Phoenix and Ashes (63 page)

It
was nothing good for either of them, but it was Eleanor he was worried about
the most. He represented the means to a very large fortune, as well as a kind
of life she clearly aspired to. If she got rid of him, she lost her access to
that life; Lady Virginia would see to that. No, it made more sense, far more
sense, for her to try and work some bedazzlement on his mind, to make him
pliant and willing to marry one of her wretched daughters.

It
was Eleanor that he was concerned about. He still didn’t know how Eleanor
factored into all this—except that she was now clearly an obstacle in the
path to Alison’s goals. He couldn’t dismiss the idea that they
meant to murder her—after all, who would notice? No one in Broom even
gave her existence a second thought now.

Even
more chilling was the thought that Alison might murder Eleanor in order to get
the power she needed to control him.

And
he was patently in no shape to take them on in a straight-on physical contest.
He wasn’t even sure he could manage a successful escape. The longer this
situation dragged on, the less confident he became. And on top of that, as bad
as his physical condition already was, he knew it was rapidly deteriorating.
Lying here on the ground was making his muscles stiffen, and there was no point
in pretending otherwise, he had a concussion that wasn’t getting any
better either. His head pounded, and though he tried to think through the pain
and the nausea, it was getting harder to put two coherent thoughts together
with every passing moment; his mouth was dry, and a slow serpent of fear had
begun crawling up his spine, making him feel weak and helpless.

He
could sense power rising very near by—Earth power, and even though it
only brushed by him in passing, the moment it touched him, he felt panic
stifling him. He knew that sort of power—born of blood and death. He had
met its like before.

When
he had been buried in that trench.

Alison
began chanting somewhere on the other side of the stones, her voice echoing
strangely, and he sensed the power awakening and answering her call—

He
felt a whimper rising in his throat—

And
a small, warm hand clamped itself over his mouth.

“Shh,”
Eleanor breathed in his ear. “It’s all right; try not to make a
sound. Alison and the rest are busy right now. If we’re very careful, we
might be able to get away before they realize we’re gone.”

And
go where
? he thought wildly, but he knew she was right. Whatever Alison
was up to, there was a point she’d be so preoccupied with controlling
what she was raising that she should be oblivious to anything but what she was
doing.

The
only question was, could
he
even walk, much less run?

It’s
not as if I have a choice
, he reminded himself. It’s run—
somehow
—or
lie here and let her do whatever she’s going to do.

Even
though fear was welling up inside him and making him want nothing more than to
curl up where he was and hide inside himself. Trying to huddle inside himself
was not an option now. Even if he had felt willing to let them do whatever they
wanted to him, what were their plans for Eleanor? If he gave up to the fear, he
would be abandoning her.

But
the fear had a mind of its own, where he was concerned. Despite his efforts to
resist it, and all the work that Lady Virginia had done with him, he felt it
taking him over, paralyzing him, flooding his heart with chill, until there was
nothing real for him except that fear. His control slipped to the edge of loss,
and tremors shook his body.

And
then the miracle occurred. Eleanor’s hand moved down from his mouth to
rest over his heart, and warmth began to spread from it.

Not
just physical warmth, either—a psychic warmth that stopped his shaking,
and drove the fear back, a wonderfully fierce passion that had no time for
creeping terror. It was like magic—

No,
it
was
magic! It was Fire magic, the complement and perfect partner to
Air—Fire magic being directed by the sure hand of someone who, if she was
not yet a Master, would certainly one day become one!

Before
he could wonder where she had suddenly gotten that skill, a set of shields grew
up around both of them; slowly, so slowly that at first he thought the
perimeter of warming around him was some side-effect of the magic she was
working on him. Then he realized that she was building shields—not as he
would have expected out of a Fire Mage, with a showy rush of upwelling, vibrant
power, but slowly, as if beginning from the barest, glowing coals and building
a fire by patiently feeding those coals a little air, a little fuel, straw by
straw.

By
that time he was no longer shaking; though his head still ached and he felt
sick, his mind was clear again. Not that he wasn’t afraid—and so
was she, he sensed it in the rigidity of her body where it lay wedged against
his, and the way she was trembling—but fear was no longer paralyzing him.

I
need to help her—and it has to be just as subtle, so that we don’t
alert Alison to what we’re doing
.

First
he needed to help her with those shields. Then—could he call a Sylph and
send it for help? Would one even come so near the poisonous, dark Earth power
that Alison was raising?

He
had to try; the nearest help was Lady Virginia, and the only way to get word to
her was via an Air Elemental.

But
it would be the first time he had called one since the crash. Would they even
come to him anymore?

He’s
awake
! That was more than Eleanor had hoped for; she hadn’t even
cared that he was shaking hard enough to rattle both of them. She’d been
hearing bits about this “shellshock” business from Sarah, and it
didn’t surprise her at all that Reggie suffered from it—fine, so he
was overwhelmed by fear. Well, she had the counter to fear, the weapon to drive
it back. Fear couldn’t stand against the fire of passion.

But
one thing did surprise her. Before, it had been as if he was surrounded by an
impenetrable wall that allowed nothing arcane to get in at him—but which
was also opaque to his senses so that he never knew that she was a Fire Mage.
Now—now he was open.

Open
enough that she responded to his fear completely on instinct. She put her hand
over his heart, and willed her power into him.

Fire—

Passion.
Courage. Heart. Fire was all of these things and more, but these were the ones
that were important now, to shore up his crumbling emotions and give him
strength to find his feet again. She sensed it, she
knew it; that was all
he needed, just a little help—he
wanted
to fight his own fear,
but he was so worn by it that he hadn’t the strength. Very well; he
should have some of hers.

And
when she sensed he was no longer shaking, she went to work building shields
around the two of them, starting with the merest trace of power, layering them
up slowly, so that—she hoped—Alison wouldn’t notice what was
happening until it was too late.

