The Serpent's Shadow (19 page)

One such piece was the throne that Shivani herself now occupied, set against the southern wall of the room, directly opposite the statue. From here she could sit and contemplate her Goddess and plan the next move in the chess game of power and death she was playing so far from her homeland.

It was a dangerous game, and one with high stakes. If she succeeded, she would bring the war to wrest India away from her conquerors right to the usurpers' very door—no, more than that. It would allow her to destroy the usurpers in their own soft, safe beds. She would bring terror to the streets of London, which would in turn infect the rest of the country with its contagion. Her task was to make it clear to those
here
who made the decisions about the Empire that they were no longer safe, that they could no longer hide behind distance and the never-ending ranks of their soldiers. She must send that same unreasoning fear into the home of every ordinary shopkeeper and clerk as well. Only when the common man and sahib alike clamored that it was too expensive to hold India would the High and the Mighty consent to release it.

If she failed—

But she would not fail. Not she, not with all her cunning and knowledge. She
could
not fail.

Those carved screens fanned out to the rear of the statue in a semicircle; behind them, the walls and ceiling, for now, were swathed in silk. Beneath the silk, hidden until they were ready to be shown, were the mural-paintings that Rakesh was currently working on. These would not be unveiled until he had completed them, and even Shivani did not know what they would look like. Not that she was worried at all what they would show or even if they would be suitable, for Rakesh belonged to the Goddess, heart and soul, and as his statue and altar showed, he was the finest of all the artists of his own generation, finer than many of the previous generations.

The priestess smiled up into the eyes of her Goddess; for the first time since she had arrived in this wretched, cold country, Shivani was content. She sighed, and inhaled a deeper breath of the incense, reveling in the flat, sweet taste in the back of her throat that purged away the everlasting reek of garlic and cabbage. The compounding of the incense, one of her many tasks as Kali's servant, was accomplished from a recipe only Her priests and priestesses knew. Shivani made it herself, in a room in which she kept the myriad ingredients for her many, many purposes. The knife and the strangling scarf were not Kali's only weapons.

The shrine was not complete, but it was at last ready for ritual use. At this very moment, out there in the fog-wreathed streets, Shivani's minions were at work, harvesting lives for the Goddess. For now, those lives were petty ones, true, the sacrifices confined to those who probably would have come to a bad end before the year was out anyway. In places with strange names, like Cheapside and Whitechapel, life was of little worth, the coin quickly spent, and few of those who wandered the streets of a night had any who cared enough to look for former acquaintances when they vanished. No one of any real importance would notice these people missing, and no one in authority would bother to look for them even if they were missed. And why should they? Distasteful as it was, the creatures that Shivani's servants extinguished were nothings, nameless, the Untouchables of the sahibs' world. The power to be derived from these pitiful creatures was minimal, but each death sent strength and magic back to the shrine and to Shivani, and tiny sacrifices at this point were not to be despised.

Soon enough there would be more meaningful deaths, victims with longer lives ahead of them, perhaps even a hint of magic in their veins.
Those
would be more acceptable, and more useful to Shivani; fat, foolish, complacent English, harvested like their fat, foolish sheep. The thugee would be happier too, for there was no challenge in slipping the silk scarf about the neck of a drunken tramp sprawled in the street in a stupor, nor in tightening the cord about the neck of a worn-out, gin-steeped whore or a fallen fool dreaming over a pipe of the Black Smoke. Shivani didn't blame them for being disappointed at seeking such petty prey, but she needed more information before she could send them after richer game. They dared not chance discovery, not yet, so victims of a better class had to be selected with great care. There should be no relations to raise an alarm, no employers to seek for an errant employee. And most importantly, no police.

She already knew what class she would select for her first real blow of vengeance. Retired soldiers were what she needed, men who had once served in the Raj and so deserved death. Men, officers in particular, who were to be found frugally spending their pensions in little bed-sitters; those were the prey she wanted. Men who had never married or had lost their wives—men with no siblings, no parents. Later, of course, when her power was greater, she would take those she had rejected as too risky; she would take them,
and
their families, down to the least and littlest. Then the campaign of terror would begin. But for now, she must take her victims quietly, and that meant that the victims themselves must be nearly invisible.

