The Serpent's Shadow

Chapter Twenty

IT was a dull day; no one had come in at all this morning, and Peter moved restlessly about the shop, dusting off his curios even though they didn’t need dusting, moving them fractions of an inch to display them better. He couldn’t feel settled, somehow. He was ill-at-ease and fretful.

For one thing, he couldn’t stop worrying about Maya. He hadn’t slept much last night, thinking about her, worrying over the increased danger she might be in. Unfortunately, the future was as opaque to him as a block of stone. Prescience was not a gift often given to Masters of any sort. Perhaps the Greater Powers felt that Masters had gifts enough without being able to see into the future as well. He could easily be worrying about nothing, and that was the problem, he just didn’t know.

If only he could find a way to persuade the White Lodge to help protect her! He’d bearded old Alderscroft again in his den last night, to no avail.

“Let the foreigners contend among themselves,” the Old Man had rumbled. “We have no reason to embroil ourselves in their quarrels.”

No matter how much Peter tried to persuade him, to the Old Man, Maya was an Outsider, and never mind that half of her was as English as the Old Man. The White Lodge had enough on its plate, he said, trying to defeat this mysterious killer-by-night—which might, or might not, be Shivani, according to the Old Man—and now Alderscroft was not entirely certain they should even do that, not without investigating the past lives of all those who had been killed! The Old Man had actually voiced the thought that if these men had committed a crime against Indians worthy of the punishment, it would be better to let the vengeful entity sate itself, for the victims had brought their punishment on themselves!

Sophistry—and an excuse for doing nothing—if ever he had heard one! Perhaps his distaste had shown itself in his expression, for the Old Man had quickly retracted the doubtful argument, and gone back to insisting that the White Lodge had all it could do to try and stop the killer in its tracks.

But he did hint that Maya herself wouldn’t be in danger if she had simply reconciled with her aunt. Peter had been hard-put to hold down his anger. If she was my wife, he wouldn’t have a choice, Peter reflected sourly. He’d have to help protect her—or risk alienating three quarters of the Lodge—for if he wouldn’t move to protect my wife, how could he be depended upon to order the protection of the wives and children of anyone else?

Then it hit him, with the sudden impact of a thunderbolt. Dear God, if You put that into my head, thank You! he thought, mood turning abruptly from anxiety to elation. I’ll marry her! By heaven, I’ll shut up the shop right now and get hold of Almsley; he can get a Special License in two hours with his connections. If I put it to her that it’s for her protection, surely, surely—

Oh, of course she’d consent! And put so sensibly, she would not think the proposal amiss, or too sudden, or too forward, or too anything!

And as an excuse to get past his own cowardice over proposing to her—

Damn it, I love her, and she loves me, I know it. Make it only the excuse to marry now, the excuse to Almsley to get us a Special License, you fool! Yes, he’d go to Almsley, get the license, then go right to Maya and throw himself at her feet—

He turned, tossing the duster aside—

And a burst of light before his face nearly blinded him.

An aureole of brilliance, rainbowed at the edges, but electric white at the center, blossomed no more than three feet from him. It screamed magic to all his senses, overwhelming all other impressions; he threw his arm up instinctively, sheltering his face against the glare.

Out of the center of the light flew a small green parrot, screaming like a terrified banshee. It shrieked in Urdu—he could only make out a few things in his confusion. Murder. Serpent. Help.

Maya’s name.

It was only there a moment, then it turned and flew back into the light, which collapsed and vanished behind it, leaving his eyes dazzled and ears buzzing in the silence.

But he didn’t need an interpreter to know that something terrible had happened to Maya.

He didn’t stop to think, didn’t pause for anything, not for a hat, not even to lock up the shop. He ran out into the street, waving wildly at a hansom cab just up the block. The driver looked vaguely familiar—was it the one that often brought Maya home at night? At any rate, he knew a desperate man when he saw one; he pulled up his horse long enough for Peter to fling himself inside, waited only to hear the address before shouting at his beast and giving the reins a mighty shake to send it into a headlong gallop, cracking his whip over its head to urge it on. The cab lurched as the horse surged forward into the traces so eagerly it might have been a racehorse or a cavalry mount that had only been waiting for the opportunity to launch into a full-out charge. Peter clung to the inside of the cab like grim death; either the driver had guessed at the level of emergency from his face, or he was hoping for a handsome tip—which he would get—or both.

