“Great-Grandpa,” Wally said. He flashed the light to either side. To the right of the grave was a second one, with a headstone labeled LAURA UMSTATTD KNIGHT, 1872–1957. “And Great-Grandma.”
He lit up Ebenezer’s grave again. No bump or depression distinguished it. Nor had anyone put flowers on it, at least not in a very long time, unlike some of the other more recent graves they had seen. “Are we really going to do this?” Ariane whispered. Butterflies churned in her stomach.
“Do you feel anything from the hilt?” Wally said. “Because I don’t.”
Ariane closed her eyes – not that it made much difference in the dark – and concentrated. “No,” she said. “But maybe…”
She turned off her flashlight and put it on the ground, pulled up her shirt, the night air cool on her skin, and unwound the tensor bandage from around her middle to release the two shards of Excalibur she carried. They seemed quiescent, completely uninterested in whatever they were doing or where they were doing it. She held the ancient pieces of steel out to Wally, one in each hand. He took them.
That certainly woke the shards up – she could feel them purring like a couple of kittens, so pleased were they to be touched by an heir of Arthur – but she still couldn’t sense the hilt’s location. It could have been under their feet or on the moon, for all she could tell.
“Well?” Wally demanded, still holding onto the shards.
She shook her head, then realized he probably couldn’t see it, and said, “Nothing.”
Taking the shards back, and feeling their disappointment as she did so, she returned them to their place beneath the tensor bandage. She let her shirt fall back down, though she didn’t bother to tuck it in, and bent over to pick up her flashlight. Covering the end with her fingers again, she turned it on to shine a dim glow on Wally as he put his own flashlight on the ground, its butt against the headstone, so that it cast a long, low fan of light across the surface of his great-grandfather’s grave, the nighttime dew on the long blades of spring grass sparkling diamond-like in the beam. He turned to the tools they’d lugged with them from grave to grave during their slow examination of the cemetery, picked up a spade, and held it out to Ariane.
Ariane hesitated, taking a long look around. Her eyes were dazzled a bit by Wally’s unshielded beam, even though it wasn’t shining in her eyes, but she thought that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t quite as dark as it had been. Surely that was the horizon she was seeing, and hadn’t the stars been brighter a few minutes ago?
Sunrise was still a couple of hours away, because this close to the solstice twilight was a long drawn-out affair, morning and night, but if they didn’t dig fast, their cover of darkness would vanish.
“Well?” Wally said impatiently, still holding out the spade.
Ariane sighed, turned off her flashlight, returned it to her backpack, and accepted the spade. Then she looked down at Ebenezer Knight’s grave, took a deep breath, and shoved the metal blade into the dirt. Wally’s spade plunged into the soft ground a moment later.
They dug in silence, and Ariane quickly forgot about the creepiness of grave-robbing in the back-breaking realization that she’d never before done anything as physically hard as just digging with a shovel. They didn’t have to dig up the whole grave – they just wanted a decent-sized hole down to the level of the coffin – but that was still a lot of dirt to move, and as the hole deepened they had to take turns getting down into it and tossing out the soil. Her back and arms felt on fire, the hole seemed to take forever to get any deeper, and all the while, slowly but surely, the light grew. At first she could only see Wally’s face, glistening with sweat even though the air was cool, in the light of the flashlight he had put on the ground. But by the time they’d dug down two feet she could see him as a black figure, digging and swinging out the dirt, spade full by spade full, and then his face appeared as a paler patch, and then…
…almost before she knew it had happened, she could see everything. The sun wasn’t up, and it was so early in the morning it would have been the middle of the night in December, but darkness no longer covered the prairie – and no longer hid them, if anyone happened to be looking.
And then, while Wally was taking a short break out of the hole, leaning against his great-grandfather’s headstone, Ariane, the palms of her hands stinging from blisters, drove her spade into the ground for what felt like the millionth again…and hit something hard. She jumped back as though she’d gotten an electric shock, bumping into the side of the hole, now maybe a metre-and–a-half deep.
