As she crossed College Avenue she heard a car start up behind her. Ariane stiffened, and a chill that had nothing to do with the frosty morning ran up her spine. From the far side of the street, she glanced back, half-expecting to see a white Ford Focus headed her way. But she relaxed when she saw it was just a blue Saturn, turning onto College.
Nothing to do with me, she told herself as she walked west. Sure enough, the Saturn drove past without slowing down, turned north, and disappeared.
Relieved, she crossed Winnipeg Street at the light, then turned north for one block before heading west again. As she turned the corner, her foot skidded on the frost-covered sidewalk and she almost fell. She gasped, caught herself, and then laughed ruefully. It’d be the height of irony if she broke her leg walking to the coffee shop before she’d even started her dangerous quest.
A little more carefully, she carried on. Once she was past the hospital, she turned north again. The Human Bean was just a couple of blocks ahead.
To her right, red and orange leaves, interspersed with shrivelled, purplish-black berries, still clung to a high hedge. Behind it rose a dilapidated two-storey house. Just before she reached the hedge, the blue Saturn shot out backwards from a driveway behind the hedge and jerked to a tire-chirping stop, blocking the sidewalk. The driver’s door burst open, and a tall man, gray-bearded and ponytailed, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, burst from the driver’s seat and dashed around the back of the car.
Ariane froze, but the frost saved her. The man’s foot slipped out from under him and he fell against the car, grabbing the side-view mirror for support. Ariane regained control of her muscles and ran into the street. The man swore and charged after her. She could hear his feet hitting the pavement just three or four metres behind her. His legs are longer. He’s faster than me –
– but maybe not as agile!
She cut left into an empty driveway. A leap over a hedge landed her in a weed-grown backyard, and she scrambled over a low fence of weathered wood into the alley beyond. Her pursuer dropped back. A clatter and a curse suggested he had fallen over the fence, but before she reached the end of the alley, she could hear the crunching sound of his feet grinding against gravel. Once again he was drawing closer and closer.
She burst onto a street. Tires squealed as a car braked hard to avoid her. She dodged around its tail and ran into the alley across the street. She was hoping her pursuer wouldn’t follow her with a potential witness in the car, but he didn’t stop. Still, the car had blocked him long enough that she gained a little ground. Halfway down the alley she spotted a narrow path leading between two houses on her right. She darted through it, dashed across another street, and plunged between two more houses into the next alley.
When she glanced back, she couldn’t see the man anymore. She slackened her pace, trying to catch her breath. Twenty more steps...thirty...no sign of him. She slowed even more, looking back down the alley as she came abreast of a dilapidated garage with leaning walls and peeling green paint. She became aware of something in her hand, glanced down, and laughed shakily when she saw that she was still clutching the brown paper bag containing Aunt Phyllis’s cookies.
But then she screamed and dropped the bag as the man burst out from behind the garage. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, then clamped his free hand tightly over her mouth, choking off her scream. He forced her arm up behind her back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he growled in her ear, though he already was. “But you have to come with me.”
She tried to struggle, but he jerked her arm up higher, making her gasp. He began dragging her down the alley, back toward his car. She rolled her eyes, searching for water...if she could find water, she could do something...but there wasn’t so much as a puddle.
“Hey!” someone shouted. “Let her go!” The man twisted them both around, and her heart leaped when she saw Wally charging toward them, carrying something that looked like a sword.
~ • ~
Wally had arrived twenty minutes earlier than he needed to at the Human Bean. He had long suffered from the curse of punctuality, so he was used to waiting for other people to show up. And getting out of the house early was always the best way to avoid crossing paths with Flish, especially on weekends.
When he reached the Human Bean, Wally decided to wait for Ariane on the sidewalk. He only had enough money for one cup of coffee, and he didn’t want to finish it before Ariane got there. The rotund proprietor of the coffee shop was okay with kids lounging if they had bought stuff, but he didn’t much care for them “just hanging out.”
