Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

He stared at her. Then slowly, a faint smile passed over his face. “I think you will. And I’ll help. Good night, Spirit.”

  He faded into the darkness.

  She slipped into her room.

  As soon as she closed the door and got into bed, she began to go through Muirin’s notes. There were an awful lot of notes for something that was only a few runes long … but Muirin had been as meticulous in her research as she was with her design and sewing, hunting down alternate meanings, considering, then rejecting, things that eventually didn’t seem to match. Finally, near the end, Spirit read the conclusion Muirin had come to. It was written as if she were writing a letter, and Spirit wondered if Muirin had planned to give her the papers all along.

  Okay. So this is the only thing it can be. And it’s right out of Lizzie’s goofy story, but nothing else matches. It kind of goes like this: “Interfering stranger (foreigner, you-who-would-meddle kind of thing) Beware! Touch not (do not disturb) the Sacred (or Shunned) Oak sealed (closed, locked up) by the Druid (priest, magician) Merlinus (whatever, dude). Herein is imprisoned (confined, enclosed, banished) the son of the Great Bear (it says Arturus), Medraut (that’s Mordred), Kin-slayer, Parricide, and Most Accursed. Turn your back, and flee.” Which, of course, is insane. Mordred wasn’t the one that was shut up in the oak, or the cave, or whatever—that was MERLIN, duh—and anyway, it’s all myth. Some farmer probably carved this into the oak figuring to make money off that old man, just like we thought.

  Spirit stared at the words, because they were suddenly making horrible sense. QUERCUS and Elizabeth said the Shadow Knights were leaderless until Mordred was freed. And when had that happened? When the Oak got struck by lightning? No, that couldn’t be it—could it? If it had been recently, when Doctor Ambrosius started Oakhurst, then what had done it? Who had turned Mordred loose? She pondered those words: “Stranger beware, touch not the shunned oak.” Could someone have freed Mordred after the house was built? Maybe when it was lying empty and abandoned?

  Crazy as it sounded, it all seemed to be adding up. Elizabeth’s story was true after all. They really were caught in a war between Mordred and Arthur, and it wouldn’t end until one or the other was truly gone, forever.

  But … she couldn’t take this to the others. Not yet. Not until she had more proof.

  * * *

  Spirit woke up the next day with that odd feeling of determination burning. Maybe it was because she’d been so helpless out there during the attack; maybe it was because Burke had acted like she alone needed protecting when Addie and Loch had been just as helpless.

  Whatever the reason, she waded into her martial arts and shooting classes with dogged persistence. If she didn’t have magic, well … there were always things that didn’t need magic.

  And she decided to befriend Muirin all over again. All this time, she’d thought Muirin was the way she was because she really didn’t need any of them and was only hanging with them because she thought they were entertaining. Now Spirit was beginning to think it was because Muirin didn’t fit anywhere else. And maybe if Spirit started acting like a real friend …

  Well, she’d see.

  So at breakfast, before Muirin could start in on her usual snide stuff, Spirit asked her a question. “Hey Murr-cat. You’ve been here the longest of us, right?”

  Muirin looked up from her fruit-laden oatmeal. “Huh. Yeah, why?”

  “Was there a point when things started getting weird?” she asked.

  “Like, weird like now, weird?” Muirin thought, then shook her head. “It’s always been that way.” She took a furtive look around to make sure there was no one within earshot, and leaned over the table a little to whisper. “The thing is, nobody actually noticed the weird stuff—the Tithing—until you and Loch showed up. We all just bought the story that sometimes kids ran.”

  Spirit nodded, as the other three leaned in to listen. Muirin flushed a little, enjoying the attention. “Can you think of anything else besides that?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “Well, aside from the fact that it was pretty funky to be going to a school for magicians.” She made a face. “You know, I’ve been to a lot of boarding schools, and I’ll tell you the truth, Oakhurst isn’t the only one that’s this competitive. So that didn’t seem all that strange to me.”

  She looked at Loch, who nodded agreement. Addie just shrugged. “I only went to the one, and it had very strict rules about fair play, ethics, all that sort of thing.”