“It’s gotta be the coffin,” Wally said. He scrambled down into the hole next to Ariane, leaned over and scooped dirt away with his hands, and there it was, smooth, polished red wood, its grain darkened by long years in the soil.
“We’re not opening it,” Ariane said. “We can’t open it, Wally. We can’t.”
Wally looked at her, his face pale in the pre-dawn light, his expression serious. “We may have to.”
“We can’t,” Ariane said. “And not just because I don’t want to,” she added, although she absolutely did not. “We can’t open it because it’s getting light. We’d have to make this hole twice as big before we could even try to pry it open. And even that would only work if it has a split lid. What if it’s one piece?”
“And you still can’t feel anything?”
Ariane closed her eyes and concentrated once more on the shards. “Nothing.”
“Maybe if you…touched the casket?”
Ariane grimaced, but it was only wood, after all – no matter what might be inside. She knelt down, her knees grinding in the loose dirt on the coffin lid, and pushed her hands against it. “No,” she said. “Nothing.” She looked up. “It may not be here at all, Wally,” she said. “It may not even have been the hilt, or at least not the real one. This could be a wild-goose chase.”
Wally shook his head stubbornly. “It all makes too much sense,” he said. “Great-Grandpa’s treasure had to be the hilt of Excalibur. And it’s got to be close. He said he’d be with it again someday, and here he is.”
“But here it’s not,” Ariane said.
Wally pressed his lips together. He’d been leaning down, hands on his knees, staring at the bit of exposed wood
Ariane had knelt to touch; now he straightened and turned toward the grave marker, his head and shoulders above the ground. His eyes widened. He stared at the grey stone.
“Hey!”
The shout came from somewhere far too close for comfort. Ariane spun in its direction to see someone – a caretaker, maybe, or a park employee, she couldn’t tell, and didn’t really care – running toward them from a picnic shelter not far away.
Wally was still staring at the tombstone.
“Wally!” Ariane cried. The sky was clear. There were no clouds to leap into. They’d have to get back to the slough. “We have to get out of here!”
Wally seemed to snap out of a trance. He blinked at Ariane, blinked across the cemetery at the man charging toward them. He’d almost reached the wire fence surrounding the graveyard, but he’d had to angle away from them, toward the gate on that side. “You kids stay put!” the man yelled.
But Wally was already scrambling out of the hole. Ariane struggled out after him, sod crumbling and falling back onto the coffin lid as she did so. Then they dashed in the opposite direction, toward the main gate by the church entrance and, more importantly, toward the pond beyond the gravel path.
“We left…the spades and pick…” Ariane panted as they ran.
“Don’t need them anymore,” Wally cried. He sounded remarkably happy for someone being chased by an angry man.
“Woof!”
Crap. And a dog!
The dog must have been off exploring on its own, but upon hearing the ruckus had clearly decided there were more interesting things to do than sniffing and peeing on trees, because here it came, racing down the street toward them – a mutt, a big one, and it didn’t look friendly, probably because its
master was still shouting angrily at them…
…and gaining on them, too, though not as fast as the dog.
It would reach them before they reached the pond.
Ariane didn’t have any choice. She reached out with her magic, drew a long shiny tendril of water from the pond, and flicked it at the dog like a whip. It hit with enough force to bowl the animal over. It yipped in shock, but was up again in a minute and twice as angry. It sped over the ground like a furred lightning bolt, but the delay had bought them just enough time. Even as the water-tendril splattered to the ground, Ariane and Wally’s feet crunched through dry reeds and splashed into the edge of the pond – and an instant after that, they were gone.
They didn’t go far. A couple of dozen kilometres west of Cannington Manor lay Moose Mountain Provincial Park, and if the nearby Moose Mountains would not have been called mountains anywhere other than Saskatchewan, they did have one thing in common with their far grander cousins to the west – lakes.
