The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  Within moments, a host of creatures, male and female, surrounded them; like Ian, their forms shifted and changed from one moment to the next, flowing like water sculptures as their moods shifted. In some way that Peter had not yet fathomed, they had already learned why he had called them even before they arrived. Perhaps it was something in the bell that told them; perhaps Ian communicated it to them in some fashion more subtle than either speech or thought.

  They flowed around Peter in a circling dance, making him the center of a whirlpool of light and movement. He heard their music as they danced, a music in which the sound of the sea in all its moods, the wash of wave on shore, the singing of the sands as the tide ebbed and flowed above them, and the slow, cold booming of the deeps was mingled with harp and flute and instruments for which he had no name. There was something in it of the familiar, but only enough to make it seem utterly alien and inhuman.

  It called to him in a way that no land music ever had or ever could, and he gave himself up to it, allowing the dancers to spin him. And as they twisted him in their midst, he became the spindle upon which they spun the thread of their power.

  Around and around he spun, faster and faster, as the dancing grew wilder and wilder and the music followed the dancers to some climax only they could foresee. It all became a blur, of light and sound and power, power, power that no one who was not a Master could ever conceive of, much less hold. Like a spring wound tighter and tighter, this could not continue, something was going to break, and yet he didn't want it to break, he wanted it to go on forever, this intoxication, this exhilaration like nothing on earth because it was not of this earth—

  Crack!

  Lightning struck in reverse! He flew up, catapulted out of Sul Skerry, out of the Water, into the world again, and into the sky and into his body, flung there with such force that he was flung back against the wall, arms spread to catch his fall.

  His eyes flew open. He had not moved, nor had anyone else in the room. But in the center of the circle was the Cone of Power, a glowing smooth-sided construct that pulsed with the collective heartbeat of its creators that called, demanded that he pour into it that which he now held. As the others, each in his own measure and to his own ability, were doing now.

  Obedient to its demand, he opened the vessel of his soul and let the Power of Water, green and fluorescing, join the electric blue of Air and the blazing scarlet of Fire in the dance of the Elements. Only the gold-brown of Earth was missing, and he felt that lack as an obscure ache in his soul.

  The Power flowed from him, pouring in a stream that seemed endless, swirling into the Cone and building it, strengthening it, giving it a depth it had not possessed before. Alderscroft stood in the middle of the circle now, in the center of the Cone; Peter did not envy him his perilous place. If the Power got out of his control, it would destroy him with no warning whatsoever, as indifferently as a man would step on a microbe and destroy it.

  Then, suddenly, Peter was empty.

  Now he moved, sagging back against the wall, as no few of the others were doing. The White Lodge Circle was broken, but it didn't matter; the magic Circle, the shield that contained it held, Alderscroft had the reins of the Power in both hands, and it was all his show now.

  The last trickle of Power flowed from the last member left standing. It was only Alderscroft and the Cone—

  "Fiat!" the old man shouted, and flung up his arms.

  The Cone expanded—so suddenly, and so swiftly, it felt like an explosion. The wall of Power rammed through Peter, taking his breath and thought with it for a moment. It felt very like being slammed into the rail by a Force Five gale-wind.

  Damn!

  Silence. A silence profound enough to be a thing, a presence in itself.

  The room was empty again. The Old Man sagged against his staff. When did he pick that up? I didn't see him get it—

  "Well," Alderscroft said, his voice hoarse with effort. "That's done it for now." He straightened with an effort, and looked around at the rest of the members of the Circle, who were, one by one, getting back to their feet and putting themselves to rights. He smiled, and Peter felt as if the Old Man had smiled at him, alone, although he knew very well that every other member of the White Lodge felt the same at that moment. It was part of Alderscroft's personal magic, his charisma, that had made him the Head of the Council for so very long and kept him there.

  "Well done, old chaps," the Old Man said, in tones that made Peter glow and forget every grievance he had ever had for that moment. "Well done. Now, who's for a drink? I damned well think we've earned it."

  Peter sighed, and followed the others out into the War Room, certain he had earned his drink, but equally certain that there was nothing to celebrate.

  MAYA was hiding in the hospital linen closet, wishing that the day was over and she could go home to a cold supper and a colder bath.

  It had been a long, exhausting day—first at the clinic, then here at the hospital. To begin with, London had been suffering from a heat wave for a week, and today had begun not just warm, but hot, even by her standards. After spending the morning sweating and panting in her black linen suit through one emergency after another, she came home drenched and ready to drop. She hadn't been able to face food, or even the thought of food, only glass after glass of tepid sweet tea. There was no ice; the ice man hadn't yet made his delivery. There was no breeze, and she had ordered Gupta to send a boy to the baker for precooked pies they could eat cold so that he could put out the fire in the kitchen stove.

  The suit she had worn all morning was ready to stand by itself; she took it off, took everything off, and couldn't face putting all that hot black linen on again, nor the corsets, nor the layers of petticoats and camisoles. Retiring to the bathroom, she took a full cold bath, which finally made her feel less like a doll of melting wax, and wished that she could just stay there for the rest of the day.

