Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  She wedged her torch where it could best illuminate the interior of the tomb, and set Warrick and the girls to making the place ready, while she slipped out of sight long enough to don her robe. She usually didn't bother with ritual robes, but this was too important and dangerous a ceremony to leave anything to chance. Besides, the things she intended to call might not recognize her authority without her robes. When she re-entered the tomb, Warrick had already gotten the altar-cloth laid out on the ground, and had lit candles and stuck them wherever he could, to save the batteries on the torch. The others' modern clothing would have looked very out-of-place if they had not worn simple black. Instead of being glaring anachronisms, they looked like minor acolytes of no particular order.

  The candles, stuck in places sheltered from the breeze, flickered very little. Alison was struck by how timeless the scene seemed. There was nothing to tell that this was 1917—or 1017—or even the first century Anno Domini.

  "Take your places," she said, and took her short-sword from the rucksack. It was a genuine Celtic relic, of bronze, and had been the means that ended more than a dozen lives before it had been left in a tomb very like this one. Locke took a candle and stood in the east, Carolyn in the south, and Lauralee in the west. Alison reserved the north, the most important in this ceremony, for herself. When the others were in place, she took the bronze blade in her hands and cut a circle of protection and power around all of them, moving widdershins as she did so. It was a little crowded in the tomb, for the space inside it could not have been more than eight feet across, but when she was done, the light from the candles faded into insignificance as the interior sprang to life, the stones themselves glowing a dull ochre with pent-up power. She took her place in the north, and nodded at Locke to begin.

  Locke looked excited; the girls, wide-eyed.

  "I guard the East in the name of Loki, the malicious, the betrayer," Locke said, raising his candle to the level of his eyes. "In his name do I call the power of Air."

  The candle flared, its flame turning blue, to confirm that Locke had made all the right occult connections. He grinned at Alison, but she was already turning and nodding to Carolyn, who was raising her candle.

  "I guard the South in the name of Hecate, the Queen of Witches, the bringer of burning plague, of drought and despair," Carolyn said carefully, her voice sounding higher than usual and a bit strained, her eyes glinting at her mother over the flame of the candle. "In her name do I call the power of Fire."

  As Carolyn's candle-flame burned the crimson of blood, Alison was already turning to Lauralee. Other than her own part, this would be the trickiest.

  "I guard the West in the name of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, Mist on the Lake, the eater of hearts," Lauralee said, very carefully, without tripping even a little on the difficult name. "In his name do I call the power of Water."

  Alison's triumph tasted sweet as the candle-flame flared green; it had been a risk, using that foreign deity—but she had wanted something uniquely western, and could think of no god more bloodthirsty than one of the ancient Aztecs.

  But now it was her turn. "I guard the North and close the circle in the name of the Morrigan, Death and Despair, the Storm-Crow, the Blood-Raven, the goddess of battles and harvester of souls," she said, holding aloft her own candle. "In her name do I call the power Earth!"

  The flame of her candle was already yellow—but it flared up like a pitch-soaked torch, until for a moment it licked the stone above their heads before subsiding. She didn't need that sign to know that she had tapped into the power sleeping uneasily here in the stones, however; to her senses the place practically hummed, and as the stones increased their glow, you could have read by the light that they shed.

  The four of them bent as one to secure their candles in saucers at the four edges of the altar-cloth, then rose again.

  And Alison began her chant.

  It predated Christianity, this chant; the stones here recognized it, as did the power within those stones. The stones vibrated in sympathy with it, and the power leapt to serve. It was an old chant designed to serve, protect, and avenge those who were great in power but few in numbers. With this magic, they did not have to muster an army. With this magic, the army would come of its own.

  An army of the dead.

  Not ghosts or spirits called from some afterlife, but revenants, the emotionally charged remnants of the unquiet dead still bound to earth by their own will, the executed, defeated in battle, murdered. Any whose remains were interred in the earth, whose deaths had not brought peace, but anger and pain, who were not at all ready to move on—

  On this night when the doors to the spirit-world were cast open, they came, from every direction they came, from hallowed and unhallowed ground, from unmarked grave, from crossroad-burial, from forgotten forest mound they came. Ancient, merely old, and new, they came, singly, then by dozens. They came on the wings of hate, of anger, and of despair. They pressed in upon the shield of power as the air outside it grew thick with their restless spirits, until the pressure outside the shield threatened to crack it. There were so many that they merged into a circling miasma from which only an occasional glimpse of ghostly-glowing face emerged—here a hairy tribesman, there a close-cropped Roman, here an arrogant Cavalier, there an equally arrogant Roundhead, here a robed Druid, there a tonsured monk—faces old as this island, and as new as yesterday.

  And Alison's chant bound them to the torment of her chosen target, and painted that target with words that made him the enemy of each of them.

