Victories Read online

  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.

  Maybe.

  If they were lucky.

  Vivian walked them around the area encompassed by the Wards. It was larger than Spirit had expected—easily several acres. Like the ones surrounding Oakhurst, the Wards were set at the cardinal points of the compass: north, south, east, and west. Burke had marked where he thought the bounds were on the ground with chalk. He’d been pretty close.

  “You should re-cast them as often as possible,” Vivian said. “I’ll show you. Burke, come here.”

  Burke obediently came to stand beside her.

  “This is the southern Ward, so it resonates most strongly to the Element of Earth. The Shield Hallow belongs to that element. Can you feel it?”

  “Maybe,” Burke said doubtfully. “I’m a Combat Mage. It’s not like I’ve ever cast a spell.”

  “Sure you can,” Vivian said patiently. “It’s cold out here tonight, but there’s one spot that feels warmer.”

  “Yes!” Burke exclaimed, sounding pleased. “Right here.”

  “Good. When you need to renew the Ward, take the Shield and hold it in that feeling of warmth. Concentrate on what you want.”

  “Protection,” Burke said firmly, and Vivian made a sound of approval.

  “But don’t do it now,” she added. “I need to be able to cross them later, not rip them to shreds.”

  “If we’re powering the Wards up from the Hallows, won’t that drain them?” Loch asked.

  “They aren’t flashlight batteries, rich boy,” Vivian said. “They’re— Well, you’ll see. Or you won’t. Anyway. You can use any of them at any of the anchor points, or the same one at all four, but it’s strongest if you use each Hallow at its proper element. So the Cup in the West, the Spear in the North, and the Sword in the East.”

  “Earth, Water, Fire, and Air,” Loch said. “Or in this case, I guess, Spirit.”

  “When was Oakhurst planning to teach us this stuff?” Addie asked crossly.

  Vivian laughed at her disgruntled tone. “Probably never. They said you were all magicians and identified your Gifts, but Mordred certainly never intended to show you how to tap the power behind them. You can use that power for a lot more than water fights. Or not getting lost,” she added, smirking at Loch.

  “When we remember, will we know?” Spirit asked tentatively. Even though she was committed to this fight, the thought of waking up thinking she was somebody else frightened her more than she wanted to let on.

  “You’ll know that when you remember, won’t you?” Vivian said, but her words lacked their usual bite.

  * * *

  It hardly seems as if we’ve only been here a day and a half, Spirit thought, brushing her hair out as she got ready for bed. Yesterday morning they’d been on the road, fleeing from Oakhurst and the Shadow Knights. This morning they’d woken up here. Tomorrow morning, Vivian would be gone, and they’d be on their own again, with a deadline they had to beat and weapons they didn’t know how to use.

  “I’m not sure I’d wear a nightgown if I had one,” Addie said, walking into the bunkroom. “It doesn’t seem too cold during the day, but at night—ooh!”

  “Well, I can always make the ones we bought into something else,” Spirit said philosophically. “Shirts, maybe.”

  “Or I can heal our chilblains with these,” Addie said, jingling the keys she now wore around her neck on a length of string. “If I ever figure them out.”

  “Good luck with that,” Spirit said with a snort. The pen wasn’t quite as convenient to carry, but she had it clipped to the neck of her sweatshirt. “Hey, Addie, do you suppose you got the Cauldron because you’re a Water Witch?”

  “I wondered about that,” Addie said, “but no. Both Loch and Burke have Earth Gifts, and Loch has the Spear, which is a symbol of Fire. And you’re not an Air Mage, but you have the Sword.…”

  “Way to go, Addie,” Spirit said. “Now I’m going to have nightmares all night wondering if only two of us are the right people to be doing this.”

  “Doing what?” Loch asked, walking in ahead of Burke. His pale blond hair was damp and slicked back, and like Addie, he was wearing his Hallow on a cord around his neck.

  “Saving the world,” Addie said.

  “We hope,” Loch said.

  “We will,” Burke said, with more confidence than Spirit felt. “Want me to turn the lights out?”

  “As long as somebody has a flashlight,” Spirit said.

  Addie reached under her pillow and brandished the flashlight Vivian had been using earlier. Burke flipped the switch—it was on the wall outside the room—and suddenly the bunkroom was cave-dark.

  “Hey,” Loch said, aggrieved.

  “Deal with it,” Burke answered.

  Spirit heard springs squeak as Loch climbed into the bunk above Addie, then felt her own bed shake as Burke climbed in above her. Then there was silence for a moment.