Wally and Ariane reappeared in a secluded cove on the shore of Kenosee Lake, and together they staggered out, Ariane drying them as they reached the shelter of the birch forest, just beginning to leaf out.
Panting, she plopped down on a log. She felt unreasonably angry, and she wasn’t sure much, if any, of that anger was coming from the sword. Not this time.
“What a waste of time!” she snarled. “Two hours of digging for what?”
“I wouldn’t call it a waste,” Wally said. “At least we got some exercise.”
Ariane suppressed the urge to lash him with a water-tentacle. “But we’re no closer to the shard. And we were seen.”
“So what?” Wally said. “About the being seen, I mean. What he thinks he saw was so unbelievable he’ll just come up with some other explanation that makes sense to him, even if it doesn’t really make sense. And as far the shard goes…” He sat down beside Ariane on the log. “It’s true we didn’t need to dig that hole. I’m sorry about that. I feel like an idiot.”
Ariane felt her anger slip away. It was hard to stay mad at Wally when he took on that puppy-dog look. Although she still thought he seemed an unreasonably happy puppy dog, very unlike the one that had wanted to tear their throats out a minute ago. “You couldn’t know it was a wild-goose chase,” she said. “It seemed like a solid lead.”
“Oh, I didn’t say it was a wild-goose chase,” Wally said. “And it absolutely was a ‘solid’ lead. Rock solid.” He grinned, that same old homely grin he’d always had. The one she loved.
Usually. This time, not so much. “What are you grinning about?” she said.
“Because I know where the hilt of Excalibur is,” Wally said. “All we have to do is figure out how to get it.”
•••
Rex Major sat in his office in his high-rise Toronto condo, researching Cannington Manor and not finding much of interest. It wasn’t very large and it wasn’t very old – historic in Saskatchewan terms, maybe, but certainly not in his. A century? Piffle. He’d literally napped longer than that.
But even as he scrolled rapidly through a rather dull description of the goings-on at the Beckton Brothers’ big ranch house, Didsbury – Arthur’s knights could have taught these “bachelors” a thing or two about partying, he thought – a chime sounded: an automated search he’d set up for news about Cannington Manor had just found something.
He opened a new tab. “Cemetery vandalized at Cannington Manor,” read the headline on the CBC Regina site. He scanned it. “Two teens seen by caretaker…managed to elude capture…no vehicles, so may still be in the area…RCMP investigating…”
Wally and Ariane. It had to be. They’d read the same thing he’d read, in Grandma Knight’s book, and interpreted it the same way he’d interpreted it – that Ebenezer Knight had hidden the hilt of Excalibur, passed down in his family for generations, somewhere near where he was buried, where he would “be with it again,” as his daughter-in-law had recorded him saying.
But Wally and Ariane hadn’t found the hilt. He knew that beyond a doubt, because he now had his two shards with him – he glanced at them, lying on his desk, two pitted lengths of ancient steel entirely out of place in the ultra-modern room. If Wally and Ariane had had the hilt, these two shards would be gone, flown to join the reunited three.
He fingered the ruby stud in his right ear. So they guessed wrong. It’s not in Ebenezer Knight’s grave. The question is, can I guess right?
He glanced at the time. Felicia was winging her way to Toronto on one of his company jets. She’d be landing at Pearson International in four hours. They could board his private jet the moment she was there, and be in Regina in another three. Cannington Manor was more than an hour’s drive from Regina, so call it eight hours in total. Late afternoon in Saskatchewan by the time they got to the cemetery, but there’d still be hours of light left.
He realized he was still fingering the ruby. He released it, and let his gaze slide from the screen and across the two shards to rest on the black case containing the tranquilizer pistol. He had two more of the highly useful devices, a handy belt holster for each, and lots of darts. He’d arm a couple of likely employees with the other pistols and Command them to come along. If Ariane and Wally showed up – and based on past experience, they almost certainly would – they would be dealt with. In fact, that would be ideal – knock them out and put them on ice somewhere and he could take his time looking for the hilt. If it was buried anywhere in the graveyard, he could simply use the power the shards gave him, with Felicia’s help to enable him to draw on it, to ask the earth itself what was buried in it. A small chest, somewhere close to Knight’s grave, would seem the most likely. With his shard-enhanced power, he could draw it to the surface without ever touching a shovel.
