Cave Beneath the Sea

by Edward Willett

  Well, he’d have his PR people work on it.

  Wally and Flish’s parents, meanwhile, were equally convinced, along with the Canadian media, that their wayward son had vanished in New Zealand. Wally’s face had been spread across the country via newspapers, the Web, and television...though never with any mention of Rex Major, of course. Which meant there was always the chance someone would recognize Wally, wherever he popped up. Since he was supposed to be dead in the southern hemisphere, the chance was probably small, but still, it might crimp Wally’s and Ariane’s activities a little bit – and crimping their activities was exactly what Major was trying to do.

  He sighed. He still didn’t have a clue where the fourth shard might be hidden. Neither, he was certain, did Ariane. She might have the power of the Lady of the Lake, but he had one shard of his own, and it too would call out to the not-yet-discovered fourth shard. He could not use it to find the two Ariane held – the Lady’s power would not permit that – but he should be able to use it to find the fourth.

  Of course, so should she.

  But the fourth had not surfaced, and that made him uneasy. Though the Lady had to have hidden the shards originally in some place accessible through fresh water, that had been a millennium ago. The fourth shard could be at the bottom of the ocean, where the salt water all around it would preclude either him or Ariane from finding it – at least while neither of them had a complete set of the shards found thus far.

  With all three shards in his possession, he thought even the ocean would not be sufficient to keep the fourth hidden – but he had only one, and Ariane had two.

  He could not take the shards from her by force. She had to give them willingly. Nor could he kill her; to do so would drain all power from the shards, rendering them nothing but inert pieces of corroded metal.

  But what he could do was find another hostage. Ariane’s weakness, as he had proved over and over, was her concern for other people. She had given him a shard when he had threatened Wally, though she had later stolen it back. She had given the second shard to Wally himself – who had soon been gulled into handing it over to Major – but the false camaraderie he had fostered with the boy that had made that possible had collapsed. Wally had not managed to steal the second shard away from him. But the boy had managed to help Ariane claim the third shard, although for a while, with Aunt Phyllis as his hostage, Merlin had thought he had that one in the bag.

  He needed both of the shards she held in order to find the fourth. That meant he needed another hostage.

  Which had led him to send Emeka and Mackenzie to Gravenhurst, when the skein of magic he had woven through the Internet via his Excalibur Computer Systems server software had flagged a series of searches for towns with both swimming pools and libraries, culminating in considerable research into the Gravenhurst YMCA. It had been a shot in the dark, but the town was only a couple of hours away, so why not?

  And he had almost hit the jackpot. Except Wally had proven more capable than he had expected.

  But Merlin had still learned something valuable. Anesthetize Ariane, and she cannot function. Knock her out, and move her to a dry room, and she will be helpless. And though I cannot kill her directly, I can starve her until she gives in.

  If I can get both of them at once, even better: then I will have a hostage to use against her. If I can get only her, Wally will certainly try to stage a rescue – and when he fails, then, once again, I’ll have a hostage.

  He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. I may have missed her this time. But next time she appears, I will be ready for her. We will be ready for her.

  Perhaps a Taser instead of chloroform...

  His email program dinged, notifying him of a new message. His eyes strayed lazily to the corner of the screen where a preview had just popped up. What he saw there made him straighten in a hurry.

  The subject line was innocuous: ECS Automated System Report. But only one system message used that subject, and it had nothing to do with servers or routers or DNS or any of the other arcane building blocks of the world-wide computer network, which Major didn’t really understand but had profited greatly from nonetheless.

  ECS Automated System Report was the subject line generated when his magic, borne by the Internet, came into contact with a much more powerful magic: the magic of Excalibur.

  He’d received a message with just that subject line when Wally Knight had carried his smartphone close to the Lady of the Lake on the day she manifested herself to Wally and Ariane in Regina’s Wascana Lake. He’d received a second from the Northwest Territories, when some piece of Internet-connected equipment had been brought close enough to the hidden first shard of Excalibur. He’d received a third from the south of France, when scientists studying paintings in an ancient cave complex had come close to the second shard. The third shard he’d found by forcing Ariane to locate it. But now here was the same subject line, and that meant...