>   “You know,” Addie said forlornly. “I never thought I’d miss anything about Oakhurst. But I miss my computer, even though all I could get was the school intranet. And books.”

  “Yeah,” Burke said. “If I’d been thinking, I would’ve picked up some of the ones at that Goodwill today.”

  “The world’s going to end in a month and you’re bored?” Loch asked.

  “Ha ha very funny,” Spirit said, deadpan. “I’m not going to miss being worked to death twenty-four seven.”

  “Or the Morning Motivational Message,” Addie said.

  “Or Systema,” Burke said.

  “Oh, I’m really not going to miss Systema,” Loch said. “But what about our healthful cross-country horseback rides?”

  Suddenly it became a game, as each of them contributed things they would not miss about Oakhurst: the dress code, the etiquette lessons, ballroom dancing, the compulsory sports, the curfews, the censorship.…

  It helped chase away the things they didn’t really want to think about. But what it did most was remind them how strange their current situation was.

  FOUR

  After the others fell silent, Spirit stayed awake as long as she could. Her friends were all asleep, but she dreaded the thought of sleeping. Of dreaming again.

  What was it like when you remembered having been someone else? Was it like dying? Would she forget she’d ever been Spirit White and had a sister named Phoenix and parents who’d loved her? Would she forget everything that made her her? She didn’t know. If it had been simple—if someone had come to her and said: “Step in front of this firing squad and the world will be safe”—she thought she could have managed to do that. But this was different. This was like dying and having to stick around afterward knowing you were dead.

  Or like something even worse … if there was something worse.

  If there was actually something worse than that, Spirit couldn’t even imagine it. With all the magic classes there’d been at Oakhurst, there hadn’t been one single one dealing with waking up to find you were a reincarnation of somebody and the person you thought you were didn’t actually exist.

  Funny thing that. Only not.

  She would have gotten up and gone out into the computer room—hung out with Merlin, or tried to see if she could get onto the actual Internet with the silo’s antique equipment—but she knew if she went blundering around in the dark, she’d wake the others up. And then what could she say to explain?

  I’ll just stay awake until morning, she told herself. Maybe I won’t dream if I sleep during the day.

  I’ll just stay awake.

  * * *

  She was walking through an empty castle. It wasn’t a castle like in Fee’s movies, or like the castles you saw in drawings. It was smaller somehow. Instead of carpets on the stone floors, there was straw, and the carpets were hung on the walls. It wasn’t all stone, either, like the ones in the movies. A lot of it was wood.

  She didn’t know how she’d gotten here, but she wasn’t worried. As soon as she found what she was looking for, she’d go back.

  Maybe it was in the stone tower. The tower was huge, both tall and wide, with wooden steps spiraling upward along the inside wall. The steps were thick planks of wood that seemed to have been set into the wall at the same time the wall had been built—she knew that without knowing how she knew. It would be centuries before the wood rotted away—if it ever did—and then the masons would take a new baulk of timber and hammer it into the empty hole, wedging it in as tight as its predecessor had been.

  The castle had been built to endure.

  The steps went up through an opening cut into each wooden floor. Nobody lived in this part of the castle—this was the siege tower, the place for a last stand, the place you went to when the castle was about to fall. Each chamber was filled with provisions—sacks of grain, barrels of salt fish and salt pork, barrels filled with arrows, chests filled with leather armor and coats of ring mail. Spirit counted as she climbed: one story, two stories, three stories, four, and still the stairs spiraled upward. She’d be able to see the entire world from the top.

  The top floor was more window than wall, built around four tall stone pillars that held up the wood and thatch roof. She didn’t envy the man who’d thatched it; he must have been very brave, or very drunk. The pillars had been plastered, covering the rough stone with a smooth white surface. The wooden floor had been whitened as well. She stepped away from the top of the staircase and peered out. She could see for miles—but when she looked down, the momentary illusion of peace was shattered.

  There were two armies facing each other on the vast green meadow. The sunlight glittered off the armor of the men and the horses, and just ahead of the front rank of fighters on each side, there was a man on horseback carrying a banner. The wind whipped at the banners, unfurling them so she could see the designs. One was red, with a black dragon coiled around a black tower—

  That’s the Breakthrough logo. I recognize it.

  —while the other banner was as blue as an October sky and showed a white horse. It glittered as the sunlight caught it; the horse had been stitched with threads of silver.

  I know that design.

  “Are you ready?” It was a woman’s voice, speaking from behind her. “You can still turn back.”

  “No,” Spirit answered sorrowfully. “I can’t. I never could.”