Wally didn’t mind the chill in the air – he’d always kind of liked the cold. He amused himself with a broken hockey stick he found lying in the gutter, practicing fencing moves with it, although of course it was much heavier than an epée or even a sabre, and the balance was all wrong...not that he was a good enough swordsman for that to matter. His recently sprained wrist didn’t even twinge. That was good, he supposed, except it meant he’d have to go back to gym class.
After a few minutes, he wandered to the corner, still clutching the hockey stick, to see if Ariane was in sight. He looked down the street and up the avenue, but didn’t see her. He was about to return to his post on the sidewalk when he spotted a familiar figure in the alley – Ariane? Just as he was going to call out to her, a man with a gray ponytail leaped out from behind a garage and grabbed her arm. Ariane’s scream broke off abruptly. “Hey!” Hefting the hockey stick, Wally charged across the street. “Let her go!”
The man twisted around to face him, holding Ariane’s arm pinned behind her with one hand and keeping his other hand over her mouth. “Mind your own business, kid!”
“She’s my friend!” Wally skidded to a stop and gripped the hockey stick tighter, pointing it at the man. “Let her go!”
“I’m warning you...” the man growled – and then yelped when Wally whacked his left elbow with the stick. He released Ariane in surprise, and grunted when the stick jabbed his stomach – Wally had meant to hit him harder, but his target had pulled back.
Ariane darted to one side, out of the man’s reach. Wally advanced en garde. “Next one is below the belt!”
The man spat out an expletive and tried to grab the stick, but Wally danced aside, and as the man’s hands closed on empty air, he stumbled, falling to his hands and knees. Wally kicked one arm out from under him and gave him a backhanded whack to the rear. The man fell down face-first.
“Didn’t say where below the belt, did I?” Wally said.
Ariane’s attacker staggered to his feet and raised a hand to his bloody nose. Wally held the stick ready in case he attacked again. The man gave Wally one last glare, and then ran away without a word, ponytail bouncing.
Wally hurried back to Ariane.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. Considering her pale face, Wally was pretty sure she was lying. “He didn’t hurt me. In fact he promised he wouldn’t.”
“We should call the police...”
“No!”
Wally stared at her. “No? A strange man just grabbed you and you don’t want to tell the police? What if he grabs someone else?”
Ariane shook her head. “It’s only me he’s after.”
“You sound like you know him.” Wally felt a sudden surge of suspicion. “He’s not a, a drug dealer or something like that?”
Ariane’s laughter carried only a slight tinge of hysteria. “You watch too much TV.”
“Only news, documentaries and science fiction,” Wally said, relieved. “So who is he, then?”
“I don’t know his name, but I know who he works for.” Ariane took a deep breath. “Rex Major.”
Wally stared in the direction the man had run off. “He was the guy who was parked outside your house when the computer went crazy?”
“Unless there are two old guys with ponytails stalking me, yeah.”
“But you should still call the police! Even if he’s not a threat to a
nyone else, he’s a threat to you.”
“If we have him arrested, Rex Major will know we know he’s after us. I’d rather keep him in the dark.”
“Don’t you think he already knows we know he’s after us?”
“He may know we know Merlin is after us. But he may not know we know he, Major, is Merlin.”
Wally groaned. “My head hurts.”
“Look,” Ariane said, “right now Merlin has all the advantages. So anything I know that he doesn’t, or at least that he doesn’t know I know...maybe it will help. Right now he may not even know that I know he’s Rex Major. I’d like to keep it that way.”
Now that the adrenaline was draining away, Wally felt a little shaky. If he could see himself, he might even be as pale as Ariane. What if that guy had had a knife? Or a gun? His heroics with the broken hockey stick could have gotten them both killed.
For the first time, Wally realized that a quest in the real world might involve real danger. Uncomfortable things, adventures. Might make you late for dinner...
...or worse.