She had another criterion as well; these, preferably, would be men who had shed Indian blood in the course of their careers, or equally well, had left deserted, weeping Indian girls behind them, betraying them with promises of love and marriage. Or both. Revenge on men such as these would be pleasing to Kali Durga, and the power derived from their deaths would be pleasing to Her priestess. Shivani caressed the carved arms of her throne, knowing that it was only a matter of time before her intelligence gatherers brought her a list of such men.

They would die—oh, yes, they would die most satisfactorily, and then their bodies would slide soundlessly into the river, weighted down by bags of stones about their necks.
Perhaps,
weeks or months from now, what was left would rise sluggishly to the surface and be discovered, but Shivani thought that unlikely. There were too many hungry creatures in the Thames, and the waters ran swiftly to the ocean. Even with stones about the neck, the bodies swept on to feed the creatures of the sea.

This was, of course, by no means the limit of Shivani's plans for the immediate future. There were other possible victims as well, victims who could be lured
here
or would even come of their own free will. Once again, she would not take any who could be traced here, but there was an abundance of fools in this city, as demonstrated by the number of “mystic societies.” Why was it that the English were such idiots about magic? No wise person meddled with magicians; the ignorant villager might seek out a guru to take off a curse or remove a demon, but he did so with great care, and did
not
run to discover the magician's power or claim it for himself. Not so the English, who prided themselves upon their bravery. One whiff of magic in the air, and the moths came swarming around, greedy, ineffectual aesthetes who longed for power but wanted it
given
them rather than putting in the effort to earn it. The chela of even the least offensive and meekest of gurus knew he must serve and serve diligently before the secrets would be unfolded to him; these arrogant ignoramuses demanded secrets they did not have the faintest hope of mastering.

It was unbelievable, how these arrogant, brainless peacocks came strutting to her, offering their throats for the knife if they but knew it! She had a guise in the world outside this basement room. There was a small apartment just above where Shivani held forth in the person of a dispenser of arcane knowledge of the shadow-shrouded sort. To her came the seekers who had no patience for study, who had rather they could achieve mastery over Fate and Men by overmastering demons and
that
by the quickest means possible. They thought themselves greatly daring, these chattering apes. They did not see the serpent gliding silently behind them.

Some would not be missed. Those, she would gather unto Kali, strengthen the Goddess with their blood, and thus increase her own strength.

One, she already had taken.

It had been a temptation she had not been able to resist, for the fool so courted his own death. Disowned by family, despised by those who knew him, even by his own fellows in the arts of darkness, he was overripe for the taking. Believing the tales she told him of his potential prowess and future bliss, he had drunk Shivani's potions, smoked her Black Smoke, and laid himself down on her altar without a qualm, so certain was he in his arrogance that she, a mere Hindu female, could never harm him.
She
was no more than the common vessel who brought him his just rewards, a bearer, a servant of a power far greater than she. He was Man, he was White, and he was destined to command Unseen Powers.

He was stupid, he was a fool, and his Powers answered him not when he commanded them. On her altar he died, the scarlet silk cord about his neck, tongue protruding, eyes bulging, face blackened. Shivani herself had twisted the cord tight, taking the greatest of satisfaction in it.

Shivani dedicated his death to Kali Durga, but she drank his strength herself, imprisoning his spirit in a little, round mirror she had found in a street market. The stall keeper had not known what he had got, but few would have recognized the plate of black glass set in a carved wooden frame for what it was. She bought it for less than a shilling, and straightaway took it to her sanctuary.

The mystery of it delighted her; it was as if some unknown hand had made it and placed it in the market for her to find. A Black Mirror! Who in all this benighted country had the wit and the knowledge to create a Black Mirror? And mystery piled upon mystery—why had it never been used? For it was virgin, empty of the least hint of magic, when she discovered it.

