The Warlock's Gambit (The Arthur Paladin Chronicles) (Volume 2)

by David Alastair Hayden

  She dove at one of the central tables like she was diving for a fumbled football in the Super Bowl. She grabbed up her prize and spun around, triumphantly holding up what looked like a shiny, silver sheet of card stock. Though her enthusiasm was infectious, Arthur walked calmly toward her.

  “Are you sure? It's awfully thin.”

  As she held it up to show him, the tablet suddenly bent.

  “Oh my god!” Morgan’s eyes were wide. “I killed it.”

  But as she loosened her grip, it popped back into place.

  She jerked her head back in surprise. “It’s flexible.” She tested it, and the piece bent easily without any apparent damage.

  “Cool,” Arthur said, picking up the other tablet sitting on the table. As soon as he touched the screen, which looked like a super thin piece of glass over silver paper, it lit up. “Makes sense, though. A Manse tablet should be more advanced than what we have on Earth.”

  “Would’ve been nice if it had given us these in the Great Room or the Paladin’s Office.”

  “I bet this is just where the Manse generates them, like weapons in the Armory. The place isn’t usually packed with shadow creatures, you know.” Arthur flipped his over. There was writing etched into the silvery back of the device. “It’s called a c|slate.”

  “Cool name.” Morgan continued testing the limits of how far it could bend.

  “You sure that’s wise?”

  “If I break it, I figure either the Manse will make me a new one, or I’ll just take yours.”

  Arthur rolled his eyes. “Thanks.”

  The next moment, Morgan rolled her c|slate up, as if it really were a piece of paper. Something clicked when she did, locking it into place so that it stayed that way.

  “Coolest — thing — ever!” she shouted. “In the whole Multiverse!” She gave it a tug, and it unfurled. “The OS looks similar to what's on the computer in the Paladin’s Office. Wow, oh wow! I don't know where the battery is for this thing or how small it must be or how the screen can bend. Processor … memory … storage … antenna … how can any of this work?” She sighed and cooed, “Oh, Arthur, I'm in love.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I do not think, my dear Morgan,” said Vassalus, “that you can fall in love with a computer.”

  “Oh, Vassalus,” she replied, “you may be formed from my psyche, but you definitely don’t quite get me yet.”

  “If you say so, dear,” Vassalus replied with concern in his voice.

  Morgan touched her screen twice and smiled even wider. “I can already tell you that the tablet has two things the main computer doesn’t — two totally awesome things that we need — an eBook app and a messaging app.”

  “Cool.” If she figured out how to work the messaging app, he’d probably never hear her voice again. Arthur frowned as something occurred to him. “Morgan, don’t you think it’s odd that we don't have any kind of walkie-talkies? In every sci-fi show I've ever seen, they have earpieces, headsets, or communication watches or something, you know? You'd think something like that would have been with the standard gear we got in the Armory. I mean, pretty much every kid I know, except me, has a phone, and yet the Multiversal Paladin doesn’t have squat.”

  “You have a phone,” Morgan said with a sneer. “It's a crappy, prepaid flip phone, but it is a phone.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  “You're right, though, it is odd,” Morgan said.

  “When we first got here, I assumed everything in the Manse was … magical. But there’s actually a lot of tech here.”

  “There is no such thing as magic,” Morgan said authoritatively. “There has to be a rational explanation for all the crazy physics going on around here. Just because we don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s magic. I’ll look and see if we have some way of communicating using these, other than through messaging. I hate talking on the phone, but with the situations we might get into, it seems like we’ll need to be able to talk sometimes.”

  Arthur looked back at his c|slate screen. A message had popped up: “Device unlocked. Welcome, Arthur Primus Paladin. Do you want to activate voice control?”

  “Morgan, do I want to activate voice control?”

  “Of course.”

  He pressed the icon to accept. “Okay, now what?”

  “Now … now you should let me play with this and figure it out first. I don’t know anything at all about them, and I don’t want you to mess anything up.”

  “I’m not an idiot, you know.”

  She shrugged.

