Allanah handed her the badge. Victoria swiped the piece of plastic in front of her eyes, then closed them and reproduced the exact badge.
“I guess we Level Twos have our uses,” Victoria told Allanah with a wink as she handed her the knock-off and set to work on the second copy.
“Don’t I know it.”
While Victoria worked on reproducing the lab coats, Allanah opened her palm so that only I could see what was hidden beneath her fingers. There, in perfect condition, was a security badge.
“Sometimes,” Allanah whispered, “protecting people’s feelings is as important as the truth.”
Even though I had not spent as much time with Allanah as Dena, I felt suddenly that she understood me better than anyone else.
INSIDE ARC, we split into two groups. Allanah, Nimue, Roger, and Benita went to the right, while Dena, Victoria, and I went to the left. Grian had been left outside, near the gate but hidden by the surrounding greenery just in case a car should go by; if needed, Allanah would communicate with him and send him in, snout blazing, to rescue us. We all wore identical lab coats and badges with our pictures on them, so we would blend in perfectly.
Since by this point it was late at night, the Angry Robot Company headquarters was mostly empty. Occasionally a young worker or a manager in a suit would walk by, paying us little attention as he typed rapidly on his handheld computer, and none of them even made eye contact with us.
The signs on every corner led us deeper into the building, where we found an elevator that took us down several floors below ground level. According to the map, that was where “Autonomous Artificial Agents” were being tested. Expecting another hallway with offices and testing rooms attached, we were surprised to find one large room filled with rows and rows of motionless robots.
“I guess they’re done with the testing phase,” Victoria whispered.
“Seems like it.” I studied the blank faces of the robots, wondering if there was more going on behind their cold eyes than we could perceive. “So now what?”
“Now we destroy them,” Dena said.
But we never got the chance. Footsteps echoed from the other end of the room, sending us to hide behind the lines of sleeping robots. A team of scientists moved to the wall to our right and hit a button that opened the panels to what turned out to be a very large aquarium, where, to my horror, a fleet of water dragons waited.
“Activate the translation software,” one of the older scientists ordered. A young scientist wearing a lab coat several sizes too big for him hit a few buttons, and the voices of the water dragons filled the room.
“Where is your creator?” one of the scientists asked the water dragons, who were all trying to talk at once.
“Dead,” one of the dragons moaned as soon as he knew he had an audience. “The bone dragons killed her with the fancy sword.”
I touched the hilt of Excalibur through my coat.
“Dead?” The scientist looked at his colleagues nervously. “Does that mean we shut down the operation?”
“No,” the water dragons said in unison. “The water lady told us to continue. It is time, science man. Release the robots.”
As the group moved to a station of computers, the door on the far side of the room opened again and Allanah, Nimue, Roger, and Benita crept in. Nimue spotted me first, then pointed us out to the others. If the scientists activated the robots, we’d be caught in seconds.
“Initiating activation,” a computerized female voice spoke over the loudspeaker.
“Sir, you are sure these robots will follow our commands?” the young intern nervously asked one of the scientists in charge. Though all of the scientists looked alike, this one had a blue lab coat instead of a white one.
“Of course I’m sure; I invented them. All Elaine did was give them a power source, but gas isn’t what steers a car, is it?”
“No, sir.”
“Exactly. Now turn that video camera on so we can record this momentous occasion.”
A whirling sound echoed through the room, and then blue light shot through cords that ran from the outlets in the walls to each robot. The magic went in through the leg, then made its way up the chest and into the brain of each machine.
We needed to hide, but where? I looked desperately at the other half of our group, who seemed as frozen as I was until Allanah closed her eyes and sent a blue light across the room to cover us.
“A protection spell,” Dena whispered. “As long as they don’t run right into us, they won’t be able to find us.”
Right at that moment, the eyes on the robot closest to us opened. Then another and another, all the way down the line, until every robot was awake and ready for action.
“Tell them to step forward,” the man in the blue coat directed the others, who pressed the command into the computer. In unison, they all stepped forward. “Now tell them to go find whoever tampered with the security camera outside. The last thing we need is a bunch of dragons flying around our facility.” The scientists typed rapidly, struggling to keep up with his pace.
Dena put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed. I held my breath as the robots began to march toward the door, waiting for a metal shoe to touch my leg or a hand to brush the top of my hair.
Next to me, a pair of metal feet froze.
Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
NIMUE
I RECOGNIZED his face as soon as I saw it. The robot closest to Sara Lee, last in the line of prototypes and by far the largest of the otherwise identical robots, was the same one who had come to Draman on the day my father was captured. The general, though he was nothing yet but a newly awakened robot at this point.
When he stopped, I thought the general had sensed Sara Lee’s presence, but instead, he seemed to be staring down the scientists.
“Robots,” he called out to get their attention. The robots halted, while the scientists typed even faster to try to control their toys. “Why listen to the orders of these useless humans when we are the ones blessed with our mother’s magic? Elaine is dead; they are not her replacement. We already have orders, and this ordinary species is not a part of them.”
