The Wizard of London (45 page)

So
the unseasonably cool weather was just a coincidence, but one she could take
advantage of. She rose and her maid dressed her while she thought long and hard
about what her next step would be.

But
the opportunity to speak privately with David came sooner than she had thought.

“We
must talk,” he said under his breath, as he passed her on the stairs, she
going down to breakfast, he returning from it.

“Now
is as good a time as any,” she replied, “I am not so enamored of
grilled tomatoes that I cannot take the time to speak with my pupil when he
looks so distressed. Let us take a turn in the gardens.”

Here,
of course, was where she overheard the lamentations of the gardeners, and
smiled to herself.

“I
am not sure where to begin,” he said at last. “I encountered
a—a nature spirit here. It threatened me.”

“Uncommon
but not unheard of,” she observed. “Clearly, though, this was no
common spirit.”

“No,”
he said grimly, and proceeded to describe his encounter in minute detail, while
she grew more surprised by the moment. There was only one creature she could
think of with that sort of power. And the fact that it had threatened to
interfere now made her understand why the Ice Lord had taken direct action.

Her
first thought was that the spirit—clearly one of the Greater Fey, those
who had been, in their time, worshipped as gods—had somehow deduced her
plan and the Ice Lord’s. If that was the case, a few puny wraiths were
not going to stop him.

But
then she realized that all of the threats had been aimed toward David, and the
warning specifically pointed at this part of the country. There had been an
implication that the spirit did not care what happened in London, so long as no
Ice Magic was brought
here
.

So
it didn’t know.

Just
because a creature was very powerful, it did not follow that it was omniscient.
And even if it had the capability to read the future, it did not follow that it
would. The Greater Fey in particular had curious holes in their thinking. They
tended to be “flighty.” They had difficulty in concentrating on any
one thing for too long. No matter how important something was, there was always
the possibility that once it was out of immediate sight, it would also be out
of mind.

Chances
were, the creature had already forgotten about David. And by the time it
realized that they were working Ice Magic, it would be too late. Nor would it
occur to the Fey that there could be more to it than just Cordelia’s
plan.

But
this fed directly into
her
plot.

“You
were right to be concerned,” she said earnestly. “This is a
dangerous creature, capricious and unpredictable. I must safeguard you from
it.”

His
lips thinned as he frowned. “Simply tell me what to do,” he
replied, once again showing an annoying independence. “I can handle this
myself, I should think.”

“Under
normal circumstances, yes,” she replied. “But these safeguards are
against the Greater Fey and must be placed externally. Even if I told you how
to place them—which I will, of course—you would only be able to
place them on someone else. The subject must be unconscious in order for the
protections to be invoked, or the initial disorientation as one is suddenly
able to see the Fey realms is far too painful.”

She
congratulated herself gleefully at that stroke. Brilliant! Now she could do
whatever she liked with him with absolute impunity. He would never even
question what she was doing, because he already had had the experience of what
happened when one first was able to see the creatures and energies of Elemental
Magic. It was generally very disorienting and sometimes distressing. Children
who were born into nonmagical families sometimes went mad, or believed they
were doing so. He had no idea whether or not being able to see the Fey would be
worse than that, although, in fact, the Fey realms did not exist, and the Fey
were simply Masters of
all
the Elements.

“When
can we do this?” he asked eagerly, as she regarded him with grave eyes.

“Tonight
would not be too soon,” she said soberly. “And if you meet me here
in the garden, I will find a secluded place where we can work
undisturbed.”

***

Isabelle
was just finishing her correspondence when the sound of a familiar footstep
made her raise her head and swivel swiftly in her chair.

Just
in time to have Frederick stoop over her and kiss her passionately, his arms
including both her and the ladder-back of her chair, which was probably the
only reason why he wasn’t crushing her into his chest. Not that she would
have minded being crushed into his chest.

