Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  He held up the pink silk gloves. Lady Virginia raised an eyebrow.

  "Forgive my skepticism, Reginald, but virtually any girl whose hands aren't completely ruined could fit into a pair of silk gloves—"

  "Oh, no. Not these," he retorted, and spread out the fingers of the left-hand glove. The three fingers.

  Lady Virginia blinked. "Ah," she said. "Well, that puts a different complexion on things, doesn't it? Rather like Anne Boleyn's set of five."

  "Rather like." He folded the gloves carefully and tucked them inside his tunic. "I'd like very much to see either Carolyn or Lauralee fit that glove."

  "Hmm." Lady Virginia stared into the fire. "Be careful what you wish for. If the girls are like the mother, they might find a way, at whatever cost."

  29

  August 12, 1917

  Elsewhere

  THESE WALLS—THEY REPRESENT SOMETHING. It wasn't just spells that Alison put to tie me to the hearth, was it?" she asked her companion, when the silence within the maze became unbearable.

  "No; she has actually tied minor Elementals into the spells so that she did not have to renew them so often," the Fire creature replied. "This is why the maze appears to be a living thing. It actually is; more than one."

  "Ugh." She shuddered, and glanced at the walls around them. Colored a sad brown, suggestions of faces continued to come and go. "Is that as nasty as I think it is?"

  "Surely." The Fire creature regarded her soberly. "As certainly as you have been imprisoned by them, they have been imprisoned by Alison. They may be creatures of darkness, but they have spent the years as the bars of your cage."

  The more she learned about Alison, the more she wanted to be free of her. If ever there was someone evil—

  I am not really "here," she reminded herself. This is like the Tarot world; my body is—well, wherever Alison put it. Perhaps the cellar. I must escape the maze and then—then wake up from whatever she did to me.

  But she had to wonder, what would happen to the "real" Eleanor, if her—call it "spirit-self—was hurt?

  Her mother's notebooks hadn't covered that possibility.

  And what would happen if she didn't get back to herself in a few hours? How long could her untenanted body sleep before life began to fade?

  So strange—her body here felt real, felt solid, solid enough that her insides twisted with tension when she realized that she might be fighting against time as well as Alison.

  She didn't really expect to be able to leave the maze unopposed. Just because she had managed to strike some kind of bargain with the maze itself, it did not follow that there were not more elemental Earth creatures here to block her passage. Probably they would try to intimidate her first, though.

  Above her—vague darkness. They walked on a surface that was very like dead grass, and the only light here came from her companion. If ever there was a place of stagnation, this was it. The air was dry and acrid, with a faint scent of corruption. And the maze walls did not get any better the deeper she went.

  And just as she had expected, once they were, by her accounting, roughly halfway through, she sensed something up ahead of her. When she turned the corner—there it was.

  She might have mistaken it for a Brownie if she hadn't known better. It looked like exactly like a child's picture-book illustration of a Brownie in a red cap—but it was the cap that gave it away.

  This was a Redcap, a vicious little gnome with an insatiable appetite for murder. It soaked its cap in the blood of its victims; hence the name. There was no point in even trying to negotiate with something like this; it was completely evil and absolutely treacherous.

  And if she had not been studying all four Elements instead of just her own, she would never have known that.

  She felt her eyes narrow as she stepped threateningly towards the Redcap. There was power welling up in her; she felt it rising inside, and she knew that if she had to strike at this thing, the power would answer her. There were only two ways to deal with a Redcap; make it run or destroy it. Turning your back on it would be fatal.

  "Hello, daughter of Adam," the Recap said, wheedlingly, looking up at her with an entreating gaze. "I am lost, trapped here, like you. Won't you help me find the way out of this maze?"

  "I think not, Redcap," she replied, before the Fire elemental could warn her. "I think you know the way out already. Don't you?"

  The Redcap's face underwent a frightening transformation. Its eyes turned red, with a greenish glow to the pupils; it hunched over, hands fumbling at its belt for the knife it probably had hidden there, and it snarled, showing sharp, pointed teeth.

  "Look out!" the Fire creature called, but she was already calling up fire herself, in the shape of her Salamanders. They appeared out of nowhere, as large as bloodhounds and fierce as lions, two of them, planting themselves between her and the Redcap, hissing.

  The Redcap leapt back with a curse. It shook its fist at her, and ran off into the depths of the maze. Since it wasn't going the way she planned, she kept the Salamanders from chasing it.

  When it was gone, they fawned around her like affectionate cats, rubbing up against her and butting their heads into her hands. The Fire creature regarded them with amusement.

  "Under other circumstances," it said, "I would say that you have a remarkable way with animals. I am glad that you have won their loyalty."

  "So am I," she replied fervently. "Should I keep them with us?"

