Victories (8 page)

Vivian smiled darkly. “Not unless you want fresh milk, but I figure you’re going to be running around trying to scare up the Hallows. You’re on a deadline, you know.”

Addie looked at Spirit. Loch glanced from the two of them to Burke. There was a moment of guilty silence.

“You really can’t tell whether or not we have them?” Spirit asked carefully. “Because we do. We found them today.”

Vivian’s shock was genuine. She sucked in a sharp breath and leaned back against the counter, gripping the edge tightly. “Holy Epona be praised that the Great Hallows are safe again,” she said. “It’s true?” she added sharply. “You’re telling the truth?”

“It would be a pretty stupid thing to lie about,” Loch said tartly. “Here—see?” He held out the phone charm on his palm. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but—”

“It’s the Spear,” Vivian said. She closed her eyes for a moment, and Spirit thought she saw a glitter of tears. “I.… I’ve hoped for so long.…” She turned around to face the cabinets and took another deep breath, clearly trying to compose herself. “That makes this easier,” she said.

“Makes what easier?” Spirit asked, trying not to sound as apprehensive as she felt. Vivian was certainly on their side, but Spirit suspected she was telling them as little as possible.

“I have to go away. I’m leaving in the morning. I may not be back.
Ever.”

“What?” Burke said. “Why? Where?”

“To perform a task—if I can. But you don’t need me any longer. The next part in this is yours, not mine. I have always known that.”

“But— Can’t we help you? With … whatever-it-is?” Spirit asked.

Vivian just shook her head.

“Isn’t there anything you can tell us?” Addie pleaded. “We’ve found the Hallows, but we don’t know how to use them. We can’t even turn them into what they’re supposed to be.”

“The Hallows themselves will instruct you,” Vivian said, still sounding a little rattled. She turned around to face them again. “You must have faith. Truly. Ask Merlin, and he will tell you the same. The Hallows will show you the way.”

“But—” Loch said.

“No,” Spirit said firmly, somehow
sure
that Vivian was right, and that this was the way things had to be. She didn’t know where this sense of certainty was coming from, but she knew it was true so solidly that it was as if it had always been true. “This is up to us now. If Vivian could’ve stopped Mordred, she would have. If she knew how—or … anything—she’d tell us.”

Vivian smiled at Spirit with genuine warmth. “Got it in one, kid. Good luck with heading off the Apocalypse.”

“Thanks—I think,” Spirit said ruefully.

“Can’t you even tell us which Reincarnates we are, and how we get our memories back?” Loch asked. “Oh, come on,” he said, looking at the others, “anybody who didn’t figure we had to be Reincarnates to find the Hallows hasn’t been paying attention.”

“You’re right, my—my dear boy,” Vivian said. Spirit had the feeling she’d changed what she was going to say in the middle. “But I’m not crazy enough to stick my nose into the middle of magic this powerful. You’ll find out when you’re meant to.”

“This is like every bad teen slasher movie ever filmed,” Loch complained. “You know things we need to know. And you won’t tell us.”

“Yes,” Vivian said, sounding more like her usual exasperated self. “Because if I tell you before you
know,
you might never know at all. Things have to come in the right order, or nothing works. It’s like a spell, only a lot more powerful than any spell you’ve ever been involved with before. You know how spells work. Do the steps out of order and you get nothing. Or something really bad. You’ve been hidden carefully—even from yourselves. If something goes wrong this time, you won’t be reborn to try again. And Mordred wins. Forever.”

Because Merlin will die,
Spirit realized. Whether Mordred knew where—and what—Merlin was or not, when Mordred blew up the Internet, Merlin would be gone.

“Let it go, Loch. She’s been right so far,” Spirit said.

Loch waved his hand irritably—agreeing or arguing, Spirit couldn’t tell—and stalked out of the kitchen.

“So … what should we do now?” Addie asked hesitantly.

The question startled Vivian into a sharp bark of laughter. “Do? Do anything you want. It’s all up to the Hallows now, so do whatever you want to until they decide the time is right.”