  She turned around to see a woman dressed in chain mail and leather armor and wearing a sword. Spirit knew she’d seen her before. But this time the woman wasn’t wearing a helmet, and Spirit could see her face.

  It was like looking into a mirror.

  “Then defend the light,” the woman said. She stepped forward and kissed Spirit on the forehead.…

  … and Spirit woke up.

  * * *

  She was Spirit White. She was Guinevere of Camelot. She remembered both lives. Ice cream and Sunday drives and growing up in Indiana. A castle on a mountaintop, riding and swordplay and learning to be a queen.

  She remembered the day she rode out from her castle to meet the man her visions had told her she would marry.

  She remembered the first time Burke had kissed her.

  She sat up. The strange cage of metal shook, then a familiar figure stood before her. She smiled in delight and relief.

  “Arthur! Husband!” Oh my god, Spirit thought in horror, clapping her hands over her mouth as she felt the heat rise in her cheeks.

  “Aye,” Burke said softly, and shook his head at the sound of his own voice. He was clearly as shaken as she was. He held out a hand and she grabbed it, using it to pull herself to her feet.

  Loch—Addie—

  She looked toward the other bunks. Loch was sitting up, staring around himself wildly as if he couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten up there and had no idea of how to get down. Ah, Lancelot. The most graceful man a-horse I have ever seen—and the clumsiest afoot.

  “No,” Spirit said aloud.

  “Yes!” Vivianne, The Lady of the Lake, sat on the edge of her bed, pushing her long black hair out of her eyes.

  No! That’s Addie!

  “It’s— The—” Addie/Vivianne said. She was both, just as Loch was Lachlan Spears and Lancelot of the Lake, as Spirit was also Guinevere.…

  “My liege,” Loch said, scrambling down from the top bunk. “Know that I am your sworn knight unto death.” He started to kneel, then caught himself. “Uh … not that I’m, um, planning to die.…”

  The weak joke broke the tension, and they all laughed.

  “Well,” Addie said, looking at Burke, “weren’t we all wondering where Arthur was?” She looked down at the sweatshirt and sweatpants she was wearing with an unfeigned horror. Well, Spirit recalled, Vivianne had always been one for fine robes and rich fabrics.…

  “Oh my god, I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Addie and Spirit both said, practically in chorus.

  “More like getting a second one,” Burke said. He put an arm around Spirit. “My lady,�
� he said softly, and Spirit couldn’t tell whether it was Burke or the Reincarnate memories speaking.

  “She knew,” Spirit said in sudden realization. “Vivian—not you, Addie, her—she knew who we were.”

  “But how could she?” Addie demanded. “Her fell arts—sorry!—her magic couldn’t have told her. Didn’t Elizabeth say Reincarnates couldn’t recognize each other unless both sides had their memories back?”

  “Aye,” Burke said. “But The Merlin never lost his. He knew all along. He has to have told her.” He stepped away from Spirit and ran both hands through his hair, as if his head hurt.

  “She said I should know her,” Loch said. “She said Vivian was her real name.”

  “No,” Addie said in a strange voice. “It was Nimue. We— They— There wasn’t one Lady-of-the-Lake. There were three of us. Them. Vivianne, Ninniane, and Nimue.”

  The Lady of the Lake, Spirit suddenly remembered, had been Lancelot’s foster mother. “And Nimue was seduced by Mordred, and betrayed Merlin,” Spirit said.

  She remembered the desperate weeks she’d spent hunting for the renegade priestess, for only she could undo the spell of imprisonment.

  She remembered reading the story in one of her sister’s books.

  It was like being in an echo chamber. Every thought jarred a bunch of other thoughts loose, and she couldn’t decide which was real. Both?

  “The—” Loch said, and stopped, shaking his head. “This is just—” Suddenly, he looked horror-stricken. “Oh, god, do you know how many people I’ve killed?”

  “Not you, Loch,” Spirit said quickly. “Lancelot. He was a knight. He fought wars. It was … a more violent time. I’ve— I killed people, too.” She remembered battlefields, and fighting beside Arthur, her sword in her hand. Her Reincarnate memories were starting to settle down, but knowing she was Guinevere with the same certainty she knew she was Spirit was hard to take.

  “It’s about to be a violent time now,” Loch said, with a ghost of his old snark. “But—” He pulled the loop of cord off over his head and held the tiny charm up between his thumb and forefinger. “—at least I know what to do with this.” There was a ripple of magic—and suddenly Loch was holding a full-sized war spear in his hands. Its head gleamed silver, and its entire length was banded in silver and painted with runes.