The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Good night, Jeremiah," he replied, with a return salute. "Fog by morning."

  "And hard luck to them on the water," Jeremiah said with sympathy. "Or off it. Keep an eye to your back on your way home. Fog's a blessin' t' them as is no better'n they should be, so mind ye take care."

  "That I will," Peter assured him, and limped out onto the dock, listening to the water lick at the wooden pilings. But something in the sound of the water stopped him, just beyond the night watchman's line of sight. He listened again. Someone swam, gently and quietly, just beneath the pier. Just beneath him, following where he went, sending up a thin, telltale touch of magic to alert him, thin as fog, insubstantial, tasting of water weeds, a gleaming, furtive, and fugitive ribbon of palest green.

  And he stifled a groan. Not tonight. Not a messenger tonight. Oh, bloody hell.

  He walked to the edge of the dock, and looked down. A translucent, faintly glowing, narrow female face looked up at him from the water, surrounded by the tangle of her seaweed hair. The naiad scowled; they didn't like the filthy water of the Thames inside the London basin, and Peter didn't blame them. He wouldn't have taken a swim in that filthy stuff for a king's ransom.

  "The Council summons, Water Master," the naiad told him, her voice the hiss of foam on the sand, the hollow gurgle of wavelets in the rocks. Then, her message discharged, she dove under the surface and vanished, heading for cleaner water as fast as she could swim.

  Peter cursed under his breath. "The Council summons," indeed. He was the only member of the Council that was a middle-class, regular working man; the rest were moneyed. Some were "professional" fellows, doctors or lawyers or stockbrokers; some were titled or had other forms of inherited wealth. None of them were tradesmen. They didn't have to be up at dawn to mind the store. They wouldn't have to somehow find a bloody cabby at dockside, and they wouldn't have to find another way to go home in the cursed fog! Oh, granted, Scott could use a beckoning finger of magic to lure a cabby in, but it would still take doing, and waiting!

  But do they ever "summon" me when it comes time for a nice dinner party, or a bit of an entertainment? he thought sourly. Oh, no. I'm the most popular bloke on the Council when there's something to be done at a savage hour, though. Gawd Almighty, old Kipling's got it dead right. "Tommy this and Tommy that an' Tommy go away, but it's 'thenkee Mister Atkins' when the guns begin t' play." He wasn't sure he had the quote dead right, but the sense of it certainly seemed to ring home tonight, in the cold and fog.

  It crossed his mind, as it did every time he was called unexpectedly by the Council of Masters, to go directly home and tell them that their bloody Council could go straight to hell for all he cared. But the problem was that the Council was useful; without them, there would be open warfare between Elemental Masters and no doubt of it. And they did good work; the White Lodge had put down a couple of nasty bits of work, even if they couldn't do much about blatant idiots like Aleister-damn-his-eyes-Crowley. He couldn't quit, not in good conscience. Not while there was evil crawling around that no purging of the sewers was going to get rid of, and not while some arrogant, damned Elemental Masters thought the way to settle a quarrel was to ruin decent, normal folks' lives with floods, earthquakes, storms, and conflagrations.

  So, still cursing under his breath, Peter Scott spun up his green-tinged summons, then limped off in search of a cabby brave enough to dare the docks after dark.

  The meeting place was always the same; the Exeter Club, and if anyone happened to stumble in to see the poor old codgers dozing away in their chairs or pretending to read the Times, he'd assume it was just another backwater of retired Colonials. The codgers were a ruse, more than half of them the pensioned-off bachelor upper servants of the real members, kept in happy and comfortable retirement here to keep the work of their former masters as secret as anything you'd find at the Foreign Office. More so, actually. At the Foreign Office, you didn't have to worry about a salamander whipping down the nearest chimney to have a listen-in.

