Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (19 page)

The room exploded in applause.

*   *   *

When they filed out, the area next to the gym was already swarming with a construction crew. Spirit had no idea how they were actually going to build anything in the middle of winter, but by midafternoon she had her answer. They’d erected a giant inflatable building over the site, a construction that was presumably going to make it possible to lay and cure a foundation. She’d seen similar buildings used for Indian casinos; they were easy enough to keep warm inside. There was already a separate generator out there, and Spirit heard a rumor that it was actually a hydrogen fuel cell able to supply enough power for all of Radial.

By evening, the school had already taken on a different tone. It was subtle, but obvious. Students who’d been looking over their shoulders ever since the New Year’s Dance were beginning to relax and go back to normal—well, Oakhurst normal, which meant that people were already scheming on how to get into the game design classes or some of the specialized “defense” classes. Just before sunset, the Russian, Anastus Ovcharenko, had been seen supervising the setup of what could only be a shooting range. The Refectory buzzed, and for the first time in weeks, Muirin, Burke, Loch, and Addie looked at ease.

Spirit, however, was
not
at ease. Nothing about this felt right, starting with the way Ms. Holland had just been erased from Oakhurst without a murmur—right after she’d tried to warn Loch and Burke.

They moved from the Refectory out to the lounge, and Addie set up the Monopoly board as usual. Spirit was determined to wake them out of this complacent state. “So Loch found this video on the system in the train,” she began, “and one of the townies was saying—”

“Whoa, Spirit, give it a rest,” Loch interrupted. “We don’t have to worry now. The cavalry’s here.”

“The—what?” she managed, staring at him. “Are you nuts? After what Ms. Holland said to you, and then she just gets
replaced
? Doesn’t that seem the least little bit fishy to you?”

Loch shrugged. “And Ms. Holland could have been the insider, trying to peel me and Burke off from the herd and Rider’s crew figured her out. Or she could have just quietly snapped, and what she told me and Burke was just part of her delusion, and they sent her away. Don’t read too much into this. Anyway, the point is, there are
adults
here now who actually believe that the war came to us. Adults, not kids, and they’ve got a lot of real-world power, just for a start.”

Muirin nodded sagely. “Mark Rider is worth billions. I’ll bet an imported Belgian truffle that as soon as she gets wind of this, Step is going to turn up here to cruise his younger brother. Enough money can buy us just about anything, including an army of security guards if we need them. And have you
seen
their auras? If they glowed any more you’d have to put a dimmer switch on them. That means magic power, baby, and lots of it.”

“So, Mr. Rider was right, even if he did have to grandstand about it,” Loch continued. “We can relax and let them take over. We can go right back to just worrying about school stuff. And it’s about time.”

She tried not to splutter. “And doesn’t it seem awful convenient that they turn up within days of those Shadow Knights? Shadow Knights wearing Oakhurst rings? Hello! Anybody?”

Muirin sneered just the littlest bit. “Shadow Knights? Where did you get
that
from, some bad fantasy novel?”

“Come on, Murr-cat,” Burke said. “Keep your claws for people who deserve to get scratched.”

Loch shook his head. “Of course they turned up within days, Spirit. Doctor A. said he’d called them. You’re confusing cause and effect. The attack was the cause, having them turn up was the effect. And so what if the bad guys were wearing rings? Heck, they could have stolen them, made them, or just used an illusion to throw us off and put us at each others’ throats.”

“But!” Spirit began, and Addie made a lip-zipping motion.

“Relax. You’ve been keyed up for so long you’re probably having an adrenaline crash,” Muirin said shrewdly. “I bet it’s got to hurt, not being the boss anymore, too. Let it go. You don’t have to be in charge now, and it’s not going to hurt you to give the boss-hat to someone with real experience.”

“But I wasn’t—but I didn’t—” Spirit stammered, taken aback.

Muirin just raised a knowing eyebrow at her.
I know you enjoyed bossing us around, and being the Special One who saw there was danger before anyone else did, but you can’t be the Special One forever.
That was what that look said. She flushed.

