The Wizard of London (15 page)

“Nan—there’s
something wrong—”

At
the hollow tone in Sarah’s voice, Nan whirled, and saw that she was
beside the window, as white as a sheet.

“Nan—I
don’t think a stick is going to be much use now—” she
faltered, pointing a trembling finger at the lamps.

And
as Nan watched, the flames of the lamps all turned from yellow to an eerie
blue. All Nan could think of was the old saying,
flames burn blue when
spirits walk
…

Nan
felt every hair on her body standing erect, and her stomach went cold, and not
because of some old saying. No. Oh, no. There was danger, very near. Sarah
might have sensed it first, but Nan felt it surrounding both of them, and
fought the instinct to look for a place to hide.

Neville
cawed an alarm, and she turned again to see him scuttle backward, keeping his
eyes fixed on the closed door. The lamp flames behind her dimmed, throwing the
room into a strange, blue gloom. Neville turned his back on the door for a
moment, but only long enough to leap into the air, wings flapping frantically,
to land on her shoulder. He made no more noise, but Grey was making enough for
two. His eyes were nothing but pupil, and she felt him shivering.

“There’s
something outside that door,” Sarah said in a small, frightened voice.

“And
whatever ‘tis, locks and wood ain’t goin’‘t’ keep
it out,” Nan said grimly. She did not say aloud what she felt, deep
inside.

Whatever
it was, it was no mere ghost, not as she and Sarah knew the things. It hated
the living; it existed to feed on terror, but that was not all that it was, or
did. It was old, old—so old that it made her head ache to try and wrap
her understanding around it, and of all that lived, it hated people like Sarah
the most. That thing out there would destroy her as casually as she would swat
a fly—but it wanted Sarah.

Grey’s
growling rose to an ear-piercing screech; Sarah seemed frozen with fear, but
Grey was not; Grey was ready to defend Sarah with her life. Grey was horribly
afraid, but she was not going to let fear freeze her.

Neither
was Neville.

And
I ain’t neither
! Nan told herself defiantly, and though the hand
clutching her club shook, she took one step—two—three—

And
planted herself squarely between whatever was behind the door and Sarah. It
would have to go through her, Neville, and Grey to reach what it wanted.

I
tol‘ Karamjit where we went—an’ when Mem’sab comes
‘ome wi’out us
—

She
knew that was the only real hope, that help from the adults would come before
that—Presence—decided to come through the door after them. Or if
she could stall it, could somehow delay things, keep it from actually
attacking—

Suddenly,
Grey stopped growling.

The
light from behind her continued to dim; the shadows lengthened, collected in
the corners and stretched toward them. There was no more light in here now than
that cast by a shadowed moon. Nan sucked in a breath—

Something
dark was seeping in under the door, like an evil pool of black water.

The
temperature within the room plummeted; a wave of cold lapped over her, and her
fingers and toes felt like ice. That wave was followed by one of absolute
terror that seized her and shook her like a terrier would shake a rat.

“Ree—”
Grey barked into the icy silence. “Lax!”

The
word spat so unexpectedly into her ear had precisely the effect Grey must have
intended. It shocked Nan for a split second into a state of not-thinking, just
being—

Suddenly,
all in an instant she and Neville were one.

***

Knowledge
poured into her; and fire blossomed inside her, a fire of anger that drove out
the terror, a fierce fire of protectiveness and defiance that made her
straighten, take a firmer grip on her club. She opened her mouth—

And
words began pouring out of her—guttural words, angry words, words she
didn’t in the least understand, that passed somehow from Neville to her,
going straight to her lips without touching her mind at all. But she knew, she
knew, they were old words, and they were powerful…

The
light from the lamps strengthened, and with each word, she felt a warmth
increasing inside her, a fierce strength pouring into her. Was it from her
feathered companion, just as the words were? Or was it the words that brought
this new power?

No,
it wasn’t the light behind her that was increasing! It was the light
around her!

