Phoenix and Ashes (14 page)

Eventually
the nurse made her rounds, discovered the death, and an orderly brought screens
to put up around the bed. That had never made sense to Reggie; what difference
did screens make? Everyone knew the poor blighter was dead. The presence of the
screens only confirmed that. A metal frame and a bit of cloth was not going to
create the illusion that he was still alive.

A
VAD girl put out all of the lamps but the one at her duty-station; and Reggie
steeled himself for the night. Night was the worst. Night, when the ward closed
in around him, when the men drifted off into drugged slumber, and there was no
one conscious to talk. He wasn’t supposed to get morphia to sleep, but it
was the only way he
could
sleep, because those horrible things that
had tormented him had come in the dark, and even though he didn’t have
magic to attract them anymore, he lay in fear that they would come for him,
anyway, that they would know him without magic and come for him. They’d
come out of the shadows and surround him, and take him back under the ground,
under the stifling ground, and the torture would begin again. The long, thin,
fingers, dry and rustling, that had clutched at his throat—the heavy,
leaden weight pressing down on his chest—the lidless, glowing eyes in the
darkness—the fetid ooze that had dripped into his face from mouths with
swollen tongues protruding from between stained brown teeth—

He
clutched the blanket with both hands and stared at the ceiling, willing his
eyes to stay open, unable to move, as he had been unable to move then,
completely paralyzed. His heart pounded like the distant guns, shaking him. The
VAD girl passed and looked at him; he tried to open his mouth to ask for help,
for water, for anything to keep her there for a precious few moments, but his
body no longer answered to him. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t speak,
couldn’t even whisper. Fear flooded him. There was nothing in his world
but fear and the darkness, the darkness that was slowly eroding that last
circle of light at the end of the ward, and when it was gone, they would come,
and they would take him as they had always wanted to do.

Or
worse, the nurse would think he was dead, she would tell the orderlies and they
would come and take him away and put him, still living and unable to show it,
in the ground, and then—

—then,
with a sudden spasm, he could breathe again, and move. The fear
receded—not much, but enough for relief.

With
an effort, he threw the memories off, and stared fixedly at a wavering spot on
the ceiling, cast by the dim lamp. They weren’t here. The wights, the
wraiths, the goblins of the Earth, they weren’t here.

They
could never find him. He had nothing about himself to tell them where he was.

He
wasn’t an Elemental Mage anymore. They couldn’t touch him, they
couldn’t see him, they couldn’t find him. It was magic that called
them, and he had given his up, burned it out, walled it away. He had no magic,
nothing for them to find, and without that to call them, they wouldn’t
find him. No matter what those lipless mouths had whispered into his ear in the
dark of that buried bunker.

So he kept telling
himself, shivering under his blanket, long past the time when the orderlies came
and took away the body on a stretcher and carried off the screens, long past
the time when a new, groaning body was placed in the newly changed bed, right
into the moment when gray dawn began to creep across the windows. And then,
only then, could he let go his hold, and fall, senseless, into exhausted
slumber.

March 18, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire

EYES NARROWED IN
CONCENTRATION, ELEANOR knelt in front of the kitchen fire and stared at the
hearthstone directly before her, willing the symbol that she knew was magically
embedded there to appear. As she did so, she felt a thin trickle of power
flowing from her to it, a sensation that was unsettlingly like blood flowing
from a wound.

This
was the first time she had dared try anything with the spell binding her to the
house. Every time she meddled with one of Alison’s spells in order to
bend it even a little and change the conditions by which it held, she got this
sensation. Sarah said it was because she wasn’t yet able to get power
from outside herself.

The
spells guarding the pantry were weak, easy to bend enough that she could walk
through them just by sheer willpower, because Alison had not troubled herself
about them very much. Because this particular piece of magic had been laid
using
her
flesh, blood, and bone, it was one of the strongest spells
in the house, and if she actually
broke
it, no matter how far away her
stepmother was, Alison would feel the backlash and know what had happened.

