Phoenix and Ashes (62 page)

She
ground her teeth, but smiled at him. Damn the man. It was a good plan, making
the best possible use of all of the disasters that fate had thrown at them.
“It will work,” she conceded.

“It
will do more than merely work,” Locke said, raising his chin arrogantly.
“It’s the way to guarantee that one of your girls marries the boy.
Don’t you see? If Lady Devlin thinks that he and Eleanor were off
together, unchaperoned, perhaps on their way to a wedding at the worst, or a
clandestine liaison at the best, she’ll be terrified that
you
will demand he marry Eleanor! Bad enough to tie her precious boy to a commoner,
but one who’s gone mad? And if instead, he’s fixated on Lauralee
and you give your consent, she’ll be so relieved that you aren’t
making a fuss about the stepdaughter that you’ll have no trouble getting
her to agree to the wedding herself. She thinks you’re gentry—poor,
but blue blood. By the time she finds out differently, it will be too late.
Especially if you hasten the wedding on the grounds of scandal, the war, or
both.”

He
was right, curse him. Well, of course he was right. He was used to thinking in
terms of blackmail. She hadn’t much practice in that particular
“art.” She had always dealt with her enemies in much more direct
ways—and with those from whom she wanted favors, by means much more
arcane.

“What
about me?” Carolyn mewed plaintively. “If Reggie’s going to
marry Lauralee, what about me?”

At
that moment, Alison caught a glimpse of something avid in Locke’s eyes,
and knew what he was going to demand as
his
payment for all of this.
After all, she would now control the Robinson fortune outright, once she was
appointed guardian to a madwoman. Carolyn would stand to inherit all that;
Lauralee wouldn’t need it once she was Lady Devlin. Carolyn was pretty,
soon to be wealthy, none-too-clever, and just as ruthless as Locke. She was a
good match for him, by his way of thinking. He would not have to hide things
from her, and she would be just as eager to cover up irregularities as he was.

“Oh,
you’ll have your wedding, too, Carolyn,” she replied, with a little
nod to Locke. “Just as splendid as Lauralee’s. I’ll see to
that.”

And
she would see to it that the girl found Locke acceptable, too. After all, it
was a great deal easier to put a death-curse on a man whose wife would do
anything her mother said.

Because the clever
Warrick Locke was getting too clever. And Alison Robinson had not gotten where
she was now by allowing anyone to have a hold over her.

August 12, 1917
Elsewhere

ELEANOR STARED AT THE
SMALL army of Earth Elementals facing them, and put one hand on the back of a
Salamander to steady herself. There was no way that she could battle all of
them—they’d overwhelm her by sheer numbers. Was it possible that
she could call for more help?

Well,
what do I lose by trying
! She didn’t close her eyes, but she did
turn her focus inward, calling up from memory the glyphs and sigils that would
bring one of the Great Elementals, many of whom had been worshipped as gods. At
this point, she didn’t particularly care which one, either; the only
thing that she did stipulate in her mind was that she really didn’t want
to fight, not even these things—

As
she traced the last sigil in her mind, the whole diagram suddenly flared in the
air between her and the Earth creatures, hanging there like a fantastical
fireworks display.

And
beside her, she heard a swift intake of breath.

Her
companion began to grow. His nimbus of flame flared out, engulfing
her—but she felt nothing but a cool breeze on her skin, and smelled
nothing but the faint scent of cinnamon and clove. He sprouted wings, too, and
his head became bird-like—no, hawk-like—and when he stopped
growing, at roughly twelve feet tall, she recognized him. Or at least, what he
represented.

Horus,
the Egyptian god of the rising sun, the son of Osiris and Isis.

She
stared at him. Of all creatures, the least likely—

Or
perhaps not. She had been working through a Tarot pack which employed many
symbols out of ancient Egypt. Horus was as likely as any other, given that
influence.

The
Earth creatures stared at him as well, dumbfounded, as the flaming sigils faded
away. He looked down at them, then turned his head to stare at Eleanor, wings
flaring.

