Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  Mrs. Carson rolled him into a private room. No snoring old-man roommate for sis, Wally thought, but his momentary bitterness fled when he saw Flish’s face. Shocked, he took in the huge blue-black bruise surrounding her swollen left eye, the gauze pad on her right cheek (stained with a spot of blood, red as a ruby), and more gauze wrapped around her head, where a portion of her scalp showed, shaven and naked-looking. His eyes travelled to the tube in her arm and the cast on her leg, hanging in traction from the ceiling, and his gut heaved. Ariane did this. The thought burned like acid. But then, No! Not Ariane. The Lady of the Lake.

  You were thrilled when the Lady gave Ariane her powers, thrilled that she gave you this quest, he reminded himself. A real-life quest just like in your favourite books. He couldn’t deny he’d been caught up in the wonder of the whole thing. But he’d forgotten one very important fact: even in books, people got hurt.

  To be fair to Ariane, Wally had no doubt that Flish and the rest of the coven would have beaten her up if they’d been able to. Would he really feel any better about things if Ariane were lying in the hospital instead of Flish?

  His head was hurting again. And he didn’t think it was entirely due to the concussion.

  Mrs. Carson turned his chair around and pushed him back into the hallway. “That’s enough,” she said. “They told me not to keep you out here any longer than ten minutes.” She pushed Wally back toward the elevators. “This is such a terrible thing to happen while your parents are away.”

  Away, Wally thought. They’re always away. Dad dropped by two weeks ago, but only long enough to tell us he and Mom were separating. Now he’s in Japan with his new girlfriend, on “business.” Mom hasn’t been home in three months, off working on that movie in Canmore. Neither one had come rushing back when he’d hurt himself. He doubted they’d come rushing back for Flish either. But at least Flish had Mrs. Carson to worry about her. Who worried about him?