  But she had duty this afternoon at the hospital.

  Finally, at the last possible moment, she pulled herself out of the bath and rummaged in the back of her closet for the garments she had brought from India, the clothing of coolest cotton gauze that she had worn when helping her father at the height of summer before the monsoons came. No corset, only a modesty vest and a lacy camisole to disguise the fact that she wasn't wearing a corset. One petticoat, and short drawers, with the lightest of silk stockings. Then a girlish, cotton "lingerie dress" of the kind worn to garden parties in the stifling heat—loosely woven, reflective white, embellished with a froth of cotton lace, airy enough to be bearable. With this dress, she broke strict mourning. At the moment, it was either that, or die of heat stroke. If she looked more like a debutante at a garden party than a doctor, right now everyone else was so hot that no one seemed to have noticed what she was wearing. This dress was almost as comfortable and practical as her saris.

  Almost as comfortable as a sari is not enough, not today. And she couldn't wait to get back home and put one of her saris on, for even the white dress seemed an unbearable burden.

  The wards were full of cholera and typhoid patients; weather like this, with no rain for a week and none in sight, was ripe for an outbreak as water supplies grew stagnant and tainted. She made Gupta boil every drop of water they used, and tried to convince her patients to do the same, but it was a fruitless battle. Her people couldn't afford the fuel it took to boil water, even when it came from a pump that put out murky liquid that smelled like a cistern. That assumed they had something to boil it on; the poor often didn't even have much of a fireplace in their little rooms, just a tiny grate barely big enough for a single pot or kettle. When they cooked for themselves, they often made up a dish and left it at the baker's, to be put in the oven for a fee. Mostly, they ate cheap fare from street vendors—who also weren't washing their hands or boiling their water.

  The only reason they don't all die of cholera and typhoid is probably because they mostly don't drink water, they drink boiled tea or beer from a stall. Or gin.


  The wards were like ovens. Only those with high fevers benefited, for to them, the air was cooler than they were. Poor things; there was ice here, but not for charity patients. People lay in their beds with a single sheet over them, sweating and in pain; the nurses couldn't bring water to them fast enough and boiling teakettles for clean, sterilized drinking water only added to the heat. Maya had put every visiting relative to work, fanning the invalids and sponging their faces, and even that didn't help much.

  The only place she'd found that was even marginally cooler than the rest of the hospital was this small room for linen storage. Here, where the air smelled faintly of bleach and clean fabric, where the cries of those in the wards were muffled, and where she was, for the moment, alone, Maya rested her forehead on a shelf support and clung to it with both hands, hoping to find a little more energy to take her through the next two hours before she could go home. Tendrils of hair clung damply to her forehead and the back of her neck; her scalp was sweating, and the pompadour on the top of her head felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

  I knew it would be like this. And I am helping them. I'm helping them more than most of the other doctors here are. Most—well, many, anyway—of the other doctors had made rounds early in the day before it became so terribly hot, and now were at home themselves, probably having iced gin and tonics. At least this once there was an advantage in being a woman. She could wear a cool dress here and a sari at home, but no gentleman would ever be seen, even in the comfort of his own parlor, without at least a linen suit coat, trousers, and fine shirt.

  There were no surgeries scheduled in this heat, although, of course, if an emergency came in that needed immediate surgery, someone would have to be found to deal with it.

  Pray God one doesn't come in. The operating theaters were worse than ovens, with the skylights letting in the direct sunlight. The Female Theater didn't bear thinking about, former attic as it was, and Maya swore to herself that if she had a woman come in needing an emergency operation, she was going to use the Men's Theater, and damn the consequences.

  Wounds went septic horribly fast in this heat; limbs that could be salvaged in cooler weather almost always had to be amputated. Please, no amputations today, she thought, almost in despair. I cannot deal with an amputation today, not on top of everything else—

  "Hiding, are we?" said a detested voice from behind her, in a tone probably intended to be suave, that only sounded slimy. "And just what are you doing here where you shouldn't be?"

  Simon Parkening. Just what I needed to put a cap on my day. "I have every right to be here, Mister Parkening, since I work in this hospital," Maya replied crisply, turning to face the interloper, and emphasizing the man's lack of the honorific of "doctor." "I, however, would very much like to know why you are here. As far as I am aware, you have no need for hospital linens."

  Parkening's eyes widened in momentary surprise, then a broad, smug grin spread over his face. "Well, well! If it isn't the little lady doctor. I didn't recognize you in such a very becoming gown. I thought you were some young wench on a larking visit, hiding from her beau."

  "Well, now that you know better, you can go on about your business," Maya retorted, a queasy feeling rising in her stomach, her forehead starting to sweat with nervousness. She did not like the expression on Parkening's face, nor the speculative look in his eyes. "I have a great deal of work to do, and I need to get back to it, and if you came to see your uncle, you'll find him at his home."

