“How…” Nate started, but then there was a stutter in their flight, and Nate was too busy gaping at the shimmering spires and whizzing space traffic of a cluster of floating island cities, each one too enormous for Nate to wrap his head around. Some kind of space station, he thought, set to the backdrop of the most expansive, breathtaking nebula yet.
They flashed on before his brain could finish exploding, and then they were on a rocky, barren wasteland of a planet, standing at the base of what Nate first took for a mountain.
“Why…” It took Nate a second try to find his voice. “Why are you showing me this? I don’t understand. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
The Lady smiled at him. “And thus I believe you have answered your own question.”
She looked toward the mountain, and Nate followed her gaze to the crumbling ruins of an entrance he hadn’t noticed in the great stone structure ahead. At a closer look, though, it wasn’t the entrance that held his attention, but the lone figure that stood there—a black-furred humanoid with a head that resembled that of a lion, or a panther.
“Earth’s days of peace grow short in number,” the Lady said beside him.
Ahead, the lion-thing bared its teeth and tipped its head back. A fearsome roar rumbled through the air. Then they flashed back to dark space.
“What the hell was that?” Nate gasped.
“But another outcome of a sentient’s proclivity for meddling with forces they did not understand,” the Lady said, slowly turning to point over his shoulder. “Truthfully, I would be more worried about that.”
Nate turned, realizing only then that they were standing on a wide asteroid at the outer edge of a thick belt of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, like it. A planetary ring, he thought.
Then he saw what the Lady was pointing at.
He wasn’t even sure what it was. Only that it blocked out the stars beyond, and that it put a fear like he’d never known deep in his heart as its dark, shimmering edge spilled across the asteroid belt, swarming in like an entire ocean of aggravated hornets.
Giant, bus-sized hornets, he realized, as the swarm closed in and ripped straight through the belt like it wasn’t there at all. Straight through gods knew how many millions of tons of stone and ice and space dust. Decimating it all. Consuming it. Headed straight for them.
Nate would’ve fallen over backward if the Lady hadn’t been holding him in her unshakeable grip. He did, however, scream his freaking lungs out as the swarm closed on them, evaporating everything in its path like a terrifyingly silent force of nature.
Then the Lady pulled him through another flash step, and the swarm was gone.
Everything was gone.
They floated in an empty space, not unlike the one Nate had surfaced into at the beginning of this interstellar nightmare. Not that he took much note in the moment. He was too busy falling to his ghostly knees, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.
“I understand that was what you might call ‘a lot to take in,’” the Lady said, gently releasing his hand for the first time since they’d set off.
Nate gaped up at her, still sucking fruitlessly for air, tightness closing around his chest right along with the horrible thought that maybe the Lady had simply forgotten to give him air here, and that he was about to die for nothing after all of that. Then she laid her ethereal hand across his back, and he felt the first tendrils of relief spreading through him. He closed his eyes, welcoming it, focusing on that single point of contact until the panic receded and he felt calm enough to look back up at the Lady.
He still wasn’t breathing, he realized. But that didn’t seem to be a problem. Maybe he hadn’t needed to all along. It hardly seemed to matter anymore.
“What do you want with me?” he whispered. “What did you mean when you said Earth’s days of peace are numbered? What does any of this have to do with me?”
“I am afraid that is not my place to tell you. My role here is merely to determine whether you are the one to take up the mantle.”
“What mantle?” Nate asked, tension creeping back in around his phantom chest. “You’re not making any sense. None of this is making any goddamn sense.”
The Lady showed him a wan smile. “All in good time, Nathaniel. For now, my associate must have his answer.”
“What answer? Why are you even helping him? Why…”
Nate trailed off, not really sure what he was trying to ask, or why he should think to expect anything else. He wasn’t even sure why he instinctively felt he could trust this Lady any more than he could trust the ragged wizard—aside from that one was a transcendent goddess of the stars and the other was a crazy old man in a dirty robe.
