Alistair Grim's Odd Aquaticum (26 page)

“It is the future taking shape before our eyes,” Dalach said. “This temple must be somehow connected to the queen. A magical record of her prophecy, perhaps, so she’ll remember it.”

“But these tiles,” Kiyoko said. “Why are they making these pictures now?”

“Perhaps something’s happened that, quite literally, has set the future in stone.”

“You mean a future that cannot be changed?”

“Aye, miss,” Dalach said, and he led us along the wall back to where we started, the scene of King Arthur drawing Excalibur from the lake. I, however, had become transfixed again by the scene of the hooded woman in the forest.

“We need to tell Father,” I said in a daze.

“Are you all right, Grubb?” Kiyoko asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“That—that forest picture over there…I think it shows my mother giving me to the Yellow Fairy.”

“What are you talking about?” Kiyoko asked. Gathering my wits, I told them the story as Gwendolyn had told it to me—the story of how a hooded sorceress, who turned out to be Elizabeth O’Grady, summoned the Yellow Fairy in the language of the ancients and entrusted me to her care. When I’d finished, the Gallownog knelt down with his hands on my shoulders and said:

“It appears you figure into this prophecy more than you realize, Grubb Grim. The same for you, Dougal McClintock.”

“Well for the life of me I can’t see how,” Mack said.

“Neither can I, sir,” I said.

“Your father is right, Grubb,” Dalach said. “Prophecies and fairies are never what they seem. Either way, we’ve got to tell Alistair Grim what we’ve found, for I fear the next scene on this wall is about to come true—a future that has already taken shape.”

“You mean Prince Nightshade is coming?” I asked.

“Along with Mad Malmuirie.”

Kiyoko dashed over to the temple entrance. “The three of you will be able to travel faster without me,” she said, glancing outside. “Tell Alistair Grim what we’ve found, and I’ll try to learn more about this prophecy.” I was about to protest, but Kiyoko cut me off. “Go now. We may not have much time before we meet Prince Nightshade again.”

We wished each other luck, and with a blink of the Gallownog’s eyes we were invisible again and flying across the garden. Rather than travel back through the castle this time, Dalach darted upward and zoomed along the battlements. The castle grounds, as far as I could see, were deserted; the once bustling courtyard had grown eerily silent, and the drawbridge was up.

“Brace yourselves,” Dalach said as we approached the moat. “The pain will be worse without the drawbridge.”

I did not think it possible, but then Dalach flew us over the gatehouse and proved me wrong. As before, the pain abated as soon as we crossed the moat, but the Gallownog did not pause this time to recover, and took off across the courtyard like a wayward gunshot. The cherry trees flew past us in a smear of swirling blossoms, until finally we passed through the outer gates and landed in the field.

What I saw there made my heart freeze.

The festival had been completely abandoned. Banners and empty tents flapped in the breeze, fires still smoldered, and the ground lay strewn with rubbish, as if the Avalonians had simply dropped everything and ran.

But worst of all, the Odditorium was gone.

F
ather!” I cried out in a panic, and the Gallownog took flight—up, up, up into the air until we were high enough to see the entire kingdom. In one direction lay the thick swath of ancient forest, the port city, and the colossal statue in the sea; and in the other direction, the castle, the rolling farmland and valleys, and the forest that stretched to the horizon.

There was no sign of the Odditorium anywhere.

“What’s happened?” I asked. The Gallownog, his face straining, surveyed the scene a moment longer, and then dropped us back down into the field.

“The higher I go,” he said, panting, “the quicker I lose my strength when shackled to a human. Give me a moment, and we’ll try again.”

Presently, a loud shriek shattered the silence, and from out of the forest flew Captain Fox Tail on his dragon. Dalach raised his finger to his lips—we were still invisible, of course—and the knight swooped past us and disappeared over the castle walls. The Gallownog, Mack, and I gave chase, my heart pounding so furiously that I barely felt the pain of crossing the moat again. And before I knew it, we’d followed Captain Fox Tail straight into the throne room.

The vast chamber was crowded with the Royal Guard and their dragons. The queen and her sisters sat on their thrones upon the dais, and there, standing on the steps before her, was Father.

I sighed with relief—and was about to call out to him—but Dalach clamped his hand over my mouth and flew us up onto a narrow catwalk high amongst the pillars. “Patience, lad,” he whispered. “Remember, things may not be what they seem.”

“I can do nothing to change your destiny, Alistair Grim,” announced the queen. “For, like Excalibur itself, my gift of prophecy is also a double-edged sword. I can see the future and yet cannot remember it.”

“You have my word as a gentleman, Your Grace,” Father said. “I will do everything in my power to help you and your lost princess. All I ask in return is to borrow Excalibur so that I might defeat Prince Nightshade.”

Dalach and I exchanged an uneasy glance. Perhaps we would learn for certain whether or not Mad Malmuirie was this lost princess after all.

“Over a thousand years ago,” the queen began, “the bond between humans and Avalonians was forged by the very sword you seek. And although it was I who bestowed Excalibur upon the line of Pendragon, it was the lost princess who returned the sword to Arthur after his pride had broken it forever.”

“You mean when he battled Sir Lancelot?”

“Excalibur was forged for the defense of truth and goodness, and thus cannot be wielded by one who is evil. However, even the noble Arthur was not immune to ill will. He used Excalibur in anger, and wounded Sir Lancelot after he bested the king in single combat. Ashamed, Arthur tossed the broken sword into a lake, upon which my sister, the lost princess, restored it and returned it to him. She was my apprentice, a budding sorceress who would one day rule in my place. Her name was Malmuirie of Avalon.”

