Mercedes Lackey - Phoenix and Ashes

A single, enormous face formed on the wall immediately in front of her. The eyes were closed and remained closed; she was just as glad. She had the feeling that if those eyes opened and looked at her, she'd be sick with fear.

It wasn't an ugly or deformed face; in fact the features were quite regular. But there was something about it that made her wish she wasn't looking at it. Something dark and cruel, something that loved pain, and was bargaining with her only because it had no choice.

"We hear," said the chorus of voices, which now came from the single face, although the lips didn't move. "Why?"

"Because," the Fire Elemental replied, with pride welling in every word, "she is better than your mistress."

The face in the wall did not react one way or another to this statement.

"How can I free you?" she asked, her voice trembling, yet determined.

"Break her defenses, and you will free us," came the reply, in a low and ugly rumble. "Swear that you will!"

Be very careful what you promise] came the thought. This is the Elemental world, and words have more weight here than in the real world. If she promised—and failed—there would be a different sort of price to pay, and there was no telling what that price would be, only that it could be very expensive.

And you do not want to owe an unknown penalty to a negative Elemental.

"I promise I will try," she said instead. "If you will give me the key to this place that holds me."

The face became very still for a moment, as if all of the creatures speaking through it were consulting with one another. Then it spoke again. "Follow the Tree," it said, "The counter-Tree. The Tree of Death."

And it faded back into the wall again, but Eleanor knew exactly what it meant—it was a riddle, probably given to her in that form because she had not promised to do anything but try, but not a very clever one. She was to trace the opposite path of the Tree of Life; fortunately, the Tree of Life happened to be one of the major Tarot layouts as well as the key to the Kabala, or she wouldn't have known what the face in the wall meant. Mentally she retraced her steps from the center of the maze, and realized with relief that she would only have to go back and change her last turning.

"Why are you here with me?" she asked, as she set out on the new pattern, greatly relieved that she was no longer going to have to touch those walls.

"Because, although I cannot help you directly, I have a function I can perform for you," he said, and tilted his head to the side, expectantly.

A function he can perform for me — Abruptly, she realized that he already had.

"You—you are an intermediary!" she exclaimed, stopping dead in her tracks. "You can negotiate with the other Elements!"

He nodded, gravely. "That is my function. And if you can make your way from this place—"

"I will," she replied, fiercely. "And when I do—I have some ideas."

A faint smile flickered over the being's face. "I rather thought as much," he said, and gestured. "Lead on."

She did; and something else occurred to her as she followed the path of the anti-Tree.

Alison had made a very grave mistake, by throwing her into this place, this state. She probably thought that she was imprisoning Eleanor further, and it must have been that Alison had drugged her. The opiates had a long history of being used to access occult states, which was why people who had no business being in such a state used them as "easy" ways to attain knowledge. Maybe Alison had assumed being drugged was going to make her easier to handle, and that would have been true, if she had not been learning discipline and control all this time, and if she had not already been traveling in the Tarot realm. And Alison was accustomed to thinking only in terms of commanding and coercing the creatures of her Element; it must not have even crossed her mind that Eleanor might find allies—or at least, something willing to bargain with her—here.

Alison would have done better to have bound and gagged her. If Eleanor got her way, Alison would live to regret that error.

But first, she still had to escape from the spell-maze, before Alison delivered her physical body to whatever fate the Earth Master had in mind.

August 12,1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

By the time Reggie reacted to Eleanor's flight, it was too late. She was out of sight before he could get to his feet, and in the end, all he could find of her was the gloves she had left on the bench beside him.

He could not hope to find her, not now. He had no idea where she had run to—and even if he left the ball and went straight to The Arrows, what was he to do there? Force his way inside? Demand that they produce her? If her stepmother had gone to such lengths to hide her, there was no reason on earth why she should conjure the girl up simply because he demanded it.

Slowly and cautiously, Reg. The first one over the barricades is the first one shot.

With light and music and laughter spilling out of the doors and windows above him, he returned to the garden bench to try and make some sense of what had just happened. One moment, she had been talking with him, perfectly sensibly—the next, she was fleeing as if pursued by demons. And yet, it couldn't have been what he said that sent her running away, could it?

Hadn't she managed to choke out that she loved him before she ran?

Surely her stepmother's hold over her could not control her here, in the privacy of Longacre's gardens—

Unless—

He shook his head at the thought. No, surely not. Surely it was not possible that Alison Robinson was a magician.

Was it?

He was completely unwilling to drop his barricades now. If Alison Robinson was a magician—heaven alone only knew what she had set in motion to try and ensnare him for one of her daughters. There might be a spell just waiting for a break in his defenses.

By the time he found Lady Virginia just paying her farewells to her cronies as the guests began to depart, and got her to come down into the garden with him, the traces of—yes— magic were almost too faint for her to read. All she could say for certain was that both Earth magic of the darker sort and Fire magic had left a hint of "scent" behind.

"Back inside, please," his godmother said when she'd finished. "It's altogether too damp and chilly for my bones. Let's adjourn to the library; there should still be a fire there."

Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed. He still wanted to go tearing after Eleanor, but he knew that would be the wrong thing to do. He had no plan of action, and to go into this without a plan was asking for trouble.

The Earth—well, dark magic of some sort—he had expected. But who was the Fire? The only mages here were Air—

Unless—Eleanor?

When he spoke his thoughts aloud, incredulously, Lady Virginia only shrugged, as she extended her toes towards the library fire. "Magicians are always more vulnerable to magic than other folk," she pointed out. "If the girl is an Elemental Mage, then her stepmother would have an easier time of it in trying to control her. The hardest creature to affect by magic is someone who has none of it at all."

He fidgeted with the cane he had taken from the stand near the door, and longed to be able to pace as he used to at times like these. To think of poor Eleanor, down there, in that repellent woman's hands—

She looked at him sharply. "Reginald," she said, very slowly, "Are you in love with this girl?"

He would have thought it was obvious to a far less astute person than his godmother, but he replied, "Yes. Yes, I am."

"Your mother won't like it," Lady Virginia cautioned. "She's common."