Twist of the Blade (29 page)

And Flish? She’d be glad not to have him in her hair. She might miss the allowance she extorted from him on a regular basis, but she wouldn’t miss
him
.

He looked out the windshield. They were nearing the airport. Wally nodded to himself, then turned to Major again.

“Great,” he said. “So, just what
will
you be able to do with your magic when you have Excalibur at your command?”

A slow smile spread across Major’s face. “You’ll have to wait and see,” he said. “But I promise you, Wally...it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever imagined.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TWIST OF THE BLADE

Ariane felt as though everything she believed in had just crashed into hard, cold truth and shattered into meaningless fragments.

She stared at the bedspread where there should have been two shards, unable to accept what her eyes told her. The second shard was gone, and so was Wally. That could only mean...

She snatched up the first shard and concentrated. Sure enough, she could hear the frantic song of the second shard receding. For a moment she considered dashing out into the hallway after Wally, barefoot and wearing only a bathrobe, but then the second shard started receding at a much faster pace than before.
He must be in a car
, she thought.
And that means....

Rex Major.

Her knees gave way and she sat down heavily on the end of the bed. Wally Knight, her companion in the Lady’s quest, her best friend, her loyal sidekick, had just taken the second shard to her arch-enemy. She noticed the money scattered across the bedspread. Wally had stolen the shard, but he’d left Aunt Phyllis’s money...and the fact he felt he didn’t need it any more was even more proof that he had someone else looking after him now.

Her stomach roiled. She jumped up and staggered into the bathroom, just making it to the toilet before she heaved, though nothing came up except sour-tasting liquid. She clung to the bowl for a long moment, then hauled herself to her feet. At the sink she rinsed out her mouth. Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror.
I look awful
,
she thought...and then she couldn’t see herself anymore as tears flooded her eyes. She flung herself onto the bed and wept as if she would never stop.
What do I do now?
ran over and over through her head.
What do I do now?

But no one could really cry forever. Her sobs slowed, softened...and stopped. And then, without really meaning to, she fell asleep.

She woke with a start, stared at her surroundings in confusion, and only then remembered where she was...and what had happened. But as she remembered Wally’s betrayal, it wasn’t grief she felt this time, but anger: a blaze of fury hotter than any she could remember feeling before. Not all of it was hers. She put out her hand and picked up the first shard from where it had lain beside her while she slept. Rage seared her mind like boiling acid.

She wondered suddenly how the sword had been made, and who had made it. She thought back to what the Lady had told her when they’d first met. She’d said she’d had Excalibur forged in Faerie, but she hadn’t said she’d forged it. And she’d said it was a thing of battle that wanted to strike and kill.

Maybe the sword contains something of the spirit of whoever forged it
, Ariane thought.
Maybe it’s an echo of
his
anger I feel.

But even though not all the anger came from inside her, Ariane embraced it as if it had. She clutched the first shard of Excalibur to her breast and let that fury scour her, burning away lesser emotions like grief and sorrow.

Anger. That was the key. She would hold on to that.

And she would
use
it.

She
would
get the second shard back. And then she would get the third. And neither Rex Major nor his new lackey Wally Knight could stop her.

She got up, dropped the bathrobe, and reached for the tensor bandage to wrap the first shard against her skin. As she did so, she wondered why Wally had left it behind. If he were truly in Merlin’s camp now, wouldn’t he have taken them both?

But then the shard touched her skin again and that question seemed unimportant. Whether he had stolen one shard or two, the fact remained that he had betrayed her: not just Ariane, his high school friend, but the Lady of the Lake.

And nobody
, Ariane thought savagely, the shard burning against her side,
betrays the Lady
.

She reached for her filthy clothes, wishing she had fresh ones to wear. But she had nothing in France. It was time to go home and find a way to retrieve the second shard, then seek out the third.

She hated even to touch the euros Wally had left, but after all, the money had come from Aunt Phyllis. It was hers more than Wally’s. And she needed it. She stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans and went out into the dark streets of Lyon.

The early morning air was chill against her skin. Above, stars shone down from a cloudless sky. Still, she could always follow waterways as far as the coast. If there were no clouds there, she’d check the weather forecast and go where there were.

Before she went anywhere, though, she needed food. Very little was open that early, but at last she found a small café that had just unlocked its doors. Two croissants and a bowl of hot chocolate later, she felt rejuvenated. She paid for her meal and then, beneath a rapidly brightening, still-cloudless sky, headed down to the Rhône, made sure no one was watching, stepped into the water and let it take her away.

As she had hoped, there
were
clouds at the coast. Just where the fresh water began to turn to salt she emerged from a stream that emptied into the sea. Standing on a rocky beach she looked up and down the coastline. A few roofs peeking above trees far off to her right spoke of a small village; out at sea she saw two ships. But there was no one to see
her
.

She reached up for the clouds and joined them.

The journey back seemed easier than the journey over. She seemed to have a better “feel” for what she was doing, as she magically flashed from cloudbank to cloudbank. She could “leap” over openings in the cloud cover, provided they weren’t too large, and at times felt like she was playing hopscotch, jumping from puffy cloud to puffy cloud. Always she found a way, though she sometimes had to go far south or far north of a direct course.

