Twist of the Blade

by Edward Willett

  Still feeling a little breathless after the harrowing crawl through the tunnel, and fascinated by the sight of the cat skull, Wally lagged behind the other two, casting his helmet light across the floor in the hope of seeing some of those other skeletons Dr. Beaudry had mentioned. He spotted the small skulls of rodents, and what looked like a bird...and then, something else.

  At the very limit of the light from his helmet, he glimpsed, stretched on the cavern floor, a dark shape that looked like...

  ...like a corpse, his mind insisted.

  Certainly the object was the right size and general shape of a human body. Not a skeleton, though, or there would be the gleam of bone. This person...if it was a person...was clothed. Had some spelunker found his way into the cavern and...?

  Wally glanced toward Dr. Beaudry and Rex Major, still winding their way among the stalagmites. He opened his mouth to call out to them...and then closed it again.

  He remembered the mysteriously flooded field outside.

  Ariane had been there. He was sure of it. And if she had made it that close to the cavern, she surely would have found some way into it.

  But Rex Major insisted she didn’t have the shard.

  Which could mean....

  A careless step could destroy something of inestimable scientific value, Dr. Beaudry had said, but in that moment, Wally didn’t care. Major and Beaudry were out of sight now, somewhere at the end of the path, either in the main cavern already or just around a bend. Heart in his throat, Wally stepped off the path and picked his way through the stalagmites toward that long, dark object.

  The light from his helmet found a pale face, streaked with mud and blood, and he dashed the last few steps.

  Ariane lay curled on her side, as still as death.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LOST AND FOUND

  In her dreams, Ariane wandered, lost and alone, through an endless, empty wasteland, beneath skies swathed in funereal black.

  Then...a glimmer of light. The clouds brightened to grey and swept open like a curtain. Silvery illumination streamed down all around her, and she reached up with a wondering hand toward the full moon...

  Her eyes flickered open. Light stabbed her pupils and she cried out, wrenching her head to the side.

  “Thank God,” said a voice. “I thought you were dead!”

  Relief, joy and disbelief poured through her like the flood she had raised from the river. She twisted her head around again, squinting against the light. “Wally?”

  “Shhh!” he hissed urgently. “They’ll hear.” He took off his helmet and set it to one side so that the beam angled away from them.

  Ariane didn’t ask who “they” were; at that moment, she didn’t care. She sat up, threw her arms around Wally and hugged him as tightly as she could. He was warm and solid and smelled of chocolate and sweat and life, and she’d never been happier to see anyone.

  Wally stiffened when she first grabbed him, then relaxed and hugged her back. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “You’re okay.” He pushed her away gently. “What happened?”

  Ariane swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to order her thoughts. “I was in a pool, down below somewhere. I found a tunnel leading up toward the shard, but then I fell. I lost my backpack, my light...I’ve been crawling, feeling my way with my hands, trying to reach the shard, no light, no sound, no water, no...” She heard her voice quiver and felt her lip tremble. “I thought I would die down here, alone in the dark. How did you...?”

  Wally hesitated. “Rex Major brought me,” he said at last.

  Ariane gaped. “What?”

  Wally nervously glanced left. “He’s looking for the shard.”

  “Rex Major brought you? How did you escape?”

  “I didn’t,” Wally said. He sounded uncomfortable.

  “But –”

  “I came voluntarily,” Wally rushed on. “He’s...he’s trying to convince me that we shouldn’t trust the Lady. That we shouldn’t even be going after Excalibur, that it’s too dangerous for....”

  “For who?” Anger rose inside her, and this time it came as much from herself as from the shard. “For me?”

  “For both of us. For everyone around us.” The pleading note in his voice grated on her like fingernails on a blackboard. “Ariane, Major says he can use the sword to make the world a better place. But if we give it to the Lady...that will be the end of magic. All magic. Are we sure that’s what we want?”

  “‘Major says,’” Ariane mimicked. “And you believe him? The man who held a gun to your head just two weeks ago?”

