Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  Except for that damn sleep-stealing demon, she thought. She sighed, a sigh that turned into a yawn, then unlocked the front door, walked into the small enclosed porch, turned and locked the door again, unlocked the inner door, went through, turned and locked that door, and finally faced the dim entrance hall of Aunt Phyllis’s house.

  “You’re late, dear,” her aunt called from the living room. “I was beginning to worry.”

  Ariane walked through the French doors and found her aunt reading the newspaper in her favourite seat, an ancient, overstuffed armchair upholstered in giant pink roses. “Sorry,” Ariane said. “I went down to 7-Eleven to get some pop. We ran out last night.” She held up the plastic bag.

  “You should have phoned,” Aunt Phyllis said, peering over the tops of her reading glasses.

  “Sorry,” Ariane repeated.

  Aunt Phyllis nodded, closed the newspaper, and put it aside. She removed her glasses. “How was school today?”

  “Not great,” Ariane said. She plopped down in one of the smaller armchairs on either side of the fireplace. “I fell asleep in English class.”

  Aunt Phyllis looked concerned. “Still not sleeping well at night?”

  “No,” Ariane said. Ariane hadn’t told her aunt about the demon, instead claiming she kept having “bad dreams” about Rex Major. After all, Aunt Phyllis could do nothing about the haunting and would just worry more than she already did.

  “It’s been two weeks,” her aunt said in a reassuring tone. “Major would have come after you if he was going to.”

  Ariane said nothing. Merlin had waited millennia to claim Excalibur as his own. What were two weeks? He’s biding his time, she thought.

  “Any...hint...about the next shard?” Aunt Phyllis asked.

  “It’s out there,” Ariane said. “But I can’t tell where. Not yet.” She slumped and closed her eyes. She was so tired, so drained. She’d started hearing the song of the second shard the night she’d returned home with the first one...but then the demon had appeared, and she hadn’t heard it since. And in her current exhausted condition she didn’t think she could summon enough power to travel through water even if she did know where to find the second shard.

  If I went down the drain I might get as far as the sewage treatment plant, she thought. But that’s about it.

  But the shard was out there. She thought – hoped – that Major didn’t know where it was either. As she understood it, he’d expected to find the second shard using the power of the first. Since Ariane had claimed the first, he would have to wait and hope that the second revealed itself the same way that one had...not that she and Wally had any idea how it had happened.

  “Did you see Wally today?” Aunt Phyllis asked.

  Ariane nodded. “Just in passing.” Ariane had promised to meet him at lunch, but had fallen asleep at the library again. Guilt mingled with her exhaustion. Wally was her ally, her partner in this quest...and yet, lately, she hardly saw him. “He said he was starting swimming lessons tonight at the Y.”

  Aunt Phyllis laughed. “Guess he wants to be prepared next time.”

  Ariane’s smile faded. If there is a next time, she thought. She yawned hugely once more. Merlin doesn’t have to attack. He can just sit back and let sleep deprivation do me in.

  Aunt Phyllis stood. “I think you should take a nap,” she said decisively. “I’ll call you for supper in an hour. Then straight to bed again after that. I’ll put away the pop.”

  Ariane nodded obediently, hauled herself to her feet and climbed the stairs to her room. She collapsed on her bed. Her eyes closed. In seconds she was asleep.

  The demon was waiting.

  The landscape in which she met it could be anything. The twisted black wood of her afternoon nightmare was one she had seen before. Sometimes they met in a desert. Sometimes they met in downtown Regina, ruined and deserted as though ravaged by war. And sometimes they met in swirling fog, like now. And those times, the demon talked.

  As usual, she sensed it rather than saw it. She had never seen it, except for a glimpse of red eyes in a swirling fog. That didn’t lessen her dread.

  You cannot ressst, the sibilant voice said softly, seeming to come from behind her as always. No matter how fast she turned, she could never see it, never get more than a glimpse of burning red eyes out of the corner of her eye. Dread choked her. She wanted to run, but if she did, the demon would just chase her, as it had that afternoon and on many occasions before.

