The children went off to baths and bed with scarcely a moment of fuss. The youngest, now at the “escape from the bath and run through the halls naked, shrieking,” stage, for once did not indulge themselves. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.
Until, as the oldest were settled into their beds, and Isabelle finished the rounds of “good night hugs,” she and Frederick stepped out onto the terrace—
—and the perfect day shattered.
One moment, they were holding hands, gazing at the stars and listening to the nightingales and the occasional call of an owl.
The next, they were clutching each other, half-deafened by the thunderclap, half-blinded by the lightning bolt that had delivered Robin Goodfellow to the foot of the terrace. A very angry Robin Goodfellow, who was nothing like the merry lad who had strutted his way across their improvised stage, playing himself with gusto and glee.
No, this was a tall and terrible creature, dressed head to toe in black, features inhumanly sharp and feral, with a face full of wrath and a sword in his hand.
“Woe be unto ye, son of Adam and daughter of Eve!” he cried, in a voice that echoed hollowly. “Your friend would not heed my warning, nor thine, Eve’s daughter, and he and his leman seek to unleash that which has no place here!”
And with another bolt of fire and explosion of thunder he was gone. But a cold, angry wind sprang up in his wake, sending storm clouds racing from east to west, plastering Isabelle’s gown to her legs.
“—what—” Frederick began, having to shout to make himself heard over the tempest.
But Isabelle had no doubts. “Alderscroft,” she shouted back. “David Alderscroft is—invoking something. I don’t know what, but—”
“But we need to put a stop to it,” Frederick shouted back, and as one they turned—
To find Nan and Sarah behind them, birds crouched down on their shoulders against the wind—and behind them, Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim.
The girls both wore expressions of fierce determination, and faintly glowing auras that looked incongruous on two youngsters dressed in schoolgirl pinafores.
Isabelle’s entire nature went into revolt at the sight of the children. Whatever needed confronting, they had no place there!
The three men were overlaid with their aspects of Warriors of the Light; Agansing in the garb of the Gurkha, enormous kukri at his belt, Karamjit in the tunic and turban and bearing the sword of the Sikh fighter, and Selim, also in turban and tunic, but with a spear to Karamjit’s curved sword.
“The avalanche has begun, Mem’sab,” Agansing said, eyes glinting. “It is too late to make a choice among what will fall. The children summoned us; they in their turn were summoned.”
Isabelle looked down at the girls, and her heart sank.
Agansing was right as often as “Doomsday” was wrong.
***
Nan was dead asleep one moment, and wide awake in the next.
She woke with the absolute certainty that something was horribly wrong. It was like the same feeling she’d had back in Berkeley Square, though different in that the threat was not directed at her or at Sarah. But a threat there was, a deadly one, and she had to meet it. She glanced up at Neville’s perch above her bed to see the raven looking down at her. She felt him in her head, calling something; felt that “something” waking up.
She leaped out of bed, to find Sarah also scrambling up.
“Wot is it?” she asked, feeling shaky and scared, but also, another part of her, galvanized and energized and—eager?
“Don’t know,” Sarah replied, pulling her dress over her head, “—but it’s—”
“Bad!” Grey cried, every feather sticking out so she looked like a gray pinecone. “Bad, bad, bad!”
That was all she had time for when the whole building shook beneath a cannonade of thunder.
And it was as if some uncanny telegraph connected them, for the same information flashed into both their minds.
“Robin!” cried Sarah, and “Puck!” shouted Nan at the same time, while Neville called alarm and Grey uttered a high-pitched, growling shriek.
“He’s angry!” Sarah added, her face white in the light of the candle Nan lit.
“He’s more’n that,” she said grimly. “He’s gone for killin’.”
Difficult as it was to imagine friendly, funny Robin Goodfellow prepared to kill something, she had no doubt in her mind at all that this was what he was prepared to do. And she also had no doubt in her mind that it was her job to prevent it, if she could.
