The Broken Sword (4 page)

He had known instantly who it was.

He did not need to follow them.
Let them think they've gotten away
, he thought with amusement. When the time was right, they would give the cup to him. And it would not be in a crowded city swarming with police over the assassination of some aged politician.

He picked up a piece of paper, set fire to it, then used the scrap to light a cigarette. Slowly, he walked around the room lighting the pillows and the thin cloth curtains. When the blaze became smoky enough, he went into the hall to wait.

All in all, it had been a good day's work. Marshall was dead and, in a happy coincidence, the cup had finally been located.

All the pieces were in place. The game was finally ready to begin.

At the first scream of "Fire!" he tossed his cigarette to the floor, crushed it with his shoe, and ambled outside.

H
al pulled the Jeep
to a stop some ninety miles northeast of Marrakesh, at a gas station consisting of a mud-brick hut in front of which were stacked two pyramids of gasoline cans under a canvas awning. For the past several hours he had been driving back roads flanking the towering Atlas Mountains, but the mountains now loomed directly in front of them.

It had all seemed like a colossal waste of time to Hal, not to mention the fact that he faced time in a Moroccan prison for stealing the car if they were caught. And all because a teenage girl thought someone was after her.

He had been willing to believe her for the first few miles, but the Jeep had been the only vehicle on the road for the past hour.

"If someone's chasing us, he's a damn slow driver," he had complained, but Taliesin insisted that he go on. For some reason the old man was absolutely convinced that the girl was right. She had directed them onto this road, and Taliesin would hear of no objections, even after she'd admitted that she'd only been in the country for three days.

Still, the old man's instincts were good—actually, a lot better than good—and if he said run, Hal wasn't about to question him.

"Well?" he asked. "Where to now? Back to the hotel?" he asked hopefully.

"That way," Beatrice said, pointing straight at the snow-covered peaks.

"Those are mountains," Hal said, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Do what she says," Taliesin said.

Hal sighed. There was no point in protesting, he knew. He filled the Jeep's tank with eighteen laboriously poured cans of gas, then bought ten more to carry with them.

"We don't have any food or water, you know," he grumbled. "We'll probably be buried under an avalanche. Anything could happen to us in that wilderness, and we're not prepared for any of them."

"Yes we are," Arthur said quietly. "We have the cup."

T
hat night they stopped
near the village of Ait Haddus. They had tried for a hotel there, but since there was none in the tiny farm community, they had to resign themselves to a night spent in the open air. Fortunately there was a store in Ait Haddus, where Hal further depleted his meager resources to buy a couple of blankets to keep between their bodies and the rocky ground, as well as some dates, almonds, olives, three bottles of seltzer water, and, since there were no trees, an armload of dried donkey dung for a fire.

The dung briquettes, though aromatic, burned fairly well. As they ate their exotic meal around it, they watched the sun settle in a red haze over the mountain peaks. Beneath them spread the monochromatic village, a succession of squares and rectangles made of the same red earth on which they sat.

"It's magnificent, isn't it," Taliesin said contentedly, unwrapping a yellowed newspaper that contained the dates.

Hal grunted, thinking about his rock-pitted buttocks.

"One might never know western civilization ever existed… Good grief." He parted the dates on the newspaper. "It's in English. The
International Herald Tribune."

Arthur craned his neck to see. "Only the want ads. Oh, man." He grabbed the paper, scattering the dates onto the ground. "Hal, look at this."

"Look at
this!
"
Taliesin shouted, gesturing toward the spilled fruit as Arthur scrambled past him.

"Work in Lichtenstein," Hal read from the black-bordered box ad on the center of the page.

"Not that. Here." He pointed to a small ad in the personals column next to it.

ARTHUR B, it began.

Meet me at seven at the Victoria Hotel in Tangier.

I will stay as long as I can.

Your Aunt Emily.

"She's alive, Hal."

Hal frowned. "I can't believe we happened to get this particular newspaper—"

"And she's looking for me."

"Right." He felt the texture of the paper. It seemed all right.

"What's the matter? Aren't you glad?"

Hal raised his eyes to the boy. Arthur's face was transformed with happiness. "Sure, kid. It's just that…"

That coincidences like this just don't happen.

