Song of the Sword (22 page)

He went on, but Major tuned him out. He still didn’t know exactly where the shard of Excalibur was hidden, but it was down there somewhere – he could feel it, a glimmering sliver of the power of Faerie that had once been his and would be again.

A blue blotch on the far side of the small lake south of the mine drew his attention. A yellow pickup truck had pulled up not far from it and he could see four men approaching it on foot.

“What’s going on there?” he said, interrupting Ursu’s glowing account of the workings of the mine’s environmentally friendly sewage treatment and disposal system.

Ursu leaned over him to get a better look. “Probably hunters. We get them from time to time. Security is on it.”

The pilot’s voice came on the intercom. “Making our final approach now, gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed your flight!”

Major stared at the tent. Something about it bothered him, but he couldn’t figure out why. He put it out of his mind and settled back into his seat. Excalibur, or at least the first precious shard of it, was waiting for him.

As long as they didn’t crash on landing.

Stupid way to fly
, he thought for the umpteenth time, gripping the arms of the chair as the air got bumpier closer to the ground.
Give me magic any time.

~ • ~

Ariane, coatless, stood shivering in the snow beside Wally, facing the three men who had woken them up so abruptly. In the distance, the sound of the airplane engine changed pitch and then died away as the plane came in for a landing. Ariane wondered if Rex Major himself might be on that plane, arriving for his tour of the mine, but she didn’t take her attention off the three men. Each was armed with a pistol in a black leather holster, and two of them, standing next to a bright yellow pickup truck with an extended cab, also held rifles. Each wore a heavy blue uniform jacket with the Thunderhill Diamonds logo stitched over one breast pocket and a name over the other. Black letters on white armbands read SECURITY.

“Anyone else in there?” said the man who had opened the tent flap. DREZNER, Ariane read on his jacket. He looked tall enough to play in the NBA and broad enough to be a professional wrestler.

“N-no,” said Wally. “There’s just us.” With his head tousled and a big red mark on his left cheek from a wrinkle he’d slept on, he looked even younger than usual.

“I’ll take a look anyway, if you don’t mind.” Drezner’s tone made it clear he didn’t care if they minded or not.

Ariane and Wally stepped aside. The other three men kept a close watch on them while Drezner went inside the tent. They could hear him rummaging through their things. After a moment he came out again, carrying their coats in one hand and the backpack in the other. He put the backpack on the ground and held out the coats. As they gratefully pulled them on, he said, “All right, what are you two kids doing here? This is private property.”

“We didn’t see any signs,” Ariane said truthfully. “We’re just...passing by.”

“You don’t have enough supplies to be ‘passing by.’ We’re a hundred kilometres from the nearest village.” Drezner put his hands on his hips. “How did you get here?”

Something in the man’s tone reminded Ariane of Mr. Stanton, the vice-principal. She could feel her temper rising, but she held it down, refusing to give in to the temptation to say, “We swam.” Instead, she said nothing.

Wally wasn’t as reticent. “What does it matter? We’re just a couple of kids. You said so yourself. Surely you don’t think we’re here to try to steal your diamonds.”

Drezner gave him a sharp look. Ariane winced.
I don’t think that helped, Wally.
She wished the Lady’s power included telepathy. Since it didn’t, she had to make do with a frown in Wally’s direction. He gave no sign he had seen it.

“You don’t look like a threat,” Drezner said. “But whoever brought you here could be – and you couldn’t possibly have gotten here on your own. Maybe you’re just here to divert our attention from something happening somewhere else. So we’ll be detaining you until we figure it out.”

“You’ve got no right to detain us!” Wally said. “We haven’t done anything!”

Not yet
, Ariane thought. She glanced over her shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of the airplane they had heard. But the airstrip was out of sight on the other side of a low ridge. A road ran down from the ridge and past the east side of the lake to the main compound.

Drezner followed her gaze and frowned. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Security Five to Security One. Smitty, is everything OK at the airstrip? Over.”

“Everything’s fine, Drez,” a voice crackled. “Mr. Ursu and Rex Major just landed. Why do you ask? Over.”

“Got a couple of trespassers,” Drezner said, his eyes never leaving Ariane’s face. “Looks like a pair of teen lovebirds –” Ariane blushed, and Wally turned bright red – “but you never know. Keep me posted. Security Five, over and out.” He hooked the walkie-talkie back onto his belt. “Awfully big coincidence, you two turning up just when we’ve got a VIP visitor.”

Ariane kept silent, but Wally heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Drez – can I call you Drez?”

“No,” Drezner said.

Wally barely hesitated. “OK. Well, uh...sir...we’re not, uh, ‘lovebirds’ – may I just say, ‘Yuck!’ – she’s my sister.”

Yuck?
Ariane thought with a touch of indignation.

Wally waved one hand in a vaguely westerly direction. “Our folks are camping over there a...a ways. We just...snuck off. For fun. We planned to be back in time for breakfast. But we overslept.” His voice gained confidence as his story developed. “Thank goodness you woke us up! They’re going to be awfully worried about us, aren’t they, sis?”

Ariane nodded. “Awfully worried.”

Drezner glanced to the west. “Over there ‘a ways,’ huh?”

“Yes, sir.” Wally nodded.

“And you ‘snuck off.’ For ‘fun.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the middle of a blizzard? Because until about seven o’clock last night, you could barely see your hand in front of your face out here.”

Wally opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Oops
, Ariane thought.

“Right.” Drezner unhooked his walkie-talkie again. “Security Five to HQ. Over.”

“HQ here. What’s up, Drez? Over.”

“Bill, our trespassers are a couple of kids. They claim they sneaked out of their parents’ camp somewhere west of here last night.”

“Last night?” The voice on the other end sounded skeptical. “In that weather?”