And not just for the sake of the potential victim, either—
“Oh, Nan—” Sarah turned round eyes on her. “If he does that—”
Nan nodded. She knew, and knew that somehow the knowledge came through Neville, that if Robin Goodfellow, the Guardian of Logres, was to spill human blood, he would be banished from the Isle for all time. And if that happened—much, if not all, of the magic would go with him. She sensed a future stretching out from that moment, bleak and gray and joyless, and shuddered.
Around them, the other children, startled out of sleep by the thunder, were calling out, the babies crying. The ayahs were busy calming them, and no one paid any attention as Nan and Sarah, with Neville and Grey clutching their shoulders, slipped out and downstairs.
No one that is, until they ran right into Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim.
A wave of dismay swept through Nan as she winced back, sure that she and Sarah were going to be rounded up and sent back upstairs.
But instead, Agansing held up his hand and peered at them. That was when Nan realized there was a kind of ghostly, glowing “other” version of Agansing superimposed on the everyday fellow.
“We will need these fellow Warriors, my brothers,” he said solemnly. Karamjit peered at them and nodded. Selim sighed with resignation.
“I bow to your superior experience, brother,” Selim said reluctantly. “But I cannot like it. They are too young.”
“Younger than they have taken up arms, and they have unique weapons none of us can wield,” Agansing replied, and turned to Nan. “We go to join Sahib and Mem’sab. We are needed.”
“Yessir,” she said, feeling oddly as if she ought to be saluting.
All of them moved swiftly in a group to the doors leading onto the terrace, the two girls having to trot to keep up. A vicious wind howled around the windows, and in lightning flashes from outside it was obvious there was a storm raging—wind, but no rain as yet.
They emerged onto the terrace and into the icy teeth of the wind just as Sahib and Mem’sab turned.
“The avalanche has begun, Mem’sab,” Agansing said, eyes glinting. “It is too late to make a choice among what will fall. The children summoned us; they in their turn were summoned.”
We summoned them? For a moment Nan was aghast at the lie. But then—then something told her it was not a lie, but the truth. Somehow she and Sarah had summoned the men, or at least, Agansing. She didn’t know how, but—
That other presence within her smiled grimly; she felt it smile. Felt it tell her how it had summoned a fellow warrior with a mental trumpet call to arms.
The wind had begun to die, although eerily silent lightning still raged in the clouds above them. “It is David Alderscroft.”
Mem’sab was saying. “I don’t know what he is trying to do, but Robin Goodfellow warned him off doing so, and I tried to echo that warning. He—”
She left whatever she was going to say unsaid, and merely shrugged, the gesture more eloquent than words of what she thought about men who refused to listen to sound advice.
“Then we have to stop him,” Selim replied immediately. “By force, if need be.”
“There’s more nor that,” Nan piped up, urged by that silent presence within her that felt strangely like some kind of version of herself, only older, stronger, tougher. “If’n Robin hurts a mortal, som’thin’ bad ’appens. ‘E gets banished.”
Mem’sab’s eyes grew wide in the light fr
om the lightning. “Oh—” she said, “Oh—that would be—”
“Not only the end to magic in the Isle, but it would open the door to a great many things that would make life very uncomfortable for the rest of us,” Sahib said grimly. “With the Guardian at the Gate gone—”
“Run,” Mem’sab said, suiting her actions to her words, as she picked up her skirts in both hands and fled down the terrace like a racing deer. “Run!”
They followed her; she ran like that girl in the Greek myth Nan had just read—Atalanta, that was her name, or something like. Nan snatched Neville down off her shoulder and cradled him in her arms as Sarah did the same with Grey; the birds would never have been able to stay on their shoulders while they ran. It was a good thing Mem’sab was wearing a white summer dress; they were able to follow her, flitting along the paths of the estate like a ghost, with Sahib like a shadow right beside her.
