Alistair Grim's Odd Aquaticum (25 page)

“So it was
you
!” I cried. “You saved us from the sea serpent!”

“Quite by accident, I’m afraid,” Kiyoko said, examining the wand. “As I had just avoided becoming a victim of Mad Malmuirie myself, I pierced the dust bubble with her magic wand and shot a lightning bolt straight into the serpent’s head. How I did this I do not know. But a dangerous weapon this is, and much better suited for Alistair Grim’s hands than mine.”

Kiyoko slipped the magic wand into the sleeve of her cloak.

“He will be happy to have it, miss,” I said. “And he’ll also be happy to learn that you’re alive. But why didn’t you tell us you were here? Why didn’t you come down from the roof after the levitation shield was turned off?”

“I did,” she said. “However, once I overheard Alistair Grim and the rest of you talking about Excalibur and the queen’s prophecy, I thought it best to keep my presence a secret in case you should need my assistance later on.”

“You mean you were actually
inside
the Odditorium? You got past the samurai?”

Kiyoko smiled slyly. “The shinobi have been outwitting samurai for centuries. And so I decided to look for Excalibur myself, for if Alistair Grim was unaware of my presence, the queen could not hold it against him should I be discovered. I sneaked out of the Odditorium at the festival, and have been searching for the sword ever since.”

I was about to ask her how she made it past the Royal Guard and into the castle without being seen, but immediately thought better of it. Kiyoko was a shinobi, after all, and Father told me that the shinobi were also called “shadow warriors.”

“I hate to rain on such a lovely reunion,” said the Gallownog, “but I suggest we resume our search for Excalibur before we’re discovered.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Kiyoko said. “I’ve combed every inch of this castle and can find no sign of Excalibur anywhere. The sword is not here.”

“Well isn’t that just peachy,” Mack grumbled, and then one of the guards began to snore. Dalach quickly bound me with his shackles, and in a flash I became a spirit again.

“Pay them no mind,” Kiyoko said. “The sleeping powder will keep the guards out for hours. Same for the priestess from whom I stole this disguise.”

“Priestess?” Dalach asked.

“I have learned there is a temple located somewhere beyond the castle. What purpose it serves, I do not know, but I was on my way there when I ran into you.”

“A temple,” Dalach said. “I should think that as good a place as any to look for Excalibur. How are we doing on time?”

“We’ve been gone exactly forty-five minutes,” Mack replied proudly.

Kiyoko smiled. “Someone has gotten himself repaired, it appears.”

“Speaking of appearances, lassie, just wait till ya get a gander at me off these shackles. It’s not just me case what’s red these days.” Mack winked and spun his hands.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s room for a shinobi on these shackles?”

Dalach shook his head. “Not unless she can hook herself beside our jabbering Scotsman here.”

“You needn’t worry, Grubb,” Kiyoko said. “There are more ways than one to become invisible.”

Kiyoko took off her cloak, revealing the signature black garb of the shadow warrior underneath—a short, hooded robe cinched at the waist, a tight pair of trousers and boots, and a pair of open-fingered gloves. She slipped a stocking over her head and tied off her hood under her chin. She was now covered from head to toe in black, save for a narrow eye slit in her stocking.

My heart swelled with joy. How wonderful it was to see her like this again—and with Ikari on her back, no less!

“Shall we?” she said, eyes smiling. Lorcan Dalach blinked, and the four of us stole from the room invisible—Mack, the Gallownog, and me as spirits, and Kiyoko once again as her shinobi self.

A
s Kiyoko led us through a labyrinth of dim, torchlit passageways, it quickly became apparent why she was called a shadow warrior. At times she blended in so seamlessly with the flickering darkness that I almost lost sight of her altogether, while at other times she hid in doorways and even crawled across the ceiling to avoid the guards. Soon, however, we found ourselves outside, in the midst of a lush garden surrounded by high walls. Birds twittered and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves, but the place was deserted.