Still, how could something like this have been arranged? They hadn't even known themselves which direction they were heading. He looked at Taliesin and arched an eyebrow. The old man shrugged. "Okay, I'm glad," Hal said, ruffling the boy's hair. "Damn glad."

The two of them laughed, and Hal allowed himself at last to feel some measure of relief.

"Wait a minute. When did this run?" He checked the date. "It's from September of last year," he said. "That's three months before we ever got to Morocco."

"So? She might still be in Tangier."

Hal sighed. "I wouldn't count on it. Still, it may be a place to start."

"Tangier," Beatrice said, staring into the fire. "Yes, that's where it will begin."

"Where what will begin?" Arthur asked.

The girl blinked. "Did you say something?" she asked apologetically. "I must have been daydreaming."

"You said something would happen in Tangier."

"Did I?" She blushed deeply. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine."

Taliesin was eyeing her sharply. "We'll go to Tangier," he said.

"Now wait a minute." Hal held up his hands. "We'll go, okay? But in a day or two, after we've had a chance to pack, check out of our hotel, go to the bank..."

"We'll go now," Taliesin said.

"Why? This newspaper's nine months old. A day or two isn't going to make any difference." He looked at Beatrice. "Or is it because of her?"

"Yes," the old man said impatiently.

Hal put his hands on his hips. "Are you saying that just because a twelve-year-old girl who doesn't even remember saying anything—"

"Yes. We'll go now."

"We can't," Hal explained, gritting his teeth.

"Why not?"

"Money, for one thing!" Hal exploded. "How are we supposed to live in Tangier? After buying food and gas for this car—which, incidentally, we can't keep in Tangier because it's
stolen
—I've got exactly..." He dug all his remaining Moroccan currency out of his pockets and fumbled through it.

Arthur glanced over his shoulder. "Three bucks. Twenty-seven cents."

"Three bucks!" Hal slapped the bills into Taliesin's hands.
"You
support the four of us in Tangier with three bucks!"

"Oh, don't be melodramatic, Hal," Taliesin said. He handed the dirham notes back to him, then extracted a wad of bills from his crisp khaki shirt. "Use this."

Hal leafed through the bills. "There's a thousand dollars here," he said, gawking at it incredulously. "American."

"Yes, I believe you prefer those."

Hal squinted. "How'd you get this much money?"

"What does it matter?" the old man said, yawning. "It's only paper."

"Only—"

"Shall we rest awhile before continuing on?"

Hal's arms flapped against his sides. "To Tangier," he said, defeated.

"Quite."

L
ong after Hal and
Arthur had fallen asleep, Beatrice sat silently gazing into the dung fire. Taliesin sat nearby, leaning against a rock. He had been watching her for hours, trying to understand why he felt such a sense of—
obedience
was the only word, really—toward her. Hal was right; she didn't know what she was saying half the time. It was as if Beatrice were two people, one of them a frightened child, and the other. . .

It was the other who commanded him, though how and why he did not begin to know. "What do you see in there, child?" Taliesin asked. "You haven't taken your eyes off that fire since it was lit."

"It's just... so beautiful," she said, looking embarrassed. "I always thought fire was just
heat
—you know, invisible." She smiled. "I'm afraid I sound like a simpleton."

"Not at all," the old man said. "I've spent many an evening staring at fires myself. It gets cold in Wales."

"Wales! Is that where you're from?"

He nodded. "And you?"

"Dorset. Near the Somerset border."

Taliesin sucked in his breath. "Near Wilson-on-Hamble?"

"Yes. Do you know it?"

He nodded. "Have you heard about the doings on St. John's Eve?"

She laughed. "Of course. We all have. The ruins of Camelot are in our back yard. In midsummer, on St. John's Eve, the ghosts of the Knights of the Round Table ride out in search of King Arthur. At least that's how the stories go."

"Do you believe them? The stories?"

She doodled on the soft ground with her finger. "I don't know. My parents didn't. They made fun of the villagers and their superstitions."

"Your parents!" Taliesin slapped the side of his head. "Good heavens, child, you haven't told them about—"

"There's no need." Her finger stopped moving in the dirt. "They died four years ago in a motorcar accident."

"Oh, my," he said softly. "I'm sorry."

"My grandmother raised me since then. And now that she's gone..." Tears sprang to her eyes and threatened to spill over.