After a little, Nan realized where they were going; the door in the hedge that the arrogant man had ridden through.
And that was where and when it all came together. The man that had nearly ridden them down and the man that Mem’sab was angry at and the man who was about to unleash all hell on them with his foolishness were all the same man, and his name was David Alderscroft…
***
Sarah was glad that she and Nan were used to playing hard. She would never have believed that a grown-up could run like that. Mem’sab had hiked her skirts clean up over her knees, and her legs flashed through the grass in a way that should have scandalized anyone who saw it. It was just a good thing that Mem’sab never did wear the kind of dresses people called fashionable; in fact, Sarah was not entirely sure Mem’sab ever wore corsets either. She’d never have been able to run in anything fashionable.
Sahib put on a limping burst of speed and got to the door in the hedge ahead of Mem’sab and wrenched it open. They all caught up to her and piled through the door and—
And they all stopped dead in their tracks.
Sarah felt a tingle, and knew that this was her moment, at the same time as Grey said urgently, “Go! Now!”
She shoved through the adults, and saw what it was that had them paralyzed.
There was a crowd of—creatures—lined up on the bridle path, standing as a barrier between them and wherever it was that Mem’sab was leading them. They weren’t physical. They might have been the ghosts of children, once.
They weren’t now.
They glowed a leprous white, and where their eyes should have been there were only empty holes with a dull, red gleam to them, as if old, dying embers lay at the bottom. Their unnaturally long fingers were crooked into vicious claws, and in place of fingernails, they had talons. Their mouths were agape, showing feral, pointed teeth, and a craving for fear and pain emanated from them in a way calculated to make any sane person turn and flee.
Except—
Except they were the spirits of children still. And under all that, they were lost, alone, afraid.
And that was what Sarah must reach.
She put Grey on her shoulder, and felt the parrot spread her wings, as if giving her shelter.
“Sarah—” Sahib began, but Mem’sab shushed him.
“Give her backing, my brothers,” she said instead, and Sarah felt a steady, warm glow building behind her, a warmth of love and support, as Nan pushed through also and came to stand beside her. She cast a glance aside.
Nan—Nan was a warrior.
The transformation was complete. Instead of the little girl in the pinafore, what stood beside Sarah was a wild creature out of an old Celtic saga, a glowing golden fighting maiden in a short, red wool tunic with a short bronze sword and a slight smile on her face that was just the least little bit disturbing in its enthusiasm.
“I see what needs be done, sister,” Nan said, with no trace of her usual accent. “This is old magic, and I know it well. I shall sever the soul from the rider, so you can set the spirits free.”
And with no more warning than that, she leaped at the line of waiting creatures, then leaped in among them—
—and began to dance.
That was all that Sarah could call it. The creatures swarmed her, but seemed unable to touch her. With Neville making vicious stabs at weirdly transparent faces, battering them with his wings, Nan danced among them, feinting, leaping, whirling, never staying in any one place for long, until—
Strike!
The sword licked out, and there was a cry, and something with tattered wings and a terrible face separated from the seething mob, as the spirit of a small child, faded and frightened, dropped out of it.
“Come!” Sarah called, holding out her arms to it, casting her heart toward it. It fled to her, and as it neared, with a cry, Grey stood on her tiptoes and spread her wings wide, and a bright light surrounded them both. The child ghost flung itself at them, touched the light—and vanished.
The thing that had separated from it uttered a scream of mingled rage and fear, and popped like a soap bubble, just as Nan made another of those lightning strikes, and severed another “rider” from its victim.
Sarah lost track of what was going on; it took all of her strength and concentration to help Grey keep opening that “door” to the beyond and persuade the children to pass through it. But eventually, Grey settled down on her shoulder again, shook herself and uttered a soft, tired sigh. The light around them faded, and she blinked, to see that the golden warrior was gone, and there was only Nan standing on the path with Neville at her feet, looking disheveled and tired—but triumphant.
