Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  “Then we might as well hang out here.”

  Wally nodded. “Why didn’t we think of this in the first place?” he said, feeling put-out at his own dim-wittedness. “The bus tickets were a mistake. What if we’re making other mistakes, missing things we should have thought of?”

  “It still isn’t exactly second nature, this whole magic-travelling thing,” Ariane said. “It’s only been a month since this all started. It’s hard to believe.”

  “A lot has happened since then,” Wally agreed. Not all of it good, he added silently, thinking of Flish.

  They made their way upstairs to the couch in the living room. Wally turned on the TV. The sports channel was showing curling, and he hated curling, but it seemed to be too much trouble to change it. And soon it didn’t matter, because ten minutes after they sat down he glanced at Ariane and saw she was fast asleep.

  Five minutes after that, so was he.

  Wally woke first, blinking at the silent TV, now showing someone ski jumping in the Alps. Ariane had slumped against him and was still fast asleep, her breathing slow and steady. He looked down at the top of her head and felt a pang of tenderness like the one that had seized him in the cab coming from the hospital. They’d been through a lot together in the past month. His life had changed in so many ways since the day he’d seen her in the school office, right after her first fight with Flish’s coven. He’d encountered the Lady of the Lake, been given a quest, helped recover the first shard of Excalibur....

  ...found out his parents were splitting up, watched his sister move out....

  ...seen his sister in the hospital, put there by Ariane.

  She didn’t mean to do it, he told himself again, still looking down at Ariane’s head, breathing in the clean, sweet smell of her hair.

  But that, he thought, was just another way of saying she couldn’t really control the power she’d been given. So what would happen when she had two shards of the sword? How would that change her? How long would it be before she wasn’t recognizable as Ariane at all, but became entirely the Lady of the Lake?

  And what would that mean, to her...and to them?

  Again Wally was struck by how little they really knew about the Lady – what she wanted, and why she wanted it. Rex Major...Merlin...wanted to rule the world, at least in some sense, but claimed that might actually be a good thing, since it would enable him to use magic to help solve the world’s problems and to free his own world from what he saw as tyranny. The Lady, on the other hand, wanted to cut Earth off from magic altogether.

  What could Ariane do with her power if she were free to use it for something other than searching for the shards of Excalibur? Could she make it rain in places suffering from drought, fill irrigation ditches in parched fields, reroute rivers? And if she could do all that, what could Merlin do if he had his full strength? Maybe he really could end war and poverty and famine.

  Ariane sighed and snuggled close, like a kitten seeking warmth. Wally rested his cheek against the crown of her head, and his doubts eased again. This was Ariane he was talking about. The best friend he’d ever had. She gave the first shard to Rex Major to save me, he reminded himself.

  But that was before she had ever used the shard’s power. If Major had told him the truth, the more she used it, the more it would change her, and next time, she might choose the shard over him.

  No! he protested, his cheek still warm against her hair. Nothing could change her that much.

  But he’d thought that about a girl before. He’d thought nothing could ever change his sister into anything other than the loving older sibling he’d grown up with. And look how wrong he’d been about that.

  He sighed. Sometimes he hated his own brain.

  He looked at the TV stand again, and at the digital TV box that topped the stack of electronics. Glowing green numbers proclaimed the time. He straightened abruptly and shook Ariane. She mumbled something, then her head lifted and she looked around, yawning. “What?”

  “We need to get to the airport or I’ll have a job getting my ticket and getting through security in time to catch my flight,” Wally said. He left the couch and headed for the wireless handset on a table at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll call a taxi.”

  “I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” Ariane said. “You’re flying to France on your own, and I’m...” her voice trailed off.

  “We went to Yellowknife on our own,” Wally pointed out, punching numbers. “That trip started with us swirling down the drain. This is just a plane ride.”

  “For you,” Ariane said.

  Wally didn’t reply right away. The taxi company had answered. He gave instructions and disconnected. Then he looked at Ariane. “You can do it. You have to.” That didn’t sound as encouraging as he wanted, so he added, “I have faith in you.”