  To the flint-wielding tribesman, he was the effete and sophisticated embodiment of the end of the old ways, a man who no longer hunted his food with spear and knife, but who spent his nights in housen, and tilled the soil. To the Cavalier, he was the upholder of the way of Parliament. To the monk he was that horror of horrors, a Protestant—to the Roundhead, he was a man who paid no more than lip-service to God, who blasphemed and gambled and sinned the sins of the flesh. To the poor peasant, he was the noble, the oppressor—to the noble, he was a man who shunned his proper class for the company of the base-born. To the Roman he was a Saxon, to the Saxon he was a Norman. To the Druid, he was the servant of the White Christ who put paid to pagans with fire and sword; to the highwayman, he was the embodiment of the law that had hung him and the hand that had done the deed. And to the shattered wreck of the just-buried war-victim, he was the man who had escaped alive, because he was wealthy, privileged or just plain lucky, when he had not. To the betrayer, to the betrayed, to the killer and the victim, to each of them, Reggie Fenyx became that which he hated the most. They swirled widdershins around the shield of protection, faster and faster, pulling in more and more of the power of this place, the power that would enable them to go forth and torment.

  So that in the end, when she uttered the word that freed them and bound them at the same time (all but those few spirits that still had the ability to think as well as feel, and had slipped away before she could ensnare them), no matter what hate had brought them here, the focus for that hate became Reginald Fenyx. She gave them the look, the sense of him; told them without words where to find him.

  This was why she had chosen so carefully her gods of East, South, West, and North. Each of them embodied, in his or her own way, the spirit of deception.

  She bound the whirling circle of spirits with a word, and set them free with that same word, a single syllable that exploded outward, sending them, the deadly spiritual shrapnel, flying.

  The circle of mist burst apart; the light of the stones went out like a snuffed candle. And all of it in a strange and echoing silence in which nothing could be heard but four people breathing as one.

  And with that word, she dropped to her knees, exhausted.

  But the deed was complete. The tomb was empty, the power within it and beneath it drained. The only glow now came from the guttering candles.

  Carolyn and Lauralee stared at their mother, mouths agape, and shaking. In spite of her weariness, Ali
son could not help smiling. She'd never done a Great Work in their presence. Now perhaps they'd think twice before challenging her.

  Warrick Locke was clearly impressed, but not nearly so cowed. And it was he who—following her instructions, true—recovered first, and began the dismissal ceremony, speaking his words and snuffing his candle. Blinking and uncertain, the two girls followed his lead as Alison got back to her feet again.

  She snuffed her own candle, then cut the circle rather than going through the tedious business of uncasting it. With the circle cut, the shield dispersed, leaving them all standing in the rock-walled tomb, looking—a little silly. Especially her, in her black velvet, hooded ritual robe.

  She wished now that she had given in to the girls and driven here in the auto. But—

  But what if someone had seen it here?

  On the other hand, Warrick was looking decidedly chipper. . . .

  "Warrick, could please I prevail upon you to get the motor from the inn and come bring us back?" she asked, and offered him a smile that promised a great deal more than she was prepared to give. The Morrigan, the deceiver, was still with her, it seemed.

  Well, she would let the Morrigan continue to have her way. If he demanded, she would let him take her to his room, then cast a spell of sleep and self-deception on him, and let him dream that he had what he wanted. She had strength enough for that, and even tired, he was no match for her.

  Weak-willed man that he was, Locke saw the promise and leapt for it. Then again, perhaps Loki was still with him, and thought to trick his way to what he'd never gotten before. "Of course!" he replied, with a sly smile. "After all that, I'm not surprised that you're tired."

  Before she could say anything else, he was off, leaving her to drag off her robe and change back into her masculine garb, then join her daughters in waiting for him She looked up into the night sky at that waning moon. And smiled. Well, let him think he had the upper hand. A contest between the Morrigan and Loki for craft and trickery was no contest.

  No contest at all. ...

  "Mother?" Carolyn said, timidly. "Were those ghosts?"

  "Of a sort," she replied. "They are properly called revenants, and they fall under the power of the Earth Master, since they are bound to earth for—well, for whatever reason. They are the unquiet dead, who never took the step through the door of the afterlife. Some Earth Masters spend their entire lives going about freeing such things and sending them on their way through the door they have been avoiding."

  "Why?" Lauralee asked.

  "Because some Earth Masters are idiots," she said, surprising a giggle out of both of the girls. "It makes about as much sense to me as going out to be a missionary. Both careers are fraught with hardship and difficulty, and ultimately in both cases you are dealing with creatures who have little or no interest in what you are trying to tell them."

  "But you—you told them what they wanted to hear?" Lauralee hazarded.

  Alison smiled. Well, it looked as if at least one of the girls had inherited some of her intelligence. "That is how you bind them to your target instead of their own," she explained. "After all, most of the time the target of their hatred is as dead as they are, and generally has more sense than to linger. You tell them how your target represents everything they hate. Then you give them enough power to do what they want, and turn them loose."