“We have something of a compact between us,” the Lady said, when Nate failed to finish his thought. “It is, as your people might say, rather complicated. As for the question in need of answering…” She gestured to something behind Nate. “I believe you will be familiar with this part of the tale.”
Nate turned, not really sure what new development he expected to find waiting in their quiet little null space. Not really sure he even wanted to know. What he definitely didn’t expect, was the smooth gray boulder that’d appeared in the darkness. Or the medieval longsword sticking out of it, gleaming blade buried halfway to the plain hilt.
“I don’t understand.”
He felt the Lady draw up beside him. “I believe that you do.”
He shook his head, eyes fixed on the sword in the stone, five fabled words drifting through his head. The sword in the stone? It couldn’t be. Even after all the wild shit he’d just seen—strange new planets, terrifying aliens, freaking giant space stations—this still felt like the biggest hoax of all. Because they’d just jumped from unknown space straight into the magical fantasy land legends of yore.
“This is some kind of metaphor?” Nate’s words sounded more like a plea for sanity more than an actual question. “Some kind of symbolic test?”
“This is the bridge to the Excalibur,” the Lady said, favoring the weapon with an affectionate smile. “The very same Excalibur you have no doubt heard about since you were old enough to understand such legends.”
“But that’s… That’s just a story. That’s…” He couldn’t help himself. “What good’s a sword gonna do against an alien armada, anyway?”
“Take it, and find out.”
Nate blinked. “You want me to…? No, I’m not… You have the wrong guy.”
The wrong guy? There was the understatement of the century. Twelve hours ago, Nate had been getting his face pounded in by a freaking frat boy named Todd, and now they were talking about alien invasions and giant space ogres and Earth’s numbered days?
She had the wrong freaking species if she thought Nate was the one to do anything about any of this. And yet the Lady continued watching him in all her calm, otherworldly wisdom, waiting for him to do what he already knew deep in his bones was impossible.
“I’m a goddamn IT major!” he blurted. “This is insane! What help could I possibly be to anyone?”
She didn’t bat an eye. “That is exactly what this trial was designed to determine.”
“But why me?” His voice sounded frail and weak in his ears. Like he was about to cry. And maybe he was. He wanted to go home. Wanted to crawl into bed and hide under the covers and forget that any of this had ever happened.
He couldn’t do this.
“I’m no one,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
The Lady waved a hand, and suddenly they were standing at the stone, and the sword was close enough to touch.
“Then test yourself, Nathaniel Arturi, and let us see your true worth.”
Somehow, he didn’t need to look to know the portal back home had opened up behind them. He did anyway, and there was a rippling ovoid window to Atherton Street, and to Emily and the two speeding cars that were stuck in freeze frame… waiting to come smash him to pieces the instant he stepped through?
“You will surviv
e the accident, should you choose to return that way.”
It was like she could see inside his head, he thought, as he turned back to the sword in the stone. Which only made him wonder that much more how she could possibly think he was the one for this… this mantle.
But fine. All he had to do was reach out and show her, right? It wasn’t like he was actually going to be able to pull the thing free. Because even if this wasn’t all just the mad ramblings of his balls-tripping, thrice-concussed brain as he lay dying in Atherton Street… and even if this radiant Lady was truly inviting him to follow in the steps of King Arthur himself…
Well, if there was any single person on Earth who was worthy of that mantle, Nate was positive it wasn’t him.
So why couldn’t he just grab the damned sword and show her?
“This is ridiculous,” he growled to himself, finally shaking his ghostly arm loose from its paralysis.
Phantom heart hammering, he laid his fingers on the hilt. It was warm to the touch. Smooth. Not at all as he’d expected. It felt not so much like a sharp, dangerous weapon as it did a living thing, tingling with a subtle power he could only wonder at.
Was this really happening?
He looked back to the Lady. What next? Was he supposed to just give the thing a yank, simple as that? She didn’t make any sign at all. But it hardly mattered anyway, he reminded himself, because he wasn’t King freaking Arthur. And because this was all a load of shit anyway.
