Heart of Light (13 page)

Nigel and Peter smoked thin, Turkish cigarettes,
which Peter extracted from a battered silver cigarette case in his pocket and offered to Nigel, who didn't want to offend him by refusing. They sat on white wicker chairs beyond the great windows of the dining room.

Within, the dinner hour wound down. Outside, the night surrounded them—warm and deep and dark. Palm trees stretched into the distance, and bushes for which Nigel lacked names blanketed the reddish soil. From somewhere deep within the garden came a strange shrieking sound that might be a bird or an insect, but sounded like a lost soul begging for release. Occasionally fireflies flickered in the night. Here and there, something golden glimmered at brush level—probably animal eyes.

The Turkish cigarettes smelled minty and sweet, like tobacco crossed with an exotic confection. They left a honeyed, sickly taste in the mouth, similar to what followed a great fever or debilitating illness.

Smoke drifted in clouds around the two men, making Peter appear to Nigel as an illusion—magic-called. Nigel closed his eyes partly and wondered from where the ethereal feel came. Peter did not look immaterial in the least, with his British, rugged good looks, his curling black hair. He had grown up just as Nigel expected—a dark Englishman, broad shouldered and blunt featured, a credit to the empire, a notable example of British youth.

So what was Peter doing here, alone and unattached to any governmental outfit, any outreaching arm of the queen's might? Not a man given to profound studies of character, still Nigel felt that men like Peter were dangerous when their passions were not attached to a safe cause.

Nigel filled his mouth with aromatic smoke and exhaled forcefully, blowing more clouds of blue smoke into the air.

The breeze whispered through the leaves and the wicker chairs creaked beneath the Englishmen's weight. The fragrance of plants and wild growth mingled with the scents of curry and cooking from within the restaurant. And though Nigel knew there was no jungle close to Cairo, he knew he was in Africa and imagined the jungle like a green animal, stretching over the continent.

They were alone in the smoke-wreathed calm outside. The tourists and the locals within the restaurant could not hear them. The exotic city of Cairo beyond the hotel's garden might as well have been in a different world. Alone with Peter, Nigel was conscious of the uneasiness between them, as palpable as the dry heat that surrounded them.

Once they'd had no secrets from each other. Of course, they'd been boys and innocent, their secrets few and mostly pertaining to illegal pets and filched biscuits. Now they might still be friends but a barrier had fallen between them. Peter was not living the life he should be living.

“I thought you'd be in the army by now, old chap,” Nigel said. “The army or the diplomatic corps. Why didn't either suit you?”

Peter slanted his eyes and looked sideways, like a lizard spying his way out of a tight corner. His eyes seemed to flicker, yellow-green, as if he'd blinked an invisible inner eyelid.

Nigel could not define in words the exact shading of evasion in Peter's face. But he knew that something about Peter's career bothered him, or hurt him, like an old wound still raw to the touch. Something more than Nigel's expectations had been disappointed.

Peter scuffed at the ground with thick armylike boots, quite out of keeping with the refined lines of his suit. He stretched his legs, an obvious attempt to look relaxed and casual. “Oh,” he drawled, his voice forcing itself to a slow and contemplative cadence, “you know, old bean, I was never one to fit the mold. I was no Carew.”

It was Nigel's turn to narrow his eyes in suspicion. Perhaps not. Perhaps Peter had never fit in, which was why they'd become friends. So that the two, outcasts in different ways, had made a pact against the blustering flange of unruly English schoolboys.

And yet, for all his strange ways, Peter had the ability to not do exactly what he'd been asked and yet achieve what the masters desired all the same. He'd been the owner of his own destiny, only conforming enough to be left in peace. But this should not have stopped now that he was an adult. He
should
have charmed his way to success and riches.

Peter shifted in his chair. “Listen, Nigel,” he said. “I couldn't really join the army. Or that other army of paper-pushers that's the civil service.” He looked over his shoulder at the lighted windows of the hotel, as though he feared someone within might be eavesdropping on them. But inside, all remained as it had been—ladies and gentlemen, attired in the best English fashion, laughed and gossiped, quite unaware of the two men outside.

“Why not?” Nigel said. “You'd be an officer, you know. It would require no more discipline than our days at Four Towers did, surely?”

Peter's gaze fell pityingly on Nigel for a moment. It was the glance of an adult looking down on childhood follies. “Nigel, do you think it's quite right what we're doing? What Britain is doing?” Peter sucked at his cigarette like a dying man, then expelled the smoke noisily, as though it were his last breath. The great cloud that enveloped him felt like a visible exclamation mark aimed at Nigel's thickheadedness.

Peter had often looked like that back in their Four Towers days, when he'd tried to persuade Nigel of some theory they'd not yet learned, or to show him math beyond what the masters had expounded. “I mean, the empire on which the sun never sets and all that rot?” Peter coaxed, his voice on the thin edge of exasperation. “Don't you find it funny that an insular race would storm out of their tiny island and feel no qualms over laying down the law and ruling strange peoples whose history is much older than ours?

“Doesn't it worry you, at times, how the empire works? What we're doing in all these foreign lands, telling natives how to live a life that surely they knew how to live before we arrived here? I mean India . . .”

Nigel's eyes widened. He'd never thought about the empire much, other than to ascertain that it existed and that it seemed to have a right to exist. He tried to articulate such a thought. “Well, we've done a lot of good, haven't we?” But the words seemed leaden and nonexpressive. He tried to name some good the empire might have wrought. “I mean, we stopped tribal warfare and . . . and human sacrifice, and mad, power-hungry tribal chiefs, and all—er—haven't we?”