But there was no time for congratulations. There was a cold, ominous glow beyond the trees, and the clouds were swirling in a whirl over the spot, lightning firing almost continuously from them.
“Run!” Mem’sab called again. And they ran.
***
David Alderscroft was beginning to feel misgivings about all this.
It didn’t feel right. He couldn’t put his finger on why, it just didn’t. Maybe it was the strange storm that had sprung up. Wind, clouds, and more lightning than he had ever seen before, but no rain.
Maybe it was the oddly eager light in Cordelia’s eyes.
Maybe it was an uneasy feeling that he did not know nearly enough about what she was going to do—or said she was going to do.
Or that he sensed an invisible, icy presence lingering somewhere nearby. It was not one of the Ice Wurms he was used to using. It was a lot—larger. And it was able to conceal itself from him almost entirely.
Why would it want to do that?
The longer he stood here in the lightning-lit garden, watching Cordelia set out her preparations, the more his instincts were overriding his control. From nagging doubt to insisting, from insisting to screaming, they were telling him that despite all appearances, this was a bad idea, that he should leave—
Except that his instincts had told him this sort of nonsense before. He was more than instinct. He was a rational, thinking man. And all this fear could be the work of that very nature spirit that Cordelia meant to protect him against.
And yet—the spirit had been very specific. It had warned him against practicing his Ice Magics here, and no more. Or actually, it had warned him against practicing them against the countryside. As if there was any reason why he would do that.
So why was Cordelia so intent on protecting him from it? It wasn’t as if he had any reason to practice any magic at all in this place. And the creature hadn’t done anything worse than frighten him.
As he stood there uncertainly with a tempest overhead, and growing misgivings in his heart, the solitude of that corner of the garden was broken, not once, but twice.
And in that moment, everything changed.
A bolt of lightning struck the ground to the east of where he and Cordelia stood, blinding and deafening him for a moment. And when he could see again—
He felt himself go rigid. It was the nature spirit again, but—different. Very different.
It was taller, its f
eatures were sharper, and it was dressed, head to toe, in black. Surrounded by a coruscating rainbow of all powers, it stared at him and Cordelia in a dark rage.
That was when the thing that David had only sensed until this moment made itself visible to the west of where he and Cordelia stood.
Or—more visible. There was something about whatever the entity was that made him struggle without success to keep his eyes on the spot where it stood, and he couldn’t look directly at the thing at all. His eyes and his mind slid around the edges of it, without being able to concentrate on it.
And then—seven people strode into the garden as if they had every right to be there.
Two of them he did not know, but both were clearly foreign, probably from some part of India. One he recognized as the servant that had let him into Frederick Harton’s home and school. The fourth was Frederick Harton himself, and fifth and sixth were the two little girls he had nearly run down. And the seventh—
—the seventh was Isabelle.
Cordelia drew herself up in surprise. “Well,” she said. “I confess, I had not expected you to turn up here. Isn’t it rather late in the day to be playing the rejected lover?”
Isabelle ignored her. The lightning made for a poor illumination source, washing out all colors, and it occurred to David then that she looked like a marble monument. Her hair had come down and tumbled in wild profusion down her back. “David,” she called, her voice trembling a little. “You do not want to be here.”
“Oh, indeed,” Cordelia replied, her own voice utterly, coldly polite. “And why would that be, I wonder? Surely you are not going to claim that I have some nefarious designs upon him. Simple logic would show that if, indeed, I had wanted something of his power and position, I would have had it long ago.”
Isabelle ignored the jab, and concentrated on David. “You need to ask yourself why it was so needful that you be here now, in the middle of the night, alone. This woman is not your friend.”
“And you are.” Cordelia did not laugh. “This sort of flummery was all very well when you were a girl, Isabelle, but it ill-suits a grown woman who should have better self-control and a more realistic view of life.”
The Wizard of London em-5 Page 34