  Peter limped up the stairs to be greeted by the night porter, who allowed his usual stony expression to slip just enough to display a hint of sympathy for the dodgy knee. Clive had one of his own, courtesy of the Boer War; they exchanged a wordless wince of mutual pain, and Clive took his coat, muffler, and hat. "They are in the Red Room, sir," the old soldier said, with a nod in the correct direction. "In view of the hour, I believe they've bespoken you some refreshment." Of course, their idea of refreshment is usually purely alcoholic, he thought with continued irritation. Still. It showed some consideration. He strode past the Club Room, even at this hour full of drowsing ancient men looking like Methuselah's grandpa, or slightly younger ones exchanging lies over pipes and port, and headed straight for the Red Room.

  At least if it's the Red Room, it's not an all-out mage war, or some fool gone mad and trying to burn down London. If it had been something really, truly, serious, the Council would be in the War Room, not the Red Room, robed and begemmed to the teeth and staves or swords in hand.

  The door opened just as he reached it, and to his relief, the fellow with his hand on the knob was Lord Peter Almsley, second son and—until his brother George came up to the paddock and produced a son— titular heir to the Almsley lands, estate, and strawberry leaves. Lord Peter stood on ceremony with no one, and was one of the few members of the Council and the Lodge that Peter Scott thought of as an actual friend.

  "Get in here, Twin," Peter exclaimed—his own private joke, since they were both named Peter and both Water Masters. "You look fagged to death. I've ordered you up a rarebit; it's on a chafing dish and I've been guarding it with my life till you got here. Bunny keeps trying to bag some for himself." Lord Peter could not have looked less like Peter Scott; he had that thin, nervy, washed-out blondness and general air of idiot-about-town that Scott tended to associate with a bit too much inbreeding within the Royal Enclosure, but he was as sound as an oak inside, and tough whipcord when it came down to cases. Scott had seen Lord Peter face down an ancient god without turning a hair, and knew for a fact there were at least nine ghosts haunting the old Almsley estate, all of whom Lord Peter had met and even conversed with. Lord Peter never said what the rest of his family (other than his grandmother) thought about the haunts, but he, at least, considered them to be personal friends.

  With a hearty clap of his hand to Lord Peter's shoulder by way of thanks, Scott entered the Red Room—which was—red. Very, very red. Red brocade on the windows, red-silk wallpaper, red-leather chairs. It must have been decorated by a Fire Master, and it always made Peter want to throw buckets of blue or green paint over everything.

  But the enticing aroma of hot cheese coming from the chafing dish on the sideboard was enough to make him overlook the decorating deficiencies for once. He ignored the rest of the Council and went straight for the bubbling rarebit, scooping up a plate, loading it liberally with toast from the rack beside the dish, and inundating the crisp triangles with cheese until there was danger of the plate overflowing. Only then did he take his place in the single empty seat around the table—and privately nominated Lord Peter for beatification when the man shoved a tall glass of stout silently toward him.

  "Listen, Scott," began Dumbarton, one of the old lads who'd inherited a pile and made it bigger in the Exchange. "Apologies and all that—knew you were working—but there's something come up."

  Peter made certain to demolish a satisfyingly hearty triangle of toast and cheese before replying. "Well, there always is, isn't there? What is it that the Council can't sort out over dinner without calling me in?"

  Someone coughed. Owlswick, of course. Lord Owls-wick, who never left the Club except for hunting season. "Well, ah—it's magic, Scott, don't you know. Earth Magic. New source of it, in the bottom of the garden, so to speak. And we're none of us ... ah ... Earth Masters."

  Peter did not make the obvious retort that neither was he—nor that they would have more than half a dozen Earth Masters on the Council if they'd just give up th
eir Old Boys nonsense and allow a few farm lads, a Scot or two, or, for God's own sake, a few of the female Earth Masters just west of London into their exclusive little enclave.

  Old argument, and his silence said it all for him. It was Lord Peter who took pity on the rest and kept the ensuing silence from turning into an embarrassment. "The trouble is, old man, it's got bloody strong potential, but it's not our Earth Magic. Nothing remotely like our traditions. And we can't—well— trace it, locate it."

