Dragon Sword (16 page)

It’s dragon-jerk Rolf.

He’s surprised to find himself in
water, just like I was, and starts splashing around, letting go of
the antlers.

“
Look, Merlin,” King Arthur says,
pointing at them. “The horns of the White Stag are
back.”

“
They’re sinking in the lake. With
the new boy.”

“
Well, do something magic to get
them back! Send this other airy lad”— Arthur points at me —“into
the lake to fetch them!”

“
It’s not my place, your
majesty
, to go ordering boy warlocks around.”

“
What if it’s a magic attack? A
trick by Morgan Le Fey? It’s your job to protect your king,
Merlin.”

“
Pardon me, sire. I thought you
were done being king.”

As Merlin and the king bicker, Rolf
turns out to be a pretty good swimmer. He heads toward us and
eventually pulls himself ashore.

He stands and leans over to spit
out water, and I think he’s going to be sick, too. But it’s worse
than that. Time travel’s harder on him: His hair is all
white.

Though that doesn’t stop him, once
he catches his breath, from declaring we’re all his
prisoners.

Then he asks Arthur to hand over
the sword — Excalibur, the Dragon Sword — in the name of the
Reich.

Worst of all, King Arthur
does.

Chapter Twenty

Eli: Dragon Hunt

Somewhere in Old
England…

“
You cannot give away Excalibur!”
Merlin has lost the amused look on his face. “You’ve gone batty
after all! It must be hidden away! For the next true king to
claim!”

“
Oh, you were right, magician. I’m
done being king. So let him have it. Who cares? He’s claiming it in
the name of this…‘Ryck,’ this King Ryck, whoever that
is.”

Rolf the showoff keeps trying to
lift the sword over his head but seems to be having a hard time
controlling it. “I…” he huffs out, “Rolf Royd…do hereby claim this
magic object in the name of the Reich . . .”

“
You see?” King Arthur says to his
wizard. “I’ve never even heard of this Ryck. They’re coming out of
the woodwork, now that they think I’m weak.”

“
You cannot transfer power to this
boy!”

“
Don’t be so alarmed”— Arthur
points at Rolf —“he can hardly lift it.” The sword seems to be
pulling him, like someone tugged along by a dog on a leash. “The
lad will have to give up in a few minutes.”

But Rolfie seems determined. “And
in the name of the
Drachenjungen
…”

“
Did he say something about
dragons?” Arthur asks. “Is he going to hunt dragons with
it?”

Rolfie-the-hunter grips the sword,
but it moves on its own, spinning him around. “I
would
like
another dragon hunt,” Arthur says.

“
You have already killed them all,
sire,” Merlin says with a trace of scorn.

“
Ah. Right.” Just as he was
starting to brighten up, the king looks depressed again. Then he
turns to me. “I suppose you will want a turn with the sword, too,
young pup?”

“
No. But you can’t let him have it,
Mr. …King Arthur, sir. He wants to use its power to do bad things
to people.”

“
Boy, I, too, once believed I could
stop bad things from happening in the world.”

“
Oh, really! Must you always be so
glum? Ever since Queen Guinevere left”— and I realize that Merlin
is addressing this comment to me —“he has been so hopelessly bleak.
That’s the danger of love. Look”— his attention shifts back to
Arthur —“this boy is right. You’re being absurd. We have to stop
this before
that
one learns how to wield it.”

At that moment, the sword goes
flying out of Rolf’s hands, like a hammer toss, and plows tip-first
into the ground, just missing my foot.

“
There, you see, Merlin? That blade
is like a wild horse. You told me the sword itself chooses who
wields it. Which makes it practically useless, anyway.”

“
You never felt that way
before.”

“
I have changed, old wizard. You
pretend not to see it.”

But I’m staring at Rolf, who seems
to have changed a lot, too, even if he is still a dragon jerk. Not
only is his hair white, but the skin around his face is…patchy.
Something happened to him out in the Fifth Dimension. He might have
landed somewhere else and stayed there for years, for all I know,
before he wound up here. Which could explain his late arrival.
There are no guarantees of anything coming out the way you think it
will when you duck in and out of time. And something certainly has
gone wrong for Mr. White Hair.

But his attitude hasn’t changed
any.

“
Look out!” I yell. Rolf has
reached under his waterlogged jacket and pulled out the pistol
strapped to his leg.

But Merlin’s on top of it, and just
as Rolf’s gun
CRACKS!
, so does a wand from under Merlin’s
robe.

The bullet stops in midair. And so
does Rolf.

Or at least his legs do. He can’t
move them. But his eyes are open wide.

“
What is that?” Merlin asks,
stepping up to examine the bullet more closely. “You had better
move, Arthur. This little sword pellet is heading right toward you,
and I can’t hold it forever. I’ve warned you, magic’s fading from
the world.”

“
Then talk to these boys who seem
to know how to appear out of thin air! And let the little flying
dagger come, you overgrown leprechaun. I am tired of fighting boys
who think they need to be king. Let the little pellet come, and let
me rest.”

Merlin shakes his head at me. “Many
seasons back, the queen and one of the king’s knights thought they
were in love with each other. And I have had to listen to Arthur go
on about it ever since. It’s not as if people aren’t sorry, but it
scarcely matters to him. The king would be gone a year or more at a
time in those days. And the queen was young! What did he expect?
’Tis hard on people to be apart like that.”

“
Yeah,” I tell him. “I
know.”

The lake is starting to churn
again. “You see, Merlin. The Lady isn’t finished with us yet,”
Arthur says. “The time has come to be rid of this infernal thing.”
He pulls Excalibur out of the ground.

“
Such a waste,” Merlin sighs to me.
“I should never have agreed to conjure her again. He is determined
to give his Dragon Sword to the Lady of the Lake.”

