“The Master will not be best pleased, Mr. Blue, that you did not share.” The stouter one shifted his bag, and I heard a moan. “We should go now, I should think. It rouses.”
The taller, his upper body swinging loosely, turned to regard his bag. “I think mine shall be along presently. There shall be plenty for all.” He looked up then, and my heart skipped a beat as his marionette head swiveled all the way around his thin neck to look directly at me. I had the sensation of staring at a skull, for all that his face was shrouded by fog, darkness, and hat-brim.
The shorter glanced back as well. He tipped his bowler to his taller friend, then settled it back and tilted it slightly to one side in a jaunty manner. “I see. You play at hazards, Mr. Grey. I commend you. The Master will either reward or punish as he laughs or angers.”
He glided into the thickening fog, jouncing his bag a bit for a final moan. The taller shambled after, and for a second I had the sense of the number 1o, fading in the night.
I paused a moment, uncertain what to do. I did not know whether these two had been within my brother’s lodgings, for all their suspicious natures. I was torn between lurking here and following after, perhaps missing him if he should return. I dithered a few more moments before deciding to follow. The building would not move, and I might have another chance to encounter him there. The two “men” did move, and would soon become a lost opportunity if I did not seize it now.
I stepped down and hurried after them, then stopped cold as a realization dawned. They had known exactly where I was, that I been watching, and they did not care that I had seen them. A lump formed in my throat, and I grasped my father’s pistol tightly. It crystallized my determination to follow, though with abundant caution.
My resolve to keep my distance and remain careful failed almost immediately. I have a quiet way about me, and can move with near silence if I must. Yet as I pressed on after them, I heard not a sound, neither footfall nor voice. I crossed carefully in front of the alley, taken by a sudden fear of something reaching out from the dark and grasping at me, pulling me down, and pressing a wet, acrid cloth over my nose . . .
I stood paralyzed a moment, unaware whether this was memory from Chicago, or a newly conjured fear. There was so much I did not remember, and so much I wished to forget.
Shaking myself free, I hurried to follow the two men, now worrying I had delayed too long and lost them. Walking rapidly forward at intervals for several blocks, I paused often to stop and listen. My racing heart sounded loud in my ears each time I paused, and each time I grew convinced I paused too long. I began to consider dropping back and returning to my lonely vigil outside the rooming house.
The deeper-voiced one spoke ahead of me, frighteningly close now, no more than a dozen steps ahead.
“Are we to be late, then, Mr. Grey?”
I was certain they could hear my heart beating as it thumped in my chest.
“A little, perhaps, Mr. Blue, but it is of no moment. The others will demonstrate the preliminaries.” I could see neither of them ahead, for all I was in easy conversing distance.
“Are we just there then, up ahead on the right, Mr. Grey?”
“Indeed, so, Mr. Blue. Look for the small door just below street level.”
“Excellent, Mr. Grey. Shall we proceed?”
“Certainly, Mr. Blue. Please, you first. I will come after. I fear I am dripping, and laundresses are put off by blood on the lapels.”
I held my breath for two dozen heartbeats, then the same again, until my pulse slowed enough for me to follow.
I took one step forward and felt a brushing against my coat, and then another. A faint but growing sense of resistance pressed back against me, as though the fog itself tried to prevent me from going to the building. Another step, another firming as what felt like faint hands tried to restrain me. What felt like fingers brushed my cheek, and I jumped back, stifling a yell.
Another dead gaslight loomed ahead in the closed-in darkness of the street. I lit it, calling in my Will to heat the cold gas. This task proved more difficult than the earlier act, when the gas had been hot and the metal grill required a only couple of degrees.
Ghostly hands and faces emerged from the fog, each a wisp as it seemed to form and dissipate. The faces of children and women grew in strength, emerging in greater numbers from the fog as I resumed my stride. Their faces grew more distinct as I approached the building, showing expressions of fear and horror. Some, their faces more fully formed, shook their heads in denial. The fog itself began to band around me, and I worried it might begin to act as a physical thing, strong enough to strangle. Fog is the weakest manifestation of Water, the earliest conjuring of an apprentice, and the easiest broken by its opposite, Fire.
