Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  He clutched the blanket with both hands and stared at the ceiling, willing his eyes to stay open, unable to move, as he had been unable to move then, completely paralyzed. His heart pounded like the distant guns, shaking him. The VAD girl passed and looked at him; he tried to open his mouth to ask for help, for water, for anything to keep her there for a precious few moments, but his body no longer answered to him. He couldn't scream, couldn't speak, couldn't even whisper. Fear flooded him. There was nothing in his world but fear and the darkness, the darkness that was slowly eroding that last circle of light at the end of the ward, and when it was gone, they would come, and they would take him as they had always wanted to do.

  Or worse, the nurse would think he was dead, she would tell the orderlies and they would come and take him away and put him, still living and unable to show it, in the ground, and then—

  —then, with a sudden spasm, he could breathe again, and move. The fear receded—not much, but enough for relief.

  With an effort, he threw the memories off, and stared fixedly at a wavering spot on the ceiling, cast by the dim lamp. They weren't here. The wights, the wraiths, the goblins of the Earth, they weren't here.

  They could never find him. He had nothing about himself to tell them where he was.

  He wasn't an Elemental Mage anymore. They couldn't touch him, they couldn't see him, they couldn't find him. It was magic that called them, and he had given his up, burned it out, walled it away. He had no magic, nothing for them to find, and without that to call them, they wouldn't find him. No matter what those lipless mouths had whispered into his ear in the dark of that buried bunker.

  So he kept telling himself, shivering under his blanket, long past the time when the orderlies came and took away the body on a stretcher and carried off the screens, long past the time when a new, groaning body was placed in the newly changed bed, right into the moment when gray dawn began to creep across the windows. And then, only then, could he let go his hold, and fall, senseless, into exhausted slumber.

  7

  March 18, 1917

  Broom, Warwickshire

  EYES NARROWED IN CONCENTRATION, ELEANOR knelt in front of the kitchen fire and stared at the hearthstone directly before her, willing the symbol that she knew was magically embedded there to appear. As she did so, she felt a thin trickle of power flowing from her to it, a sensation that was unsettlingly like blood flowing from a wound.

  This was the first time she had dared try anything with the spell binding her to the house. Every time she meddled with one of Alison's spells in order to bend it even a little and change the conditions by which it held, she got this sensation. Sarah said it was because she wasn't yet able to get power from outside herself.

  The spells guarding the pantry were weak, easy to bend enough that she could walk through them just by sheer willpower, because Alison had not troubled herself about them very much. Because this particular piece of magic had been laid using her flesh, blood, and bone, it was one of the strongest spells in the house, and if she actually broke it, no matter how far away her stepmother was, Alison would feel the backlash and know what had happened.

  She had asked Sarah why they couldn't simply dig up the stone and destroy the finger (or what was left of it), but Sarah had blanched. "Don't even think of trying that," the witch had said earnestly. "It would kill both of us. The layers of protection she has on that stone would fell a charging elephant. It's not like in a fairy tale, child, where all you need do is find the thing and be rid of it. No magician worth his salt would put his major spells in place without protections."

  That left the difficult task of insinuating around the protections and the spell itself, of twisting and distorting the original spell to give Eleanor more freedom, until the spell snapped back to its original form. Sarah could show Eleanor how to work the magic that would lengthen Eleanor's invisible chain for a few hours, but Eleanor was going to have to learn how to actually perform the magic for herself.

  Her shielding circle of protection was small, just big enough to hold her and the stone. It was a good thing she wasn't claustrophobic; she could actually feel the boundaries of the circle pressing in on her.

  There must be something missing here. Why can't I finish this thing? She stared down at the stone, and tried to remember what had let her get into the pantry—

  I was angry. Would that help? She let some of her anger and impatience trickle down into it along with the power. And that turned the trick; the first hints of a sullen glow appeared on the dull, grainy surface of the rock, then the glyph came slowly to life, as if painted in lines that burned with malevolence.

  She knew now it would make her ill merely to touch it with a finger. Fortunately, she wouldn't have to.

  With twigs of oak, ash and thorn bound together into a wand, she traced the lines of the glyph—and the closer she got to the end of her tracing, the harder it was, physically, to move the wand, the more the nasty thing faded back into the stone, blurring. . . .

  It was as if the air had become thick and gluey, and the stone itself was trying to take hold of the end of the wand and keep it from moving any further. The last few fractions of an inch took all her strength.

  The moment she finished the tracing, all resistance to her movement vanished, the glowing glyph evaporated, and she bent over her own knees, panting with exertion. Her arms trembled and ached, and she felt as if she had been trying to push Sisyphus's stone up the hill in hell.

  But it was worth the effort—for a few hours, at least, she would be free to leave the house now.