  Up until this evening, Wally would have said Ariane. But now, for the first time...he wasn’t so sure.

  ~~~

  Ariane cried for ten minutes, while just out of her sight she heard ambulances and fire trucks rushing to the tennis courts. Several people hurried past the end of the alley, faces lit by flashing red and blue lights, to see what was going on. But Ariane stayed where she was, sitting in numbed silence, arms around her legs, head on her knees. I should go home, she thought, but exhaustion and shock pinned her to the ground. She closed her eyes.

  She dozed.

  The demon was waiting.

  Once more it hid in dark, swirling mist, slithering behind her as fast as she turned, so she never caught more than a peripheral glimpse of glowing red eyes. You sssee? it hissed, its voice reptilian, repellant. The power isss not for you. The power isss too great. It will ssswallow you. There will be nothing of you left. The Lady of the Lake isss using you. She isss not your friend. The voice lowered, as though trying to sound conciliatory. Give up the shard. Give it to Merlin. He will be merciful. He holdsss no ill will toward you. Refussse to do the Lady’sss will, and all will be asss it wasss before....

  It would be so easy, Ariane thought. Let Rex Major have the piece of the sword she already held, let him have the others as he found them, let him re-forge Excalibur...she could go back to being a normal kid, worry about normal-kid things...

  But even as she considered the possibility, she rejected it. A normal kid? Over the past two years she’d lived in a half dozen different foster homes. She’d changed schools three times. Until Wally, she’d had no friends. All because her mother had disappeared, a disappearance somehow linked to Merlin’s quest for the shards of Excalibur. She didn’t know how yet, but she’d find out. With the Lady’s power, bolstered by the power of Excalibur, she could do something about it. Find her mother, if she was still alive. Bring her back. Heal their family....

  Her anger, so close to the surface these days, boiled up. The shard answered it. Even locked in her demon-dream, she felt it flame against her skin. She looked down at herself.

  As always in these dreams, she wore a long gown of flowing white, but this time, she also wore a broad belt of red leather, and hanging from that belt...

  A sword. The sword. Excalibur.

  The ghostly hilt had a large round pommel with a hole in it, as though something were missing...a jewel, perhaps. Golden wire wound around the part where her hand gripped, which felt solid though it looked as transparent as thin smoke, her curled fingers clearly visible through it. Yet it was solid enough to grasp – and solid enough to draw.

  She pulled and the sword slid easily out of its scabbard. Like the hilt, the blade was translucent, as though made of glass or water...all except for the tip, the piece of the sword she had already found, the piece she wore strapped to her body. That was hard, polished steel, sharpened to a razor’s edge. It glinted turquoise, as though lit by sunlight filtering through the waters of a glacier-fed lake.

  Her anger swelled and again the shard responded. The sword tip flared with light so bright the gloomy black fog of the demon-dream paled to a swirling grey. She slashed the ghostly blade back and forth, burning away darkness like morning mist in the heat of the rising sun.

  She laughed. She suddenly felt strong, invincible. Why had she let the thing behind her terrorize her for so long? She raised the sword, holding it close to her body and in front of her face as though offering a salute. “I’m going to turn around,” she said, and the words came naturally to her, the same words she had said to Flish’s gang by Wascana Lake the day they’d tried to humiliate her, the first time she had called on the Lady’s power. “If I were you, I’d run.”

  And then she spun and slashed in one movement.

  For just a moment, she saw the demon, caught a glimpse of grey scaly skin, curling black horns, red eyes, hooves and a barbed tail. The tip of Excalibur scored its bare chest, opening a long slash from which black blood bubbled and oozed. The demon’s fanged mouth gaped in an ear-splitting scream of pure agony, then it turned and ran, hooves thudding away into the misty darkness, drops of black ichor sizzling on the ground in its wake.

  Ariane woke with a gasp. She lifted her head from her knees and stared wildly around, wondering where she was, where the sword had gone.

  And then she felt the shard pressing, solid and warm, against her skin. She took a deep breath, and despite everything else that had happened that night, a deep relief, verging on joy, washed over her.

  She would sleep that night, real sleep. For the first time in two weeks.

  Wally, she thought as she rose to her feet, suddenly anxious to return home, knowing Aunt Phyllis must be worrying. I should go see Wally in the hospital....

  But then she yawned, a huge, jaw-creaking yawn that she couldn’t stop. No. Sleep was what she needed. Wally was safe, and he’d probably be out of the hospital tomorrow anyway. Flish might be there a little longer, she thought, and the guilt of what she had done tempered her relief at chasing away the demon. But after all, they’d attacked her – even though they had twice before seen what she could do. She’d only been defending herself.

  Nobody was killed. Nobody was seriously hurt. A couple of broken bones, maybe. They’ll be fine.

  And so will I, she thought, yawning again. With proper sleep, so will I.

  I’d better be. I have to find the next shard.

  She hoisted her backpack and set off down the alley that led home.

  ~~~

  Later that night, alone in his high-rise Toronto office, Rex Major read a new text message, and swore. Ariane had banished the demon he had sent to haunt her dreams. Somehow she had realized the first shard could be used to drive it away. And the demon’s fear of Excalibur was so great it would not return, even if Major commanded it to.

  Rex Major’s thumbs flew over his phone. He hit SEND. The coded message would return the demon to its own world, but with the reassurance that it had done its part well and could still have the girl as its reward once Excalibur was Merlin’s.
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  That reassurance was important. Despite the power he had once had and hoped to have again, Major always tried to stay on the right side of demons.

  He returned his attention to the e-mail that had sent him rushing from the opera, an automated message sparked by the encounter of the second shard with one of the thin threads of magic his Excalibur server software had woven throughout the Internet.

  He often felt like a spider lurking at the centre of a vast web, waiting for the vibrations caused by insects landing on its strands. Computers were everywhere, and if they were connected to the Internet, they were, in some small way, connected to him. The smartphone Wally Knight had been carrying had alerted him to the presence of the Lady of the Lake in Wascana Lake in Regina. When the diamond miners in the Northwest Territories had dug down to the first shard, it had perhaps been another smartphone that, prompted by the sliver of magic within its software, had sent the automated notice to Major.

