by Funaro, Greg
“One at a time, Grubb,” Kiyoko said with a laugh. “I should think the answer to your first question is obvious, for just as the prince’s armor saved him from his fall, so too did it save me from mine. I made sure to land on top of him, you see. Had it been the other way around…”
Kiyoko made a splatting sound with her hands and I swallowed hard. Father had been convinced all along that Prince Nightshade had survived his fall from the sky, but hearing it firsthand from the shinobi’s mouth somehow made it all the more terrifying.
“As for my escape,” she went on, “I was thrown free when we hit the ground and slipped away into the forest. Soon afterward I came upon the wounded Thunderbird.”
My mind flashed with images of our last battle with the prince—the fiery tip of his whip striking Gwendolyn, the sight of her and the giant bird on which she’d been riding spiraling down toward the forest below. Cleona had managed to save the Yellow Fairy, but her poor Thunderbird…
“I nursed her back to health with some herbs I found in the forest,” Kiyoko said, “but by the time we arrived at the Thunderbirds’ lair her flock was gone—fled to another location, we assumed, to escape the prince. And so, in return for saving her life, the Thunderbird agreed to help me find you.”
“Cor blimey! You mean you followed us all the way from the Americas?”
“It seems Thunderbirds are quite skilled at tracking fairy dust, and so we followed the trail of Alistair Grim’s Odditorium clear across the ocean to England. We caught up with you this morning on the coast, but unfortunately someone else had caught up with you too.”
Kiyoko slipped out a knobby, twisted stick from under the sleeve of her cloak. I recognized it immediately. It was the magic wand that belonged to—
“Mad Malmuirie!” I cried.
“So that was her name,” Kiyoko said. “It seems Alistair Grim has made more enemies than just Prince Nightshade over the years.”
“But how—? What—?” I spluttered.
“Let’s just say this Mad Malmuirie was not pleased to learn that I was your friend,” Kiyoko said. “We fought long and hard, and I managed to steal her wand, but she flew away on her broom before I had time to finish her.”
“And Mr. Smears?” I asked. “Was he with her too?”
“I met no Mr. Smears. The witch was alone when we fought.”
My mind was doing somersaults now. What had become of Mr. Smears? Did Mad Malmuirie kill him after they freed themselves from Moral’s egg goo? And furthermore, how had Kiyoko made her way to Avalon?
“But now for the strangest part of my tale,” she said. “The Thunderbird and I caught up with you again just as you were about to embark on your undersea voyage. Of course, I did not know that at the time, and when she dropped me off on the Odditorium’s roof, I was suddenly pinned down under a bubble of fairy dust.”
“Cor, you mean you traveled with us here underwater, miss?”
“That I did. And it wasn’t so bad. Difficult to move, yes, but I had plenty of air. However, all that changed when the sea serpent attacked. Luckily for me I was in a position to avoid being crushed. And luckily for you, I managed to kill the beast with this.” She held up Mad Malmuirie’s wand.
“So it was you!” I cried. “You saved us from the sea serpent!”
“Quite by accident, I’m afraid,” Kiyoko said, examining the wand. “As I had just avoided becoming a victim of Mad Malmuirie myself, I pierced the dust bubble with her magic wand and shot a lightning bolt straight into the serpent’s head. How I did this I do not know. But a dangerous weapon this is, and much better suited for Alistair Grim’s hands than mine.”
Kiyoko slipped the magic wand into the sleeve of her cloak.
“He will be happy to have it, miss,” I said. “And he’ll also be happy to learn that you’re alive. But why didn’t you tell us you were here? Why didn’t you come down from the roof after the levitation shield was turned off?”
“I did,” she said. “However, once I overheard Alistair Grim and the rest of you talking about Excalibur and the queen’s prophecy, I thought it best to keep my presence a secret in case you should need my assistance later on.”
“You mean you were actually inside the Odditorium? You got past the samurai?”
Kiyoko smiled slyly. “The shinobi have been outwitting samurai for centuries. And so I decided to look for Excalibur myself, for if Alistair Grim was unaware of my presence, the queen could not hold it against him should I be discovered. I sneaked out of the Odditorium at the festival, and have been searching for the sword ever since.”
