Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  “Why bother asking?” Wally snapped. “If you know my Dad was just here, you’ve obviously got somebody watching Ariane and me. You already know they haven’t come back.”

  “Of course I’m keeping an eye on you, Wally,” Major said. “I’m concerned about you. You’re an admirable young man, with the best of intentions. But I know my sister. I know how dangerous she is, to those who follow her as much as to those who stand against her.” He paused. “So...your parents haven’t been there. Or even called?”

  Don’t listen to him, Wally warned himself. He’s not worried about you. He almost killed you to get the shard.

  On the other hand, no one else seemed concerned at all.

  “No,” he said at last.

  “I’m sorry, Wally,” Major said. “My own father abandoned my sister and I when we were quite young, and our mother, too, was...elsewhere. Like you, we were mostly raised by a surrogate. It was never easy.”

  Wally said nothing. Yeah, he sounds sincere, he thought. But so what? He’s a good actor.

  “And Ariane? Have you seen her since you were admitted?” Major continued after a moment.

  Wally found it surprisingly hard to speak for a moment. “No,” he finally managed to squeeze out.

  “Perhaps,” Major said softly, “you should give serious thought as to where your loyalties should lie.”

  Wally chewed on his lip. The only sound was the heavy breathing of the old man asleep in the next bed. I should hang up, he thought again. It was obvious that Major was trying to drive a wedge between him and Ariane.

  But he kept the phone to his ear. He’d had some doubts about the Lady shortly after she’d first appeared. Ariane had allayed them. But now those doubts were back, redoubled.

  Ariane, though, was his friend. He wasn’t about to turn on her just because she hadn’t made it to the hospital to see him, hadn’t been able to control the power she hadn’t even asked to be given.

  The best defence is a good offence, Wally thought. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “Ariane has you worried, especially now that she has the first shard. She beat you in Yellowknife. We beat you.”

  “Doesn’t she have you worried?” Merlin countered mildly. “She hasn’t come to see you. She could have killed your sister and her friends. Are you sure you even know her anymore? She can’t handle the shard, Wally. Or the power my sister gave her. It’s changing her. She’s already different from the girl you met, and she’ll keep changing, becoming colder, harder, less human, caring less and less about the things you care about.” His voice grew warm, soft, conspiratorial. “You’re just a tool to her, Wally. A tool she needs now, but one she won’t need forever. As soon as she has another shard, she’ll toss you aside like a broken hammer. And that will be the end of your part in this quest.” His voice dropped further, to almost a whisper. “That’s assuming, of course, she doesn’t get you killed first.”

  Wally squeezed his eyes shut. I shouldn’t keep listening, he thought. I shouldn’t.... But there was something almost ...mesmerizing about Major’s voice.

  Magic, he thought. He used it on me before, in Yellowknife, he made me tell him what we were doing there...but I fought it off then. And it’s not going to work now! His eyes shot open.

  “Why should I listen to you?” Wally snarled. His elderly roommate grunted and rolled over, and he lowered his voice. “You’re way more dangerous than Ariane. And you’re no more of this world than the Lady of the Lake!”

  “On the contrary, I’m very much of this world,” Merlin said. If Wally’s outburst had taken him aback, his voice betrayed no sign. “I’ve been here more than a thousand years, whereas the Lady left long ago. And over the last forty years I’ve built a successful business that gives liberally to charity, employs thousands of people, and makes possible the fast, stable Internet you and millions of others take for granted. I’ve already made this world a better place. Why do you doubt I will continue to do so, with Excalibur in hand? I want to unite this world, stop the wars that flare all over the planet, use my power to ensure that everyone is clothed and fed, clean the world of pollution, restore the natural balance....”

  “...and then use Earth as a jumping-off point from which to invade your own world,” Wally finished. “Don’t try to convince me you’re a saint. I know the truth.”

  “Liberate my own world,” Major corrected. “And then two worlds will be free from tyranny, not just one. Is that not a worthy cause? Especially compared to my sister’s? All she wants is to close the door between Earth and Faerie forever, to shut off this world from all magic, all the healing power that I – or she, if she cared to exercise it – could bring to bear.” For the first time, Major’s calm facade cracked, real anger breaking though, coarsening his voice. “My cause is just, in both worlds, Wally. My sister wants to keep things the way they are. I want to change them, and change them for the better. Which cause is nobler?”

