Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  Yes, and that is the real reason you object, isn't it? Because he doesn't treat you like royalty. He outranks you, old man, in or out of the service.

  "Perhaps that was because you sneered at him and his military record the moment he walked in the door," Reggie said, with dangerous calm. "But if you find his company so intolerable, why don't you go back to your own home? We are perfectly capable of managing without your advice, you know."

  The old man lurched to his feet. "I ought to horsewhip you for that!" he roared.

  "Don't try it, unless you want the favor returned," Reggie replied contemptuously. Even though his stomach was turning at the confrontation, and he wanted badly to retreat to his room, this time he was, by heaven, going to stand his ground. And his grandfather might as well hear the unvarnished truth for once in his life. "I'm weary of your muttered insults, of your accusations of malingering, and your insufferable arrogance. I'm tired of you turning mother into a spineless shrinking violet with no will of her own. Go home, Grandfather. Go and learn some manners. Come back when you're fit to be company for good men like the Brigadier; until then, go roar at your poor valet and threaten your housekeeper like the petty tyrant you are."

  He turned to his mother. "Mater, you've always liked the Brigadier's company in the past, and I see no reason why that should have changed. You might see your way clear to inviting a few more people down as well; it would do you good to have some company here. My Aunt April, perhaps; that would give us enough for a good round of bridge of an evening."

  His grandfather was still spluttering; his mother was distracted by the thought of inviting someone whose company she enjoyed.

  "Lady Williams?" his mother faltered. "But I thought her chattering—"

  "I should welcome her chattering, Mater," he replied, gently. "It is good-natured and good-hearted. It would be very pleasant to hear good-natured conversation around here. Perhaps if there were more of such pleasant conversation, I would find the pub less congenial."

  By now his grandfather was nearly purple with rage, and driven into incoherence.

  "If you were to choose to stay, Grandfather, I'll thank you to remember that," he continued. "And don't bother trying to think of a retort. I'm going to dress for dinner. You, of course, are free to stay or go, as you choose—but if you choose to stay, you know what you can expect. The gloves are off, Grandfather, and they are remaining off."

  And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked all the way to his rooms.

  Once there, however, he turned the key in the lock and locked himself into his darkened bedroom, and sank nervelessly down onto the neatly made bed, shaking in every limb.

  I cannot believe I just did that.

  All his life, his mother's father had been the one person that no one dared to defy. Even Reggie's own father had never openly flouted the old man's edicts.

  But tonight Reggie had challenged him. Whether or not he'd won remained to be seen. But the challenge had been uttered and had not been answered.

  It should have felt like a triumph, but all that Reggie felt was a kind of sick fear that made him curl up on the counterpane and shake. Maybe precisely because he had overturned the old order—it had to be done, but it was one more bit of stability gone.

  And he hadn't even done a good job of defying the old man. There had been nothing measured or politic about the way he'd laid into his grandfather; in fact he'd probably made an enemy of the old man. He hadn't planned any of it, hadn't chosen his subject, time, or grounds, and just might have made things worse. It was only that he had been pushed once too often and now he felt he had to push back or die.

  He felt too sick to go down to dinner now, stomach a wreck, head pounding and aching like someone had taken a poker to it.

  Well, after what he'd just done, the old man probably wouldn't be down to dinner either. Still, he couldn't leave his mother to sit at that long, empty table alone.

  So after he got his shaking under control, he dressed, and waited for the gong, and went down, down to a mostly-empty table, the silently rebuking presence of his mother, and food he scarcely tasted and ate very little of.

  It should have been a triumph, but it tasted of ashes and gall. And in the end, it led to yet another sleepless night, during which he stared at the ceiling, rigid with fear, and was completely unable to muster a single coherent thought until dawn.

  14

  April 30, 1917

  Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

  "I WISH THAT THESE PLACES were somewhere more convenient. Or at least, had decent hotels nearby." Lauralee sighed dramatically, and pouted at the old four-poster bed she was going to have to share with her sister. Carolyn was already sprawled across the expanse of it, and had voiced complaints about the quality of the mattress and the size of the room.

  There really was no reason to complain; the room was big enough by coaching-inn standards. It was certainly solid and well-kept. The furnishings might date back to the previous century, but they, too were solid and well-kept. Their early dinner had been palatable, and neither under nor-over-cooked. The real cause for discontent probably lay in the fact that it was not a posh hotel and not in London, nor Bath, nor any other metropolis.

  Alison frowned at her offspring; it was occurring to her just now that they were mightily spoilt. The Crown and Cushion in Chipping Norton was the nearest inn to her goal, just outside the village of Enstone, and as such things went, was superior to a great many places where she'd been forced to stay in the course of her occult career. "You ought to be grateful you have a bed, much less a room, much less a decent room in a good, solid inn," she told them, tartly. "I've stayed in hovels, or camped on the ground with gypsies before this. You're just fortunate that there actually is an inn within walking distance of the Hoar Stones."

