Phoenix and Ashes (64 page)

Real
fire, physical fire, suddenly sprang up in a circle around them, following the
line of the shields and setting fire to the undergrowth. It was a waist-high
perimeter of flame that kept Alison and her minions from getting at her victims
physically
.

Reggie
couldn’t do exactly the same thing—but he
could
call a
storm-wind, to lash at their adversaries with the branches of trees and
bushes—and he did. Carolyn shrieked with indignation, and Warrick Locke
ducked.

“Get
them!” Alison shouted furiously over the howling wind, as her hair
escaped from its pins and whipped in tendrils around her head, like the snakes
of a Medusa.

Reggie
expected another attack on their shields, and indeed, one came, a dull blow
that actually drove the shields back a little. It didn’t matter; the
Elemental Fire devoured the rest of the attack, and the line of physical fire
simply followed the shields, and Locke shook his head, when Alison gestured
furiously at him.

And
the glow of power faded a bit from the megaliths. He felt his heart
leap—either she was losing control of it and it was sliding back into
quiescence, or else she was draining it with her attacks. In either case,
unless she found another source of power soon, she would be reduced to her own
resources—

That
was the moment when she seized Warrick Locke’s wrist, shouted something
incomprehensible—

And
Locke screamed in fear and pain, falling to his knees, as he aged fifty years
in a handful of seconds. A few seconds more, and Alison dropped his wrist, and
the lifeless, withered hulk of what had been a man fell to the side, no longer
moving.

Where
did she get that
? He knew what it was, in theory. Earth Masters
healed—and so could harm. They grew—and so knew how to destroy.
They could give life—and take it. It was what made them so dangerous when
they went to the bad. Shocked to the core, Reggie just stared.

Both
her daughters were equally shocked, and as a consequence, didn’t react
quickly enough when their mother seized both of their wrists. “
No
!”
he shouted—not that he cared for them, and they had certainly been ready
to consign
him
to whatever fate Alison had prepared for him, but no
one should die like that—

But
Alison was evidently not ready to kill her own flesh and blood. Quite.

Though
the creatures she cast aside, first Carolyn, then Lauralee, were never going to
attract anyone’s attention again, except as objects of pity.

Alison
turned towards them again, her eyes glowing with rage and power, her hands
crooked into claws. And all around her, the stones were incandescent with
terrible power.

She
gestured with a crooked finger, and the earth rose in a wave and crushed out
the physical fire over half of the periphery of the shields, leaving behind
only the shields of Elemental Fire and Air themselves as protection.

Eleanor
swallowed down fear and nausea, and tried to
think
. Their shields
weren’t going to hold, not for long, since they were feeding off nothing
but her own strength. There had to be a way to stop her!

She
held onto Reggie’s arm, and backed up a step, so that he did the same. A
slow, terrible smile stretched Alison’s lips in a dreadful mockery of
pleasure. She gestured again, and this time it was a horde of those horrible
gnome-things that rose up out of the raw earth and flung themselves at the
shields.

Eleanor
gathered her wits, and called her Salamanders.

Once
again, faithful and protective, they came, leaping out of the flames of the
dying fires, dashing towards Alison’s gnomes.

But
they were joined by something Eleanor had never seen before; slender, sinuous
things like legless dragons. They didn’t seem to have much in the way of
attacking ability, but whenever they whipped themselves around a Salamander,
the Fire Elemental grew markedly larger or brighter—or both.

The
Salamanders reached the line of gnomes, and this time, the gnomes didn’t
run.

There
were more of them than there were Salamanders, and they swarmed the Fire
Elementals, threatening to pull them down. But whatever the Salamanders came
into contact with burst into flame.

The
Salamanders weren’t getting off unscathed, however; the gnomes had heavy
clubs and spears, and they were perfectly prepared to use them.