  And now, at last, he had received a similar message about the second shard. Nothing but an IP address, but that had been enough for him to determine it had originated somewhere in southern France. Now to home in on it....

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, called up the power that still leaked to him through the almost-sealed doorway dividing Earth and Faerie, and sent his mind flashing through the web he had created, across the Atlantic and deep into Europe. The effort sapped his strength, but he held on, pushing harder. The signal had come from...there...and he could trace it back to...

  His awareness of his office crashed back. He straightened, rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced at the clock on his computer screen. Ten minutes, he thought bitterly. Ten minutes of effort, and I’m exhausted.

  He shook his head. His magic hadn’t lasted long enough for him to pinpoint the shard’s location, but at least he had the name of a nearby city. He would travel there. Closer to the shard, he might be able to sense it more clearly, or at least be ready to move quickly if it once more made its presence known to his ensorcelled software.

  He checked his schedule. Unfortunately, though the search for Excalibur was his priority, he couldn’t just drop everything and fly to France. (Fly. He shuddered. He hated flying.) Almost as important as the sword to his plans were the prestige, influence and high-level contacts Rex Major Industries provided, and there were several important meetings scheduled for the next week with officials from Canada’s Department of Defence, followed by more sit-downs with representatives from the Pentagon. Both militaries were interested in the newest version of his Excalibur software, the most secure yet....

  ...and the most infiltrated with my magic, Major thought.

  When the sword was whole and in his possession, the military servers would be key to forging all the powers of Earth into a weapon he could use against the world he really wanted to control: Faerie.

  The Queen and the rulers of the Clades know how to fight against swords and magic, he thought grimly. But we’ll see how they fare against tanks, jets, machine guns and cruise missiles.

  He shook his head. No, he couldn’t fly to France right away. He had to keep those appointments. But the moment they ended....

  He drafted a brief e-mail to Gwen, his secretary, asking her to schedule one of the corporate jets for his use. But then he hesitated. Important though they were, he was taking a risk by not cancelling those meetings. Now that Ariane had banished the demon, her power would start to return. Which meant she might soon be able to sense the second shard. And if she got to it first....

  He fingered the ruby stud in his right earlobe, as he tended to do when thinking about Excalibur. But I won’t let that happen, he thought. Her every move is watched. If she does anything suspicious, I can change my plans and leave at once.

  No. He’d keep the appointments. And then he’d go to France...and claim the second shard.

  He sent the e-mail to Gwen and was about to leave his desk – he needed to rest his pounding head – when a new message arrived. He barely glanced at it, intending to deal with it in the morning, but when he saw the sender’s name, he sat down again.

  Major didn’t dare use anyone closely connected with his business to keep an eye on Ariane and Wally: not since Keith Pritchard, his former Regina sales manager, had been arrested for breaking into Ariane’s bedroom. So he had hired, through untraceable channels, someone from outside his organization to watch the two teenagers: just watch, for now. Major couldn’t take the shard from Ariane by force and still use its power: she either had to give it to him of her own free will, or he had to retrieve at least three of the remaining four shards, so that he could then call the rest to him. But even if he couldn’t steal the shard, he wanted to know exactly what Ariane and Wally were up to.

  As Merlin read his spy’s account, his eyebrows shot up. Ariane had had a busy night. She’d not only banished his demon from her dreams, she’d used the power of the shard to attack four girls.

  She is becoming more dangerous, he thought. But not just to me. To herself and those around her. I may be able to use that. And then he continued reading, saw who one of the injured girls had been and smiled a cold smile: a smile that widened when he also read that Wally had hit his head and was in the hospital...and that so far, Ariane had not gone to visit him.