  Wally had no more arguments, and his head was pounding, both from the concussion and from the effort of fighting the seductive attraction of Major’s voice. He pulled the handset away from his ear, glared at it, and then, convulsively, as though killing a poisonous snake, smashed it into its cradle. The old man stirred and muttered before subsiding into sleep again.

  Wally rolled over onto his other side, away from the phone, half-expecting it to ring again. It didn’t, but that didn’t stop him from hearing Major’s words repeating in his head. Which cause is nobler?

  He’s the villain, he told himself. He’s lying.

  Just one problem: he couldn’t point to a single thing Major had told him about the Lady or Ariane that wasn’t true.

  He didn’t trust Major. But at the moment, he didn’t really trust anyone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE RETURN OF THE SONG

  When Ariane finally dragged herself through the doors of the house, Aunt Phyllis was waiting for her. “Are you all right?” her aunt said anxiously. “You’re an hour late...and I heard sirens!”

  Ariane had never felt so utterly drained. With the surge of energy she had drawn from the shard now gone as though it had never been, her exhaustion was so complete she couldn’t bear the thought of trying to explain to Aunt Phyllis what had happened. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Mr. Merle kept me even later than usual...working on polynimin...polymani...polynomials....”

  Aunt Phyllis laughed, but then her face grew concerned. “I think you should go straight to bed, Ariane. If you wake up later, I can heat up dinner...but right now you need sleep more than anything else.”

  Ariane nodded numbly and climbed the stairs to her room, every step an enormous obstacle she could barely surmount. She’d tell Aunt Phyllis the truth in the morning. Ariane didn’t want to keep secrets from her, not anymore, but she just couldn’t handle that conversation tonight.

  She stumbled through getting undressed, hid the shard under her pillow, lay down, pulled the covers over her, and fell instantly asleep.

  For the first time in weeks, her dreams were ordinary, and they vanished from her mind when her alarm clock rang. She stretched, luxuriating in the feeling of being well-rested, her pleasure only slightly offset by the fact she still had to tell Aunt Phyllis what had happened at the tennis courts the night before. But without the fog of fatigue clogging her brain, even that seemed doable.

  She glanced at the dark window. The sun wasn’t even up yet, but somehow the morning already seemed bright. A hot shower and I’ll be able to face anything, she thought as she got out of bed. She stripped off her pajamas, pulled on her bathrobe, and crossed the hall to the bathroom, smiling when she heard Aunt Phyllis singing along to Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” playing on the radio in the kitchen...for once not tuned to the CBC.

  She took off the bathrobe, stepped into the shower, started the water, reached for the shampoo....

  ...and froze.

  As the water touched her, she heard a song within it, a distant, shimmering thread of music, cold as st
eel, hot as flame, inhuman, beautiful...and unmistakable. It was the song of the sword, the second shard of Excalibur, calling to the Lady of the Lake...calling to her again at last.

  She leaned both hands against the tiles, the water sluicing down her body, closed her eyes and concentrated.

  The song came from far away, much farther away than the first shard had seemed when she had heard its music, so faint she couldn’t even tell from which direction it came.

  The first shard, she thought. What if...?

  Ariane jumped out of the shower without turning the water off, ran naked and dripping across the hall to her room, grabbed the shard from under her pillow, and rushed back to the bathroom. Holding the pitted, pointed piece of steel in her left hand, she stepped back under the streaming water.

  It was as though she’d been listening to the song of the sword through ear buds, and had just plugged her music player into an amplifier. The thin thread of music swelled, and suddenly she knew where it was coming from: east. A long, long way east...and no way to get there through fresh water. Which meant another continent, somewhere beyond the Atlantic.

  Europe? Africa? Asia? She couldn’t tell. She opened her eyes and stared down at the dark tip of the ancient sword. The old steel looked out of place in her aunt’s shower, its sharp edges and merciless point contrasting starkly with her pink, bare flesh. How am I supposed to cross the Atlantic Ocean? she thought in despair. I can’t travel through salt water!

