Twist of the Blade (5 page)

Ariane spun back toward Wally’s sister. Flish stirred a little, moaned. Ariane raised the tendril. Its tip turned to ice and the ice to a glittering blade.

An arm of liquid hung above Flish, wielding a crystalline
sword...wielding, Ariane realized, Excalibur. And the ice-blade had a voice: a deep, imperious bass that thundered in Ariane’s head. S
trike! Strike now! Kill your enemy!

But another voice spoke up in response, clear and high as a sustained violin note singing out above the rumble of bass and timpani in a symphony.
Y
ou...can…not...do...this
, it said, every word emphasized.
You
can’t.
It’s murder. She’s not your enemy.
Rex Major
is your enemy. She’s just a girl. A bully, but just a girl. She’s Wally’s sister.

Kill your enemy!
the sword thundered.

No!
the other voice shouted in response, and this time that denial came not only from the part of her that was fifteen-year-old Ariane Forsythe of Regina, but the part of her that was the ageless Lady of the Lake. “I wield Excalibur! It does not wield me!” she screamed into the night; and then she slashed the sword down.

The ice-blade shattered against the pavement well clear of Flish’s head. The arm of water fell apart, disappearing into the glittering pool welling harmlessly across the courts from the broken pipe.

Ariane strode over to Flish, who managed to turn her head to look up at her with wide eyes, the blood streaking her face black as ink in the dim light. Her breath came in pain-filled gasps. “Leave me alone,” Ariane snarled. “Once and for all,
leave me alone!
You don’t know who or what you’re dealing with. And next time, I might not be able to stop myself.”

She reached down to Flish’s belt and pulled the girl’s cell phone out of its case. “I’m calling 911,” she said. “But I won’t be here when they come. You can tell them the truth, if you want to. They’re not going to believe you.” She dialed, told the operator there had been an explosion in the tennis courts, and hung up before he could ask more questions. She returned the cell phone to its case, then strode away without looking back.

She walked half a block along 17th Avenue, then turned north into an alley. In the shadow of a tree that hung over a sagging wooden fence, she sank to the ground beside a garbage bin and began to sob, her body shuddering as the sound of sirens approached.

CHAPTER THREE

NEWS TRAVELS FAST

The next time Wally woke, his hospital-room window was dark. A clock stared at him from the wall at the foot of his bed.
After 5:30,
he thought
. Ariane will be finishing remedial algebra. Give her time to get home, have supper...then she’ll come. Maybe Aunt Phyllis, too.
His stomach growled at the thought of Aunt Phyllis’s fantabulous chocolate-chip cookies, and he suddenly realized how hungry he was.

A few minutes later a silent green-clad orderly delivered a metal-covered plate on a pink plastic tray. Wally lifted the cover to discover flabby Salisbury steak, lumpy mashed potatoes and limp green beans. He inhaled the food as though it were the best meal of his life.

But even
his
appetite drew the line at the amorphous brown blob served for dessert. He thought longingly again of Aunt Phyllis’s chocolate-chip cookies as he poked at the whatever-it-was with his fork, just to see if it would crawl out of the bowl. It quivered as if it would
like
to, but stayed put.

The orderly returned and cleared away the dinner tray. An hour went by, then another. By half-past seven Wally had his eyes glued to the door, expecting Ariane to appear at any moment. Even Flish would have been a welcome face by that point. But when someone finally
did
come to visit, it wasn’t Ariane or his sister. Instead, a plump, middle-aged woman, graying hair tied up in a severe bun, bustled into his room.

Wally stared at her red, blotchy face. “Mrs. Carson?” Mrs. Carson
crying
because he’d banged his head?
Maybe I’ve misjudged her.

“Oh, Wally,” Mrs. Carson gasped. “What a terrible thing.”

“It’s really not that bad,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “It hardly hurts at all as long as –”

“It’s your sister,” Mrs. Carson went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “A broken leg, two broken ribs, a wrenched back, a nasty cut on her head, scrapes and bruises all over...the doctor says she’ll be fine, but she –”

“Wait a minute,” Wally said. “
Flish
is in the hospital?”
I should have known Mrs. Carson wasn’t here to see me.
Even though his sister had moved out of the house two weeks ago, after their father had made it official that he and their mother were separating, Mrs. Carson still fawned over her. “What happened to her? A car accident? Shania drives like a maniac –”

“An explosion!” Mrs. Carson said, wringing her hands. “A water pipe under the tennis courts behind St. Dunstan’s High exploded just when Felicia and her friends were walking across it. The impact threw your sister halfway across the court and she hit one of the net posts. Stephanie has a broken nose, Cassandra is scraped and bruised, and Shania broke her wrist.” Mrs. Carson’s voice shook. “When I think what could have happened....”

Tennis courts? A water pipe? Since when do water pipes explode?
Some of the fog in his head cleared, and Wally remembered what he hadn’t been able to the night before: hearing his sister and her friends plotting to jump Ariane on the tennis courts, far away from any water, on Thursday...today!

He’d never warned Ariane. But...

Broken ribs? Broken limbs?
It wasn’t Ariane I needed to warn.
Anger swelled. “Where is she?” he choked out. “Can I see her?”

“She’s sedated,” Mrs. Carson said. Her lip trembled. “Poor girl...”

