The Seven Swords (13 page)

19 - HOW BORS IS DELIVERED

Late that night, Tiberius circled
high over Fenland as Thumb peered through the mottled clouds below. Fallown, the golden Leagonese dragon that carried their spy, Bors le Fey, flew several hundred feet above.

They were waiting for Merlin's blackout as they turned wheels in the sky.

“Hmmph. Wizards,” Tiberius cooed scornfully.

“He's doing the best he can, Tiberius,” Thumb countered.

The flat, low-lying island of Fenland sprawled out below them. It was shaped like a plump lizard perched on a tree branch. Castel Deorc Wæters was located on the island's highest point in the middle of the lizard's head, right where its eye would be.

The stars were bright and plentiful. Fenland was also constellated with twinkling lights, as little towns and thoroughfares and the Castel itself were lit up. The sea surrounding the island was black as pitch.

“We've'n't much time,” the dragon said. “Two minutes. Otherwise Scarm'll notice us and give chase.”

Thumb had never encountered Scarm, the Fenlandian dragon, but he knew all about her. She was younger than both Tiberius and Fallown, and renowned for a quick temper. Her coloring was a deep, iridescent purple. Of all the dragons she had the biggest wings, and, unlike any of her kinfolks', these were covered in green feathers. Her breath attack was a scalding-hot stream of black oil.

“Merlin will come through,” Thumb said quietly, hoping he was right.

The dragon just said, “Hmmph.”

Two minutes passed. Nothing happened. Tiberius snapped his tail, signaling to Fallown that they would have to leave. Even though Bors could turn invisible, they wouldn't drop him without the blackout in effect. Light wasn't the issue—magic was. With the sangrealitic power out, most of the Castel's warning enchantments would be on the fritz.

The dragons turned east and prepared to kick it into high gear. But then Bors, who was a mute and couldn't yell, split the air with a loud whistle.

“Hmmmph!” Tiberius exclaimed, displeased with the unnecessary noise.

“Look!” Thumb said.

The island's lights flashed and then snuffed out.

The dragons pointed their heads to the earth and dived. Thumb suppressed a gleeful yelp and dug his fingers into Tiberius's skin as the wind screamed around him.

They dropped a thousand feet in seconds. Tiberius leveled off as Fallown descended another five hundred feet. He hovered there for a few seconds before beating his wings to rejoin Tiberius. When he pulled alongside Tiberius and Thumb, they saw that Bors was gone.

Tiberius said, “Hold'n on tight, Jester Thumb.”

Thumb lowered his chest onto the dragon's neck and waited for the kick.

The dragons winked at each other and accelerated to jet speed in an instant.

It was such a rush that Tom Thumb couldn't help but laugh.

20 - IN WHICH DRED IS LET IN ON A SECRET

“Mordred!” Morgaine crackled over a
walkie-talkie as the lights went out again. “Come here!”

Bors had been dropped the night before, and over the past twenty-four hours the entire island of Fenland had been suffering intermittent blackouts. Most of them only lasted a few minutes, but two had gone on for more than an hour. It was a development that had angered Morgaine to no end, since they not only shrouded the island in darkness, but also dampened the primary source of her strongest magic.

Morgaine was positive that Merlin was behind these machinations. She wanted the wizard dead so badly, and she knew that he wanted the same for her. After all, she had led the coven of witches that had imprisoned him in the invisible tower, and he would never forgive her for it.

Of course she would never forgive him either. So many centuries ago he had helped deny her rightful ascent to power.

Back then Merlin had sided with Arthur the First, her nauseating, righteous half brother. Arthur the pure, the chaste, the noble. Morgaine had hated that Arthur with all her heart. Why had Nyneve, that loathsome Lady of the Lake, chosen
him
for Excalibur? He was nothing but a hypocrite, a sheepish bore who was all too ready to follow the wizard's orders. He was the glove to Merlin's hand. The first Mordred, Arthur's son
and
nephew, and the apple of Morgaine's eye, was the person who
should
have been chosen as king. Mordred the brave, the right, the bold! Morgaine's coven had tried to oust Arthur and replace him with Mordred, but they had failed. It was true that Mordred dealt that old Arthur his fatal blow with the Peace Sword, but not before suffering his own dying wound.

Her sweet, sweet Mordred. This new “son” of hers was nothing next to him.

How she missed him.

And how she hated the wizard.

Morgaine wasted no time in dispatching hundreds of soldiers across Fenland, tasked with finding out how the wizard had managed to tap into their sangrealite grid, and with finding a way to stop it.

Because of these orders, Castel Deorc Wæters was operating on a skeleton crew.

It was a condition that Dred found to be a pain in the butt. Without soldiers to run around for Morgaine,
he
had to pick up the slack. Just in the last day, he'd made eight trips to the basement to flip the circuit breakers. Now it sounded like his mother wanted him to do it again.

“Moooor-dreeeed!” she repeated.

Dred, who was talking through the door with Qwon, rolled his eyes and said, “Jeez. I guess I'll see you later.”

