Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  I wonder if Ariane suffered from jet lag, coming across the way she did? Wally thought, and felt a pang of unease. If she made it across at all.

  What would she say if she could see him now, practically best buds with Merlin?

  I’m just trying to find out the truth, for both of our sakes. I haven’t betrayed her.

  Yet, a tiny voice whispered deep inside.

  Their new destination was fit for an emperor: it was even called L’Empire. Artfully lit to show off the intricate architectural detail of each of its five stories, it looked to Wally like something James Bond should be driving up to in his Aston Martin, ready to play high-stakes poker against some evil genius.

  Its interior elegance matched that of its exterior. Marble floor and pillars, glass-topped tables, palm fronds, red-striped chairs that Wally could tell at a glance were intended more for looks than comfort...though tired as he was, he longed to sit down in one and just fall asleep.

  But first they had to deal with the desk clerk. Wally listened as Major requested a second room for his young friend. The clerk protested, saying there were no rooms available. But Major lowered his voice until Wally couldn’t hear him anymore, and a moment later the desk clerk, suddenly all smiles, said, “Bien sûr, Monsieur Major, à votre service.”

  Two minutes later Wally had a room card in his hand and, feeling rather dazed, was in the brass-and-marble elevator with Major. They emerged into a long cream-coloured hallway where every door was trimmed with gold and the white carpet was so thick they seemed to make no impression on it, gliding silently along. Wally felt almost disconnected from his body, as if he were a ghost haunting the old hotel, not a flesh-and-blood boy at all.

  Major showed him to his door. “Sleep well,” he said, and smiled. “As I’m sure you will. I think you are half-asleep already. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned and went back down the hallway toward the elevators.

  I could escape now, Wally thought, looking after Major’s retreating back. Nothing to stop me. Go out, go back to our own hotel, wait for Ariane....

  But the truth was, he didn’t want to. All he wanted was sleep, and that was waiting just beyond that white-and-gold door.

  The room had warm yellow walls, a deep blue carpet, thick, velvet drapes, fresh flowers on an elegant little side table and beautiful paintings on the walls: it was, in short, the most luxurious hotel room Wally had ever been in, even with his well-to-do parents. He desperately wanted to crawl into the bed, with its magnificently carved wooden headboard and snow-white, feather-filled duvet, but there was something else he had to do first.

  He went into the bathroom – which had a marble floor and vanity, naturally – and filled the tub, marvelling even in his exhaustion at the tap, which surely wasn’t real gold...was it? He sat on the closed toilet seat staring blankly at the marble-tiled wall while the water ran, so tired he almost nodded off twice. When he judged there was enough to allow Ariane to materialize in the tub should she somehow figure out where he was and arrive via magic in the middle of the night, he rose wearily to his feet and returned to the bedroom.

