The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  He nodded. "It's the affinities—Water can serve as an initial teacher to Earth easily enough, just as Fire can to Air. And vice versa, of course."

  "Of course," she echoed, her eyes reflecting that her mind was already elsewhere. "Is that why you became a man of the sea? That you were already a Water Master?"

  Oh, he liked the quick way she picked up on things! "I wasn't a Master at the time, but yes." He nodded. "I went straight off to the first ship that felt right, and applied as a cabin boy when I was eleven. Would it surprise you to learn that the captain of that ship was a Water Master?"

  She looked amused. "Not very, no."

  He made a gesture with his upturned hand. "There you have it. If we have the choice, mages tend to pick occupations that reflect their magic, and if they aren't singled out by a Master of their own element, they go looking for one. Earth—well, you get some trades that are obvious, farmers, herdsmen, herbalists, gamekeepers, gardeners—but there are also a fair lot of mid-wives, animal handlers, and trainers, and although you're the first physician I know of, there're clergymen, a lawyer or two, and the odd squire here and there. Water's almost always a sailor or fisherman, a riverman, a canal worker, but I know of a couple of artistic types, another lawyer and an architect and several fellows who work in the city and never have anything to do with sailing. And Lord Peter, of course; he's some sort of diplomat. Fire—metalsmiths, glass-workers, firefighters, but also soldiers, the odd lad in government service. Air, though, they tend to be the scholars, the artists, or the entertainers. Lots of creative types in Air."

  "But not always."

  "But not always," he agreed. "Lord Peter Almsley's Water and, as I mentioned, diplomat—I think. They're always sending him off to the continent chasing this or that, anyway. He's really creative in his own sphere; he's certainly entertaining, and he's as persuasive a speaker as any great actor. It isn't his Element that gave him his purpose and job, it's his glib tongue. It's not just the magic, you see, it's what situation in life you were born to, and your natural talents, which don't necessarily march in time with your magic. And anyway, you never start with learning Elemental Magic."

  Her eyes grew puzzled. "Why not?"

  "Because you either have to coax or coerce the Elementals to work for you, and that takes practice and working in the raw basics first. Not all Elementals are—nice." He thought for a moment about some of the habits of his own affinity. "Some are vicious. If they heard your call, they might come to it, just so they could hurt you. If you weren't strong enough to defend yourself, they would. Hurt you, that is."

  Maya's lips formed a surprised "O" although she made no sound.

  He decided at that point that both of them had enough of abstracts for the moment. "Just so you know. Forewarned and all that. Are you ready to try some of those basics?"

  "I think so. Can we work here?" Her last words were hesitant, and he suspected that she had preserved a chamber here in the house where she worked her spells. He also suspected that it was an annex of her own bedchamber, and she hesitated to bring a man and a stranger so near to it. I am a stranger, he reminded himself. No matter that it seems less that way with every minute that passes. I'm lucky she lets me in here alone with her at all.

  "We can," he said, and was rewarded with a genuine smile of relief. "Of course we can. Especially since the first of your lessons will be in constructing protections between your household and whatever is—" he waved his hand in the general direction of the street, "—out there. The difference between what you've been doing until now and what I'll show you is that we'll be building those protections on a foundation based in your own Element."

  Oh, Peter, that made you sound like a right pompous ass! He winced. She didn't notice, though; or at least, she was too polite to show that she had.

  He rose: she did the same. "Would you feel more comfortable with some concrete symbols of what we're doing, or not?" he asked diffidently. "I mean, would it help you if I actually drew chalk diagrams on the floor, or outlines, or whatever?"

  "I think," she said, with a flavoring of irony, "that we needn't frighten the others with chalked diagrams. As a doctor, I have to imagine what is going on inside my patients, to lay them bare in my mind so that I can treat them."

  He flushed with acute embarrassment, and tried to cover it by getting to his feet. "Right—ah—well, if you were a real beginner, I'd have told you how to cleanse the area that you're going to protect, but as it happens, it's already cleansed. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be here."

  He pointed to the fountain where, attracted by a Master of their own element inside their domain, two undines drifted in the lower pool, forms visible as an occasional undulation of wave-into-arm or a transparent face briefly showing on the surface. Maya looked, and then looked again, staring.

  "I never saw them before!" she exclaimed.

  "They wouldn't show themselves, not to you, without me being there; you aren't their Element, and you aren't a Master yet," Peter replied, hoping that she didn't think his automatic smile was patronizing. "The point is that they're here, which means that the earth through which they had to go to get into your fountain is clean. By that, I don't mean that it's sterile or anything like that; I mean that there's none of the usual city poisons in the water and earth here—you can't help the ones in the air—and no poisonous energies here either."

  "But how—" she began.

