Phoenix and Ashes (60 page)

“I
may very well discover more you won’t like before I’m
through,” Reggie said grimly.

“It
wouldn’t surprise me.” Lady Virginia reached out and took his hand.
“Please promise me that you will not go tearing down there this instant
in your motor.”

“I
would
like
to—but I feel that would be a very bad notion,”
he replied with feeling. “I will go down there tomorrow. I might actually
catch the girl myself, in which case, I will bundle her up here and put her in
your hands. If there are coercions on her—you can deal with them.”

“Against
a creature like Alison Robinson? I should think so,” his godmother told
him, in a tone that would have been arrogant in anyone but a mage of her
ability. “I’ll open up your father’s workroom and prepare it.
Heaven knows I’ve used it often enough in the past. On
our
home
ground, Reginald, it would take an army of mages to defeat us.”

“If
I can’t find her immediately, I’ll have to try subterfuge. And
fortunately, I have an excuse.” He smiled thinly. “I have these.
And I will be looking for the girl who fits them.”

He
held up the pink silk gloves. Lady Virginia raised an eyebrow.

“Forgive
my skepticism, Reginald, but virtually any girl whose hands aren’t
completely ruined could fit into a pair of silk gloves—”

“Oh,
no. Not these,” he retorted, and spread out the fingers of the left-hand
glove. The
three
fingers.

Lady
Virginia blinked. “Ah,” she said. “Well, that puts a
different complexion on things, doesn’t it? Rather like Anne
Boleyn’s set of five.”

“Rather
like.” He folded the gloves carefully and tucked them inside his tunic.
“I’d like very much to see either Carolyn or Lauralee fit that
glove.”

“Hmm.”
Lady Virginia stared into the fire. “Be careful what you wish for. If the
girls are like the mother, they might find a way, at whatever cost.”

August 12, 1917
Elsewhere

THESE
WALLS—THEY REPRESENT SOMETHING. It wasn’t just spells that Alison
put to tie me to the hearth, was it?” she asked her companion, when the
silence within the maze became unbearable.

“No;
she has actually tied minor Elementals into the spells so that she did not have
to renew them so often,” the Fire creature replied. “This is why
the maze appears to be a living thing. It actually is; more than one.”

“Ugh.”
She shuddered, and glanced at the walls around them. Colored a sad brown,
suggestions of faces continued to come and go. “Is that as nasty as I
think it is?”

“Surely.”
The Fire creature regarded her soberly. “As certainly as you have been
imprisoned by them, they have been imprisoned by Alison. They may be creatures
of darkness, but they have spent the years as the bars of your cage.”

The
more she learned about Alison, the more she wanted to be free of her. If ever
there was someone evil—

I
am not really
“
here
,” she reminded herself.
This
is like the Tarot world; my body is—well, wherever Alison put it. Perhaps
the cellar. I must escape the maze and then—then wake up from whatever
she did to me
.

But
she had to wonder, what would happen to the “real” Eleanor, if
her—call it “spirit-self—was hurt?

Her
mother’s notebooks hadn’t covered that possibility.

And
what would happen if she didn’t get back to herself in a few hours? How
long could her untenanted body sleep before life began to fade?

So
strange—her body here felt real, felt solid, solid enough that her
insides twisted with tension when she realized that she might be fighting
against time as well as Alison.

She
didn’t really expect to be able to leave the maze unopposed. Just because
she had managed to strike some kind of bargain with the maze itself, it did not
follow that there were not more elemental Earth creatures here to block her
passage. Probably they would try to intimidate her first, though.

Above
her—vague darkness. They walked on a surface that was very like dead
grass, and the only light here came from her companion. If ever there was a
place of stagnation, this was it. The air was dry and acrid, with a faint scent
of corruption. And the maze walls did not get any better the deeper she went.

And
just as she had expected, once they were, by her accounting, roughly halfway
through, she sensed something up ahead of her. When she turned the
corner—there it was.

