A Study in Sable (24 page)

“Good,”
said Neville, and, relieved of his duty to play sentry over Suki, tucked his head under his wing. Nan took the book away from Suki and put it down on the little table between the beds. She changed quickly into her nightdress, blew out the candle, and got into bed. She didn't expect to fall asleep soon, both because of the strange bed and the strange country sounds coming in the window, but no sooner had she put her head to the pillow than she felt herself drowsing.

Must . . . have been . . . the scrumpy,
she thought. And the next thing she knew it was morning, and Mary Watson was tapping on the bedroom door.

• • •

Nan was very glad she had packed sturdy boots for herself and Suki; these country paths, as she knew from her time in Cornwall, were no joke to be hiking over in city shoes. Suki was doing a fine job of keeping up, and Neville performed yeoman's duty as an aerial scout. Although it was likely thought by people outside the city that Londoners took cabs everywhere, the fact was most people in London did a great deal of walking, and the four of them were no exception.

Because this was a market town and right on the railway, there were a lot of strangers coming and going. They attracted no attention at all. And a lack of attention was exactly what they wanted.
People probably assumed they were going to visit the famous “country house” of Knole, one of the largest houses in the country; the fact that John was carrying a picnic basket packed for them by the staff at the hotel reinforced that. And it was possible that the altar they were seeking lay within the heavily wooded parklands belonging to the house.

It didn't take them very long to find the path marked on the rough map that Lord Alderscroft had sent John. At first, they walked mostly through meadows dotted with sheep and a few cattle, with Neville soaring overhead, occasionally uttering a
quork
to urge them to keep up. The path took a turn between two planted fields, then plunged into a wooded valley. That was where Neville joined them, changing his flight style from gliding above them to short flights along the path, keeping just ahead of them and serving as a sort of scout.

Suki was enraptured. She had adored the overgrown garden at Hampton Court Palace, but this was her first real experience of woodlands.

The trees were enormous. Not that Nan was any stranger to enormous trees, but not growing so closely together as these. There was a deep sense of
age
under the cool of their thick branches. Would Puck appear? Nan thought probably not; he didn't know John and Mary, and he was likely to be cautious around them. But in addition to hearing and getting glimpses of wildlife under these trees, she was hearing and getting glimpses of the
other
life in this protected place.

Here, a rustle and a glimpse of a tiny thing scuttling away from the path, a creature that seemed as much made of twigs and leaves as flesh and blood.

If Earth Elementals have flesh and blood . . .

There, a brief flash of eyes and hair, which faded into a tree trunk. The drumming of tiny hooves—a lamb? A kid? Or a faun? A momentary flurry of faint color overhead—that was surely a sylph.

Suki led, romping along the path, stopping to crouch and look at something in the grass or turning and running backward to make sure they were keeping up. John walked a little ahead of Mary and Nan; Mary kept glancing over at Nan, with a quizzical look on her face.

“Can you see them?” she asked, finally. “The Elementals, I mean?”

Nan nodded. “Fauns, dryads, some little gnome-y things, things that fairy-tale books Suki reads call ‘elves,' although I don't believe they are using the word correctly. Sylphs, I think. I wouldn't expect to see Fire Elementals out here, nor Water, unless we happen across a pond or a brook.”

Mary glanced at Suki, who was bent over and talking to something in the grass. “And now she can see them, too. It must be some sort of spell.”

“Probably. Although if what Lord Alderscroft has told us about the Great Elementals is true, he could simply have
willed
the ability to us. Puck also gave Sarah a charm that protects her against harmful ghosts, although at the time he said that even harmful ones don't have much power, and warned her not to depend on it against anything that wasn't a ghost.” Nan half-smiled. “That's why we didn't use it on the Shadow Beast. That, and we wanted the Shadow Beast to think we were helpless so we could be proper bait.”

They had been walking along a line of twisted, gnarled, very old trees for some time now. The fact that they were at least twenty-five feet high testified to their age. A line that was as perfectly straight as if someone had planted the trees deliberately. Trees that . . . now that she came to think of it . . . looked all alike.