  “It should be simple, shouldn’t it? It’s a tablet. Why shouldn’t I try it?”

  “Because I’m afraid it will be simple, too simple.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know what all it can do yet. The main computer in the Paladin’s Office can control all sorts of different functions throughout the Manse — functions I don’t understand. What if these c|slates have the same access as the main computer? What if we accidentally opened a door, or there was a way to disable the protection sigils?”

  Arthur narrowed his eyes. “Just because I don’t have much experience with computers doesn’t mean I’m dumb enough to do something like that!”

  “Look, I just don’t want you triggering something by accident. Even I don’t understand what most of the symbols on here mean.”

  “Then how do we know you won’t do something bad?”

  “Because I know how to figure out what something does and how it works before I go messing with it. It won’t take me long, promise.”

  “Whatever.” He rolled up his c|slate, like he was wringing water out of a dishtowel, and jammed it into his pocket. “I’m going to look around. When you’re finished, you can show me how to use it. If you don’t think it’s too much for me …”

  Morgan sat down at the table, completely focused on the screen and oblivious to his anger. “Yeah, good idea.”

  Arthur stalked up the staircase to the gallery and began randomly browsing the shelves, discovering titles like The Mating Habits of Ill-Finned Preekasa and Other Nargurian Sundries and How to Detect a Zabilith. He didn’t have a clue what any of that was, but he bet it was all important for a Paladin to know. He was probably supposed to know what preekasa and zabiliths were instead of who the tenth president of the United States was — not that he actually remembered who that was. He flipped through some of the books, seeing maps of continents on other worlds and alien creatures with multiple heads or tentacles or green skin or antennae. A thrill shot through him as he realized he was looking at actual alien creatures and not just something someone made up.

  But the thrill didn’t last and, after a while, he grew frustrated and bored. Normally, he could’ve spent an entire day in the Library, but the books were all so strange and so specific that they were practically meaningless. He tried to locate books that covered the basics about the Multiversal Paladin, the Manse, the Paladin family history, or Entropy and Aetheria, but all he found were books with titles like The Battle of Narkon IV, Wherein Multiversal Paladin #73 Battled the Warlock King Tokas. The library didn't seem to have a card catalogue and, as far as he could tell, the titles were shelved randomly.

  As he stalked past the table where Morgan was still poring over the c|slates, Arthur growled, “I’m taking the others to the Museum. We’re going to clear out the shades there.”

  “Okay!” she called out without looking up.

  He wasn’t sure she’d actually heard what he’d said at all.

  With Lexi, Vassalus, and the servitors at his side, Arthur went back out in the Grand Hallway and approached the door to the Museum.

  “Are you sure it is wise to carry on without Lady Morgan?” Vassalus asked.

  “We don’t need her,” Lexi said. “If she doesn’t want to help out, she can just sit there and play with her new toy all she likes, while Arthur does the dirty work.”

  “I hardly think that is fair,” Vassalus countered. “Wh
at she is doing is important work.”

  Lexi shot him a look. “Oh stuff it, you big —”

  “Both of you, shush!” Arthur snapped. “We’re clearing out the Museum, and we’re doing it now.”

  No one dared say anything else. Valet opened the door; shades rushed forward, one splatting himself against the sigil, and Arthur opened fire. Arthur’s third shot toward the shades missed when one of them ducked suddenly. But a split second later, there was a POP and all the shades disappeared. He had struck the dark-heart by accident. Lexi and Vassalus charged in and looked around before declaring the room clear.

  “Well, that was lucky,” Lexi commented.

  Arthur nodded. “I don’t think shades are the best troops the Entropians have. They’re just … what’s the word I’m looking for …”

  “Cannon fodder?” Vassalus suggested.

  Arthur nodded. “Exactly. They’re really only dangerous if you’ve got a bunch coming at you at once, or if they’re mixed in with wraiths. As long as you've got weapons that can hurt them, anyway.”

  “Well, it is a lot easier if you have the sigils to hold them off,” Vassalus said.

