He was debating between heading directly back—he had what he’d come for, or at least what he’d been sent for—and spending a day or two trying to find the Fire Master before turning back. His magic had allowed him to make extremely good time on his way here, and it would do him the same service upon his return. He knew what both Doctor Shipmeadow and his father would say: “Leave the matters of wizards to experienced wizards. You’re young yet. And Air, you know, is a flighty Element . . .”
Learie was very tired of hearing that he was scatterbrained, but he realized that he really didn’t know what to do now. And General Wellesley needed the intelligence he’d been sent to gather.
Then the supply train blew up.
The wagons carrying an army’s supplies were always at the center of the camp, both to guard them from theft and so that a unit’s quartermaster could easily disburse supplies. He’d noted the gun platforms, covered in canvas against the damp and transported on flatbed caissons, and near them, the kegs and crates of black powder. Harmless until it was poured down the barrel of a canon or a musket. Loose gunpowder burned, but didn’t explode; to make the barrels explode you’d have to toss them into a bonfire or insert a length of fuse cord into the barrel and light it.
Or have a Fire Master set it off.
The explosion filled the predawn darkness. It deafened him and made the ground shake. Flaming debris fountained into the sky, starting small fires everywhere it landed.
Learie barely had enough warning to duck down behind the ridge, and what warned him wasn’t anything he saw or heard.
It was the sense that someone was using magic. Fire Magic.
As the explosion’s echoes began to die, he cautiously raised his head. There! In the stand of cottonwood off to his left. Movement. A lone rider.
He scrambled down the slope of the ridge to where he’d left his mount. Storm was a seasoned veteran of the Peninsula; he’d been startled by the sudden noise, but he hadn’t bolted. Learie flung himself into the saddle and touched his spurs to Storm’s flanks. The gelding sprang forward as if his tail were on fire, and Learie settled to the chase.
The Fire Master had a head start, but he was riding a beast little better than a pony, one of the half-starved scrubs the peasants (the rich peasants) rode, unsuitable as remounts even when the cavalry units were desperate. And Storm was a big Irish Thoroughbred, with power and speed in every line of him.
The wind whipped away the screams and shouts from the burning camp. In the brightening day, Learie had eyes for only one thing: the rider fleeing before him. The Fire Master was dressed in rough peasant clothing, a battered slouch hat pulled low over his face. He rode bareback, over grass gray with hoarfrost, hugging his pony’s ribs with his knees. As the thunder of Storm’s hoofbeats grew louder, the other rider glanced back once. Learie got a quick glimpse of a pale face and shadowed eyes before the rider turned his attention to coaxing the pony to greater speed.
It was a doomed attempt.
But just as Storm’s nose drew level with the pony’s flank, the grass beneath his hooves burst into flame.
Learie had been expecting something of the sort. The moment he felt the air spark with magic, he gathered Storm into a jump. The gelding, used to the obstacles of the hunting field, obediently gathered himself and sailed into the air, landing delicately on the unburned turf beyond. Three more strides and he drew level with the pony. Laurie raised himself in his stirrups, and, kicking them free, launched himself at the other rider.
They rolled over and over in the tall grass. The slouch hat went sailing.
The first thing Learie noticed was the cascade of black hair that came tumbling free.
The second thing was that the Fire Master—a woman!—was attempting to knife him in the ribs.
“Here now!” he said indignantly.
“French pig!” the woman spat. “Let me go!”
“French!” Learie exclaimed. “Do I look French to you?” By now he was sitting on her, her wrists clasped in both hands. She hadn’t let go of the knife.
“You look like a dog of a pig!” she said. “And I will make you regret the day your mother bore you!”
“Just the one?” he asked lightly. Now that he could get a good look at her, he couldn’t imagine how he’d ever mistaken her for a man—or a peasant. Tumbled curls of shining black hair framed an oval face with clear pale skin. Her eyes were black as well, flashing with fury as she attempted to win her freedom. Skin to skin, he could feel the pulse of her Fire Magic like a separate heartbeat. “Look. You can’t just go around raising Fire like that. What if you kill someone?”
She stared at him in astonishment.
“I mean—you’re Spanish, aren’t you? And of course you hate the French. Who doesn’t? But didn’t your teachers ever tell you, well, the rules?”
“Rules,” she said, her voice ugly. “You are English. You play at war as if it is a game. Where were your rules when the French came to Madrid? They came to us as friends, and then named themselves our conquerors! We fought—and they turned the city into an abattoir. The streets ran red with blood as they burned and looted. Nowhere was safe from them. Not even the convents. It was then I understood that the Blessed Santiago had chosen me as his instrument of retribution.”
“You were a nun?” Learie asked. She glared at him in disgust. I guess not. He wracked his brain to make sense of what she’d said. Madrid had rebelled in the spring of 1808, and Murat had executed hundreds of citizens in bloody reprisal. She looked to be within a few years of his own age. She would have been fourteen or fifteen that year, an age at which many Adepts first gained the use of their gift. But . . .
“Where was your father?” he asked.