Somewhere off the coast of North America, though, she felt her strength waning. She’d travelled farther than she’d expected without the help of the shard, but now it was time to use its power. She reached for it....

...and couldn’t draw on it.

She could feel it, blazing away as always, but something seemed to be interfering, keeping her from accessing it. She paused in her flight, struggling to connect, but she couldn’t.

The second shard
, she realized.
The second shard. Merlin has it, and while he has it I can’t use the first!

Her frantic efforts to connect with the sword’s power drained her own strength even more. The effortless sense of flying faded away. Now it felt as if she were forcibly holding herself airborne, as if she were doing chin-up after chin-up, arms growing weaker each time.

She could only materialize in fresh water large enough to cover her...and there was no fresh water in the ocean. She couldn’t materialize in the clouds. So if she couldn’t hold herself airborne in the clouds and she couldn’t materialize in salt water...what then?

Truly frantic now, she pressed on to the west. She knew the coast was not much farther, could even dimly sense fresh water ahead, but she wasn’t quite there yet, and her strength was almost gone...

...and then, suddenly, she heard the song of fresh water
below
her, fresh water deep enough to cover her. Without a second thought, she drove her spirit into it.

An instant later, back in her body, surrounded by water with the familiar eye-sting of chlorine, she kicked upward. Her head burst through the surface and she took a deep breath of strangely salty air.

“No swimming after hours!” a voice boomed. “Out of the pool!”

Ariane shook her wet hair out of her eyes and, treading water, looked around. She was in a swimming pool on the after deck of a huge cruise ship, with more decks rising above her like layers of a wedding cake. Rain drizzled from the night sky; travelling through the clouds, she’d outrun the morning light of France. She spotted the speaker, a man silhouetted against the lights on the ship’s railing. She could make out empty deck chairs and a deserted bar dimly lit by its own nightlight. The man lifted his hand and the glow of a flashlight pinned her in the dark pool. She blinked at its brightness.

“Miss, you’ll have to come out of there.” The voice changed, sounded more concerned. “You’re not even wearing a swimsuit.”

“I fell in,” Ariane called, which was, after all, exactly the truth. “I was just out...taking the night air,” also true, “and I guess I...slipped.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Ariane swam over to the side of the pool and climbed out using the ladder nearest the young man. “Just wet.”

“Do you want me to show you back to your cabin?”

“No, no need. I’m sorry for the bother.”

“It’s quite all right, miss. But you should get out of those wet clothes.”

“I will,” Ariane promised. “Thank you again.”

Then before he could ask her which cabin she was in, or realize just how tattered and torn her clothes were, she hurried away into the dark, hoping she looked like she knew where she was going.

A moment later she was out of sight around a corner, and leaned against the cold metal wall in a shadowed place between two lights. She ordered the water off herself, and, dry and feeling much warmer, set off again.

She couldn’t take to the clouds again until she’d rested and eaten something. She realized she didn’t really have the faintest idea how long she’d been up there, but she did know it seemed like a very long time since her meal in Lyon.

She’d never been on a cruise ship before, but she’d heard there was never a shortage of food. Sure enough, after wandering up and down a few staircases and wood-panelled hallways, she found a room where a central buffet table was surrounded by dozens of other tables, all empty except for one, where a lone insomniac sat drinking coffee and reading. The heating trays were disappointingly empty, but a long glass cabinet held pastries of every description, and next to it stood four urns of coffee: mild, medium, bold and decaf. Ariane helped herself to two croissants and an apple turnover and even though she wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, filled a mug with the bold blend, added cream and lots of sugar, and then sat down.

To her surprise, her hand trembled as she lifted the cup to her lips. She looked at the brown liquid sloshing just below the rim, then quickly took two big gulps and set the coffee down again.

That
, she thought,
was close
.

Had the cruise ship not been there, she might be...dead, she supposed, though would her body ever have been found? Would there even have been a body to find?

Wally didn’t just steal the shard. He almost killed me.

Her anger and the shard’s swelled again. She knew it wasn’t entirely fair. There was no way he could have known that giving one shard to Merlin would prevent her from using the power of the other. But that was the point, wasn’t it? He was meddling with things he didn’t understand, and instead of believing the Lady of the Lake, he’d decided he knew better.

He did leave you the first shard
, she argued with herself.
Maybe he did it because you said you needed it to get across the ocean.

But then a much, much nastier possibility occurred to her.

Or maybe
, she thought,
he did it because Merlin told him to – because Merlin knew that I wouldn’t be able to use the shard, but I’d try; because Merlin hoped I wouldn’t make it back across and he’d be rid of me forever.

But if she had simply...faded away...in the clouds, what would have happened to the shard? Would it have vanished too? Or would it have plunged into the ocean? She had to suppose that Merlin couldn’t use the power of the second shard while she held the first, anymore than she could use the power of the first while he held the second. But if she were dead, she wouldn’t hold the first, would she? And then, with the second shard to augment his own magical ability, Merlin would probably be able to retrieve the first easily, even from the bottom of the sea.