  He stripped off his clothes, shoved the ribbon-tied box of chocolates off the pillow, pulled the duvet to his chin, and fell asleep in seconds.

  ~~~

  Rex Major, whose “room” in L’Empire was actually a four-room suite, sipped a very nice Rhône red and looked out from his top-floor window at, appropriately enough, the Rhône River. Car lights streamed across the picturesque Pont Wilson. Not far away, he knew, lay Vieux Lyon, the old city, where tourists flocked to enjoy dining and shopping in the centuries-old buildings lining the winding cobblestoned streets – buildings and streets that had not been built until some half a millennium after Viviane imprisoned him.

  It sometimes astonished even him how long he had been in the world. When he had lived as Merlin in England, Arthur’s people had marvelled over the ancient buildings, roads and walls left behind by the Romans. In his modern guise, he had been to England many times...and seen grand buildings freshly built in his day reduced to nothing more than a few tumbled stones in a green field. Those ruins were further removed in time from the present than the Roman ruins had been from Arthur’s court.

  He snorted. And the oldest ruins on Earth are brand-new compared to the ancient buildings of Faerie, which were built while humans were still squatting naked in caves.

  Should he succeed in freeing Faerie from the stultifying hand of the Queen and the Council of Clades, he might well still live long enough to see this era’s buildings reduced to ruins. But, far more importantly, he might at last see some new buildings erected in Faerie, even grander than those of ancient days. Perhaps Faerie could finally move forward in time as this world did, instead of being trapped in its own past like an insect in amber.

  And the boy, Wally Knight, heir to Arthur’s power – potentially, at least – just might be able to help him accomplish that...if he could sway him to his cause.

  That’s a lot of caveats, he thought dryly. Still, he felt he had made a good beginning. The boy was too smart not to have doubts about the Lady of the Lake and what her power was doing to his friend, especially not after seeing Ariane use that power to attack his sister. More, the boy was desperate for a father figure, his own father having failed him so spectacularly. Merlin had seen how Wally had reacted to the simple gesture of a hand on his shoulder. He would continue to exploit that vulnerability.

  Though completely unaware, the boy carried his own touch of magic in the blood of Arthur coursing through his veins. When grown to manhood, he could, with Major’s help, be one of the greatest leaders the world had ever known. And unless Major missed his guess, like Arthur before him, even at his young age Wally was already looking around at this fragmented, fighting world and wondering if there wasn’t a better way.

  Arthur had fought to unite the myriad, tiny warring kingdoms of post-Roman England into one powerful nation, guided by the revolutionary idea that the strong, who unavoidably ruled the weak, also had a responsibility to both help and protect them. “Might for right,” rather than “might makes right,” in the words of the otherwise execrable musical monstrosity, Camelot.

  It was the only way to create a society not only fair and just, but strong enough to withstand attack, Major firmly believed...which was why he’d planted that notion in young Arthur’s head in the first place.

  Major had no use for the modern love affair with democracy. Let the mob choose their own leaders, and inevitably they would vote for, as the Romans said, “bread and circuses,” handouts and mindless entertainment, until their nations’ treasuries were exhausted. As they pursued ever-more-trivial goals, they would even lose their willingness and ability to work, their passion to create and build. When a civilization weakened, there were always barbarianes waiting at the gates to bring it down, and this age was no different. The only thing that could fend them off was a strong leader, a new king armed with Excalibur. First he could root out those threatening this planet’s civilization with terror and weapons of mass destruction...and then, with his power fully restored and all the newly united Earth’s resources and technological know-how at his disposal, move to free and unite Faerie.

  It was a grand vision. Far grander than the vision of King Arthur, who had sought only to unite one rather small island...although Merlin had hoped to ultimately extend Arthur’s rule beyond Britain’s shores. But in Arthur’s time the world had not been intertwined with computer networks – networks through which Merlin’s magic wove a gossamer-thin web. When he once more wielded his full power, that gossamer would become steel. And then, with nowhere on Earth outside his ken and reach, who would stand against him, or the forces that would flock to the service of their new king: King Wally!

  Major winced. I’d better get him to change his name.

  He turned his thoughts back to the present. All his grand plans depended on his obtaining the shards and re-forging Excalibur. Ariane, heir of his traitorous sister, already had
the first and obviously had a good idea of where to find the second. But she didn’t have it, not yet, and that gave him great hope. Perhaps her attempt to cross the Atlantic using the clouds failed. She might even have died trying.

  He put that thought aside. If the girl died on land, he would shed few tears. But if she died in the middle of the Atlantic, the first shard would sink to the bottom of the ocean, from whence, with his magic so crippled, he might never be able to retrieve it.

  No. Odd though it seemed, he actually hoped she was alive and well – but in Canada, while he was here, just a two-hour drive from the cavern where the second shard of Excalibur lay.

  Tomorrow I will claim it, he thought with satisfaction. And then Ariane Forsythe, the “Lady of the Lake,” will be in for some surprises.

  He finished his glass of wine, stood and headed for bed.

  ~~~

  If the rock ledge had simply plunged straight into the chasm, Ariane would surely have been killed. Instead it fell only a couple of metres, then hit a slope of broken stone and slid down, faster and faster, roaring and clattering. She lay flat on top with nothing to hold on to, coughing and choking on the stone dust raised by the ledge’s grinding descent.