Right?
He gripped the hilt tighter, and it all but sighed in his hand, swirling with an energy he felt but couldn’t consciously quantify.
All a load of shit. Right.
“When all seems lost,” the Lady said, “remember this moment, Nathaniel.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but the thought quickly dissipated anyway, blown to the wayside by the growing storm of the sword’s agitation, dancing like a leaf in a hurricane. Nate gripped the hilt tighter, willing it to be still. Then he braced himself, and pulled.
Pulled, and nearly fell over backward as the sword slid free with a sound of grating steel, and Nate joined it in that building hurricane. The dark air thrummed with rushing power, rippling around them, buffeting Nate’s ghostly form like gusts of a hard wind, growing in intensity until he was sure he’d be carried away. But there he stood at the eye of the storm, the darkness of their null space brightening around him with the surge of the sword’s power.
Nate turned to the Lady, too shocked for words. She hovered in the maelstrom beside him like a pale goddess, her ethereal dress fluttering only gently in the gale force winds. She smiled at him—a smile so warm that it literally shone, bleaching everything around them until he could barely make her out at all in the blinding light. Until he could barely see his own ghostly hands holding the Excalibur.
I will see you again, Nathaniel Arturi, came the Lady’s disembodied voice, like a loving mother’s kiss on the forehead.
Then the world flooded to pure white light, and she was gone.
11
Traffic Delays
It was like coming to after having been knocked unconscious.
One moment, Nate could’ve sworn he was on a psychic voyage across the stars with the one called the Lady, pulling the goddamn Excalibur from the stone like some kind of tripped out Flash-Gordon-King-Arthur wannabe. And the next, he was crashing into Emily Atherton, car horns blaring in from both sides.
They hit the asphalt, and Nate rolled, distantly aware of the screeching rubber tearing toward them and more than a little surprised to find Emily’s weight trapped safely in the cage of his arms. He hadn’t even had time to think about it and yet…
Something was different.
He wasn’t sure how or why. Only that, as he poked his head up from their rolling tangle, nothing seemed to be moving even half as fast as it had been a moment ago. The cars slid across the asphalt in slow motion—a blue Honda on their side, and a gunmetal Audi in the other lane—brakes locked and squealing in a pitch that sounded too low. Down the sidewalk, Copernicus was running toward them, also in slow motion, having somehow already made it safely across the street.
For one moment, Nate observed all of this and more with a kind of detached calmness, slowly rotating through the air with Emily, whose mouth was peeling slowly open in a silent scream.
Then he came around and saw the blue Honda’s front right tire closing on his left leg, watched in horror as the squealing hunk of rubber hit his ankle, driving it under, and—
Time sped back up. They tumbled roughly onto the sidewalk, Nate’s heart thundering with the sudden and terrible certainty that his ankle had just been shattered into a thousand pieces, Emily still tucked tightly in his arms. Too tightly, he realized, from her too-wide eyes looking up at him. Or maybe that was just because he’d landed on top of her, one hand firmly latched to her buttocks, Todd style.
He started to release her, ankle all but forgotten, trying to sputter an apology, too wired on near-death adrenaline to manage words.
“Look out!” someone shouted at the top of their lungs.
Screeching brakes and rushing motion caught his brain stem and yanked.
He didn’t think about darting forward to grab the incoming bike. He’d barely even registered it was a bike, by the time the leading edge of the frame was rocketing into his open palm. He just tried to stop it from hitting Emily, and the rest happened on its own.
Impact jarred through his arm, cascading down the line from the hard smack of metal bike frame on open palm. Hard pavement kicked up against his braced hand and foot and knees—unforgiving reactionary forces coming to flatten him out for his audacity in trying to stop a speeding bike with his bare hand.
Only he didn’t get flattened.
Nate watched in shocked disbelief as the dark-hoodied rider careened over his handlebars and past Nate in slow motion, face frozen in a wordless cry, looking every bit as startled as Nate was. Time sped back up. The rider thudded to the sidewalk and bounced past Emily like an unwieldy human cannonball, coming to a rest in a groaning heap after three hard revolutions.