Probably both.

Hansoms were two-wheeled vehicles; this one not only bounced over the cobbles but occasionally went airborne for a moment as it hit a particularly large bump. People flung themselves out of their path as they careened headlong down the street, but they needn’t have bothered; the driver and his horse showed a level of skill at judging the traffic ahead and the places that they could squeeze through that was positively supernatural. The horse was soon drenched in sweat, drops of foam and sweat flying from its mouth and neck as it pounded around a corner, yet it showed no sign of wanting to slacken its pace, and the driver never again touched his whip, which remained in its socket up beside him.

The torture of each hard bump and landing was nothing compared to the torture of his heart. His gut clenched; his heart was a cold lump of icy terror. The cab swayed wildly from side to side as the driver swerved around slower-moving vehicles. Mindful that he might need the man’s services immediately after he got to Maya’s home, Peter let go of one side of the cab and pulled out his notecase, extracting a tenner which he stuck in his breast pocket. He stuffed the pocketbook back in his coat, grabbing the side of the cab again as they cut around a corner on one wheel. A tenner was more than double the proper fare; the man and his horse weren’t going to suffer for this.

At last the cab clattered down Maya’s street, and pulled up to the door, the horse actually going down on its haunches and skidding to a halt. Peter thrust the money up at the cabby as he leaped out, then had a second thought, and called “Wait a moment!”

He pulled out his notecase again, and scribbled a note to Almsley. At this hour, his Twin would still be sleeping the sleep of the idle rich in his Piccadilly apartment. He extracted another note and thrust it and the note with Peter’s address on it at the cabby.

“Give this to Lord Almsley’s man,” he said, already turning away. “Tell him it’s an emergency.”

“Roight yew are, guv’nor!” the cabby said, and before Peter had even touched the door, was off, his horse again at the gallop, drawing on reserves of strength and stamina that Peter would never have expected.

The door flew open as he turned back around; it was Gupta, who uttered an inarticulate groan, and gestured him inside. Peter pushed past him.

He didn’t have to ask “where”—there was a small crowd crammed into Maya’s office and spilling out into the corridor. It was all of Maya’s own household, neighbors—

The sight of one of them, a girl in shabby satins, triggered another brainstorm. He knew her only from Maya’s description, but he had no doubt who she was, and he grabbed her by the elbow. She rounded on him, fist pulled back and clenched to strike, eyes red, hair disheveled, and face streaked with dirt and tears.

He grabbed her wrist before she could hit him. The wiry strength in it didn’t surprise him. “Norrey!” he hissed, and she started back, eyes going wide, at the sight of a strange man dressed like a “toff” who knew her name. “Listen to me—you have to do something for us. Maya needs your help, and she needs it now.”

“But she’s—” the girl burst into tears, and Peter let go of her wrist, seized her shoulders and shook them until her teeth rattled and she pushed him away, angry again.

“No, she’s not!” He was certain, as he was certain of nothing else, that whatever had happened to Maya, she was not dead yet, no matter what this girl might think. Her shields were all still in place, and her magic was still a presence that would not have been there if she was dead. But overlying it was another magic, an inimical force that might well kill her unless he could somehow find its source. “I know who did this to her, but I don’t know where they are, and if we’re going to help her, I have to find that out!”

Norrey’s tears stopped as if they had been shut off, and her expression warred between doubt and hope. “But—”

“You get your friends, and you get the word out, girl!” he said fiercely. “The people that did this are Hindu, Indians like Maya and Gupta. They’ll have taken a place somewhere that they think they won’t be noticed. There’ll be a lot of them—mostly men. You might think they’re thieves; they aren’t, but that’s what they’ll move and act like.”