Then
a dozen of them got through, and Reggie lurched forwards to interpose himself
between them and her. Two frantic Salamanders raced towards them, and a Sylph,
a delicate, winged creature, suddenly popped into existence, hovering in
midair. The Salamanders got one each, and the fairy-like being might have
looked delicate, but she accounted for the other four with her bow and arrows.

But
not before two of them got to Reggie, and while he was fending one off with his
staff, the second ducked under a blow and smashed into Reggie’s bad knee
with his club.

Reggie
toppled over with a choked-off cry of agony, as the winged girl filled the evil
creature with three swift arrows in succession.

With
a wordless cry of fury, Eleanor reached for more power—in what might have
been an unexpected place. Not to the physical fires being extinguished by more
gnomes, but down—down past the layer of Earth where Alison’s power
lay, down past the planet’s stony skin, down into the place where the
Earth itself gave way to Fire, and the molten rock showed which of the Powers
was stronger—

“No!”
It was Alison’s turn to shout, as she concentrated all of her anger and
fury on Eleanor.

The
fury began to take shape, rising out of the earth before them.

A
Giant.

Not
the sort that Jack had met at the top of his beanstalk. That Giant, uncouth as
he had been, was a paragon of intelligence and sophistication next to this
thing.

It
was made of the earth that it rose from. Near-shapeless, it had a blob of
rancid clay for a head, with two holes gouged out for eyes, at the bottom of
each of which glowed the same, sickly-yellow light as suffused the stones. A
misshapen lump defined a nose, and beneath that, was an empty yawn of a mouth.
It had no neck to speak of; the head seemed to grow directly from the
moss-covered, massive shoulders. And as yet, it had no discernable arms or
legs—

That
changed in a moment; a club-like arm with undifferentiated mitten-hands reached
out, snatched up a battling gnome and Salamander together, and tossed them both
into its gaping maw, devouring them both with a single gulp.

It
grew a trifle, and reached out for another pair of fighters—

Horrified,
Eleanor looked away for a moment—and caught sight of Alison.

Her
stepmother was transfixed by the battle; partly because she was pouring
everything she had into her creation, and partly in mesmerized pleasure at the
carnage.

But
she had forgotten something.

She
had dropped her additional protections, relying only on her old, unaugmented
shields.

And
Eleanor now knew how to unweave those—she had used the same key on her
shields as she had on the spells binding Eleanor to the hearthstone.

Reggie
had struggled to his good knee and was staring in horror at the giant, shaking
in every limb, his eyes wide. She grabbed his arm and shook it. He wrenched his
gaze away from the giant and looked up at her. His face was so pale he looked
like a corpse.

“We
have one chance!” she shouted, over the bass growls of the giant.
“Help me!”

From
somewhere, he dragged up the final dregs of his courage. Life came back into
his eyes.

“Her
shields!” she cried, “Forget about the giant—drop
our
shields, then come in, Air and Fire together, and follow my lead—

He
nodded; he dropped the staff and she crouched beside him; they clasped hands
and let their own shields go.

Alison
howled in triumph; the giant echoed it, and wrenched himself up further out of
the earth.

Alison’s
shields flickered as she let the last of her concentration slip from them.

And
together, a single melded lance of Fire and Air struck at the weakest point,
blasting it away—and the shields unraveled.

Alison
faltered, and took a single step back. The loss of her shields confused her for
one vital moment.

And
the giant turned, wrenching its body completely out of the ground. It stared at
her for several long seconds; her eyes widened, as she realized in that instant
that she was unprotected—

—and
that all around her were creatures she had forced to obey her with whatever
weapon came to hand. Creatures who saw her momentarily unprotected.

Like
the giant that she had just created out of earth and blood and pain.

She
looked up at it with her mouth open. It looked down at her.

And
then, it fell upon her, burying her alive in a mound of freshly-turned soil
before she could make a sound.

The
last of the gnomes swarmed over the mound, burying themselves into the ground
where she had been.

And
suddenly, there was silence—except for the mindless whimpering of the two
creatures that had once been Carolyn and Lauralee.