  The fourth shard.

  As usual, the only text in the message was an IP address, the address of the device whose tiny sliver of Merlin’s magic had been triggered by its proximity to the fourth shard. Major turned to his computer.

  The IP address belonged to Cacibajagua Island Diving Adventures. A few more clicks of the mouse, and he was looking at the company’s website. “Dive with us!” it read. “Diving adventures for everyone from the beginning snorkeller to the certified cave diver. Dive lessons from beginner to advanced. Don’t want to dive? Enjoy a scenic cave tour in our state-of-the-art submarine!”

  Hmm, Major thought. He clicked the “About Us” link.

  “Cacibajagua is a Taino word which, in Taino mythology, refers to the cave where life began,” he read. “Our company was founded by the world-renowned cave diver Audron Rounsavall, who discovered on this tiny island one of the world’s most beautiful underwater caves, a unique cavern below sea level and filled with seawater, but also accessible from inland, where fresh water flows into it, tumbling down as a spectacular cascade through the cave ceiling into a beautiful saltwater pool. Audron was so taken with the cave and with the island that he bought it and started Cacibajagua Island Diving Adventures, so people from all over the world can enjoy the cave and the other outstanding diving opportunities on this and nearby islands and reefs. Call us today and arrange for your unforgettable island diving adventure!”

  Major’s heart speeded. The fourth shard, he thought. It’s in that cave. I’d bet my magic on it.

  And it was surrounded by salt water. Which meant Ariane Forsythe didn’t know where it was – couldn’t know, unless someone brought it to the surface. This time, he’d have it first, and keep it. This time, Ariane and Wally couldn’t interfere.

  With two shards in his possession, and with Felicia, as much heir to Arthur as Wally, to help him draw on their power, he would find the final piece of the sword, the hilt, and claim it for his own. He rubbed the ruby stud in his earlobe. Today, Excalibur. Tomorrow, the world, he thought. He chuckled at his own pretentiousness, but added anyway, out loud, “And then...Faerie.”

  He got up and headed to the media room to let Felicia know she was about to get an unexpected Caribbean vacation. As he crossed the living room, the soundtrack of the movie she was watching swelled to a thunderous, triumphant climax.

  The noise no longer bothered him. In fact, it suited his mood perfectly.

  Chapter Four

  A Kiss on the Cheek

  Ariane waited in the nebulous nothingness of the strange watery realm into which she dissolved when she travelled using the Lady’s power. She knew Wally was with her; she always interpreted the sensation as him holding her hand, as he had been when they’d left Gravenhurst, but of course they didn’t really have hands in any material sense at the moment. As far as she knew.

  One thing that always felt just as solid and sharp as ever was the shard of Excalibur she carried. Since she had two to Major’s one, she could draw on the power of this one. Through it, she could also sense the
second shard in her possession, though it was currently tucked away under the mattress of her bed at Barringer Farm. She couldn’t call on the power of both shards, not unless Wally was holding them. Somehow, his connection to King Arthur also gave him a connection to the sword, through which it transmitted even more of its power.

  She didn’t need any of the shard’s power for this little jaunt halfway across the country using waterways and water systems. But that sharp, constant presence protected her in another way. Whenever she used the Lady’s power, she felt the water’s distant and insistent call: to let herself dissolve, to release the spark that made her an individual and join the mindless flow of water around the world. She had to guard against that dangerous, insidious urge every time. The shard helped. It had no intention of letting itself vanish into liquid darkness. Its steely determination – literally steely – helped her hang on to herself – and to Wally.

  Now, with the finer control of her powers that had been developing over the past few weeks, she held the two of them in limbo, waiting for the pool below the waterslides at the Medicine Hat Lodge to clear. The moment it did so, she brought them into it, the surge from their arrival masked by the ordinary rush and roil of water.

