Soul of Fire (47 page)

“Your uncle has . . . things he wants done, such as delegations to other were tribes—things he could not entrust publicly to one of his courtiers.”

“So you are his secret operative?” Lalita asked.

Again another small bow. “Something like that. I have traveled most of the globe, including China and Europe. I’ve seen something of the world, and learned a lot of languages. And now your uncle has called me home.”

“Ah.”

“You’ve probably guessed what his plans are?”

“Have I?”

He bowed to her. “You do know you are your uncle’s heir, do you not?”

“No,” Lalita said, in shock. “My uncle has sons. Maidan—”

Hanuman was shaking his head. “Your cousin Maidan has no more hope of getting the throne than I do. In fact, our hopes are exactly alike. They both depend on your choosing one of us as a husband.”

Lalita felt faint. To her lips, unbidden, came a protest; “One of you two?” she asked. “And no other?”

Hanuman laughed—a show of spirit more like the monkey-man she’d first met and unlike the very quiet and subdued monkey of today. “Oh, I’m sure others, if you can find them and if they are monkey-men, Princess.” Then his face sobered again. “But I will confess that your uncle, our king, thought you should choose from the two of us. Your cousin because he is of the royal family and of royal blood. By any understanding, his credentials are impeccable and he will be accepted by all the court.”

“And yourself?” Lalita asked.

“Myself, because I’m not any of those things. Your uncle thinks the line has perhaps had . . . too many cousin marriages and not enough outside blood. He likes my abilities, and the way I think, which he’s kind enough to term
unconventional.
And he thinks I would be a good . . .” He looked away from her. “Father of kings.”

She felt her cheeks heat and said, to change subject as much as because she wished to know, “None of which tells me why my uncle would make me his heir, nor what all of it means.”

“It is not a very common situation in the kingdom. You see, there are far more shifter men than shifter women. Women can and do carry the gene, but are rarely weres themselves. So normally the crown passes from father to the first son who is born with the power to shift forms.”

She bobbled her head in acknowledgment. She knew all this.

“But when a were-woman is born anywhere in the royal family, that means that all her sons will be of exceptional ability, and all of them will be weres. So the woman is always the heir in those cases.” He looked as if he was calculating mentally. “It’s happened . . . five times in the recorded history of our people. And all their sons were those that history does not forget.”

“Oh,” Lalita said. “So my uncle sent you and Maidan . . .”

“Well, your uncle sent me first,” he said, and grinned. “But then Maidan persuaded him to give him a chance also. And Maidan is his firstborn and favorite son.”

“Then he was not in the temple at Benares,” she said, and felt a considerable relief at the idea that her cousin had not been among those many monkeys scrabbling at her clothing.

“No,” Hanuman said.

“Tell me, Hanuman, and tell me true, did my uncle also order you to secure my friend Miss Warington so that she could be sacrificed to heal the ruby?”

The answer was immediate. “No. I will not deny that we had an interest in acquiring the ruby. But your uncle never considered blood magics as a way of cleansing it, Princess!” His voice reproached her for even thinking it. “You know that is not the way of our people.”

“Then what did you intend to do with the ruby?”

“Even flawed and broken as it is,” Hanuman said, “your uncle believed it would show the direction of the other ruby. I’m not . . . perhaps . . .” he added, with a thoughtful look, “the greatest magician who ever lived. But I am undeniably one of the best witch-sniffers. Your uncle thought me capable of following the link of magic between the rubies even without Soul of Fire pointing at the other one. And so I would be. And then, in possession of the other ruby, the one that’s whole . . .” He shrugged, as if to say it didn’t matter.

“And have you now wholly given up any hope of getting the ruby?” Lalita asked.

He looked surprised. “Of course not.”

“I see,” she said. “You simply do not intend to do battle with the dragon for it?”

“No need to do battle with the dragon, Princess. In my experience, monkeys are best at pinching what’s unguarded, and obtaining what’s forgotten. The dragon won’t always be vigilant, and I thought . . .”

It was her turn to laugh, remembering his performance as sweeper in the Waringtons’ household, and the way he’d stolen the ruby from under their eyes. She wondered, for just a moment, if Hanuman was ever capable of gravity. If she married him, would he be serious in lovemaking? Or was everything a game with him?

“But I think,” Hanuman said, suddenly pensive, as if he’d heard her thought, “the dragon might be truthful about the rubies. He says that he gave Heart of Light to his friend. And having had Heart of Light in his reach, why would he want Soul of Fire? Unless he was telling the truth?”

He gave a theatrical sigh. “I wonder if your uncle knew that. And if this was a test for me as well, to see how sharp I am. I think the ruby might be too dangerous a way to obtain freedom for our people. If your friend were not still in danger, I’d abandon the game now.”

She pulled her mind forcibly away from some foolish questions and asked, “You think the dragon has found her?”

“If I read his look right, I think that particular dragon would move Earth and sky to find her,” Hanuman said. “And not for the ruby, either.”

“What would you know of his look?”