She
had asked Sarah why they couldn’t simply dig up the stone and destroy the
finger (or what was left of it), but Sarah had blanched. “Don’t
even think of trying that,” the witch had said earnestly. “It would
kill both of us. The layers of protection she has on that stone would fell a
charging elephant. It’s not like in a fairy tale, child, where all you
need do is find the thing and be rid of it. No magician worth his salt would
put his major spells in place without protections.”

That
left the difficult task of insinuating around the protections and the spell
itself, of twisting and distorting the original spell to give Eleanor more
freedom, until the spell snapped back to its original form. Sarah could show
Eleanor how to work the magic that would lengthen Eleanor’s invisible
chain for a few hours, but Eleanor was going to have to learn how to actually
perform the magic for herself.

Her
shielding circle of protection was small, just big enough to hold her and the
stone. It was a good thing she wasn’t claustrophobic; she could actually
feel the boundaries of the circle pressing in on her.

There
must be something missing here. Why can’t I finish this thing
? She
stared down at the stone, and tried to remember what had let her get into the
pantry—

I
was angry. Would that help
? She let some of her anger and impatience trickle
down into it along with the power. And that turned the trick; the first hints
of a sullen glow appeared on the dull, grainy surface of the rock, then the
glyph came slowly to life, as if painted in lines that burned with malevolence.

She
knew now it would make her ill merely to touch it with a finger. Fortunately,
she wouldn’t have to.

With
twigs of oak, ash and thorn bound together into a wand, she traced the lines of
the glyph—and the closer she got to the end of her tracing, the harder it
was, physically, to move the wand, the more the nasty thing faded back into the
stone, blurring…

It
was as if the air had become thick and gluey, and the stone itself was trying
to take hold of the end of the wand and keep it from moving any further. The
last few fractions of an inch took all her strength.

The
moment she finished the tracing, all resistance to her movement vanished, the
glowing glyph evaporated, and she bent over her own knees, panting with
exertion. Her arms trembled and ached, and she felt as if she had been trying
to push Sisyphus’s stone up the hill in hell.

But
it was worth the effort—for a few hours, at least, she would be free to
leave the house now.

She
took the sprig of rosemary that she had plucked from the garden, broke it in
half, and laid half of it on the stone, putting the other half inside her
bodice where she could smell it. For as long as the rosemary was unwithered,
she would be free of the spell. The withering of the two sprigs of herb would
be her signal that she had about a quarter-hour to get back inside the
boundaries set about the house. Sarah had not been able to tell her what would
happen if she didn’t get back in time; “I know you’ll be
pulled back, and all I can say,” she had opined, “is that
you’ll regret it, for fair.”

Thinking
about her stepmother’s temper, and her pleasure in the pain of others,
Eleanor decided that she didn’t want to chance it. Tucking the wand into
a pocket along the seam of her skirt where it would be hidden, she dispelled
her protective circle and stood up.

“Well
done,” said Sarah, sounding quite pleased. “Now, since you’ve
done this for the first time, you’ll be fair useless for magic
today—so what would you like to be doing?”

“But
how am I going to learn anything—” she began, feeling alarm.

Sarah
shushed her, shaking her head. “Don’t get yourself in a pother;
after this, ‘twill be much easier each time you free yourself.
You’ve made the spell answer to your will now. You’ve put your bit
of a brick in the door; it can’t entirely close now. D’ye see?”

She
nodded; she
did
see. “Then—Sarah, can we get help
somehow?” She swallowed hard. If only someone would believe her in the
village—

But
Sarah shook her head. “There’s no magicians in the village at all
but me, and no one else is going to see past the spells she’s got in
place about you to keep people from recognizing you or believing you.”
She bit her lower lip. “Well, someone who was
completely
shielded would, but my dear—someone with that sort of shielding would be
a Master. Those spells were set with your blood too, and I don’t know
where or how.”

