Sacrifices

by Mercedes Lackey

“Mr. Spears, you can’t blame yourself for any of this. Mr. Green’s death was a terrible accident, but that was all it was—an accident,” Detective Mitchell said. She waited a moment, but if she was expecting a reply from Loch, it didn’t come. Detective Mitchell shook her head and walked quickly after her partner.

  * * *

  Spirit was on her feet before she thought. As she neared Burke and Loch, she could hear what Loch was saying. “—I’m fine. If you want to be a little friend to all the world, there are a number of more suitable—” He broke off as he saw Spirit. “Is there any possibility you’ll all go away?”

  “Look, I have to talk to all of you,” Muirin said. “It’s important, and it can’t wait.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not really in any mood to hear about your new friends and your new clothes right now,” Loch snapped waspishly.

  Burke looked irritated, obviously thinking Muirin was just trying to make herself the center of attention at the worst possible time. Even Addie—Spirit glanced toward her—looked long-suffering.

  Muirin looked at all of them and her face lost all expression. “Fine. See you guys around,” she said coldly. She turned to walk away.

  For an instant, Spirit wondered if they should just let her go. Was Muirin taking advantage of Loch’s grief and misery to make another pitch for the Shadow Knights? But … no. If that were the case, she wouldn’t have asked to talk to all of them. And didn’t Ms. Groves say the whole place is full of “don’t think” spells? This is the first time Muirin’s asked for a meeting since before we defeated the Wild Hunt.

  “I think we should listen to her,” Spirit said quickly. She turned and ran after Muirin.

  “Wait, Murr!” she said, catching up to Muirin. “You’re right. If you say it’s important, I believe you.”

  “Why should I bother?” Muirin said. Her voice was harsh, but her expression was lost and unhappy.

  “Because we’re friends,” Spirit said. “Because we believe each other. Because we believe in each other.” That’s what faith is, Spirit realized in surprise. And if we don’t have faith in each other, who will? “If we don’t all stick together, what’s going to happen to us?”

  To her relief, Muirin let her turn her around and walk them both back to the others. “This is a good time, really. Nobody’s going to think much about the five of us being together right now,” Spirit added.

  “Right,” Muirin sniped. “We can go off and practice our Care Bear Stares and that’ll give them time to figure out how they’re going to off you next time. Because if you can’t see the way this was supposed to play out today was with you dead and Loch killing himself—or supposedly killing himself—in remorse, you’re even stupider than most people from Indiana.”

  “Hey,” Burke said, hurt.

  “Okay, so was that it? Are we done now, Muirin?” Addie asked coldly.

  Muirin gave her a sneering look that didn’t go past her lips. Behind the sneer, she was terrified. Spirit saw the fear in her eyes. “We haven’t even started yet. Hope your fancy company makes a lot of Androstenediol. You’ll get even richer. Come on.”

  She stalked off, clearly expecting them to follow.

  “Androstenediol?” Burke said blankly. “What’s that treat?”

  “Radiation poisoning,” Addie answered.

  * * *

  It was only the fact that whatever had happened on the Skeet Range had knocked Breakthrough for a loop that let the five of them slip away from their watchers so easily. Muirin led them to the basement level under the classroom wing. It was a part of the school Spirit had been in only rarely, because it held the soundproofed magic practice rooms where you practiced your magic if you happened to have some. If one of the rooms was occupied, the light over the door was red. Today none of the lights was lit.

  “Come on,” Muirin said, leading them to the room at the end. When they were all inside, Muirin picked up a heavy wooden bar and slid it through the braces on the door.

  “I didn’t think there was a room in the entire school you could lock,” Spirit said in surprise.

  “This is the practice room for Jaunting and Apportation,” Muirin said. “You don’t want to be able to open the door accidentally.”

  Spirit looked around curiously. There was no furniture. The floor was covered with heavy rubber matting, and the walls … looked as if people had been throwing things at them. Heavy things. Hard. A lot.

  She leaned against the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor. Burke lowered himself to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. Addie and Loch stood.