  “Yeppers,” Lexi said, “but I’d think if Arthur had received proper Paladin training, he could probably waste these suckers just by looking at them.”

  Arthur walked in, with Lexi, Vassalus, Arms, and Valet following along behind him. The Museum was a narrow hallway that looked like a miniature version of the Grand Hallway, only there were no doors, and the walls were covered in paintings.

  “Wow, it's almost like an art gallery,” he said. “Must be a hundred big portraits in here.”

  “Memorials of the people who were Paladins before you,” said Lexi. “I bet the smaller portraits are of their companions.”

  He walked over and looked at the first painting on the right: ARTHUR SECUNDUS, PALADIN 105. “This must be my grandfather.”

  “Such an incredibly handsome man,” Lexi purred. “Mm-hmm, he is a tasty one.”

  Arthur eyed her, restraining a laugh.

  “By the good gods, Alexis,” declared Vassalus, “show some restraint.”

  Lexi shook her head in confusion and blinked. “The things I say … you know, I don’t think I was made quite right.”

  “Well, I can certainly agree with that,” Vassalus said as he prowled ahead.

  This time, Lexi didn’t have a clever retort.

  Arthur examined his Grandfather Paladin’s picture, trying to summon up at least some small scrap of memory, but then he remembered that his dad was already the Multiversal Paladin when he met Arthur’s mom. “I never knew anything about my Paladin grandfather. The plaque below said he died trying to save the people of Vikarus Prime on May 8, 2737. Weird date. The Paladins must use a different dating system than we do.”

  Crackle … “Arthur?” … crackle … “Arthur, can you hear me?”

  It was Morgan’s voice, faint and garbled with static, like on a two-way radio. Arthur glanced around in confusion. “Where’s that coming from?”

  “The tablet, my dear,” said Lexi.

  “Oh.” Obviously. He took it out of his pocket and unrolled it. The tablet beeped, and on the screen, a symbol resembling a long, stylized, elf-like ear flashed red. He touched the symbol.

  Morgan’s voice now came through crystal clear. “Arthur, are you there? Did you touch the accept button?”

  “Yes,” he replied tersely. “You figured out the tablet.” He was still irritated with her.

  “Arthur, I can barely hear you. Hold the c|slate up to your head, like a phone. Or talk louder.”

  He held the whole thing against his face so his ear was near the middle of it. The tablet’s edges stuck out all around his head, making him feel stupid. “Is this better?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “I’m in the Museum.”

  Still mad, he pressed the button again, hanging up on the call. A minute later, Morgan practically skipped in to join him. In her hand, she held a phone that matched the c|slates.

  “Hey, where’d you get that?”

  Beaming, she grabbed opposite corners of the device and expanded it out into the full-sized c|slate, which was probably twelve inches across diagonally. “You can resize it. How awesome is that? The most, right?”

  “Where does all the screen and everything go when you make it smaller?” he asked blandly, trying to hide his amazement. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction. But either she was ignoring his mood, or she didn't notice. “Because it doesn’t get any thicker.”

  “No idea. And check this out.”

  She pinched the c|slate down into a one inch square and stuck it on the sleeve of her shirt. She moved her arm, and it didn’t fall off. She pulled it off, stuck it to her skirt, and spun around quickly. Arthur wouldn’t have dared to point out to her what happened when she twirled like that.

  “See? It sticks, automatically — you just have to press it firmly. Don’t ask me how that works, either.”

  “That's nice.”

  “If you hadn’t hung up on me so quickly, I would’ve shown you how to change the voice call into a face-to-face call. And you don’t have your ringer turned on, so I had to use something called an override voice message. Not sure what the point is exactly, but you can turn that feature off if you don’t want it, or if you’re some place where that might be a bad idea. Oh, and you can make the device into a watch, too.” She stretched it out, and bent it so that it formed a bracelet, which she wrapped around her wrist. The display immediately adjusted to this new arrangement.

  He shrugged, despite the coolness of it all. “Anything else?”

