Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  The sun had set and stars pricked the cloudless sky. The temperature had dropped substantially, and she’d left her jacket on the box on which she’d been sitting. She wrapped her arms round herself. Dr. Beaudry noticed and turned to the guard. “Donnez-lui votre manteau,” he said, and the guard nodded and took off his uniform jacket, handing it to Ariane. Gratefully she draped it over her shoulders. “My apologies for any discomfort you have suffered, Arial,” said Dr. Beaudry. He gave the guard a hard look. “The equipment shed is the only building in which you could be locked. I have told my men they should have put you in the trailer instead and simply waited outside the door for my return. It is not like you are a prisoner of war!”

  “Um...it’s all right,” Ariane said. “I was just a little scared, wondering how much trouble I was in.”

  “That is what we must determine,” said Dr. Beaudry. He studied her, though he couldn’t have seen her very well in the dim light. “So, Arial Muirhead. What are you doing here? You seem very young to be travelling Europe on your own. Where are your parents?”

  “I don’t have any,” she said. Which was true enough. “And I’m not as young as I look. I’m...eighteen.” The farmer and his wife had believed that lie...hadn’t they?...but Dr. Beaudry’s left eyebrow raised skeptically, and she rushed on. “I’m doing that backpacking-across-Europe thing.”

  “A girl of your age?” Dr. Beaudry’s left eyebrow descended and knitted with his right into a deep frown. “Très dangereux!”

  “I can take care of myself,” Ariane said.

  “Vraiment?” Dr. Beaudry looked toward the trail that led down to the tent and the cavern entrance. “And why, exactly, did you try to enter the cavern?”

  Ariane shrugged. “I saw you come out. I thought it might be interesting.”

  “Interesting enough to risk being captured by the guards?”

  “There weren’t any guards when I entered,” she said truthfully.

  “Ah. Oui. Very odd, that.” Dr. Beaudry glanced at the guard. “There seems to have been an unusual... surge...from the river. We are very fortunate it did not flood the cavern.”

  “What’s so special about the cavern?” Ariane said.

  “You do not know?” Dr. Beaudry’s eyes narrowed. “You really only entered it for a...what’s the English expression...a lark?”

  “I was bored. I thought it might be fun.”

  Dr. Beaudry spread his hands. “That cavern contains some of the most amazing cave paintings ever found anywhere in the world...amazing not only for their size and complexity, but because of their age: the oldest are at least 35,000 years old. Maybe more.”

  Ariane blinked. Rex Major and the Lady of the Lake had been around a thousand years ago, and that seemed unimaginably ancient. But 35,000...! “How did they survive so long?”

  “Pure chance,” said Dr. Beaudry. “At some time the cliff face collapsed and sealed off what was once the main entrance. Much, much later, another earthquake opened a new way in, the way you entered. The interior has been untouched for millennia, except for small animals and birds, whose bones litter the floor. Also, the cavern is very dry...unusually so.”

  Even though part of her was screaming at her to get away, find Wally, and grab the shard, Ariane was genuinely interested in the cave paintings...but the comment about the lack of water in the cavern captured her attention in an entirely different way. “But I thought caverns almost always have water in them. Aren’t they formed by water?”

  “Oui,” said Dr. Beaudry. “And so was this one. But the water has receded. There is very little in the cavern now.”

  “No pools? No underground rivers?” Uh-oh....

  “In the main cavern, there is a very shallow pool,” Dr. Beaudry said, “which appears to have once been much larger. The water drips into it from the ceiling, very slowly. Much, much deeper in the cavern, we have found a more sizable pool, which may be fed by an underground river.”

  “Is it big enough to swim in?”

  Dr. Beaudry frowned. “What an odd question,” he said. “And I think I have answered enough of them. I must decide what to do with you.”

  “Please let me go,” Ariane pleaded. “I’m sorry I sneaked into the cavern. I didn’t know it was so special.”

  “You knew it was guarded and you were told by the guards not to enter it,” Dr. Beaudry said. “There are heavy fines for trespassing in a nationally protected site of antiquities. I should turn you over to the gendarmerie.”