  “As you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time with our new Breakthrough overlords,” Muirin said. “But what you don’t know is that Teddy Rider and Anastus Ovcharenko don’t get along at all. I’ve been using that. I flirt with Teddy, steam starts coming out of Anastus’s ears.”

  As she talked, Muirin paced back and forth, practically bouncing. Her tone of voice was chirpy and upbeat, as if this was all a big joke, but looking at her, Spirit knew she had been right about what had been behind that sneer. Muirin wasn’t just unhappy.

  Muirin was terrified, too afraid to stand still.

  “I don’t care—” Addie began.

  “Wait!” Spirit said quickly. “Addie, you owe it to Muirin to listen. You know you do.”

  Addie nodded shortly, her black hair swinging forward over her face to hide her set expression.

  “And I wouldn’t bother to tell you all this—since you’re so fabulously interested in my life and all that—except for the fact you’d probably want to know how I ended up all on my own in The Fortress.”

  “‘Alone’ is the part I have trouble with,” Loch said.

  “I love you too,” Muirin shot back. “But listen you guys: Mark and everyone keeps pretending there’s a lot of work still to do on The Fortress. They’re lying. It’s almost finished. And it really is a fortress—it’s set up for people to live in there, at least for months—maybe years. And I know why. You remember how none of us could figure out what Mordred and the Shadow Knights wanted?”

  “Yes,” Spirit said quickly, before anyone else could speak. “Because nothing they’ve been doing has seemed to make any sense.”

  Muirin gave her a grateful look.

  “Get to the point,” Loch snapped wearily.

  “They’re going to start a war,” Muirin says. “A big war. Missiles, bombs. Like their game, for god’s sake: Final Battle: The Rise of the Black Dragon!” She plucked a copy of the advance CD out of her jacket and waved it.

  “Oh, Muirin. You’re getting this out of a computer game?” Addie said reproachfully.

  “No!” Muirin said. “They put it in their game—you’ve met Mark, do you really think he wouldn’t take the chance to gloat?—but they’re working to make the game scenario really happen! Breakthrough is hacking its way into the computers that launch the missiles. There are missile silos all over this part of the state, and some of them still have missiles in them. And before you ask, Smart Boy,” she said to Burke, “they’re going to hack the software so they can’t be called back or destroyed in flight.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Addie said. But she didn’t sound as convinced as she had a moment before.

  “Okay,” Muirin answered, “you come up with a good reason for there to be stacks of Department of Defense documents all over Hacker Heaven and the whole place set up like the Pentagon. Once they crack the encryption, it’s all over.”

  “It can’t be,” Burke said, sounding sick. “You must be wrong, Murr. You—”

  “No,” Spirit said quickly. “Muirin’s right. We wanted to know what Mordred wants, and this is it. Muirin, what’s that saying you’re always quoting? About technology and magic?”

  “‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’” Muirin said. “Arthur C. Clarke.”

  “So … any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology, too,” Spirit said. “Burke, you’ve al
ways said if the Outside World knew about Oakhurst and Magic, they’d grab everyone they could and make them be soldiers for them, and we wouldn’t have much choice. Because there’s a lot of Outside World, and it’s full of technology, and—if we’re the grand total of all the Magicians in the world, we’re outnumbered.”

  “Right,” Burke answered cautiously. “The side with the most guys usually wins. Basic tactics.”

  “But Mordred’s been stuck in a tree since the fall of Camelot. He doesn’t care about the modern world, and—like you said, Muirin—he can’t possibly declare himself King of Earth. Not the way it is now. But if he’s the only one with real power…”

  “Then Magic replaces Technology, and Mordred and the Shadow Knights are the only ones with Magic,” Loch said, sounding horrified. “And they rule … everything.”

  The silence that followed Loch’s words was heavy with fear—and belief. Burke stretched out his free arm, and Muirin stumbled toward him gratefully. She sat down beside him and he wrapped his arm around her, hugging her.

  Loch crossed the room and sat down with his back to the door. His face looked bruised, and he rubbed his eyes. “They can do it,” he whispered, as if to himself. “A Kenning Mage, a good one, one that’s a computer expert too, that’s all they need. What he can’t hack, he can magic his way into, and what magic can’t do, hacking can. Add a little luck, and they’re in.”