“That’s what they say.” Drezner watched Wally as he spoke. “Can we send the chopper up, check it out? If they’re telling the truth, their parents will be worried about them. Over.”

“Sure thing. I think Carl is on standby...yeah. I’ll have him in the air in fifteen minutes. Over.”

“Great. Over and out.” Drezner hung the walkie-talkie back on his belt.

“Thanks a lot!” Wally said. He’d obviously decided it was too late to back down from his story now. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding them – we can’t be more than five kilometres from the campsite.”

“Uh huh.” Drezner did not sound convinced. “Well, until we do, you’re going to be our guests.” He turned his head. “Vasili, Tom, get the tent into the back.” The two guards by the truck slung their rifles over their shoulders and came forward. As they took down the tent with quick efficiency, Drezner put one heavy hand on Ariane’s shoulder and the other on Wally’s, and propelled them toward the truck. Ariane snatched up their backpack as they passed it. They waited by the vehicle until the tent had been loaded aboard, then Wally was placed in the front seat, between Drezner and “Vasili” (his name tag read MARAGOS), while Ariane got the back seat, directly behind Drezner and next to “Tom” (POITRAS).

As Ariane climbed in, Drezner reached out and lifted Wally’s chin, revealing the band-aids she had put on his throat after the attack of the Lizardoid the night before. “What happened to your neck?” Drezner said.

“Shaving cuts,” Wally said. He rubbed his throat. “Tough beard. You know how it is.”

Drezner snorted and turned the key to start the engine.

As the truck rolled toward the buildings whose lights they had seen the night before, Ariane dug in the pockets of the backpack for a couple of granola bars, passing one to Wally before opening her own and munching on it as they drove. She needed energy, and it looked like a proper breakfast was out of the question.

As they approached the road east of the lake, they slowed to let two other pickups zip past in a cloud of snow. Wally turned to look at Ariane, and she could read the question in his eyes.
Rex Major?

But Ariane couldn’t confirm either way.
And what difference does it make anyway?
Gloom gripped her. It wouldn’t take the helicopter pilot long to discover that no one was camped west of the diamond mine. Then there would be questions they couldn’t answer, a flight back to Yellowknife to talk to the Mounties, and who knew what after that. Even if they didn’t say anything, the Mounties would figure out who they were and trace them back to Regina. An eternity of questions, probably news stories, and a media frenzy would follow...

And in the meantime, Rex Major would have the first shard of Excalibur, and would already be looking for the next one.

They continued across a bridge over a rock-strewn stream, then turned left. Their pickup and the two that came from the airfield all stopped at about the same time in front of a two-story building covered in blue-green metal siding. Above a large porch enclosed in glass, big red letters proclaimed, WELCOME TO THE THUNDERHILL DIAMOND MINE.

With Drezner’s massive shoulders blocking her view, Ariane couldn’t see the other two pickups, but apparently Wally could. He stiffened, then shot her a quick look and jerked his head toward the building.
Rex Major, I presume
, she thought.

By the time she and Wally climbed out of their truck, everyone else had gone inside. Ariane could hear the throbbing sound of a helicopter warming up. She looked around helplessly. Even if she and Wally could outrun Drezner, Maragos and Poitras –
fat chance!
– there was nowhere to hide, not even a corner to dash around. The building stretched dozens of metres in both directions. And so she and Wally meekly followed Drezner up the steps, through a door onto the porch, and then through another door into a hallway.

A sign above a shuttered counter to their left read LUGGAGE PICKUP. Just past it, an open door led to what looked like a waiting room. Just past
that
, a very bored-looking security guard sat inside a theater-box-office-like glass booth labelled RECEPTION, reading a tattered copy of
Sports Illustrated
. He glanced up when they came in, but then went back to the magazine.

From around the corner at the end of the hall came a snatch of conversation, “...dormitories can house more than six hundred workers...”

Major must be getting the grand tour,
Ariane thought.
At least that will keep him from looking for the shard right away.

Not that that helped, as long as she was...

Her gaze fell on two doors at the end of the hallway, doors with metal push plates instead of door handles, one with the outline of a man on it, the other with the outline of a woman...

“I need to go to the washroom,” she said. Wally gave her a sharp look, but she ignored him. “I
really
need to go.”

Drezner sighed. “All right. But be quick.” He turned to the other guards. “Vasili, you wait outside the door for her. Bring her to HQ when she’s done. Tom, you can go back to your regular rounds. You,” he said to Wally, “come with me.”

Poitras nodded and went back outside. As the door opened and closed, Ariane heard a helicopter chop-chop-chop overhead, presumably heading out to find their fictitious parents’ camp.

Drezner, Maragos, Wally and Ariane walked down the hall, past doors leading to a lunchroom on their right and something called the Visitor Orientation Centre on their left. Ariane ducked into the ladies’ washroom, avoiding Wally’s gaze. She was afraid the men would figure out she was up to something if she and Wally even looked at each other.

She went into a stall to take care of urgent business, collecting her wits and her breath in the process. She had to get away from Drezner.
Wally...

Wally will just have to look after himself.
She tried not to feel guilty about it.
It’s not as if they’re going to hurt him.

The toilet flushed automatically as she left the stall.
They’ll hear that
, she thought.
It won’t take them long to get suspicious...

She went to the sink and turned on the water, immediately hearing its siren call. Glad she’d eaten the granola bar, she took a deep breath, plunged her hands into it, and let it take her.

She didn’t want to go far this time, just far enough to escape the security guards and get as close as possible to the shard of Excalibur. But at first she had no choice at all: the water flowed into the sewer pipe, and from there to the sewage treatment plant. She rushed in her disembodied form through its settlement tanks and filters and evaporators, and hurried along with the treated water down a long pipeline to a lake, but she was getting farther from the shard of Excalibur, not closer to it.