“He is English. He had to leave when the French came, but my mother was too sick to travel. He would have taken me, but who would care for her? He left us in the convent, until he returned. But he did not return,” she said.
He must have tried to, Learie thought unhappily. But the girl’s father—whoever he’d been—might not have reached England at all. Bonaparte controlled the seas, and blockading the ports had been his first step to conquering Spain. The ship might have been sunk. Or her father might never have boarded it. “But, now, look. He must have told you something about your magic. He would have known you were going to have an Elemental Gift when you were born . . .”
“It is not witchcraft!” she cried, renewing her struggles. “It is a gift from God!”
“Well, of course it is—I mean, blast it, no! It’s an affinity. A lot of people have them. Mine’s Air. And there are Water Masters, and Earth Masters, and—”
“No!” she said. “It is from Santiago, to avenge my mother! Her daughter is dead—but La Antorcha will chastise them with tongues of flame!”
La Antorcha. The Torch. This was getting worse and worse; he’d heard that name several times this year—it was the name of the leader of one of the guerillero bands. “Oh, please,” he said. “Don’t tell me you have a troop of crazy Sp—”
Behind him, he heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol’s cock.
“If it please you, señor, kindly release La Maestra,” a voice said.
* * *
I am not having fun, Learie thought. How do I know this? Because I have had fun, and this is not it.
There were six of them. They’d tied his hands behind him and put him on La Antorcha’s scrub. She’d taken Storm. The gelding had looked a bit confused at seeing his master riding another animal, but accepted his new rider docilely enough.
“A fine animal,” she had said as she swung into the saddle. “I will keep him, as compensation for the trouble you have caused me.”
“Oh,” Learie had answered, “please. Be my guest.”
He had no doubt of his ability to escape at need—and to call Storm to him when he did. That wasn’t
the problem. The real problem was, he didn’t know what to do.
The guerillero camp was several hours’ ride west, a collection of ragged huts crammed into a fissure on the hillside. It was at least a semi-permanent location, judging from the goats and chickens wandering disconsolately about. They’d taken his boots, tied his ankles, and tossed him into the back of one of the huts. Judging from the smell, it doubled as a goat pen.
Learie leaned his head back against the wall—it creaked alarmingly—and sighed. He wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking he was going to do. He’d thought the Fire Mage was a man, of course, but what had he intended to do when he caught up with him? Lecture him on the Elemental Mage Code of Ethics? Would that really work on somebody who was blowing up Frenchmen? God in Heaven, Learie. You really don’t have a single brain in your pretty head, do you? he thought wearily.
His report for General Wellesley was an urgent matter. The General needed to know where the French were and what they were doing. But the matter of the rogue mage needed dealing with as well.
If I could just talk to her, Learie thought wistfully. If I could just explain. Really explain.
His lips pursed in a soundless whistle, and he drew all his experience of Air Magery around himself. Not to force. Not to compel—neither the Elementals he summoned nor the target of his spell. Just to ask. To hope. He was afraid he was already half in love with La Antorcha, and he could not bear the thought of letting her step farther along this dark path to madness and death.
Nor could he bear the thought that a Huntsman might come to do what he knew he could not bear to.
He sat, staring at nothing, as the light that shone through the gaps in the walls slowly faded into dusk.
* * *
“I have brought you food, though I don’t see why I should bother.” La Antorcha ducked into the hut, carrying a wooden bowl and a wineskin.
“It’s because you are good and kind,” Learie said.
“I am a fool to waste food on an English heretic who has given his soul to the Devil,” she said harshly. She knelt down beside him and aimed the nozzle of the wineskin at him. He opened his mouth, and was rewarded with a thin stream of sour wine.
“No, look,” he said after she lowered it. “That’s where you’re wrong. Common misconception—I mean, it would be if anybody who wasn’t one of us knew about it—but you see, the affinity is something you’re just born with. Like blue eyes. Or black hair.”
“I do not believe you,” she said. He opened his mouth to argue further. She tried to close it with a spoonful of soup.
“Look,” he said desperately, twisting his neck to evade the spoon. “This is all very well and good—God, Satan, St. James, angels, great stuff all of it—but the part you’re missing is that if you keep on using your magic this way, you will die.”
“Who will kill me, English? You?” she asked scornfully. “You are bound like the sheep for the slaughter.”
“No one will kill you,” he said, suddenly weary beyond measure. “Your father should have told you. Mine did. There are rules about how you use your gifts. Not like laws and local custom and all that. Rules like if you walk of the edge of a cliff, you’ll fall, and if you hold your head under water long enough, you’ll drown. See? You can’t fight them. You can’t argue with them. They just are. There are three things you cannot do. You can’t use your power for selfish advantage, you can’t use it to do harm to others, and you can’t use it to kill.”
“Huh,” La Antorcha said. “Then what good is it?”