I took one final step, felt the resistance tighten again, and called in my Will. I pulled a strand of thread from my coat to use as fuel, for that reduces the amount of the Fire Master’s own essence that must be spent. I drew up the flame on my palm, using its heat to drive back the foggy apparitions. They made one final effort to push me back, and failed as I released the flame to fly about me, fending off the ghostly hands. The effect faded, broken by my Fire. I kept the flame going, dancing above my left shoulder to light my way.
I took a tentative step forward, then another, without resistance. I do not know why, but I paused to look back. There in the light of my flame stood a little boy, about ten. He looked at me with an expression of profound sadness, then dissipated, his face and body breaking into millions of pieces as he faded into the fog.
I know little of Air, other than it often serves illusion and false seeming. I assessed this as Elemental conjuring, a spell to keep the unwanted away from the warehouse, too weak in force to draw suspicion while clever enough frighten the credulous and the weak. I was neither.
My confidence returned. So much for Air.
I walked quickly to the small, recessed door in the side of the building. The door opened a foot or two below street level, reached by an ancient step, suggesting that the building had long predated the street, enough for all of London to have risen around it. I glanced at the walls, my impression of great age reinforced by the old, cobbled walls. Brushing one with my fingertips, I felt an old power, a whisper of a foreign tongue I registered as Earth. The large building might today serve as a humble warehouse, but its roots were ancient, and its lineage out of place with its role.
I paused a moment on the step, momentarily overtaken. I had forsworn dark places after Chicago, yet now prepared to enter another. I gathered myself, touched the pistol as talisman, and entered.
A narrow hall stretched before me. I saw doors scattered along the hall, but no sign of either man, and no clue as to which portal they had passed through. I stepped carefully down the narrow passage, wary for a sight or sound that might mean my discovery.
I glanced down and saw dark spatters on the floor a few dozen feet into the hall. I knelt where I could see them more closely, and then removed my glove to touch my fingers to one drop. It proved to be blood, as I surmised. I gathered that it must have fallen from the bag held by the thin man. I wiped my finger clean on my handkerchief and returned it to my pocket.
I followed the blood trail, passing in front of several doors, until it abruptly ended alongside a piece of blank wall. I looked up and back, then passed my flaming ball from my shoulder to my hand and examined the wood on both sides of the hallway. I moved the flame closer still and peered closely at what appeared to be a narrow crevice to my left. The flame’s tip danced as though brushed by the slightest movement of air. I focused just there, and saw the tiniest of cracks where a section of wall did not perfectly match the others.
I felt around the wood, my naked hand sensitive to the slightest of rises that marked the door’s edge. It proved well concealed, so much so that I might have patrolled the hall a hundred years and never found it. That thought froze my blood a mome
nt.
The feeling grew in my breast that the two men had lured me here, a revelation that gave me both pause and hope. Pause in that while I might now escape the trap, this was still the surest route I had to finding him. Hope in that my epiphany would possibly give me an advantage and allow me to turn the tables. I was slightly built, this was true, but I could yet surprise. Had not Dr. Holmes learned that to his chagrin?
Bending, I found a nail head protruding slightly from the wood. I depressed it, and it gave a satisfying click. The hidden door opened a trice, enough for me to insert my fingernail and prize it far enough for me to slip through.
Behind lay a stonewalled staircase, leading steeply down to a lower basement. Smelling the damp and wet, I reasoned that this cellar lay not yet far enough from the Thames to be immune from its effects. I moved down, stepping carefully to avoid a fall that might bring injury, or worse luck, noise.
The stairs gave way into a large, dark room, large enough to swallow the flame from my solitary light. The far end of the room, perhaps sixty paces away, revealed a thin sliver of yellow light, perhaps a door cracked with a lantern beyond?