  “Mm-hmm. So long as we’re in the Manse, the c|slates never need recharging. If we're outside, they'll last two months on a charge, unless we use a lot of video calling and high-end features, in which case two to four weeks is the max. But I’m not really sure what the high end features are yet.”

  “Guess you've got it all figured out then.” Arthur tried to keep sounding like he could care less. But if Morgan did have them all figured out, then maybe she'd let him use one now. They really were awesome. And the longer Morgan went without realizing he was mad at her, the harder it got to stay that way.

  “Not even close. I just found a basic user manual on the c|slate — it's in .txt! Weird, huh? That's as basic as it gets. Apparently universal, too.” She suppressed a tiny giggle. “Multiversal maybe …”

  “Morgan!” Arthur threw his hands up in frustration. “You know, you were really rude to me earlier.”

  “I was?”

  “Yes. You basically called me stupid.”

  “Sorry — you know I’m not good with people.”

  “I know. I forgive you. But it pisses me off when you do stuff like that and …” He sighed. “And I wanted you to know I was mad and to say you were sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. I get it, and I don't think you're stupid. Honestly, I get along really super well with you — better than I do with anyone else. Most people, I’d have offended them so much by now that they’d probably throw me out into space.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, because it was probably true. “Look, I found a picture of my grandfather, and the smaller portraits beneath him are the companions who served with him.”

  She leaned in and frowned. “And when they died … oh, great, looks like none of them died of old age. That bodes well for me.”

  “Well, one of them retired: Hans Jurik. He served with my grandfather. If these pictures’ dates are up-to-date, he’s actually still alive.”

  Valet gestured toward a picture in the section directly across from them, and Lexi bounded over. She placed her paws on the wall and stood up to take a look. “Hans has a picture under your great-grandfather, too. This Hans must’ve been a survivor.”

  “He would have to have an incredible lifespan for that,” Vassalus said.

  Arthur peered closely at the picture and grunted. “Well, Hans seems to have fur, tin
y horns, and tufted ears. Very subtle. You have to look close to see them. So maybe whatever species he is, that’s normal for them.”

  Morgan began to walk along the wall, scanning. “Yep, looks like most Multiversal Paladins and their companions die in action.”

  “Well, what did you expect?”

  “Have you noticed,” commented Morgan, “that all the male Paladins are named Arthur?”

  He nodded. “And looks like you were right about the middle names. Primus, Tertius, Octavius — those all sound number-ish. We’re very creative with names. Oh, here's a female Multiversal Paladin! Boudicca Prima. And another before her: Boudicca Octavia.”

  “And a Boudicca Severus,” Morgan added. “That’s cool. I'd forgotten that Lady Ylliara said women can be Multiversal Paladins, too. It turns out the Aetherians aren’t chauvinists. I like them a little better now.”

  “You know, I wonder. If one of my dad's siblings was still alive, would they have become the next Multiversal Paladin instead of me?”

  “Maybe. I would assume that it goes to whoever’s most worthy the bloodline. But how anybody would decide that, I have no idea.”

  Arthur shrugged. “It doesn't matter, though, does it? It’s just me left. Every cousin, aunt, or uncle who could’ve done the job has been wiped out.”

  As they moved back in time, each Paladin tended to have more companions. Often more than twelve were listed, but that was because those that died were replaced. Quite a lot of companions were not human, or not normal humans anyway. None of them were strange aliens with tentacles or insect heads or anything like that. At last, they reached the very first Paladin, from nearly 2100 years ago: Arcturus Paladinius, the only one not named Arthur or with a Latin number name.

  “I wish we knew something more about him,” Arthur said. “Other than who his twelve companions were. And he’s the only one without a birth order name.”

  Morgan sighed. “If the Manse’s memory and computers really are wiped, then all the information about all the Paladins is forever gone, unless the Aetheria know it.”

  “Who knows,” Arthur said. “I’m starting to think they’re not as grand as they’d like us to believe. You notice how Lady Ylliara was the only one to come to the rescue? If the Multiverse really is doomed without me, you'd think they could spare someone else to help clean out the Manse, give us a tutorial … something.”