  Then the rock hit something, and catapulted her into the air.

  She smashed her shoulder against stone, rolled over, and finally came to rest against a rock face. Groaning, she sat up. Miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken, but every limb ached. Her knees, elbows, and palms were scraped and, though she could not see them, certainly bleeding. But worst of all, her backpack and the all-important flashlight had vanished.

  She sat very still, breathing hard, staring into the darkness, seeking any spark of light: but though her eyes were wide open, she saw nothing but the same aimless, meaningless flashes of colour she saw when they were closed. The blackness pressed down on her like a thick blanket, as though trying to smother her. She found herself panting. She couldn’t seem to get enough air...

  I’m dead, she thought. Dead and already buried. I’m going to die down here....

  She closed her eyes, though it made no difference, and tried to take deep breaths, willing her racing heart to slow. Calm down! she told herself. Dr. Beaudry will be here. And other scientists. I’ll hear them, or see them. They’ll get me out.

  Or else I’ll find water....

  But she could sense none. The cavern really was, as Dr. Beaudry had said, bone dry.

  Something heavy crashed down on the rocks, so close a stone nicked the tip of her ear. She gasped and clapped a hand to the place as blood trickled out, then scrambled to her feet. I have to keep moving, she thought. It’s not safe here. But which way? With her back against the rock face, she reached out with both hands as far as she could, and felt nothing. She took a cautious step, and her foot slipped off a loose rock, her ankle turning with a frightening twinge. And what if she came across another chasm? She could plunge to her death without warning.

  No, the only safe way to move was on her sore and bleeding hands and knees.

  But which way? she thought again.

  She sucked on a finger to wet it and held it up, hoping to feel a cooling breath of air on one side or the other that might indicate the direction of an exit. But she felt nothing. Now what? she thought. Flip a coin?

  You don’t have one. And you couldn’t tell if it landed heads or tails anyway.

  And then she remembered that she did have a compass of sorts. The terror of the fall, the shock of the landing and the terrible, oppressive darkness had momentarily driven it from her head, but now, as she paused, wondering which way to go, she heard once more the song of the second shard.

  It was there, off to the right and above her. Could she reach it? She didn’t know. But if she could, it would most likely be near water, since the Lady would have originally hidden it in water...and just let her find water, however little, and she could escape.

  Water. She licked her lips. The hard work of the climb, the fall, the choking stone dust...she needed water for more than just escape. I’ll find it, she reassured herself. She grimaced, dust gritting beneath her teeth. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.

  Ariane had never had a nightmare as terrifying as this reality: smothered by darkness, creeping her way on hands and knees across broken rock, left hand, right knee, right hand, left knee, over and over again.

  Every time she reached out with her hand she feared she would bang her knuckles on a wall of rock sealing off her path, or find nothing but air, the edge of another chasm. Twice she did encounter rock, and, sobbing in fear, turned to crawl parallel to it: but both times she discovered another opening, heading in more or less the right direction, and carried on.

  Her lacerated knees and palms burned like fire and grew sticky with blood. A part of her wondered that she was still moving – but she wasn’t drawing on her strength alone. The first shard felt the nearness of the second. Its magical power poured forth, bolstering her failing strength; and the nearer she got to the second shard, the more she could draw from the first.

  But when, at last, she emerged into a space that seemed somewhat larger and with fresher air than any she had been in before, even the shard’s strength poured away from her like the water she so desperately sought. Her shaking arms couldn’t bear her weight any longer. She fell forward, arms folded under her, then rolled onto her side. Curled up on the ground, shivering, hurting, despairing, she closed her eyes – though it made no difference – and, blessedly, fell instantly unconscious.