  "They probably got in here the last time it rained, following the runoff, or perhaps there's a connection to an underground water supply on your property. There are lots of old wells and springs that have been forgotten." Peter shrugged. "The point is that this kind of Elemental can't move through anything that's unclean."

  "But how did it become clean?" she asked, frowning. "I did nothing"

  Peter could only shrug again. I wish she'd stop asking questions I don't know the answer to. I really don't want to look like a right dunce in front of her. "I don't know," he admitted. "But there are parts of the city that manage to stay clean no matter what. A lot of them are old shrines or even the sites of old churches that got built over. What's been cleansed stays cleansed, unless someone comes along and deliberately deconsecrates it. Gods have a way of hanging onto what's theirs, and of making where they live into a place where they can be—oh, I don't know—I suppose the word is comfortable. And only a Dark god is comfortable in a place that's contaminated."

  Maya opened her mouth, and Peter waited expectantly. Then she shut it again, abruptly. "Never mind," she said. "Never mind." He was faintly disappointed; he would have liked to hear her think out loud again, but plowed on regardless with the lesson.

  "Well, you need to actually establish the boundaries of your clean area first," he said, waving his hand at the wall around the greenhouse. "You said you can see Earth Magic—go ahead and see where it ends."

  She turned toward the back wall of the conservatory, dropped her gaze to the foot of the wall, and frowned. Then, slowly, understanding drifted over her features.

  "If you hadn't told me, I'd never have looked for it," she said carefully, her eyes alight with satisfaction. "But there is, there is a boundary space right at that wall, and it isn't the one I made! It's where the earth in my garden stops, and something else that isn't as— nice—starts." Now it was her turn to grope after words.

  "That edge is what you're going to use, and not just a 'fence' of power either," he told her. "Now that you see where I want you to put it, I want you to drain the power out of the existing barrier. Go on—" he urged, as she hesitated doubtfully. "I'll have a shield of my own in place before you can drain yours away." And he quickly made good on his word, putting up a shield to surround the entire house, cleverly using (or at least he thought he was being clever) the electrical wiring and the pipes to carry his protections. Things like copper wire and copper pipes carried magical currents as readily as they carried water or electricity.

  Since he'd discovered that, Peter'd had a much easier time of casting shiel
ds.

  Ah, but she must have discovered the same thing, for he sensed the flow of energies out even as his own poured in. Unmaking was always quicker and easier than making, if the thing you were tackling happened to be your own.

  "Now we'll go about this the correct way," he told her, as the Earth power around the perimeter faded from his perception. He picked up a stone and placed it right at her feet. "We'll be using that in a moment, but for now, look beyond the surface and read the energies under your garden. See how strong they are?"

  She nodded slowly.

  "Don't just look at them. Touch them. Then when you've touched them, let them flow into you from the soles of your feet." He gave her an encouraging smile. "You can do it; you already have, a little. You can't help it."

  "If I relax . . ." she muttered, then took several slow, deep breaths. Meanwhile, he watched her like a cat at a mouse hole, waiting for the mouse to poke a whisker out. And after two false starts, he watched as the warm yellow-gold of Earth energy crept upward and engulfed her, leaving her haloed in light.

  She laughed with delight and surprise. "My word! It's like—like gulping down an entire bottle of champagne!" she exulted. He chuckled, recalling the first time that Water energies had flowed into him. It had been very like being drunk—the giddiness, the increased pulse rate—and yet he'd remained perfectly sober.

  "Now concentrate on that rock," he continued. Immediately, the little pebble glowed with an inner life, glowed with the power she had taken from the earth. He would have used a clear glass of water—glass being a kind of liquid, and so akin to water—if he needed a focus, which he really didn't anymore. "Think of it as the world in miniature, and weave a single protection around it. Like this—"

  He quickly shielded the rock with his own, Watery energies. These were the most basic, but basic did not mean "lesser." "Watch closely," he warned, and slowly expanded the shields in all directions, exactly like blowing up a soap bubble. But unlike a soap bubble, this one remained just as tough and strong as it got bigger, for he kept pouring energy into it as it expanded. And when it met the shields he already had on the place, they merged immediately into a seamless whole.

  "Now it's your turn," he told her. She bit her lip, and started as he had.

  By Jove! She's a fast learner! It only took a single false start, and her own shields began to expand from the point where they'd begun. The movement was painfully slow at first; she couldn't expand and increase the energy going into the shield at the same time. No matter, that would come in time.

  When her shields touched his, they did not merge. Instead, they layered, hers overlaying his. She looked nonplussed when that happened; she had probably thought that they would become a single entity.

  "Is that right?" she asked, with a sharp look at him. "Are they supposed to do that?"