“Do
you still want to negotiate with them?” came his mild voice. “I think
you’re in a better position now.”

The
Salamanders romped about his ankles as she looked up at him. “I’d
rather not hurt anyone,” she said, though a bit doubtfully. “If I
can help it, that is.”

“That’s
wise, here,” he conceded. “There’s no point in making more
enemies than you have to. They have long memories, and hold grudges
forever.”

He
turned to the Earth creatures. “Let us pass,” he said, his voice
taking on trumpet-like tones. “We would rather not harm you, but we will
fight to escape if we must. You do not wish to fight us.”

There
was uneasy stirring from the line of Earth creatures, but no one moved. Finally
the Redcap spoke up, sullenly.

“All
right for you to say, but what about us? What happens when the Earth Master
discovers you’ve slipped the trap? She’ll have us then, for
certain-sure!”

Horus
clacked his beak impatiently. “And if we break her protections first?
She’ll be yours, then.”

There
were startled looks, then the creatures began talking urgently among
themselves. Eleanor couldn’t even begin to recognize what they all were;
a good half of them hadn’t been in any of her reading yet. They all
looked like things out of nightmare. Including, of course, the Night-mare.

Horus
waited patiently until the murmuring stopped, but if he had expected a direct
answer, he didn’t get one. Instead, the assembled creatures merely faded
away into the shadows and the depths of the maze, leaving the path open.

Eleanor
looked up at her protector, and he down at her. “That is as direct an
answer as you will ever have from the likes of them,” Horus said.
“The way is open, for now—until they change their minds.”

That
was all she needed. She ran forward, out of the maze and into—

—darkness—

She
realized, after a moment of light-headed giddiness that at least part of the
darkness was because there was a blanket over her head. It was stifling, and
she could hardly think, because she felt so—so intoxicated—

That’s—
because—
I
am
—Alison had drugged her, as she had suspected, and there was still
plenty of the stuff in her veins. She jounced along, lying on her side, two
sets of feet poking into her, and the roar of an automobile engine near at
hand. It was hard, so hard to think—even the fear that sat cold and
primal in the pit of her soul was sluggish.

And
her companion was gone, now that she was in the real world again. There was no
one to advise her.

She
fought her way through the glue that clogged her mind. Fire. Burning. She was
outside Alison’s spells, and in control of her own powers now. There must
be something Fire could do!

Can—
can
I burn this stuff—out of me?

There
had been some hints of that in her mother’s notes, of a kind of healing
that Fire Masters could do, that literally burned out disease and poison. This
drug was poison in and of itself.

What
did she have to lose? Alison was taking her away somewhere, and it was just
lucky she’d broken free of the spell, because otherwise she’d be
feeling the compulsions right now.

And
at that thought, she felt a cold certainty steal over her, and with it, the
fear woke out of its sluggish sleep to seize her heart. Alison knew that. So
Alison was planning on it. Why?

She
had to clear this poison out of her veins so she could think clearly!

She
had only one thing to try. If she waited for the drug to wear off, it might be
too late. She
had
to burn it out before Alison expected it to wear
off. Because Alison certainly had Locke with her still, and perhaps
Locke’s brutish manservant, and there was no way she could escape them
all.

Once
again, she turned within, concentrating on another sigil, this time a simple
one; just as well, because it kept slipping away from her as she felt herself
floating away.

Ateh.
Malkuth. Geteth. She had traced this thing a thousand times; each Name from her
mother’s notes attached to a particular stroke in the air with finger or
wand. But now she traced it in her mind instead of the air, and muzzily tried
to hold the image burning there
.

It
nearly escaped from her three times before she completed it, and tried to put
purpose to it. Its intention was to purify. Could it purify her blood?

Only
one way to find out. It seemed to flutter in her mind, like a bird, impatient
to fly. It, at least, thought it had a purpose.

She
set it free, and let go. If it didn’t do what she wanted, there
wouldn’t be a second chance.