Norrey’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he described the look and habits of dacoits as he recalled them from India. “Now, do you think you can pass that on? We need to know where they are quickly, Norrey, the quicker the better.” He took a risk, and lowered his voice still further. “This is magic, Norrey, black, evil magic; we have to find the people who are doing it and stop them, or they will kill her by midnight!”

“ ‘f they be in th’ city, Oi’ll winkle ‘em out!” Norrey said, with the fervency of a vow. She wriggled out of his grip and shot out the door. Now he could push and shove his way through to the examining room, his heart plummeting with dread at what he would find there.

They had laid her out on her own examination table, and at first sight, with her face so white and still, and not so much as a flutter of her eyelids, she did look dead. All of her pets had crowded into the room, and surrounded the table; the moment that they sighted him, they burst into a clamor or made for him. Charan leaped up into his arms, and the three birds waved their wings frantically at him. Then the green parrot launched itself across the gap to land on his shoulder.

Peter put Charan on his other shoulder, and went to Maya’s side, heart in mouth. There were no outward signs of life, not even the rise and fall of Maya’s chest to show that she breathed. But when he took up her hand and felt her wrist, there was a faint pulse—and over her hung an invisible pall that only he could see, a nasty, clinging yellow-gray fog that made him sick when it brushed against him.

Gupta made his way back into the room. “Get these people out!” he snapped. “No one here but household, Lord Almsley when he arrives, and Norrey when she returns. Have you sent for a doctor?”

Gupta cast him a reproachful look. “From the Fleet, sahib,” was all he said, then set about clearing the office, then the hall, of people who, however well-meaning they were, at this point were nothing but a nuisance.

When he had closed the door on the last of them, Gupta returned. “What is this, sahib? Magic—surely—”

“Magic and something else, I don’t know what—” Peter was half into a trance. He might not be a doctor—he wasn’t any kind of a healer—but he was a Water Master—

And the body is—what? Three-fourths water?

Well, in this case, it was water with something horribly wrong about it. It wasn’t only the sickening fog that hung over it, there was something foul in her very blood—coursing all through her veins, some poison or drug or both—

“Move yer bloomin’ arse, ye wretched donkey!” said an Irish-accented voice, and he came abruptly out of trance as a rough hand shoved him to one side.

“Doctor O’Reilly—” Gupta protested, while Peter coughed and shook his head to clear it.

The newcomer had a beard and head of fiery red curls, and a temper to match—but had the air of authority and the slender hands of a surgeon. He pulled off his coat in such haste that the sleeve tore. “Quiet!” O’Reilly snapped, as the man snatched up a scalpel from a tray of instruments and began cutting Maya’s clothing off of her, with a fine disregard for propriety. And as he moved, Peter saw with his inner eye a very familiar flicker of power around him. “But—you’re a Fire Master!” he gasped. “How—where—”

“In Eire, of course, ye gurt fool!” O’Reilly growled. “An’ as to why I’d no joined yer precious club, ye can ask that bigger fool Aldershot or whate’er it is he calls hisself when he’s at home!” He threw the remains of Maya’s shirtwaist on the floor and started on her camisole and corset cover. “Didn’t guess she was a young mage till after ye came along.” More rags joined the shirtwaist. “Saw no rhyme nor reason t’ interfere then when you had her in hand, and her takin’ a likin’ to ye, so kept meself to meself. If I’d known she was with troubles, though—Hah! There!”

He’d gotten the corset cut off and tossed it aside, much to Peter’s acute embarrassment; the doctor didn’t seem to care, but Peter couldn’t help flushing painfully at Maya’s nude torso laid bare for all of them to see—

But his flush faded as O’Reilly pointed at a nasty round bruise on her side, just above her hip.

“That’s a syringe mark, or I’ll eat me own shoes,” O’Reilly said in angry triumph. “And that ‘counts for how they got their divil brew into her! Happen they got summat from her, too, or I miss my guess, filthy heathen.”

He flung the scalpel down on the floor and seized the stethoscope, hauling it on over his ears and putting the listening end to her chest, then jerking it from his ears again.