  They made their way to the side of the pool, tossed out their backpacks – Ariane ordering them dry in the same instant – and then climbed, still sopping wet, out onto the brown tiles of the poolside, just as a small boy came squealing off the end of one of the slides and splashed into the water behind them.

  They hurried away from the pool. In one of the many plastic chairs around the edges of the big open room, close to the almost-empty leisure pool and beneath an entirely superfluous beach umbrella, sat Emma, reading a book, two fluffy white towels on the table beside her. She looked up at them, marking her place with her finger, as they plodded wetly over to her and grabbed a towel apiece.

  “You took longer than I expected,” she said quietly. “I was beginning to worry.”

  “Rex Major,” Ariane said. She rubbed her hair vigorously. She would have preferred to just wish herself dry – she never used a towel any more when she showered – but for the sake of appearances she supposed she could put up with this more primitive method for the moment. “He twigged to the fact Wally was there. We barely got away.” She didn’t mention the chloroform or the fact Wally had clobbered Emeka with a tree branch.

  Emma looked alarmed. “Does he know where you’re hiding out?”

  “I don’t see how he can,” Wally said. “Even our pool search was done a long way from the farm.” He sounded tired and a little shaky, and Ariane, looking at him in the light, suddenly realized how pale his face looked. Every freckle on it – and there were quite a lot, even though the summer’s sun was now barely a memory – stood out like a brown dot on white paper.

  “Is it still storming?” Ariane said. She looked up at the windows that surrounded the pool courtyard just below the high ceiling, but could see only darkness.

  “It is,” Emma said. “Worse than ever. We’re stuck here overnight.” She gave Wally a long hard look. “You look terrible. What exactly happened?”

  “Later,” Ariane said hastily. “Wally needs something to eat. So do I. And sleep.”

  “I’m all right,” Wally said, but he didn’t look all right. And then he blinked. “I almost forgot,” he breathed. “With everything else that happened... Ariane, I’ve got a lead.”

  “A lead?” For a minute Ariane didn’t understand what he was talking about, then she gasped. “Mom?”

  Wally nodded. “Just before Emeka showed up in the library. I found a couple of photos. A face, out of focus, in the background, but the software thinks it’s her, and so do I.”

  “Out of focus, in the background, where?” Ariane’s heart pounded, raced in a way it hadn’t even when she was running from Rex Major’s men. “Wally, where?”

  “Horseshoe Bay, B.C.,” Wally said. “Where the ferries leave for Vancouver Island. She was there two weeks ago, anyway.”

  “We have to go find her!” Ariane looked back at the pool, already thinking about plunging back into it, heading west, finding Mom...

  Mom, who had shown up wet and disoriented on the doorstep after her walk around the lake two years ago, and ended up in the psych ward at the Regina General Hospital. Mom, who had pretended not to know her daughter when Ariane had gone to visit her. Mom, who had somehow escaped the hospital and disappeared, leaving Ariane to the care of a series of foster parents until Aunt Phyllis had recovered from her cancer treatments enough to look after her...

  Someone grabbed her arm. She felt a surge of anger at the touch and the water in the leisure pool swirled and gurgled, eliciting sharp cries from the small children there. “Ariane!”

  It was Emma. Ariane came back to herself and forced her anger down. The sword was fuelling it; her mother had rejected the quest to reforge Excalibur, and the sword knew it – and resented it.

  I control the sword, Ariane told herself. It doesn’t control me. The water subsided. Confused chatter erupted from the parents. Ariane ignored it, staring into Emma’s warm brown eyes.

  “You can’t go off half-cocked,” Emma said softly. “You have to plan.” She glanced at Wally. “And look at Wally. He can’t go anywhere tonight anyway. We’ll eat, we’ll talk, we’ll decide what to do, we’ll sleep on it.”

  “But you will let us go,” Ariane said. She supposed it should have been a question, but it came out as a flat statement. No one was going to stop her from going to look for her mother. No one.

  “Of course I will,” Emma said. Then she smiled a little. “As if I could stop you.” She closed her book with a snap and stood up. “Let’s go to our rooms. You need to get dressed. Then food.”