But he was only the...the sidekick. Ariane was the freaking Lady of the Lake. The decision was hers. Wally’s First Law of Sidekickery: The heroine is always right. He grinned, but the grin dissolved in dismay when something close to his feet caught his eye: a brown paper bag, ripped and stepped-on, from which spilled...
“Oh no! Don’t tell me!”
Ariane followed his gaze, and sighed. “I’m afraid so. Aunt Phyllis’s cookies.”
“That was going to be my breakfast!”
“Cheer up!” Ariane gave him a friendly shove back up the alley. “There are cinnamon buns at the Human Bean...and I’m buying.” She grinned. Colour had returned to her face – she looked more like her usual self. “Because I know something else Rex Major doesn’t know I know.”
“What?” Wally gave the crushed cookies one last, woeful glance over his shoulder.
“I know how to use the Lady’s power to get to the shard of Excalibur. I tested it last night. Major doesn’t know it yet, but he’s in a race – and we’re going to win it.”
“Really?” Wally matched her grin. “Tell me about it...over cinnamon buns.”
He led the way back toward the Human Bean. But he didn’t let go of the broken hockey stick.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Dip in Hudson Bay
The yellow walls and antique-filled interior of the Human Bean felt invitingly cozy to Ariane after her chilling adventure in the alley. She ordered a large skim-milk latte for herself and a large iced cappuccino for Wally (Brrr! she thought), plus two cinnamon buns (heated), and settled down in one of the coffee shop’s overstuffed couches. Wally sat down on another, on the other side of a low table painted with goofy black and white cows against a green background. It could have been any ordinary Sunday morning.
But Ariane’s hand trembled as she raised her latte to her lips. What would have happened if Wally hadn’t shown up? How far was Rex Major willing to go to stop her?
As if you don’t know. Major might be impersonating a modern businessman, but he wasn’t one. They had to remember that. He was a millennia-old sorcerer – Merlin, no less – from a time when human life was even cheaper than it was in the twenty-first century. He’d kill her (or have her killed) the instant he seriously thought she might interfere with his search for the shards of Excalibur.
But as that frightening thought crossed her mind, she frowned. Except...
Why hadn’t he done it already? Why had he even bothered with that bizarre computer-borne warning? The ponytailed man who had attacked her had been hanging around her house for two days. He’d followed her to the convenience store. He’d had several opportunities to run her over, if he’d wanted to kill her. But he hadn’t. And even today, he’d said, “I’m not going to hurt you...”
She found that slightly comforting...but only slightly. Even assuming she could believe him, and he hadn’t just been trying to stop her from struggling, he’d at least been out to kidnap her. While as a potential victim she wholeheartedly endorsed kidnapping over murder, she’d much rather not experience either one.
And then she gripped her mug tightly in horror. That ponytailed creep knew where she lived. That meant he knew about Aunt Phyllis. What if he hurt Aunt Phyllis trying to get to her, or just to teach her a lesson, like they did in movies? The liquid in Ariane’s mug sloshed as her hand quivered. She put down her latte and pushed her cinnamon bun away – she no longer had an appetite.
Wally eyed her plate. “I’ll eat that if you don’t want it.” He’d apparently inhaled his own bun. Whatever nerves he’d felt after the encounter with the ponytailed man – and he’d been white as a freckle-faced ghost for a few minutes – had obviously gone away.
“Be my guest.”
Wally picked up the bun, but didn’t bite into it right away. “What’s wrong? You look like you just tasted something rotten.”
Ariane told him what she’d been thinking. “I’m not worried about myself. Well, OK, I am, a bit. But if anything happened to Aunt Phyllis because of me...”
“Now are you ready to call the police?” Wally took a big bite of the cinnamon bun. “I told you...mmmm...we should have called them right away...mmph.”
“It’s going to be our word against...whoever that guy is,” Ariane said. “Why should the police believe me? I’m what they call ‘troubled,’ you know. Father ran out years ago, mother vanished mysteriously, bounced from foster home to foster home and school to school before my aunt took me in. I’m not what the cops are going to call a reliable witness, and that guy, if he works for Rex Major, has a respectable tax-paying position with Excalibur Computer Systems. They’ll think I’m making it all up to gain attention.”