  Ariane started to beg him not to do that, but then realized that the gendarmerie would at least have running water in their bathroom. “If you must.”

  Dr. Beaudry smiled. “But I will not. I do not believe you understood the gravity of your offense. Having been locked up all afternoon, however, perhaps you do now.”

  “I do,” Ariane said.

  “Then you are free to go,” said Dr. Beaudry. He looked up at the darkening sky. “I will drive you to the village.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Ariane said. “Merci beaucoup.”

  “It is not far,” said Dr. Beaudry. He held out his hand. “I think Philippe would very much like his coat back before we go.”

  Ariane slipped it off her shoulders and handed it to the guard. “Merci, Philippe,” she said.

  “De rien,” Phillipe replied. He held out her own dusty jacket and her backpack, which he had retrieved from the storage shed. “Bonne soirée,” he added, and headed back down the path, presumably to spend the night in the tent.

  Dr. Beaudry led Ariane to his vehicle, a brand-new Renault SUV. He opened the passenger door for her, waited while she climbed in, then closed the door, went around the front and got in behind the wheel. She relaxed into the black leather seat and suddenly found her eyelids heavy. What time was it back in Saskatchewan?

  “There is a small hotel in Cellier de l’Abbaye,” said Dr. Beaudry. “Have you any money?”

  “Yes,” Ariane said.

  “Then I will take you there.” He gave her a smile. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes!” She hadn’t realized it until he asked, but she was ravenous.

  “I did not eat my lunch today. You may have it. In the glove compartment.”

  Ariane popped open the glove compartment and took out a plastic container. She peeled it open to find bread, meat, cheese and fat green olives, and tore into everything with far-from-ladylike zeal. Dr. Beaudry eyed her out of the corner of his eye. “You are sure you have money for the hotel?”

  “Yes,” Ariane said, between mouthfuls. “Honestly.”

  “Hmm.” Dr. Beaudry didn’t sound convinced.

  The unpaved road, little more than a rutted track, twisted back and forth around limestone outcroppings and through stretches of forest. But after fifteen minutes it joined a paved road that a few minutes later brought them to a village, all narrow winding streets and gangly stone buildings. Dr. Beaudry stopped in front of a rather grand structure whose facade was unmistakably that of a church, with Gothic arches and a stone cross above the main entrance. “Auberge de l’Abbaye,” Ariane read on the low, stone-framed sign in front. “Abbey Inn?”

  “The Abbey that gave the village its name,” Dr. Beaudry said. “Now a hotel. Rather expensive, I’m afraid, but the Ardèche region is a major tourist destination. Fortunately, it is past high season and there will be vacancies.”

  Ariane nodded. She opened the door and got out of the SUV, reaching back inside for her backpack. “I’m sorry for trying to sneak into your cavern,” she said. “Thank you for not reporting me to the police.”

  “You are welcome, Arial.” A smile flickered across Dr. Beaudry’s face, then vanished. “But if I see you there a second time, I will not be so lenient!”

  “I understand,” Ariane said. She closed the door and watched as he drove away.

  A doorman emerged into the courtyard through the tall iron-bound doors. “Mademoiselle?” he said. “Puis-je vous aider?” When Ariane hesitated, he switched to English. “You ar
e checking in?”

  “I...” Ariane thought how wonderful it would be to sleep in a nice comfortable hotel room, to get up in the morning and enjoy a leisurely breakfast, to maybe take a walk around the village...she was in France, after all!

  But she stiffened her resolve and her spine, and instead said to the doorman, “No, I’m afraid not. But...if I may use your washroom?” He looked confused. “La...toilette?”

  His face cleared. “Mais oui,” he said. “Suivez-moi.”

  He led her into the lobby.

  Unlike its facade, the lobby of the Auberge de l’Abbaye retained nothing of its ecclesiastical heritage, unless the ancient abbot or abbess had taken a highly unconventional approach to the vow of poverty. In light of all the marble, crystal and polished brass on display, Ariane suspected her small store of euros would barely have bought her a single night. It was all so grand she was almost surprised to be allowed to use the lobby washroom, but there was, after all no one else around and the doorman seemed a decent-enough fellow. Or maybe he was just bored.