  In that dark place she would have welcomed one of the dreams of the Lady that had once so troubled her, dreams where sun shone on dappled water beneath a limitless blue sky…but her dreams were as black as her journey, as though even the memory of light had been pressed from her mind.

  ~~~

  Wally woke to the ringing of the bedside phone. For a moment he lay still, disoriented, unable to figure out what the sound was. His alarm clock didn’t sound like that. And why was the room yellow? His room was blue...

  Then everything came rushing back and he sat up with a gasp and lunged for the phone. White and gold, it was made in the style of phones from a hundred years ago...if you ignored its LCD screen and push-buttons. “Hello?” he said groggily.

  “Good morning, Wally,” said Rex Major. “I’m sorry to wake you so early, but we’re due at the shard’s location in three hours, and it will take two to drive there.”

  “No....” Wally yawned hugely “...problem.” He glanced at the clock. 6:30 a.m. What time was that back home? He suspected he didn’t want to know.

  Feeling like someone had strapped barbells to his arms and dumbbells to his eyelids, he stumbled into the bathroom. The water in the tub hadn’t been disturbed: Ariane had not made a midnight appearance.

  He pulled the plug to let the tub drain while he used the toilet, then started the shower. Ten minutes of hot water woke him up considerably. As he climbed out of the shower and reached for a towel, he blinked at the sink in the marble countertop. Its taps, like those in the tub, appeared to be made of solid gold. As did the toilet handle, the towel racks, and the handles of that other strange-to-Canadian-eyes fixture, the bidet. (Though he knew what it was from previous trips to Europe, Wally hadn’t used it. He didn’t much care for the feel of water jetting up his butt.)

  When he’d dried off, he stared at himself in the mirror. Dark shadows beneath his eyes, five stitches showing clearly on his white forehead with his hair plastered down...he looked like the survivor of some horrible accident. He scrunched up his eyes. And his head was hurting again. The pain had been growing since he got out of bed. He rubbed his temple and went into the room, digging around in his backpack until he found his bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol. He went back into the bathroom to down two of the pills, then finally got dressed in fresh underwear and socks, a clean (if very wrinkled) pair of jeans, and a black T-shirt, for once unadorned by any geek-culture message. His head ached marginally less as the painkillers took eff
ect, and he was sitting on the bed devouring the chocolates he had pushed off his pillow the previous night when Rex Major came knocking.

  “Did you sleep well?” Major said, leading him to the elevator.

  “Not long enough,” Wally said. He yawned again. “I hate jet lag.”

  “Coffee and a croissant will do wonders,” Major assured him.

  What polite conversationalists we are, Wally thought, considering he’s a millennium-old wizard, I’m a kid from Saskatchewan and just a couple of weeks ago he was trying to kill me. Descending into the Lady’s watery chamber had had much the same effect on his life as falling down the rabbit hole had on Alice’s.

  A few minutes later he felt much more like himself, thanks to an almond croissant, another filled and drizzled with chocolate and his first espresso ever. He smacked his lips, wondering which would fade first: the bitter aftertaste or the buzz of caffeine.

  Major glanced at his watch. “7:20,” he said. “My car should be out front. Shall we?”

  The car, a long black Mercedes, was indeed waiting. As he slid across the butter-soft leather of the rear seat, Wally thought, I could get used to this.

  “Allons-y,” Major said. (Wally smirked, wondering if Rex Major had ever seen the David Tennant incarnation of Doctor Who.) The chauffeur touched his black-visored cap with a black-gloved hand, then drove them smoothly into the narrow street in front of the hotel. Tires squealed behind them and Wally turned in his seat to see the driver of a green delivery truck shaking his fist furiously. Wally gave him a cheerful wave and turned around again.

  It took half an hour to get out of Lyon, but soon they were zipping through farmland along a smooth highway. A bit more than an hour after they had left the hotel, though, they turned off that main road onto a winding secondary road, still paved, but much narrower, that led them up into the blue, stony ridges that paralleled the highway. Grey stone, green trees, lakes and rivers...it looked a little bit like northern Ontario to Wally, who was keeping his eyes on the scenery to avoid having to talk to Rex Major.