Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  August 13, 1917

  The Hoar Stones

  "What did you do with him?" Alison asked, as Locke made his way up the path to the Hoar Stones behind her, with Eleanor slung over his shoulder like a bag of coal. She was impressed in spite of herself; she was accustomed to seeing Locke leave all of the work to his servant, but it appeared he could manage quite a bit by himself. He'd certainly managed to bring Reggie Fenyx here on his own, and he was carrying Eleanor as if her weight was inconsequential.

  "He's in the lee of the rocks, just outside the chamber," Locke replied. "He's still out cold. I thought you'd want to keep the chamber itself clear so you can work."

  "Very wise. Leave the girl there as well," Alison said, absentmindedly; they were still a good thirty yards from the Hoar Stones, yet already she could feel its power drawing her. Had the work she'd done here last spring woken some ancient source of magic from a long slumber? Well, if that was so, all the better.

  She reached out to the source of the power, greedily, and felt her lips stretching in a grin as it responded to her. Lovely, lovely Earth-born power; whatever purpose the Hoar Stones had been originally meant to serve, over the centuries there had been enough who had used it as a place of sacrifice that the ground here was as blood-soaked as the fields of Flanders. Blood spilled called power, and this sort of power was the kind that answered her hand the best.

  She felt like a child in a sweet-shop, told to take what she wanted. Finally, she was going to have it all!

  The power filled her, thick and intoxicating, with the hint of corruption she found so irresistible, and she moved into the chamber as if in a trance as Locke dumped Eleanor beside another bundle of blanket and clothing just outside it. It occurred to her then that Locke was probably stronger than he looked; Reggie Fenyx was no small man, and Locke had somehow manhandled him from the motor all the way up here.

  Then again—Locke might have managed to rouse Reggie enough to get him to walk. Even unconscious, a clever use of magic could have gotten Reggie to stumble along in Locke's wake or in front of him. And if he damaged himself somewhat, well, so much the better; he'd look like someone who had been staggering about after an accident.

  She put them both temporarily from her mind as Locke and the girls joined her in the chamber. This was going to be a difficult piece of work, and she needed to concentrate on it.

  Reggie lay quite still as Alison's henchman dumped someone beside him. The last thing he wanted any of them to know was that he was awake and aware and prepared to act—if feeling nauseous and half-crippled counted as being prepared to act. Little did any of them know that he'd been using his pain-medications for so long that he had built up a tolerance for opiates; the air moving around his face when the auto was in motion had served to arouse him, and the drive out into the country had given him long enough to get his brain more-or-less working again. When the man had mumbled some sort of half-learned charm over him, he'd felt the intent of it through the very minimal shields he had put up, and had acted the part of an automaton, staggering up the shadow-shrouded path in the man's wake. Unfortunately, he was without a cane, and the ground was anything but even. He didn't even want to think about the damage he had done to himself, trying to walk; he thought he'd felt something tear loose around his kneecap once. The pain of his knee had burned what was left of the drug out of him altogether, and he must have stumbled and fallen a dozen times. Evidently the man had expected that, because Locke just stopped whenever that happened, waited for Reggie to pick himself up, then led him on.

  Reggie had been perfectly ready to fall over where the man pointed. By that time his head was perfectly clear, but it ached so much from what he presumed was a blow, and his knee was in such agony, that by the time he realized that he was alone among these ancient stones, it was too late to do anything about it. He could already hear someone coming up the same path. All he could do was feign unconsciousness and wait to see what happened next.

  What happened was that Locke dumped someone else practically on top of him. Someone small, and very warm. Eleanor?

  He continued to lie quietly as the sound of the others moved off a little. The way he was positioned, he couldn't see anything anyway; his face was turned towards the megalithic stone, and the other person had been dropped behind him.

  But he was sure it was Eleanor. It wasn't just the sense that it was her, or instinct. Logic said that was the likeliest—but why? What was Alison planning?

  It was nothing good for either of them, but it was Eleanor he was worried about the most. He represented the means to a very large fortune, as well as a kind of life she clearly aspired to. If she got rid of him, she lost her access to that life; Lady Virginia would see to that. No, it made more sense, far more sense, for her to try and work some bedazzlement on his mind, to make him pliant and willing to marry one of her wretched daughters.

  It was Eleanor that he was concerned about. He still didn't know how Eleanor factored into all this—except that she was now clearly an obstacle in the path to Alison's goals. He couldn't dismiss the idea that they meant to murder her—after all, who would notice? No one in Broom even gave her existence a second thought now.

  Even more chilling was the thought that Alison might murder Eleanor in order to get the power she needed to control him.