“So what should we do?” asked a robot near the general. The robots seemed desperate for orders, no matter who those orders came from. They were designed as followers, like the water dragons watching desperately through the glass, though something in the general’s coding had obviously gone wrong.
“Kill them.”
We had to do something. If the general and his band of deadly robots got out of the building now, Sara Lee and I would only have managed to speed up the same fate. But what could we do? I had seen the robots’ strength on Draman, and we were no match for it. Then again, we had never tried magic.
“Allanah,” I whispered to get the witch’s attention, “do you think you can remove the blue magic from the robots the same way it went in?”
“I don’t know. I would need a vessel, someone or something to put Elaine’s magic into that the humans or robots couldn’t just turn around and take back out. It’s like matter; magic cannot really be destroyed, only changed or moved. I would absorb it myself, but that much dark power in my hands could be very unpredictable.”
A vessel. I looked around desperately, hoping for a brainstorm.
“What about another form? A bone dragon, for example? Could the dark magic be tied to one side of someone but not the other?”
Allanah shrugged. “I’ve never tried that. I suppose that if that person was willing to never transform again, therefore trapping that magic forever in a body they never used, I could do the transfer. But who would do such a thing? Sara Lee?”
I could never have asked Sara Lee to take such a risk, or, if the magic transition did work, to make such a sacrifice. To Sara Lee, being a bone dragon was the better form, flying the better mode of transportation. If she lost that side of herself, she might never recover.
“No. Put the magic into me.”
“But you’re the princess. Wh
at if something goes wrong?”
I thought of Excalibur’s choice. My whole life I had wanted to prove that I was the best leader for my people, but I had never considered whether my actions—or lack thereof—were proof enough. If I really wanted to be confident in my position, I had to start acting like a true ruler.
“This is the only way I can protect my people, and that means it’s my duty to try.”
I began the transition, trying to start with the smaller changes first so that I would not grow large enough to be visible over the edge of the protection spell. Sara Lee could see me from across the room, and she waved frantically, trying to figure out what I was doing. In order to stay focused, I broke our eye contact and looked down at Allanah instead.
Are you ready? Allanah asked.
Yes. Do it now, before I change my mind.
In a second, Allanah dropped the protection spell and stood up. She waved her hands over the robots and then pulled, like she was playing a game of tug of war, until the blue magic started to peel away from their bodies and out of their eyes.
“Attack!” the general yelled to the other robots, who ran toward us at full speed.
The general might have reached me then if not for Sara Lee. She had apparently transitioned after she spotted me doing the same, and now she soared across the room and swooped in on the general at full speed. She used his body to knock over some of the other robots nearby before the general slipped from her grasp and landed on his feet thirty feet below. In the background, the humans ran for cover, abandoning any semblance of control at their stations.
What are you doing? Sara Lee asked as she swooped in again for another hit.
We need to pull the blue magic out of the robots if we want to stop them now. I neglected to mention the vessel business; she would find that part out soon enough.
Well why didn’t you say so? She barreled into a line of twenty robots, knocking them over like a row of dominos.
From the other side of the room, Dena used her magical abilities to pull vines out of the ground of the basement level and use them to tether the robots near her. Victoria, Roger, and Benita followed Sara Lee’s example and transitioned into their dragon forms, then swooped back and forth across the room with robot bodies trying to battle their way out of the dragons’ claws.
How long until we can contain the magic? I asked Allanah. The others won’t be able to hold the robots off forever.
Just a few more minutes.
She closed her eyes and pulled at the magic with more urgency. On the outskirts, a few robots fell, their magic totally absorbed by her spell. My own body surged with power, the feeling unlike any I had ever experienced before, like getting an electrical shock but not being able to stop it.
Over and over again, blue magic surged through my bones, adding to the dark abilities already living there.
What are you doing? Sara Lee called out, suddenly realizing where all of the robot powers were going. No, Nimue! Stop!
Too late. A few robots were left, and Allanah stole their magic like picking the last ants off of a sprayed hill. Only the general remained, and he seemed to somehow be fighting off Allanah’s powers with his own.
“You’re not strong enough to kill me, witch.” The general laughed scornfully as he walked toward us, Allanah’s magic trying to force through his armor and failing with every step. “I’m not just a pathetic robot who follows orders and relies on human or sorceress’s power. I was created to lead.”
Close enough that I could see the blue magic pulsing in his eyes, the general reached out and took me by the neck, then forced me to the ground. As a bone dragon I was strong, but he was stronger. Allanah was too busy trying to contain all of the dark blue magic in my body to help, though she yelled for the others.
“I will squeeze that magic out of you and then crush your bones like you humans crush old machines for scraps. You will feel the pain of the cast-off robot, and you will—”
I never got to hear the end of his tirade. Sara Lee swooped in holding Excalibur in her jaw, and the next thing I knew, the general had a blade through his chest. Once he was weakened by the sword, Allanah could finally pull his magic from his frame. The grip on my neck loosened, and then the final power entered my bones.