She looked over at Mary. “What are these trees?” she asked, waving her hand at the row.

“Hawthorn,” Mary said. “Why?”

Hawthorn! She looked at them again. But they were so tall! The hawthorns she had seen in Cornwall hadn't been nearly this tall; most, in fact, had been hedges. It was the size that had fooled her; this was a line of the “thorns” of “oak, ash, and thorn,” the trees of Puck's magic, and—yes, sure enough, on the other side of the path were equally ancient oaks and ashes. Those weren't planted in a straight line, and they were mixed with limes, beeches and yews, but they were certainly there. This meant something. She didn't know, what, yet, but it surely meant
something.

The stretch of woodland through which they were walking ended
abruptly up ahead; Nan could see sunlight beating down on meadow grass up there. Suddenly, she didn't want this to end. It was so very peaceful, walking beneath these forest giants, birds everywhere, in the close, still, cool air beneath their canopy. This was a fairy-tale forest, and every breath she took in it was scented with magic.

The path broke out from under the trees into an irregular patch of meadow; their appearance startled a herd of deer, who all looked up at them in alarm and dashed away. The path went on through the meadow and into another patch of younger woodland, but Nan looked uphill and saw that the top of the hill was crowned with oaks just as ancient, if not more ancient, than the patch of forest they had just left. And she knew, although she did not know how she knew, that their goal was there.

“Up there,” she said, pointing. Neville flew to her shoulder and regarded the oaks, then nodded once. Then he flew off and vanished into the trees, and from somewhere ahead they heard him calling.

Suki edged closer to her and took her hand. John nodded, and took Mary's, indicating to her that she should take the lead.

Neville continued to call at intervals, modulating his voice to his normal
quorks
as they drew closer to him. There was a dense thicket of younger hawthorn—a hedge almost—around the base of the oaks, and she couldn't see any way to get in. But she followed the sound of Neville's voice and, just when she least expected it, she all but stumbled into the gap in the hedge that let them all inside.

And there was another, moss-grown path, leading off to the right, curving gently between two walls of thick growth. She looked back at John.

“This fits the description Lord Alderscroft relayed to me,” he replied, and gestured that she should continue to lead.

The path was barely wide enough for a single person, so Nan put Suki behind her, between herself and Mary Watson, with John Watson bringing up the rear.

The path seemed to go on, and on—for far longer than it
should
have, since they never started downhill again, only up. It was John Watson who finally said, “I think we are going in a circle.”

“Easy enough to tell,” Mary replied, and pulled off the pretty ribbon she wore at her throat instead of a necklace. They all stopped while she tied it to a twig, then they went on, leaving the bright bit of color hanging limply in the still air.

Nan counted off the paces as they walked. When she got to a hundred, she heard Mary call out. “I see the ribbon! Look through the hedge to the right.”

At first Nan couldn't imagine what Mary thought she saw, but then she moved her head, and got the flash of bright blue on the
other
side of three feet of trees and underbrush.

“Not a circle then, a spiral,” John grumbled. “I wish Lord Alderscroft's informant had given us that little detail.”

“The boy probably had more hair than wit,” Mary muttered. “Wandering about the Downs composing odes to ferns, no doubt.”

Nan smothered a laugh, and said over her shoulder, “Air Magician?”

“Head full of air, more like,” John retorted. “Yes, I believe he was Air.”

Mary laughed aloud. “Sadly, my love, Air Magicians cannot all be as level-headed as I. Well, the stone we are looking for must be at the heart of this spiral, and it is a good way to conceal such a thing. Press on, Nan.”

Try as she might, Nan could not sense anything sinister
at all
about this place. On the contrary, it seemed solemn, as if she was walking down an aisle in a little green church.

She glanced back at Suki, who had been remarkably quiet since they entered this grove, and saw in the child's face some of the same solemnity that she felt. There was nothing of the smoldering repression Suki sometimes showed when she was being “quieted” against her will. It appeared more as if she felt she was in the presence of something that required silence and attentiveness.