  Well, Ariane thought, his evening is about to become a lot less boring...because the girl he’s showing into the bathroom isn’t coming out again.

  Dr. Beaudry had said there was a large pool deep inside the cavern. She thought it must be the body of water she’d previously sensed, the one she’d been afraid to materialize in for fear it was completely enclosed in rock. Since he knew of it, it must both be open to the air and offer access to the rest of the cavern. That would be her route in.

  Inside the bathroom, she first rummaged in her backpack for the flashlight she’d packed. It wasn’t very big, maybe twice the size of a lipstick case, but its LED lamp put out plenty of illumination. She didn’t plan to be underground very long: she’d materialize in the pool, and that close to the shard, she should be able to find it without any trouble. She’d grab it, get back in the water, transport herself to Lyon and find Wally at the hotel. Then – once she’d apologized profusely and explained why she’d gone after the shard without him – they could plan their return to Canada. Wally might have to wait to catch a flight, but Ariane could head home at once, whisking the second shard of Excalibur safely out of Major’s reach.

  If he’d even dare to come after it. She shivered a little, wondering what it would be like to have two of the shards of Excalibur strapped to her skin, filling her with their power, their anger, their fierce desire to strike down all enemies.

  She’d find out soon enough.

  She pulled her backpack back on, then, holding her flashlight in her left hand, turned on the cold-water tap in the marble sink basin with her right, stuck her fingers into the water and whisked away.

  By now, the sensation had become as familiar as breathing, the immense strangeness of it almost forgotten. She was used to rushing through pipes to sewage treatment plants...at least her watery self had no sense of smell!...and quickly found her way to the outflow of the one that served the village. It dumped clean effluent into the river, well downstream of where she needed to be, but that was no obstacle. Close to the cavern, she followed rivulets through the rocks, racing in seconds through crevices the water took days or weeks to seep through. Slithering through stone, twisting, turning, she sought an approach to the pool she felt nearby.

  And suddenly she found it. No underground river fed the pool after all; it was just a deep depression into which water seeped from one place and seeped out through another. Beginning to feel her strength starting to wane as she squeezed through the rocks, she gladly let herself materialize. The pool wasn’t much deeper than a bathtub, but that was deep enough. She lifted herself dripping out of the water and shone her flashlight around the chamber.

  Her breath caught. Salmon-coloured stalactites, glittering with crystals, hung in curtains ten metres above her head like a frozen aurora borealis. Around the edges of the S-shaped pool, shining stalagmites thrust upward. She stood in water the colour of milk, rafts of multifaceted crystals floating here and there on its surface. She wished she could illuminate the whole chamber at once, instead of being limited to pointing her bluish circle of light here and there, but even the little bit she could see was beautiful and eerie at the same time.

  But she wasn’t there as a tourist. She pulled the circle of light away from the stalactites and flashed it around the edge of the pool. Finding a spot where the rock sloped gently into the milky water, she waded out and wished herself dry. Then she began looking for an exit from the chamber. Dr. Beaudry had seen this pool, so there must be....

  ...there. A dark opening, a tunnel leading up.

  A narrow tunnel. She hesitated. She’d have to crawl, and she was uneasily aware of the mass of rock over her head, rock she had been flitting through as water just minutes before. But if Dr. Beaudry had come down this tunnel, he must have gone back up it, and that meant she could too.

  But he had had a helmet lamp. She only had a handheld flashlight. She considered the problem for a moment, then slipped off her backpack and tied the flashlight by its wrist strap to one corner of the backpack, so that it peeked over her shoulder. It flopped a bit as she moved, but it left her hands free.

  All set at last, and wondering uneasily just how long her flashlight batteries would last, she got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel...and toward the song of the second shard now flooding her mind.

  At first the going was easy enough. The water-smoothed stone didn’t even hurt her hands and knees...much. But as she continued to climb, the tunnel narrowed. Before long she had to lower herself onto her belly, pulling herself along like a snake. The stone roughened, scraping her elbows and arms.