She
might have mistaken it for a Brownie if she hadn’t known better. It
looked like exactly like a child’s picture-book illustration of a Brownie
in a red cap—but it was the cap that gave it away.

This
was a Redcap, a vicious little gnome with an insatiable appetite for murder. It
soaked its cap in the blood of its victims; hence the name. There was no point
in even trying to negotiate with something like this; it was completely evil
and absolutely treacherous.

And
if she had not been studying all four Elements instead of just her own, she
would never have known that.

She
felt her eyes narrow as she stepped threateningly towards the Redcap. There was
power welling up in her; she felt it rising inside, and she knew that if she
had to strike at this thing, the power would answer her. There were only two
ways to deal with a Redcap; make it run or destroy it. Turning your back on it
would be fatal.

“Hello,
daughter of Adam,” the Recap said, wheedlingly, looking up at her with an
entreating gaze. “I am lost, trapped here, like you. Won’t you help
me find the way out of this maze?”

“I
think not, Redcap,” she replied, before the Fire elemental could warn
her. “I think you know the way out already. Don’t you?”

The
Redcap’s face underwent a frightening transformation. Its eyes turned
red, with a greenish glow to the pupils; it hunched over, hands fumbling at its
belt for the knife it probably had hidden there, and it snarled, showing sharp,
pointed teeth.

“Look
out!” the Fire creature called, but she was already calling up fire
herself, in the shape of her Salamanders. They appeared out of nowhere, as
large as bloodhounds and fierce as lions, two of them, planting themselves
between her and the Redcap, hissing.

The
Redcap leapt back with a curse. It shook its fist at her, and ran off into the
depths of the maze. Since it wasn’t going the way she planned, she kept
the Salamanders from chasing it.

When
it was gone, they fawned around her like affectionate cats, rubbing up against
her and butting their heads into her hands. The Fire creature regarded them
with amusement.

“Under
other circumstances,” it said, “I would say that you have a
remarkable way with animals. I am glad that you have won their loyalty.”

“So
am I,” she replied fervently. “Should I keep them with us?”

“Definitely.
I have no idea what might lie ahead of us, except that I cannot imagine that
there will
not
be more trouble.”

She
just nodded. She doubted very much that the next obstacle they encountered
would be so obliging as to run away.

August 12, 1917
Longacre Park, Warwickshire

Reggie didn’t
sleep very much—but then, he hadn’t expected to. And he had flown
and fought on less rest than he’d gotten last night. He had gone over his
plan so many times it was engraved in his mind—

Not
that he really expected to find the Robinsons following
his
plan. No,
he would just have to keep his wits about him and try to find a way to get to
Eleanor. Once they were together, he didn’t think that even Alison would
try to oppose him taking her out.

She
could
summon a constable, he supposed—but he doubted that the
Broom constable, old as he was, would do more than make a token effort to stop
him. And once Eleanor was freed from whatever holds Alison had placed on her,
the shoe would almost certainly be on the other foot. He suspected that she had
some ugly tales to tell.

It
was very hard, though, to have to rise, breakfast as usual—and wait.
Wait, because if he went down at any time before, say, noon—no one would
let him in. Certainly Eleanor was not permitted to answer the door. She
hadn’t before, when he’d called, and that was probably to keep her
from being recognized by a visitor, or from blurting out a plea for help. If he
arrived too early, no one would be awake, and he could hardly pound on the door
and bellow at them to let him in. Not unless he
wanted
to tip his
hand.

No,
above all, he didn’t want anyone to know what he was up to until it was
too late to do anything about it.

The
Robinsons had left about three—so they would not be receiving visitors
until noon at the earliest. So he would have to wait.

Except—if
he was going to go into a confrontation with an Earth Master, his simple
barricades were not going to suffice.

So
after breakfast, with a feeling of fear that would have paralyzed him had he
not been eaten alive with worry for Eleanor, he took a certain back staircase
that his mother was not even aware existed, up to a room on the same floor as
the servants’ quarters. Except that this room connected with no other
chamber in the house, and the door to the staircase was carved with sigils that
would allow only an Elemental Master to see it.