Suddenly she didn’t have any taste for Monopoly.

The others weren’t paying that much attention to the set anyway. Burke and Loch were quickly deep in a discussion of whether or not Burke would make a better game designer, developer, or programmer. “After all, it’s not like I’ve got a pile of money waiting for me when I turn eighteen,” Burke said with a shrug. “And with any luck, Doctor A. and the Riders will clear this war out before we graduate. So I’ll need a job, you know? Might as well be something I like.”

Muirin laughed. “Maybe I actually
can
scrape Step off onto Teddy Rider; when she’s stalking her prey she always forgets I even exist.”

They all seemed to have forgotten everything they’d learned; Spirit could hardly believe it. Didn’t they want to find out what was really going on? Didn’t they want to
know
who the insider was, instead of just guessing? And what about the “other” Oakhurst, the one where people who
didn’t
have magic went? Because, supposedly, they were all Legacies, right? And she knew darn good and well that her parents hadn’t had the least little bit of magic. If they had, life would have been a lot different. Maybe they’d have hidden it from their friends, but their own kids, kids who might have some of that magic themselves? No way. So where was this “other,” this “shadow” Oakhurst?

And if it didn’t exist—well that would mean that they’d all been lied to. They weren’t Legacies. They’d been found some other way. And what did
that
mean?

But the others acted as if the last several months had never happened, as if Oakhurst was going to go back to normal. Loch argued with Burke about taking shooting classes. And Muirin was asking Addie if she thought that the Russian was worth making a pass at!

Spirit wanted to jump up and start screaming, just to get them to stop.

And then she noticed that they were all wearing their rings, which glinted brightly with the colors of their School of Magic. In fact, as she looked around, she realized
everyone
in the lounge had taken to wearing their rings.

Except her.

It was horrible. There she sat, with the conversation going on around, over, under, and past her. It was as if she wasn’t even there.

Finally she made an excuse and went back to her room.

She lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling, feeling desperately that something horrible was going to happen, and knowing there was nothing she could do to prevent it. It was like being in a nightmare, where you ran from one person to another, screaming at them that something awful was going on, and they acted as if you were nothing more than an annoying fly. Except this was
real
.

Was she wrong? Everyone else seemed so
sure
. The adults were here, the “cavalry,” and it was true, they had resources and abilities the kids could only dream of having. Money, skills, experience—and magic, lots of it. Spirit didn’t even have a spark of magic. Was this just her wanting to hang on to the moment when
she’d
been important, when
she’d
been the one figuring things out? Loch had been the first one to say it on Christmas Day. She should have known he wouldn’t be the last.

But …

Ever since the week before Christmas, she’d been the one warning everyone that it wasn’t over, and look, she was right, it not only wasn’t over, here were a bunch of adults saying that stuff was just beginning. She’d been proved right. This was the ultimate “I told you so.” Shouldn’t the arrival of the “cavalry” make her happy? Hadn’t she wished more than once that she could feel safe again? And now, she should be able to feel safe, right? Not only were these people setting up magical defenses, they were setting up physical ones, expensive ones that probably not even Oakhurst could have paid for. The Riders had come
flying
back to Oakhurst when Doctor Ambrosius called. It wasn’t easy, out there in the big world, to just shut your business down and move it elsewhere. They’d sacrificed a
lot
. Shouldn’t she just shut up and be grateful?

She should. Her head said she should. But her insides were seething with revolt, telling her there was something so wrong about all of this that there was not one bit of it that could be right.

And no one would believe her.

Not even Burke. Not even Loch.

Her head ached with the effort of not crying; finally she got up and splashed some cold water on her face. She glanced at the clock, and couldn’t believe it was only eight. It felt as if she had been lying there for hours. No way she was going to be able to get to sleep, not this early. She thought, briefly, about trying to see if Doc Mac was available. She still trusted him—and maybe he could tell her if she was just being paranoid, if she was just trying to hang on to her teeny little bit of fame, manage to reassure her—

But it was really too late at night for something that wasn’t an emergency. Besides, he was probably meeting with the new people. It sounded like Mark Rider was the kind of guy who wanted the psychological profiles of everyone around him.…

Might as well fire up the computer. She still had class work to do, even if the classes she was doing it for were going to be canceled in the next couple days and replaced with—what? More martial arts? Magic classes she could do nothing in?

