The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  Even among men who counted themselves as civilized and would not dream of physically hurting a female, there was the repeated and deliberate starvation of woman's intellect. Consider the refusal of male instructors to teach women subjects they considered improper—that was the reason the London School of Medicine for Women had been founded in the first place. For heaven's sake, Oxford hadn't even granted degrees to women in anything until the end of last century!

  And the marriage laws! While a father lived, no matter how incompetent, a woman's property could be handled (or mishandled) by him. Once married, it belonged to her husband, again to be treated as he willed! Even when a woman earned money by her own work, it belonged to him! The only time a woman could be free from interference was when father and husband (if she had one) were both dead—and even then, any male relative who wished to have what she had earned could have her brought into court and declared incompetent! She had seen that happen, to women who were too intimidated to fight back, or those who lost in the court to a lawyer with a smoother tongue (or a readier hand with a bribe) than hers had been!

  With every step, with every memory, her fear fled, and her anger rose. Last of all came the most recent memories, of Simon Parkening and his cronies heckling both her and her unconscious, helpless patient, afraid of her competence, and trying to overmaster her with brutal words because they could not beat her into submission.

  And neither they, nor these other beasts will beat us down! she thought, her anger now bringing new energy to her steps, so that she raised her head and glared at the hecklers in the streets with white-hot rage in her eyes. Go ahead! she challenged silently. Threaten me all you like! You only prove that you are worse than the brute animals!

  "Votes for Women" was only the battle cry, the hook upon which all else depended. It was emancipation of women that was the real issue—for until women could vote, they could never change the laws that oppressed them and made them slaves.

  Maya was not the only one mustering anger as a weapon against the mob; she saw now that others were glaring at their tormentors with equal defiance as they marched. In the younger girls, the defiance was mixed partly with fear, but mostly with excitement. Perhaps they had not yet had enough experience with the worst that men could do for the fear to seem very real to them. But in the older women, it was clear that the anger had overmastered the fear, and their glares were intended to shame the instruments of that fear.

  Sometimes it even worked, when they could actually catch and hold the eyes of those who shouted so angrily at the marchers. Now and again, a man stopped in mid-shout, his mouth gaping foolishly. His face flushed, he dropped his eyes, and he slunk into the crowd. But there was always another shoving forward to take his place.

  At this moment, Maya almost hated Men, the entire brutal race of them.

  Almost. For there were men among the marchers, and not the cowed, hen-pecked specimens depicted in the cartoons of the critical press either. Men who were braver and stronger than the ones shouting on the line of march, because they weren't afraid of women who were just as brave and strong as they were! For their sake, Maya could not take the easy route of condemning the whole sex—only those who were too cowardly, weak, and ignorant to bear the thought of losing their domination over those that should have been their partners.

  At last their goal came within sight. Parliament, where the marchers were going to lay their coffin, fill it with stones until it was too heavy to lift, and some of the women were going to chain themselves to it and to the railings of the stairs and the fences. These women would be arrested and dragged off to prison, of course, where they would also go on hunger strikes, and be force-fed—

  And die, perhaps. Until shame overtakes those in authority and the murdering stops!

  Amelia worked her way up through the marchers to Maya's side. "As soon as we gather and start to fill the coffin, you and I need to slip off," Amelia said quietly, under the muffled drumming and the shouts.

  "I feel horrible to leave them," Maya said, looking about her at the determined faces of the women around her.

  "You and I fight the fight where we are working, and we are needed there," Amelia told her, although she, too, looked guiltily at the others who marched past them and began to solemnly place the stones each one carried into the now-open coffin. "Who would take our place, guarding the Bridgets and the Alices of London from the Clayton-Smythes and Simon Par-kenings who treat them like so many disposable experiments?"

  Maya sighed and nodded, although it was hard to leave those others here to face whatever fate and the police had in store for them. Hidden from the jeering onlookers by the other women around them, they removed their sashes and handed them to one of the others—nor were they the only ones who were taking off sashes and blending back into the crowd. The drummers formed a semicircle, continuing the death-march rhythm and distracting the eyes from those who were slipping away. Now that the marchers had reached Parliament, there were other people thronging the streets than merely those who had gathered to jeer, and it was much easier to move to the edge of the group and slip off to hide among them. Most of the women here would not be among those who courted arrest. Several, like Amelia and Maya, would not even remain here unchained to risk it.

  But she still felt horribly guilty as she tucked her stethoscope into her bag and squeezed past a couple—

  a nursemaid and her beau—who were craning their necks to see what was going on to cause such an uproar.

  Once past the crowd, she and Amelia walked briskly away, unmolested even by those who had been shouting at them a few moments before. Without that white sash branding them as suffragettes, men looked right past them as things of no threat, and hence, no importance.

  And perhaps that spoke of their contempt and disregard for all women even more than the shouting. It certainly spoke eloquently of their blindness.