  “Can’t we do something?” Addie asked, shaking her head desperately. “It’s a construction site—there has to be dynamite around. If you blow up their computers…”

  “No can do,” Muirin said bleakly. “Mark tore a strip off Teddy for leaving me alone in Hacker Heaven. I don’t think I’m getting back in there any time soon. With or without explosives.”

  “We have to tell Dr. Ambrosius,” Burke said.

  “No!” Spirit burst out. She closed her eyes, but even so, she could feel the others all stare at her. She finally said it. Said what she had been thinking all this time, and hadn’t said aloud, because she knew the others had all been pinning their hopes on the idea that at least Dr. A could wake up and save them all. “I mean, what if he isn’t Merlin? Or if he can’t help? We need—”

  “You need to tell us why you think he isn’t, Spirit,” Burke said slowly. “You were there. You saw that picture. It was Doctor A.”

  “Yes it was,” Spirit said. “And so we know he was there the night Mordred got out of the tree.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “And we know Wolfman escaped, and he and Doctor A—Kenny Hawking—were friends, and so we assumed it was Merlin who helped Wolfman escape, because Kenny Hawking was a Reincarnate who got Awakened and realized who he was. But … that doesn’t make sense. Wolfman was crazy—at least when we talked to him he was—so why wouldn’t his friend have done more for him? And Wolfman was murdered after we talked to him.”

  “You didn’t tell us that!” Addie exclaimed.

  “Brenda was talking about it on Wednesday when we showed up for the Committee meeting,” Spirit said. “Then the Shadow Knights attacked the library, and … But that’s the point! If Kenny is Doctor Ambrosius, and Doctor A is Merlin … he isn’t in control of anything, because why would he let the Shadow Knights kill Wolfman if he was? So either he’s not Merlin—or he is, and he’s being completely controlled, and has been since right after Mordred got out of the tree.”

  “Okay, so maybe Doctor Ambrosius isn’t Merlin,” Addie said slowly. “But we don’t know—unless you can tell me how we spy on what’s probably the most powerful magician in the school.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Muirin said slowly. “But you aren’t going to like it.”

  * * *

  The next day was Sunday, and that meant Sunday Service. With everything else going on, and so many classes being dropped, you’d think it would be one of the first things Oakhurst would ditch, but no. Spirit had never liked the chapel or its bland nondenominational decor—and services—but now the stained glass windows with their depictions of knights in armor all seemed horribly meaningful instead of just weird.

  She’d spent all night reading Ms. Groves’s book, as much to blot out what Muirin had told all of them as in hopes somewhere in it there would be a solution to their problems. All she’d found was confusion piled on confusion. All the stories contradicted each other—in some, Arthur’s court was in France. In some, he went to war with the Roman Emperor. In some he was married to someone who wasn’t Guinevere. And less than half the stories in the book were about Arthur and Camelot anyway. Galahad and Percival and Gwalchmai and Gareth—her brain was stuffed with weird names and weirder stories until she couldn’t even think.

  It’s hard to believe the Dance is next Friday, Spirit thought numbly. And oh yeah, Mordred’s going to bomb the world back to the Stone Age. There was one more meeting of the Dance Committee before the Dance itself. Of course, a few deaths were no reason for Oakhurst to cancel an event, but she hadn’t heard about Radial pulling out either.

  She sat up straighter and did her best to pay attention to the service. It had actually included a memorial to Beckett Green, for a wonder—but then, he hadn’t just vanished like most of their teachers did. He’d been murdered—by Anastus Ovcharenko, or whoever had forced Loch to point the shotgun at her. But if Mr. Green had been memorialized (if that was even a word), this sure wasn’t a memorial service.

