Sacrifices (15 page)

“Yeah,” Spirit said. “But she was Yseult of Cornwall, not Guinevere. If she’d been Guinevere, she would have recognized everybody.”

“Huh,” Loch said. “You’re right, Muirin. Good memory! And that tells us something we didn’t know—Mark Rider can’t possibly be Mordred.”

Muirin beamed, and Spirit realized again how desperate Muirin was for affection. Desperate enough she’d even excuse Breakthrough’s crimes just because they were nice to her?

She wished she knew.

“Did I miss something?” Addie asked.

“Elizabeth told Spirit she recognized Mark as one of Mordred’s Shadow Knights. Which means Mark is the Reincarnate of someone Yseult of Cornwall met. And Yseult never met Mordred. So Mark isn’t Mordred,” Loch said.

Muirin made a face. “But he
is
a Shadow Knight. There goes my theory that he’s possibly not a bad guy.” She looked as if she had bitten something sour.

“Too bad,” Burke said. “Maybe Merlin—”

“No, wait,” Spirit said. “Guys. Why are we concentrating on Merlin?”

“Well
duh
!” Muirin said. “He stuck Mordred in a
tree
! Hel-
lo
!”

“But
Merlin
isn’t Mordred’s main enemy.
King Arthur
is. So where’s Arthur?” Spirit asked.

“You mean
who’s
Arthur, right?” Loch said.

“It’s like
Where’s Waldo?,
except now with added mortal peril,” Muirin sniped. Even Burke smiled at that.

“You know,” Addie said thoughtfully, “we’re being offered courses in Norse Mythology, and Egyptian Mythology, and Greek and Roman Mythology, and Chinese Mythology…”

“And Serbo-Croatian Mythology and Finnish Mythology and it’s not just a class, it’s a mythadventure,” Muirin said. “Your point?”

“My point is, the Arthurian Mythos is pretty big. So why aren’t we getting it?” Addie said, frowning. “We get Celtic Mythology, yes. But that isn’t the same thing.”

“Grail, grail, the gang’s all here,” Loch said. The others winced at the pun. “It makes sense if we’re living it, though.”

“That’s my point,” Addie said. “We aren’t being taught it because we’d find out something they don’t want us to know.”

“But everybody already knows it, don’t they?” Burke says hesitantly.

“No,” Spirit said decisively. “It’s huge. My—” She swallowed hard and went on. “My sister was really into it. The stuff in the movies and on TV? That’s just a tiny piece of one of the stories. Since we were homeschooled Mom even got Fee college books about it. People have been writing about Arthur and Camelot and the Round Table and … everything … for more than a thousand years.”

“So which one’s the true story?” Burke asked.

Spirit shrugged. “All of them. None of them. I don’t know.”

“The real question is: how much of it do
you
know?” Addie asked.

“Not enough,” Spirit admitted sadly. “I always thought it was silly.”
Oh Fee, I’m so sorry for all the times I teased you!

“Silly or not,” Burke said, “we need to know more than we do. Muirin’s right. We don’t know who did what. And we need to.”

“Anybody want to bet that one-horse library down in Ice Station Radial’s got a couple of books on the subject?” Muirin asked.

“Maybe,” Loch says thoughtfully. “Don’t you have Dance Committee on Wednesday, Spirit?”

Spirit groaned. “Oh god, don’t remind me. Maddie and Zoey tried to kill each other at lunch today. And if Maddie isn’t being ditzy and Dylan isn’t trying to start trouble, Chris is bending over backwards to be helpful—which comes across as patronizing—and Juliette Weber patronizes him right back, and she can barely get a sentence out before Bella and Veronica are falling all over themselves to say ‘Oh my god, you are so right, Juliette,’ and—”

Burke chuckled. “Welcome to high school.”

Despite everything, Spirit found herself smiling back. “Yeah. That’s it exactly.”

“Well maybe you could see what the town libe has,” Loch said, resolutely ignoring the byplay.

“Nuh-
uh,
” Muirin said. “She’d have to steal the books. And when we’re talking about stealing library books, that’s a job for … Super-Muirin!”

“Isn’t that a bit below your pay grade?” Loch teased gently. Muirin stuck her tongue out at him.