Kiyoko concealed herself behind a row of hedges and pointed to a domed structure with pillars at the far end of the garden. “That must be the temple,” she said. “Go now and I’ll meet you there.”

Invisible as we were, the Gallownog, Mack, and I flew straight for it, while Kiyoko darted stealthily behind shrubs and clumps of trees until she joined us again behind a pillar outside the temple door. Dalach poked his head in first, and upon finding the temple empty, whispered for us to follow him.

The inside was circular and decorated in a mosaic of colored tiles. A round, glowing pool of water took up most of the floor, its light reflecting against the walls in shimmering ripples of radiant blue. Lorcan Dalach blinked us visible again and we moved to the water’s edge. My heart sank. There was no sign of Excalibur anywhere.

“Well, that was a colossal waste of time,” Mack said. “Of which, might I remind ya, there is less than one hour left.”

“Perhaps I missed something back in the castle,” Kiyoko said. “What say you, Gallownog? Shall we split up to cover more ground?”

Dalach ignored her and led us to the wall, whereupon I discovered that the tiles formed elaborate pictures that ran around the entire chamber in a series of separate panels. The panel that had caught the Gallownog’s attention was a massive battle scene of knights in shining armor, but to the left of it I noticed a smaller scene depicting a knight sitting in a boat on a lake. Nearby, a maiden with flowing red hair swam underwater while thrusting a sword up through the surface. Excalibur, I knew at once—which meant that the knight in the boat was King Arthur and the woman in the water was the Lady of the Lake.

“I know this writing,” Dalach said. He traced his finger over a tiled scroll at the base of the battle scene. From what I could tell, each scene had something similar—a scroll or a banner that bore its title in strange symbols that I did not understand. “‘The Rise of Camelot,’” Dalach read.

“Camelot, the kingdom of King Arthur,” Kiyoko said, and the Gallownog drifted to the next scene. It was King Arthur again—I could tell by his armor—but this time he was on a horse galloping away from the red-haired maiden, who knelt with a crazed expression, as if pleading with him to return.

“‘The Princess’s Gift Denied,’” Dalach read from the title scroll. He drifted over to the adjoining panel—another battle scene, this one depicting the fall of Camelot, Dalach informed us—but my eyes remained fixed on the red-haired maiden. I was certain I’d seen her before.

Then it hit me.

I gasped. “Mad Malmuirie!” The others whirled to face me.

Kiyoko inspected the red-haired maiden more closely. “She does bear a striking resemblance to the witch I fought.”

“A coincidence,” scoffed Dalach. “That picture depicts King Arthur refusing a gift from the Lady of the Lake. What this gift is I cannot say, but surely that maiden cannot be Mad Malmuirie. That would make her over a thousand years old, not to mention an Avalonian—and not just any Avalonian, but the Lady of the Lake herself.”

Embarrassed, I dropped my eyes to my shoes. I hadn’t meant to suggest that the Lady of the Lake and Mad Malmuirie were the same person. That was just plain silly, now, wasn’t it? But still…

Kiyoko placed a sympathetic hand upon my shoulder, and then Lorcan Dalach led us to the next panel. The picture was of a dark forest and a starry sky, and amidst the trees stood a hooded woman dressed in black. She appeared to be handing something to a yellow fairy who was hovering nearby—a swaddled child, I realized, who looked like a little grub worm.

My mouth gaped and my eyes grew wide.

“The title has crumbled away,” Dalach said, but I didn’t need the Gallownog to tell me what it might’ve been. After all, it was
the
Yellow Fairy herself who had told me how I came to her. Which meant that the woman on the wall was my mother and the little grub child
me
!

That’s impossible,
I wanted to say, but the words stuck in my throat. None of the others, not even Mack, had any idea what it all meant. How could they? None of them were there that day when Gwendolyn told me the story of my birth. And so I just stood there, frozen in disbelief, until the Gallownog dragged me over to the next panel.

The four of us gasped.