*   *   *

Spirit wanted to talk to Merlin. They’d done the first thing they had to do, and she was hoping he might be more forthcoming than Vivian had been—or at least tell her what had to happen next. But she felt oddly shy about saying so. When the others agreed the best thing to do was try to figure out how to use the magical weapons they’d been given, Spirit went along with it. She suspected none of them wanted to admit to the others that they were afraid that mastering their Hallow would awaken their Reincarnate memories. Becoming someone else—
remembering
being someone else—seemed like amnesia-in-reverse. Or dying.

But if they hadn’t been willing to die, they would all have gone along with Mordred. Of all the people at Oakhurst, at Breakthrough, or in Radial, they, the five of them (because it had been Muirin’s choice, too), were the only ones who had a true understanding of the choice they’d be making: join Mordred as his favored sorcerous henchmen in a post-Apocalyptic wilderness, or …

… or do exactly what they were doing now, and fight back any way they could.

No matter the cost.

Since none of them had really destructive Gifts—not like Van Cartwright or some of the other Fire Witches or Weather Witches they all knew—by unspoken agreement they designated the rec room next to the bedroom as a sort of practice room. There, one by one, they sat trying to figure out how to use—or even just
activate
—the magical weapons they’d been given.

Burke, of course, went first.

*   *   *

With nothing else to do while the others were practicing—Spirit had asked to go last—and with the prospect of Vivian deserting them looming on the horizon, Spirit decided to ask Vivian to show her how the computer console worked. It was the only way for her to talk to Merlin, and she wanted to be sure she’d be able to.

Vivian walked Spirit through the procedure for powering up the huge old computer. It ran on tubes, not chips, Vivian told her, so she couldn’t just flip a switch and expect it to start immediately. And once the system had power, there would be another long wait while the system—a modem dialing out over telephone lines—could make its connection to the Internet.

“Can I ask you a question?” Spirit asked, waiting for the amber lights on the console to go green.

“You can
ask,
” Vivian said cautiously.

“It’s about my— My Gift,” Spirit said hesitantly. “You were at Oakhurst a long time ago, right?”

“Don’t make it sound like it was sometime in the last century,” Vivian said. “Oh …
wait.…”

Spirit smiled faintly at the tiny joke. “I just wondered … did they teach the Fifth School when you were there? Doc—One of the staff there had heard of it, but.…”

Vivian looked sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Spirit. Ms. Groves talked about it a little, but she said Spirit Mages were so rare, there was no point in teaching that School.”

“That doesn’t sound … like her,” Spirit said, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Vivian asked quietly.

Spirit nodded, unable to speak.

“I’m sorry. She was a holy terror, but she never played the games a lot of the staff did. And you’re right. It
doesn’t
make sense. They taught all of us about all the Schools, no matter what our Gift was. Why not that one?”

“I don’t know,” Spirit said, scrubbing at her eyes angrily. She was tired of crying. And she was tired of people dying, too. “It’s like they all just …
forgot,
or something.”

Vivian nodded soberly. “There was a lot of that going around, and not just the students. Stuff like some of the teachers just forgetting about the kids who disappeared, not even
trying
to track them down, even when the kid had been someone they were trying to give extra attention to.”

Yeah. And three guesses who did that.

Spirit wondered why Mordred had been trying to cover up the existence of the Fifth School. It would have been so much easier to deny it even existed. How would the students know?

And that meant … the School of Spirit was important.

Important enough to bring Mordred down?

That would sure have been a good reason to keep anyone from finding out about it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the hiss of static over the speakers—an indication of an open phone line—followed by the “bong bong” sound that Vivian called a “handshake.” It meant their system had made a connection.

“That’s it,” Vivian said. “You’re live. I’ve still got some stuff to do before I leave, so I’ll leave you two to chat. Be sure to shut the system down when you’re done using it. If anything breaks, you’ll need to build a time machine before you can order parts.”

“I won’t forget,” Spirit said.

Vivian left the control bunker, and Spirit took a deep breath, watching the square green cursor pulse hypnotically on the little screen.

HELLO, QUERCUS, she typed. OR SHOULD I CALL YOU MERLIN? It was an effort to hit each key hard enough to activate it, and her fingers were starting to ache already.

YOU MAY CALL ME WHAT YOU WISH, SPIRIT. The letters formed one by one on the screen. Spirit didn’t know if the slowness was due to the ancient technology they were using, or the fact that Merlin was thinking carefully about each word.

