Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,98

Eww Lolita creepy? He could be saying that just to throw all of us off. Or even just to get you to concentrate on him, you know what I mean?”

Muirin started to protest, then grimaced a little. “Well … maybe it is kind of creepy…” A brief expression of guilt passed over her face, and she thrust the handful of paper at Spirit. “Here, you might as well have them. Anastus wanted them but … yeah, that’s creepy, why would he want something he said was worthless, unless it’s like some weird souvenir or something.”

Spirit took the papers. And though it required every bit of her willpower, she stayed in Muirin’s room right up until lights out, listening to her talk about fashion and the latest from her stepmother (who seemed to belong to the Boy Toy of the Month Club) as if there weren’t four dead kids in the county morgue, three of them people they knew. And it actually occurred to her, as Muirin nattered on about Vivienne Westwood, that this might be Muirin’s way of dealing with just that. To pretend it hadn’t happened, and hide it behind a wall of trivialities.

When she had to leave, it seemed to her that Muirin had been grateful for the company. Maybe it was harder to cope with all this when there was no one to chatter at.…

But right at the door of her room, a shadow detached itself from the wall. She gasped and started to scream—

—and stopped herself just in time. “Burke!” she whispered harshly. “What are you doing here? You’ll get in trouble!”

“I had to talk to you,” he whispered back. “Spirit, I—I don’t know anything anymore, except that you guys are my family now. I can’t bail on you again. Especially not you. You’re—I should have been there. I should have been with you to protect you. I know you aren’t a fighter—”

“No, I’m not,” she said, and then, felt something strange, like anger, but not like anger, ignite inside her. “I’m not. But I will be.”

He stared at her. Then slowly, a faint smile passed over his face. “I think you will. And I’ll help. Good night, Spirit.”

He faded into the darkness.

She slipped into her room.

As soon as she closed the door and got into bed, she began to go through Muirin’s notes. There were an awful lot of notes for something that was only a few runes long … but Muirin had been as meticulous in her research as she was with her design and sewing, hunting down alternate meanings, considering, then rejecting, things that eventually didn’t seem to match. Finally, near the end, Spirit read the conclusion Muirin had come to. It was written as if she were writing a letter, and Spirit wondered if Muirin had planned to give her the papers all along.

Okay. So this is the only thing it can be. And it’s right out of Lizzie’s goofy story, but nothing else matches. It kind of goes like this: “Interfering stranger (foreigner, you-who-would-meddle kind of thing) Beware! Touch not (do not disturb) the Sacred (or Shunned) Oak sealed (closed, locked up) by the Druid (priest, magician) Merlinus (whatever, dude). Herein is imprisoned (confined, enclosed, banished) the son of the Great Bear (it says Arturus), Medraut (that’s Mordred), Kin-slayer, Parricide, and Most Accursed. Turn your back, and flee.” Which, of course, is insane. Mordred wasn’t the one that was shut up in the oak, or the cave, or whatever—that was MERLIN, duh—and anyway, it’s all myth. Some farmer probably carved this into the oak figuring to make money off that old man, just like we thought.

Spirit stared at the words, because they were suddenly making horrible sense. QUERCUS and Elizabeth said the Shadow Knights were leaderless until Mordred was freed. And when had that happened? When the Oak got struck by lightning? No, that couldn’t be it—could it? If it had been recently, when Doctor Ambrosius started Oakhurst, then what had done it? Who had turned Mordred loose? She pondered those words: “Stranger beware, touch not the shunned oak.” Could someone have freed Mordred after the house was built? Maybe when it was lying empty and abandoned?

Crazy as it sounded, it all seemed to be adding up. Elizabeth’s story was true after all. They really were caught in a war between Mordred and Arthur, and it wouldn’t end until one or the other was truly gone, forever.

But … she couldn’t take this to the others. Not yet. Not until she had