  “Ariane –”

  “Major – Merlin – will say anything, do anything, to have Excalibur!” The shard sharpened her words. “But he will...not...have it!”

  Wally didn’t answer. He grabbed his helmet and leaped to his feet, jamming the helmet back on his head and tightening the chinstrap with a convulsive tug. As the light stabbed down at Ariane again, she jerked her head away to avoid being blinded.

  “They’ll come back to look for me any second,” Wally said. “You should hide.”

  “I have to find the shard,” Ariane retorted, still not looking at him. “I’m not going to hide. I’ll follow you, far enough behind that I can’t be seen.”

  “But if Major gets the shard before you can....”

  “He might get it,” Ariane said stubbornly, “but that doesn’t mean he can hold on to it.”

  Wally turned away without another word and jogged back to the middle of the cavern, just as someone far down the path shouted, “Wally!”

  Ariane knew that voice all too well.

  “Coming!” Wally called, and hurried to catch up – with Rex Major, she thought, furious even though she knew Wally had to follow him to keep her presence a secret. She watched his light dwindle in the distance and join two other lights, which then turned and moved away from her.

  She was also furious with herself. She’d had the perfect opportunity to seize the shard and escape before Merlin even knew where it was, and she’d blown it. The bravado she’d shown Wally now collapsed beneath a wave of fear. How strong would Merlin be if he got the second shard? Strong enough to force her to give him the first one too?

  Better not to find out. Feeling about a hundred years old, she struggled to her feet, wincing as her torn jeans scraped across her bruised and bloodied knees. She flexed her scraped, burning hands, and then followed the departing lights of Wally and Rex Major.

  She couldn’t believe Wally had come here with Rex Major of his own free will, couldn’t believe he was actually flirting with the idea of trusting the man who had once threatened to kill him. What’s come over him? Has Merlin enchanted him? For the first time, she wondered if she could trust Wally.

  She had to move cautiously to avoid the stalagmites thrusting up from the cave floor, but since the only light came from the headlamps of the others, she ran into a few despite her best efforts, adding to her collection of bruises. Even so, she quickly gained ground on the other three, because they were winding back and forth along a path she couldn’t see, whereas her own was much more direct.

  Something crunched beneath her feet, and in the same instant, the trio ahead of her paused. She could see them clearly now, and wasn’t surprised that the third man was Dr. Beaudry. She stopped when they did, heart leaping to her throat, afraid someone had heard her, but the lights didn’t swing in her direction. Dr. Beaudry was pointing at something; she could hear his voice though she couldn’t make out the words.

  The three moved on. Their lights suddenly disappeared around a corner of stone, only a glimmer reflecting back. Ariane abandoned stealth and dashed forward, terrified she would be plunged into absolute darkness once more. She banged her thigh hard against a stalagmite and swore under her breath, but then rounded the corner and saw Wally, Major, and Dr. Beaudry at the end of a narrow passage, silhouetted against a blue-white glow. They rounded another corner, but now Ariane had plenty of light. She crept to where they had jus
t stood. The passage opened up into a much larger chamber....

  She froze, open-mouthed.

  Lamps on aluminum poles, set along a winding path marked by red twine, revealed a chamber so enormous it took her breath away: the width of a football field, at least. Its ceiling soared above her like the interior of a cathedral, hung with giant stalactites that glittered like dragon’s teeth in the cold light, thin white ribbons of stone winding among them. No stalagmites broke the smoothness of the vast floor, only a few rounded lumps of rock.

  On the walls, on every flat surface, sprawled paintings: vivid renditions of oxen and bears, cats and horses, birds and hunters, and absurdly fat, naked women. Across one expanse of stone to her left stretched a long line of handprints, each an ocher-coloured testament to a long-vanished race.

  Wally, Rex Major and Dr. Beaudry stood in the middle of the cavern, Dr. Beaudry pointing at something overhead. No one was looking in her direction...

  ...and a moment later she wasn’t looking in theirs. The song of the second shard swelled within her and the first shard burned against her side, its song crescendoing in harmony with that of the second. For an instant she couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything but that soundless, soaring song, the shards of Excalibur yearning to be reunited.