Maybe I can learn to shoot a gun and be cannon fodder.

She plopped down in her seat, successfully kept herself from opening up the school chatroom, and got her after-class assignments. Math problems and an essay, oh joy. Resolutely she did her assignments, and reached into the drawer for a thumb drive to save them until she could get time on a printer. For all she knew, there
would
be an EMP or a power outage or an undervolt, and she’d lose everything she’d just done.

Her hand fell on something smooth and cooler than the thumb drive she was looking for. She pulled it out.

It was the mysterious “Ironkey” drive she’d found in her bag.

She hesitated a moment, then shrugged, and plugged it into the USB port. The worst that would happen would be that it would infect her computer and the school net. Bitterly, she decided that wouldn’t be so bad … it would give Mark Rider and his computer geeks another chance to save the day. And the best? There might be something interesting on it. Something to take her mind off this mess.

Her computer registered and recognized the device. She clicked on the book-shaped icon.

A window opened. Words appeared.

Are you alone? Y/N

OK, that was weird.
Y,
she typed.

What is your name?

Spirit White.

Correct answer. Who was Mr. BunBun?

Spirit blinked. She hadn’t thought of that in
years
. When she was five, for some unknown reason the stores had run short of stuffed rabbits at Easter, and her parents had gotten her a pink stuffed plush dog instead. She’d called it Mr. BunBun and for three years she couldn’t be separated from it.

How did a program on a flash drive know that?

Muirin. This had to be some kind of prank of Muirin’s. She didn’t remember telling Muirin about Mr. BunBun, but obviously she had. And Oakhurst did have killer computer labs. Even if Muirin couldn’t write a program like this, she could find someone to do it for her.

Might as well see what happens.…

My stuffed dog,
she typed.

Correct answer. Welcome, Spirit White.

A new window opened, full of text. She began to read it, slowly.

Instructions. Instructions—supposedly—on how to use a code package in a file on this key to do what, so far, none of the school hackers had ever been able to. Get past the firewalls undetectably, and reach outside the intranet and onto the Internet. Into the world.

Muirin couldn’t have done this. If she knew how, she’d do it herself. If she meant to share it with Spirit, she’d have bragged about it. Spirit’s mouth went dry, and she sat back in her chair, staring at the screen. If this worked, she could talk to anyone—do research—get advice.

But then the temporary euphoria abruptly vanished. Who would she talk to? She was all alone. She didn’t know anyone. She wasn’t like Muirin, who had contacts everywhere and knew how to make more. Everyone she knew, everyone she cared about, was right here.

And if it was a trap—would it be a trap laid by the Oakhurst insider? Ms. Holland could have planted this in her bag. What would happen if it
was
a trap? Could you use a computer program to do magic? Would it bring a Shadow Knight straight to her? Or had whoever put this in her bag figured she
did
have friends outside the school, and intended to use her to find them?

She stared at the screen for a good minute before finally unplugging the drive and throwing it back in the drawer.

It was no use. She was alone, afraid, and without allies. She got undressed, went back to bed, turned off the lights, and cried herself to sleep.

TWELVE

Spirit woke up with a start—with someone’s hand clamped over her mouth. She froze. Her body couldn’t seem to move even though her brain wanted her to leap out of bed and—

“Don’t scream,” came a hissing whisper. “It’s just me, Elizabeth.”

The hand came away, and before she could get a good breath to let out a shriek, the light over her bed clicked on. It
was
Elizabeth, looking pinched and anxious. Spirit struggled up into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes, still sore and sticky from crying. “Elizabeth, what are you doing in my room?” she asked angrily. What was wrong with her? “It’s after hours. You’re going to get us both in trouble.”

The girl shrank away a little and sat down on the floor beside the bed, breathing shakily. “I had to talk to you,” she said. “You’re the only one that doesn’t seem all sucked in by the Breakthrough people.”