  "That's coming on a bit strong, don't you think?" Parkening replied, taking a step nearer. "You can't expect me to believe that you came here dressed like that—" he gestured at her gown, "—intending to work? Do you take me for a fool? You were waiting here to meet someone, weren't you?"

  To Maya's horror, he moved closer.

  "You're hiding in here to meet with your lover, aren't you?" he said, grinning nastily. "Who is it? That filthy Irishman? I suppose a little half-breed like you would take up with some mongrel like him—"

  Suddenly his hands shot out, and he seized her by the upper arms before she could move.

  "You ought to try a real white man, not a miserable dog of a Mick," he continued, then pulled her to him with a jerk, forcing his mouth down on hers. His teeth ground into her lips as he tried to force them open with his tongue. He crushed her against his chest in a cruelly hard grip with one hand clenched tight enough to bruise her biceps, while his free hand groped for her breast, pawing at her with lust. She couldn't open her mouth to scream without getting his filthy tongue down her throat.

  But something in her reacted to the outrage with potent fury.

  No!

  Shock galvanized her and filled her with diamond-hard hate; they combined in a single moment of sheer outrage, and before she thought, she struck at him— but not with her fists, with her mind.

  Earth-born power rose within her unbidden; lava-hot with rage, it welled up inside her and overflowed, all in an instant. She couldn't have controlled it if she'd wanted to, and she didn't want to. It rose up in a mountainous wave, paused, and avalanched down on Simon Parkening, smashing him with a crushing blow before she could take a smothered breath.

  He choked, let her go; she staggered backward a pace, and he dropped like a stone, sprawling on the floor of the storage room as if a champion boxer had just laid him out.

  Maya gasped, and stumbled back into the support of the shelves, one hand on the upright, the other at her bruised lips.

  What have I done? Is he dead?

  For one long moment she could hardly breathe for the panic that thought triggered. But then, when Parkening groaned and stirred a little, sense reasserted itself, and her outrage returned.

  I defended myself, that's what I've done! And there's nothing wrong with that! As anger broke through the shock and allowed her to think again, Parkening brought up both hands, slowly, to his head, and curled into a fetal position. From the look of him, he wasn't going to wake up very soon, and when he did—-he'd be hurting. She put out her hand, slowly, to get a sense of what she'd done to him.

  Something—like a concussion. Serves you right, you—you cad! she thought at him, hot anger choking her and making her flush. If I didn't know that your uncle would blame me for this, I'd turn you in to him, I would!

  But Clayton-Smythe would take one look at her, and probably decide that she had tried to seduce his nephew, and not the other way around. No—this would have to do for punishment. She bent over and touched him on the shoulder—briefly—just long enough to determine exactly how much damage she'd done.

  Not enough, she thought with scorn, her insides twisted with the wish that she had been able to do more than merely strike him. He'll just have the devil of a headache when he wakes up. It probably won't be any worse than the hangovers he has all the time. Wonder at her own strength broke through the anger then; she'd had no idea she could hurt someone as well as heal them! I wonder what he'll think I did? Probably that I hit him with the nearest bedpan.

  Well, she had—it just wasn't what he'd think she'd hit him with.

  Enough dithering. What do I look like? She spent a moment putting her dress back in order, and patted her hair into place. Above all, she had to make certain no one would suspect that she and Parkening had so much as exchanged a greeting, much less what he had actually attempted. Her reputation was at stake here, and she dared allow nothing to mar it. There. Now— fix this situation—

  For the first time that day, she blessed the heat, blessed the fact that no one had actually seen her go into this room, and stepped over his body.

  "Nurse!" she called shrilly, backing out of the door hastily, as if she had only just stepped in. "Nurse! Bring an orderly! There's a man on the floor of the linen room with heat stroke!"

  The head ward nurse came running at her call, with an orderly following. She pursed her lips when she recognized Simon Parkening, but said nothing except, "Well! Master Parkening, is it? Now what business did he have here?"

 
; Maya shrugged as if it was of no moment. "Is it Parkening, Nurse Haredy? I didn't recognize him. I don't know or care," she replied, supervising the orderly who hauled the unconscious man up and draped a limp arm over his shoulder. "But if we don't get him off the charity ward and into a private bed with all the little comforts, his uncle will blame us."

  The head nurse frowned, then suddenly smiled. "Nurse Fortenbrase with all her airs can have the care of him, and I'll be washing my hands of him," she told the orderly, who hauled a groaning Parkening off to a wheeled stretcher for transport to a better class of care.

  "I wish I could trade him weight-for-weight for a block of ice," Maya said sourly, startling a laugh out of the Nurse Haredy. "Well, let's get on with it. Just because a spoiled brat faints in our ward the work doesn't stop."

  "True enough, Doctor," the nurse nodded, and the two of them went back to tending people who deserved better care than Simon Parkening, but unfortunately weren't likely to get it.