August 13, 1917
The Hoar Stones

What did you do with
him?” Alison asked, as Locke made his way up the path to the Hoar Stones
behind her, with Eleanor slung over his shoulder like a bag of coal. She was
impressed in spite of herself; she was accustomed to seeing Locke leave all of
the work to his servant, but it appeared he could manage quite a bit by
himself. He’d certainly managed to bring Reggie Fenyx here on his own,
and he was carrying Eleanor as if her weight was inconsequential.

“He’s
in the lee of the rocks, just outside the chamber,” Locke replied.
“He’s still out cold. I thought you’d want to keep the
chamber itself clear so you can work.”

“Very
wise. Leave the girl there as well,” Alison said, absentmindedly; they
were still a good thirty yards from the Hoar Stones, yet already she could feel
its power drawing her. Had the work she’d done here last spring woken
some ancient source of magic from a long slumber? Well, if that was so, all the
better.

She
reached out to the source of the power, greedily, and felt her lips stretching
in a grin as it responded to her. Lovely, lovely Earth-born power; whatever
purpose the Hoar Stones had been originally meant to serve, over the centuries
there had been enough who had used it as a place of sacrifice that the ground
here was as blood-soaked as the fields of Flanders. Blood spilled called power,
and this sort of power was the kind that answered her hand the best.

She
felt like a child in a sweet-shop, told to take what she wanted. Finally, she
was going to have it all!

The
power filled her, thick and intoxicating, with the hint of corruption she found
so irresistible, and she moved into the chamber as if in a trance as Locke
dumped Eleanor beside another bundle of blanket and clothing just outside it.
It occurred to her then that Locke was probably stronger than he looked; Reggie
Fenyx was no small man, and Locke had somehow manhandled him from the motor all
the way up here.

Then
again—Locke might have managed to rouse Reggie enough to get him to walk.
Even unconscious, a clever use of magic could have gotten Reggie to stumble
along in Locke’s wake or in front of him. And if he damaged himself
somewhat, well, so much the better; he’d
look
like someone who
had been staggering about after an accident.

She
put them both temporarily from her mind as Locke and the girls joined her in
the chamber. This was going to be a difficult piece of work, and she needed to
concentrate on it.

Reggie
lay quite still as Alison’s henchman dumped someone beside him. The last
thing he wanted any of them to know was that he was awake and aware and
prepared to act—if feeling nauseous and half-crippled counted as being
prepared to act. Little did any of them know that he’d been using his
pain-medications for so long that he had built up a tolerance for opiates; the
air moving around his face when the auto was in motion had served to arouse
him, and the drive out into the country had given him long enough to get his
brain more-or-less working again. When the man had mumbled some sort of
half-learned charm over him, he’d felt the intent of it through the very
minimal shields he had put up, and had acted the part of an automaton,
staggering up the shadow-shrouded path in the man’s wake. Unfortunately,
he was without a cane, and the ground was anything but even. He didn’t
even want to think about the damage he had done to himself, trying to walk; he
thought he’d felt something tear loose around his kneecap once. The pain
of his knee had burned what was left of the drug out of him altogether, and he
must have stumbled and fallen a dozen times. Evidently the man had expected
that, because Locke just stopped whenever that happened, waited for Reggie to
pick himself up, then led him on.

Reggie
had been perfectly ready to fall over where the man pointed. By that time his
head was perfectly clear, but it ached so much from what he presumed was a
blow, and his knee was in such agony, that by the time he realized that he was
alone among these ancient stones, it was too late to do anything about it. He
could already hear someone coming up the same path. All he could do was feign
unconsciousness and wait to see what happened next.

What
happened was that Locke dumped someone else practically on top of him. Someone
small, and very warm. Eleanor?

He
continued to lie quietly as the sound of the others moved off a little. The way
he was positioned, he couldn’t see anything anyway; his face was turned
towards the megalithic stone, and the other person had been dropped behind him.

But
he was sure it was Eleanor. It wasn’t just the sense that it was her, or
instinct. Logic said that was the likeliest—but why? What was Alison
planning?