“And once we’ve done the research, we decide whether we’ve got any chance at all of stopping Breakthrough and Mordred ourselves—or even of finding out what they actually want to do,” Addie said, firmly dragging the discussion back on track. “I
still
say we should try to find someone who can help. I’m not denying Breakthrough is big, and the Shadow Knights scare me to death. But you know … Breakthrough is just a computer game company. Prester-Lake BioCo could buy it out of small change. And
I’m
Prester-Lake. You guys keep forgetting—maybe we’re kids, but a couple of us are important kids, or at least, we’re the heirs to important stuff. At the very least, I can get my trustees to investigate Oakhurst.”

“If you can get to them without going on the run,” Loch said. “Remember, once we run, we become runaways, and everyone knows bad things happen to runaways. Nobody would ever suspect Breakthrough if you ran and you … vanished.”

This hasn’t solved anything!
Spirit thought wildly, as the others chattered excitedly.
We were supposed to come up with a plan tonight, think of something to do now that we know who Merlin is! Instead, everybody’s talking about stealing library books, and Addie still wants to get somebody from outside to help, and …

… And we think Doctor Ambrosius is Merlin. But what if Murr is right and Merlin isn’t actually the good guy?

Suddenly the thing that had bothered her ever since they’d visited Wolfman came clear in her mind.

Wolfman was there when Mordred got out of the tree. Mordred had to have seen him. Why didn’t he kill him—or take him over? We assumed his friend Kenny—who is now Doctor Ambrosius—protected him, but if he did, why is Wolfman so crazy now? Why didn’t Kenny help Wolfman later—when he came back and founded Oakhurst? Why didn’t he bring Wolfman to Oakhurst when he put the school together?

And why isn’t “Kenny” using his own name? The other Shadow Knights are.

She didn’t have any answers. And looking at her friends, she was afraid to even ask the questions.

SEVEN

Spirit was still mulling over the problem when the Dance Committee met again on Wednesday. She hadn’t been able to talk to QUERCUS—the intraweb had been down again when she got back to her room Monday night, and it had stayed down all day Tuesday. She wasn’t even getting out of Endurance Riding by being on Dance Committee anymore. The class had been canceled until further notice, so
nobody
had to deal with it. Spirit was guessing it was because of the monster, but she didn’t know. For the first time, Oakhurst’s news blackout was more than a minor annoyance. If the monster was still out there—and hadn’t just vanished back to the same place things like the Wild Hunt had—it had to be attacking the local livestock. If it was … That would be proof, but proof of what even she wasn’t sure.

Maybe proof that Merlin and the Grail Knights are somewhere nearby. Because whatever that thing is, it doesn’t seem to be a part of Breakthrough’s plans.

At least today she didn’t have to deal with being at The Fortress. She guessed Mark Rider had really been annoyed with Teddy for bringing them all onto the site last week. This time nobody showed up to whisk them off anywhere, much to Kylee and Dylan’s disappointment, and they were meeting at the library.

The Radial Association Library had been remodeled when it was turned from a house into a library, at least as far as knocking out some of the interior walls and turning doorways into archways. But it still wasn’t very big. The front room had the checkout desk and the low shelves that held the children’s books. The back room had tall metal shelving (antique, cast iron, and heavy) and a couple of battered wooden tables. The Radial committee were gathered around one of them. There was a huge goody basket on the table. Courtesy of Breakthrough. Of course. The Radial kids had already opened the basket and shared out the contents among themselves. The table was covered with cans of soda, cookies, cupcakes, candy bars … Chris sat down and grabbed two Cokes, passing one to Zoey.

“Hey!” Erika said. “Those are ours!”

“You wish,” Dylan sneered. He grabbed a Coke and plucked the gift card out of the nearly empty basket. “To the joint Radial-Oakhurst Spring Fling Dance Committee, with the best wishes of Breakthrough Design Systems,” he read out, sneering. “So it’s half ours—and you’re half thieves.”

He skimmed the card back into the basket and grabbed a bag of chips and a handful of candy bars. He tossed them to Chris and Kylee and Maddie and Zoey, then grabbed an armful of sodas to pass around. He even gave Spirit one—not because he was suddenly her new best friend, but to irritate the Townies.

“So anyway,” Brenda said, tossing her hair back and ostentatiously turning her back on the five from Oakhurst, “Dad was out at the Wolferman place all day dealing with County, and the Fire Marshall, and everyone. He said we were just lucky the fire didn’t spread to the DOT barn—it took out that whole patch of woods.”