I was about to ask her how she made it past the Royal Guard and into the castle without being seen, but immediately thought better of it. Kiyoko was a shinobi, after all, and Father told me that the shinobi were also called “shadow warriors.”
“I hate to rain on such a lovely reunion,” said the Gallownog, “but I suggest we resume our search for Excalibur before we’re discovered.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Kiyoko said. “I’ve combed every inch of this castle and can find no sign of Excalibur anywhere. The sword is not here.”
“Well isn’t that just peachy,” Mack grumbled, and then one of the guards began to snore. Dalach quickly bound me with his shackles, and in a flash I became a spirit again.
“Pay them no mind,” Kiyoko said. “The sleeping powder will keep the guards out for hours. Same for the priestess from whom I stole this disguise.”
“Priestess?” Dalach asked.
“I have learned there is a temple located somewhere beyond the castle. What purpose it serves, I do not know, but I was on my way there when I ran into you.”
“A temple,” Dalach said. “I should think that as good a place as any to look for Excalibur. How are we doing on time?”
“We’ve been gone exactly forty-five minutes,” Mack replied proudly.
Kiyoko smiled. “Someone has gotten himself repaired, it appears.”
“Speaking of appearances, lassie, just wait till ya get a gander at me off these shackles. It’s not just me case what’s red these days.” Mack winked and spun his hands.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s room for a shinobi on these shackles?”
Dalach shook his head. “Not unless she can hook herself beside our jabbering Scotsman here.”
“You needn’t worry, Grubb,” Kiyoko said. “There are more ways than one to become invisible.”
Kiyoko took off her cloak, revealing the signature black garb of the shadow warrior underneath—a short, hooded robe cinched at the waist, a tight pair of trousers and boots, and a pair of open-fingered gloves. She slipped a stocking over her head and tied off her hood under her chin. She was now covered from head to toe in black, save for a narrow eye slit in her stocking.
My heart swelled with joy. How wonderful it was to see her like this again—and with Ikari on her back, no less!
“Shall we?” she said, eyes smiling. Lorcan Dalach blinked, and the four of us stole from the room invisible—Mack, the Gallownog, and me as spirits, and Kiyoko once again as her shinobi self.
As Kiyoko led us through a labyrinth of dim, torchlit passageways, it quickly became apparent why she was called a shadow warrior. At times she blended in so seamlessly with the flickering darkness that I almost lost sight of her altogether, while at other times she hid in doorways and even crawled across the ceiling to avoid the guards. Soon, however, we found ourselves outside, in the midst of a lush garden surrounded by high walls. Birds twittered and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves, but the place was deserted.
Kiyoko concealed herself behind a row of hedges and pointed to a domed structure with pillars at the far end of the garden. “That must be the temple,” she said. “Go now and I’ll meet you there.”
Invisible as we were, the Gallownog, Mack, and I flew straight for it, while Kiyoko darted stealthily behind shrubs and clumps of trees until she joined us again behind a pillar outside the temple door. Dalach
poked his head in first, and upon finding the temple empty, whispered for us to follow him.
The inside was circular and decorated in a mosaic of colored tiles. A round, glowing pool of water took up most of the floor, its light reflecting against the walls in shimmering ripples of radiant blue. Lorcan Dalach blinked us visible again and we moved to the water’s edge. My heart sank. There was no sign of Excalibur anywhere.
“Well, that was a colossal waste of time,” Mack said. “Of which, might I remind ya, there is less than one hour left.”
“Perhaps I missed something back in the castle,” Kiyoko said. “What say you, Gallownog? Shall we split up to cover more ground?”
Dalach ignored her and led us to the wall, whereupon I discovered that the tiles formed elaborate pictures that ran around the entire chamber in a series of separate panels. The panel that had caught the Gallownog’s attention was a massive battle scene of knights in shining armor, but to the left of it I noticed a smaller scene depicting a knight sitting in a boat on a lake. Nearby, a maiden with flowing red hair swam underwater while thrusting a sword up through the surface. Excalibur, I knew at once—which meant that the knight in the boat was King Arthur and the woman in the water was the Lady of the Lake.