Eleanor
closed her eyes for a moment to swallow down her bitter disappointment.
“I don’t remember anything,” she admitted.

“You
wouldn’t. She probably set them outside the house, with the rags she used
to clean up the kitchen after she took off your finger,” Sarah said.
“Otherwise people wouldn’t be thinking that you’re up at
Oxford. Alison’s set the spell to make anyone as sees you think
you’re some daft little servant girl she got through some charity place.”

“That’s
what the servants we used to have thought,” she said, slowly. “So
even if I could make people understand what I’m saying to them, they are
still
going to think I’m mad.” If she hadn’t spent the last three
years in complete misery, she might have been thrown into despair by this
crushing of her hopes. “Well, look at me!” She laughed bitterly,
because no one would ever have recognized the old Eleanor Robinson, pampered
and petted, in the work-worn, shabby creature she was now. “Even without
a spell, no one would know me! People don’t look past clothing much, do
they?”

Sarah
shook her head. “I’m sorry, love, no they don’t. She
doesn’t need a spell to make you
look
like a scullery maid, does
she?”

Eleanor
felt the sting of tears in her eyes, and rubbed at them angrily with the back
of her hand. This was a lesson in humility she hadn’t thought she needed,
and yet—when she thought of all the times
she
had looked right
past anyone who was dressed as a low servant, expecting only to hear, at most,
a low-voiced and humble “Morning, miss,” paying no attention
whatsoever to anything else that might come out of that person’s
mouth—

Oh,
she had plenty of excuses for herself! That she couldn’t help how
she’d been brought up, that even the old vicar had on occasion preached
sermons about knowing one’s place—

Yes,
but—Just because you were taught something didn’t make it right
.

She
looked down at her work-worn hands. They were a bit better now, knuckles not
quite so swollen, cracks healing, but she would never lose the muscle and the
callus and have dainty lady’s hands again. She might as well be one of
them now, because that was what she looked like, and that was what everyone who
saw her would think she was. Servants. The lower classes. Inconsequential, to
be silent until spoken to, never to venture an opinion, much less disagree with
what their betters said. Of course, they were too ignorant to know what was
good for them. That was why God had placed others in authority over them,
wasn’t it? And the hierarchy of master over servant didn’t end
there, of course, because the servants themselves had their own hierarchy of
greater and lesser, each class lording it over the one beneath. And on what
justification? Because you were born into a particular family!

“Gad,
Sarah, why don’t they all rise up in the night and slit our
throats?” she cried, looking up.

Sarah
didn’t seem at all confused by the outburst. “I’m
told.” she said dryly, “That’s what they’re doing in
Roosha. So the papers say. So Mad Ross says.”

She
was distracted for a moment. “Ross Ashley is still here in the village?
Trying to make us all socialists?” Even before the war Ross had been
notorious in Broom, with his membership in the Clarion Cycling Club, his
socialist pamphlets and lectures, going about the country on his bicycle and
standing up on soapboxes at church fêtes and country fairs and singing
“The Red Flag” at the top of his lungs at every opportunity.

Sarah
nodded, half wryly, half in sympathy. “Oh, aye. Got conscripted, like
everyone else, discharged last year, lost half his left hand when his rifle
exploded, and lucky it didn’t take all of it and his face, too. Got a
quarter interest in a bicycle shop now with Alan Vocksmith. Alan’s rifle
blew up too; he lost an eye.”

The
distraction served its purpose; she lost that first, hot rush of anger. She
looked up at Sarah, setting her jaw. “If I can ever break this magic,
maybe I’ll help him,” she said. “But first, I have to break
free.”

“That
you do.” Sarah stood up and brushed off her apron. “Let’s
make the first start.”

Her
first feeling when she walked out of the garden gate was of disbelief, combined
with a rush of such elation that she felt giddy. She had not been outside of
those walls for so long that the commonplace street seemed as exotic as
Timbuktu. She was free! At long last, she was free, free to stand on the
street, free to wander where she wanted, free to—