  That got his attention, and he stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. "You—what? You're having me on, right?"

  Lord Peter shook his head. " Fraid not, old fellow. Wish I was. We get it narrowed down to a district, then—that's as far as we get. It's as if whoever is doing this has something going meant entirely to confuse and confusticate."

  "And that," rumbled old Lord Alderscroft, the head of the Council, at last, "is very interesting. Worrying. And we damned well want to know how it's done, especially if there's something more serious behind it."

  Lord Alderscroft spoke in Council perhaps once a year, but when he did, even Peter lost his cynicism, sat up, and took notice. He was, perhaps, the most powerful Fire Master who had ever sat in the seat of the Master of the Council. Peter pushed away the last of his dinner, uneaten, and said respectfully, "What are my duties, sir?" He suspected that when Alderscroft spoke even the King stood humbly and waited for orders. The great man moved forward, out of the shadows of his wingback chair, bringing his face into the light. It was the face of an old lion, old, but without one whit of his power diminished in any way; eyes that saw through to the soul, weighed it and measured the worth and strength of it, yet somehow made no judgment of it. His hair was longer than was fashionable; no one would ever have even thought of him with other than that half-tamed, gray-and-fawn mane around his face. Power under will, will under the law, tempered with compassion, endless tolerance and patience, and a clear and unflinching knowledge of the best and the worst in his fellow man. That was Lord Alderscroft, and Peter would have gone through fire and brimstone and hell itself if the old man asked him to. They all would have, including the ineffectual Owlswick.

  "We know the general district, Scott; it's down near Fleet, and we've mapped out where the confusion-magic ends, so the source is likely to be somewhere within it." Alderscroft motioned to Lord Peter, who passed over a map with a ragged ovoid drawn on it. And Scott immediately saw the difficulty.

  "You'd all stand out there like horses in a hat shop, wouldn't you?" he said, now with a touch of humor. "By heaven, I believe you couldn't go five feet in that area without losing everything but the lining of your pockets!"

  "Now you see our difficulty," Alderscroft said, with a grave nod. "Can you go in there—and perhaps find the source of this—even give us some notion of who the person is, and why this mage has come to this city?"

  "I can try," Peter acknowledged. "Water's closest to Earth anyway; likely I can get close when none of the rest of you can, at least not you Air and Fire Masters. The little water sprites like to hang about Earth Magic, especially in gardens, so long as the water's clean. I might get some luck."

  "I'll send Gannet over to your warehouse and get things shipshape at your shop," Lord Peter promised, with a winning smile, that made him look considerably less like a prime silly ass and more like the intelligent fellow he was. "You remember Gannet, don't you?"

  Scott managed a smile of his own. "Your pet burglar, I believe?"

  "Reformed burglar, reborn in the Lord, baptized most faithfully in the Blood of the Lamb, I will have you know," Lord Peter corrected. "Just remember, with him in charge, nothing's going to go missing, not so much as a farthing from petty cash. Or—" The smile was still there, but there was a hint of grim chill that reminded Scott just how dangerous Lord Peter really was. "He'll be answering about it to me. And trust me, he'd much rather have to answer to the Lord God Almighty than to me."

  Gannet showed up promptly at seven, giving Peter time enough to give him some basic directions before the crew from the warehouse started arriving. Gannet did not look like an ex-burglar; he looked like a slightly shabby and terribly earnest old watchmaker— until you looked at his hands, with the fingertips sanded to make them that little bit more sensitive to the turn of a combination lock, the click of a lock pick. Still, he seemed sound enough, and by eight, Peter was out on the street, preferring to walk rather than take a cab or the Underground to where he was going. He needed to adjust his attitude and appearance, and the only way he could do that, would be to gradually acquire his local color, like a chameleon. The deeper he went, from upper middle class to middle, to lower, then to genteel poverty, then to poverty that was nothing like genteel, the more his appearance changed. Without adding or subtracting from his wardrobe, his cap acquired a tilt that furtively shaded his eyes, his grip on his walking stick changed to that of the grip on a weapon, his shoulders slouched, his path took him nearer the wall, nearer the shadows, and his eyes got a sideways slant that marked him as a wary, and possibly dangerous, man. And difficult though it was to conceal, he lost the limp entirely.