It
was after the first three or four layers had been constructed that she sensed another
power joining hers.

She
had never felt Air magic before, but even if her inner sight hadn’t shown
her the soft blue glow of it, she had no doubt of what it was; there was a
lightness to it, the coolness of intellect, and a liveliness. Even as he layered
in his own subtle shields, interleaving them with hers, she felt his magic
feeding hers, Fire and Air mingling until the blending was far more powerful
than the mere sum of both. And at that moment she felt her own courage rise.

She
was terribly glad that he had joined her in creating the shields that
surrounded them both, because when she finally threw off the blanket they had
bundled her in and sat up, trusting that by this time Alison was so deeply
involved in her own magics that she wouldn’t notice anything else going
on, what she saw made her lose her hard-won courage for a moment.

The
very stones of this Neolithic monument were glowing a muddy, ugly yellow with
Alison’s newly raised power. Oh, not glowing to ordinary sight, but to
the trained Inner Eye of a magician there was no mistake, none at all. This was
an old, old power, and it answered to Alison slowly, but it was answering. And
it was as dark a power as Alison could have wished.

She
pulled the blanket off Reggie’s head and tugged at his shoulder; as he
sat up, much more slowly than she had, she didn’t have to direct his
attention to the stones. He saw it on his own.

He
pulled her head towards his face, and put his mouth right up to her ear to
whisper, “That’s not good.”

She
nodded.

“We
have to get out of here now,” he continued, urgently. “Can you help
me get to my feet?”

She
nodded harder.

She
got to her feet—slowly, and with a great care for making sure she
didn’t break a twig or dislodge any rattling stones. But there was one
thing that she she knew she
had
to do if they were going to walk out
of here.

She
had to find him some sort of support, a stick he could use as a cane. His knee
could not possibly be in good shape right now.

Except,
of course, that she couldn’t actually see in the shadow-shrouded woodlot,
in the dark of night, to find any such thing.

All
right. I need someone—or something—that can see
.

With
infinite care, she pushed out the shields on the forest-side of their
protections, until they extended well into the undergrowth. Then she called a
Salamander.

She
stipulated that it was to be a very, very small Salamander, the kind that had
first come to her, scarcely bigger than a tiny kitten. Alison hadn’t
noticed the little creatures when they were under her own roof; with luck, she
wouldn’t notice one now.

She
had no fire for it, and this was far, far too close to inimical power. She
wasn’t sure any Fire Elemental would answer her here.

But
her heart leapt when, without so much as a spark of real fire to feed
from—it still came! It wreathed apprehensively around her wrists and
through her fingers, every movement of it telling her that it was
not
happy to be near so much dark power. She soothed it as best she could, and
tried to impress on its mind what she needed—a good, stout stick, sound
and strong, and not too short.

It
hesitated for a moment, regarding her with glowing yellow eyes, then darted off
into the brush, coursing back and forth like a beagle on a scent, but staying
within the protection of the shields. She knew when it had found what she had
asked for by the way that it darted out of the brush towards her, then back in
again. It wasn’t going to talk to her, not here. Wise. Alison might well
hear such a thing.

She
followed it, treading very carefully, never putting her full weight on her foot
until she knew there was nothing beneath it to make a sound that would betray
them. For the first time, she was glad of her worn shoes; the soles were so
thin she could easily feel what was under her feet. Pushing carefully through the
undergrowth, she found the Salamander running up and down the length of the
stick, which was a bit longer than the canes Reggie normally used—more
like a quarterstaff. Well, that was not such a bad thing. It might make a
better weapon at need, and the longer it was, the less likely it would be that
Reggie would need to lean on her.

She
dismissed the Salamander with her thanks—it was clearly growing terrified
at the feel of the terrible Earth power outside the shields, and she
didn’t blame it. With infinite care, she pulled the stick out from the
undergrowth, little by little, until, with a sigh of relief, she got it free.

She
turned around with it in her grip in time to see something wispy, sinuous, and
pale blue streaking away from Reggie’s hands. She hadn’t gotten a
good enough look at it to tell what it was, but she hoped he was sending for
help. She tiptoed back to him and handed him the stick. With a look of relief,
he took it gladly and used it to get himself—with her help—to his feet.
“Now which way?” he whispered.

She
shook her head. “I don’t know!” she whispered back. “I
never saw anything!”

She
might not have been unconscious when she was brought here, but she had been
bundled in a blanket. Truth to tell, she hadn’t a clue which direction to
go in.

Reggie
clung to the rough staff Eleanor had found for him and tried to think. Had the
path into this place been between those two flat stones he was facing now,
or—

“
Mother
!”
shrieked a young female voice behind him. “They’re awake!
They’re trying to sneak away!”

Too
late.

A
soundless explosion of sickly yellow light impacted against their shields; he
felt Eleanor react just in time to strengthen them, and a second later, he was
reinforcing her. Fire magic was better for shields anyway; you couldn’t
wear away at Fire shields, the Fire just ate everything you threw at it. Even
nasty stuff of the sort that Alison was throwing at them now; Fire just
purified it, then consumed it. You could smother them, drown them, or blast
through them if you were powerful enough, but you needed either to be extremely
powerful in the first place, or to make an all-or-nothing commitment to the
attack to do so, and Alison hadn’t yet made that kind of attack.

Following
directly on her attack came Alison herself, her face a mask of fury, with her
solicitor Warrick Locke right beside her. He seemed to be unarmed, but she had
a wicked-looking knife in one hand—a ritual blade, maybe, but it was also
a real weapon, and he and Eleanor were unarmed. He gripped his stick like a
quarterstaff, but he knew that he wouldn’t be of much help with his leg
ready to give out at any moment.