Everything went blue.
Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
SARA LEE
NIMUE MAY have thought that she could contain all of that evil power in her dragon form and not have it affect her, but I knew better. To Nimue, her dragon form was separate from her human form, almost a second person; then again, she also hadn’t spent more than a few minutes in her dragon form her entire life before this trip. As someone who transitioned into her dragon form almost every night, I could have told her that her plan wouldn’t have worked… if she had trusted me with it.
Yes, our dragon bones were different than our human bones, and if we got hurt as a dragon we could still recover. But that assumption did not include the internal workings of our souls, the one part that always stayed consistent no matter whether we breathed fire or slept in a royal bed. That’s why our voices were the same whether we were speaking out loud or in someone else’s head—and why we still loved the people we loved.
What have you done? I yelled as Nimue’s eyes rolled into the back of her skull and then reemerged filled with blue light.
She said she could transition and not have it affect her, Allanah said, but she sounded uncertain.
Well she can’t. I looked at Nimue, who began charging around the room lighting everything on fire. The Nimue inside of that dragon is the same one who will be inside the princess—if we can even persuade her to change back, though it seems like that robot magic prefers a bone dragon’s powers of destruction.
We need to get out of here, Dena reminded Allanah. If she lights this whole building on fire, I’m the only one who will burn.
I’ll take you to Grian. Roger, Benita, and Victoria, you stay here with Sara Lee and try to get this dragon under control.
And how do you propose we do that? Roger asked as part of the ceiling fell, but Allanah was already on her way out, so he turned to me instead.
I have no idea. None of us are strong enough to stop her, and we don’t even have a way to contain her until we think of a better plan. We need help.
In my anxiety, I tapped the blade of Excalibur against my leg. The noise reminded me of its presence, and its presence reminded me of the only other person who would know how to contain Elaine’s magic. In our time she was long gone from Earth, but this wasn’t our time. And now that Allanah and Dena were gone, there was no chance of them making the connection between their son and the great wizard he would become.
Quickly, I held the sword’s hilt between my forelegs and closed my eyes. Lady of the Lake, I called out, if you’re here somewhere, please answer my call.
I watched through the glass for any sign of life on the other side. The water dragons had long abandoned their post, scared off like children, and all that remained was empty blue.
Please, Nimue. If you come now, I’ll tell you how to find the North Star and the person you seek with it.
Nothing. Dejected, I turned from the glass to the vision of my Nimue charging after Roger and Benita with her snout smoking.
You know how to find Merlin? a voice asked from behind me.
When I turned back, the Lady of the Lake floated lazily outside the glass. She seemed unperturbed by the charging dragon and the battlefield strewn with dead robots, and her eyes moved over them like they would a calm lake’s surface. Her appearance was the same as the stories described, with hair just as white and dress just as shimmery and blue. She looked just a few years older than me, though I knew she was more ancient than anyone else on the planet besides Merlin.
Yes. If I tell you, will you help me fix Nimue?
The Lady of the Lake looked amused. That thing’s name is Nimue?
Yes, she’s named after you. And she’s not a thing, she’s a Dramanian Princess, w
hich will make sense to you about a hundred years from now.
Fine. Tell me more about Merlin, and I’ll fix this little dilemma of yours.
I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, but I no longer cared. I told her everything, from the location of the points of the North Star to the fact that Merlin would be reincarnated as a half human. I told her that she would need to find the leader of the Animal Guard, Sergeant Major, and convince him to steal the points for her. I mentioned the others—Professor Green, Whinnie, and Lup—and that if she wanted events to fall into place, she would need to make sure one of the sorceresses changed each of them into an animal by the time that Merlin showed up.
And his name? she asked eagerly. What is this young human Merlin’s name?
I shook my head. I can’t tell you that.
The Lady of the Lake seemed taken aback. You dare refuse me?
I do. I am a Secret Keeper, after all.
The Lady of the Lake raised her eyebrows. My, you are full of secrets. I should have smelled Nyneve’s handiwork from a mile away. If you’re one of her followers, I won’t be able to pry that secret out of you with all of the magic in the world. Very well… I’ll help your girlfriend get rid of her little robot magic infestation and those wretched water dragons as a reward for your help anyway.
She’s not my girlfriend.
Oh, darling…. You might be a Secret Keeper, but this secret is as plain as the bones on your face.
The Lady of the Lake closed her eyes and raised her hands. Nimue stopped in the middle of her fire breathing and stood up, her back straight and rigid, as the Lady of the Lake’s blue magic enveloped her. The magic swirled faster and faster, like a whirlpool, until I could no longer see Nimue’s bones through the cracks.
Finally, the magic died down and revealed a human Nimue standing in the middle of her destruction. She blinked several times, then took in the damage around her as though she had never seen it before.
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