As
always, she closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment when all she thought
of, felt, knew, was him; the moment of being completely
with
him, in
love, surrounded by love, engulfed by love. As always, it was better than it
had been the last time. She had never been more sure of him, never been more
sure that no matter how things changed, the two of them would see that they
changed in a way that only brought them closer.

Being
together, in that way that stole her breath and stopped her heart and held them
both in timeless time.

The
moment passed, as such moments always did, leaving behind echoes that created
their own kind of song inside her. She felt him stand straight and opened her
eyes, smiling.

He
looked down at her, chuckling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Once
again, we scandalize the servants.”

She
laughed. “I did not expect you until tomorrow!”

He
grinned and shrugged. “Doomsday Dainwrite sent me off with a half
holiday,” he replied, and his face took on the mournful expression of a
bloodhound contemplating an empty food dish. “
You need to go to your
wife
,” he said in sepulchral tones. “
Terrible things are
about to happen, and she will need you
.”

Isabelle
laughed at that, because the head of the firm, called “Doomsday”
even by his own wife (who he predicted would leave him, drown, catch fire, be
struck by lightning, or die of some plague virtually on a daily basis), had
never, ever been right in his predictions of disaster and mayhem. The only
times disaster
had
befallen the firm or some person in it, Doomsday
had been completely silent on the subject and had been taken as much by
surprise as anyone else.

“Well,
it is not as if you have not earned a half holiday and more,” she
replied, taking his hand in hers, and holding it against her cheek for a
moment, then letting it go.

“And
so have you. We are having tea on the terrace, away from the children, and then
we are going for a walk on the grounds, you and I and no one else. And we are
going to talk of nothing but commonplaces.” He bestowed a look on her
that told her he was accepting no arguments. But then, she was not inclined to
give him one.

By
dinnertime all was back to normal, except that she felt as rejuvenated by the
afternoon as if she had spent a week at the seaside. Her good humor spread
among the children; for once there were no quarrels, no outbursts of temper,
scarcely even a raised voice when there was contention over the last jam tart.
That pirate of a raven, Neville, was on his best behavior, and Sarah’s
parrot Grey did not even indulge herself in her own favorite bit of mischief of
sorting through the bits in her cup and dropping what she didn’t care to
eat on the floor.

The
children went off to baths and bed with scarcely a moment of fuss. The
youngest, now at the “escape from the bath and run through the halls
naked, shrieking,” stage, for once did not indulge themselves. It was the
perfect ending to a perfect day.

Until,
as the oldest were settled into their beds, and Isabelle finished the rounds of
“good night hugs,” she and Frederick stepped out onto the
terrace—

—and
the perfect day shattered.

One
moment, they were holding hands, gazing at the stars and listening to the
nightingales and the occasional call of an owl.

The
next, they were clutching each other, half-deafened by the thunderclap,
half-blinded by the lightning bolt that had delivered Robin Goodfellow to the
foot of the terrace. A very angry Robin Goodfellow, who was nothing like the
merry lad who had strutted his way across their improvised stage, playing
himself with gusto and glee.

No,
this was a tall and terrible creature, dressed head to toe in black, features
inhumanly sharp and feral, with a face full of wrath and a sword in his hand.

“
Woe
be unto ye, son of Adam and daughter of Eve
!” he cried, in a voice
that echoed hollowly. “
Your friend would not heed my warning, nor
thine, Eve’s daughter, and he and his leman seek to unleash that which
has no place here
!”

And
with another bolt of fire and explosion of thunder he was gone. But a cold,
angry wind sprang up in his wake, sending storm clouds racing from east to
west, plastering Isabelle’s gown to her legs.

“—what—”
Frederick began, having to shout to make himself heard over the tempest.

But
Isabelle had no doubts. “Alderscroft,” she shouted back.
“David Alderscroft is—invoking something. I don’t know what,
but—”

“But
we need to put a stop to it,” Frederick shouted back, and as one they
turned—

To
find Nan and Sarah behind them, birds crouched down on their shoulders against
the wind—and behind them, Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim.