  She took the sprig of rosemary that she had plucked from the garden, broke it in half, and laid half of it on the stone, putting the other half inside her bodice where she could smell it. For as long as the rosemary was unwithered, she would be free of the spell. The withering of the two sprigs of herb would be her signal that she had about a quarter-hour to get back inside the boundaries set about the house. Sarah had not been able to tell her what would happen if she didn't get back in time; "I know you'll be pulled back, and all I can say," she had opined, "is that you'll regret it, for fair."

  Thinking about her stepmother's temper, and her pleasure in the pain of others, Eleanor decided that she didn't want to chance it. Tucking the wand into a pocket along the seam of her skirt where it would be hidden, she dispelled her protective circle and stood up.

  "Well done," said Sarah, sounding quite pleased. "Now, since you've done this for the first time, you'll be fair useless for magic today—so what would you like to be doing?"

  "But how am I going to learn anything—" she began, feeling alarm.

  Sarah shushed her, shaking her head. "Don't get yourself in a pother; after this, 'twill be much easier each time you free yourself.

  You've made the spell answer to your will now. You've put your bit of a brick in the door; it can't entirely close now. D'ye see?"

  She nodded; she did see. "Then—Sarah, can we get help somehow?" She swallowed hard. If only someone would believe her in the village—

  But Sarah shook her head. "There's no magicians in the village at all but me, and no one else is going to see past the spells she's got in place about you to keep people from recognizing you or believing you." She bit her lower lip. "Well, someone who was completely shielded would, but my dear—someone with that sort of shielding would be a Master. Those spells were set with your blood too, and I don't know where or how."

  Eleanor closed her eyes for a moment to swallow down her bitter disappointment. "I don't remember anything," she admitted.

  "You wouldn't. She probably set them outside the house, with the rags she used to clean up the kitchen after she took off your finger," Sarah said. "Otherwise people wouldn't be thinking that you're up at Oxford. Alison's set the spell to make anyone as sees you think you're some daft little servant girl she got through some charity place."

  "That's what the servants we used to have thought," she said, slowly. "So even if I could make people understand what
I'm saying to them, they are still going to think I'm mad." If she hadn't spent the last three years in complete misery, she might have been thrown into despair by this crushing of her hopes. "Well, look at me!" She laughed bitterly, because no one would ever have recognized the old Eleanor Robinson, pampered and petted, in the work-worn, shabby creature she was now. "Even without a spell, no one would know me! People don't look past clothing much, do they?"

  Sarah shook her head. "I'm sorry, love, no they don't. She doesn't need a spell to make you look like a scullery maid, does she?"

  Eleanor felt the sting of tears in her eyes, and rubbed at them angrily with the back of her hand. This was a lesson in humility she hadn't thought she needed, and yet—when she thought of all the times she had looked right past anyone who was dressed as a low servant, expecting only to hear, at most, a low-voiced and humble "Morning, miss," paying no attention whatsoever to anything else that might come out of that person's mouth—

  Oh, she had plenty of excuses for herself! That she couldn't help how she'd been brought up, that even the old vicar had on occasion preached sermons about knowing one's place—

  Yes, but— Just because you were taught something didn't make it right.

  She looked down at her work-worn hands. They were a bit better now, knuckles not quite so swollen, cracks healing, but she would never lose the muscle and the callus and have dainty lady's hands again. She might as well be one of them now, because that was what she looked like, and that was what everyone who saw her would think she was. Servants. The lower classes. Inconsequential, to be silent until spoken to, never to venture an opinion, much less disagree with what their betters said. Of course, they were too ignorant to know what was good for them. That was why God had placed others in authority over them, wasn't it? And the hierarchy of master over servant didn't end there, of course, because the servants themselves had their own hierarchy of greater and lesser, each class lording it over the one beneath. And on what justification? Because you were born into a particular family!

  "Gad, Sarah, why don't they all rise up in the night and slit our throats?" she cried, looking up.

  Sarah didn't seem at all confused by the outburst. "I'm told." she said dryly, "That's what they're doing in Roosha. So the papers say. So Mad Ross says."

  She was distracted for a moment. "Ross Ashley is still here in the village? Trying to make us all socialists?" Even before the war Ross had been notorious in Broom, with his membership in the Clarion Cycling Club, his socialist pamphlets and lectures, going about the country on his bicycle and standing up on soapboxes at church fetes and country fairs and singing "The Red Flag" at the top of his lungs at every opportunity.

  Sarah nodded, half wryly, half in sympathy. "Oh, aye. Got conscripted, like everyone else, discharged last year, lost half his left hand when his rifle exploded, and lucky it didn't take all of it and his face, too. Got a quarter interest in a bicycle shop now with Alan Vocksmith. Alan's rifle blew up too; he lost an eye."

  The distraction served its purpose; she lost that first, hot rush of anger. She looked up at Sarah, setting her jaw. "If I can ever break this magic, maybe I'll help him," she said. "But first, I have to break free."