  And he was patently in no shape to take them on in a straight-on physical contest. He wasn't even sure he could manage a successful escape. The longer this situation dragged on, the less confident he became. And on top of that, as bad as his physical condition already was, he knew it was rapidly deteriorating. Lying here on the ground was making his muscles stiffen, and there was no point in pretending otherwise, he had a concussion that wasn't getting any better either. His head pounded, and though he tried to think through the pain and the nausea, it was getting harder to put two coherent thoughts together with every passing moment; his mouth was dry, and a slow serpent of fear had begun crawling up his spine, making him feel weak and helpless.

  He could sense power rising very near by—Earth power, and even though it only brushed by him in passing, the moment it touched him, he felt panic stifling him. He knew that sort of power—born of blood and death. He had met its like before.

  When he had been buried in that trench.

  Alison began chanting somewhere on the other side of the stones, her voice echoing strangely, and he sensed the power awakening and answering her call—

  He felt a whimper rising in his throat—

  And a small, warm hand clamped itself over his mouth.

  "Shh," Eleanor breathed in his ear. "It's all right; try not to make a sound. Alison and the rest are busy right now. If we're very careful, we might be able to get away before they realize we're gone."

  And go where? he thought wildly, but he knew she was right. Whatever Alison was up to, there was a point she'd be so preoccupied with controlling what she was raising that she should be oblivious to anything but what she was doing.

  The only question was, could he even walk, much less run?

  It's not as if I have a choice, he reminded himself. It's run—somehow—or lie here and let her do whatever she's going to do.

  Even though fear was welling up inside him and making him want nothing more than to curl up where he was and hide inside himself. Trying to huddle inside himself was not an option now. Even if he had felt willing to let them do whatever they wanted to him, what were their plans for Eleanor? If he gave up to the fear, he would be abandoning her.

  But the fear had a mind of its own, where he was concerned. Despite his efforts to resist it, and all the work that Lady Virginia had done with him, he felt it taking him over, paralyzing him, flooding his heart with chill, until there was nothing real for him except that fear. His control slipped to the edge of loss, and tremors shook his body.

  And then the miracle occurred. Eleanor's hand moved down from his mouth to rest over his heart, and warmth began to spread from it.

  Not just physical war
mth, either—a psychic warmth that stopped his shaking, and drove the fear back, a wonderfully fierce passion that had no time for creeping terror. It was like magic—

  No, it was magic! It was Fire magic, the complement and perfect partner to Air—Fire magic being directed by the sure hand of someone who, if she was not yet a Master, would certainly one day become one!

  Before he could wonder where she had suddenly gotten that skill, a set of shields grew up around both of them; slowly, so slowly that at first he thought the perimeter of warming around him was some side-effect of the magic she was working on him. The he realized that she was building shields—not as he would have expected out of a Fire Mage, with a showy rush of upwelling, vibrant power, but slowly, as if beginning from the barest, glowing coals and building a fire by patiently feeding those coals a little air, a little fuel, straw by straw.

  By that time he was no longer shaking; though his head still ached and he felt sick, his mind was clear again. Not that he wasn't afraid— and so was she, he sensed it in the rigidity of her body where it lay wedged against his, and the way she was trembling—but fear was no longer paralyzing him.

  I need to help her—and it has to be just as subtle, so that we don't alert Alison to what we're doing.

  First he needed to help her with those shields. Then—could he call a Sylph and sent it for help? Would one even come so near the poisonous, dark Earth power that Alison was raising?

  He had to try; the nearest help was Lady Virginia, and the only way to get word to her was via an Air Elemental.

  But it would be the first time he had called one since the crash. Would they even come to him anymore?

  He's awake! That was more than Eleanor had hoped for; she hadn't even cared that he was shaking hard enough to rattle both of them. She'd been hearing bits about this "shellshock" business from Sarah, and it didn't surprise her at all that Reggie suffered from it—fine, so he was overwhelmed by fear. Well, she had the counter to fear, the weapon to drive it back. Fear couldn't stand against the fire of passion.

  But one thing did surprise her. Before, it had been as if he was surrounded by an impenetrable wall that allowed nothing arcane to get in at him—but which was also opaque to his senses so that he never knew that she was a Fire Mage. Now—now he was open.

  Open enough that she responded to his fear completely on instinct. She put her hand over his heart, and willed her power into him.

  Fire—

  Passion. Courage. Heart. Fire was all of these things and more, but these were the ones that were important now, to shore up his crumbling emotions and give him strength to find his feet again. She sensed it, she knew it; that was all he needed, just a little help—he wanted to fight his own fear, but he was so worn by it that he hadn't the strength. Very well; he should have some of hers.

  And when she sensed he was no longer shaking, she went to work building shields around the two of them, starting with the merest trace of power, layering them up slowly, so that—she hoped—Alison wouldn't notice what was happening until it was too late.

  It was after the first three or four layers had been constructed that she sensed another power joining hers.