  THE summons came just after sunset and found Peter Scott at his flat; a moment later, he was on a 'bus, figuring that the odds of finding a cab at that time of the evening in his neighborhood were pretty remote. He only had to change 'buses twice, when it all came down to cases, and the 'bus was just as fast as a cab would have been.

  He swung himself off the back steps of the 'bus at the corner as it paused to make the turn, and trotted all the way to the club. He met another of the club members, young Reginald Fenyx, on the steps of the Exeter Club, as a third and fourth climbed grim-faced out of cabs behind him. The summons tonight had come in the person of a human messenger boy carrying an envelope with his name on it, not in some arcane fashion, and it had been marked "urgent." Only twice since he had been invited to join the White Lodge had he gotten such a summons, and both times the situation had, indeed, been urgent.

  "Do you know what this is about?" he asked Reggie Fenyx, holding open the door for the younger man.

  "Not a clue, I'm afraid," the latter replied, with a shake of his head. "I'd only just got to our town house, down from Oxford on the train, when the lad rang the bell. The card was for Pater as well, but he's down in Devon, and pretty well out of range for something that's urgent."

  "Whatever it is, they've called in every member that's in London," put in one of the men who had just arrived by cab. "I'm not certain how the Old Man knew that I was back in town."

  "I think he's just sending boys around with cards and a list of addresses," opined the fourth, as they all passed the guests' dining room, the Club Room, the public dining room, and headed for the stairs that would take them to the second-floor War Room.

  The War Room took up half of the second floor, which shared the floor with the private rooms of Lord Alderscroft and Lord Owlswick. Both peers were already in the War Room, along with more members of the Council of the White Lodge than Peter had ever seen before together at once. There was a table here, at which about half of those assembled were seated, with the rest standing behind them. As yet, no one had donned the robes that hung on pegs along one wall, but every member wore whatever
mystic jewels he deemed necessary in an emergency situation. In the case of Lord Alderscroft, that was nothing more than his signet ring; in the case of the weedy squire John Pagnell-Croyton, it was two rings, a massive gold necklace with a garnet pendant, and a pair of garnet cufflinks that might once have been earrings. The thin peer looked as if the weight of all that gold would crush him to the floor in a moment.

  Peter had never bothered with focus stones or enchanted ornaments; he never felt comfortable wearing even a ring. As a ship's captain, he had not worn one because it was a hazard he did not need; all too often he had seen fingers torn off or hands mutilated because a ring got caught in machinery that could not be stopped in time. Now that he was a landlubber, he frankly could not afford the only gems that truly called to him—emeralds—and that, combined with his disinclination for anything ostentatious, meant he eschewed jewelry altogether.

  That lack made him stand out yet again among the rest of the Elemental Masters. Even Almsley had a ring—though his was far simpler than most of the rest of the members of the Council. Almsley's ring was a cabochon emerald set in a wide silver band; it had belonged to his grandfather, and had been passed down to the first male who demonstrated Water Magery in each generation since the Roman-British times, for the Almsleys were a very old family. There were similar rings for Fire, Air, and Earth Masters, kept in a locked casket by Almsley's grandmother. What the female Elemental Masters of the Almsley line received was something Almsley had never disclosed to his "Twin," but since Grandmama was a Water Master in her own right, there were, presumably, provisions made for them as well. The Almsleys were not only an old family, they were perforce unusually egalitarian.

  "Is this the last?" Alderscroft rumbled to Owlswick, who was ticking off names on a list as they all came in.

  "Yes, my lord," Owlswick replied, setting pen and list down on the table before him. "The others are all too far away to be of any service for tonight, and I have seen to it that they shall be informed of the details of the current situation. God forbid—but it may creep beyond London."

  "What situation, my lord?" asked Reggie Fenyx, somehow managing to combine a deferential manner with a bold and unshrinking gaze. Peter had the feeling that Reggie was destined, not for the role of a scholar, but for the military. No matter what his father thinks, that one isn't going to stay at Oxford past attaining his degree.

  "Death!" replied a sepulchral voice, in tones of uttermost gloom, startling Peter, and many others as well. "Death Invisible stalks the streets of London!"

  It was not Lord Alderscroft who answered, but Harold Fotheringay, who was, on occasion, given to over-dramatization. Alderscroft shot him a look of annoyance, but he did not contradict the younger man. Instead, he merely added, "Something of the sort, at any rate. Please take your seats, gentlemen, and I will tell you all we know."

  "I found the first one," Fotheringay moaned to no one in particular, as they took their seats. "My man of business. Horrible! Horrible!" Not to belittle Foth-eringay's distress, he really did look deeply shaken; beneath the heavy mustache, his lips were pale, as was his complexion, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his hands trembled as he clasped them together on the table. Whatever he's done in the past, he's not overdramatizing now. What he saw has him paralyzed with fear.