  “So—” Spirit frowned. “You’re saying the weird stuff was happening, but you only noticed it because Loch and I did?”

  “Sometimes it takes an outsider’s eye, Spirit,” Burke finally said. “We were all … used to it, I guess.…” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  “Nuh-uh!” Muirin shook her head emphatically. “Addie and I were kind of used to the competition. And it just seemed logical to me, and probably to Addie, that some kids would pull a runner from this stalag. But Burke, face it, you’re, like, the most conformist guy I ever met, and you’d believe anything a teacher told you. It’d never occur to you that a teacher would lie.”

  Burke flushed, but didn’t deny it.

  Muirin screwed up her mouth in concentration. “So okay … you know what? I think the reason all this is happening now is that Spirit and Loch said, like, whoa, what’s going on, and we noticed, and we all started poking around, and maybe that was like hitting the beehive. Which I don’t think is a bad thing because … well I’m beginning to think that once whoever it is figured out that Step would be really happy if I disappeared and wouldn’t go looking too hard for me, I’d have been on the Tithing list.”

  Spirit nodded soberly. After a moment, so did Addie, Loch, and Burke.

  After breakfast, Spirit followed Muirin out. “Hey, got a sec before class?” she asked before Muirin could get out of earshot.

  Muirin stopped and looked at her curiously. “A couple, why?”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. So whatever magic I have might as well not be there. But there has got to be something a non-magic person can do when there’s Combat magic flying around. I mean, not every magician even has anything that’s good in combat. So I need to know how that stuff works, and if you, you know, know anything I could actually do the next time. ’Cause I am not going to stand around like a moron a second time.”

  “You’re asking me?” Muirin replied, looking stunned.

  “Why not? You’re a really good magician, and you’re smart, and I bet you’ve already thought of some of this.” Spirit waited for her answer.

  It came as a slow smile. “You’re right. I have. And I’ll help you out. We’ll hook up after lunch.”

  Am I getting through to Muirin at last? I sure hope so.…

  * * *

  Things had been quiet for three days.

  There was actually a funeral—well, a memorial service—for the three kids who’d been killed. No one in Radial knew about that—or about the deaths of Oakhurst kids in the first place. Spirit had used her QUERCUS connection to get the online version of the Radial newspaper, and found out that the one townie that had been killed had been officially reported as a “snowmobile accident while joyriding.” The article basically said the townies had been trying to jump the gully. Well, now Spirit had a pretty good idea of what Ms. Singleton’d been doing to the townies before the emergency crews took them back to Radial.

  Muirin was as good as her word. She was teaching Spirit all about Combat magic. And it turned out there were things that could interfere with it.

  “A bullet through the head is pretty effective,” Muirin had said dryly. “’Cause, you know, it’s hard to control your powers when your brain’s been blown out.” But then she’d gone on to school Spirit in other options.

  Muirin wasn’t the only one Spirit had gone to about this. It had occurred to Spirit that this would be a good way to test Ms. Groves, one of the magic teachers. If what she said matched what Muirin said, then that was a good test at leas
t of whether or not Ms. Groves was giving people misinformation. Plus she might get some angles from Groves that Muirin hadn’t thought of.

  Even though Ms. Groves was … scary.

  Ms. Groves looked at her with an expression that made Spirit think she was about to get reamed out. “And why would you want to know something like that?”

  “Because I don’t want to be known as First Casualty,” Spirit replied.

  Ms. Groves had smiled. Actually smiled. It was, as expected, a scary smile.

  “Very good, Miss White,” the teacher replied, and rubbed her hands a little. “It pleases me to see you applying yourself at last. When you next get on your computer, you will find you have been given access to a number of new files. Study them. There will be a test in the morning.”

  Spirit thanked her, but sighed inwardly. Of course. There’s always a test in the morning.

  FIFTEEN

  The Oakhurst Alumns had descended in force now, and were doing their level best to make things look scarier and at the same time more secure. They were sending one big message, that was for sure. “It’s all right that people have died, we’re here to protect you now, so you can go back to your dances and your classes.”

