“Perhaps some context would help,” he said.
“That’d be great,” I gasped. “Anything helpful would help.”
“For we are not so different, you and I. We are both— how shall I say it?—reluctant players in a game not of our choosing. A mere two years ago we were living quite normal lives. You here in America and I in France. Both normal students in normal towns going about our normal lives. Until our normal lives were ripped away, yes?”
He leaned against the table, dropping the sword point between his spread legs and spinning it. Light raced up and down its length and sparked off the dragon’s head embossed on the hilt.
Garmot. Gar-Gar. Gra-Gra. Mot-Mot. Mar-Mar. Mart? Marty . . . Marty-Gra . . . ?
“Like you, I resisted,” he said. “I refused to play. I wanted a normal life. And until someone very close to me was murdered, I thought—I had every reason to believe—I would have that life. As did you, I am sure.”
“I still want that,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
“Irrelevant,” Jourdain Garmot said. “We have no choice now but to see the game to its bitter end. Bitter for you, of course, since you will not survive this day. But bitter for me, as well, for killing you will not mend my broken heart or return my beloved friend to me.”
He leaned the sword against the table and picked up the black satchel.
“You have lost many close to you,” he said. “Your father. Your uncle. The knight called Bennacio. But none so close as he who was lost t
o me. He was my mentor, my constant companion, my best friend. When news came of his death, I wept like a young child. He was all I had in the world, and though he was taken from me, I keep him with me, always. Would you like to meet him, the one who was so cruelly stolen from me?”
I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the hilt of the black sword. It wasn’t my sword; my sword didn’t have the dragon emblem, but it was a knight’s sword. All the Knights of the Sacred Order carried the black sword.
Dragon. Garmot.
He unsnapped the first clasp.
“I cannot bear for us to be parted, you see ...”
My thoughts started to spin in a panicky whirl.
Gar-Ger, Gera-gar, Gra-mot, Gram-ot, Gra-gri-mot-motger-grot, gram-to, mar-gro, mar-gor, mar-got, mog-art . . .
Mogart . . . !
“It’s a ...” I whispered. “It’s a—I don’t know what it’s called, but I think it’s like ana-something—Garmot for Mogart ...”
“The word you are looking for is ‘anagram,’ ” Jordain said.
He flipped open the second clasp. “And as you say in America ... speak of the devil.”
Then Jourdain Garmot reached into the bag and pulled out a human head. It was the head of the man I killed in Merlin’s Cave. It was Mogart’s head.
“Say hello to my father, Alfred Kropp.”
05:03:48:21
“I didn’t have a choice,” I choked out. My stomach rolled and I looked away from Mogart’s mummified head. The skin had turned a deli mustard yellowish brown, tightening against the shape of the skull beneath. The lips had pulled back, revealing the teeth and giving the illusion of a snarl. The eyes had long since rotted away, leaving two empty black-filled holes. “He was going to kill me—he did kill me ...”
He ignored me. “ ‘The last knight.’ I understand the one called Bennacio tried to take that title for himself, but in reality my father was the last knight—the last to fall as a result of your treachery.”
“My treachery? I don’t think you know the whole story. Nothing against your dad, but he turned on the other knights—”
“Enough.”
“He betrayed them—”
“I said enough!”