  It had never caught her. When she was awake, she didn’t think it could catch her. But in these dreams, more often than not, her fear overwhelmed her waking reason.

  She forced herself to stay put, but she couldn’t stop turning in place, knowing she could never see the demon, but unable to stop trying. The fog swirled around her, thick, choking fog, tinged yellow and smelling of sulphur.

  You cannot sssleep, the demon hissed at her. Where are your powersss now, young Lady? I have ssstolen them from you...without sssleep, you are nothing. My massster knowsss thisss. My massster laughssssss....The hiss moved closer. She felt a hot breath on her neck, as if a furnace door had opened behind her. Her heart jumped and in a moment she would have run, would have dashed blindly through the fog...

  Instead she jerked herself awake, gasping, pulse pounding.

  She glanced at her bedside clock. She’d slept less than ten minutes.

  Fatigue pressed down on her, filling her head with fog as choking and deadening as the one in which the demon spoke to her, weighing down her heart with despair. She closed her eyes again, but she didn’t sleep.

  Instead, she wept.

  ~~~

  Rex Major, eyes closed, let the glorious “Flower Duet” from the first act of Lakmé wash over him. He sat alone in his box in Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Opera had not existed in the era of Camelot. He had originally purchased his season tickets to present the image of a community-minded businessman, but to his astonishment, he had discovered he loved opera.

  Musicals, on the other hand, he couldn’t stand. Although he liked Spamalot better than Camelot. He chuckled at the thought.

  His cell phone buzzed. Major debated ignoring it, but knew he couldn’t. Before the opera had started, he’d configured his phone so only high-priority messages were allowed through. He sighed, opened his eyes, and pulled the phone from its holster.

  He glanced at the screen. She sleeps not, it read.

  He smiled and put the phone away. Text messages from a demon, he thought. What a wonderful age this is.

  The demon couldn’t physically harm Ariane. But by disrupting her sleep, it was disrupting her power, keeping her reserves of energy so low that she wouldn’t be able to sense the location of the second shard of Excalibur. He smiled more widely. And keeping her reserves so low she doesn’t realize she has the power to push the demon away. The real Lady, his beloved sister, tucked away on the other side of the barely open door to Faerie, had failed to tell her heir and protégé many, many things that might have helped in her struggle against Merlin.

  The “Flower Duet” ended, but Major hardly noticed. Few things could distract him from opera, but thoughts of Excalibur were among them. Thinking about the girl in Regina who held the sword’s first shard – temporarily – also brought to mind the boy, Wally Knight. A youth, a stripling, barely more than a child...and yet he had resisted Major’s Voice of Command, the Voice that no adult had ever withstood before: no adult save one.

  Arthur.

  The King had never been Merlin’s to Command. Had he been, he would have been a far lesser King than he became. Arthur had been an extraordinary leader because he had aided Merlin of his own free will.

  Wally Knight had the beginnings, at least, of the same power. True, he had succumbed to the Voice of Command at first, but almost at once he’d begun to push back. The second time Merlin had used it, it hadn’t worked at all. The Lady didn’t have the power to counteract his magic so directly, so she couldn’t have
given Wally that ability.

  Wally must have inherited it.

  Major believed in coincidences. But not where magic was concerned. Magic seeped through everything it touched, like water carving a cave out of limestone, smoothing and shaping the rock. Arthur had been born with the ability to resist Command, just as Merlin had been born with his abilities, and the Lady with hers. Where magic had come from originally was a matter for theologians. Major wondered about it but didn’t really care: Magic was a fact, it operated according to its own natural laws, and those who best understood those laws...like him...could make the most effective use of it.

  Wally, Merlin thought. Walter Arthur Knight the Third.

  If Merlin was right, then even the boy’s name was not a coincidence. Ariane was the heir of the Lady of the Lake. And Wally, Major had slowly come to believe, could be none other than the heir of Arthur himself.