  Except, of course, that half the classes had been canceled in favor of things that were all defense oriented … so the message for Spirit was decidedly mixed. Maybe the others weren’t that bright … or maybe they were just so desperate to have things back to normal they’d grasp at anything to hang on to that illusion.

  Most of the new arrivals were Breakthrough employees; the few who weren’t seemed to be friends of the Breakthrough employees. All of them had the little Oakhurst pin or tie tack or cuff links with the black serpent on it. Now that had a perfectly reasonable explanation, of course; the Gatekeepers would naturally have kept in touch with each other to a greater extent than ordinary Oakhurst grads. Mark Rider probably kept tabs on all of them and had them all in his address book. When Doctor Ambrosius called him for help, all he had to do was have his secretary work his phone tree.

  Still, you’d think there’d be at least one or two without the black snake … and one or two who didn’t make her skin crawl. But they all seemed to be out of the same mold—oh, not in the way that they looked, because they ranged from geeky nerds with thick black-rimmed glasses and rumpled clothing, through people who looked like career soldiers, to people like Mark Rider and Madison Lane-Rider—but in the intensity of how they looked at you. As if they were sizing you up, all the time.

  And most of them were actually living here. The building crew already had dorm-trailers and they brought in more for most of the Alumns. The rest were in guest rooms in the same wing that housed the Infirmary and Doc Mac’s office. Mr. and Mrs. Rider were the only ones who weren’t physically at Oakhurst. From what Spirit heard through Muirin, there wasn’t a motel in Radial that suited their lifestyle so they were living out of two enormous and blindingly luxurious bus-sized RVs, one serving as their office complex (complete with high-speed wireless), the other (which had a hot tub!) as their “apartment.” The four geeks had taken over all of the old storage rooms in the gym and had filled them full of computers—and other things that looked sort of computer-ish, but which no one was allowed to look at too closely. The six army guys were out doing things on the grounds. They assured everyone that whatever they were doing would absolutely ignore anyone who belonged here at Oakhurst. And even though most of them carried at least sidearms, it was magic stuff they were doing out there.

  With all of these people here, Spirit expected something big and magical, but in fact … the siege began quietly.

  All the Gatekeepers-slash-Breakthrough employees began mingling with the students in the lounges after supper—or popping up and offering to help with something, generally in classes or training. Okay, Spirit thought, that kind of makes sense. We’re all living together here, so they’re just being friendly. Right? But she kept a very sharp eye on them anyway, and she started to notice how they’d ooze up to kids who were sticking loosely together. Then a couple of them would get one of the lot aside for something. A couple of rounds of that, and the kids who’d been as much friends as you could be here started keeping their distance from the others, and if anything, spending time with the Breakthrough people. (Which was kind of more eww because even the youngest of the Breakthrough people was over drinking age.)

  Spirit waited, and sure enough, one night a couple of them moved in on Burke.

  Except when they were getting together specifically for games or when Spirit was going out of her way to hook up with Muirin under the twin guises of “teach me about fashion” and “teach me about Combat magic,” Murr-cat was mostly still hanging out with Madison Lane-Rider. Burke, however, was sticking with the group while still radiating body language that said “I’m not sure I’m completely comfortable here.” Maybe that was why they zeroed in on him.

  It was a couple of the military types, which really should not have been a surprise. Burke looked kind of like them, with his athletic build, his short hair, and his quiet and polite manner. She caught them talking to him casually between classes, murmuring earnestly. Then that night, they intercepted him at the door of the lounge, and pulled him off to the side.

  She knew Burke pretty well by now, and it seemed to her that he didn’t like what he was hearing but was too cautious to show it. Much. As an experiment, she got up and headed in the direction of the kitchen for a juice. One of the geek-girls just happened to turn up at the open fridge just as she was reaching in.

  “Hi, you’re Spirit, right? I’m Mandy.” The girl pushed her glasses up on her nose and got the same sort of ginseng tea that Spirit had chosen. “This place make you as crazy as it did me when I was going here?”