  "And it is to Lord Fotheringay's credit that he recognized at once the signs of a magical attack," Alderscroft rumbled. "If he had not, we would not yet be aware that there was anything amiss at all, for there has been no sign of movement among our enemies, and none of the victims are themselves mages."

  What? Peter was as much taken by surprise as most of the rest of the Council. Mages don't kill ordinary people by magic!

  The details came quickly. "Fotheringay went to pay a call on his man of business today, very early. The man was not yet down for breakfast, which was something of a surprise—" Alderscroft began.

  "It was impossible," Fotheringay interrupted. "Man was always up at dawn." He shook his head, and Peter saw drops of perspiration on his forehead. "Sent the maid up. Knew there was something wrong. Man was always up at dawn." He grew paler as he continued the story. "Demned fool woman let out a shriek; I went running up. Demned fool useless woman—standing there screaming—ran off for the police before I could stop her."

  He put his head down on the table, unable to go on for the moment.

  "Fotheringay sent for me, of course," Lord Alderscroft continued. "I've managed the situation, which could have been very badly mishandled. What Fotheringay uncovered was the corpse of his man, with all the marks of asphyxiation on him. I think I need not go into details."

  "Man looked like he'd been squeezed to death!" Fotheringay blurted, raising his head again, his blank eyes looking, not over the table, but into the recent past. "Never seen anything like it—demme if I have!" He shuddered violently. "Didn't have to check; the stink of power was all over him, but nothing like ours!" He squeezed his eyes shut again, much to Peter's relief. That blank stare was nothing less than unnerving.

  "Indeed. And, might I add, nothing at all like that Hindu woman you investigated for us, Scott, though it definitely is Indian," Alderscroft continued, unaware that his words had sent a chill down Peter's back. "This was my analysis, and it was confirmed by the one thing that linked all the other victims—and we have identified four, who all perished in the same way last night. All of the victims had served in India. The first victim we found had done so in a purely civilian capacity, two of the others in the Army, the last was born and raised to adulthood in the Raj and only recently returned home when his father died. Quite a young man, actually," Alderscroft added, meditatively. "It was that which confirmed to us that we were dealing with an extraordinary force. One old man, even three old men, could perish in the night of—say—

  magically induced apoplexy. That requires precision, but not a great deal of power. This, however—"

  "Squeezed to death!" Fotheringay repeated, thoroughly unnerved. He's going to be good for nothing for a while, Peter decided.

  Peter was just as unnerved as Fotheringay, though for different reasons than the others of the Council. Maya had not yet told him what it was she had been protecting herself from with those cobbled-together shields. Indeed, she had not even admitted to him that she was hiding herself.

  This could not be coincidence. Whatever, or whoever, had killed those men was probably Maya's enemy, or at least, was the person (or persons) Maya was trying to hide from. And that only led to more questions, entirely different questions from the ones the rest of the Council now pondered.

  She expected this power to follow her from India, or to be here already. Follow her, I think, or we'd have seen murders before this. But why is it killing Englishmen?

  There must be a clue in the fact that it had taken only those who had been in India. Many spells required something of the target in order to be launched; had these men left articles behind that were now being used against them?

  The only problem was that assumption implied that whoever had murdered them had brought those objects with him. That seemed unnecessarily complicated. Surely, surely, this thing was not operating from India itself?

  "We must assume that it is possible this deadly force is operating from India itself," Alderscroft rumbled. "You all know how the natives have been foolishly agitating of late for the end to British guidance. The continent teems with their numbers, and they can easily fill temples to overflowing with worshipers lending their crude force to the focused power of an Adept. Why they have chosen to murder these men, I do not pretend to know. We must, however, assume that this is but the opening salvo to a war of the Unseen."

  "Then we must seal the country!" someone blurted. "We must create a shield over England at once!"

  "That is my conclusion," Alderscroft agreed, and a buzz of talk erupted, aimed at planning just how to create such a shield.

  Peter could only watch and listen, helplessly. That— I can't believe that, he thought. First o
f all, how would anyone, even an Eastern Adept, be able to focus power over that great a distance? Oh, of course, there were legends of such things, but not ever in Peter's experience—and he had a great deal when it came to India and the East—had such a thing ever been accomplished. And why would anyone bother with such small fry? To kill at such a distance would require enormous power. Why waste it on four nonentities? If these four had done anything that heinous, certainly they would not have been such—nobodies. And if this was meant as a strike against British rule, why strike at nobodies in the first place? Why not go after someone in a position of power in India—the Viceroy, or the Colonial Government?

  Alderscroft had jumped to his own conclusion, however, and from the look of things, he wasn't going to budge from it.

  "Simple shields, made large enough, should disrupt power operating at such an extreme distance," Alderscroft said, loud enough for his voice to carry over the general babble, pulling Peter's attention back to the matter at hand. "I think we have enough Masters on hand to make such a shield, and as soon as we can gather all the members of the Exeter Club and White Lodge together at Stonehenge, we will have enough to make such a shield impervious."