  "That you do." Sarah stood up and brushed off her apron. "Let's make the first start."

  Her first feeling when she walked out of the garden gate was of disbelief, combined with a rush of such elation that she felt giddy. She had not been outside of those walls for so long that the commonplace street seemed as exotic as Timbuktu. She was free! At long last, she was free, free to stand on the street, free to wander where she wanted, free to—

  But as she looked up and down the street—and just across the street from the garden gate, where the largest of the village pubs stood—she got the feeling that something was not right.

  But what was it?

  "Wait—" she said to Sarah, standing beside the garden wall, staring around her, trying to identify what it was that made the familiar street seem so unfamiliar. There were no children playing, but that was scarcely it; first of all, it was cold again, overcast and raw, and second, it was a school day. Little ones wouldn't be outside on a nasty day like this. No, it wasn't the absence of children—

  Then, suddenly, as the postman came around the corner, and she saw, not trousers but a skirt, a postwoman, she understood with a hideous feeling of shock what it was that was bothering her.

  There were no men.

  There were no men anywhere to be seen.

  Not opening up the pub, not making deliveries, not making repairs, not carrying the post.

  And suddenly, all those notices in the papers that she read without really understanding them became solid and real in her mind. Conscription age dropped to seventeen. Conscription age raised to fifty. No deferments for only sons, for fathers of young children, for students. No deferment for religious objections. No deferments except for what the War Department considered to be "vital work in the national interest" and severe physical impairment. Go to War or go to prison: that was your choice.

  England was a nation of women now, sprinkled with old men, boys, and those whose wounds were too serious, too incapacitating to allow them back into the army.

  She followed Sarah, numb, feeling a kind of cold chill creeping over her as she passed the small street of the shops and saw women behind the counters, women making the deliveries. And in the shops—the butcher shop had hardly anything on display, most of the bread in the bakery was the same, heavy, rye and oat bread that she ate, and there were more bare places in the tiny grocery than there were goods. When she contrasted those shelves with the ones in Alison's cellar and pantry, she was appalled. Where was Alison getting her treats? Not in Broom—

  Everywhere there was a kind of emotional pall that had nothing to do with the weather. It was as if there was no hope anymore in Broom—

  But for all of that, the little talk that she overheard was not about the war, not about the lost loved ones. That bleak December when her father had died, that was all that anyone could talk about. Who had gone, where they were, that the war would surely soon be over— hushed whispers about the slaughter at Mons and other places, with glances over the shoulder as if to talk of such things would bring disaster down upon one's own loved ones, or as if it were treasonous to even suggest that things were not going well. Teas and entertainments were being planned for boys in training at nearby camps, there was talk of volunteer work, of parties to knit scarves and roll bandages—

  There was none of that now. Just sharp-voiced complaints about the price of butter and the impossibility of getting sugar—of having to make do on thin rations, and the talk of further privations. Of the impossibility of getting servants, of the only help at the farm being Land Girls. Of longing for spring "when at least we'll have our veg garden and won't feel the pinch so—"

  Ordinary talk, unless you heard the barely repressed hysteria or depression under the words, the attempt to cover up hopelessness with chatter about nothing. She ghosted along in Sarah's wake, and now saw the signs of actual, physical privation in some places, of sunken cheek and waistbands too large, and realized she wasn't just seeing the effect of lack of luxuries, she was seeing real hunger.

  And if that were so, in the country, where people were likely enough skirting the rationing by hiding pigs in the forest, geese and ducks on the farm-ponds, chickens, pigeons, and rabbits in the garden, reporting less milk than their cows actually gave—what was it like in the city?

  She felt battered, actually battered, by revelation after cruel revelation. She couldn't have managed to speak to any of these familiar strangers, even if she hadn't been walled off from them by appearance and spell. She didn't know them. These were not her people. They were some odd breed of changeling that looked superficially like her old neighbors, but who were mere shells, filled with despair, over which a cracking veneer of commonplace was held in place by a fading will to pretend that everything was all right.

  Sarah glanced soberly
at her from time to time, but said nothing. She only led the way to her little cottage, propped up on either side by larger Tudor buildings, and opened the door to let them both inside, hanging up her plain brown wool shawl on the peg beside the door.

  Once inside, Eleanor put her back to the wall and stared at Sarah incredulously. "Why didn't you tell me?" she blurted, wanting nothing more than to bolt back to the safety of her kitchen where the privations of the years had not penetrated, and where she could pretend that nothing outside the walls had changed.

  "Would you have believed me?" Sarah countered, stirring up the fire in her tiny fireplace and putting another log on it. "Could I have told you in any way that you would have believed? You've been seeing some of the papers, now and again, I'm sure."

  Eleanor collapsed into the old wooden chair that Sarah indicated, hands limply in her lap. "But—" she said, helplessly. "But that doesn't tell you—"