  Spirit might not have noticed before she’d gotten her series of fashion info-dumps from Muirin, but now … she tried not to frown as she cataloged Mandy’s outfit and realized that it could not have possibly been more precisely put together to appeal to the “old” Spirit. No-name, unpretentious sneakers, no-name jeans, a muted t-shirt with a worn Lord of the Rings eagle graphic in earth tones layered over a comfy sweater … Mandy was dressed exactly the way Spirit used to.

  “Mostly I’m scared,” Spirit said hesitantly. “I mean, they keep telling me I have magic, but so far it’s not showing, and…” She shrugged. “I don’t know how to fight. That attack when we were out riding…” She teared up, and didn’t try to stop it. “People died. I was just lucky it wasn’t me.”

  “Don’t worry about fighting. That’s what the meat-shields are for,” Mandy said with a little snort. “As for the magic, late-bloomers tend to get the more interesting Schools anyway. Early gets flashy; late gets the good stuff. Your peeps giving you a hard time for not having anything yet?”

  “Yeah,” Spirit lied, to see what Mandy would say.

  “Figures. Trust Fund set. Used to getting everything handed to ’em; you can bet they’re thinking once they’re graduated, you’ll make a great maid. They have to put up with you ’cause Oakhurst is all about making us equal, and probably you’ve got something they can use, but boy, does that ever change once you’re out.” Mandy leaned against the door frame and drank her tea. “Not like Mark. He made his own way and his own money. He’s one of us.”

  I’ll just bet, Spirit thought.

  “Have you thought about what you are going to do when you graduate?” Mandy continued.

  “Don’t you mean, ‘if I get out of this alive’?” Spirit countered, allowing herself to sound bitter. “’Cause that isn’t looking good from where I sit.”

  Mandy waved her hand carelessly. “Stick with my bunch when the fireworks start, they don’t dare let us die, we’re too important. No, seriously, you need to start thinking about things like that. You don’t want to end up in fast food. Breakthrough’s got scholarships for Oakhurst grads who don’t have Trusts to fall back on. Who else do you think would be willing to hire a Bachelor of Arts in—oh—Lang
uages, Mythology, and Literature? At Breakthrough, we don’t call that degree ‘useless,’ we call that a researcher. Archaeology, oh man, you bet, there is an outstanding scholarship for anyone willing to go all the way to a Ph.D. in Archaeology. But, of course, anyone who got these scholarships would have to be a magician, and there aren’t a lot of those around.”

  “Huh,” Spirit said. “I didn’t know…”

  “Go ahead and use those so-called friends of yours, because God knows they’ll use you. But when Breakthrough comes through before graduation recruiting, sign up for the college sponsorship program. Hell, if your foreign languages are good enough, they’ll send you overseas to college. Always wanted to go overseas? Want to attend Oxford? Glasgow University? The Sorbonne? University of Vienna? Study in Rome?” Her eyes glittered behind her glasses. “They’ve sent people all over.”

  It made Spirit a little sick and a lot angry to realize how much Breakthrough knew about her. They’d obviously picked out the right person with the right offer to tempt her. Before she’d come here she’d never been outside of Indiana—she would have killed for a full scholarship to study abroad. And when she’d first gotten here, it would have worked, too. But the more Mandy bad-mouthed her friends, the angrier Spirit got.

  But she was smart enough not to show it. Instead, she nodded, and continued to look scared and timid, and finally Mandy seemed to think she’d done her job and let her go. Spirit wasn’t sure whether to head back to where she’d left the others, and hesitated just inside the door, trying to see if anyone was still there. It was pretty obvious from the body language in the room that the Gatekeepers were having the effect they wanted. Those who were still sitting together were doing so warily, and the lounge was emptying.

  She was about to go further into the room when Loch passed her, hands shoved in his pockets. “Train station. Now,” he muttered under his breath as he passed, paying no outward attention to her. She waited just long enough for him to get well into the boys’ dorm, then headed quickly for her own room to snatch up her coat and slip out the door. There was plenty of time before lights out, and even now, no one restricted movement on campus. Officially, anyway.