  Ariane slung her backpack over her shoulder, Wally took his, and together they followed Emma out of the pool room. It wasn’t a long walk: Emma had gotten them two rooms on the main floor – apparently the Lodge wasn’t very full at the moment. Emma gave Wally his key, and he went into his room while Ariane went into hers and Emma’s to change back into her clothes. Once Wally emerged from his room, dressed in his normal geek-culture clothes and not quite as pale as he had been, they all went down the hall to the lobby and then into the hotel’s buffet restaurant. Ariane felt ravenous, as she usually did after using her powers, and filled her plate to overflowing, although she found the brown/ochre/orange colour scheme of the dining room unappetizing. Another side effect of the Lady’s powers, she suspected. Red used to be her favorite colour. Now she gravitated toward blues and greens.

  Wally, though usually just as big an eater as the stereotypical growing teenage boy was supposed to be – and he was growing; at least five centimetres since the adventure had begun – took very little, almost as little as Emma, who ate like the proverbial bird.

  They didn’t talk much while they ate. With several other people in the restaurant, discretion was in order. They returned to Wally’s room once they were done. Since it had only a single bed, there was space in it for a big armchair, a sofa and a coffee table, whereas Emma’s and Ariane’s room had only a couple of chairs nestled up to a small round table by the window.

  Emma and Wally sat on the couch, while Ariane plopped into the chair. “I phoned Phyllis and told her we’d be spending the night, and that Wally made it back safely,” Emma said. “I didn’t tell her about Rex Major’s men almost nabbing you in Gravenhurst. No reason to worry her when she’s all alone except for the dog and cats.”

  “Did you tell her Wally spotted Mom?” Ariane said.

  Emma shook her head. “No. And I won’t until I know more.” She looked at Wally. “So tell me more. What did you find, and how did you find it?”

  <•>

  Wally had never felt more tired in his life. Tired, and strangely shaken. He’d taken down both of Rex Major’s trained bodyguards with nothing more than a stick. He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing. He hadn’t had to think about it. The moves had come naturally to hi
m, as though he had practised them all his life.

  Sure, he’d taken a high-school fencing course, but he’d never been all that good at it – not until the first shard of Excalibur had been found. Then suddenly Natasha Mueller, his fencing coach, had been all prepared to send him off to the Chinook Open tournament in Swift Current. Instead, he’d fallen on some ice and knocked himself out, so that had been the end of that. Plus then there had come the trip to France and his betrayal of Ariane, then the move to Toronto with Rex Major, followed by his escape from Rex Major and the rescue of Aunt Phyllis in Prince Albert and the recovery of the second shard in New Zealand and the flight to Cypress Hills, and now the series of trips to libraries in towns with swimming pools.

  Suffice it to say, he hadn’t exactly been practising.

  Yet he had no doubt that if he were given a sword right now, he could compete with the best fencers in the world. He frowned. Except, of course, he’d be disqualified. You couldn’t duck under someone’s guard and clobber them from behind in competitive fencing, as he had done with Emeka. Or, for that matter, hit them below the belt as he had the first guy. In retrospect, he cringed a little in sympathy. But he’d felt no sympathy when he’d attacked: nothing but righteous anger and determination to rescue Ariane.

  The damsel in distress, he thought, looking at her now. Although, with the powers of the Lady of the Lake at her command, she was about as far from a shrinking-violet, days-of-yore maiden as you could get.

  That hadn’t changed how he’d felt, though, when he’d gone at Rex Major’s two henchmen.

  He remembered the solid thud when his branch had hit the back of Emeka’s head, the way the impact had shivered up the wood into his hands. He could still feel it. He remembered the blood. It was like the business with the security guard outside Rex Major’s condo all over again. That guy he’d hit with a poker. He’d thought he might have killed him. Rex Major had assured him he hadn’t. He hoped he hadn’t killed Emeka. He didn’t want to kill anyone. But with the sword now singing in his blood as well as in Ariane’s, though in a different way, he was afraid sometime he would act without thinking, and...