“There’s two sorts uv diviltry here, drugs and magic. An’ the one that’ll kill her first is the drugs.” O’Reilly’s accent got thicker as time flew past and tension grew. “You—” He glanced up at Peter. “You, Water Master! You can be givin’ me a hand here—I’ll be wantin’ ye to drive what’s in her back out toward th’ wound, here. That’s not somethin’ I can do; I can’t work inside uv her wit’out burnin’ her up. Can ye do that?”

“I—” he was going to say he would try, but trying was not good enough, not here, not now. He nodded, dumbly, placed his hands gently on the cool skin of her abdomen, and fought his way down past that sickening fog mantling her body again. It was harder the second time; the magic was stronger. How much stronger would it get?

The wrongness was everywhere; where to start? It was only going to continue to get pumped around in her veins as he worked! He couldn’t count on keeping any place “clean” for longer than a heartbeat or two.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he started. Indecision and hesitation were the enemy’s allies. Work like a seine net; strain out the stuff and shove it in front of me, then go back again and again—

Herding phantoms, chasing mist; that was what it felt like, and all on a miniature scale. He pushed the poisons ahead of a thread of power; they flooded in behind his sweep, and he had to force himself to ignore them, concentrating on the evil he had captured, and all the time that malevolent magical miasma he worked in thickened and grew stronger. It wasn’t until the sphere of his awareness reached the area of the puncture that he understood what O’Reilly was up to.

With a needle of Fire as finely regulated and controlled as any master embroiderer ever wielded, O’Reilly vaporized every tiny atom of poison oozing from the puncture, without ever cauterizing the wound itself. In fact, he created a kind of suction as he evaporated the vile stuff, a suction that hastened the process of drawing out the poison. It was a brilliant display, but Peter had no time to admire it. Maya sank further with every passing moment, physically and magically.

Peter completely lost track of time and his surroundings. His focus, his life, now centered on herding the poisons, and taking note and hope from the slow but steady improvement in Maya’s heartbeat and breathing as he cleared her system of them. At some point, he felt the presence of another joining him in this task, the familiar deft touch of Peter Almsley; with his Twin came a little more strength, and a little less fear, and the knowledge that he wasn’t fighting evil magic and poisons all alone.

The stuff was getting thinner, less a sludge in the blood and more a color—then less a color than a stain—then it had thinned to the point where he could barely find any of it at all—

And that was when Almsley shook his elbow, and he fought his way back out through that horrid fog, which had by this point thickened to the point that it was a sludge, or a kind of quicksand. It left a taint in the back of the mind in the same way that a mouthful of foul liquid left a taint in the back of the throat. He came back to himself, retching in reaction to it.

Gopal was at his elbow, steadying him, as he opened his eyes on the surgery.

Almsley looked like hell, dark circles under his eyes and strain in every feature; he knew he didn’t look much better. It was hard to make out O’Reilly’s face under all that hair, but his complexion was certainly pale enough.

And we aren’t even close to finished yet—

His hand sought Maya’s, and he felt her wrist for a pulse. Strong and steady, thank God! And her chest, now decently covered with a sheet, rose and fell normally. She looked asleep to all outer appearance, except that her eyes, too, were sunken, her cheeks hollowed, and her skin as pale as porcelain, every vestige of color drained from it.

“We’re holdin’ our own,” O’Reilly said, as Peter looked up at him. “That was good work ye done.” He glanced past Peter at the other man. “Almsley, I had no notion from that silly-ass manner uv yours that ye had that level uv skill.”

“Well, that’s rather the point of the manner, old man. I want people to underestimate me,” Almsley said wearily, then turned to Peter. “What are we going to do about that spell that’s on her?”

No beating around the bush with Almsley, thank God. “I have someone out trying to find out where these dacoits are; where they are, that’s where we’ll find the source of all this.” His own gaze moved past Peter Almsley to Gupta, who shook his head slightly. He stifled a groan. “Well, she’s not back yet—frankly, Twin, she’s a member of a gang of thieves and footpads, and if they can’t find what we’re looking for, no one will.”