She was actually wringing her hands. Spirit had never seen anyone wring their hands before. It looked strange. “I’m not buying into it,” she said, cautiously. “You were there when the Shadow Knights turned up, and they were wearing Oakhurst rings. A week later, these guys are here—but you can’t just pack up and ship building crews and tons of stuff in a week, so I don’t buy that they came running when Doctor Ambrosius called last week. From what one of the Radial kids said, it sounds like they’ve been in Radial for weeks, setting up this move. So … maybe Doctor Ambrosius called them a couple months ago, and it’s just strange timing that they turned up now, but … I don’t like it. It just seems all wrong.”

Elizabeth was shivering, but looked up sharply. “The Shadow Knights! You know what they’re called!” she exclaimed, her eyes darkening.

Spirit blinked, startled. “Uh, what? Burke just made up that name.…”

“But it’s the right name for them! The Shadow Knights—they’re the ancient enemies of the Knights of the Grail!” Elizabeth clutched Spirit’s arm; her hands were freezing. “It all goes back to Arthur!”

“Arthur?” It took Spirit a moment for her brain to come up with the right association. “You mean
King
Arthur? Camelot? Excalibur? Merlin?”

“Yes!” Elizabeth had her arm in a death grip. “Listen, it’s all deeper, all larger than you think. It’s not just Oakhurst, and it’s not just now, this is a war that’s been going on for centuries, and now it’s getting near the end—”

And then, the words just poured out of her, as if they had been kept behind a dam all this time. More words than Spirit had heard Elizabeth speak in the entire time she’d been here. As Spirit listened, caught in a kind of bemused numbness, Elizabeth spun a story so wild that it belonged in a book, not real life. Spirit’s friends had been calling her paranoid for weeks, but even though she was dead certain they were all in danger and smack in the middle of some horrible conspiracy, even
she
hadn’t come up with anything this crazy. And Elizabeth wasn’t exactly making it easy to follow her story.

Finally, when Elizabeth ran out of air, Spirit tried to get it all sorted out so it was more or less coherent. “So … all this is about King Arthur and the rest of those mythical people. First, there are these Shadow Knights. And they’re serving Mordred. Mordred has been reincarnated, or else he never died, you’re not sure which. But some of the Shadow Knights are people who served him, or were his allies before, and they
are
all reincarnated over and over. And Mordred wants the usual Evil Overlord stuff, and the Shadow Knights are going to help him get it. Right?”

Elizabeth nodded and opened her mouth to start again. Spirit held up her hand. “Whoa. Wait. I’m still trying to get this straight.”

Elizabeth nodded, and watched her expectantly.

“But the Shadow Knights have never been able to defeat the Grail Knights, who were the ones that served Arthur and Merlin. And the Grail Knights haven’t been able to defeat the Shadow Knights, either. Which is why they all keep getting reborn.”

The girl nodded. “And Arthur, too. Arthur is reborn.” She faltered. “Merlin and Mordred, I am not sure. I am not part of their story, so I do not know these things, I only know what I have been a part of myself—”

Wow, now she’s even starting to talk … odd. Like someone who’s not really from around here … as in a zillion years ago not from around here.

“Wait! I’m still—Okay, so now we talk about Oakhurst. Some of the Oakhurst people are Shadow Knights. Some are Grail Knights.” She paused, trying not to think about how absurd this all sounded. “Some aren’t anything, except magicians. And you can’t tell which is which.”

“It is all part of the curse that fell upon Britain when Mordred betrayed Arthur and sold himself to the Dark,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “Everyone involved in any way with Arthur’s kingdom is doomed to be reborn over and over until either the Shadow or the Grail triumphs. One must destroy the other. But I do not recognize any of the people here at Oakhurst, because I did not know them in the past.”

“So why doesn’t anyone remember all this?” she wanted to know.

“The Shadow Knights do, but only once they turn to the Dark. Their master, Mordred, wakes their memories. I do not know about the Grail Knights.” She looked as if she knew that part of the story sounded pretty weak. “Possibly Merlin wakes theirs as well. But when they are reborn, they have no memories of their past lives.”

