The Serpent's Shadow (51 page)

“
Down
!” said Rhadi insistently from his perch on the broom.

“I will stay here to guard your back, sahib,” Gupta said after a moment. “I do not know what you may encounter there, but we
know
this place here holds evil things.”

“‘Old still, old 'eathen,” Norrey told him. There was the sound of a blade being drawn. “There. Oi'm a dab ‘and wit' a sticker. Oi'll bide 'ere with ye. Naow, if't gets loight agin, yew gimme one o' them pop-guns, eh?”

“I shall, little mem‘sab,” Gupta promised. “Go, sahib! Time flies!”

Peter didn't need any further encouragement; he groped his way into the closet and put his hand under Rhadi. The parrot pulled himself up to Peter's shoulder again. Peter felt his way past the hidden door, then worked his way carefully, a step at a time, down the staircase in utter blackness. As the stairs took another turn, he saw a thin, faint line of light somewhere at the bottom. If there had been
any
other light, even the glow of fox fire or Norrey's match, he'd never have seen it.

“Door,”
Rhadi agreed.

He groped his way down the stairs toward that beckoning thread of palest yellow, that suggestion of illumination. The stairs ended; floor began. The strip of light was just higher than his head, suggesting the top of a door. “
Careful
!” Rhadi warned, and instead of rushing toward it, he felt ahead with his foot, encountering something—a bucket, a box—immediately.

The hero trips over a bucket and breaks his neck.
He went to his hands and knees and groped his way through the litter to the wall, only to find junk piled up against it.

But Rhadi ran down onto his arm and hand, and tapped his beak lightly on the wall. “
Hand,
” he said. “
U
p!”

There's another secret catch.
Peter moved his hand up a trifle.

“
More
!” Rhadi insisted. Then,
“Right! More!”
He felt the bird lean forward; there was a loud click.

The wall, junk and all, swung outward.

He threw up his hand to ward off the flood of light and the billow of harsh incense smoke that came at him. Squinting through the glare of many lanterns, he made out the figure of a woman in a red sari, an altar with something golden flickering above it that trailed a faint silver cord out through the wall beyond, and the poisonously beautiful statue of Kali Durga, glittering with enough gold to make every pickpocket in London wealthy.

The woman had not been expecting an intruder—or at least, she had not expected anyone other than her own people—for she had not yet turned to see who had triggered the secret door.

Peter cursed his clumsiness in losing the revolver. As inexperienced a shot as he was, one bullet would have finished it all.

The sound of his own name rang in his head in familiar and beloved tones, and without thinking, he answered.

“Maya!”

Unfortunately, he answered aloud.

Now the woman whirled, scarlet skirts swirling around her bare ankles, and she hissed in shocked surprise when she saw him.

I'm
getting very tired of things that
hiss
—

He stood up, and attempted to look like the brave hero in a thrilling story. “My men have taken your dacoits, priestess,” he said in Urdu, hoping he could end all this without further conflict. “You are de
feated. Break your magics and go, and I will allow
you to flee my country.”

She drew herself up, and smiled at him. Despite the fact that she was a handsome woman (and looked far too young to be Maya's aunt), he did not in the least care for that smile. There was so much hate in it that he had to force himself not to flinch. “I think not, English,” she said in buttery tones. “I have something that you and I both want, but
I
will keep it, and you will die.”

Rhadi screeched and fluttered away and Charan leaped from his shoulder, as something shadowy and huge oozed out of the darkness of the closet behind him. Charan and the parrot both screamed as the shadow of a python at least a hundred feet long flung enormous coils about him before he could move, and began to squeeze.

Peter! The golden shape flickered and fluttered above the altar like a bird trapped in a cage. Peter fought for breath as the cold muscles closed in on him. The priestess laughed.