“That’s the point,” Learie said, giddy with exhaustion and the sense he simply wasn’t making her understand. “It is good. It’s for good. It’s for—when you summon the creatures of your element, and see them for the first time, and know they will always come—as friends, as allies—and you see how beautiful . . .” His throat tightened, and he stopped. “That’s what it’s for. For doing good. The rest . . . it’s perversion. At best, your magic will leave you forever. You’ll remember the beauty, but you’ll never touch it again. At worst, you’ll find yourself twisted by it. You’ll hurt everyone you love. You’ll destroy everything you care about. You’ll beg to turn back time—or die—but you won’t. Not until you don’t even care.” He closed his eyes and let his head drop to his chest. “Then you’ll die. And nobody will mourn you. All they’ll feel is relief.”
“Pretty words,” La Antorcha said, but for the first time she sounded uncertain. “Why should I listen to you?”
“Did you miss the part where I said I was an Air Master? Forgive me. We haven’t been properly introduced. Allow me to present to you Captain Sir Beverly St. John St. Andrew Laoghaire Darwen of the 11th Hussar Regiment, with Mastery of the Element of Air, with which, therefore, I share a certain identity. Meaning I am a useless clown and agreeable buffoon, fickle in my affections, changeable in my emotions, untrustworthy in my passions, but always, always entertaining.”
He felt the touch of a small, cool hand smoothing back his hair. “I think you are too hard on yourself, English,” La Antorcha said. Then she was gone.
He lay there without moving for a very long time, then finally turned his attention to the lengthy, but not particularly difficult, process of unknotting his bonds. When he was done, he scooped the litter on the floor of the hut into some semblance of a bed and curled up on it.
“Then you’ll die. And nobody will mourn you.”
You didn’t need to misuse your gifts for that.
You just had to be born to the wrong Element.
* * *
Morning came too early—as it always did when he was sleeping rough. Awakened by the gleam of sunlight through the walls, he rolled over, groaned, rubbed his hand over his stubbled jaw, and commenced the laborious process of convincing himself that he really did want to get up. At last, upright, and with most of the kinks worked out of his muscles, he emerged cautiously from his accommodation.
The little settlement was utterly still. Even the chickens were asleep, fluffed grayish balls of feathers huddled in doorways. The Spanish peasant might be up with the sun, but the Spanish guerrillero tended to get up with the moon.
He found his boots with his saddle and tack (though his saddlebags, and the supplies they’d contained, were absent). He sat down on the saddle to pull on the boots, then shrugged off his cloak to muffle the rings and buckles of his saddle and bridle. He lifted them carefully, and went looking for Storm.
The gelding was with the guerilleros’ ponies in the pocket pasture at the end of the crack in the cliff face. There was grass, and someone had determinedly lugged a wooden horse trough here from some (undoubtedly burned-out) village or farm. He wondered how many buckets of water it took to fill it, and where they had been brought from. Storm raised his head when Learie arrived, ears flicking interestedly, and minced toward him, bright-eyed.
“Sorry, old fellow,” Learie said. “It’s short rations for both of us until we reach home and hearth.” He’d flung the saddle over Storm’s back and was tightening the girth when he realized he wasn’t alone.
La Antorcha stood near the cliff wall, her forearms braced on the back of one of the ponies, watching him. “You’ll need a guide,” she said when she knew he’d seen her. “To get out of these mountains—”
“Without getting lost?” he asked.
“‘Alive,’ I had been going to say,” she answered.
Learie snorted wordlessly and turned to coaxing Storm to accept the bit.
“I thought you were going to keep him,” he said, when they’d ridden a little way down the narrow twisting trail that led back to the plain.
“I could not feed him,” she answered, “and he would die. It is the way of English things, I understand.”
“Not all of them,” he answered. “Some English things can flourish in the most surprising places.”
“We
shall see, won’t we?” La Antorcha said.
They rode in silence, first single file, then side by side, until they reached the plains and the road to the south was in sight.
“Now you will go, and you will fight,” she said, reining in.
“I will go, and a great many people will fight, I think,” he answered. “And perhaps, by our skill and the grace of God, we will win.”
“And Spain will be free,” she said. “Someday.”
“I hope so,” Learie said. “And what of La Antorcha?”
“There is fighting for La Antorcha to do as well,” she answered. “And perhaps, when it is done, we will meet once again. But until that day, I will carry your words in my heart. I do not wish to become someone who must die unmourned.”
“That can never be,” Learie said huskily. “I swear it.”
“Then go with God, English,” she said. “And we will meet again.”
“Burn brightly, La Antorcha,” he answered. He touched his heels to Storm’s sides and put the gelding into a trot.
South.
Into the fire.
Stones and Feathers
Elizabeth A. Vaughan
“Last night, you say?” Lieutenant-General Loftus asked, standing at the window staring at the Tower Green where the preparations for the ceremony had begun.
Colonel Doyle knew that his superior was probably watching some of the men clearing the area of gawking visitors, picking up the worst of the trash and debris, and chasing the damned ravens off. “In his sleep, sir.” Doyle said quietly. “Heart, I’m told.”
“Damned inconvenient.” Loftus said.
“Sir,” Doyle hesitated, weighing his superior’s turn of phrase. “Because he died in office,” he said, tentatively agreeing.
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