  Arthur had had several sons; the most notorious of them had been Mordred. When he had come to court he had been presented as Arthur’s nephew, but in reality Arthur had fathered the boy with his half-sister, Morgause, before either of them knew they were related. Mordred eventually led a rebellion against his father. In the final battle, at Camlann, Arthur slew his own son...but only after Mordred had mortally wounded him.

  All of Arthur’s legitimate sons had died childless. But Mordred had had sons of his own, who had continued rebelling against Arthur’s successor. Ironic though it was, Arthur’s bloodline had continued only through the son who had slain him.

  Arthur had had other magical gifts besides the ability to withstand Command. Men had begged to follow him, begged to join hopeless battles against overwhelming odds...and then won those battles, because of their love for their King. And with Excalibur in his hand...Major shook his head, remembering Arthur striding across long-ago battlefields, Excalibur flashing in the sun, blood running like water from its silvery blade, the sword singing a terrible, magical song that only he, Merlin, could hear. Warriors fell like wheat before a farmer’s scythe when Arthur took the field. Yet neither Excalibur nor his physical prowess had saved him when he faced Mordred, whose skill had been nearly equal to his own; and that, too, told Major something: Mordred had inherited some of his father’s gifts.

  Which meant Wally, if he were Arthur’s descendant, might have those gifts as well, though masked by his youth.

  The first act of Lakmé ended. The audience moved to the exits for intermission, but Rex Major stayed put. When I have Excalibur, he thought, I will need someone to wield it, someone to lead the army I will raise, someone to command and rally my troops as we march through the door into Faerie and I take back my world from the tyrants who oppress it.

  Could Wally be that someone? After proper grooming, proper instruction, could he lead Merlin’s army of liberation to victory?

  He’s loyal to his friend now, Major thought, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stay that way. He doesn’t know what he is, or could be. When he does, why would he be content to serve the Lady of the Lake, to help her erase magic from this world, to go back to being an ordinary boy, sentenced to become an ordinary man?

  Even in Camelot, magic had never been the only tool Merlin used to bend people to his will. Threats would work with some; he didn’t think they would work with Arthur’s heir. But good old-fashioned bribery, the lure of greatness, of glory...that, Major thought, had possibilities.

  And there was something else. He smiled as he thought of it. The young Arthur had been orphaned at fifteen by the death of his father, Uther Pendragon. Aware of that, Merlin had deliberately set out to become a father figure to the youthful King. He had wielded far more influence through that personal connection than he ever would have as a mere wizard, no matter how powerful.

  Wally Knight’s father still lived, but he had all but abandoned the boy, as had his mother. Wally’s sister Felicia, not unlike Arthur’s other half-sister Morgana, was more foe than family. Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it, Major thought. He smiled to himself. But those who do remember history can cause it to repeat, if it suits them. And I think it will suit me very well.

  The audience was filing back in. He decided to put thoughts of Excalibur out of his head for the rest of the evening. But just as the lights dimmed, his cell phone buzzed again. He glanced at it. What he saw brought him surging to his feet. The door of the box closing behind him cut off the opening notes of the second act. Two minutes later, texting his chauffeur as he walked, he was striding through the glass-walled members’ lounge to the cloakroom.

  Rex Major had just discovered the location of the second shard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BLINDSIDED

  Wally rose slowly to consciousness, as if he were surfacing from the bottom of a muddy lake. He first became aware of sounds: voices he could make no sense of, the hum of air conditioning, footsteps. Then a smell: harsh, antiseptic. He realized he was lying in a bed, but not his own – this one felt harder. He was wearing pajamas, and he didn’t wear pajamas. The crook of his right elbow hurt, as if something sharp had jabbed it. His head throbbed. He raised a shaking hand and felt rough gauze wrapped around his head like a turban.

  What the...?

