The Serpent's Shadow (22 page)

Maya opened her mouth, and Peter waited expectantly. Then she shut it again, abruptly. “Never mind,” she said. “Never mind.” He was faintly disappointed; he would have liked to hear her think out loud again, but plowed on regardless with the lesson.

“Well, you need to actually establish the boundaries of your clean area first,” he said, waving his hand at the wall around the greenhouse. “You said you can see Earth Magic—go ahead and see where it ends.”

She turned toward the back wall of the conservatory, dropped her gaze to the foot of the wall, and frowned. Then, slowly, understanding drifted over her features.

“If you hadn't told me, I'd never have looked for it,” she said carefully, her eyes alight with satisfaction. “But there is, there is a boundary space right at that wall, and it isn't the one I made! It's where the earth in my garden stops, and something else that isn't as—nice—starts.” Now it was her turn to grope after words.

“That edge is what you're going to use, and not just a ‘fence' of power either,” he told her. “Now that you see where I want you to put it, I want you to drain the power out of the existing barrier. Go on—” he urged, as she hesitated doubtfully. “I'll have a shield of my own in place before you can drain yours away.” And he quickly made good on his word, putting up a shield to surround the entire house, cleverly using (or at least
he
thought he was being clever) the electrical wiring and the pipes to carry his protections. Things like copper wire and copper pipes carried magical currents as readily as they carried water or electricity. Since he'd discovered
that,
Peter'd had a much easier time of casting shields.

Ah, but
she
must have discovered the same thing, for he sensed the flow of energies
out
even as his own poured in. Unmaking was always quicker and easier than making, if the thing you were tackling happened to be your own.

“Now we'll go about this the correct way,” he told her, as the Earth power around the perimeter faded from his perception. He picked up a stone and placed it right at her feet. “We'll be using that in a moment, but for now, look beyond the surface and read the energies under your garden. See how strong they are?”

She nodded slowly.

“Don't just look at them.
Touch
them. Then when you've touched them, let them flow into you from the soles of your feet.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “You can do it; you already have, a little. You can't help it.”

“If I relax ...” she muttered, then took several slow, deep breaths. Meanwhile,
he
watched her like a cat at a mouse hole, waiting for the mouse to poke a whisker out. And after two false starts, he watched as the warm yellow-gold of Earth energy crept upward and engulfed her, leaving her haloed in light.

She
laughed with delight and surprise. “My word! It's like—like gulping down an entire bottle of champagne!” she exulted. He chuckled, recalling the first time that Water energies had flowed into him. It
had
been very like being drunk—the giddiness, the increased pulse rate—and yet he'd remained perfectly sober.

“Now concentrate on that rock,” he continued. Immediately, the little pebble glowed with an inner life, glowed with the power she had taken from the earth.
He
would have used a clear glass of water—glass being a kind of liquid, and so akin to water—if he needed a focus, which he really didn't anymore. “Think of it as the world in miniature, and weave a
single
protection around it. Like this—”

He quickly shielded the rock with his own, Watery energies. These were the most basic, but basic did not mean “lesser.” “Watch closely,” he warned, and slowly expanded the shields in all directions, exactly like blowing up a soap bubble. But unlike a soap bubble, this one remained just as tough and strong as it got bigger, for he kept pouring energy into it as it expanded. And when it met the shields he already
had
on the place, they merged immediately into a seamless whole.

“Now it's your turn,” he told her. She bit her lip, and started as he had.

By Jove! She's a fast learner!
It only took a single false start, and her own shields began to expand from the point where they'd begun. The movement was painfully slow at first; she couldn't expand and increase the energy going into the shield at the same time. No matter, that would come in time.

When her shields touched his, they did
not
merge. Instead, they layered, hers overlaying his. She looked nonplussed when that happened; she had probably thought that they would become a single entity.

“Is that right?” she asked, with a sharp look at him.
“Are they supposed to do that?”

“Put earth and water in a jar and shake them together ; no matter how hard you shake, the earth separates from the water once you stop agitating the jar,” he replied. “And that is how you build proper shields. Layer them, don't try to braid them until you have more skill and practice. Bring them up on a central point, then expand them to meet your perimeter. Again?”

“Absolutely!” Now she seemed eager for the task; as Peter watched her establish her initial shield, he recognized it as the ‘I'm not here' camouflage, and paid close attention to how she spun it up. When she expanded it—more smoothly this time, but by no means as quickly as he had—he was pleased to see it layer into the previous set. It was stronger now than it had been. That was part of being better integrated, but was also due to having more energy behind it.

“Feeling tired yet?” he asked her, once the shield was up and established. He knew she wouldn't be, because she wasn't using her own power, but it was time to call her attention to that fact.

“Why—no!” She was astonished by her own answer, and looked down at her hands with a quizzical expression, as if looking for the reason there.

“That's because you used the energies of your Element, and not your own personal power,” he replied. “Now you don't need to depend on yourself to work magic; you have a source of energy outside yourself. So think about that for a moment. What is that going to mean to you, and not just here and now, but outside these four walls?”

“That—Can I use this for healing as well?” she asked instantly. “Oh, of course I can! There's no reason why I couldn‘t, is there, and every reason Why I should?”