Cor—

A
golden halo of light surrounded her, increasing in brightness with every word
that spilled from her lips. And now Grey joined in the chanting, for chanting
it was. She caught the pattern now, a repetition of some forty-two syllables
that sounded like no language fragments Nan had ever heard. She knew what
Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese all sounded like, even if she couldn’t speak
or understand them, for folk of all of those nationalities thronged the slums
where she had lived, from Whitechapel to Limehouse. She knew what Latin, Greek,
and French all sounded like too, since those were taught at the School. This
language definitely wasn’t any of those. But when Grey took over the
chant, Nan stopped; she didn’t need to speak anymore. Now it was Grey who
wove an armor of words about her—and a moment later, Sarah’s voice,
shaking, faltering, but each syllable clear, if faint.

Then—she
went all wobbly for a moment. As if something gave her a good cuff, she
experienced a sort of internal lurch of vision and focus, a spirit earthquake.
The room faded, thinned, became ghostly. The walls receded, or seemed to;
everything became dim and gray, and a cold wind buffeted her, swirling around
her.

On
the other side of that door, now appallingly transparent, bulked an enormous
shadow; that was what was oozing under the door, reaching for them, held at bay
by the golden light around her. The shadow wasn’t what filled her with
horror and fear, however—it was what lay at the heart of it, something
that could not be seen, even in this half-world, but which sent out waves of
terror to strike devastating blows on the heart. And images of exactly what it
intended to do to those who opposed it—and the one it wanted.

Now
the shadow was on their side of the door, and there was no getting past it. The
shadow billowed, and sent out fat, writhing tentacles toward her.

But
Nan was not going to break; not for this thing, whatever it was, not when her
friend needed protecting from this horror that was going to devour her and take
her body for its own!

She
brandished her club—and as the weapon in her hand ripped through the
thick, gray tendrils of oily fog the thing sent toward her out of the shadow,
she saw with a shock that she no longer held a crude wooden club. Not
anymore—

Now
she held a shining sword, with a blade polished to a mirror finish, bronze-gold
as the heart of the sun. And the arm that swung the blade was clad in bronze
armor.

She
was taller, older, stronger; wearing a tunic of bright red wool that came to
her knees, a belt of heavy leather, her long hair in a thick plait that fell
over one shoulder. And Neville! Neville was no heavier than he had been, but
now he was huge, surely the size of an eagle, and his outspread wings
overshadowed her, as his eyes glowed the same bronze-gold as her sword and the
golden aura that surrounded them both.

But
the form within the shadow was not impressed.

The
shadow drank in her light, swallowing it up, absorbing it completely. Then it
began to grow…

Even
as it loomed over her, cresting above her like a wave frozen in time, she
refused to let the fear it wanted her to feel overwhelm her, though she felt
the weight of it threatening to close in on her spirit and crush it. Defiantly,
she brandished her sword at it. “No!” she shouted at it. “You
don’t get by!”

It
swelled again, and she thought she saw hints of something inside it…
something with a smoldering eye, a suggestion of wings at the shoulders, and
more limbs than any self-respecting creature ought to have.

She
knew then that this was nothing one single opponent, however brave, however
strong, could ever defeat. And behind her, she heard Sarah sob once, a sound
full of fear and hopelessness.

Grey
and Neville screamed—

And
the ghost door burst open behind the horror.

In
this strange half-world, what Nan saw was a trio of supernatural warriors. The
first was a knight straight out of one of her beloved fairy books, broadsword
in hand, clad head to toe in literally shining armor, visor closed—though
a pair of fierce blue eyes burned in the darkness behind the visor with a light
of their own. The second bore a curved scimitar and was wearing flowing,
colorful silken garments and a turban centered with a diamond that burned like
a fire, and could have stepped out of the pages of the
Arabian Nights
,
an avenging jinn.

And
the third carried not a sword, but a spear, and was attired like nothing Nan
had ever seen except in a brothel or a filthy postcard—in the merest
scrap of a chemise, a bit of draped fabric that scandalized even Nan, for
inside that little wisp of cloth was—

Mem’sab?

