ignite inside her. “I’m not. But I will be.”