“I know this writing,” Dalach said. He traced his finger over a tiled scroll at the base of the battle scene. From what I could tell, each scene had something similar—a scroll or a banner that bore its title in strange symbols that I did not understand. “‘The Rise of Camelot,’” Dalach read.
“Camelot, the kingdom of King Arthur,” Kiyoko said, and the Gallownog drifted to the next scene. It was King Arthur again—I could tell by his armor—but this time he was on a horse galloping away from the red-haired maiden, who knelt with a crazed expression, as if pleading with him to return.
“‘The Princess’s Gift Denied,’” Dalach read from the title scroll. He drifted over to the adjoining panel—another battle scene, this one depicting the fall of Camelot, Dalach informed us—but my eyes remained fixed on the red-haired maiden. I was certain I’d seen her before.
Then it hit me.
I gasped. “Mad Malmuirie!” The others whirled to face me.
Kiyoko inspected the red-haired maiden more closely. “She does bear a striking resemblance to the witch I fought.”
“A coincidence,” scoffed Dalach. “That picture depicts King Arthur refusing a gift from the Lady of the Lake. What this gift is I cannot say, but surely that maiden cannot be Mad Malmuirie. That would make her over a thousand years old, not to mention an Avalonian—and not just any Avalonian, but the Lady of the Lake herself.”
Embarrassed, I dropped my eyes to my shoes. I hadn’t meant to suggest that the Lady of the Lake and Mad Malmuirie were the same person. That was just plain silly, now, wasn’t it? But still…
Kiyoko placed a sympathetic hand upon my shoulder, and then Lorcan Dalach led us to the next panel. The picture was of a dark forest and a starry sky, and amidst the trees stood a hooded woman dressed in black. She appeared to be handing something to a yellow fairy who was hovering nearby—a swaddled child, I realized, who looked like a little grub worm.
My mouth gaped and my eyes grew wide.
“The title has crumbled away,” Dalach said, but I didn’t need the Gallownog to tell me what it might’ve been. After all, it was the Yellow Fairy herself who had told me how I came to her. Which meant that the woman on the wall was my mother and the little grub child me!
That’s impossible, I wanted to say, but the words stuck in my throat. None of the others, not even Mack, had any idea what it all meant. How could they? None of them were there that day when Gwendolyn told me the story of my birth. And so I just stood there, frozen in disbelief, until the Gallownog dragged me over to the next panel.
The four of us gasped.
There was no question as to what this scene represented, for there on the wall was the Odditorium itself. And not just the Odditorium, but the entire festival from which we’d just come—the knights and maidens, the horses and dragons, Queen Nimue and her sisters—all of it spread out before me exactly as I remembered it. And there was every one of us from the Odditorium who had been there too. Our likenesses were uncanny—except for Mack, who for some reason hovered in the sky like a giant red sundial.
“Well, at least they got me new color right,” Mack said.
“What does it say?” Kiyoko asked.
“‘The Return of the Lost Princess,’” Dalach read, and upon closer inspection, I noticed someone on the dais who had not been there at the festival. It was the red-haired maiden from the earlier panels, only now she was wearing a crown and appeared much happier.
“The festival,” said the Gallownog. “It was a welcome-home celebration. And for a princess, no less.”
“A princess that resembles Mad Malmuirie,” Kiyoko said, holding my gaze, and then she turned to Dalach. “What if Grubb is right?” she asked. “What if Mad Malmuirie really is the red-haired princess on this wall?”
“Mad Malmuirie, a princess?” Mack cried in disbelief. “Impossible!”
I expected Lorcan Dalach to agree with him, but instead he just stood there, tracing his fingers over the tiles that made up the lost princess’s face. “I too find it puzzling,” he said finally. “And yet my eyes tell me the boy may be right.”
“So you think the woman on the wall is Mad Malmuirie?”
“I cannot tell for certain, but clearly there is much more to the story of King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake than any of us is aware.”