VIVIAN CALLS YOU MERLIN, SO I WILL TOO. SHE’S LEAVING TOMORROW. SHE WON’T SAY WHERE SHE’S GOING. BUT

Spirit’s fingers hovered over the keyboard indecisively. She trusted Merlin completely, but she wasn’t sure whether she should talk about the Hallows. What if someone was eavesdropping?

SPIRIT? YOU MAY SAY ANYTHING YOU WISH TO WITHOUT FEAR. IF IT WERE POSSIBLE FOR OUR ENEMIES TO FIND ME, I WOULD HAVE BEEN DESTROYED LONG AGO.

Spirit released a deep breath she hadn’t known she was holding. WE FOUND THE HALLOWS, she typed. BUT THEY DON’T WORK. I MEAN, WE CAN’T MAKE THEM DO ANYTHING.

BUT YOU WERE CONSECRATED TO THE HALLOWS, came the response. Spirit wasn’t sure whether it was a question or not.

YES, she typed back.

THEN HAVE PATIENCE AND FAITH. ALL WILL BE WELL.

HOW CAN YOU BE SURE OF THAT? The keyboard was too slow for her to type all the things in her mind: how was patience going to stop Mordred? How could she—how could any of them—have faith that they could defeat Mordred? How could they have faith in the power of the Hallows when they couldn’t even make them
work?

I AM A VERY OLD MAN. (Spirit could almost hear the wry chuckle accompanying those words.) I HAVE HAD TIME TO LEARN THE POWER OF FAITH. AND OF TRUST.

HOW CAN YOU TRUST US? Spirit answered. YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW US.

I HAVE KNOWN YOU LONGER THAN YOU IMAGINE, SPIRIT WHITE. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

That was so close to one of those irritating catchphrases from Oakhurst’s Morning Motivational Messages that Spirit couldn’t keep herself from making a face. She was instantly ashamed of herself—just because Oakhurst had done its best to pervert everything good and kind and normal was no reason she should buy into their lies.

I’LL TRY, she answered.

*   *   *

By the time Spirit’s turn to try out her Hallow came, none of the others had been able to announce any success in activating theirs. Spirit sat down at the table and set the pen in front of her. She stared at it gloomily. The pen just sat there. The pen was … just a pen. It was clearly magical—it had the same numinous hyper-reality Addie’s car keys possessed, or Loch’s phone charm, or Burke’s tacky jewelry—but aside from that.…

Nothing.

This entire exercise reminded Spirit far too much of her first days at Oakhurst, when Miss Smith had locked her up in a room with a potted plant, a bowl of water, a candle, and a bundle of feathers, and told her to figure out which Elemental School her Gift belonged to. It hadn’t worked then, and it didn’t work now.

When she found herself absently tapping the pen against the table out of sheer boredom, Spirit gave up. If the mystic ballpoint was going to reveal its secret life as an enchanted sword, it wasn’t going to do it this afternoon. Somehow, the fact that none of the others had had any better luck made Spirit feel better than it should have. She’d worried that their experience with their Gifts would make a difference, but … no.

At least this is one of those situations where prior experience doesn’t count,
she told herself.
Although with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, it might be nice if it did.

She sighed as she got to her feet. Time to go tell Burke, Loch, and Addie that they were four for four in the “not activating the Hallows” department.

*   *   *

Since tomorrow they’d be on their own, Burke and Spirit made dinner as a sort of practice run. Loch had said he was great at ordering room service, and Addie swore she’d never seen a kitchen in her life, so Spirit and Burke decided it was up to them to stave off group starvation after Vivian left. They were all trying hard to pretend this was just a sort of impromptu camping trip, something they might have done in the regular course of things. It didn’t work very well, but it helped. After dinner, Vivian took all four of them on a tour of the bunker, showing them where all the switches and valves were, and how to operate them. A lot of the original signs were still up from when the bunker had been in use, and a lot of those were detailed directions, so that helped. Spirit couldn’t decide whether it was creepy or kitschy. She wondered
why
there were such detailed directions, but … if someone was down here during a war, they might be hurt, sick with radiation.… Maybe that was why.

After that, the five of them went up to the surface. It was already dark, but the wind wasn’t quite as cold as Spirit expected it to be. Spring was coming.