  "Put earth and water in a jar and shake them together; no matter how hard you shake, the earth separates from the water once you stop agitating the jar," he replied. "And that is how you build proper shields. Layer them, don't try to braid them until you have more skill and practice. Bring them up on a central point, then expand them to meet your perimeter. Again?"

  "Absolutely!" Now she seemed eager for the task; as Peter watched her establish her initial shield, he recognized it as the Tm not here' camouflage, and paid close attention to how she spun it up. When she expanded it—more smoothly this time, but by no means as quickly as he had—he was pleased to see it layer into the previous set. It was stronger now than it had been. That was part of being better integrated, but was also due to having more energy behind it.

  "Feeling tired yet?" he asked her, once the shield was up and established. He knew she wouldn't be, because she wasn't using her own power, but it was time to call her attention to that fact.

  "Why—no!" She was astonished by her own answer, and looked down at her hands with a quizzical expression, as if looking for the reason there.

  "That's because you used the energies of your Element, and not your own personal power," he replied. "Now you don't need to depend on yourself to work magic; you have a source of energy outside yourself. So think about that for a moment. What is that going to mean to you, and not just here and now, but outside these four walls?"

  "That—Can I use this for healing as well?" she asked instantly. "Oh, of course I can! There's no reason why I couldn't, is there, and every reason why I should?"

  Oh, well done! he applauded. "Exactly. Just make sure that you set up shields and cleanse the area first. This is another thing to remember, that other magicians and magical beings will see the flow of power and come to find out what's going on, and some of them are not what you'd like to have hanging about you. But you can't do that right now, all right? At this moment, right now, you need to practice all the different kinds of shields and protections you were trying to build weeks ago. When we've got something like what you were trying to produce, I will show you how to link the shields into the Earth energy so that the shields will maintain themselves, and that will be enough for one day."

  She blinked, and was lost within herself for a moment. "Ah. I am using my own power to control the Earth Magic, am I not?" she asked.

  "Exactly so." Brilliant! I'll have to ask Almsley, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone picking up on the Art so quickly! He smiled. "Now, are you ready to learn about the kinds of shields that I know of?"

  The hour that Maya had allotted to herself for this lesson simply flew past, and she decided to go a little short of sleep rather than cut the lesson short. When Peter Scott finally left, she was tired, but not with the bone-deep weariness that she often felt after establishing her guardian borders, and now she wouldn't have to go over and over her protections every night. Now they would take care of themselves—unless someone tried to break them. Then she would have to make repairs, of course.

  But not out of my own storehouse. She made the rounds of the oil-lamps and candles in the garden, making certain that they were all extinguished.

  She had sensed the presence of strange life hiding within the bounds of her sanctuary—nothing inimical, in fact, she got a feeling of comfort and warmth from them, even though they wouldn't show themselves. There was definitely something alive here, and she wondered, given the little she knew, what it could be. Little forest gods? It could be. The garden in the conservatory had taken on the sense of being a vaster space than it truly was.

  Perhaps I'll stumble across a faun lurking behind the vines some time soon.

  She felt as excited as she had after her first successful surgery, as enthralled by the sense of power, of the things she could do with her own two hands.

  "It is a start, and a good one, little chela."

  A familiar voice, but not human.

  She looked up and saw Nisha's glowing eyes gazing down at her. The owl had turned as white as bleached linen. The huge yellow eyes held her, as mesmerized as if she were a little mouse and Nisha contemplating her as a light snack.

  It is not wise to tempt the gods, even (or especially?) if they are not yours, she thought, with a sudden chill.

  "It is a start," she agreed, as her heart .gave an unpleasant jump. "I hope it is the right path."

  "It is, and because it is, your enemy will strew it with difficulties," Nisha replied somberly. "Be wary, for they will not always come in a form you will recognize. Your enemy can do you much harm without needing to know where you are."

  The owl blinked once, then swiveled her head away, looking up and out into the darkness beyond the glazed roof. Freed from those eyes, Maya could move; she stepped back a pace and took a deep breath.

  Nisha swiveled her head and caught her again. "She is here. Her creatures already crowd the night, and she gathers in those who walk in the sun as well as the shadows. Be wary."

  And with that, it seemed Nisha had no more to say—or rather, the being that used Nisha had said all that she wished. The spectral white of her feathers darkened, and she looked back up into the night. M
aya found she had been holding her breath, and let out the air she had been holding in a long, shaken sigh.

  The faint sound of something at her feet made her look down with a nervous jerk, but it was only Charan, and he showed no sign of wanting to add to Nisha's warning. He pulled at her skirt and chirruped at her. She leaned down and gathered him up in her arms, feeling a little chilled.

  It is more than time I got some sleep. Although her knees trembled for a moment and felt as if they might not hold her, she steadied herself with a hand to the tree trunk, then left the conservatory for the hall and the staircase.