"Beatrice—"

"No, I'm all right." She wiped her face. "It's just that I can't help but feel that I've somehow
traded
her. For my sight."

"You mustn't believe that."

"But I do! Even when that man was... killing her..." She wept silently, her tears falling in dark circles on the ground, "Even then, all I could think about was being able to see."

"I understand." he said.

"No, you don't!" she shouted angrily. "You can't know what it's like to be blind! You've probably never even known a blind person."

"Oh, but I have. My teacher was blind."

"It's not the same." Beatrice sniffed. "Your teacher?"

Taliesin nodded.

"What did he teach?"

"She. My instructor—my master—was a woman." The old man cocked his head and smiled. "I suppose you'd say she taught life." He picked up a stone. It was gypsum, clear as water. He held it up to the slim bright crescent of light in the night sky.

"Selene," she said. "For the moon. It will bring clarity of vision."

"Why, quite right." He smiled delightedly. "You used the archaic term. Are you a student of the spiritual properties of stones? I understand there are quite a few of those these days."

She frowned. "No," she said, touching the stone with the tip of her finger as if it were an insect. "I've never seen a rock like this before."

There was a silence. Finally the old man said, "Ah, no matter. Someone must have mentioned it to you."

"Yes," she answered numbly.

Clarity of vision,
she thought, looking into the fire. How had those words come into her head?

How had she come to know any of the strange things she had known all her life?

A psychologist had once asked her to describe her dreams. They were typical blind person's dreams, amorphous, filled with touch and sound. The only unusual thing was that several of them were recurring.

"There's a grove of oak trees," Beatrice explained. "It's around a circular clearing, with smoke rising up from the center of it."

"Yes? And are you in this dream?" the therapist had prompted.

Beatrice nodded. "I'm dressed in a long woolen robe. It's raining, and I can smell the damp. The fire has been banked to embers, but there's something in it." She heard the swift intake of her own breath. "It's the heart of a stag, sacrificed for the festival of Midsummer."

The psychologist took notes in a leather-covered book. She looked up briefly. "What happened then, Beatrice?" she asked in a soprano singsong.

"Then the magicians came."

The therapist's pencil stopped in mid-air. "I beg your pardon?"

"The magicians. The sorcerers. They came to Mona. They killed my priests while I was in prayer. They burned everything."

The psychologist scribbled furiously, "Mona? Is that a place?"

"It was our place. Our last refuge." Tears ran down her face.

The therapist gave her a tissue. "Tell me, Beatrice," she asked, "do you sometimes feel that someone has taken your sight from you? The doctor who delivered you, perhaps, or your mother, or God himself?"

Beatrice only wept.

"Perhaps you'd like to think about that for next time," the therapist said, glancing at her watch.

"Mona," Beatrice whispered now.

Taliesin started. "What did you say?"

She looked up, surprised to see him. She had been so absorbed in her own past that she had forgotten she wasn't alone. "I... I don't remember."

The old man's lips tightened.

"Yes?" Beatrice asked gently. "What is it?"

"You said... That is, I thought you said..." He blinked. "Listen, child, you'd best get some rest while you can. Tomorrow we'll take you to the British Embassy in Tangier and see about getting you back home."

She examined her hands. "I don't have a home," she said.

"But surely your grandmother made some provision."

She shrugged. "I'm to inherit the estate when I come of age. Until then, I'll probably be sent to a boarding school under the aegis of some law firm." She turned away from him and lay facing the fire. "But that's not your problem."

"Well..." The old man cleared his throat. "We'll think of something."

He sat silently in the thick stillness of night.

"I really should be with you," Beatrice said sleepily, the flames dancing before her closed eyes.

"In Tangier."

"Yes."

"Why, Beatrice?" he asked. "Why Tangier?"

It took her a long time to answer. "Because the cycle is ending," she said at last.

"The cycle?" His voice was barely audible.

"The cycle that began on Mona."

Taliesin felt his heart thudding. He had heard her correctly, then. She had spoken the name of a place which had not existed for a thousand years.

Mona.

It had been so long since he had thought of it. So long...

This was the cup's doing, he knew that instinctively. The cup had come back, and whatever plans Hal and Arthur had made would mean nothing. The cup would do its work.

For surely, he thought, studying the slumbering girl, that work had already begun.