The
shadow collapsed in on itself—not completely, but enough for the knight
to slam it aside with one armored shoulder, enough for the jinn and
Mem’sab to rush past it, and past Nan, to snatch up Sarah and make a dash
with her for the now open door, with Grey flapping over their heads in their
wake.

Nan
saw the shadow gather itself, and knew it was going to strike them down.
“
Bloody hell
!” she screamed—or at least, that was
what the words that came out of her mouth meant, although she certainly
didn’t recognize the shape of the syllables. And, desperate to keep it
from striking, she charged at the thing, Neville dove at it, and the knight
slashed frantically upward.

Again
it shrank back—not in defeat, oh, no—but startled that they had
dared to move against it.

And
that was enough—just enough—for Mem’sab and the jinn to rush
past bearing Sarah, for Nan and Neville and Grey to follow in their wake, and
for the knight to slam the door shut and follow them down the stairs—

Stairs
which, with every footstep, became more and more solid, more and more real,
until all of them tumbled out the front door of Number Ten, Berkeley Square,
into the lamplit darkness, the perfectly ordinary shadows and smoke and night
sounds of a London street.

Neville
fluttered down, panting, to land on the ground. Sahib slammed the front door
shut behind them and leaned against it, holding his side, and breathing
heavily. Gone were his armor, his sword—he was only ordinary Sahib again,
with a cane to help his bad knee. Selim—and not the jinn—put Sarah
down on the pavement, and Grey fluttered down to land on her shoulder. Neville
looked up at Nan and quorked plaintively, while Mem’sab, clad in a proper
suit, but with her skirt hiked up to scandalous shortness, did something that
dropped her skirt from above her knees to street length again.

“Are
you two all right?” she asked anxiously, taking Sarah by the shoulders
and peering into her face, then doing the same with Nan.

“Yes’m,”
Nan said, as Sarah nodded.

“Faugh,”
Sahib coughed, as he straightened. “Let’s not do that again any time
soon, shall we? I’m getting too old for last-minute rescues.”

Last
minute rescues
—‘
cause we went off alone, like a pair of
gormless geese
! “Oh, Sahib—Mem’sab—” Nan
felt her eyes fill with tears, as it suddenly came home to her that her
protectors and benefactors had just put themselves into deadly danger to save
her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’ mean—”

“Nan,
Nan, you aren’t to blame!” Sahib said immediately, putting one
strong arm around her shoulders. “You did nothing that you
shouldn’t have done, and if you hadn’t been so careful, we
wouldn’t have known where you were until it was too late! No, it was our
fault.”

“It
certainly was,” Mem’sab said grimly. “But it was someone
else’s as well… and there is going to be a reckoning when I find
out who. But let’s get away from here first. I don’t altogether
want to find out if the bindings keeping that thing confined to this house will
hold under provocation.”

Sahib
took Sarah’s arm, giving her Grey to tuck inside her coat, and Selim
offered a hand to Neville, who was so tired he hopped onto it without a
protest, and then lifted the raven onto Nan’s shoulder. As they walked
quickly away from the building, Mem’sab continued.

“Someone
came to me a few days ago with a story about this place, how some haunt was
making it impossible to rent out and he was in dire difficulty because of it.
He wanted Sarah, or me, or both of us together to lay the spirit—but I
have heard all of the stories about this address, and I knew better than to
try. Something came to dwell there, over a hundred years ago, and it is not a
thing to be trifled with. Men have died here, and more than one, and many
people have gone mad with fear. Whatever that thing was—”

“Is
old,” Nan put in, with a shudder. “Real, real old. I dunno how it
got ‘ere, but it ain’t no spook.”

“Well,
evidently this person decided to force our hand,” Sahib said
thoughtfully—and as Nan looked up when they passed under a streetlamp,
she saw that both his face and Selim’s were grim. “I believe that I
will have a private word with him.”

“As
will I—although I am sorely tempted to tell him that his devil has been
laid, and suggest he spend a night there himself,” Mem’sab said,
with deep anger in her voice. “And from now on, we will contrive a better
way of bringing you girls if I should need you.”

“Please,”
Sarah said, in a small voice. “What happened to Nan and Neville? And you
and Sahib and Selim?”