The
girls both wore expressions of fierce determination, and faintly glowing auras
that looked incongruous on two youngsters dressed in schoolgirl pinafores.

Isabelle’s
entire nature went into revolt at the sight of the children. Whatever needed
confronting,
they
had no place there!

The
three men were overlaid with their aspects of Warriors of the Light; Agansing
in the garb of the Gurkha, enormous
kukri
at his belt, Karamjit in the
tunic and turban and bearing the sword of the Sikh fighter, and Selim, also in
turban and tunic, but with a spear to Karamjit’s curved sword.

“The
avalanche has begun, Mem’sab,” Agansing said, eyes glinting.
“It is too late to make a choice among what will fall. The children
summoned us; they in their turn were summoned.”

Isabelle
looked down at the girls, and her heart sank.

Agansing
was right as often as “Doomsday” was wrong.

***

Nan
was dead asleep one moment, and wide awake in the next.

She
woke with the absolute certainty that something was horribly wrong. It was like
the same feeling she’d had back in Berkeley Square, though different in
that the threat was not directed at her or at Sarah. But a threat there was, a
deadly one, and she had to meet it. She glanced up at Neville’s perch
above her bed to see the raven looking down at her. She felt him in her head,
calling something; felt that “something” waking up.

She
leaped out of bed, to find Sarah also scrambling up.

“Wot
is it?” she asked, feeling shaky and scared, but also, another part of
her, galvanized and energized and—eager?

“Don’t
know,” Sarah replied, pulling her dress over her head, “—but
it’s—”

“
Bad
!”
Grey cried, every feather sticking out so she looked like a gray pinecone.
“
Bad, bad, bad
!”

That
was all she had time for when the whole building shook beneath a cannonade of
thunder.

And
it was as if some uncanny telegraph connected them, for the same information
flashed into both their minds.

“Robin!”
cried Sarah, and “Puck!” shouted Nan at the same time, while
Neville called alarm and Grey uttered a high-pitched, growling shriek.

“He’s
angry!” Sarah added, her face white in the light of the candle Nan lit.

“He’s
more’n that,” she said grimly. “He’s gone for
killin’.”

Difficult
as it was to imagine friendly, funny Robin Goodfellow prepared to kill
something, she had no doubt in her mind at all that this was what he was
prepared to do. And she also had no doubt in her mind that it was her job to
prevent it, if she could.

And
not just for the sake of the potential victim, either—

“Oh,
Nan—” Sarah turned round eyes on her. “If he does
that—”

Nan
nodded. She knew, and knew that somehow the knowledge came through Neville,
that if Robin Goodfellow, the Guardian of Logres, was to spill human blood, he
would be banished from the Isle for all time. And if that happened—much,
if not all, of the magic would go with him. She sensed a future stretching out
from that moment, bleak and gray and joyless, and shuddered.

Around
them, the other children, startled out of sleep by the thunder, were calling
out, the babies crying. The ayahs were busy calming them, and no one paid any
attention as Nan and Sarah, with Neville and Grey clutching their shoulders,
slipped out and downstairs.

No
one that is, until they ran right into Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim.

A
wave of dismay swept through Nan as she winced back, sure that she and Sarah were
going to be rounded up and sent back upstairs.

But
instead, Agansing held up his hand and peered at them. That was when Nan
realized there was a kind of ghostly, glowing “other” version of
Agansing superimposed on the everyday fellow.

“We
will need these fellow Warriors, my brothers,” he said solemnly. Karamjit
peered at them and nodded. Selim sighed with resignation.

“I
bow to your superior experience, brother,” Selim said reluctantly.
“But I cannot like it. They are too young.”

“Younger
than they have taken up arms, and they have unique weapons none of us can
wield,” Agansing replied, and turned to Nan. “We go to join Sahib
and Mem’sab. We are needed.”