Victories (25 page)

While it would be years before the county recovered from the bizarre and shattering blow it had been dealt, at least there was no shortage of money to rebuild. Loch and Addie hadn’t been the only “trust fund elite” at the school. But for just that reason, the “Oakhurst family” was breaking up. As lawyers and banks and trusts were slowly contacted, the kids with someplace else to go went there. Addie and Loch had stayed, stubbornly insisting they wanted to be here for the rebuilding, but both of them were minors, and it was only a matter of time.

And finally, one day, it was time.

*   *   *

“I can’t believe I’m leaving this place,” Addie said. “Alive, I mean.”

“What, you call this living?” Loch wisecracked. “I’ll write, you know. To all of you.”

“And we’ll write back,” Burke said. “Come on.” He started his horse forward at a gentle walk, and the others followed.

It was the first of May. Beltane. The day on which the world had been scheduled to end, only it hadn’t, and only a few people—
now
—remembered it had been supposed to. Later today Loch and Addie would be driven to Billings—in an ordinary car, this time, not an Oakhurst Rolls-Royce. From there, Loch would go to a boarding school in New York State (he’d chosen it himself, and it had an aggressive anti-bullying policy, as well as a school code requiring respect for all races, creeds, and sexual orientations), while Addie was heading to Switzerland.

Because it was their last day together, Burke had organized this farewell event, and borrowed horses, too. He said they weren’t going far, or going to be away long, but Mrs. Copeland had still packed a lunch that would probably have fed eight kids for two days.

They rode down Radial’s new main street. It hadn’t been paved yet, but the sidewalks had been poured and there was so much new construction going on that everything smelled of fresh-cut wood and sawdust. By the end of the month, there’d be actual buildings here again.

“So where are we going?” Loch asked. “Not back to Oakhurst, I hope.”

“No,” Burke said. “But I thought we could take a look at it for old time’s sake.”

“Ha,” Addie said comprehensively. “You mean at the future home of the Prester-Lake School.”

“I cannot believe you’re naming it after yourself,” Loch said.

Addie flashed him a brilliant grin. “Don’t be silly, Loch. That would be vulgar. I’m naming it after my money.”

“And money is never vulgar,” Loch said grandly.

As a gesture of goodwill to the county (and because, Addie said, somebody had better do something with the place), a new school was going up on the grounds of what had once been Oakhurst. When it was finished, all the kids in the county would go there, but it would also have dormitory housing for any of the former Oakhurst kids who needed it. It should be ready by fall.

And someday, maybe, teenaged magicians would come here to learn to use their powers. But that time was a long way away, if it ever came at all.

“I wonder what it’s going to be like going back to school,” Spirit said. “To a real school, I mean.”

“You’ll hardly notice,” Loch said. “You’re going to be spending most of the time applying to colleges.”

“At least
I
don’t have to wonder what I’m going to take,” Addie said. “Business administration. Prester-Lake is a pretty big company. Somebody’s got to run it.”

“Better you than me,” Loch said feelingly. “I’m not sure what I want to do. Maybe become a counselor.”

“Troubled teens our specialty,” Burke said lightly. “Well, I’m off to medical school when I graduate. If I can find one that will have me.”

“Grades are going to be a problem,” Spirit said. Everyone’s last year at Oakhurst had been pretty much a wash academically, not to mention the fact that all their school records had been destroyed.

“If there’s one thing we all know how to do,” Burke said. “It’s study. The difference is, now it’s going to mean something.”

“Something
real,
” Addie said.

They detoured around the place where the school itself had been. When they’d come to tear it down, nobody had asked why neither of the dormitory wings had windows. Now the whole area was a building site, and they couldn’t just ride across it. Most of the parts of the school that had still been intact after the explosion had already been torn down, and anything that had been left had been bulldozed flat for the new construction, so the stables were gone, and the little sunken garden with the fountain, and most of the landscaping. Only the chapel and the little train station had survived from when Arthur Tyniger had put Oakhurst up in the first place

“So where are we going?” Loch asked, when they’d ridden past the train station.

“You’ll see in a minute,” Burke said.

The landscape ahead of them was unchanged, and unsettlingly familiar. It had been the scene of Endurance Rides too numerous and horrible to count.

And of one very important battle.

For a moment Spirit shivered in a winter wind only she could feel, thinking of the night the five of them had faced the Wild Hunt. The stand of trees where Loch had created his spelltrap—and where they’d sent the Wild Hunt’s leader back to Hell—was just up ahead.

The little pine forest was, as Spirit had suspected, their destination.

“The boundary marker’s still here,” Loch said in surprise. He dismounted, and ran his hands over it. “The Warding’s gone, though. At least I think so. It’s kind of weird, not being able to tell any more.”

“I think it’s a good thing,” Addie said. She swung down out of her saddle and took a deep breath. “
Spring!
I never realized this miserable wasteland could actually be pretty.”