  Worse was to come. The tunnel narrowed still more. To keep going, she had to wriggle out of her backpack, pushing herself backward down the tunnel until it came off her outstretched arms. Breathing hard from exertion and rising panic, desperate to get out of the tunnel, she pushed the backpack ahead of her and kept wriggling uphill...but now her tiny light, still fixed to a top corner of her pack, was completely hidden from her, so that she slithered through utter darkness, a black so complete that it seemed to have physical mass, pressing down on her with all the weight of the hundreds of feet of solid rock above her head.

  Her breath came in tortured gasps, and in her chest, pressed tight against the rock, every heartbeat felt like a blow. Could Dr. Beaudry really have come this way? she thought. And then, a horrifying idea. What if there was another tunnel? I didn’t really explore the chamber....

  An even more horrifying thought followed hard on the heels of the first. What if I get stuck? Nobody knows I’m here!

  Panting, she stopped. Should she wriggle back down again, return to the pool?

  But she’d come so far...and this tunnel was still taking her toward the second shard – she could hear it so clearly now, could feel the first shard yearning to join it, as strongly as when she had entered the cavern earlier. She pushed ahead again, and almost at once the tunnel expanded. Emboldened, she redoubled her efforts. She sensed a wider space ahead, and gave her backpack a mighty shove into it....

  ...only to see the backpack vanish into emptiness, the circle of illumination from the flashlight drawing a brief, final blue streak across a line of stalactites before disappearing.

  And then, with a loud crack, the ledge onto which she had unknowingly climbed gave way and she fell, screaming, into the same darkness that had swallowed her pack.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BE MY GUEST

  Wally expected Rex Major to drive straight to wherever the shard was, but instead, as they climbed into a taxi, Major asked him what hotel he and Ariane had booked. “Why?” Wally said. “We won’t –”

  “You might still need it,” Major said reasonably. “And if you don’t check in, you’ll not only lose the room, you’ll lose your deposit.”

  It made perfect sense, but it was all so mundane Wally felt bemused. This man is Merlin, he reminded himself. Old, ancient, wise, powerful in magic...and he’s w
orried about our hotel deposit? Oddly, the sense of being looked after for a change made Wally feel better about accompanying him. Monsters don’t worry about other people’s budgets!

  He told Major the name of the hotel, and Major, in impeccable French, instructed the cab driver to take them there.

  Aunt Phyllis hadn’t splurged on the hotel, and the building, when they drove up to it, made Wally think she’d paid too much even so. A tattered canopy hung from walls of rough, soot-blackened stone over the sidewalk. “Cœur de Lyon” read tiny grey letters on a canopy of equally dingy blue.

  “Heart of Lyon,” the name meant, and certainly they were somewhere in the old city, though hardly at its centre. But also, Heart of Lion...Lionheart. Like Richard. Another King of England, but his time came long after Arthur’s, Wally thought. And long after Merlin/Major, who told the taxi driver to wait, then got out, held the door for Wally and led the way to the hotel entrance.

  Together they went through the rotating glass door into the small, dark lobby, all red-leather chairs and walnut-panelled walls. It didn’t look like much, but rich smells of spices and roasting meat filled it, making Wally’s mouth water. Wally glanced through a door to their right as they approached the desk and saw a half-dozen patrons enjoying dinner in a rather gloomy restaurant panelled in the same dark wood. His stomach growled, and then, desperately tired, he yawned. And his head was hurting again. How long before he could eat...and sleep?

  “There’s another thing you obviously didn’t consider,” Major said as they approached the front desk.

  Wally shot him a suspicious look. “What?”

  “To check into a hotel in France, you must be eighteen years old.” And then he switched to French and took care of everything with the desk clerk, checking Wally in, signing the register, then handing Wally two keys for room 404. But they didn’t go up to the room: instead, Major led him back to the waiting cab.

  Wally yawned again, jaw cracking, as he relaxed in the car seat. Major gave him a sympathetic smile. “Jet lag,” he said. “One more reason to hate flying.”