  "And that's another thing, Mother—" Carolyn began.

  "Shut your mouth," Warrick Locke said, unexpectedly. "We're not here for your amusement. We're here to work, and if that requires a little walking on your part, so be it. You are the ones ultimately benefiting from this, after all; you ought to be pleased, not whingeing about it."

  Carolyn, caught in mid-complaint by Locke's surprising display, gaped at him for a moment before closing her mouth. She still looked sullen, but at least she had shut up.

  Not that Alison was particularly happy to be a mile and a half from the hoar stones, but at least it was walking distance, and the stones were secluded in an ancient grove of trees, which would give them privacy and security over the course of the next three days. To her mind that privacy was worth any amount of moderate discomfort.

  Fortunately, the Hoar Stones were not associated with any May Eve celebrations on the part of the locals. If anything, they were shunned. Another indication that this site was exactly what Alison needed.

  "You had better have packed for the walk, as I instructed you," Alison said, with a hint of threat in her voice. "Or you'll find yourself tottering down the road on whatever shoes you did bring. I have need of you; four is the minimum of participants for these ceremonies. We aren't trifling with Beltane rituals of fertility or love-making you know. The things I plan to awaken need coercing and confining. And to that end, thank you, Warrick. I appreciate you being willing to participate."

  Her solicitor looked both surprised and gratified. Well, she didn't often thank him, or anyone, for that matter. Not that she intended to start handing out thanks any more frequently; being sparing with them made them that much more valuable.

  "I don't often get to see a Master performing a major ritual," he replied, with a nod of thanks. "I'll certainly learn a lot."

  He might at that. Not that it would be anything he could actually use. He wasn't strong enough for that.

  She had set the first batch of minor Earth Elementals on Reginald's trail some time ago—but they had been consistently thwarted by the protections Devlin Fenyx had set about the manor house itself, powerful protections that had kept them completely out. Alison had intended th
em to attack him only when he was asleep, or in that twilight state between waking and sleeping, when they would be best able to terrify him, and they had been unable to catch him sleeping outside the walls of Longacre. Until today.

  Apparently he had drowsed off in the sun somewhere outside this afternoon; her minor goblins had caught wind of this, and had surrounded him.

  Then something went wrong.

  They weren't even as bright as pigeons, and she could get nothing out of them of any real substance, only that Reggie had a protector that had destroyed several of them and sent the rest fleeing for their lives. She thought it might be the village witch; the old woman wasn't really powerful but she was strong enough to destroy a few minor goblins, and Reggie had been spending a lot of time down at the Broom pub. And while it wasn't likely that the witch would concern herself with something happening up at Longacre, even Alison could not entirely blame her for interfering with something that happened in her own personal sphere.

  But that only meant that stronger measures were called for here. As it happened, the timing could not have been much better. Beltane was an ancient night of magic; it would be much easier for her to pull through what she needed on May Eve. There was no light without shadow, and though the traditional magics of Beltane were those of growth and life, it would be no great strain to bend some of the solstice power to other paths.

  And in fact, the tradition, though not a British or Celtic one, was already in place in other parts of the world.

  For every joyous Beltane, there was a terrifying Walpurgisnacht. Samhain would have been better, of course—the time of waning light, and of death, rather than rebirth—but any of the greater pagan festivals would do for her purposes, for every one that celebrated light had the counterpart that celebrated the shadow.

  The sun was going down now; soon enough it would be time to slip out of the inn—probably the best time would be while people were coming and going from the bar—and begin the walk to the hoar stones.

  "Time to change and gather our things," she declared, leveling a look at the girls that warned them that tonight she would tolerate no nonsense. She and Warrick left the two to follow her orders, while they went to their own rooms.

  Any other time she would not have allowed herself to be caught dead in trousers; this, however, was an occasion for the deliberate perversion of society's norms, and she clothed herself in sturdy walking shoes, men's pants, and a warm jumper, with a long coat to go over it all. She stuffed her hair up into a workingman's cap, and picked up the rucksack that she had already packed. Besides being warm and practical, the outfit had another purpose. Anyone who saw them on the road would see two men and two women, and assume he was seeing two courting pairs. He would also think twice about accosting them.

  The girls were not wearing trousers, but they were clothed all in black, with sturdy walking-shoes, plain woolen skirts, equally plain shirtwaists and their oldest coats. Warrick Locke followed their example in being clothed plainly and in black. He had the other rucksack.

  They slipped out of the inn to discover that night had already fallen. Well, that was all to the good; they were able to move at a brisk walk to the south and east, heading for their goal a mile and a half away.