  With a sigh, she put the shard in the soap dish and reached for the shampoo again. The hot water would run out in a minute, and she still had to get ready for school. She’d talk to Wally and....

  He’s in the hospital, Ariane remembered with a start.

  For the first time, it occurred to her that by now someone would have told him that Flish was in the hospital too. Once he heard how his sister had been hurt, he’d have to be a complete idiot not to figure out what had really happened – and Wally was definitely not an idiot.

  She remembered how upset he had been whenever she’d threatened Flish. What would he be feeling now that she’d actually hurt her?

  And I didn’t go see him last night, she thought, some of the shine suddenly disappearing from the morning. I didn’t even call.

  She finished shampooing and started soaping, in a race to get clean before the rapidly cooling water raised goose bumps. Just as it turned ice-cold, she reached for the tap to turn it off – then laughed at herself, exerted a little of the Lady’s power so she no longer felt the chill, and gave her hair a second shampooing just because she could. Then she ordered the water off her body (though she kept her hair damp for easier brushing) and, both thoroughly clean and wide awake at last, stepped out onto the bath mat. They’ll probably let him out today, she thought, pulling on her robe. I’ll go by his house after school. I have to tell him about the second shard. He’ll understand about Flish...and why I couldn’t come see him.

  Won’t he?

  But when she finally made her way downstairs, her plans changed. Aunt Phyllis, resplendent in a bright green dress, hair swept up into a formidable grey wave, was just setting out cereal and milk on the kitchen table. She straightened as Ariane entered and faced her, hands on her hips, mouth a thin, straight line.

  Uh oh, Ariane thought. That look could only mean one thing: her aunt had somehow found out about last night.

  The situation seemed to call for a preemptive strike. “I need to tell you something, Aunt Phyllis,” she said. “I didn’t tell you the truth yesterday. I wasn’t late because of polynomials.” Hey, I said it right! “I was attacked.” Ariane told the story as simply and completely as she could, leaving out only her confrontation with the demon, since she’d never told Aunt Phyllis about that problem in the first place. “I didn’t have any choice,” she finished. “It was the only way to save myself and the shard too.”

  Aunt Phyllis listened without speaking. When Ariane was done, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

  “I was so tired, and scared and...I just didn’t want to deal with it. I’m sorry.”

  Aunt Phyllis looked away from the table, at nothing in particular, then looked back again. “Ariane, you have to start trusting me,” she said. “I’m the only adult who knows your secret...well, except for Rex Major,” she flashed a small smile, “and despite what children’s books would have you believe, adults can be a great deal of use in the real world, especially when you’re not even old enough to get a driver’s licence or hold a full-time job.”

  “I know,” Ariane said. “I’m sorry.”

  Aunt Phyllis turned back to the table and continued laying out spoons and bowls. “Those poor girls,” she said. “Ariane, this power of yours...I know you were defending yourself and the shard, but...what if you’d killed one of them?” She stopped, leaning on the table with both hands. “I don’t care about your quest,” she said, her voice sounding old and strained. “I care about you. I don’t want you hurt. And I don’t want you hurting other people.” She suddenly slammed her palms on the table, making Ariane jump. “Damn the Lady of the Lake! Why couldn’t she leave our family alone? First your mother, and now....” She pressed her lips tightly together again.

  Ariane said nothing. She had no answer.

  After a long moment, Aunt Phyllis took a deep breath, straightened and turned toward Ariane. “Promise me,” she said. “Promise me you won’t hurt anyone else!”

  Ariane thought back to how it had felt on the tennis courts, the way the shard had seized on her anger, amplified it. She remembered its rage-filled call: Kill your enemy!

  “Aunt Phyllis, I...” Her throat closed on the words. “I...I promise,” she said at last. “I promise to try.”