Peter watched him with an ironic smile that was more in the expression in his eyes than in the curve of his lips. He flicked ash from his cigarette with a quick, tapping finger. “Have we? Or have we simply taken the place of the tribal chiefs and bathed our hands red in as much blood as any local despot ever did—only more so, because we don't have the need? It's not our survival at stake. Just our hunger for power, our need to prove we're stronger than other nations.”

“Er . . .” Nigel said. He cleared his throat and looked down at his hands holding the slim-looking cigarette that leaked a curl of bluish smoke into the air. “I suppose we had to crack a few heads to get the natives to listen, what? I suppose we were sometimes a little brutal. The Highland regiments . . .” But he remembered in time that Peter's mother hailed from Scotland, and stilled his tongue. “Overall, we have made these parts more civilized and brought the rule of law to a people who never before had it.”

“Nigel, if you're talking of Cairo, they've had law in one form or another since the Code of Hammurabi.”

“Oh, I know,” Nigel said peevishly, because he had absolutely no idea who or what Hammurabi might have been, or since when this code had existed. He really didn't care for history or law, or the history of law among backward men in distant lands. “But their law is not like ours,” he said. “And our law and our magical science have improved these people's lives. Even if that required some blood to be shed. Surely we did the right thing. You know, white man's burden and all that . . .” He searched his memory of newspaper reports on the disturbances in the far reaches of the empire.

Peter whispered something under his breath. It sounded to Nigel's ears as “We taught them to wear pants . . .”

But Nigel didn't challenge it nor ask for an explanation. He was not about to discuss the ancient roots or inherent merits of native attire, about which Peter doubtless knew a crushingly great deal. Instead, Nigel forged headlong into
his
explanation. “At any rate, there's no great insurrection in the empire now, is there? Pax Britannica and all that. The last great battle was that Zulu uprising put down at Isandhlwana a generation ago. You can't tell me the region isn't better off without Zulu imperialism.”

“The region can only take one form of imperialism at a time,” Peter said, and showed his teeth in what clearly wasn't a smile. “And yet, we keep troops all over the empire,” he said.

“Plum assignments, and you know it,” Nigel said. “Almost a vacation for the troops.”

“Plum assignments, indeed. A vacation, Nigel?” He stubbed his cigarette upon the wicker arm of his chair and rose in one fluid movement and turned. “Let us not argue, Nigel. You're my friend and I—”

A scream split the warm, dark night.

A woman's scream, high and desperate, full of fear.

It came from above, in the hotel, and the voice was unmistakably Emily's.

MAIDEN IN DISTRESS

“Emily!” Nigel exclaimed.

Peter started through the door behind them and into the restaurant, running headlong between the tables. Nigel threw himself upright and surged after Peter, bounding between the white cloth-draped tables, seeing but not thinking of the shocked expressions of the remaining diners.

He avoided a waiter who appeared in front of him by jumping sideways, and felt his hip nudge the corner of a table. A woman exclaimed in outrage, and crockery broke. He did not turn back, nor did he offer excuses. Instead, he ran with the nimbleness that had eluded him on the sports fields. Following the feel of Emily's distress, he overtook Peter, and ran past him onto the staircase that led to the upper floors.

A floor beneath Emily's, her magical call and her scream both stopped abruptly, a candle snuffed.

Nigel plunged headlong into the fifth-floor hallway where'd he'd reserved rooms months ago, ran madly down the hallway, came to the door with the room number that had been assigned to Emily. He knocked for a second before reaching for the knob, trying it. The door sprang open. The room was deserted, but the door in the far corner, which presumably led to his own room, stood open. Scarcely pausing to draw breath, Nigel ran through it. And stopped.

The scene within was like something out of a fable.

Emily—young and innocent, like the fairy princess in a childhood tale, in her velvet dress, her dark hair spilling down her back—stood by the window struggling with a huge ethereal being, seemingly composed of shadow and black cloud.

The creature was twice as large as life and twice as dark as the blackest coal. It roared and clawed at her with massive talons. Its mouth ripped into Emily's shoulder and she screamed and writhed in pain, though her body looked unharmed. Her power, on the other hand, oozed a hazy halo of leaking magic, clearly visible to Nigel's mage sense.

Nigel blinked, realizing he'd stopped dead in the doorway as Peter, coming up behind, collided with him, then checked his advance with a sudden gasp.

The attacker looked like a hyena, but a hyena woven of shadow or darkness. It was as though all the darkest nights of the world had coalesced and taken form. Emily's bright, shining power, which twined her physical form in light, was in a life-and-death struggle.

The beast hunched and reared and roared, and sought the throat of Emily's magic. This thing, visible only to Nigel's mage-sight, was as much a part of Emily as a heart or a brain. Without it, Emily would not survive.

Nigel heard himself scream in denial as he surged forward. He grabbed Emily's shoulders and pulled her backward, trying to wrench her away from the creature. But it was as though her feet were stuck fast to the floor. She could not move without her power, and her power was held captive.

Nigel took a deep breath. Carried on a tide of crazed bravery—Emily's name upon his lips like a prayer—he forced himself between Emily and the thing. The touch of the shadow creature was like a burn. Nigel knew he would die as the men at the safe house had died, consumed by a magical flame.