My nostrils filled with the smells of dank earth and mildew as I stepped onto the dirt floor. I lifted my small flame upward, seeing a wooden floor overhead supported by pillars and rafters. The pillars appeared to be a uniform, square-trunked forest, with trunks spaced every ten feet or so. The room appeared bare except for open barrels scattered around in what appeared to be a random fashion. I glanced quickly in one and saw oil-sheened water, old smelling and unsavory.
I snuffed my light and listened carefully. Was I pursued? Had I been detected? I heard no evidence of either. I waited a few moments more to steel myself, then crossed the open room to the nearest pillar. Somewhere I had lost my glove, so my uncovered hand brushed rough splintery wood, dry as dust. I moved thus, with short staccato steps from pillar to pillar, pausing to listen as I went.
I judged I crossed midway through the room when lamps attached to every pillar burst into flame at once, an exercise requiring more strength than I possessed. The gesture spoke volumes to both a sense of power and a flair for the dramatic. Blinking in the sudden glare, I beheld a figure dressed entirely from head to toe in dark robes marked with suns, comets, and stars. It appeared a richer variant of the fashion worn by sideshow conjurers and comic-opera villains. He lacked only a conical hat with Wizzard picked out in silver thread to complete the costume.
My eyes adjusted, and I knew I had found my brother. He looked to be in no great distress, standing easily in a conjuring circle some thirty paces away. His hands appeared unshackled, at least as far as I could see from below the hems of the voluminous sleeves. His face seemed as beautiful as ever, and he appeared sleek, well fed, and untroubled.
The frights and discomforts I had suffered in traveling to his side only to find him so well kept made me testy. I made as if to pick a piece of lint from my coat, using my play at nonchalance to mask my distress and fear.
“You said you needed me,” I said, not bothering to conceal my irritation. “I came.”
“Obviously.” His voice, deeper and richer than I remembered, stretched out each syllable, employing them to make me feel small and stupid for stating the obvious.
Stung by his response, yet endeavoring not to show it, I retorted, “I saw your lodgings. You’ve fallen a long way, then, or has your last conquest cast you aside?”
He flashed his perfect teeth at me and shrugged. I knew him well enough to see he both acknowledged my sally and demonstrated his indifference to its effect.
“Those are not my lodgings,” he replied in his quiet voice. “I needed to send you someplace close by where you would be easily found. The rooming house served its purpose.”
The fear that I had banked under my irritation flared back to life. I gestured at his comic-opera costume, “Your appearance suggests prosperity, if not common fashion. You said you required my help. Why am I here?”
“You misread the telegram,” he answered in the same calm and reasonable tone that drove me mad as a child. “I don’t need help. I need you.”
“Me? Why?” I replied, startled.
“When you escaped the Chicago Chapterhouse with the ritual incomplete, certain of my fellows wondered if I had aided you.” He shrugged. “My commitment to the Cause has been questioned. My order required me to offer a gesture of redress. So I agreed to bring you here in order to restore myself in their eyes.”
My mind reeled under the hammer blows of his four short sentences. The memory of being bound naked to a board and screaming while pincers tore my skin burst forth from the locked place where I kept it. I struggled to keep other terrors, as bad and worse, confined in their dark places, lest I be overborne. My brother had known of the torments I suffered in Dr. Holmes’ dungeon—had acceded to them, and had brought me here to continue them.
The completeness of the betrayal nearly broke me. I grappled enough with the fact of his treason, but could not fathom the reason for it. “Why?”
He spread his arms, palms toward me, showing me the robe’s symbols. “In the ancient days, we were not confined to the one natal Element but could establish Mastery over others, beyond those of birth and sire. That is what this is, these robes adorned with those Elements under command . . . Star for Fire, Moon for Water, Comet for Air, and Diamond for Earth. Those ancient forms, debased by sideshow magicians and fools, now restored to their proper role.”