Wally looked out at the dark sky.
Ariane couldn’t have
meant
to do it
, he thought.
She was just protecting herself...things must have gotten out of hand....

He could keep telling
himself
that, but he really needed to hear
Ariane
tell him. Now, more than ever, he needed her to come see him.

But first he needed to see Flish for himself. He turned back to Mrs. Carson. “Could you ask?” he said. “Ask if I can see her?”

Mrs. Carson smiled a little. “Of course,” she said. “Wait right here.”

I’m not likely to go anywhere, am I?
Wally thought. He bit his lip. He
wanted
to believe Ariane had only hurt Flish by accident, didn’t want to think she had done so deliberately...but blowing up the tennis courts? It was overkill, like trout-fishing with dynamite.

In the back of his mind, a worm of doubt stirred itself. What if it
hadn’t
been an accident? What if Ariane had
chosen
to hurt them? After all, hadn’t he seen her try before?

Mrs. Carson pushed a wheelchair into the room. “They said it’s all right for me to take you up to her room,” she said. “She won’t be able to talk to you, but at least you can see her. She should be awake tomorrow and then you can visit properly.”

Wally nodded. He was able to get out of bed on his own this time, using the wheelchair handles to support himself during his one brief, dizzy moment. He grabbed the robe that had been lying at the foot of his bed and pulled it on over his hospital gown, cinched the belt around his middle, and then sat down in the wheelchair, put his slippered feet on the footrests and let Mrs. Carson push him out into the hall.

She wheeled him past the nurse’s station, maneuvered him around an old woman clutching an IV pole as she shuffled along one tiny step at a time and pushed him into one of the elevators. Two floors up, they got out, turned right and rolled down another hall that looked pretty much the same as the one outside his room except for a different collection of bad artwork on the off-white walls.

Mrs. Carson rolled him into a private room.
No snoring old-man roommate for sis
, Wally thought, but his momentary bitterness fled when he saw Flish’s face. Shocked, he took in the huge blue-black bruise surrounding her swollen left eye, the gauze pad on her right cheek (stained with a spot of blood, red as a ruby), and more gauze wrapped around her head, where a portion of her scalp showed, shaven and naked-looking. His eyes travelled to the tube in her arm and the cast on her leg, hanging in traction from the ceiling, and his gut heaved.
Ariane did this.
The thought burned like acid. But then,
No! Not Ariane. The Lady of the Lake.

You were
thrilled
when the Lady gave Ariane her powers, thrilled that she gave you this quest
, he reminded himself.
A real-life quest just like in your favourite books.
He couldn’t deny he’d been caught up in the wonder of the whole thing. But he’d forgotten one very important fact: even in books, people got hurt.

To be fair to Ariane, Wally had no doubt that Flish and the rest of the coven would have beaten her up if they’d been able to. Would he really feel any better about things if
Ariane
were lying in the hospital instead of Flish?

His head was hurting again. And he didn’t think it was entirely due to the concussion.

Mrs. Carson turned his chair around and pushed him back into the hallway. “That’s enough,” she said. “They
told me not to keep you out here any longer than ten min
utes.” She pushed Wally back toward the elevators. “This is such a terrible thing to happen while your parents are away.”

Away,
Wally thought
. They’re
always
away. Dad dropped by two weeks ago, but only long enough to tell us he and Mom were separating. Now he’s in Japan with his new girlfriend, on “business.” Mom hasn’t been home in three months, off working on that movie in Canmore.
Neither one had come rushing back when he’d hurt himself. He doubted they’d come rushing back for Flish either. But at least Flish had Mrs. Carson to worry about her. Who worried about
him?

Up until this evening, Wally would have said Ariane. But now, for the first time...he wasn’t so sure.

~~~

Ariane cried for ten minutes, while just out of her sight she heard ambulances and fire trucks rushing to the tennis courts. Several people hurried past the end of the alley, faces lit by flashing red and blue lights, to see what was going on. But Ariane stayed where she was, sitting in numbed silence, arms around her legs, head on her knees.
I should go home
, she thought, but exhaustion and shock pinned her to the ground. She closed her eyes.

She dozed.

The demon was waiting.

Once more it hid in dark, swirling mist, slithering behind her as fast as she turned, so she never caught more than a peripheral glimpse of glowing red eyes.
You sssee?
it hissed, its voice reptilian, repellant.
The power isss not for you. The power isss too great. It will ssswallow you. There will be nothing of you left. The Lady of the Lake isss using you. She isss not your friend.
The voice lowered, as though trying to sound conciliatory.
Give up the shard. Give it to Merlin. He will be merciful. He holdsss no ill will toward you. Refussse to do the Lady’sss will, and all will be asss it wasss before....

It would be so easy,
Ariane thought. Let Rex Major have the piece of the sword she already held, let him have the others as he found them, let him re-forge Excalibur...she could go back to being a normal kid, worry about normal-kid things...

But even as she considered the possibility, she rejected it. A normal kid? Over the past two years she’d lived in a half dozen different foster homes. She’d changed schools three times. Until Wally, she’d had no friends. All because her mother had disappeared, a disappearance somehow linked to Merlin’s quest for the shards of Excalibur. She didn’t know
how
yet, but she’d find out. With the Lady’s power, bolstered by the power of Excalibur, she could
do
something about it. Find her mother, if she was still alive. Bring her back. Heal their family....