  Usually Doctor Ambrosius picked two or three holy books to read to them out of—by now she was pretty familiar with the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, and the Tanakh as well as with a number of lesser-known scriptures. He always had a way of doing it that seemed to say all religions shared an underlying spiritual truth—and those “truths” were all equally false. Spirit usually found it more boring than anything else, but today Doctor A was sticking with the Bible. The Book of Revelations, to be exact. And it wasn’t at all hard to pick up the subtext. And Lo! For there will be a Final Battle of Good and of Evil and maybe a few other things too, and in that battle the Special Kids will be saved and the Bad Kids will be cast into a burning lake of fiery fire to experience permanent fatal death. Great. Way to be subtle, Evil Overlord.

  I should have told everyone about QUERCUS when I had the chance, she thought. Now it was much too late. They were all on edge. If the others found out she’d been keeping a secret—a big secret—from them for months …

  She wasn’t sure what would happen.

  At least she’d managed to convince them to try to find out more about Doctor Ambrosius without having to flat-out say why she distrusted him so much. She glanced over at Dylan. Dylan caught her looking and smirked at her. Spirit wasn’t sure whether to glare, pretend she hadn’t noticed, or just close her eyes and pretend she wasn’t here at all. She wasn’t sure what Muirin had told Dylan to convince him to help, but she’d gotten him to agree.

  Loch had a digital recorder. It wasn’t even contraband; he used it to make notes for studying. It could record for about a day before it ran out of charge, and it was about the size of a cell phone. Dylan knew the layout in Doctor A’s office as well as any of the rest of them did: he’d Jaunted Loch’s recorder to the top of the bookshelf behind Dr. Ambrosius’s desk today before the service, and he’d retrieve it the same way tomorrow. And Spirit hoped it would have something definite on it. Because if it didn’t, then Burke was going to go to Doctor Ambrosius, and Spirit couldn’t come up with a really good reason not to, even if she was desperate enough to reveal QUERCUS. I can just see how that would go: “Oh hey, my invisible friend who appeared mysteriously says you shouldn’t trust Doctor Ambrosius. And I’ve been keeping him a secret because I don’t trust you.” Yeah, how about not?

  She stifled a yawn.

  * * *

  Ms. Smith and Ms. Corby were standing on either side of the doorway as everyone filed out. Spirit barely had time to register that they were pulling kids aside when Ms. Corby summoned her. She found herself standing beside Zoey, Kylee, and Maddie. On the other side were Chris and (Spirit’s hear
t sank) Dylan. A moment later, Burke and Loch joined them.

  “What’s this all about?” Spirit whispered to Maddie.

  “You’ve been chosen to attend afternoon tea, Miss White,” Ms. Corby said without turning around.

  Back when Oakhurst was at least pretending to be a real school where the student body was going to live to grow up, one of the things on the curriculum was “Genteel Deportment,” which was what the formal dances and the formal dinners and the afternoon teas were for. Afternoon teas were held by Doctor Ambrosius every Sunday for the faculty and four boys and four girls chosen at random. Spirit had just assumed the teas had been discontinued, since she’d been picked during her first month at Oakhurst, and you couldn’t be picked again until everyone else had been picked once.

  Surprise.

  Then again, how many of us are left? Maybe my number just came up again.

  Yeah, right.

  * * *

  Afternoon tea was even more grueling this time than it had been the first time, and even getting out of her new Sunday afternoon classes couldn’t make it any better. She was supposed to be doing two hours of Horsemanship (held in the paddock near the stables for safety) followed by her “Fencing” Class (they hadn’t worked out with anything as light as a foil in weeks). If they were all being prepared to survive in some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, their bizarre curriculum finally made sense. Lucky us, to be the Oakhurst class here when Breakthrough decides to carry out its evil plan. I bet all Mark and Teddy Rider and Madison Lane had to take was French and Calculus.

  She kept her face very still as a sudden thought struck her.

  What made her think any of them had actually gone to Oakhurst at all? She had only their word for it they were alums. No one had bothered going through the files down in the secret basement to verify that.

  But they weren’t old enough to have been Hellriders …

  … were they?

  No.

  That had been forty years ago. Wolfman had been, well, Doc A’s age. It would have had to have been Mark and Teddy’s father who’d been one of the Hellriders. But that would mean they weren’t orphans.