“Okay. Let me know how it goes,” Qwon said.

Dred slid the little door shut. He grabbed Smash and headed to his mum's chambers.

Qwon rolled onto her back and watched the sky turn from purple to pink as the sun set in the west.

She was nervous. Things were happening fast. Early that morning, well before sunrise, an ecstatic Shallot had appeared at Qwon's side and shaken her awake. “Whassup?” Qwon asked groggily, surprised to actually see the fairy after so many days.

Shallot whispered, “Another fairy has joined us!”

“Another prisoner?” Qwon asked confusedly.

“No. My cousin Bors le Fey arrived during the blackout in the middle of the night. He's here on behalf of my clan and King Artie Kingfisher. He's going to help us escape!”

“Wow!” Qwon said. “How do you know this?”

“His smell told me, of course. We fairies can communicate through our odors.”

“Oh,” Qwon said. “So, what—we're out of here then?”

“Soon, Qwon from Pennsylvania! Be ready!”

“I will,” Qwon said a little unenthusiastically.

“What is it?” Shallot asked.

“I don't know. . . . It's just . . . Has the plan changed at all? Since we have help now?”

“What do you mean?” Shallot asked.

“Are we still planning on . . . taking care of Dred?”

The fairy huffed. “Don't go soft on me now, Qwon. We have to escape, and I plan on doing whatever it takes to get out of here.”

“I know, I know. But . . . let's try to go easy on him, okay?”

Shallot spit out an exasperated “Ha!” and promptly disappeared, leaving a heady trace of her sweet smell that stunned Qwon for a few moments.

When the mini scentlock passed, Qwon's mind raced. In seven days the new moon would rise. At any moment their escape would begin. But what if it didn't work? What if they got caught? Or what if it
did
work? Morgaine would blame Dred for their escape. Qwon didn't want Dred to bear the brunt of Morgaine's anger. It wouldn't be pretty. She also didn't want Shallot to hurt—or worse, kill—Dred out of spite. Qwon had come to like Dred and she decided that when the time came, she would do what she could to protect him.

Meanwhile, Dred slowly made his way to Morgaine's chambers, Smash perched atop his shoulder. And as it happened, he was thinking of Qwon.

Not just thinking of her, but thinking of releasing her. Morgaine had Excalibur and The Anguish. Wasn't that enough to lure King Artie? Did they really need this innocent girl too? The simple truth was that over the past few days Dred had come to like Qwon, and he didn't want her to get hurt.

Dred came to a stop and rapped on Morgaine's door, trying to force these thoughts from his mind before his mother could detect them.

“Come in!” his mother said in her singsong voice.

Dred entered. Her room was lit with candles and small, battery-powered lanterns.

“You called?” he asked, walking toward her.

Morgaine was slumped at her vanity, her green hooded cloak draped over her body. She answered, “Yes, dear boy.” Her voice was strong but it had a shake to it that he'd never heard before.

“Mum, are you all right?”

“All right? No, of course I'm not all right.” She turned away as he got closer, but she didn't realize that Dred could see her in her mirror's reflection.

The face he saw there was his mother's, but it was very different. She had aged thirty years in the last twelve hours. Her cheeks were gaunt, and her chin pointed. Her mouth gaped a little every time she drew a breath.

“Mum!” Dred exclaimed. “What happened to you?” Smash, also startled, nuzzled in his master's neck.

“The wizard is toying with me!” Morgaine said as she faced him. “If the power was up, you'd see me as you know me, but when it goes down . . . I look like this.”

“I'm sorry, Mum,” Dred said, and he meant it.

“I don't want your sympathy, boy. I'm still strong, so don't get any ideas.”

Dred, worried that his mother could see his nascent thoughts about freeing Qwon, tried once more to strike his mind clean. “What ideas, Mum?”

“‘What ideas, Mum?'” Morgaine mimicked, sounding exactly like Dred, which was super creepy. “Ideas. I don't know, you're practically a teenager. You've all sorts of ideas, I'm sure.”

“Mum, I don't know what you're talking about,” Dred said pretty unconvincingly.

“Fine. Be a dear then and take your empty head to the basement and flip all the breakers. Start with the main feeds and work your way down.”

“I know, I know,” Dred said, already turning around. “Just like last time.”

Morgaine spun back to her mirror. “Yes, pet, just like last time.”

Dred left and wound his way around the Castel to the modern glass structure in the middle of the compound. It was new, but the sublevels below it were some of Castel Deorc Wæters' oldest.

He descended several flights of stone stairs and finally came to a low hall a hundred feet underground. The breaker room was housed in what used to be a formal dungeon, replete with ancient iron maidens and racks to prove it.

Dred walked down the hall with his flashlight, counting the doors. When he reached the seventh one, he froze.

He'd stepped into an unexpected scentlock, and at the last second Smash screamed, “Fairy!”