“A love affair?” Kiyoko asked, eyeing the scene of THE PRINCESS’S GIFT DENIED.
“Again, I cannot tell,” said Dalach. “But if Mad Malmuirie is both the legendary Lady of the Lake and this lost princess, then something must have happened that drove her away from Avalon all those years ago.”
“And the festival should have marked her return,” Kiyoko said. “But for some reason, she wasn’t there.”
My head was swimming, and a heavy silence fell over us as the implications of the writing on the wall came clear. Was Mad Malmuirie really the Lady of the Lake, the Avalonian princess who bestowed Excalibur upon King Arthur? And after being gone for over a thousand years, was she supposed to return to Avalon today?
“But how can Mad Malmuirie be from Avalon?” Mack cried suddenly. “I seen her up close many times, and I can tell ya she hasn’t any gills!”
The Gallownog shrugged. “I myself would not have thought such a thing possible until now. But the faces on this wall, the likenesses of you and the others, prove it cannot be coincidence.” Dalach stared at the lost princess for a moment longer, and then we were moving again. Kiyoko nodded at me as if to say, Well done, but I was too disturbed by everything I’d seen to feel even the slightest bit proud—so much so that it took a moment for the next panel to sink in.
“It cannot be,” Kiyoko said. On the wall beside the castle was another battle scene, this one showing a black knight in a chariot pulled by four black horses. A cavalry of skeleton soldiers and other creatures followed close behind. My throat squeezed and my stomach felt queasy.
There before us was none other than Prince Nightshade!
“‘The Return of the Black Knight,’” Dalach read from a banner below the prince’s chariot. Nightshade and his minions were clearly in the midst of an attack, but their enemy had crumbled away from the wall. What followed was a twenty-foot span of nearly all brick broken up by patches of tile that appeared to have once been part of a much larger picture.
“The queen’s prophecy,” Kiyoko said. “It’s all here.”
“Not all of it,” said Dalach. “Who knows how many panels are missing and what they once portrayed….”
“Look!” Mack cried. We spun around to find a swirling mist of colorful sparkles forming above the pool. The four of us stepped aside, and the sparkles solidified into tiles. Faster and faster they swirled in midair until, with a great whoosh, the tiles flew across the room and plastered the
mselves in various spots along the bare brick wall.
“Well, what do you know,” Mack said. “That’s me again!”
He was right. In one spot the tiles had formed a small picture of Mack shooting red beams from his eyes, and in another, a picture of a golden egg—Moral’s egg, I knew.
“What is this place?” Kiyoko asked.
“It is the future taking shape before our eyes,” Dalach said. “This temple must be somehow connected to the queen. A magical record of her prophecy, perhaps, so she’ll remember it.”
“But these tiles,” Kiyoko said. “Why are they making these pictures now?”
“Perhaps something’s happened that, quite literally, has set the future in stone.”
“You mean a future that cannot be changed?”
“Aye, miss,” Dalach said, and he led us along the wall back to where we started, the scene of King Arthur drawing Excalibur from the lake. I, however, had become transfixed again by the scene of the hooded woman in the forest.
“We need to tell Father,” I said in a daze.
“Are you all right, Grubb?” Kiyoko asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“That—that forest picture over there…I think it shows my mother giving me to the Yellow Fairy.”
“What are you talking about?” Kiyoko asked. Gathering my wits, I told them the story as Gwendolyn had told it to me—the story of how a hooded sorceress, who turned out to be Elizabeth O’Grady, summoned the Yellow Fairy in the language of the ancients and entrusted me to her care. When I’d finished, the Gallownog knelt down with his hands on my shoulders and said:
“It appears you figure into this prophecy more than you realize, Grubb Grim. The same for you, Dougal McClintock.”
“Well for the life of me I can’t see how,” Mack said.
“Neither can I, sir,” I said.
“Your father is right, Grubb,” Dalach said. “Prophecies and fairies are never what they seem. Either way, we’ve got to tell Alistair Grim what we’ve found, for I fear the next scene on this wall is about to come true—a future that has already taken shape.”