“
But why?”

“
So she can hide it. I am afraid he
really is through being king. I am afraid that this is the end, at
last, of Arthur’s kingdom. Of Camelot.”

“
But you’ll always know where
Excalibur is, right?” I ask. “No matter where she puts
it?”

“
She will not hide it in another
place, but another time, lad. I don’t know where — or when — she
comes from. ’Tis a time-altering spell that allows her to appear at
the lake.”

But time isn’t being altered by the
Lady of the Lake.

It’s the Saurian ship that
appears.

Merlin is so shocked, he drops his
wand. The bullet is freed from its spell and goes whizzing right
past Arthur — who luckily has moved to get a better view of the
craft.

Rolf is cut loose, too, and falls
to the ground, before getting up and bolting away into the
forest.

“
Hey!” I yell after him. But I
don’t want to chase him. I want to see if my friends are all right
first.

After circling around overhead, the
ship lands in a grass clearing inside a ring of oaks.

The entrance panel slides open, and
Thea once again pops her head out. She looks around, a little
cautiously — to make sure no one is shooting at her this time —
then sees me with King Arthur and Merlin.

“
A most remarkable sorceress!”
Merlin exclaims.

She says something, but I can’t
understand it. The heavily accented English of Merlin and Arthur is
bad enough — but without a lingo-spot, I don’t have a chance of
figuring out Thea.

Just like in Alexandria, she dabs a
little of her own spot behind my ear. It tingles, too, like a
milder version of my Seals cap.

“
I said,” she repeats, “that I am
tired of being called a sorceress.”

“
I understood you the first time!”
Merlin says, coming up to us. “I recognize that tongue from desert
lands.”

Thea smiles at him, then turns her
attention back to me. “And you, Eli the Boy Wizard, are a hard
person to track down.”

“
Well, at least I’ve been on the
same planet the whole time,” I tell her.

“
So you
are
all wizards,
then!” Merlin exclaims. “Magic
is
coming back into the
world!”

“
I am an astronomer,” Thea says, “a
mathematician, and a librarian. Who are you?”

But I cut off Merlin’s answer with
another question. “Thea! If you’re here…then Clyne…when he jumped
off the bridge…?”

I have visions of his body floating
around the ocean, winding up in some fisherman’s net, and a
headline in that
Weekly Truth
paper about someone finding a
sea serpent.

“
At last a quiet time on Earth
Orange! Let us
kk-kk-dng!
picnic here before getting back to
studies!”

“
He’s a hard person to track down,
too,” Thea says as Clyne bounds out of the ship, “especially when
he’s falling from a bridge.”

I’m so glad you’re okay,
Clyne!
That’s what I want to tell him, but I don’t get the
chance.

“
Merlin!” shouts Arthur. “Merlin
you old rascal, look! Dragons live, after all! You have brought one
to me and I shall have at it! Sword”— and now he’s talking to
Excalibur — “good times have come back to England!
YAH-HHHH!
”

And with a roar, Arthur runs at
Clyne, swinging his Dragon Sword, ready to cut my friend’s head
off.

Chapter
Twenty-one

Thea: Tintagel

Merlin’s Time

When I glimpsed forests and no
cities, I thought we could rest in this world awhile. K’lion, Eli,
and I are a small society: Unmoored in time, we have seen things
most people in our homelands would never believe.

Our friendship has been forged in
fire and movement. We’ve had no time to really talk, play, or as
K’lion says, “picnic.”

I thought that time would be now.
Instead, I find myself disoriented, surrounded by trees in a thick,
dark woodland, the likes of which I never saw near Alexandria.

I ran into these woods thinking I
could keep K’lion from being hunted by this king, whoever he is.
Alexandria is — was a port city where news of the world came to us
regularly. And though I know of both Celts and Britons, I have
never heard of this “Arthur.” Of course, I am not precisely sure
when
this is, either.

I entered the forest, side by side
with Eli. We were both yelling that K’lion was not a dragon. But
the king was far ahead of us, chasing our friend, who at least
outpaced his pursuer with great leaps.

Eli seemed to think he could make
the king call off the hunt if he could only explain about K’lion,
but the king’s enthusiasm made it hard to catch up. And then, quite
suddenly, Eli was gone.

I do not know how, precisely.
Perhaps all forests shift like this as you move through them, with
paths closing off and new ones opening up, so that you can never be
sure exactly where you are. They are disorienting. Alexandria’s
boulevards, its harbors, and the desert vistas outside the city
were much easier to navigate.

“
Don’t be so hard on yourself,
sorceress. ’Tis a magic wood. I designed it so that most would lose
their way.”

There was no warning, no sound — he
just appeared. Merlin.

His sleeves were wet, and he was
holding a set of white antlers.

“
I am trying to keep your king from
killing my friend,” I told him. “If I can ever find
them.”

“
Unfortunately,” Merlin said with a
shrug, “only the king can find his way through this wood. We
nonroyals usually have to wait for the cry of a magical creature,
like a dragon, to guide us out. But I think your dragon man will be
safe. Arthur doesn’t quite have the blood lust he once
did.”

He ran a finger over the antlers.
“He hunted the White Stag with his bare hands and cut the antlers
off. I should never have told him the horns have power. Because the
power never lasts, and the greater sadness is an empty
forest.”

“
Thinking woods, magic horns, and
spells! Are you really standing here talking to me, wizard, or is
this another of your tricks!” The words were no sooner out of my
mouth than I stopped, stunned to realize how much I sounded like
Brother Tiberius, the falsely pious monk who stirred a riot against
my mother and caused her death. He routinely accused Mother and me
of witchcraft.