Once he had the hilt, Ariane’s two shards would come to him, Excalibur would be reforged, and with it he would swing wide the door into Faerie. Then, with all his old magical powers restored, plus the additional potency from the sword, the plans he had so painstakingly put in place over the past two decades could be executed at last – generals and politicians, the whole world, his to Command.
His allies on the other side of the door would come to his aid as well. So what if he had been out of communication for a thousand Earth years? Time did not pass, or matter, the same way in Faerie. Those followers would still be loyal, and with the door open, they, too, would flock to his side.
Earth would bow down to him and, soon after, Faerie would fall, its mighty knights and even its magic no match for the war machines Earth was so very, very good at creating. The battles would be vicious but short, and then at last both worlds would be united, to flourish under the one ruler they should always have had, the true High King, the ideal of which Arthur, uniting the tiny squabbling kingdoms of Great Britain, had been but a pale shadow.
High King Merlin. Long live the King!
Just a few more hours.
He caught himself fingering that damned ruby stud again. He released it and started making phone calls.
Chapter Twelve
Eureka!
Wally grinned at Ariane. Ariane stared at him as if he’d just sprouted an extra pair of ears. He patted his head just to be sure he hadn’t, because after all, magic…
But he had only the usual complement of two ears, though they were of the rather sticking-out kind. So the astonished look must be because she didn’t believe him.
Maybe if you explained? a rather sarcastic inner voice commented. Instead of just going for the cheap drama?
“I noticed it just before we had to run,” he said.
“Noticed what?” Ariane demanded. She sounded exasperated, and he supposed he couldn’t blame her.
“The hilt,” he said. “It was in plain sight all the time. Well, kind of.”
“Wally…” Ariane said. He heard a gurgling sound behind him, and glanced around to see the water in Kenosee Lake heaping itself up into a nastily bubbling hump.
Hastily, keeping an eye on th
e water, he said, “Did you get a good look at Great-Grandpa’s headstone?”
“I guess.”
The water subsided, and he turned to face her again. “Did you see that weird carved cross on it?”
“I saw a cross. Didn’t think it was particularly weird. Lots of headstones have crosses.”
“Not like that one. I didn’t notice it when we first looked at it, because the light was so dim. But when I turned around in the hole in the morning light, it was right in front of me, and that’s when I realized it’s not a cross at all. Anyone would think it is, because it’s on a headstone, but it’s not.” He let his grin spread to its widest. “It was a carving of a sword hilt, with a few centimetres of blade still attached.”
He expected Ariane to shout “Eureka!”, but instead she kept giving him that you’ve-got-extra-ears look. “So? Wally, a carving of a hilt doesn’t do us any good. We need the actual thing. And it could be buried anywhere in that cemetery. Or not there at all. Someone might have found it while digging another grave. Some treasure-seeker could have turned it up. It still doesn’t help.”
“I disagree,” Wally said, his grin slipping in a surge of irritation, only some of it from the sword. “I don’t think it means the hilt was buried nearby. I think it means the hilt is right there…inside the headstone.”
“Inside…?” Still no improvement in her “God, you’re weird” look. “Wally, that headstone is solid stone.”
“Is it?” Wally said. “What if it was just made to look solid? What if Great-Grandpa had it made special, out of two pieces of stone, with an opening inside it for the hilt?”
“Years before he died?”
“Why not? Lots of people buy their tombstones while they’re alive, and just leave space for the dates. It would have been perfectly hidden, inside a grave marker and inside a warehouse somewhere, and he knew he’d ‘be with it’ again someday. Which he is.”
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