I felt a glimmer of comprehension. “And you’ve found a way.”
“Yes,” he replied. “The essence is drawn out of the Master and stored in a vessel. This may then be drawn off by another, if the spells are known.”
He reached into his robes and drew forth a cluster of amulets, all on slim chains around his neck. He extended his other hand toward the ground, his beautiful face furrowed in concentration. “And so . . . Earth.”
I saw an amulet glow in his hand, shining through his flesh as it brightened. The ground slowly shifted and grew, a small mound that resolved itself into a golem’s shape, perhaps knee high, that turned to regard me with an eyeless face.
“Air.” A swirling vortex formed around me, entirely free of dust from the dirt below. It battered me, whipping my hair, and driving me to my knees. I tried to stand, and it struck me again, forcing me down. When the buffeting settled, I tried to move and failed. Air, as strong as bonds of iron, held me in place.
“Water. The sign in opposition.” His eyes closed in concentration as water from the nearest barrels formed into an arching spout that moved from one barrel to another. The effect proved clearly the hardest and least impressive. Sweat poured from his face, as the last portion of the arc collapsed and fell, a few feet short of the receiving barrel. Had I felt a weakening in his bonds of Air as he struggled with Water, or did this serve only my desperate imagination?
He freed me then, allowing me to my feet, as he mopped his face with his free hand. His other hand grasped the amulets around his neck. His hand, glowing with the energy within, faded.
He both impressed and frightened me by his use of the other Elements, but less than he might have. Fire had come so easily to him that watching him struggle here had been a revelation. He had limits. I had never seen my brother work at anything before, neither in his Mastery, nor in his ability to live on others’ fortunes. It diminished him in my eyes. My brother and his ilk had found a way, certainly, but it proved foreign and difficult.
One piece didn’t fit. “So, the sending outside was yours, then. A spell of phantasms to ward the building.”
He looked askance at me, perplexed. “No. I know naught of that.”
Curiouser and curiouser . . .
“Then what need of me?” I asked, striving for a calm I did not feel. I knew the answer before he spoke.
“Masters are the grist for our mill,” he replied, in a voice as indifferent as
if he were ordering fish for dinner. “The rituals draw the eternal essence, the spark of the divine, or soul, if you prefer the base term. We bind the Elemental energies thus released in order that we may draw from them later. The resonances deplete quickly, so we require steady replenishment.”
It confirmed both what I previously suspected and my current suspicion that I had well and truly trapped myself. He was stronger, but I was faster. Could I make it serve me to escape?
I gathered my Will, drawing flame and fuel from the nearest lamps, then sent it hurtling toward him, hoping to catch him off stride. He made no effort to move or evade. Instead, my lancing flame arced away from him, toward one wall where it simply vanished. A sigil there glowed red, then leaped from symbol to symbol around the room, racing at intervals as it picked up my energies and gave them around. In a second the walls glowed, red and hot as embers.
He smiled then, a splitting of his mouth that did not extend to his eyes. “The ritual is begun, and you are still connected to it. The more you cast from yourself, the faster this will proceed.” I hurled another ball of flame at him, and watched it arc away and be drunk. The sigils glowed redder still. I saw then that they had not been etched on the wall, but written on some kind of plate or shield that hung there.
“Our investigations have shown that we carry all of the Elements within us, weaker perhaps, but which can still be extracted,” he said, speaking as if behind a lectern and I had not just attacked him. He gestured, and I gasped as the air was leached from my lungs. My head reeled, and I collapsed to my knees again, unable to draw breath. Over his shoulder, I saw other sigils light, dimmer blues and greens and whites, less defined, but still glowing. My heart raced, and blood pounded in my veins. My sight darkened as I looked up and saw him make a small plucking gesture with his hands.
The feeling of being pulled through a sieve gave way at once. I fell forward onto my face, hot tears washing away the dust on my cheeks from the dirt floor.
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