  She had never felt Air magic before, but even if her inner sight hadn't shown her the soft blue glow of it, she had no doubt of what it was; there was a lightness to it, the coolness of intellect, and a liveliness. Even as he layered in his own subtle shields, interleaving them with hers, she felt his magic feeding hers, Fire and Air mingling until the blending was far more powerful than the mere sum of both. And at that moment she felt her own courage rise.

  She was terribly glad that he had joined her in creating the shields that surrounded them both, because when she finally threw off the blanket they had bundled her in and sat up, trusting that by this time Alison was so deeply involved in her own magics that she wouldn't notice anything else going on, what she saw made her lose her hard-won courage for a moment.

  The very stones of this Neolithic monument were glowing a muddy, ugly yellow with Alison's newly raised power. Oh, not glowing to ordinary sight, but to the trained Inner Eye of a magician there was no mistake, none at all. This was an old, old power, and it answered to Alison slowly, but it was answering. And it was as dark a power as Alison could have wished.

  She pulled the blanket off Reggie's head and tugged at his shoulder; as he sat up, much more slowly than she had, she didn't have to direct his attention to the stones. He saw it on his own.

  He pulled her head towards his face, and put his mouth right up to her ear to whisper, "That's not good."

  She nodded.

  "We have to get out of here now," he continued, urgently. "Can help me get to my feet?"

  She nodded harder.

  She got to her feet—slowly, and with a great care for making sure she didn't break a twig or dislodge any rattling stones. But there was one thing that she she knew she had to do if they were going to walk out of here.

  She had to find him some sort of support, a stick he could use as a cane. His knee could not possibly be in good shape right now.

  Except, of course, that she couldn't actually see in the shadow-shrouded woodlot, in the dark of night, to find any such thing.

  All right. I need someone—or something—that can see.

  With infinite care, she pushed out the shields on the forest-side of their protections, until they extended well into the undergrowth. Then she called a Salamander.

  She stipulated that it was to be a very, very small Salamander, the kind that had first come to her, scarcely bigger than a tiny kitten. Alison hadn't noticed the little creatures when they were under her own roof; with luck, she wouldn't notice one now.

  She had no fire for it, and this was far, far too close to inimical power. She wasn't sure any Fire Elemental would answer her here.

  But her heart leapt when, without so much as a spark of real fire to feed from—it still camel It wreathed apprehensively around her wrists and through her fingers, every movement of it telling her that it was not happy to be near so much dark power. She soothed it as best she could, and tried to impress on its mind what she needed—a good, stout stick, sound and strong, and not too short.

  It hesitated for a moment, regarding her with glowing yellow eyes, then darted off into the brush, coursing back and forth like a beagle on a scent, but staying within the protection of the shields. She knew when it had found what she had asked for by the way that it darted out of the brush towards her, then back in again. It wasn't going to talk to her, not here. Wise. Alison might well hear such a thing.

  She followed it, treading very carefully, never putting her full weight on her foot until she knew there was nothing beneath it to make a sound that would betray them. For the first time, she was glad of her worn shoes; the soles were so thin she could easily feel what was under her feet. Pushing carefully through the undergrowth, she found the Salamander running up and down the length of the stick, which was a bit longer than the canes Reggie normally used—more like a quarterstaff. Well, that was not such a bad thing. It might make a better weapon at need, and the longer it was, the less likely it would be that Reggie would need to lean on her.

  She dismissed the Salamander with her thanks—it was clearly growing terrified at the feel of the terrible Earth power outside the shields, and she didn't blame it. With infinite care, she pulled the stick out from the undergrowth, little by little, until, with a sigh of relief, she got it free.

  She turned around with it in her grip in time to see something wispy, sinuous, and pale blue streaking away from Reggie's hands. She hadn't gotten a good enough look at it to tell what it was, but she hoped he was sending for help. She tiptoed back to him and handed him the stick. With a look of relief, he took it gladly and used it to get himself—with her help—to his feet. "Now which way?" he whispered.

  She shook her head. "I don't know!" she whispered back. "I never saw anything!"

  She might not have been unconscious when she was brought here, b
ut she had been bundled in a blanket. Truth to tell, she hadn't a clue which direction to go in.

  Reggie clung to the rough staff Eleanor had found for him and tried to think. Had the path into this place been between those two flat stones he was facing now, or—

  "Mother!" shrieked a young female voice behind him. "They're awake! They're trying to sneak away!"

  Too late.

  A soundless explosion of sickly yellow light impacted against their shields; he felt Eleanor react just in time to strengthen them, and a second later, he was reinforcing her. Fire magic was better for shields anyway; you couldn't wear away at Fire shields, the Fire just ate everything you threw at it. Even nasty stuff of the sort that Alison was throwing at them now; Fire just purified it, then consumed it. You could smother them, drown them, or blast through them if you were powerful enough, but you needed either to be extremely powerful in the first place, or to make an all-or-nothing commitment to the attack to do so, and Alison hadn't yet made that kind of attack.