Key of Light (Key 1)

“True enough, but if she’s got you this worried I’d say you’re already in to your knees, and sinking. Why don’t you give her a call? She can come get a look at the painting, and I can get a look at her.”

“Let’s give it till tomorrow.”

“You’re scared of her. Make that up to your waist and sinking.”

“Shut up. I just think it’d be smart for Brad to bring his painting over, let the three of us give them both a good look. See what we come up with, without the female element.”

“Works for me. You got any food around here?”

“Not really. But I’ve got all the takeout and delivery places on speed dial. Take your pick.”

“Surprise me. I’ll go get my stuff.”

IT wasn’t so different from their youth, unless you considered that the living room where they sprawled belonged to one of them rather than to a parent.

Since the choice had been left to Flynn, they were eating Italian, but the beer had been upgraded to a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that Brad had brought with him.

The paintings were propped side by side against the wall while the three of them sat on the floor. Moe took the couch.

“I don’t know much about art,” Flynn began.

“But you know what you like,” Brad finished.

“I wasn’t going to stoop to a cliché.”

“Actually, it’s a valid statement.” Jordan agreed. “Art, by its very nature, is subjective. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can, Dalí’s Melting Watch, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”

“As impossible to compare Monet’s Water Lilies with Picasso’s Lady in Blue as it is to compare Dashiell Hammett and Steinbeck. It’s all in the style, purpose, and perception.”

Flynn rolled his eyes toward Brad. “What I was going to say before the two of you went off on that little intellectual riff is that it seems to me that the same person painted both of these. Or if it was two different people, one was emulating the other’s style.”

“Oh.” Brad swirled the liquor in his glass and grinned. “Okay, then. I’ll go along with that. And what does that tell us?”

“It’ll tell us a lot if we have Jordan’s painting tested. We already know the one at Warrior’s Peak and Brad’s were done more than five hundred years apart. We need to know where Jordan’s fits in.”

“Fifteenth century.”

Flynn turned his head, stared at Jordan. “You had it dated already?”

“A couple years after I bought it. I needed to get some stuff insured. Turned out it was worth several times what I paid for it. Kinda weird when you think of it, as The Gallery’s got a rep for being pricey.”

“Why’d you buy it?” Brad asked him.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve asked myself that. I don’t even know why I went in there that day. It wasn’t one of my usual stops. Then I saw it, and it just grabbed me. That moment, that breath just before destiny, between innocence and power. He’ll pull the sword free. You know it. And in that moment, the world changes. Camelot’s born, Arthur’s fate is sealed. He’ll unite a people, be betrayed by a woman and a friend, and sire the man who’ll kill him. In this moment, he’s a boy. In the next, he’ll be a king.”

“Some would argue that he was born a king.”

Jordan shook his head at Brad’s statement. “Not until he put his hands on the hilt of the sword. He could have walked away from it. I wonder if he would have if he’d known what was coming. Glory and grandeur, sure, and a slice of peace, but then deceit, deception, war. And an early death.”

“Well, that’s cheerful.” Flynn started to pour another drink. Then he stopped, looked back at the paintings. “Wait a minute. Maybe you’re on to something. In the other, you’ve got the results after that moment of destiny you were talking about. Would the god-king have married the mortal, conceived three daughters, if he’d known their fate? Is it about choices, which direction we take?”

“And if it is?” Brad put in. “It doesn’t tell us much.”

“It gives us a theme. And if we make the leap that the paintings are clues to the location of the keys, then we have to follow the theme. Maybe the first is in a place where a decision was made, one that changed the course of lives.”

“Flynn.” Jordan hesitated, swirled his drink. “You seriously believe these keys exist?”

“That’s right. And if you guys had been around since the beginning of this, you’d have come around to that by now. There’s no way to explain it, Jordan, no more than you can explain why that boy was the only person in the world who could pull Excalibur from the stone.”