Reggie sank slowly
to the ground, his teeth gritted against the agony of his ruined
knee—slowly, only because Eleanor caught him as he fell and eased him
down. That took the last of
her
strength, and all she could do was to
hold him as the remaining Salamanders curled around them both, keeping them
warm and protected, and wait for dawn, help, or both.

November 25, 1917
Somerville College Oxford University

SOME OF THE GIRLS
THOUGHT the little studies in Somerville College were cramped and shabby. Then
again, some of the girls were accustomed to the kind of accommodation one found
at Longacre Park… for Eleanor, even if the study had been the size and
bleakness of her garret room at The Arrows, it still would have been paradise.
A raw November wind rattled the windows, but she had a fine fire going (and
before long, someone with less access to wood or a more slender budget for coal
would be around to “borrow” a log or two). One of the scouts had
managed tea and toast; Eleanor had jam and butter from Sarah by parcel this
morning. All was right with the world.

Eleanor
poured her visitor another cup of tea with a feeling of unreality. It still
seemed an impossibility that she was here, settled in Oxford, a student at last
in Somerville College.

“So,”
asked Doctor Maya, stirring honey from the Longacre hives into her tea in lieu
of unobtainable sugar. “How are you enjoying life as a student of
literature?”

“It’s
incredible,” Eleanor replied. “I keep thinking I’m going to
wake up in my bed in the garret and it will all have been a dream.”

“And
the studies?” Maya persisted, giving her a penetrating look.
“They’re going well?”

Eleanor
laughed; she knew what Maya was thinking. That Reggie’s proximity would
be a powerful distraction. Little did she know that he was harder on her than
her tutor, and she was harder on herself than both of them put together.
“I think my generation is going to be a trial to those who follow
us,” she told the doctor. “Those of us who are
here
are
determined to prove that we can be as valuable as the ones who left to become
VADs or do some other sort of war-work. And when Oxford grants us
degrees—
which they will
—we are going to be among the first
in line to demand ours. Compared to what Alison kept me at, this is light
duty.” She sighed, but it was with content. “And compared to how
I’ve been living at The Arrows, this place is a delight. Reggie keeps us
both supplied with wood for the fireplaces from Longacre, and with other
things, too. I find I can get a lot of help when I need it in trade for an egg
or a jar of honey.”

Maya
tsk
ed wryly. “You’re a regular black-marketeer. I’ll
have to demand a bribe of some of those eggs to keep quiet, I’m afraid.
They can’t be had for any price in London.”

Eleanor
laughed. She was doing a lot of that these days. She didn’t remember much
past Alison’s demise. She’d been drained almost to fainting, and
Reggie
was
unconscious when Lady Virginia appeared like an avenging
angel and carried them both off to Longacre. Lady Devlin hadn’t known
what to think—at first she had, with some bewilderment, tentatively
welcomed Eleanor as the hitherto-unknown stepdaughter of her friend Alison
Robinson.

Then
the situation rapidly unraveled. It had been decided to say
nothing
about Alison, Warrick Locke, and the girls; the farmer upon whose land the Hoar
Stones stood had found the autos, the body of Locke, and the two near-witless
sisters. Constables digging in the churned-up earth had turned up the body of
Alison, but other than that, no one could make heads or tails of why the four
were out there in the first place, nor what had turned two young women into
withered hags nor what had destroyed Locke. And, once Peter Almsley intervened
on behalf of the War Office, country constables being what they were, it was
decided that it was best not to ask too many more questions that couldn’t
be answered. It was all written up that Locke had murdered Alison and buried
her body, and that the shock had prematurely aged her daughters, who had killed
Locke in a fit of insanity. This was more than scandal, this was sensation, and
Eleanor suddenly found herself unwelcome at Longacre Park.

However,
she was well on her feet by this time, and The Arrows was
hers
.
Rightfully hers, as she found out when the lawyers came to see her. She
didn’t even need to lift a finger to do anything to help Carolyn and
Lauralee if she chose not—