One guess was that perhaps the Black Mirror was not used in this land as Shivani was wont to use it. That was the only answer she had for the puzzle.

Now the Mirror slept in the basket beside her throne, swathed in a shroud of black silk, waiting only until
she
was ready to make use of her newest servant.

She had made use of him already, in several smaller trials—ordering him to show her where her thugees were at work, or having him find the strongholds of other practitioners of magic, who could presumably see her as a rival or as a threat. She knew now where the strongest resided, and had added them to her long-term plans, but now it was time to put her servant to work on something nearer to home.

She sprinkled powder of a different kind on the charcoal in the brazier at her feet, breathed in the drug-laden air, and felt at last the moment of disorientation that she had been waiting for. She did not drift off, she merely felt as if she hovered just a little above her body.

That was all she wanted. Any more, and she would lose her grip on her awareness and drift free. That could be useful, but it was not what she wanted to do at this moment; she needed only to be relieved of the distractions of a physical form, not to escape altogether. Her hand reached, seemingly of its own volition, into the basket beside her, and brought out the little, round mirror of black glass.

She cradled it in her lap, staring into depths that did
not
reflect the lazy swirls of smoke, nor her own face, but held a restless, glowing, featureless shape that swam within the glass like a furtive fish among water weeds.

“Mirror-servant in my hand,” she murmured lan-guorously to it, “Answer thou to my command.”

The glowing presence moved to the foreground, fogging the mirror with sickly light.
Release me!
the prisoner wailed soundlessly.
Let me go!

“I thought you wanted to live forever?” she replied with a smile, aloud, although her servant understood her well enough if she only
thought
what she wanted to say at it. “You begged, you pleaded for magic and immortality, for the ability to understand the Unseen world, for the knowledge to move bodiless through this world and go into the realm of spirits. I gave you immortality, did I not? So long as a single grain of this glass remains intact, you are bound to it; surely you will live forever! I gave you all the rest as well!” Then she laughed, throatily. “You understand the Unseen as no other of your acquaintance, you go into the realm of the spirits, and though you move through the Unseen at my will, and not yours,
I
never told you that you would have freedom therein. But—still! You show your ingratitude, and how little you deserve any kind of freedom!”

You didn't tell me what you meant!
the shape howled in protest.
You didn't tell me I'd die! You deceived me!

“You deceived yourself,” she retorted severely. “I told you, and promised you exactly the truth. That you put your own interpretation on that truth is hardly my fault. Now, enough of this nonsense. Obey me, else I will force you, and you have had a taste of what I can do to you. Show me the traitor to my people and my land!”

For a fleeting moment, before she lashed it with a spark of pain and punishment, so that the thing trapped within the glass cried out in anguish, the mirror showed her
own
face.

“No more of that!” she snapped, before regaining control and composure. “Show me the treacherous daughter of my traitoress sister! Show me the thing that claims the power that is mine by right of blood!”

But there was nothing forthcoming. Shivani frowned, and prodded the mirror-servant again with the sharp and punishing goad of her will.
I can‘t!
the servant wailed.
I cannot show you!

“Cannot, or
will
not?” she asked, furious. “You
will
do what I command!”

Cannot! She is here, somewhere, she is near to you, within the bounds of the city but I cannot find her! There are signs of her everywhere, but not one leads
to
her!

Shivani cursed her pawn for being a fool, weak, and useless—but did not curse him as a liar. She could command the truth if she wished, but she already knew that her unwilling servant had told the truth in the first place. She had already tried every means at her disposal to find the girl, and had come to the same end as her servant. Surya's daughter was nowhere to be found, yet traces of her were everywhere. The only possible explanation for this was that she had somehow managed the magic that enabled holy men to walk amid crowds and yet remain unseen—or to be precise, completely ignored and isolated among them. That should
not
have been possible, with no one to teach her the secrets that Surya had learned in her own temple, but there was no denying the facts. The girl knew, was using her knowledge, and even a mirror-servant, who should have been able to eel his way past any common protections, could not find her.