  Aunt Phyllis’s mouth quirked. “‘There is no try,’” she said. “‘Do, or do not.’” The tiny smile vanished before Ariane had quite gotten her head around the fact her old-fashioned aunt had just quoted Yoda. “But I suppose that’s the best I can hope for.” She snorted. “And even though I wish you hadn’t hurt them, at least maybe now Felicia and her friends will leave you alone.” She went back to the counter and picked up a bowl of bananas, grapes and apples. “Any...” she hesitated as if searching for the right words, “...um, news on the location of the second shard?” She put the fruit bowl on the table and gestured for Ariane to have a seat.

  “I think so,” said Ariane, pulling out her chair and sitting down. She reached for the cereal. “In the shower, I...heard it. And when I held the first shard, I heard it a lot better. It’s somewhere east. A long way east.”

  “How far?” Aunt Phyllis said, taking her own seat.

  “Europe, at least,” Ariane said. “Maybe even farther.”

  “Oh!” Aunt Phyllis paused in the act of pouring cornflakes into her bowl. “Not a problem for Rex Major. But...airplanes are expensive, Ariane. And hotels, food, transportation.... We don’t have that much money.”

  “I know,” said Ariane. “I’m going to talk to Wally about it today. He might have an idea. They should be letting him out of the hospital –”

  Aunt Phyllis set the milk back down on the table with a thump. “Wally’s in the hospital? Ariane, how many other bombshells are you going to drop on me this morning? What happened?”

  Ariane blinked. She’d completely forgotten she hadn’t told Aunt Phyllis about Wally. She hurriedly explained. “I wanted to go see him last night, but after everything else...and I was so tired...so I thought I’d go to his house after school –”

  Aunt Phyllis smiled a little. “No need to wait that long,” she said. “School’s been cancelled.”

  Ariane blinked. “What? Why? It’s not a holiday –”

  “Water-main break,” Aunt Phyllis said. Her mouth quirked again. “Under the tennis courts, if you can imagine. No water in either Oscana or St. Dunstan’s, therefore no bathrooms. Can’t pen up several hundred teenagers all day without bathrooms.”

  Ariane smiled weakly. “Oops.”

  Aunt Phyllis c
huckled. “I doubt any of your classmates would hold it against you, if they knew. In any event, you can go see Wally this morning. He must be wondering why you haven’t been to visit him.” Her voice softened. “And you can check on Flish while you’re there.”

  Ariane stared at her in shock. “She’s not going to want to see me!”

  “She can’t stop you,” Aunt Phyllis pointed out. “Go see her, Ariane. Someone needs to extend an olive branch. She’s Wally’s sister, after all.”

  “I’d rather chew glass.”

  “Ariane –”

  “All right, all right!” Ariane lifted her hands in surrender. “I’ll talk to her. But if she throws a bedpan at me…especially a full one…I’m out of there.”

  “Good girl.” Aunt Phyllis stood up. “I wish I could come with you, but I’m going to be late for my committee meeting if I don’t get going.”

  “Be careful,” Ariane said. “I bet one of Rex Major’s cronies is keeping an eye on us.”

  Aunt Phyllis gave her an odd look. “‘Be careful’? Isn’t that my line?”

  Ariane paused. She hadn’t told Aunt Phyllis about the demon, so she couldn’t tell her she was worried that Rex Major might try something more...direct...now the demon was gone.

  “It’s just that, after last night, things seem even more dangerous than I thought,” she finally said.

  “Certainly for anyone who tries to attack you,” Aunt Phyllis said, “but I doubt Rex Major is going to have mercenaries storm the basement of First Presbyterian Church to get at me. But all right, yes, I’ll be careful. Now finish your breakfast, then go see Wally and Flish. If they do let Wally out, see if he’ll come to dinner. Then we can talk about this second shard and how you’re going to get to...wherever it is you have to go.”

  She bustled out, leaving Ariane alone with her cornflakes and thoughts.

  Visiting hours at the hospital didn’t begin until ten. It was only a fifteen-minute walk, so she had well over an hour to kill. She spent part of it experimenting with the first shard, trying to pinpoint the location of the second, but it remained maddeningly imprecise: somewhere over the ocean, not due east, but a bit south. She also sensed, without really knowing how – this whole magic thing was still awfully new to her – that although it wasn’t close to the coast, it wasn’t an immense distance inland. She thought that pointed to Europe rather than somewhere even farther east.