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knees. I should go home , she thought, but exhaustion and shock pinned her to the ground. She closed her eyes.
    She dozed.
    The demon was waiting.
    Once more it hid in dark, swirling mist, slithering behind her as fast as she turned, so she never caught more than a peripheral glimpse of glowing red eyes. You sssee? it hissed, its voice reptilian, repellant. The power isss not for you. The power isss too great. It will ssswallow you. There will be nothing of you left. The Lady of the Lake isss using you. She isss not your friend. The voice lowered, as though trying to sound conciliatory. Give up the shard. Give it to Merlin. He will be merciful. He holdsss no ill will toward you. Refussse to do the Lady’sss will, and all will be asss it wasss before....
    It would be so easy, Ariane thought. Let Rex Major have the piece of the sword she already held, let him have the others as he found them, let him re-forge Excalibur...she could go back to being a normal kid, worry about normal-kid things...
    But even as she considered the possibility, she rejected it. A normal kid? Over the past two years she’d lived in a half dozen different foster homes. She’d changed schools three times. Until Wally, she’d had no friends. All because her mother had disappeared, a disappearance somehow linked to Merlin’s quest for the shards of Excalibur. She didn’t know how yet, but she’d find out. With the Lady’s power, bolstered by the power of Excalibur, she could do something about it. Find her mother, if she was still alive. Bring her back. Heal their family....
    Her anger, so close to the surface these days, boiled up. The shard answered it. Even locked in her demon-dream, she felt it flame against her skin. She looked down at herself.
    As always in these dreams, she wore a long gown of flowing white, but this time, she also wore a broad belt of red leather, and hanging from that belt...
    A sword. The sword. Excalibur.
    The ghostly hilt had a large round pommel with a hole in it, as though something were missing...a jewel, perhaps. Golden wire wound around the part where her hand gripped, which felt solid though it looked as transparent as thin smoke, her curled fingers clearly visible through it. Yet it was solid enough to grasp – and solid enough to draw.
    She pulled and the sword slid easily out of its scabbard. Like the hilt, the blade was translucent, as though made of glass or water...all except for the tip, the piece of the sword she had already found, the piece she wore strapped to her body. That was hard, polished steel, sharpened to a razor’s edge. It glinted turquoise, as though lit by sunlight filtering through the waters of a glacier-fed lake.
    Her anger swelled and again the shard responded. The sword tip flared with light so bright the gloomy black fog of the demon-dream paled to a swirling grey. She slashed the ghostly blade back and forth, burning away darkness like morning mist in the heat of the rising sun.
    She laughed. She suddenly felt strong, invincible. Why had she let the thing behind her terrorize her for so long? She raised the sword, holding it close to her body and in front of her face as though offering a salute. “I’m going to turn around,” she said, and the words came naturally to her, the same words she had said to Flish’s gang by Wascana Lake the day they’d tried to humiliate her, the first time she had called on the Lady’s power. “If I were you, I’d run .”
    And then she spun and slashed in one movement.
    For just a moment, she saw the demon, caught a glimpse of grey scaly skin, curling black horns, red eyes, hooves and a barbed tail. The tip of Excalibur scored its bare chest, opening a long slash from which black blood bubbled and oozed. The demon’s fanged mouth gaped in an ear-splitting scream of pure agony, then it turned and ran, hooves thudding away into the misty darkness, drops of black ichor sizzling on the ground in its wake.
    Ariane woke with a gasp. She lifted her