Oh, well done!
he applauded. “Exactly. Just make sure that you set up shields and cleanse the area first. This is another thing to remember, that other magicians and magical beings will see the flow of power and come to find out what's going on, and some of them are not what you'd like to have hanging about you. But you can't do that right now, all right? At this moment, right now, you need to practice all the different kinds of shields and protections you were
trying
to build weeks ago. When we've got something like what you were trying to produce, I will show you how to link the shields into the Earth energy so that the shields will maintain themselves, and that will be enough for one day.”

She blinked, and was lost within herself for a moment. “Ah. I
am
using my own power to control the Earth Magic, am I not?” she asked.

“Exactly so.”
Brilliant! I'll have to ask Almsley, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone picking up on the Art so quickly!
He smiled. “Now, are you ready to learn about the kinds of shields that
I
know of?”

The hour that Maya had allotted to herself for this lesson simply flew past, and she decided to go a little short of sleep rather than cut the lesson short. When Peter Scott finally left, she was tired, but not with the bone-deep weariness that she often felt after establishing her guardian borders, and
now
she wouldn't have to go over and over her protections every night. Now they would take care of themselves—unless someone tried to break them. Then she would have to make repairs, of course.

But not out of my own storehouse.
She made the rounds of the oil-lamps and candles in the garden, making certain that they were all extinguished.

She had sensed the presence of strange life hiding within the bounds of her sanctuary—nothing inimical, in fact, she got a feeling of comfort and warmth from them, even though they wouldn't show themselves. There was definitely something alive here, and she wondered, given the little she knew, what it could be. Little forest gods? It could be. The garden in the conservatory had taken on the sense of being a vaster space than it truly was.

She felt as excited as she had after her first successful surgery, as enthralled by the sense of power, of the things she could do with her own two hands.

A familiar voice, but not human.

She looked up and saw Nisha's glowing eyes gazing down at her. The owl had turned as white as bleached linen. The huge yellow eyes held her, as mesmerized as if she were a little mouse and Nisha contemplating her as a light snack.

It is not wise to tempt the gods, even (or especially?) if they are not yours,
she thought, with a sudden chill.

“It is a start,” she agreed, as her heart gave an unpleasant jump. “I hope it is the right path.”

“It is, and because it is, your enemy will strew it with difficulties
,” Nisha replied somberly.
“Be wary, for they will not always come in a form you will recognize. Your enemy can do you much harm without needing to know where you are.”

The owl blinked once, then swiveled her head away, looking up and out into the darkness beyond the glazed roof. Freed from those eyes, Maya could move; she stepped back a pace and took a deep breath.

Nisha swiveled her head and caught her again.
“She is here. Her creatures already crowd the night, and she gathers in those who walk in the sun as well as the shadows. Be wary.”

And with that, it seemed Nisha had no more to say—or rather, the being that used Nisha had said all that she wished. The spectral white of her feathers darkened, and she looked back up into the night. Maya found she had been holding her breath, and let out the air she had been holding in a long, shaken sigh.

The faint sound of something at her feet made her look down with a nervous jerk, but it was only Charan, and he showed no sign of wanting to add to Nisha's warning. He pulled at her skirt and chirruped at her. She leaned down and gathered him up in her arms, feeling a little chilled.

It is more than time I got some sleep.
Although her knees trembled for a moment and felt as if they might not hold her, she steadied herself with a hand to the tree trunk, then left the conservatory for the hall and the staircase.

She used the railing as support and climbed the stairs to her room. She had rounds of some of her patients in the hospital to make in the morning, and would need all her wits about her, with or without the interference of her unwelcome relations.

In the morning, she had managed to put Nisha's words into the back of her mind. There was no point in dwelling on the warning, not when she had so much else to concern herself with. The patients she needed to attend today were
not
in Royal Free, but in St. Mary‘s, and the atmosphere in St. Mary's was distinctly cooler toward her and her few fellow female physicians than it was in the smaller hospital. She earned the right to install her own patients here by helping with the work in the charity wards, and every difficult charity case she took, as she saw it, was one more chip out of the edifice of Masculine Superiority.

Nevertheless, she was grateful that she had invited Amelia along and that Amelia's classes permitted her to attend. The surprised glances, the knowing smirks they occasionally got as they worked their way down the wards were not so bad—but the glares of outright resentment and hostility were difficult to face down. It was good to have someone here who was prepared to render glare for glare.

It was hard work made harder by the fact that the other physicians gave her no help, and even pulled nurses away from helping her without so much as a “by your leave,” but Maya's patients here needed her, and she would not leave them to the tender mercies of the less competent. These were working-class patients, mostly laborers, who had come to grief in work-related accidents. The moment they became injured, they ceased to earn their income, and the longer they remained out of work, the longer their families had to scrape by on nothing, or on the pittance that wives and those children old enough to work could bring in.
She
did what few other doctors would trouble themselves about; she brought cases to the attention of the parish and other charities, vouched for the men that they were genuinely injured and not attempting to collect money on false pretenses, and helped to steer them through the tangles of suspicion and doubt until they reached the other side with a little relief money to feed their families. She also did not wield the amputation saw with the vigor that other surgeons did. For a working man, that was more important than being helped to charity, for if appendages were amputated, he would find it hard to earn a living again, and if entire limbs were lopped off by someone who seemed to think humans as much in need of pruning as trees, it would be next to impossible to find employment.