  The moon gave enough light to walk by, and though there were one or two May Eve bonfires in the distance, these were a fraction of the number that used to blossom before the war. Another thing the war was good for—with most, if not all, of the young men across the Channel, the kind of May Eve celebrations that ended in couples and unattached young girls scattered across the landscape to see the sun rise on May Day were probably not taking place this year at all.

  Why bother to wash your face in May dew to make yourself beautiful? For whom? The septuagenarian shepherd? The Land Girls?

  The boy you'd once giggled over who'd come home without arms or legs or wits? If your lover was still alive and whole, he was probably in the trenches tonight, and would not be home for months, if he ever came home at all. And if he did—

  It might have been better for him if he had died.

  Alison could taste some of that anguish in the air this night, but it did not come from the area of the few bonfires. It came from the cottages, where lights were going out; May Eve was just another night, and May Day would bring nothing good except, perhaps, a few early strawberries, a few flowers.

  Alison kept her ears open for the sounds of other footsteps in the fields, but heard nothing but owls and sleepy sheep, and the unhappy mutterings of her own footsore offspring.

  And as for the few couples left, the men either home on leave, or spared having to go to the war by infirmity, like Broom's own Scott Kelsey, with his collapsed lung—well, they were already coupling in conjugal beds, without needing to find May Eve bowers for clandestine trysts. Marriages had been and were being made that would never have been countenanced before the war, some with babies already in the offing, though by no means most. She'd been the avid eavesdropper on the end of one of those little cottage dramas, sitting behind the parents of the prospective groom as pretty Tamara Budd and her handsome young officer-fiance stood to have the banns read in church last Sunday. The groom's mother was sniveling—overdressed for a village church-service, and in lamentable taste, the couple was clearly prosperous enough to have assumed their boy would marry above his class, not below it. "Quiet, woman!" the husband had hissed. "She's not what you want, but she's what he wants, and do you want a grandchild to have his name before he's killed or don't you?"

  Oh, those words, and that delicious, delicious despair! People were saying now what they had not even dreamed of thinking before—not "if he's killed, but "when." Women sent off their men with that despair in their hearts, open and acknowledged. And if any of their men came home at all, no matter how damaged, they thanked God and thought themselves lucky. Every time the telegraph-girl came riding into Broom on her bicycle, that despair followed her like the wake of a boat, spreading through all the village until she brought her anticipated, but dreaded burden of bad news to her destined door. There was no other reason for a telegraph to be sent to anyone in Broom except for the most dreaded of reasons. "Killed in action." "Missing in action" (which was the other way of saying "blown to bits and we can't find enough of him to identify"). "Wounded and dying."

  And every time the telegraph-girl entered Broom, Alison knew it, and reveled in that wash of fear and anguish. She'd even sent a telegraph or two to herself, when deaths were few, just to trigger it, and the power it unleashed. For all the inconveniences that the war had brought, this was worth it, and if only it could go on for three, four, five more years—

  She made a mental note to strengthen those demons of illness she had sent to America. Not tonight, but soon. The longer the war lasted, the greater her power would be.

  There was no traffic tonight; none at all, not even when they passed through Enstone itself. Not a foot-traveler, not a cart, certainly not an auto. There was some small activity around the pub, two men going in as they passed the first houses in the village, but no one came out during the time they were on the Enstone to Ditchely road. Not that she had expected any fellow travelers, but she was pleased that things were so quiet.

  Alison had an electric torch, but she didn't use it; she was navigating by the "feel" of things, rather than looking for landmarks. After a bit less than an hour of the four of them plodding down the uneven road between the high hedgerows, she began to sense what she was watching for, southwards, off to the side of the road, a sluggish, stagnant pool of power that had not been tapped in a very long time.

  "Watch for a gap in the hedge to the right," she ordered. "It will probably be a stile going over, but there might actually be a path."

  But it was the crossing road that they saw first, and only after looking closely for it, found not only a stile but a path, off to the right.

  Both hedge and stile were in poor repair, as reported by Warrick Locke, who went over first. Now Alison used her torch;
the last thing any of them needed was to be lamed by a sprained ankle at this point!

  The path lay along the line and under the shelter of another hedge, but now it was clear to Alison where their goal was, and a tingle of anticipation made her want to hurry the others towards that wooded enclosure whose trees shielded imperfectly the glow of power that roused sullenly at her presence.

  The enclosure was little more than a couple of wooden railings; they went over and pushed through the holly and other undergrowth to arrive at her goal.

  It stood upon a small mound, an arrangement of six stones forming the remains of what had once been a large, chambered structure. A tomb, perhaps; at least, that was what the old men she had questioned in Enstone had said it was, the tomb of an ancient tribal chieftain long dead before the Romans came. She didn't much care; two powerful ley lines ran through it, and it had been made other use of for some time after its former occupant had been looted away by Romans searching for British gold. The largest of the stones was a good nine feet tall.