  She gave him a quick smile. “Thank you.”

  He smiled back, feeling warm.

  A car horn honked. He looked at the door in surprise. “That was quick. He must have been just around the corner.” He picked up his backpack and Ariane grabbed hers as well. “Here we go.” He went to the front door and held it open. “After you.” Ariane gave him a little bow, and swept by. Wally turned and locked the door, pocketed the key, then followed her down the walk.

  Just before he got in the taxi, though, he glanced back at his house, wondering if he’d ever see it again.

  He shook his head. Don’t go getting morbid, Wally.You and Ariane beat Rex Major once. You can do it again. The Lady of the Lake and her Faithful Sidekick. No evil sorcerer stands a chance.

  Grinning, he climbed into the taxi. “Airport,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BON VOYAGE

  In the taxi on the way to the airport, Ariane listened to Wally describe the itinerary that had been outlined for him by the Air Canada representative over the phone the night before. It seemed straightforward, if exhausting. He’d first fly to Calgary, a short hop of about an hour, then transfer to another flight, which would take him over the pole to Frankfurt. From Frankfurt he would fly to Lyon, France, arriving some thirty hours after he’d left Regina. The plan was for Ariane to meet him at the airport.

  Assuming I haven’t dissolved into cold mist above the Atlantic, she thought, and swallowed.

  They’d chosen Lyon, rather than Paris, because Ariane’s best guess for the shard’s location was the south of France. Based on her experience with the first shard, she expected to be able to home in on the second shard much more easily once she was closer to it. In fact, she hoped that as soon as Wally had gone through customs, they could simply duck into a bathroom, zoom to the shard, grab it, zip back to Lyon, and hide out in the hotel room Aunt Phyllis had reserved for them until Wally could book a return flight. If they were lucky, and flights permitted, they might not even have to use it.

  When they got to the airport, Wally went straight to the Air Canada desk. He came back after a few minutes with a grin. “Done,” he said. “But I don’t have much time. We’d better hurry.”

  They headed up the escalator to the second-floor security check-in. The line stretched for what looked like a mile. Ariane kept Wally company in the line, and Wally kept checking the clock. “Come on, come on,” he muttered.

  They were only two-thirds of the way to the screening area when they heard, over the public address system, “This is the final boarding call for Air Canada Jazz Flight 8437 to Calgary. All passengers, please make your way to Gate D.”

  “That’s me,” Wally said to Ariane. “It’s going to be close.”

  Ariane craned her head, trying to see past the very large gentleman (in all dimensions), in front of them. “Can’t they move any faster?”

  They finally reached the screening area just as the PA said, “This is Air Canada Jazz paging passenger Walter Knight. Please make your way to Gate D immediately. Your plane is ready to depart.”

  Ariane could go no farther. She ducked out of the line and stood to one side. “Hurry up, hurry u
p, hurry up,” she urged under her breath, watching Wally through the glass wall surrounding the screening area. The large man in front of Wally had been chosen for more detailed inspection. The guard patting him down seemed to take forever, but at last he was done. Wally, who had already emptied his pockets and placed his watch into the grey plastic bins provided, put his backpack on the X-ray conveyor belt. He stepped confidently through the metal detector, grabbed his stuff, gave her a final wave, and then dashed off.

  He was gone.

  She was on her own, and so was Wally. She hurried back toward the escalator. At the top was a coffee shop whose seating area overlooked the runways. She went to the windows and watched the Air Canada Jazz jet with Wally aboard pulling away from the jetway. She watched it taxi out, and a few minutes later heard the thunder of its engines and watched it lift into the sky.

  He’s on his way, she thought. And now it’s my turn. She looked up at the low cloud covering the sky.

