Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  August 12, 1917

  Elsewhere

  At one moment, Eleanor had been surrounded by the last people on earth she wanted to see. She had started to get up, but Warrick Locke had pounced on her with a rag in one hand. He had covered her nose and mouth with it; she had been forced to breathe through it, tasting a sickly-sweet, unbearably thick aroma, and the next thing she knew she had been thrust into blackness. She seemed to fall forever, then there was a kind of electric jolt—

  Now, she was here. The Tarot-world, with its flat, blue sky and its flat, green lawns. But this was a part of it she had never seen before.

  She stood inside a square of grass that was surrounded by hedges whose tops were well above her head. It all looked very measured and regular; too regular to be real.

  "Where am I?" she said aloud, though she really only thought she was talking to herself.

  But she wasn't alone. She heard something behind her, and turned. "You are in the center of a maze," said the Hermit, pushing back his cowl and setting his lantern down. He frowned, but at the hedges, not at her, his bushy gray brows knitting together. "You are in great danger; this is merely a reflection in this world of another reality that surrounds you."

  At the moment, she didn't care what the maze was for. "I know I don't belong here," she said urgently. "And I know I'm in danger—but I didn't come here by myself, and I don't know how to get out! Is there any way you can help me?"

  He looked directly into her eyes, and she saw a personality there— something she had not ever really seen with any of the other Tarot cards. "The Perfect Fool asks the unasked questions—" he said aloud. Then he changed.

  He became—Fire. Fire incarnate. A sexless creature of insubstantial flame, gazing at her with penetrating blue eyes, eyes the color of a hot gas flame. His voice remained the same, however.

  "I think we can dispense with this, child," he said, and with a casual gesture, the maze, the flat blue sky, the flat green earth, were all gone. In their place—a world of fire, fire which not only did not burn her, but which, when it touched her, felt like a cool caress. "You are not a Master, not yet—I am not compelled to obey you, nor required by mutual bargain."

  She shook her head. "I know that," she replied, swallowing. "And I know I'll be studying all my life to really understand my powers. I was foolish to think I could Master all the cards in a few days, but—but I think I could have gotten enough to have broken free of Alison."

  "You are in great danger," the Fire Elemental repeated. "And the maze we were in is nothing to the maze that holds you tight in tangles of magic."

  "Yes I am," she agreed, shivering. "I don't think I can escape from this by myself. I need help. Will you, can you help me?"

  "That depends," the Elemental said, measuringly. "You must show by your intelligence that you deserve help."

  Fire—most difficult of the Elements. Dangerous to try and control. More dangerous to lie to. But win its loyalty—

  "I have to break the coercions," she said flatly. "And I have to break free of here, and get back to the real world again."

  But the Elemental simply regarded her gravely. Finally, "Or—?" he prompted.

  Fire is the hardest to hold, most difficult to understand, likeliest to rebel, and is impressed only by—intellect. This Elemental was showing remarkable patience by those standards. She pummeled her brain. What could she do to get out of the coercions? If she broke them, Alison would know. She'd already tried stretching them. What else was there? If she looked around herself a certain way, she could actually see them here, tangling around her in a rat's nest of bindings like—

  She blinked, and looked again. Like—a—maze—just as he told me.

  She took a deep breath. She couldn't solve the thing in the "real" world, but—here?

  "What happens if I thread my way out of the coercions?" she asked the Fire Elemental.

  He grinned broadly, and nodded, the flames that were his hair brightening. "Then her spells will no longer hold you, and yet, they will not be broken. So she will not be aware that her spells no longer hold you. But do you think you can solve this?"

  "I have to," she replied grimly. "I'll see if wall-following will do it. It might take longer, but it's the surest."

  She focused her concentration until the tangles of the spells that confined her became clear, concentrated further, willing the tangles to take on the tangible form of walls and passageways.

  The magician imposes his will, his way of seeing on the Plane of Magic, and the Plane reflects what he wills. She couldn't will herself out of this, because the mind and will that had set the spells was stronger than she was. But she could force it to take on a semblance of something she could deal with.

  She found herself at the heart of another maze. She didn't like the look of the walls that surrounded her, either; they were dark and repellent and she didn't want to touch them, but wall-following meant keeping one hand on either the left or the right-hand wall and following it, no matter what, and after a moment of thought, she put her hand on the left-hand wall, and stepped into the shadowy, intimidating darkness of the maze itself.

  The Fire Elemental came with her, which surprised her a little, though it was heartening to have company. She hadn't expected it, and since he brought light with him, this meant she could actually see where she was going.

  That was an advantage. Seeing the walls that made up the maze clearly was not an advantage.

  They felt like something alive—but not pleasant. Faintly warm, pulsing, a touch slimy. But worse than the feel was the look; a suggestion effaces there, and not nice faces, either. She didn't ask if the walls were alive; that was fairly obvious. "Can they feel?" she asked instead.