“The traitor has succeeded in keeping me at bay for much longer than I thought, and I was angry,” she mocked, dark eyes flashing with glee. The shadow snake crushing Peter loosed its hold a little, just enough for him to catch a strangled breath, but nowhere near enough to escape. “But now I see that Kali Durga has rewarded me! I shall have
your
death and
hers
—and she will see you die, and you will know that she is to die, and your mutual agonies will be such—blissssss—”

“Then why does Kali Durga close her eyes to you, false one?”
said an entirely new voice—and the coils about Peter loosened a little more.

Peter couldn't turn his head, but the speaker leaped forward over the serpent holding him.

It was—a monkey. A man-sized monkey. A man-sized
langur,
dressed in elaborately embroidered Indian festival garments, with a sacred crown upon its—His—head, garlands about His neck, and a spear in His hands.

“Thank you,”
Hanuman said, bowing a little to Peter. Then, as the huge and shadowy constrictor holding Peter started to raise its head in alarm, He struck.

The serpent dodged the first blow of the spear, but in trying to escape, it loosed its coils completely and allowed Peter to tumble free. Peter, however, had no thought for the combat.

The priestess had seized a knife from the altar beside her, a blade that glittered with magic. She stared at Peter as he sprinted desperately for her, then raised her arm.

“You
will not have her, English!” she shouted, and slashed the knife down through the air beside Maya—severing the silver cord that bound Maya to her own physical body.

Peter!
she wailed, and Peter fell to his knees and screamed her name, feeling his own heart torn from his body and ripped into pieces before his eyes.

And—

Hanuman plunged His spear into the head of the Serpent—

As Rhadi sped toward the fading golden light above the altar—

The Serpent gave one, final, agonized lash of its enormous tail. The tail whipped over Peter's head, and impacted the priestess, knocking her past the altar—

Allowing Rhadi to reach it just before the last of the golden light faded away.

There was a soundless explosion of light—exactly the light that had burst out the moment that Rhadi had appeared in the shop. Except that this time, for a single moment, Peter thought he saw, not a bird, but a handsome, smiling young Hindu man.

The light vanished.

There was no Shadow Serpent. And Rhadi, who was aglow with golden light, flitted to Peter's shoulder.

“
Kiss,
” he said, and touched his beak to Peter's lips.

The glow flowed into him, drying his tears of loss and anguish in a heartbeat, filling him with a loving and familiar presence, and a strange, slow, power that made him feel as if he were swimming in honey.

Maya?
he thought, in disbelief.

Peter, she said, from within his heart.
Oh, Peter!

“Take her home, for you do not have much time to restore her before Kama's power fades,” said Hanuman. “It is over. The evil one has gotten her reward from her own Goddess and will trouble you no more on this turn of the Wheel.”
Peter turned to see that Shivani, the priestess of Kali Durga, was, indeed, nestled among the many arms of Kali Durga, her head lolling sideways in a way that could only mean a broken neck—and if that wasn't enough to ensure that she was dead, two of the dagger-bearing arms had closed on Kali Durga's votary, driving the blades they held deep into her body.

The eyes of the statue were open again.

Peter turned again—but there was no Hanuman. Only Charan, who chittered and ran toward him, scampering up his leg to his arms, and from there to his shoulder.

“Home,”
said Rhadi.
“Quick
!”

Peter took one of the lanterns from the wall, and headed for the stairs in a kind of shock or daze. It felt as if he were floating, not walking; his head buzzed with confined power that was not his own, and he could hardly manage to put one thought after another. He went right past Gupta and Norrey as if he were sleepwalking. They stared at him and tried to stop him, but now he knew what he had to do, and he began to run. Strengthened and sustained beyond his own abilities by Earth magic that poured into him directly instead of through an intermediary, he felt he could run forever—

But there were faster feet than his, and he made for them. He leaped into the hansom of their faithful cab driver, then under silent urging from within, spread his arms and allowed the Earth Magic to engulf cab and horse and all. Without whip or orders, the horse surged forward into the traces and in moments was at the gallop again, but this time, the more the gallant beast strove, the more energy poured into him. He ran as he had never run in all of his life as a racehorse, ran as if he raced in freedom across the sweet, soft meadows of his colthood and not the hard pavements of the city. Charan clung to one shoulder, Rhadi to the other, and the cab scarcely seemed to touch the street as they flew onward.