“The Wolferman place.” Wolfman.

“Was— Was anyone hurt?” Spirit asked hoarsely. Kylee frowned at her in puzzlement.

“Just the crazy old guy who lived there,” Juliette said dismissively. “He was probably the one who started it. He was an ex-con or something.”

“Crispy critter,” Brett said, and snickered.

“The Fire Marshall said it started because of candles,” Brenda said, happy to provide inside information. “Everybody knows the place hasn’t had electricity for years.”

The fire was obviously the most interesting news right now, and nobody seemed in any hurry to get down to Dance Committee business. It had apparently started early yesterday morning and ripped through the entire house. By the time the Fire Department arrived, all they could do was keep it from spreading.

Wolfman is dead,
Spirit thought numbly, staring down at the unopened can of soda in her hands.
Burke and I went to talk to him, and a few hours later there was a fire.
She glanced at Zoey. Zoey was a Fire Witch. It was one of the more common Gifts—more than half the Oakhurst students had gifts from either the School of Fire or the School of Air. She didn’t think Zoey had set the fire at the Wolferman place, but any Fire Witch could have done it.

Wolfman hadn’t had a chance.

“We’ve got a lot of stuff to cover today,” Maddie said, interrupting the gossip ruthlessly. She took out her spiral notebook (with the Oakhurst coat of arms printed on the front, naturally) and opened it to a blank page. “Especially the song list for—”

Suddenly the front of the building … exploded.
Wind attack!
Spirit thought automatically. In that instant she was grateful to Ms. Groves for teaching them things they thought they had no possible use for. She might not have any magic of her own, but Spirit knew every Gift and every spell any of the Schools could wield.

Shadow Knights! But why here?

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The windows, the door, the front wall itself sprayed across the floor into the back room, all reduced to tiny fragments. She winced and ducked—the air was full of blowing debris; it was like being an a wind tunnel.
Oh my god there were
people
in the front room.…

The Radial kids were frozen in their chairs. The Oakhurst kids were up and moving.

Maddie screamed.

The figure striding through the hole that had been the front wall of the library was twelve feet tall, wore gleaming black armor, and had glowing red eyes. Spirit stared at it for a stunned moment because it seemed so familiar. Then she placed it: it was straight out of
Rise of the Black Dragon
. She’d seen it over at The Fortress last week when the others had been playing the new game.

An illusion. It has to be.
But the damage the Shadow Knight could do was very real.

The assessment had taken her mere seconds, but it was long enough for a second and third armored figure to join the first.
The door—there has to be a back door—
Spirit thought frantically.

“Get up! Come on! Move!” she screamed.
They’ll never cover this up.…
she thought inanely. Her ears were still ringing from the blast; she could hardly hear herself. Chris was standing next to her. She shoved him so hard he staggered into the table. “Get them!”

The Radial kids were finally starting to move. At least Juliette and Kennedy were. The others were still staring at the impossible—unbelievable—sight. Spirit grabbed the person nearest to her—it happened to be Dylan—and started dragging him toward the back of the room. There was a back door—she remembered now she’d seen it the other night when Muirin had parked in the library parking lot.

Spirit felt as if her mind were racing, as if she wasn’t thinking, but remembering things she already knew. Maddie was a Water Witch, Kylee an Energy Mage, Zoey a Fire Witch, Dylan a Jaunting Mage, and Chris a Weather Witch. If they wanted to fight back, the only one whose Gift would be much use was Kylee’s.

The wind was rising. She tripped over flying books, staggering sideways as much as forward. There was so much dust in the wind she couldn’t see where she was going, and its howl was so loud she couldn’t hear anything else. One of the Shadow Knight illusions picked up a chunk of debris and threw it; it struck the side of the arch and fell to the ground, sucked into the back room by the inexorable force of the wind. If the wind got strong enough, it would pin them against the walls, and they’d be battered to death by flying furniture. It was already swirling around the inside of the building like a tornado.

Like a tornado …

“Oh god!” Spirit cried.

She heard a ripping sound, saw light where there shouldn’t be light as the roof tore away and walls collapsed. The floor shook. She didn’t dare look back. She’d gotten to the door. She slammed her body against the crash bar with all her strength.