But this was unlike any scentlock Dred had ever experienced. It wasn't flowers, or sea air, or pine needles, or dew. It wasn't anything. It was like the aromatic equivalent of total silence.

Only Dred's eyes would move. He frantically glanced around the hall, but saw nothing.

And then Smash squealed in agony, and Dred felt him tumble off his shoulder and land with a muted
thump
at his feet. The invisible fairy's hot breath fell on the nape of Dred's neck. He was grabbed by the shoulders and forced around to face the right-hand wall.

The fairy drew a word on Dred's back with its finger, but Dred didn't catch it. Dred made a sound like “again” in the bottom of his throat.

The unseen fairy wrote the word out two more times before Dred understood:
There
.

What did it mean? The only thing in front of him was one of the many recesses that were used to hold lamps and torches in the old days.

Dred sensed the fairy circle around him. Then a stone in the nearest recess moved, and a low grating sound filled the hall as the wall in front of him swung inward.

A secret passage.

The fairy slid behind Dred again and traced another word on his back:
Look
.

Two beats later, the fairy was gone, and the scentlock was lifted.

Dred wheeled and drew his sword in a single motion. He swiped furiously at the air in every direction, but his blade met no resistance. Whoever it was that had stopped him—and killed his pet—was gone.

Dred sighed, sheathed his weapon, and bent to pick up Smash's body. A little yellow card lay on the creature. He picked up both, slipped Smash into his shirt, and looked at the card. It said, in a full, flowing script:

 

Sorry. It would have told her.

 

Dred stared at the note, and he knew it was true. He'd suspected as much, even though he had always hoped that Smash was his friend in spite of his allegiance to Morgaine.

Dred was about to crumple the note when the corner farthest from his fingers spontaneously caught fire. He dropped the card and watched it burn. After a few seconds, nothing was left but some black curls of ash.

He let these go and stamped them into the floor. Then he turned to the secret doorway and stepped through.

What was this place? He would have sworn that he knew every nook and cranny of Castel Deorc Wæters, but he'd never been here before. His heart raced as he walked through a long tunnel supported by wooden beams. It sloped downward, and the soft surfaces of the passageway snuffed out all sound.

The tunnel terminated after several hundred feet at a large, perfectly round door. In the middle of the door was a brass ring the size of a dinner plate.

Dred considered knocking, thought better of it, and placed a hand flat on the wood. He took a deep breath and pushed. The door swung inward a few inches. He quietly drew his sword, and then nudged the door all the way open.

Dred stepped into a large room with high ceilings cut out of the bedrock. He shone his light around. The room appeared to be a laboratory of some kind. It had endless rows of metal gurneys and glass cabinets full of all kinds of instruments and vials and packages. But it also had wooden shelves stuffed with musty, dusty books and scrolls. On the wall to his left were hundreds of vials containing dried herbs and multicolored powders. Next to this was a cabinet of various wands, staffs, and bracers. An old black velvet cloak he vaguely remembered Morgaine wearing long ago hung on a peg.

He walked deeper in. After the gurneys came row upon row upon row of tall glass cylinders filled with a slightly cloudy liquid. And suspended in these giant bottles were . . .
things
.

Some were the size of a fist, others were so big that they pushed fleshily against the glass. Some had arms, some didn't. Some had heads, some didn't. Some had eyes, some had five eyes, some had eye sockets but no eyes. Some had webbed fingers and toes, some had no fingers or toes. Some had dark, purply skin; others had white skin; others still had no skin at all.

Some looked half human. Most looked like monsters.

Dazed, Dred walked on. The farther down the line of cylinders he went, the more fully formed the things became. They began to have hair and features. Some were very young, others looked like ten-year-old children.

They all appeared to be boys.

The next several rows contained older children—teenagers—and even a few men. Something was horribly wrong with each of these specimens. Ears on their necks, no noses, feet for hands, skeletons on the outside.

The last row, however, contained boys that looked completely normal. They were about Dred's height and, despite being dead, looked healthy.

He stepped right up to the last one and shone his light on its face. Dred stopped breathing when he realized . . .
that he was looking at himself
!

The boy in the cylinder suddenly opened his eyes and looked directly at the light.

Dred stumbled backward and dropped his flashlight and sword, which made an awful racket as they fell to the ground.

His heart pounded out of his chest as he struggled to regain his breath. Dred counted to ten, and then back to one, and then leaned over and picked up the light, sweeping its beam over the boy-thing again. Other than the eyes, which were closed now, it hadn't moved at all. Dred took a deep breath and let the light rest on his double's face again.

And again, after a few seconds, the eyes opened and turned in their sockets to look directly into the light.

Dred forced himself to take full breaths. He moved the light away, waited, then shone it on the creature once more. Again it opened its eyes after a pause.

It wasn't alive. It was just light sensitive. The eye thing was a nervous reaction or something.

Satisfied that he wasn't going to be attacked by a bunch of zombie doppelgangers, Dred gathered himself. Turning from the hundreds of glass tubes, he continued to the back of the room.