Emily watched him go with wide eyes, then turned her gaping stare back to Nate. “Oh my god.” She gave it another moment’s shaken thought, then reconfirmed. “Oh my god!”
In the street, horns were honking. People were shouting. The squeal of peeling tires yanked all eyes to the blue Honda, and to the thirty-something driver who Nate swore had just run over his ankle. The guy was gunning the engine, eyes wide, both hands clamped to the steering wheel in a death grip. Nate watched in dumb silence as the blue car screeched off over the hill, still trying to piece together what the hell had just happened, and kind of wanting to laugh at the thought that anyone on the planet could be so worried about something so trivial as a reckless driving charge right now.
The car. His ankle. The slow motion bike crash. The freaking intergalactic psychedelic walkabout.
The Excalibur.
He turned unseeing eyes back to the bike he was still holding, half-expecting to find a magic sword there instead. It was impossible. Im-freaking-possible. Anti-possible. A fluke. That’s what it was. Adrenaline, and close calls, and… and what?
“What the fuck is happening?” Nate whispered to himself, oblivious to the world around him. At least until his eyes properly focused, and he got a good look at what he’d done.
The bike frame was bent in his hand. Bent by his hand, some part of his stupefied brain registered. Bent like the thing had crashed straight into a freaking steel girder rather than his fleshy little palm. Bent like…
Like you managed to eke out an ounce of power, said a gruff voice. Good.
Nate dropped the bike with a crash, and nearly fell over backwards in his reflexive rush to distance himself from the speaker. Only there was no one there. Left, right, up, down. No one. He shuffled a few steps back, panic spiking… and then fizzling straight out—not gone, necessarily, but filtered down, like someone had slipped him a few benzos
just to take the edge off.
What was happening?
No one there. No one but Emily Atherton and the recovering biker, both staring at him like he might be an alien. Nothing but the oddly distant pounding of his heart, and the pedestrians jogging over to come check on them, and the street full of cars, and spectators, and—
“Hey, dude!” someone called across the street. “Hey, dude! How’d you do that?”
Nate followed the voice and realized the speaker had his phone out, and pointed right at him. Recording, from the look of it. So were his friends. Looking around, Nate saw more phones, all pointed at him, and Emily, and the bike that he’d just… just what, exactly?
“—uys fucking see that?”
The panic rustled behind the curtains.
“—his bare hand.”
He was numbly aware his heart was beating faster.
“—some kinda freakin’ super—”
He couldn’t seem to breathe. Couldn’t—
“Hey, are you all right, man?” asked a too-close voice beside him.
Nate jerked away, surprise piercing through his divine benzo filter, yielding another few inches to the blunt panic closing around his chest like a giant steel mitten. His good Samaritan didn’t seem to mind. The kid was too riveted to his phone display, more interested in filming Nate’s reaction than in actually helping.
Nate’s eyes flicked down to the twisted bar of the bike frame—twisted to the shape of his hand—and he fought down the sudden urge to take off running. That would only look worse, he thought. Worse than whatever the hell this already looked like. He didn’t know. Couldn’t think straight.
He should leave.
He turned for Emily and the poor biker, thinking to at least check on them first, but the biker was already sitting up, looking rattled but okay, and Emily… Emily was watching him like she wasn’t sure who or what he was.
He started to step past her, mind too blank to come up with any better plan than to leave before people started asking questions he couldn’t answer. Emily reached up and caught his hand before he’d made it three steps, her eyes flicking to his from the wrecked bike, understanding setting in, right along with a silent plea for him to explain to her what had just happened. He tried to move on. She didn’t let go. Almost without thinking about it, he pulled her up to her feet. She was surprisingly light. Too light. But he still wasn’t ready for it when her shaky legs gave out to lingering shock and a broken boot heel, and she fell straight into him.
The Eighth Excalibur Page 10