  "Can they break through the protections on Longacre?" Carolyn wanted to know.

  "Some might. But even if they don't they are powerful enough to force Reggie to see them, awake or asleep." She sighed with content. This had truly been a job well done. "We'll let them torment him for a while, and use up all that extra power I gave them. Then you'll move in."

  "But how will we banish ghosts?" Carolyn cried. "We can't even make a simple love-charm work on him!"

  "Ah—"Alison laid a finger aside her nose and nodded. "There's the beauty of it. Once they use up that extra power I gave them, the geas I put on them will start to fade, and they'll lose the ability to make him see them. And as the geas fades, they'll forget why they're haunting Reggie and start to drift back to their old homes. You won't have to do anything, yet Reggie will think that it's you."

  They both stared at her, looking awestruck. They hadn't given her that particular look since they were tiny children, and she had amused them by catching a faun and making it dance.

  And as she heard the chattering of the motor in the far distance and chivvied the girls into cleaning up the site and heading back down the path to the road, it occurred to her that this evening might represent a triumph in more ways than one.

  Not only had she gained supremacy over an army of the dead, she had once more gained the upper hand, most decisively, over her own children. They would be long in forgetting this.

  And that was—a good thing.

  15

  April 30-May 1, 1917

  Longacre Park, Warwickshire

  REGGIE HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN—until his mother reminded him of it over dinner—that the next day was May Day, the day of the school treat at Longacre and the school prize day. Well, why should he remember? The day of the school treat and prize day had always been June first, not May Day when he had been growing up.

  But the war had changed this, as it had so many other things. School ended early now, so that children could help with the farm work their fathers and brothers were not here to attend to. The country, and more importantly, the army, needed to be fed; farm work came before schoolwork. And the traditional May Day festivities were not nearly so festive as they had been. There would be no church fair, or at least, not the sort that delighted children—the half-gypsy traveling fair folk with their swinging chairs and carousels, their booths of cheap gimcrackery and games like coconut shy and pitch-toss were not traveling any more. In fact, most of them were off in the trenches themselves, and the old men, children, and women that were left simply could not cope by themselves. With sugar and other things being rationed now, there would be no stalls featuring the forbidden foods that one was only allowed to eat at a fair. The church fair would be a very sad and much diminished version of its former self. Someone would probably set up a hoop-la game and a coconut shy, but the prizes would not be the glittery fairy dolls and wildly colored crockery of the past—no, they would be home-made rag-babies and whatever someone had found in the attic that hadn't made it onto the white elephant table. There would not be a greased-pig race, not with pigs being war resources. There would be no egg-and-spoon race for the same reason. Oh, there could have been a race using rocks or plaster eggs, or potatoes, but it wouldn't have been as much fun without the hazard of breaking the egg. No one left in Broom was nimble enough to climb the greased pole, so that had been canceled as well. There would be no Morris dancers, who by tradition were all men. No procession through the town of the hobby-horse, green man, Robin and Maid Marian— once again, tradition decreed these May Day heroes must be men. There would be a maypole, but only girls really took pleasure in the dance around it.

  With all these childhood pleasures revoked, it only made sense— and of course Reggie was in complete agreement on this—to combine the school treat with the May Day fair and have it all on the lawn of Longacre. The children might not be able to have rides on the great swing, but they could play in the maze, be driven around the grounds in the ancient pony-cart or Reggie's own auto, and hunt for early strawberries among the fallen leaves of the woods. Through means Reggie could not quite fathom, his mother had managed to connive, beg, or blackmail the authorities into releasing enough sugar to bake cakes and make ice cream for the treat, so if the children could not eat themselves sick, they would at least have some sweeties.

  And of course, Reggie himself would have to present the prizes to the winning scholars, to put the final fillip of glory on the whole day.

  No, he quite agreed with the whole notion, and the only thing that made him wish the school and the children to the steppes of Mongolia was that because he had forgotten, he had not be
en able to tell poor Eleanor that he would not be at the meadow at teatime.

  And he did not know how to find her to send her a message to that effect, either.

  The thought of her arriving at the meadow only to find it deserted made him feel sick—she would be so disappointed, and he found the idea of disappointing her made him feel like a right cad.

  Well, maybe someone would remind her what day it was. Yes, hopefully, wherever she was working, she'd be told, and wouldn't turn up only to be disappointed.

  Meanwhile, he listened with some surprise and growing pleasure to his mother go on about her preparations for the great day. It was the liveliest he'd seen her since he had arrived. Of course, her father was still sulking, taking his meals in his rooms, so that particular pall was not being flung over the dinner-table.

  And perhaps he will leave. Or at least, go off to bully his own servants until—

  No. He would not think of going back to the Front, to the war. Not now. He turned his mind resolutely to the plans for the morrow.