“But—I don’t get it, if they’re reborn over and over and fight the war over and over, why hasn’t anyone noticed until now?” Spirit shook her arm a little, and Elizabeth finally noticed she was holding on to it and let go.

“Because until the spirit in the Tree was freed, they had no leader and no direction,” the girl said simply. “Their conflicts were random, skirmishes rather than battles, and since none of them recalled their pasts, they did not even know why they fought with each other. That Tree is the one here in the Entry Hall. That is why we are all here, because of the Tree.”

“And the spirit was freed when lightning hit it and killed it?” Spirit replied.

Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know, but that is a good notion. I’m not part of that story. I know I keep telling you that, but all I can tell you is what I know—I was just a tiny part of the original story. I never met Arthur, or Lancelot—I only ever knew a few on the side of the Grail or the Shadow.”

“Wait—you—”

“I am a Reincarnate,” Elizabeth said quietly, but with conviction. “I am—was—Yseult of Cornwall. Iseult the Fair. Isolde.”

“Wait, what—
Tristan and Isolde,
that Isolde?” Spirit’s jaw dropped a little. This was getting crazier by the minute.

Elizabeth nodded.

“Prove it,” Spirit demanded.

Elizabeth looked off somewhere over Spirit’s shoulder, her eyes unfocused.
“Ol an tekter a wylys ny yl taves den yn bys y leuerel bynytha. A frut de ha floures tek menestrouthy ha can whek fenten bryght. Avel arhans ha pedyr streyth vras defry ov resek a-dyworty worte myres may tho whans
,” she said.

Well, it
sounded
like another language, and not gibberish. And it sure didn’t sound like any language Spirit knew. She had a smattering of Spanish, some French—Oakhurst insisted you learn Latin and Greek, so she was getting those now—it wasn’t any of those. And it didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard people speak, like Italian, German, Japanese, or Russian.

“I mean, that’s all I can do,” Elizabeth said apologetically. “I can speak Cornish, old Cornish, and no one’s been able to do that in hundreds of years. I speak what we now call Irish-Celtic. I could tell you where to find landmarks in Cornwall and Ireland. But things that I knew are probably not even two stones on top of each other now. The ruins at Tintagel aren’t even from my … lifetime.” She shrugged helplessly. “I know this sounds mad. You look at me and see an American, a sixteen-year-old girl, but I have been Yseult—known I was Yseult—nearly the whole of my life. I thought
I
was crazy when I first started getting my dreams, except I finally figured out they weren’t dreams after all. They were memories. That’s when I started seeing the Shadow Knights, too. I think they were looking for me.” She shuddered. “I—Yseult, I, we’re the same person, don’t you see? There
is
no Elizabeth Walker. There’s only Yseult of Cornwall, and I wasn’t on either side originally, and if the Shadow Knights can get me to choose them—that’s more power for them. Plus my Gift. I can see things, past and future, and that would be really useful to them. I think that’s how I ended up waking my own memories, because I saw my parents dead, and I was trying to find out how they died and warn them, but … I got all this other stuff instead.”

Spirit licked dry lips. “So … Breakthrough … Mark Rider, all of them…”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, sounding desperate. “I know
some
of them are Shadow Knights. I think Mark Rider is, but that’s only because—well, I don’t have any proof. Maybe I think he is only because he’s one of those guys you know would run over you then sue you because you ruined their tires. And you don’t have to be a Reincarnate to become a Shadow Knight; they’ll recruit anyone who’s a magician, so even if he
is
a Shadow Knight, he might not be a Reincarnate. Reincarnates are the most powerful, but anyone who is a sorcerer is useful. So Mark Rider could be a new recruit, he could be a Reincarnate, I could be completely mistaken about him. I mean, the only way I can find out for sure is to get close to them, and if I do, and it’s someone I recognize and a Shadow Knight, then that person will recognize me, too, and then they’ll know I’m more than just someone with a Gift.” She looked up at Spirit, shivering again. “If they do that, I’m dead. Either they’ll kill me because they can’t get me to join them, or they’ll—well, it won’t be
me
anymore, so I might as well be dead.”