“But I’ll tell them –”
“They’ll think you’re making it up to gain attention too.”
Wall blinked. “I don’t –”
She sighed, and in the tone of a daycare teacher explaining to a toddler for the umpteenth time why it’s important to wash one’s hands after using the potty, she said, “My attention, Wally. They’ll think you’re in love with me, or something.”
Wally turned the approximate color of a ripe tomato. “That’s nuts!”
Ariane felt a little annoyed. “Of course it is.” Now it was Wally’s turn to frown. “But they won’t know that.”
“But if you really think your Aunt Phyllis is in danger, what else can you do?”
Ariane hadn’t known, until that moment, but Wally’s straightforward question crystallized the answer in her mind. “I have to leave,” she said slowly. “I have to run away.”
~ • ~
It took a lot to distract Wally from a fresh cinnamon bun, but Ariane’s declaration succeeded. He stared at her, bun in hand and mouth wide open, for a long moment, then put the bun down unbitten. “That’s crazy!”
Ariane looked pale, but she lifted her chin stubbornly. “Why? If I’m gone, if I leave Regina, then Rex Major won’t have any reason to hurt Aunt Phyllis.”
“Of course he will!” Wally said. “If he’s going to hurt her to make you abandon the quest, he’s just as likely to do it if you leave town as he is if you stay put.” Ariane opened her mouth as though she were going to argue, and he hurried on, fiercely telling the inner voice reminding him about Wally’s First Law of Sidekickery that sometimes the heroine wasn’t right, and this was one of those times. “You can’t protect her by leaving. In fact, with your power, you’re more likely to be able to protect her by staying put. And anyway, whether she’d be safer or not if you left, you’re safer here with people who can help – like me.”
Ariane met his gaze squarely. “Hasn’t it occurred to you I’m putting you in danger too?”
“Occurred to me?” He snorted. “I just fought some guy in an alley. Of course it’s occurred to me! But I don’t care.”
And he didn’t. Whatever risk he ran by helping Ariane seemed minor compared to the risk of never seeing her again i
f she ran away. Wally had always thought he was happy as a loner, but he didn’t want to be one anymore. Ariane was his friend, and he didn’t intend to lose her. “And anyway, the same thing applies to me. Rex Major won’t leave me or Aunt Phyllis alone just because you run away. We’ll still be in danger, and you’ll just be in more danger.”
Ariane closed her eyes. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just...I didn’t mean to get Aunt Phyllis involved. But there’s no getting out of it, is there? She...and you...and I...are all at risk until we have Excalibur and Merlin doesn’t.”
“Or until he has it!”
Ariane stared at him.
“I mean it, Ariane! Why not just let him have it? Take his warning. Forget about the whole thing.” Wally surprised himself with his vehemence. What about the quest? a part of him protested, but he ignored it. Screw the quest. “Don’t look at me that way. This is getting serious! At first it was kind of fun, like a movie or a video game or playing make-believe – a little adventure you can quit when Mom calls you for dinner. But someone tried to kidnap you – or worse. And now you’re talking about running away from home. Let Merlin have the stupid sword. We didn’t ask for any of this! It’s none of our business.”
Ariane was silent for a moment. “I can’t,” she finally said. She looked down into her coffee cup. “I just can’t.”
“Why?” Wally said. “So Merlin wants to be king of the world. So what? Maybe we should let him! Maybe that’s what we need on this stupid planet. Maybe he could put an end to the wars in the Middle East and Africa and wherever else we’re killing each other this week. Heck, he’s a sorcerer. Maybe he could put an end to famine and poverty and disease while he’s at it.” He recalled what else had occurred to him. “Jeez, Ariane...did you ever think that maybe we’re on the wrong side? Maybe Merlin is the good guy. Maybe the Lady of the Lake is the villain in this story we’ve been sucked into, and we’re just...pawns.”
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