Father stiffened with shock. I had been right all along. Mad Malmuirie
was
the Lady of the Lake!

“Well, I didn’t see that one coming,” Father said after a long, tense silence.

“Malmuirie was in love with Arthur,” the queen said. “However, we Avalonians are fairies from another dimension, and thus cannot remain in your world for long. So Arthur had Merlin transform my sister into a human so they could be together. The old codger was happy to do it—a devious attempt to lure me back into your world, no doubt.”

“Your Grace?”

“Merlin never stopped loving me, you see, and tried unsuccessfully for centuries to find a way into Avalon. Which is why, I suppose, I always felt partly to blame for what happened. For in the end, King Arthur spurned her for the lovely Guinevere. Ashamed and betrayed, unable to face her family, Malmuirie disappeared—driven mad by a broken heart, the story goes. After all, a magical sword is one thing, but a princess’s love is the most precious gift she has to give.”

The Princess’s Gift Denied,
I said to myself, recalling the picture on the temple walls, but Father was silent, his mind clearly spinning with questions about what the queen had just revealed to him. My mind was spinning with questions too. Did Father know that the lost princess was supposed to have returned to Avalon today? Had Queen Nimue informed him about Prince Nightshade? And did he even know that the Odditorium was missing?

“So you see?” the queen said. “The true story of what happened has been lost to time—rewritten, rather, by those who wish to use history for their own selfish purposes. And thus, you humans are not only ignorant of the past, but also doomed to repeat it. You have proven yourselves incapable of wielding power without evil and corruption.”

“I see,” Father said quietly. “Then you have no intention of lending me Excalibur, even if I help you, Your Grace?”

“Again, that is not for me to decide, for although I am indeed the guardian of Excalibur, the end of my thousand-year reign draws nigh. Only the lost princess can take my place, and thus the fate of both our worlds hangs upon her return.”

“So the decision regarding Excalibur rests with your sister Princess Malmuirie?”

“
Your
decisions, both the ones you make and the ones made for you, shall determine whether or not you are worthy of Excalibur.”

“You speak in riddles, Your Grace.”

“I speak the truth. We Avalonians are not like other fairies. Your world and ours are linked in ways that even you cannot fathom at present.”

Father thought long and hard about this, and then sighed and raked back his hair. “Very well, Your Grace, but what about the others? I agreed to your plan because you assured me my companions would be safe. After a decision is reached regarding Excalibur, will you stand by that promise?”

“No harm shall come to your friends here in Avalon, and yet they are forbidden to interfere. When the moment arrives, you shall know why.”

So Father knew that the others were safe—that was a relief—but where could they be, I wondered, and what had become of the Odditorium?

Suddenly, the entire throne room began to rumble and shake. The dragons reared and the air grew thick with fear. Captain Fox Tail ordered his knights into some sort of battle formation, and they cleared a wide space in front of the brightest of the windows. The stained glass pulsed and flashed, lightning danced along its edges, and then from out of the window burst an enormous cigar-shaped contraption that resembled a black shark with wheels. It was dripping wet and sputtered with smoke, and as it spun out and skidded to a stop before the dais, a half dozen more of the contraptions, each one chained to the shark before it, burst through the window and skidded to a stop too.

The sharks revved and roared, and I noticed that mounted at the rear of each of them was a small engine, complete with a glass porthole through which I could see the glowing orange eyes of a demon. My guts twisted and my knees threatened to buckle. According to Father, there was only one other person besides himself who used demons in such a manner.

Prince Nightshade.

A hatch opened atop one of the sharks and out leaped the prince himself, his long black cape billowing behind him like a swollen thundercloud. I cried out in terror as he hit the floor with a thud, but there was so much noise in the throne room that no one heard me. More hatches began to open, and from out of the sharks poured the prince’s skeleton Shadesmen—axes ready and armor clanging as they positioned themselves in a wide circle around the room.

Catching sight of Father, Prince Nightshade raised the visor on his spiked helmet. His red eyes flared amidst the empty pit of his face, and the jagged red tear that was his mouth turned upward into a smile.

“Greetings, Black Knight,” said Queen Nimue. “How nice of you to join us.”

The queen’s sisters tittered, but Prince Nightshade ignored them and gazed about the room—sizing up the situation before he attacked, it seemed. I could feel myself starting to panic, and was about to ask the Gallownog what we should do, when from out of the prince’s shark climbed someone I’d never have expected in a million years.

I gasped. “Mr. Smears!” Dalach hissed at me to be quiet.

“What’d I tell ya, Your Highness?” said Mr. Smears, climbing down his shark. “Is that Alistair Grim in the flesh or is it not?”

“That it is,” Nightshade purred with delight. “At long last, that it is.”

Father stiffened, and I noticed that he was holding the Black Mirror by his side. He must have slipped it from his pocket during the chaos of Nightshade’s arrival.

“We meet again,” Father said flatly.

Mr. Smears hitched up his trousers and, cocking his top hat, swaggered over to the prince. It was instantly clear to me what had happened. The crows Cleona and I had seen in the forest had belonged to Prince Nightshade after all. He must have gotten to Mr. Smears while he was still stuck in Moral’s egg goo, and in turn Mr. Smears told him about Father’s quest for Excalibur. Mr. Smears knew about it from watching us in the warding stones with Mad Malmuirie!