When they stopped, Peter burst from the cab; Maya's door flew open at his touch. He sprinted into the surgery, shoved O‘Reilly away with an absent push, and bent to place his lips on Maya's.

“
Kiss!
” said Rhadi, joyfully, and the warm, golden presence left him in that kiss, flowed out of him and into her, leaving him. But not empty; never empty. And never alone again.

Her lips warmed beneath his. He opened his eyes and reluctantly ended the kiss, and as he did so, she opened her eyes, and smiled.

This time, she reached for him, and the kiss lasted as long as either of them could have wanted.

Epilogue

From:
Nurse Sarah Pleine
Fleet Clinic
Cheapside

To:
Jane Millicent Lambert
5 Carnock Road
Manadon

 

 

Dear Jane;

Well, my dear, we had our wedding! Our
double
wedding, I should say, since it was Miss Amelia and her beau, that sweet young man we had at the clinic that I told you about, and Miss Maya and her Captain! I was matron of honor to both of them, and I was
that
nervous when I saw the native dress that Miss Maya intended to wear, but it was all right, for they gave me a
handsome
suit and didn't expect me to get all tangled up in one of those “sorry” things, which is
just
as well, for you know, I haven't the figure to wear anything that looks like yards and yards of bedsheet! Doctor O‘Reilly and Lord Peter Almsley were best man—men?—and oh, I never saw a handsomer set of fellows, and O'Reilly's wife the match for him, a regular Lady of Shallots. Six of the girls and teachers from the London School were maids of honor and half of them wore those “sorrys”—well, I didn't envy them a bit, no matter that it's twelve full yards of silk and you could make it up into a very nice frock later—and each of them carried one of Miss Maya's pets instead of a bouquet! And the peacock was up at the altar behind the bishop, with his tail spread the whole time and so quiet and good you'd have thought he knew
exactly
what was going on....

From:
Helene, Duchess of Almsley

 

To:
Her Grace Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Almsley

Heartwood Hall

Newport Pagnell

 

Your Grace,

Well, my
dear
son—your grandson—has done it again with this “little wedding” he organized for his friends. I shan't be able to show my face in London for months. A circus, a positive
circus,
not a wedding—women in native dress, animals, creatures
straight
from a suffragette meeting and criminals and only the Good Lord knows
what
else in attendance, and as if that wasn't bad enough, for he could have kept it
quiet
if he had confined his mischief to just those, he has had Bishop Mannering to officiate and
everyone from his Club
to attend! The humiliation! I can't keep him in order, but he listens to
you,
surely
you....

To: Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Almsley

Heartwood Hall

Newport Pagnell

 

Dear Grandmama;

Well, we've done the deed, and it came out splendidly, like the first act of
Aida,
only the animals were guaranteed not to disgrace themselves on the church carpet. Thank you for denuding your garden and hot-house for us; Maya was nearly in tears of joy over the flowers.

Alderscroft has done the handsome thing; he's admitted he was wrong, which may be the first time in history, and he's not only brought in O‘Reilly and his wife (she's Fire, too—I wouldn't care to be a fly on the wall in that house during a marital squabble!) to the Lodge, and brought in Maya as a full Club Member in her own right, but he's issuing invitations to every Master we know of to join the Club and Lodge. Some will decline, of course, but they will still be official Auxiliaries. I, by the by, am to convey his humble respects and invitation to you, etc. etc. There have been words and even some (few) resignations over this; there are still some old mummies who can't stomach the notion of a tradesman or a good yeoman farmer in “the company of Gentlemen,” much less (oh, horrors!) a mere Female Creature as a member of the Exeter Club, but they were fair useless to begin with.