  She gasped, and her awareness of her body rushed back. The second shard is in this chamber!

  She knew it. Did Major? He didn’t have her powers, but he did still have some magic to call on, and this close to the shard....

  Even as she thought that, she saw Major’s head, which had been tilted toward the ceiling, jerk down and turn in the direction from which the song of the second shard had come. The ruby stud in his right ear glinted as it passed through the beam of Wally’s helmet light.

  And then, chillingly, his head turned again...in her direction.

  ~~~

  From the time he had entered the cavern, Rex Major had fought down his rising impatience. He could sense the shard was close, despite his greatly reduced magical ability. But Ariane knew where it was, too, and she’d already arrived. He had seen the evidence of water in the field outside the camper, had known at once that it could not have gotten there in this drought without her summoning power. Yet he also knew that she did not yet have the second shard. So where was she?

  Once they were inside the cavern, he bristled at their maddeningly slow pace, even though he could see the reason for it clearly enough. You could hardly rush – safely, at least – down a folding ladder and through a narrow crawlspace. But with every step he knew he had to be getting closer to the shard, and he could barely restrain his rising excitement.

  “Very close now to the main chamber,” Dr. Beaudry told him as they made their way through a large but low-ceilinged chamber thickly studded with stalactites and stalagmites. And very close to the shard, Major thought. It’s there. It must be!

  He glanced toward Wally, whom he expected would be walking close behind them; but the boy wasn’t there.

  He stopped and turned around. “Wally!” he shouted.

  There was the boy’s light, off to the left. He glanced at Dr. Beaudry, who had knelt down and was studying a small skeleton just outside the red twine. Major didn’t care if Wally unintentionally destroyed something valuable by leaving the path. But Wally was important to his plans...or could be, at least...so he did care if the boy accidentally destroyed himself by falling down a cliff, braining himself on a stalactite, or impaling himself on a stalagmite. His lips compressed. He didn’t have time to babysit, not when he was so close! He was about to stride back to fetch the brat when he heard a faint, “Coming!” and the light began moving toward them.

  A moment later Wally trotted up. “Sorry,” he panted. “I was looking at bones.”

  Major bit off his sharp retort. “Stay close,” he growled instead, and turned back to Dr. Beaudry, who had straightened and was watching them.

  “Everything all right?” said the scientist.

  “Perfectly all right,” Major said. “Let’s go on.”

  “Not much farther now,” Dr. Beaudry said, suppressed excitement in his voice. “And when you see it.... This way!”

  The path took them into a narrow passageway perhaps thirty feet long. At its end Major saw a blue-white glow. A few more strides and they emerged into the largest cavern Major had ever seen. Large enough to shelter an army, he thought, and he should know: he had camped in enough caves with Arthur and his men during long-ago campaigns. Cave paintings covered the walls, dimly lit by the lamps along the path. Dr. Beaudry, breathless with excitement, rushed through a long spiel about what he and other researchers had surmised thus far about the ancient artists, but Major hardly heard him.

  The shard had to be close...very close. But where?

  And then, as Dr. Beaudry pointed up, waxing eloquent about a particularly striking painting of a giant bear standing on its hind legs, Major’s vague sense of the shard’s presence, a kind of faint pressure in the back of his head, suddenly became so powerful he grunted: it felt as if he’d been punched.

  His eyes swivelled from the ceiling to the darkness of the chamber’s furthest regions, then locked onto the spot where the ceiling descended toward the floor – where he saw a faint, glimmering reflection.

  Water!

  It was as if the shard had suddenly shouted, “Here I am!” His eyes narrowed. But the shard had not shouted to him. It had responded to the presence of something else:

  The first shard of Excalibur.

  He swung his head to the right, and saw her, crouched where the path entered the great chamber. Ariane.

  He snapped his gaze back to Dr. Beaudry. “Be quiet,” he commanded. The scientist’s mouth shut in mid-word. “Don’t move,” he added, and Dr. Beaudry froze in place, a living statue.

  Then Rex Major turned and darted across the cavern floor toward the dark crevice where the second shard of Excalibur lay.