“Seeing as we already know your Hindu sorceress has managed to cloak herself handily from everything the Lodge has tried, even that idiot Owlswick couldn’t manage,” Almsley agreed, and grimaced. “Damn the Old Man for a fool! There are half a dozen other things he could have done when you first asked him for help that would not leave us at such an impasse!”

O’Reilly growled in his throat. And he might have said something himself on the subject, but just at that moment, the doorbell rang, and Norrey burst into the surgery.

“We found ‘em!” she shouted in near-hysterical triumph. “We got ‘em pinned i’ their ‘ole!”

It took time to get organized; Peter fretted more with every passing second, his nerves at such a pitch that he thought the top of his head would split. He ordered Gopal to stay behind, for he didn’t want to leave the house physically undefended. Magically, O’Reilly, who would also stay behind because of his medical skills, was more than a match for most direct attacks. Of all the Masters, the Fire Masters were the most adept at combat, as well as having the power best suited to fighting. And while it would have been ideal to have that combative ability with them, O’Reilly was their only physician, and he had to stay with Maya.

Peter wanted to leave Gupta behind as well, but the old man wouldn’t hear of it. He vanished briefly and came back armed to the teeth with a brace of ancient Army pistols, knives in his belt, and even a sword slung over his back. “I have slain men ere this,” the old man insisted. “I can slay dacoits now, with little more harm to my karma.”

Almsley insisted on going as well, nor was he unarmed; he’d brought his own revolver and a second one for Peter, and a pocketful of ammunition.

And they quickly found, as they looked for a second cab—their remarkable first driver and his fantastic horse having been hired by Almsley for the day, with immense forethought on Almsley’s part—that the animals were not going to be left behind either.

All but Rajah the peacock, that is; he placed himself at O’Reilly’s side, somewhat to the bemusement of the doctor, and would not stir. But Charan and Rhadi could not be separated from Peter, Sia and Singhe fastened themselves to Norrey, and Mala and Nisha set up such a clamor of falcon screams and hoots that it was clear they were going along with someone. So once their redoubtable cabby had summoned another of his brotherhood, Norrey and Peter crammed themselves into the first cab, and Gupta and Almsley into the second—Almsley bearing Mala on a leather driving glove like a knight of old, and Gupta with Nisha on the improvised protection of multiple layers of rags wrapped over his left arm and wrist, held in place by an additional wrapping of harness leather.

By now it was dark; none of them had eaten, so Gupta made them all wait long enough to drink a concoction of eggs, cream, and sweet sherry to sustain them. Only then did they take to their chariots for another wild ride through the streets of London.

The langur and the parrot were silent—unnaturally so—during the careening drive. Charan gave little more than a chitter or a grunt of protest when he was squeezed by one of the cab’s more violent movements, Rhadi uttered no sounds at all from his perch on Peter’s shoulder. The streets were a little clearer—most people were at their suppers—and the horse pounded almost unimpeded into the depths of the East End.

“I want to stop a block or so away from this place!” Peter shouted into Norrey’s ear over the thunder of hooves and the rattle of wheels on the pavement, the creaks and groans of the cab as it shuddered with every bump and lurch. “I don’t want to alert them—”

“Already thunk o’ that, guv!” Norrey shouted back. “An’ Oi got some mates waitin’, too!”

No sooner had she said that, than they pulled up at the mouth of a dark and noisome little street—more of an alley—and once they were all out of the cabs, Norrey led them down it at a trot, one mongoose on her shoulder, the other cradled in her arms.

This was all happening much too fast for proper thought, much less planning. Part of Peter wanted to bring everything to a complete halt, to return to the house and map things out properly, but the rest of him screamed in growing panic that it wasn’t going fast enough, that they had to hurry, hurry, hurry! If it hadn’t been that the animals were so supremely calm and confident at this point, Peter would never have ventured down this street at all, for he’d have been certain Norrey was going to betray them—

Especially when a scurvy lot of ne’er-do-wells materialized around them as Norrey stopped halfway down, just outside a little hole in the wall that might be what passed for a pub in these parts. Certainly there was some sort of light passing through the greasy, cracked windowpanes, and the sound of shrieks and laughter coming from inside.