“A lot prettier when you aren’t fighting for your life,” Burke agreed with a smile. He dismounted, then reached up to haul the packs off his saddle. “I figured, since two of us are leaving and everything’s changing, we should do something to mark the occasion. Not celebrate, exactly. Just mark it.”

He opened the pack and pulled out, to everyone’s surprise, a small foldable shovel. “We’ll need this,” he said.

“For what?” Addie asked. “Or do I want to know?”

“To bury this,” Burke said. The next item he pulled out of the pack was a small metal canister. It had obviously been made from a short length of pipe. One end was soldered closed, and the other end had a screw-top lid.

Loch took it from him, frowning in puzzlement. “An empty hunk of pipe?”

“Not if we put stuff in it.”

He stuck his hand in his pocket, and pulled out four familiar items.

A set of worn and battered keys on an old key tag with a GM logo. A tiny phone charm in the shape of an arrowhead. A white plastic ballpoint pen, its logo long since worn off. And a set of cheap pot-metal rings with designs on their faces in rhinestones: one an ace, one a diamond, tied together with a piece of string. Burke held the items out to them on the palm of his hand. Nothing but cheap trash. But need and magic had made them into more. Just as it had made them.

“Those are the Hallows,” Loch said slowly. “I— In all the confusion, I never wondered what had happened to them.”

“Yours was in your pocket,” Burke said to Loch. “I found it when I was tossing a bunch of clothes in the wash a couple of days later. I already had the other three. The pen was in the back of the van. The keys were in the ignition. And I’d still been wearing the rings.”

Addie reached out and touched the keys. “
‘Are’
the Hallows?” she asked. “
‘Were’
the Hallows? I’m not sure I could even tell.”

“‘Were,’ I think,” Burke answered. “But I kind of thought … we might want to bury them anyway.”

“Sounds good to me,” Loch said. He picked up the length of pipe and held it out to Burke. “Toss ’em.”

Burke tipped his hand gently, and let the four items spill into the container.

“Wait!” Spirit said, as he was about to put the top on. “There’s one more thing!”

She slipped the knotted shoelaces over her head and held up the Ironkey drive.

“This was how I’d talk to QUERCUS—to Merlin,” she said. “Back at Oakhurst. I don’t think he’s out there any more, I haven’t tried to use it because I didn’t want to know, but.… I think this deserves to go in with the others.”

Burke nodded. “Seems fair,” he said.

Spirit dropped the Ironkey into the pipe, and Burke screwed the lid down tight. Then they all took turns with the entrenching tool, digging a small deep hole under the pine trees. When they all agreed it was deep enough, Burke placed the container at the bottom, and they filled in the hole and stomped the earth down. When the pine needles on the ground had been scattered over the place again, there was no sign anything had ever been disturbed.

“Someday, somebody’s going to dig that up, you know,” Addie said. “What do you suppose they’ll think?”

“Just some kids playing a game,” Spirit said. “You know what kids are like.”

“Sure,” Loch said. “Always playing around. No idea about doing something important with their lives.”

Addie reached out and touched Loch’s arm gently. “We already have,” she said. “If none of us ever does anything else worth mentioning until the day we die, we’ll have done this.”

“Well I, personally, intend to do a lot of things,” Spirit said firmly.

“Me too,” Burke said. “Now, who wants lunch?”

T
OR
T
EEN
B
OOKS BY
M
ERCEDES
L
ACKEY AND
R
OSEMARY
E
DGHILL

Shadow Grail #1: Legacies

Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

Shadow Grail #3: Sacrifices

Shadow Grail #4: Victories

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MERCEDES LACKEY is the author of the Valdemar novels. She has collaborated with Andre Norton on the Halfblood Chronicles and with James Mallory on the bestselling Obsidian Trilogy, Enduring Flame Trilogy, and the upcoming Dragon Prophecy Trilogy. She lives with her husband in Oklahoma.

ROSEMARY EDGHILL has worked as an SF editor, a freelance book designer, a typesetter, an illustrator, and as a professional book reviewer in addition to writing numerous books. She lives in Maryland.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

SHADOW GRAIL #4: VICTORIES

Copyright © 2014 by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Cliff Nielsen

A Tor Teen Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Lackey, Mercedes, author.

    Victories / Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill.

            p. cm. — (Shadow Grail; 4)

    “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

    ISBN 978-0-7653-2826-7 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-0-7653-1764-3 (trade paperback)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-4321-9 (e-book)

  1.  Magic—Fiction.   2.  Supernatural—Fiction.   3.  Mordred (Legendary character)—Fiction.   4.  Boarding schools—Fiction.   5.  Schools—Fiction.   I.  Edghill, Rosemary, author.   II.  Title.

    PZ7.L13543Vi 2014

    [Fic]—dc23

2013025956

e-ISBN 9781466843219

First Edition: April 2014