  "Definitely. I have no idea what might lie ahead of us, except that I cannot imagine that there will not be more trouble."

  She just nodded. She doubted very much that the next obstacle they encountered would be so obliging as to run away.

  August 12, 1917

  Longacre Park, Warwickshire

  Reggie didn't sleep very much—but then, he hadn't expected to. And he had flown and fought on less rest than he'd gotten last night. He had gone over his plan so many times it was engraved in his mind—

  Not that he really expected to find the Robinsons following his plan. No, he would just have to keep his wits about him and try to find a way to get to Eleanor. Once they were together, he didn't think that even Alison would try to oppose him taking her out.

  She could summon a constable, he supposed—but he doubted that the Broom constable, old as he was, would do more than make a token effort to stop him. And once Eleanor was freed from whatever holds Alison had placed on her, the shoe would almost certainly be on the other foot. He suspected that she had some ugly tales to tell.

  It was very hard, though, to have to rise, breakfast as usual—and wait. Wait, because if he went down at any time before, say, noon—no one would let him in. Certainly Eleanor was not permitted to answer the door. She hadn't before, when he'd called, and that was probably to keep her from being recognized by a visitor, or from blurting out a plea for help. If he arrived too early, no one would be awake, and he could hardly pound on the door and bellow at them to let him in. Not unless he wanted to tip his hand.

  No, above all, he didn't want anyone to know what he was up to until it was too late to do anything about it.

  The Robinsons had left about three—so they would not be receiving visitors until noon at the earliest. So he would have to wait.

  Except—if he was going to go into a confrontation with an Earth Master, his simple barricades were not going to suffice.

  So after breakfast, with a feeling of fear that would have paralyzed him had he not been eaten alive with worry for Eleanor, he took a certain back staircase that his mother was not even aware existed, up to a room on the same floor as the servants' quarters. Except that this room connected with no other chamber in the house, and the door to the staircase was carved with sigils that would allow only an Elemental Master to see it.

  It took a terrible effort for him to take each step upwards—because each step brought him nearer to the moment when he must give up his defenses and accept the power back into his hands—and with that power, open himself to attack. He was
sweating by the time he reached the landing.

  It was his father's old workroom, a corner room with tall windows on two sides, lined with books and cabinets for supplies on the other two, and with a floor of white marble inlaid with a magic circle in silver. And Lady Virginia was already there.

  She was dressed for the occasion, in a loose, sky-blue robe of silk, with her ice-white hair in a single plait down her back. Curiously enough, this made her look younger, rather than older.

  "I thought you might turn up," she said, as he closed the door to the staircase behind him. "So I didn't put up the wards yet."

  He shivered, involuntarily. "If you had any idea how frightened I am—" Then he steeled himself, before the panic could rise up and choke him. "But I don't have a choice, do I?"

  "Not if Alison Robinson is a Master—and all of the preliminary work I have done tells me she is," Lady Virginia replied grimly. "I believe—though I am not yet sure—that she is the one responsible for that plague of revenants outside your father's old shields. I can't imagine why she would set them on you, but I'm not very good at deciphering the plans of individuals with the kind of twisted soul capable of summoning something like that up in the first place."

  Reggie nodded. Then he spoke the hardest words he had ever said in his life. "Tell me what to do, Godmother," he begged. "Help me, please. I need my powers back, and we don't have a great deal of time before I face her."

  "Then I will need to force your shields open," she replied, jaw set. "And it won't be easy on you."

  He bowed his head, with the feeling that he was baring his neck to the axe. "I never thought it would," he said, with miserable determination.

  August 12, 1917

  Elsewhere

  The end of the maze was very near, and Eleanor had routed a good half-dozen nasty creatures that had tried to ambush her on the way. The worst had been the Night-mare; at least, so far. A truly dreadful black thing it was with far too many legs, all of them ending in talons rather than hooves, and long, white fangs. The Salamanders had not been able to attack it, and it had come charging straight at her—

  And she had found herself with a flaming sword in her hands. She had no more idea of how to use it than how to fly—but slashing wildly at the Night-mare had made it shy sideways to avoid the attack, aborting its charge. It had stared at her with evil red eyes for a moment, then, like the Redcap, it had retreated into the depths of the maze.

  "Interesting," her companion said, as she let the sword go, only to have it vanish into thin air the moment she loosed her hold on the hilt. "It appears that however Alison is controlling or coercing these creatures, it is not enough to make them face any sort of serious opposition. I believe she has completely underestimated you."

  "I hope sol" Eleanor replied, as her Salamanders pressed up against her legs, one on either side of her.

  Now she was one turn away from the exit to the maze, or so she thought. When she rounded this last corner, she should be free of the spells that bound her to the hearth of The Arrows.

  But of course, Alison was not likely to let her go without a fight.

