Carrie Vaughn - Discord's Apple

“Hera still wants it,” Alex said. “It still has power.”

“Who are you?” She kept asking that. Why should he tell her now?

“Cursed.”

From upstairs, Mab started barking fiercely, as if battling demons. Evie jumped and almost dropped the apple. Alex glanced up the stairs.

Rubbing her thumb over the inscription, she returned the apple to the chest of drawers. She closed the Storeroom door firmly behind her when she left.

“Let’s see what’s wrong.” She tugged on his sleeve, and he followed her up the stairs.

The kitchen door slammed shut.

“Don’t close your door on me, Frank Walker! I know who you are and I know you have it!” A man shouted loud enough to hear in the basement, even over Queen Mab’s barking.

When she got to the kitchen, her father had opened the door a crack. He must have been sleeping; he wore a bathrobe and slippers. He was hushing the dog, who was inside, whining and turning circles, her claws clicking on the linoleum.

“Mab, down! What is it you think I have?”

“Open the door. I will not stand here like a beggar or a supplicant.”

Frank sighed, his shoulders slouching. He opened the door wide, cold air or no. Mab started to launch herself, lunging like she would tackle the visitor, but she stopped just inside the doorway, between Evie’s father and the stranger, barking like mad.

The visitor glowered at her. “Quiet! If you please, madam!”

Mab clamped her jaws shut. She ducked and backed a step, whining noises still straining at her throat, but she wouldn’t leave Frank’s side.

The visitor was an older man, around her father’s age, with short steel-gray hair and a trimmed beard. He carried a walking stick, which he propped on the porch between him and the dog. He wore a tired brown tweed suit and an air of importance.

“I’ve come for the sword,” he said.

Frank looked the man up and down. “What sword?”

“What sword?” the man said “What sword ? The one sword, the sword of power that may be carried only by the true king. The sword that Viviane gave over to your family’s keeping fifteen hundred years ago. Didn’t she tell you I’d come for it one day?”

Evie stared at the tableau like she was watching a play, with Alex breathing at her shoulder.

“I don’t know. My family may have kept the sword for that long, but we don’t remember who gave it to us. How do I know you’re the one?”

“How maddening, to be hindered by fools. Let me explain this to you: He is coming. The sword belongs to him. Not me, not you. Him. I must see that he gets it.”

“Him. The true king?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Wait just a minute.”

He turned and started a moment, glancing with surprise at Evie and looking harder at Alex, but he nodded and moved to the basement door. The stranger started to enter the house, but her father looked back and pointed. “Evie, make sure he stays here.”

The old man glared at her. She shrugged and took her place beside Mab when he tried to step inside.

“Do you know who I am, young lady?” he said.

She had a nagging suspicion she knew who he thought he was.

“I could turn you into a frog. A hideous, ugly frog.” He raised his hands, fingers pointed in an arcane gesture.

She crossed her arms.

“I have a feeling she’s safe in this house, even from you,” Alex said.

The old man stood for a moment, pointing expectantly as if waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Evie didn’t feel so much as a hair tingle at the back of her neck.

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes. I almost forgot. This house, this family. I must hand it to Viviane—she always knew what she was doing.” He looked at Alex. “And who are you?”

“A traveler. Like yourself.”

“Hm, not like me at all. Sapling.”

Alex stifled a chuckle with a hand over his mouth.

Her father called from the basement stairs. “Evie? Take our visitor around back. I’ll meet you there.”

She couldn’t do anything but play along. She gestured for the man to leave first, and they filed off the porch and went to the back of the house, Mab trotting close at Evie’s side.

A few moments later, her father followed, carrying a sword, held upright. It was plain, nothing like the fantastic, gem-encrusted weapons with baroque hilts and engraved pommels that teenager Evie had drawn in the margins of class notes. Functional, well balanced, one that might sing if its bearer sliced the air with it.

Both Alex and the stranger turned and stared.

“By the gods,” Alex breathed.

“Ah, old friend!” the stranger said, a warm smile deepening the creases on his face.

Her father stood before a lumpy boulder that lay in the center of an otherwise flat stretch of dried-out lawn. It was as tall as his waist, as big around as an ottoman, weathered smooth and covered with gray lichens. Part of why the house had been built here was because no one had found a way to move the rock and clear the space for plowing. When Evie was little, she’d played mountain climbing on it, and pretended it was her throne. It had been one of her favorite things about going to her grandparents’ house.

Using both hands, Frank reversed the sword and placed the point on the top of the boulder. Then, taking a deep breath, he pushed. The sword went through the rock like it was snow, until only a handsbreadth of blade below the hilt remained exposed.

The sword in the stone. It was real, and it was in the Walkers’ backyard. Evie almost had to sit down.

The stranger drew a sharp breath. Alex’s eyes lit up. He was grinning.

“There,” Frank said, brushing off his hands. “It’s his sword, you say. Bring him here and let him take it.”

“Damn.” Disbelieving, the stranger blinked. “Didn’t see that coming.”

Frank stared at him. “Really?”

Alex went to the stone and paced around it, circling closer like a shark to meat. “May I?” he said, pointing at the hilt and turning to Frank.

“Sure.”

Alex closed his hands around the hilt and pulled. And pulled and pulled, but the sword didn’t even jiggle in its nest. Laughing, he said, “This is marvelous!”

The stranger, Merlin, looked at her father. “This is fair. I can’t complain. Events must run their course—I, of all people, understand that. But I will return. And I will bring the lad.”

“We’ll be here,” her father said.

The man stalked off, disappearing around the corner of the house.

Evie reached and let her fingertips skim the smooth metal of the cross guard, then slide down the flat of the blade, at least the few inches before it sank into the stone. The steel was warm to the touch and seemed to hum. The skin on the back of her neck tingled. The sword in the stone was real, Merlin had just marched away, those glass slippers—and Hera. The goddess, Queen of Olympus, who wanted the golden apple.

Before Evie could say a word to speak any of this out loud, to make it real in her own ears, her father doubled over, grunting as he collapsed against the rock.

Evie was at his side in a moment; Alex joined her.

“Dad, what’s wrong? Dad—”

“I’m—I’ll be fine. Just . . . help me get inside.”

“I’ll call an ambulance—”

“No, no,” he said, his jaw clenched, his voice taut. “Dad—”

“Evie, do as he says,” Alex said grimly. He pulled her father’s left arm over his shoulder. Evie followed his lead with his right arm.

Mab whined, shoving at Evie’s hip with her nose the whole slow walk to the house.

L ucinda put her hand on her pregnant belly, pushed back the cloth draped over the doorway to her hut, and found an old/young woman standing before her. She looked old, with silver hair and creased eyes, but seemed young in the way she smiled and the straight way she held herself.