And then, without warning, the path ended in a clearing.

It was about twenty feet across and open to the sky, full of flattened grass, as if deer came in here to lie down on a regular basis. In the center was a great stone slab, propped up on four rough-cut
stone legs. The rest of the clearing was nothing but grass and flowers, hundreds, thousands, of clover flowers. The still air was full of their faint scent. Nan quickly moved out of the way so the others could enter.

John cleared his throat self-consciously. “Well . . . this seems to be it. Nan?”

“Wot 'bout me?” Suki asked.

Nan considered that for a moment. Suki was absolutely no stranger to violent death. Like Nan, she had probably seen more murders in her first nine years of life than anyone other than a soldier ever would even be able to
imagine
in an entire lifetime. And Suki might well see something that she would not; no two psychometrists ever got the same visions from the same object.

“Surely not—” Mary objected, but Nan waved her off.

“Let me see if it's dangerous first. If not, then you may help me, Suki.” Suki's face was still solemn, and Nan added, “Don't be disappointed if you don't see anything either. You're still just learning how to use the Talent.”

“Oil roight,” Suki agreed, and hung back as Nan approached the stone table, knelt down in the soft grass next to it, and gingerly placed her hand—

Blood. Blood poured over her hand, soaking her sleeve, blood streamed over the stone and—

She took her hand away, blinking. Because, yes, the image had been horrific . . . and yet . . . completely lacking in any emotional impact. No horror. No terror.

“What did you see?” John asked anxiously.

“That this place has been used as a place of sacrifice, and very recently, too,” she said. “Let me try again.”

She placed her hand on the stone again, this time prepared for the image of blood pouring over the stone and onto her hand.

The blood poured over the stone, down grooves cut into it for the purpose, over her hand and into a bowl placed to receive it. There was an animal on the stone; it blurred before her eyes, but she concentrated, and then she could see it. It was a fallow deer, a stag, with huge, heavy
antlers, its eyes were closed, and its throat had been cut. It was dark. The only light came from four torches thrust into the earth around the stone table.

There was a man . . . a shadow against the starry sky. She struggled to see him. Slowly, he came into focus. Blond, square-jawed, in his midtwenties, she thought. He wore a pair of stag antlers on his head, and in his right hand, he held a bloody flint knife. He had painted his face and chest with the blood.

And
now
she felt emotion, from that ancient warrior she once had been. Rage. Rage rose up in a flood over her, overwhelming everything else. Red, hot, raving anger so great she could scarcely contain it. She reached for her bronze sword—

And broke contact with the stone. The vision vanished, and so did her anger.

“Suki, come here,” she said carefully. Unlike her, Suki did not seem to have the spirit of a long-dead Celtic she-warrior in her. Suki might be able to see more than she could. Mary made a strangled sound, but John hushed her.

Suki knelt beside her in the grass, carefully not touching the altar, not yet. “Suki, a man came here and killed a deer on this stone. There will be a lot of blood. Do you think that will frighten you?” Nan said, knowing already what the answer would be.

Suki's little face twisted with scorn. “Oi bain't skerrit,” she said, dismissively. “Oi weren't skerrit when Bob Malsey tookit 'is shiv an' cut up Black Reggie so'is guts run out in street. Oi ain't gonna be skerrit fer a liddle blood wot ain't really there.”

Mary made another little strangled sound.
Poor Mary. She looks at Suki and thinks ‘delicate little flower' when Suki is about as delicate as a ferret.
“All right then, Suki, go ahead and touch the stone and see what you can see. If you don't like it, just pull your hand away. I'll be right here.”

She took Suki's left hand in hers so Suki could reach out to touch the stone with her right. The child's eyes glazed over, but she gave no sign of being afraid. Nor did she give any indication that she felt the same incandescent rage that Nan had. Rather, she had a look of
profound concentration, as if she was committing everything she saw to memory.