  Perfect.

  ~~~

  Rex Major sat in a comfortable chair on the balcony of his condo, high atop one of the towers that many city residents thought were a blight on the shore of Lake Ontario, enjoying the unseasonably warm November weather in the final hour before his driver would arrive to take him to the airport. From all accounts, it was freezing on the prairies. He hoped Ariane and Wally were enjoying it.

  His phone buzzed. Major sighed, set aside the excellent Alsatian Gewürztraminer he’d been sipping, and removed the phone from his pocket.

  He glanced at it. There were a couple of new messages. One was from the private investigator he had hired to keep an eye on Wally and Ariane. The agent had already told him the two were going north for the week, ostensibly so Wally could recover from his head injury. This message simply confirmed he had seen them depart and would be in touch again once he had confirmed their new location.

  But that made the second message really leap out at Major. It was an automated message, generated by the thin skein of magic that overlay every installation of Excalibur software on the planet, magic he had instructed to let him know whenever anything about either Wally or Ariane showed up on a computer system.

  Wally Knight, who his agent had just told him was safely en route to northern Saskatchewan for a week’s vacation at Emma Lake, had just boarded an airplane in Regina bound for Calgary, then Frankfurt....and then Lyon, France. Where he himself would be landing in just a few hours. That had to mean that Ariane knew where the second shard of Excalibur was...or it would have meant that if not for the inexplicable fact that Ariane was not flying with Wally. The boy was on his own.

  Unless....

  Could Ariane have some other method of getting to France? A method that didn’t rely on airplanes? Had she found some way to use the Lady’s power to make the trip, even though he knew for certain she couldn’t move through salt water?

  He supposed it was possible, but it seemed unlikely. Maybe she sent Wally to get the shard himself, Rex Major thought. Maybe she thinks he can slip under my magical radar, since he has no magic of his own.

  That thought was so enticing he hardly dared to credit it. But the fact that it might be true was enough to make him smile as he raised his glass of wine once more. When you’re an unaccompanied minor, he thought, someone really ought to be there to meet you at the airport. He raised his glass and took a full, satisfying mouthful.

  ~~~

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of the airport terminal in Regina, Ariane considered leaping into the clouds right where she stood: but there were too many people around, and she didn’t want anyone to see her suddenly disappear into thin air. Such an inexplicable occurrence would make the news for sure, and then their attempts to keep Merlin in the dark would have been for nothing.

  But she didn’t have to go far to be out of sight. At one end of the terminal building, a brick wall hid a garbage collection area. Ariane walked briskly in that direction, glanced around to make sure no one was paying any attention to her and slipped around the corner of the wall. Positioned safely behind a dumpster, she looked up at the grey sky.

  “Here goes nothing,” she muttered, and as she had done just two days before, she sought the cloud-song.

  It was easier here with no distracting bodies of water nearby. The clouds’ high, wild music sang clearly to her. They wanted her to come back to them, become one with them again. They seemed to reach for her as she reached for them.

  An instant later, they had her.

  Once again she felt her body expand, diffusing through the clouds. Once again she felt that urge to let consciousness slip away entirely, to join the clouds forever: but this time she was expecting it, and held her sense of self tightly together, centered on the hard, bright presence of the shard of Excalibur, the piece of grit around which she could layer the pearl of her mind.

  East, she thought. Farther than before.

  Much farther.

  She raced away from Regina, flowing easily through the overcast sky that stretched clear to Winnipeg. But not far beyond the larger prairie city, as she neared northern Ontario, the clouds thinned and she began to struggle. Her path, at first straight as an arrow’s flight, now wavered, north, south; and then, suddenly, she ran out of clouds altogether.

  It was like racing at full speed to the edge of a cliff, and pulling herself up just in time: almost as though she teetered on the verge of plunging out of the cloud and falling to the huge metropolis below her. She held herself still, feeling breathless even though she wasn’t technically breathing, and looked around her.

  She suddenly realized, much to her surprise, that she recognized the city. To her vastly expanded, immaterial eyes it looked like an amazingly detailed model through which toy trains and cars wound their way, but one of those “model” buildings was in reality the gigantic skyscraper most people called the Sears Tower, although she’d heard somewhere it was called something else now. The city had to be Chicago, and that meant the enormous lake to the east was Lake Michigan, sparkling beneath a clear sky in late-afternoon sunshine. She’d come much farther south than she’d intended or expected.