  To forge a sword, one must strike while the steel is hot, Major thought. It was a saying he’d coined sixteen hundred years ago, and it was still true today.

  He reached for the telephone.

  ~~~

  The ringing of a phone woke Wally from the doze he’d fallen into after Mrs. Carson had left. Again, it took him a moment to figure out where he was – and another moment to understand that the ringing phone was on the table beside his bed. He started to reach for it with his right hand, was brought up short by the IV line, rolled onto his side, and finally fumbled the ancient pink handset out of its cradle with his left. “Hello?” he rasped.

  He expected to hear Ariane on the other end, or one of his parents. Instead he heard a voice he’d last heard two weeks ago, in an open-pit diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, from a man holding a gun to his head.

  “Hello, Wally,” said Rex Major. “How are you feeling?”

  Wally’s first inclination was to slam the phone back down into its cradle, but something stopped him. Partly, it was simple curiosity. But partly...maybe mostly...it was the little worm of doubt curling in his heart – doubt, now that he had seen how the Lady’s power could affect Ariane, about how much of what the Lady of the Lake had told them about Rex Major had been the truth.

  “I’m...fine,” he said cautiously. “A slight concussion, a few stitches. Why do you care?”

  “Wally,” said Major, in a tone the boy had not heard him use before, the very opposite of the Voice of Command, “I apologize for what happened in Yellowknife. But you must understand how desperate I was...how desperate I am...to retrieve the shards of Excalibur. For more than a thousand years I have dreamed of a world united under one strong, benevolent ruler, someone who can keep order, ensure justice for all, punish wrongdoers. Excalibur has the power to make that happen, in the right hands.”

  “You mean your hands,” said Wally.

  “Yes,” Major said. “I don’t deny it. I tried once before to rule through a surrogate. But Arthur, though a great man, had his weaknesses, and let his kingdom fall when he could have saved it. Or perhaps I could have saved it, had my sister not already conspired with Viviane to have me imprisoned.”

  “I never heard of Merlin having a sister,” Wally said. “But hey, if she tried to stop you, she must have been all right.”

  Major laughed. “Wally, you’re smarter than that. She’s still trying to stop me. But she always did like to use others to do her dirty work. Then, it was Viviane. Now...it’s you.”

  It took a second for what Major was saying to sink in. “The Lady of the Lake is your sister?”

  “Yes. We’re not close,” he added. “Obviously. But we were once.”

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nbsp; “I know how that goes,” Wally said, wondering, even as he replied, what the heck he was doing chit-chatting with Rex Major (aka Merlin aka the ancient sorcerer trying to take over the world) as though they were classmates.

  But he wasn’t about to hang up after that bombshell about the Lady being Merlin’s sister. The Lady had never mentioned that little fact.

  “We were allies,” Major continued. “She believed then, as I still do now, that we must overthrow the tyrants who rule Faerie. But...” he sighed. “She succumbed to the temptations of wealth and power. Rather than fight tyrants, she decided to become one, seizing control of Clade Avalon.”

  “Avalon? Isn’t that an island?”

  “A legendary island,” Major said. “No one knows where it was, because it was never really here. It could appear in any lake, or at sea. In reality it was a doorway to the real Avalon, my realm...until my sister betrayed me.”

  “And I thought I had problems with my sister,” Wally muttered.

  “How is your sister?” Major said. “I know she was seriously injured by your girlfriend this evening

  “Ariane is not my girlfriend,” Wally answered automatically. He was used to the words by now – he had repeated them a lot over the last two weeks, after his classmates noticed how much time he and Ariane spent together.

  “Perhaps that’s a good thing,” Major said softly. “She seems...dangerous.”

  Wally said nothing.

  “But you still haven’t told me,” said Major again after a moment. “How is your sister?”

  “Broken bones. Cuts and bruises. She’ll be in the hospital longer than I will.”

  “And your parents? Your father was home just a short while ago, was he not? Has he or your mother come rushing back to her side...or your side?”