  She turned the corner, and found herself facing every creature she had encountered thus far, and some new ones, all lined up across the exit-point to the maze.

  August 12, 1917

  Longacre Park, Warwickshire

  Reggie emerged from the workroom feeling—unnerved. Unsettled? No, far too mild a word. Severely rattled, and definitely drained. Those hard-built barricades were gone, but he had yet to test the strength of his powers as an Air Master, because he did not want to alert Alison to the fact that those powers were back, and neither did Lady Virginia. Psychologically—

  He was a wreck, for he had, in the space of a few hours, lived through and endured the sharp-focused memory of his ordeal after being shot down. The difference was, this time he had his godmother to guide him through it. This time, he had come out the other side still sane. Or at least, relatively so. But his nerves were raw, and fear surged and ebbed unexpectedly, making him wonder just how much control he could keep.

  But they had run out of time. It was midafternoon by the time Lady Virginia allowed him to go, and some instinct warned him that Alison Robinson was going to do whatever she had planned for Eleanor very soon. He had to get down there now—or, he suspected, he would lose her forever.

  His auto was waiting for him at the door, as he had requested before he went up to the workroom. He thanked heaven that she wasn't a temperamental beast; in fact, she might have been sensitive to his urgency, for she fired up at the first spark, all cylinders roaring like uncaged lions.

  He threw the auto down the drive at a reckless pace, and kept it up right to the outskirts of Broom—but the moment he was within sight of the place, he throttled the racing engine down, and proceeded at what seemed to his raw nerves to be a crawl. This was not just to avoid knocking people down, it was because things had to seem normal. If Alison suspected anything, she could, and probably would, refuse him entrance.

  It made him want to scream with impatience as he dawdled down the main street, smiling tightly, and waving at some of his cronies from the pub. Only one thought kept him steady; Alison did not know how much Eleanor had said to him. Nor did she know they already knew each other. So there should be no real reason in her mind to suspect how much Reggie already knew or guessed. She should not have felt the need to rush into a solution to the problem of Eleanor's escape.

  Or so he hoped and prayed. There had been one good sign, anyway—Lady Virginia had been assiduously monitoring the area for signs of powerful magic ever since last night, and there had been nothing.

  At long last he pulled up to the edge of the street beside The Arrows. He parked the beast right there, took out his cane, and limped to the front doorway to ring the bell.

  It was answered by Carolyn, who looked startled and confused the moment she set eyes on him.

  "Reggie!" she exclaimed, pushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. "What a delightful surprise! We didn't expect you—"

  "I know," he said, stretching his mouth in what he hoped was a genuine-looking smile. "But I had to come down here today. I know how clever you all are, and how you know just about everyone for miles around, and I was hoping you girls could help me solve a mystery."

  "But—of course, please come in, I can't think what I'm doing, leaving you standing in the door like this." She laughed; was it his imagination, or did it ring false? "We're sending formal thank-you letters, of course, but since you are here, I must tell you that your ball was wonderful; I don't know when I've had a better time!"

  "Actually, that's why I'm here," he said, seizing the opportunity with both hands as he stepped into the parlor at her direction. The Arrows was at least as old as the Broom; real, genuine Tudor construction. The place betrayed its age, with blackened beams, white-plaster walls, and very low ceilings that made him want to duck his head. "You see, I encountered someone at the ball, but she left before I got a chance to find out who she was, and I hoped you could help me with that."

  "Me?" Carolyn turned towards him as he took a seat beside the fire, and he was sure he was not mistaken; there was a flush of guilt on her cheeks. He felt his gut tighten. "How could I help?"

  "Indeed, as eager as we are to assist you in any way, Reggie, I don't know what we could do in this case," said Alison Robinson, gliding into the room, soundlessly. He didn't jump, but she had startled him, moving so quietly. There was something altogether snakelike about the way she moved. If he'd had hackles, they'd have been up. "There were dozens of young women at your ball, and all of them were masked for most of the evening."

  "Ah," he said brightly. "But I think you might know this girl, and she has one very distinctive characteristic. You see, she wore these gloves—"

  He held out the pink silk gloves to Alison, who examined them with a faint frown on her face. Right until the moment when she realized that the left-hand glove had only three fingers.

  Then,
she started, and paled for a moment, and he felt his heart leap in triumph. So, they were up to something! And they hadn't known Eleanor had left anything of herself behind.

  "Actually, I believe you are correct," she said, recovering quickly and turning a bland face towards him, "I do know something about the girl who wore this glove. If you'll wait a moment—"

  "I would wait a year if you could bring her to me," Reggie replied, his heartbeat quickening with nervous tension. Should he not have presented the gloves to Alison? Now she knew something was up, but did she guess how much he knew about Eleanor? Or rather—how little? She can't be going to bring Eleanor. There's some trickery going on here.