  "Oh yes," came the reply; grim, and with a dangerous edge to it.

  "Are they in pain?" she continued. Not that she wanted to know— except that she did.

  "Oh, yes," softly, yet somehow grimmer still.

  She made another two turnings; the faces in the walls were set in frozen expressions of despair. "Can I free them?" she asked. Not that she wanted to, but—

  But nothing should suffer if it doesn't have to.

  The Fire Elemental stopped, looking at her with an expression of utter astonishment. "Why would you desire to do that?" he asked.

  "Because if I can, I should," she replied, knowing that this was the right answer. Not the most expedient, and perhaps not the wisest, but the right answer. "This—this is wrong. If I can make it right, then it's my duty to. I have power, and power begets responsibility."

  And the walls began to murmur.

  She shivered at the sound, which carried something of the tone of those revenants in it. But the Fire Elemental straightened, and spread his arms wide, the little flamelets that danced over him rising from his outstretched limbs. "Hear, my lesser brothers of Earth? Do you hear this child of Flame? You are in thrall to a Dark Master of Earth. She is not bound to you; she has no responsibility to you, and yet—she would free you."

  A single, enormous face formed on the wall immediately in front of her. The eyes were closed and remained closed; she was just as glad. She had the feeling that if those eyes opened and looked at her, she'd be sick with fear.

  It wasn't an ugly or deformed face; in fact the features were quite regular. But there was something about it that made her wish she wasn't looking at it. Something dark and cruel, something that loved pain, and was bargaining with her only because it had no choice.

  "We hear," said the chorus of voices, which now came from the single face, although the lips didn't move. "Why?"

  "Because," the Fire Elemental replied, with pride welling in every word, "she is better than your mistress."

  The face in the wall did not react one way or another to this statement.

  "How can I free you?" she asked, her voice trembling, yet determined.

  "Break her defenses, and you will free us," came the reply, in a low and ugly rumble. "Swear that you will!"

  Be very
careful what you promise] came the thought. This is the Elemental world, and words have more weight here than in the real world. If she promised—and failed—there would be a different sort of price to pay, and there was no telling what that price would be, only that it could be very expensive.

  And you do not want to owe an unknown penalty to a negative Elemental.

  "I promise I will try," she said instead. "If you will give me the key to this place that holds me."

  The face became very still for a moment, as if all of the creatures speaking through it were consulting with one another. Then it spoke again. "Follow the Tree," it said, "The counter-Tree. The Tree of Death."

  And it faded back into the wall again, but Eleanor knew exactly what it meant—it was a riddle, probably given to her in that form because she had not promised to do anything but try, but not a very clever one. She was to trace the opposite path of the Tree of Life; fortunately, the Tree of Life happened to be one of the major Tarot layouts as well as the key to the Kabala, or she wouldn't have known what the face in the wall meant. Mentally she retraced her steps from the center of the maze, and realized with relief that she would only have to go back and change her last turning.

  "Why are you here with me?" she asked, as she set out on the new pattern, greatly relieved that she was no longer going to have to touch those walls.

  "Because, although I cannot help you directly, I have a function I can perform for you," he said, and tilted his head to the side, expectantly.

  A function he can perform for me— Abruptly, she realized that he already had.

  "You—you are an intermediary!" she exclaimed, stopping dead in her tracks. "You can negotiate with the other Elements!"

  He nodded, gravely. "That is my function. And if you can make your way from this place—"

  "I will," she replied, fiercely. "And when I do—I have some ideas."

  A faint smile flickered over the being's face. "I rather thought as much," he said, and gestured. "Lead on."

  She did; and something else occurred to her as she followed the path of the anti-Tree.

  Alison had made a very grave mistake, by throwing her into this place, this state. She probably thought that she was imprisoning Eleanor further, and it must have been that Alison had drugged her. The opiates had a long history of being used to access occult states, which was why people who had no business being in such a state used them as "easy" ways to attain knowledge. Maybe Alison had assumed being drugged was going to make her easier to handle, and that would have been true, if she had not been learning discipline and control all this time, and if she had not already been traveling in the Tarot realm. And Alison was accustomed to thinking only in terms of commanding and coercing the creatures of her Element; it must not have even crossed her mind that Eleanor might find allies—or at least, something willing to bargain with her—here.

  Alison would have done better to have bound and gagged her. If Eleanor got her way, Alison would live to regret that error.

  But first, she still had to escape from the spell-maze, before Alison delivered her physical body to whatever fate the Earth Master had in mind.

  August 12,1917

  Longacre Park, Warwickshire

  By the time Reggie reacted to Eleanor's flight, it was too late. She was out of sight before he could get to his feet, and in the end, all he could find of her was the gloves she had left on the bench beside him.