“These are m’ mates,” Norrey said, gesturing with her free hand to the dozen or so cutthroats and footpads around her. “These are the blokes for Miss Maya, lads.”

“Don’t unnerstan’ more’n ‘alf whut Norrey sez,” spoke up the tallest and nastiest-looking of the lot. “But she ‘ad th’ White Cough, an’ she ain’t got it naow, so—” He shrugged. “Reckon Miss Maya fixed ‘er, an’ since there ain’t no cure, ‘adda bin—magic, I guess. So I guess there cood be magic as ‘as ‘urt ‘er.”

Peter was at a loss, but Almsley wasn’t. “We’ve got work for you, whether you believe in magic or not—and if we don’t get to these people and stop what they’re doing, Doctor Maya will die,” he said, stepping forward, with Mala mantling on his wrist.

Norrey hissed at the leader and tugged at his sleeve; he made as if to cuff her, until one of the mongooses ran up on her shoulder and showed its teeth at him. He laughed uneasily, then turned back to Almsley. “Aye, some on us owes Miss Maya—but some on us don’t,” he replied aggressively. “So whut’s in it fer all on us?”

Almsley leaned forward, his eyes glittering in the dim light from the single street lamp at the corner and the fitful illumination from the pub. “I’ll not spin you any Banbury tales,” he said, “but think about this. Those people must have bought that building they’re in—a whole building—or they couldn’t be doing what they are without a landlord nosing around! Where did that money come from? They don’t work and don’t steal—but they have to eat, so where’s their living coming from? There’s more money in that place; there has to be.”

“Eh,” the leader replied thoughtfully, stroking the sparse whiskers on his scruffy young chin.

“Hindu women have all their wealth in gold jewelry,” Peter spoke up suddenly, out of his own memory. “Oh, surely you’ve seen that, seen one or two of them walking around! Well, the woman who bosses all of those men is from a high-caste family—and she’s a powerfully important person in her own right, too! Doctor Maya came to England with all her people, bought her house, rebuilt it, and started her surgery with what she got from her own jewelry, and she wasn’t nearly so high-caste or important. What do you think that woman’s fortune looks like?”

“Ah!” said the leader, as some inarticulate mumbles from the rest of the group indicated their growing interest.

“And besides all that, there’s a temple in there somewhere,” Almsley concluded triumphantly. “You know what’s in temples!”

That got them muttering. Perhaps one or two of them had gone into the British Museum out of curiosity. The rest would have heard the stories from returning soldiers or even seen a moving picture.

Almsley went on persuasively. “Even if there’s no gold and gems, there’ll be silks and statues and lots of things you can sell, and not to some pawnbrokers either! Whatever is in there is yours. All we want is the woman herself.”

“Done!” said the leader, holding out his hand to Almsley, who shook it with the full solemnity the pact deserved. “Let’s get ‘em!”

Maya woke.

Between the time that she fell into blackness and the time that she woke, her mind had not been idle. There were conclusions ready for her the moment that she was conscious—that the old apple seller must have been her aunt Shivani, or in Shivani’s pay, that this had been a trap. She knew when she woke that she would awaken in Shivani’s power, and that Shivani expected her to be frightened, disoriented, and helpless.

Shivani was wrong. She woke angry, and prepared to fight.

So when she found herself floating—in midair—unable to move or make a sound, it was the “floating” part that momentarily confused her, and not her surroundings.

How can I—wait—of course. She had learned enough from Peter, had traveled in the realms of Earth Magic often enough, to recognize after a moment that Shivani had somehow managed to magically dissociate her spirit from her body, and now held the spirit captive. When she looked for it, she could still find the frail “silver cord” that attached her to her physical body, but Shivani had done something that made it impossible for her to follow it back home.

Stop. Look. Where am I?

If she couldn’t move or speak, she could still see and hear, and what she observed did not bode well for her.