“I have seen it in my mirror.”

She choked a little, but forged on. “So, we are to follow the dragon.”

“If you say we are. You are in charge here.”

“I see,” Lalita said. “This is a test for me as well, is it? And if I fail, then my uncle will find a way to leave succession to Maidan or one of his other sons?”

“I did not say that.”

“I am not stupid.”

“No, Princess, you are not that.”

“However, I do not know what to do. I came to you for help.”

He looked so disappointed, she felt forced to add, “Oh, not with deciding what to do next. Hanuman, what happened to the other dragon?”

Hanuman blinked at her in surprise. “The other dragon?”

“Back in Calcutta, you said you smelled two dragons. Yet we found only one. And I started thinking . . .”

“I haven’t smelled the other one since we . . . met this dragon. Do you think—do you think they travel together?”

“I don’t know,” Lalita said. “But I don’t like it.”

“And what do you wish me to do, Princess? I will warrant you that if there are two dragons with the ruby, rather than one, it will make it more difficult to obtain. But I do not believe you’d be less protective of your friend.”

“No,” Lalita said. “But all the same, I’d like to know what we’re up against. You see, it is so unlike Sofie to drug us and leave.”

“She thought we intended to sacrifice her to cleanse the ruby,” Hanuman said. “The tigers have her scared, and Englishmen know next to nothing about weres. She would judge on the only weres she knows.”

“Still, why would she not trust me? We’ve been friends since we were little.”

“How can I solve that for you, Princess?”

“Did the other dragon come with the Englishman?”

“No. There is only one scent of dragon in the house, and that very faint, and coming from the kitchen, where the Englishman was. But there is another scent here. I am trying to identify it . . .”

His nose twitched again. It seemed odd to Lalita that a witch-sniffer who could smell a dragon all the way across the house, from the kitchen, was hesitating over this other scent, so close to him.

At last, Hanuman looked up. “Princess, your friend is spelled. I think—from the stink of it—the spell was put on by the tigers.”

“Oh, I know that,” Lalita said. “That is why she sleepwalked. Even in London. But . . . are you sure that the tether was put on her by the tigers? How would they do it?”

“How is easy,” Hanuman said. “They would have cast about for the stone, and then their soothsayers would tell them the stone’s redeemer was already born. It wouldn’t tell them she was a child. From the strength of this, the way it entwines with her magic itself, I think it’s been there since shortly after she was born.”

I think they’ve been on to her existence . . . magically . . . since she was born. They just didn’t know what age she was. Or that she’d been sent to England. They expected her to come to them. . . . I think that explains her blind wandering.”

“And why she went so very far. Of course she couldn’t find members of the Kingdom of the Tigers in England, but—”

“But in her sleep she tried to,” Hanuman said.

Lalita closed her eyes, letting the full implications of all of this sank in.

THE CAVE ABOVE THE WORLD; THE INADEQUACY OF DESIRE

“I could take you somewhere,” Peter said, aware of
speaking more from his heart than from his mind. “Somewhere where you could be safe.”

Sofie—he couldn’t actually think of her as Miss Warington, not while she was there with him, in this little rocky cave on the face of a sheer cliff—looked at him speculatively. She looked very much as though she were mentally fitting him for the insane asylum. There was that edge of disbelief to her gaze, as though she was afraid of what he might say next. She cleared her throat, and despite the soft curves of her face and body, managed to look thoroughly schoolmarmish as she said, “My dear St. Maur, you can’t possibly be serious.”

“Indeed, I am very serious,” he said. “I could take you to Paris. Or London. Or somewhere away from all this.”

“And do you think all this wouldn’t follow me? The tigers and the monkey and doubtless another dozen or so powers all wanting the ruby and me? Please, milord, do not treat me as though I were a child.”

“No,” he said. “Not a child.” He felt lost. He wanted, more than anything, to make her happy, to make her safe. And he did not know how to go about it. “I will do what I can. Anything I can.”

Sofie reached into her pocket and pulled out the ruby, which still flickered with red light in irregular bursts. “Here, milord, take it. The fate of the world depends on it. My fate is but a small thing.”

He took it, reverently. He’d seen Heart of Light in its proper setting, in the eye of the oldest avatar of mankind. Were it not for having seen it—not for having heard the voice of the goddess in his head—he would never have believed that he was worthy of touching it.

But the strange thing was that as he touched it, nothing answered him. It was all . . . dead and silent. There was no echo, no voice from it. The flames flickered within the ruby, and magic bursts erupted from it, but there was no mind, no intelligence left.

It was, Peter thought, much like a very old person’s mind when the animating principle has fled. Memories remain and impulses, but the brain no longer remembers the dreams and aspirations that once animated it. He reached for the ruby with all the magic he had.

His answer was a babble of voices, in all the languages of mankind. He thought of Nigel’s last letter, telling him that he should use Soul of Fire to find Heart of Light and Nigel himself, since Nigel was traveling the world, trying to escape
some very suspicious characters on my trail.