  He could not hope to find her, not now. He had no idea where she had run to—and even if he left the ball and went straight to The Arrows, what was he to do there? Force his way inside? Demand that they produce her? If her stepmother had gone to such lengths to hide her, there was no reason on earth why she should conjure the girl up simply because he demanded it.

  Slowly and cautiously, Reg. The first one over the barricades is the first one shot.

  With light and music and laughter spilling out of the doors and windows above him, he returned to the garden bench to try and make some sense of what had just happened. One moment, she had been talking with him, perfectly sensibly—the next, she was fleeing as if pursued by demons. And yet, it couldn't have been what he said that sent her running away, could it?

  Hadn't she managed to choke out that she loved him before she ran?

  Surely her stepmother's hold over her could not control her here, in the privacy of Longacre's gardens—

  Unless—

  He shook his head at the thought. No, surely not. Surely it was not possible that Alison Robinson was a magician.

  Was it?

  He was completely unwilling to drop his barricades now. If Alison Robinson was a magician—heaven alone only knew what she had set in motion to try and ensnare him for one of her daughters. There might be a spell just waiting for a break in his defenses.

  By the time he found Lady Virginia just paying her farewells to her cronies as the guests began to depart, and got her to come down into the garden with him, the traces of—yes—magic were almost too faint for her to read. All she could say for certain was that both Earth magic of the darker sort and Fire magic had left a hint of "scent" behind.

  "Back inside, please," his godmother said when she'd finished. "It's altogether too damp and chilly for my bones. Let's adjourn to the library; there should still be a fire there."

  Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed. He still wanted to go tearing after Eleanor, but he knew that would be the wrong thing to do. He had no plan of action, and to go into this without a plan was asking for trouble.

  The Earth—well, dark magic of some sort—he had expected. But who was the Fire? The only mages here were Air—

  Unless—Eleanor?

  When he spoke his thoughts aloud, incredulously, Lady Virginia only shrugged, as she extended her toes towards the library fire. "Magicians are always more vulnerable to magic than other folk," she pointed out. "If the girl is an Elemental Mage, then her stepmother would have an easier time of it in trying to control her. The hardest creature to affect by magic is someone who has none of it at all."

  He fidgeted with the cane he had taken from the stand near the door, and longed to be able to pace as he used to at times like these. To think of poor Eleanor, down there, in that repellent woman's hands—

  She looked at him sharply. "Reginald," she said, very slowly, "Are you in love with this girl?"

  He would have thought it was obvious to a far less astute person than his godmother, but he replied, "Yes. Yes, I am."

  "Your mother won't like it," Lady Virginia cautioned. "She's common."

  "So are the Americans that keep marrying into the peerage," he snapped, feeling an entirely irrational surge of irritation. "And so are the other two girls, and Mater would have no trouble at all throwing me to one of them!"

  "Ah, but the Americans have fortunes—large fortunes," his godmother retorted. "Even if the girl inherited, and there's no guarantee of that, she's prosperous, but no heiress. And Alison Robinson is in Burke's, so presumably so are her daughters."

  "Is she?" he replied. "Someone with the name she's claiming is, but anyone can claim to be a member of a family one is never going to encounter. And I didn't find any mention of Carolyn, Lauralee, or either of Alison's marriages in Burke's, if she is who she claims to be."

  "She was vetted by Alderscroft—" Lady Virginia began, and before she could continue, her jaw tightened. "Alderscroft, who would swear his second-best hunter was a member of the peerage if he thought it would serve the cause. I begin to smell a rat, Reginald. Alderscroft may have used her before, and certainly knows she lives in Broom, so he might have told her to keep an eye on you, without bothering to tell me about it, may I add. But it is as certain as the sun rising in the east that she decided to aggrandize herself as soon as she saw the situation. I knew there was something about that woman that I did not like."

  "I may very well discover more you won't like before I'm through," Reggie said grimly.

  "It wouldn't surprise me." Lady Virginia reached out and took his h
and. "Please promise me that you will not go tearing down there this instant in your motor."

  "I would like to—but I feel that would be a very bad notion," he replied with feeling. "I will go down there tomorrow. I might actually catch the girl myself, in which case, I will bundle her up here and put her in your hands. If there are coercions on her—you can deal with them."

  "Against a creature like Alison Robinson? I should think so," his godmother told him, in a tone that would have been arrogant in anyone but a mage of her ability. "I'll open up your father's workroom and prepare it. Heaven knows I've used it often enough in the past. On our home ground, Reginald, it would take an army of mages to defeat us."

  "If I can't find her immediately, I'll have to try subterfuge. And fortunately, I have an excuse." He smiled thinly. "I have these. And I will be looking for the girl who fits them."