It
took a terrible effort for him to take each step upwards—because each
step brought him nearer to the moment when he must give up his defenses and
accept the power back into his hands—and with that power, open himself to
attack. He was sweating by the time he reached the landing.

It
was his father’s old workroom, a corner room with tall windows on two
sides, lined with books and cabinets for supplies on the other two, and with a
floor of white marble inlaid with a magic circle in silver. And Lady Virginia
was already there.

She
was dressed for the occasion, in a loose, sky-blue robe of silk, with her
ice-white hair in a single plait down her back. Curiously enough, this made her
look younger, rather than older.

“I
thought you might turn up,” she said, as he closed the door to the
staircase behind him. “So I didn’t put up the wards yet.”

He
shivered, involuntarily. “If you had any idea how frightened I
am—” Then he steeled himself, before the panic could rise up and choke
him. “But I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“Not
if Alison Robinson is a Master—and all of the preliminary work I have
done tells me she is,” Lady Virginia replied grimly. “I
believe—though I am not yet sure—that
she
is the one
responsible for that plague of revenants outside your father’s old
shields. I can’t imagine why she would set them on you, but I’m not
very good at deciphering the plans of individuals with the kind of twisted soul
capable of summoning something like that up in the first place.”

Reggie
nodded. Then he spoke the hardest words he had ever said in his life.
“Tell me what to do, Godmother,” he begged. “Help me, please.
I need my powers back, and we don’t have a great deal of time before I
face her.”

“Then
I
will need to force your shields open,” she replied, jaw set.
“And it won’t be easy on you.”

He
bowed his head, with the feeling that he was baring his neck to the axe.
“I never thought it would,” he said, with miserable determination.

August 12, 1917
Elsewhere

The end of the maze
was very near, and Eleanor had routed a good half-dozen nasty creatures that
had tried to ambush her on the way. The worst had been the Night-mare; at
least, so far. A truly dreadful black thing it was with far too many legs, all
of them ending in talons rather than hooves, and long, white fangs. The
Salamanders had not been able to attack it, and it had come charging straight
at her—

And
she had found herself with a flaming sword in her hands. She had no more idea
of how to use it than how to fly—but slashing wildly at the Night-mare
had made it shy sideways to avoid the attack, aborting its charge. It had
stared at her with evil red eyes for a moment, then, like the Redcap, it had
retreated into the depths of the maze.

“Interesting,”
her companion said, as she let the sword go, only to have it vanish into thin
air the moment she loosed her hold on the hilt. “It appears that however
Alison is controlling or coercing these creatures, it is not enough to make
them face any sort of serious opposition. I believe she has completely
underestimated you.”

“I
hope so!” Eleanor replied, as her Salamanders pressed up against her
legs, one on either side of her.

Now
she was one turn away from the exit to the maze, or so she thought. When she
rounded this last corner, she should be free of the spells that bound her to
the hearth of The Arrows.

But
of course, Alison was not likely to let her go without a fight.

She
turned the corner, and found herself facing every creature she had encountered
thus far, and some new ones, all lined up across the exit-point to the maze.

August 12, 1917
Longacre Park, Warwickshire

Reggie emerged from
the workroom feeling—unnerved. Unsettled? No, far too mild a word.
Severely rattled, and definitely drained. Those hard-built barricades were gone,
but he had yet to test the strength of his powers as an Air Master, because he
did not want to alert Alison to the fact that those powers were back, and
neither did Lady Virginia. Psychologically—

He
was a wreck, for he had, in the space of a few hours, lived through and endured
the sharp-focused memory of his ordeal after being shot down. The difference
was, this time he had his godmother to guide him through it. This time, he had
come out the other side still sane. Or at least, relatively so. But his nerves
were raw, and fear surged and ebbed unexpectedly, making him wonder just how
much control he could keep.