  ~~~

  Ariane’s eyes met Major’s for one timeless instant, then Major snapped something at Dr. Beaudry that froze him in mid-lecture and dashed toward the far end of the cavern, toward the very place from where the second shard of Excalibur sang to its mate.

  Ariane swore, leaped up, and ran full-tilt after him. Fragile crystals of stone shattered beneath her feet and she kicked a human skull that broke into pieces as it rolled across the cavern floor. If she could get only get to the shard first....

  ...but then her foot caught on a lump of stone and she fell, sprawling. Agony speared her ankle and she screamed as her already bruised and lacerated knees slammed against rock, her cry of pain echoing around the giant chamber.

  Wally came running up from behind her, slowed. “Are you all right?”

  “Go!” she gasped out. “Stop him!”

  Wally hesitated, then ran after Rex Major.

  Ariane picked herself up and hobbled after them both, unable to run, bitterly certain she was already too late.

  Unless....

  New energy flowed into her, and it came neither from the shard she carried nor from the one toward which she stumbled. Somewhere ahead, a source of water sang out to the Lady of the Lake.

  She pushed her battered body toward it as fast as she could.

  ~~~

  Wally ran after Major, wondering how, exactly, he was supposed to stop Merlin, the greatest wizard in history, from seizing the shard.

  Wondering if he really wanted to.

  Major ducked under a low bulge of rock. Wally ducked too...and his feet flew out from under him. He slammed down onto his rear, slid, and splashed into water so cold it took his breath away. When he lifted his hands, icy rivulets ran down his forearms. Water! Ariane could use this –

  Sitting in the near-freezing liquid, he turned his head. Major stood in the middle of a large, shallow pool, pounding on a lump of stone with the hammer from his utility belt. Bits of rock flashed in the light and splashed into the water. Eyes wide, teeth bared, Major had transformed from urbane businessman to berserk w
arrior. For a second Wally thought the wizard had gone crazy, but then he glimpsed a metallic glint in the lump of rock.

  The shard of Excalibur, he realized, was inside the lump, sheathed in centuries of mineral deposits.

  “Wally!” Major shouted, turning his wild stare to him. “You’ve got a rock hammer on your belt. Come help!”

  Major wanted him to help retrieve the shard. Ariane wanted him to stop Major. What do I do? he thought, feeling like a bunny rabbit caught between two tigers.

  But before he could do anything, Ariane slid down the slope behind him, and into the water.

  ~~~

  Ariane, the first shard screaming to be united with the second, the second begging to be united with the first, felt the Lady’s power crash over her like a tsunami as she splashed down into the water of the pool. She jerked her head up and stared at Rex Major, who was hammering at the lump of stone that held the shard. She shot a glance at Wally, sitting uselessly on his butt, looking helpless, looking lost; and in that moment, filled with the power of the Lady and the anger and longing of the two shards, Ariane felt an overwhelming sense of contempt.

  With the magic coursing through her, she whirled the water of the pool into a thick tendril and batted Wally out of the way just as he started to get to his feet. Then she tipped the tentacle with ice and hurled it, a rod of liquid heavy as a battering ram, at the hump of rock Major had been pounding.

  The weakened stone shattered. The shard splashed into the water...and she had it. The tentacle of water hurtled back toward her, the shard held in a grip of ice.

  Major shouted and lunged after it, tripped and fell headlong into the pool. Wally, just staggering to his feet, raised his head at just the wrong moment, and caught the tendril full in the face. Like a roundhouse punch, it spun him around and dropped him back into the water, crying out in pain as he fell. Major scrambled to his feet and roared toward her, water splashing up in sheets around his feet. He was between her and Wally. Kill Merlin! The shards shouted within her, and the tendril of water hardened into a blade of ice in the shape of Excalibur, like the dream sword she had used to drive off the demon Major had sent to plague her sleep. Kill him!