  He opened his eyes. It took a great deal more effort than it should have, and his lids scraped like sandpaper over his dry eyeballs. He blinked up at speckled acoustic tiles. A metal track curved through them, supporting a blue curtain bunched up at his right.

  And then, finally, he understood: he was in a hospital.

  But why? What had happened?

  He remembered hiding from Flish in his smelly locker. He remembered deciding to go out through the gym instead of the front doors of the school. He remembered saying hello to Coach Mueller, and then....

  ...then nothing. It was all a blank.

  But it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together when you were lying in a hospital bed with a headache and a turban.

  “I fell,” he said out loud. The words sounded hoarse in his ears. “I fell and hit my head.”

  “But shouldn’t be any the worse for it,” said a voice to his right, startling him. He looked that way, wincing at the stiffness in his neck, and saw a woman in a nurse’s uniform standing between him and a second bed. The old man who lay there mumbled something and rolled onto his side. The nurse glanced at him, then back at Wally. “A few stitches, a rather nasty concussion. But no skull fracture, and the CT scan is clear. You should make a complete recovery.”

  He looked down at his sore elbow. A needle was stuck into his skin, taped in place and attached to a tube that ran through a grey box on a metal pole, and then up to a bag of clear fluid. He turned his head. On his left arm was a blood pressure cuff. It started to tighten, and just when he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, loosened again. Two green numbers on a second grey box shifted, then steadied: 122 over 74. “BP is good,” announced the nurse. “You’re doing fine.”

  “How...” Wally’s throat closed on the words and he coughed. The nurse picked up a glass of water from the side table and held its curved straw to his lips. He sipped gratefully, then said, “How long have I been here?”

  “Ambulance brought you in last night. A teacher was with you...Natasha Mueller?”

  Wally nodded.

  “She stayed until you were admitted and brought up here. Dr. Kipkoskei wants you to stay forty-eight hours for observation, so you’ll be our guest for another night at least.”

  “I really don’t feel like going anywhere,” Wally said. The throbbing in his head wasn’t severe, but it was constant.

  “Head hurt?” the nurse asked.

  He nodded.

  “I can bring you some painkillers. According to your school records, you aren’t allergic to any medications. Is that right?”

  “As far as I know,” Wally said.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  Wally nodded again. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “I can help you with
that too,” said the nurse. “But we’ll take it easy. Hold on one second.” She reached across him and undid the cuff of the blood-pressure monitor. “You’ll have to walk with the IV pole. Now, try sitting up.”

  Wally pushed himself up with his elbows. A wave of dizziness swept over him, but after a moment it passed. “All right,” he said cautiously.

  “Swing your feet over the side.”

  Wally did so. The nurse opened the drawer of the side table and took out a pair of shapeless hospital slippers, like little cloth bags with elastic around the top, and slipped them on his feet. She stood next to the bed, offering her arm.

  “Now try standing. I’ve got you.”

  Wally slid off the bed until his feet touched the floor, took her arm, and slowly stood up. Another wave of dizziness hit him, and he gripped her arm tighter, but the spell only lasted an instant. He took a deep breath. “I’m good,” he said.

  “Excellent!” The nurse smiled. “Then let’s get you to the bathroom.”

  He held onto her as they inched across the room, past the old man in the other bed. “What about my parents?” Wally asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.” The nurse sounded disapproving. “As I said, a Ms. Mueller brought you in, but I wasn’t on duty then. I’ve only spoken to a Mrs. Carson. Our records indicate your parents have given her authority to approve medical treatment for you.”

  Wally nodded, and rather wished he hadn’t. “She looks after us...me...when my parents are away.” He glanced past the nurse into the hallway. “Is she here now?”

  “I haven’t seen her since my shift started,” said the nurse, sounding more disapproving than ever.

  “What about my sister?”

  “I’m sorry, Wally,” the nurse said. “I’m afraid no one has come by.” She smiled again. “But it’s only a little after noon. Your friends won’t be out of school for hours yet. I’m sure you’ll have visitors this evening.” They’d reached the bathroom door. “Now, are you okay to use the toilet by yourself?”