  He who walks among jackals dares show no weakness.

  Slowly, for he did not dare take his attention too far from the real world, he insinuated his senses into the unreal world, the one so few ever knew was all around them, even here in London, where the pavement covered the tender, nourishing earth, the water was awash in poison, the fire smoked hideously, and the air carried nearly as much poison as the water.

  It was a long walk, but he was used to walking. A ship captain walked hundreds of miles on the deck of his ship; he probably walked three times the actual distance of every voyage. He walked now to keep that bad knee strong; and a shopkeeper walked nearly as much as a ship captain.

  He followed his instincts into the theater district and out again.

  Hmm. Interesting. As he passed from ungenteel poverty back into genteel and adjusted his appearance accordingly, he sensed his quarry, neared it, then arrived practically on top of it.

  Very interesting. It pulsed just beside him, shields and other undefinable things, and over all a shifting, an urge to look somewhere else, that he had to fight to keep his attention concentrated. Power, certainly. But ... it had a curiously cobbled — together feeling. As if it was the sheer strength of it alone that kept its spells from falling to mismatched bits.

  Curiouser and curiouser. He bought a paper from a passing boy, leaned against an entryway fence, and pretended to read.

  Definitely not ours. It should be, but it isn't. The spells had a foreign flavor, an unfamiliar spice or savor—as if he'd been served up with Thai tea, cold and laden with sweetened cream, instead of the hot, lemony Ceylon he'd been expecting. It was the Earth Magic native to this island Logres, but it was not being used in the same way.

  What in the bloody hell?

  A policeman on his beat eyed him dubiously for a moment; Peter met his gaze, straight on, eye to eye, then gave him a friendly nod, waited a moment, and folded his paper, once again on his way.

  There was that other thing going on, too—that "I'm not here," the touch of "go hunt elsewhere," the gentle but insistent push to go away and look somewhere else that the others had described. Definitely there, all right, but not of much use as a defense unless you were trying to scry from a distance. Once on the spot, ridiculously easy to get past. All he needed to do was find the place where the push to not look was the hardest, and he'd find the source.

  It took some sauntering—cheerful sauntering was good in this neighborhood, though once in a while if he touched his cap to a lady he got an unmistakable invitation in return that he didn't have the time (or the wish, for that matter) to follow up on. Bobbies on the beat had a well-fed and fairly relaxed air about them, which meant that whatever went on around here, as long as it wasn't in the public street, or occasioning a scream for help, they reckoned it wasn't any of their business to interfere.

  That was good for him, since
they assumed he was either looking for something but wasn't going to make trouble when he found it (oddly enough, the actual truth), or he was out of work, but not so long out of work that he was out of temper as well. He circled the neighborhood like a shark following the scent of blood in the water, moving in a tighter and tighter spiral, until at long last he came to his real goal.

  And when he found it, his source, the place from which the skewed and strangely sculpted magic emanated, he stared at it with a gape on his face like a country cousin at the British Museum.

  Doctor M. Witherspoon, said the discreet brass plaque beside the door. Physician and surgeon.

  He shuttered his expression quickly, and wandered a slight distance away for a moment, taking out his paper to distract the eyes of passersby again, and sending out his own peculiar magic callings.

  And got yet another gob-smacking shock.

  Yes, there were happy little water sprites within that wall of protection. And no, they were not coming out, thank you. It was nice here, and they weren't going to leave—or provide him with any information—without being forced.

  Peter Scott had never forced a Water Elemental to do anything it didn't want to in his entire career as a Master, and he wasn't about to jeopardize his standing with them by doing so now. There were, after all, more mundane ways of getting at some of the information locked inside that shell of magical protection.