There was no question as to what
this
scene represented, for there on the wall was the Odditorium itself. And not just the Odditorium, but the entire festival from which we’d just come—the knights and maidens, the horses and dragons, Queen Nimue and her sisters—all of it spread out before me exactly as I remembered it. And there was
every one of us
from the Odditorium who had been there too. Our likenesses were uncanny—except for Mack, who for some reason hovered in the sky like a giant red sundial.

“Well, at least they got me new color right,” Mack said.

“What does it say?” Kiyoko asked.

“‘The Return of the Lost Princess,’” Dalach read, and upon closer inspection, I noticed someone on the dais who had not been there at the festival. It was the red-haired maiden from the earlier panels, only now she was wearing a crown and appeared much happier.

“The festival,” said the Gallownog. “It was a welcome-home celebration. And for a princess, no less.”

“A princess that resembles Mad Malmuirie,” Kiyoko said, holding my gaze, and then she turned to Dalach. “What if Grubb is right?” she asked. “What if Mad Malmuirie really is the red-haired princess on this wall?”

“Mad Malmuirie, a princess?” Mack cried in disbelief. “Impossible!”

I expected Lorcan Dalach to agree with him, but instead he just stood there, tracing his fingers over the tiles that made up the lost princess’s face. “I too find it puzzling,” he said finally. “And yet my eyes tell me the boy may be right.”

“So you think the woman on the wall is Mad Malmuirie?”

“I cannot tell for certain, but clearly there is much more to the story of King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake than any of us is aware.”

“A love affair?” Kiyoko asked, eyeing the scene of
THE PRINCESS’S GIFT DENIED
.

“Again, I cannot tell,” said Dalach. “But if Mad Malmuirie is both the legendary Lady of the Lake and this lost princess, then something must have happened that drove her away from Avalon all those years ago.”

“And the festival should have marked her return,” Kiyoko said. “But for some reason, she wasn’t there.”

My head was swimming, and a heavy silence fell over us as the implications of the writing on the wall came clear. Was Mad Malmuirie really the Lady of the Lake, the Avalonian princess who bestowed Excalibur upon King Arthur? And after being gone for over a thousand years, was she supposed to return to Avalon today?

“But how can Mad Malmuirie be from Avalon?” Mack cried suddenly. “I seen her up close many times, and I can tell ya she hasn’t any gills!”

The Gallownog shrugged. “I myself would not have thought such a thing possible until now. But the faces on this wall, the likenesses of you and the others, prove it cannot be coincidence.” Dalach stared at the lost princess for a moment longer, and then we were moving again. Kiyoko nodded at me as if to say,
Well done,
but I was too disturbed by everything I’d seen to feel even the slightest bit proud—so much so that it took a moment for the next panel to sink in.

“It cannot be,” Kiyoko said. On the wall beside the castle was another battle scene, this one showing a black knight in a chariot pulled by four black horses. A cavalry of skeleton soldiers and other creatures followed close behind. My throat squeezed and my stomach felt queasy.

There before us was none other than Prince Nightshade!

“‘The Return of the Black Knight,’” Dalach read from a banner below the prince’s chariot. Nightshade and his minions were clearly in the midst of an attack, but their enemy had crumbled away from the wall. What followed was a twenty-foot span of nearly all brick broken up by patches of tile that appeared to have once been part of a much larger picture.

“The queen’s prophecy,” Kiyoko said. “It’s all here.”

“Not all of it,” said Dalach. “Who knows how many panels are missing and what they once portrayed….”

“Look!” Mack cried. We spun around to find a swirling mist of colorful sparkles forming above the pool. The four of us stepped aside, and the sparkles solidified into tiles. Faster and faster they swirled in midair until, with a great
whoosh
, the tiles flew across the room and plastered themselves in various spots along the bare brick wall.

“Well, what do you know,” Mack said. “That’s me again!”

He was right. In one spot the tiles had formed a small picture of Mack shooting red beams from his eyes, and in another, a picture of a golden egg—
Moral’s
egg, I knew.

“What is this place?” Kiyoko asked.