She hovered, as it were, just above something that could only be an altar. Behind her was a many-armed, brightly painted statue of a woman bedecked in necklaces of flowers and skulls. Each hand held a different weapon, or a severed head. She had no difficulty in recognizing Kali Durga, and that was no great surprise—though it was odd that the statue’s eyes were closed.

Didn’t I hear something about that, somewhere, in a street tale? That someone in Ganesh’s temple once offended him, and the statue of Ganesh closed its eyes to show that Ganesh would no longer answer his prayers?

She was immediately distracted by the sight of her aunt, however, who now bore no resemblance to the old apple woman at all. Shivani, the Priestess of Kali Durga, was, in fact, remarkably young-looking; except for a very few fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, she looked just as young as Maya. Her hair was black and glossy, plaited into a thick braid along with thin gold chains. She might have been considered a handsome woman except for those lines, which gave a cast of cruelty to her features, and except for her eyes, which were hard and cold. Anyone seeing her would have known at once that she and Surya had been sisters—and would have known at once that they were nothing at all alike.

The woman knelt at a brazier just in front of the altar, casting bits of this and that into it so that smoke rose in thin curls from the charcoal. Beside the brazier was a tube of red—Maya’s own blood, still in the syringe. Involuntarily, Maya strained toward it.

“You are awake,” the woman said, in a calm, and silky voice. “Do not trouble to speak; you cannot.”

Do not trouble to boast, I am not impressed, Maya retorted, forming the words and thinking them fiercely at her captor, as she had learned to do when her spirit went deep into the realm of Earth Magic.

Startled, the woman looked up from her task in spite of herself. Their “eyes” met, and Maya strove to put nothing in her own gaze but defiance as she held her thoughts behind a tightly woven shield.

“I will have you,” Shivani said quietly.

You will not. You cannot overcome me. You may kill me, but you will never have me. With that challenge, and before Shivani could react to it, Maya gathered her strength, and drove her self down into the earth below, searching for a link into Earth Magic.

It was tainted, stinking with blood; she drove down further, sensing that behind her Shivani had leaped to her feet and was belatedly trying to prevent her from going in this unanticipated direction. She felt her progress slowing, as Shivani “pulled” against her flight, using whatever hold she’d put on Maya’s spirit to drag her back.

She strained against the pull, striving to inch herself clear of the polluted soil, trying to get even a fraction of her “self” into a place where she, and not Shivani, had the advantage. It was like trying to swim to the bank of a stagnant cesspool with a rope around her waist and someone pulling her deeper into the pool with it.

She would not submit! Never!

Her progress slowed—stopped altogether—

Slowly, Shivani began to pull her back.

In one final effort, Maya hurled herself forward—not all of her self, but just a tiny thread connected to a miniature javelin, a little anchor, the most invisible of grapples to connect her to a source of additional, clean strength. And the thread caught, held, fused—

She gave up the fight, and let Shivani bring her back like a dog on a leash, or a fish on a line. But behind her that thinnest, barely perceptible thread unreeled, and the magic of the Earth pulsed up it, giving her renewed strength and hope.

Shivani, however, gloated in triumph as she brought Maya back to her place above the altar. “You stupid, stubborn brat!” Shivani crowed. “I am older, stronger, and far cleverer than you! And very, very soon you will know just how little you can do against me. Look there—”

She gestured to the side of the altar, where there was a small mirror of black glass lying on a square of red silk. Maya looked closer at what seemed to be an entirely innocuous object, and to her horror, she realized that there was—something in it.

No, not something. Someone. A tortured spirit, more than half mad, imprisoned within the circle of ensorceled glass. A movement of Shivani’s hands caught Maya’s attention, and she saw that Shivani held up a similar mirror for her inspection.

“This one will shortly be your home, English witch,” Shivani said sweetly. “Examine it as much as you please for the next hour or so. It will be the last time you see it again from the outside.”

With her own laughter ringing through the temple, the priestess of Kali Durga went back to her magics, leaving her victim to contemplate the fate her captor had designed for her with a sinking, terror-filled heart.