  But far, far in the east, she could just see a band of clouds. Too far for her to leap to, cloud to cloud....

  ...but then, she didn’t need to, did she? There was a whole lake below her.

  She hadn’t tried this before, either, but she didn’t see why it shouldn’t be possible. She leaped from cloud to water, causing a brief shower on Chicago’s Navy Pier, but instead of materializing fully, she melted into the water and raced across the lake.

  At the far side, she reached back up for the clouds, this time having no difficulty at all distinguishing their soprano song from the lake’s bass rumble, and a moment later was once more aloft, rushing east again through the much thicker clouds she found on the lake’s far shore.

  But she still couldn’t follow a straight path. More and more she found herself travelling north until, as darkness descended, unbroken ice stretched away from her in every direction. Shortly after that, she could see nothing at all, and could only reach for the next cloud, and the next, always searching for those farther east and if possible, south.

  Time seemed to have no meaning as she struggled from cloud to cloud, sidestepping, backtracking. Every leap seemed a little harder, every move a little slower. Even with the power of the shard, she began to wonder if she could truly make it all the way across the ocean. Maybe the shard’s power was limitless, but hers wasn’t. She still had to direct and use its magic, and it was becoming harder and harder to do so. Not only that, as her energy decreased, she also found it more and more difficult to resist the siren call of the clouds. Rest, they seemed to say. Rest. Sleep. Let go of your sense of self....

  If she gave in to that urge, let herself unravel into the clouds, what would happen to the shard? Would it spring back into existence and drop like a stone into the ocean below?

  Except, she suddenly realized, there wasn’t ocean below. She was over land.
>
  More important, she was over fresh water. She couldn’t see it, had no idea what it was, but that didn’t matter: with the last of her failing strength she plunged into it, aiming for a spot close to the shore, deep enough for her to materialize in, but not so deep her heavy backpack would immediately pull her under.

  Cold water suddenly announced itself against her skin, her magic now so weak it couldn’t ward off the chill. She found soft mud beneath her feet and raised her head out of the water, spluttering.

  Low overcast cloud blotted out the sky. A glow over the black bulk of a hill spoke of a nearby town or city, but there was no other sign of human life. Ariane moved to step out of the pond, but the mud gripped her feet and brought her splashing down face first. Spluttering again, crawling on her hands and knees, she scrambled onto the shore into tall, prickly grass, and lay there on her stomach, head turned to one side, gasping. For the moment, she was too weary to even attempt to order the water off her body.

  And then she heard the nearby sound of heavy breathing.

  Her own breath halted. Holding it, she listened.

  Something moved closer. He must have seen me pop out of the water, Ariane thought. What will he think?

  And if he doesn’t speak English, I can’t even explain myself. I can barely say, “Comment allez-vous?”

  She rose up on her hands, rolled over, and sat up. “Who’s there?” she whispered.

  More heavy breathing. A shuffling in the grass. And then...

  “Moooo!”

  Ariane jumped, and then burst out laughing. The cow mooed again and lurched away from her, clearly worried by the sudden appearance of a crazy person in its pasture. Still chuckling, Ariane summoned just enough power to wish herself dry, and then stood up, swaying a little. Her eyes should have accustomed to the darkness as soon as she materialized, since she had travelled through the night, but she hadn’t really been using her eyes had she? Instead, her pupils seemed to still be set to Saskatchewan daylight aperture, which made her surroundings even darker. But slowly they began to adjust, the glow in the sky enough to reveal the landscape around her. The body of water was small, little more than a pond; she was probably on a farm, since she’d been greeted by a cow. She couldn’t see a house anywhere, but that might be because of the trees that grew thickly along three sides of the pool and climbed the hill behind her toward the city sky-glow.