Suddenly, she raised her head. “There’s someone coming. I can’t be found here.”

She was on her feet faster than Spirit would have believed, had the door to the room open and was out into the hall before Spirit could react.

Spirit jumped out of bed and ran after her. She paused in the hall, trying to remember which way Elizabeth’s room was. Before she could remember, she heard footsteps and a flashlight shone in her face.

“Spirit, what are you doing out here?” Kelly Langley demanded.

“I thought I heard something.” Lame, but it was the only thing she could think of. “Like someone dropped something out here.”

Kelly panned her flashlight around the hallway, which was, of course, empty and clean. “You were having a nightmare or something,” Kelly said firmly. “Go back to bed. Now.”

There wasn’t exactly a choice. Spirit nodded, and went back into her room. She thought about trying an e-mail to Elizabeth, but … well, probably not a good idea. Besides, Kelly was probably waiting outside the door to make sure her light went out. With a sigh, she got back into bed and turned it off.

Fat chance getting any more sleep tonight.

*   *   *

“Merlin. And Arthur.” Burke shook his head. “It sounds like a bad fantasy movie.”

“Or a manga, or an animé, they’ve got plots that screwy,” Muirin said. “Ha. Park Place, Addie. Pay up. Seriously, Liz needs to market herself to Japan, they’d eat that kind of thing up with a spoon.”

“I know but…” Spirit had woken up this morning with the conviction that, as utterly unbelievable as it had all sounded, that was exactly the reason why it must be true. If Elizabeth had been making something up, she surely would have gone for a story that was a lot more plausible.

“Look, Spirit, if it makes you feel any better, how about if I go find her?” Burke asked. “I’ll go get her right now, we can talk to her, and we’ll—” he paused. “Not interrogate her, but if she really made all this stuff up, unless she’s psycho, we can probably point out enough holes to make her admit it.”

“It’s already got more holes than Swiss cheese,” Muirin muttered.

“No, I’ll go,” Addie said, getting up. “I’m almost out of Monopoly Money anyway, what with Moneybags Muirin there owning every property on the board that I land on. If she’s in her room, you couldn’t go there anyway, Burke. I’ll try there first.”

But Addie came back only five minutes later, and she had a very strange look on her face.

“What?” Spirit demanded.

“She’s gone.” Addie shook her head. “I mean, completely. The name tag is gone from her door, the room’s been cleaned out. And there wasn’t any announcement or anything—”

“Well, there’s your proof she was delusional, Spirit,” Muirin said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I bet Kelly caught her wandering the hall looking for Excalibur, sent her to Doc Mac, and he shipped her away. I mean, think about it. Mark Rider said we’re under attack, and the last thing you want here is someone damaged like that. She wouldn’t be safe here, and who knows what she’d do if she decided she didn’t like the protections? And there wasn’t an announcement because—well, who’d care? It’s not like she had any friends.”

Spirit was more than a little shocked by Muirin’s callousness, but … if Muir was right, then … well, Muir was right. Poor Elizabeth
was
safer somewhere else, and Oakhurst was safer without her. But …

If Muirin was wrong … had the Shadow Knights found Elizabeth, just as she had feared they would? Was everything she had said, crazy as it sounded, actually true?

*   *   *

The next day, all classes were canceled while the new schedules were made up—but that didn’t mean they were free. In fact, they were even
less
free. Divided into groups—and, of course, none of the five of them was in the same group—they were tested in every way possible. A battery of physical tests—not just physical fitness: Their reflexes were tested and timed, their proficiency in anything like a martial art underwent the scrutiny of Anastus Ovcharenko and his two underlings—were interspersed with academic tests. By the time the day was over, Spirit was too tired even to think, and she wasn’t the only one. The Refectory that night was extremely quiet, people dully shoving food into their mouths as if they were too tired to taste it. Even Muirin was too tired to complain.