Mercedes Lackey - Phoenix and Ashes

She put them both temporarily from her mind as Locke and the girls joined her in the chamber. This was going to be a difficult piece of work, and she needed to concentrate on it.

Reggie lay quite still as Alison's henchman dumped someone beside him. The last thing he wanted any of them to know was that he was awake and aware and prepared to act—if feeling nauseous and half-crippled counted as being prepared to act. Little did any of them know that he'd been using his pain-medications for so long that he had built up a tolerance for opiates; the air moving around his face when the auto was in motion had served to arouse him, and the drive out into the country had given him long enough to get his brain more-or-less working again. When the man had mumbled some sort of half-learned charm over him, he'd felt the intent of it through the very minimal shields he had put up, and had acted the part of an automaton, staggering up the shadow-shrouded path in the man's wake. Unfortunately, he was without a cane, and the ground was anything but even. He didn't even want to think about the damage he had done to himself, trying to walk; he thought he'd felt something tear loose around his kneecap once. The pain of his knee had burned what was left of the drug out of him altogether, and he must have stumbled and fallen a dozen times. Evidently the man had expected that, because Locke just stopped whenever that happened, waited for Reggie to pick himself up, then led him on.

Reggie had been perfectly ready to fall over where the man pointed. By that time his head was perfectly clear, but it ached so much from what he presumed was a blow, and his knee was in such agony, that by the time he realized that he was alone among these ancient stones, it was too late to do anything about it. He could already hear someone coming up the same path. All he could do was feign unconsciousness and wait to see what happened next.

What happened was that Locke dumped someone else practically on top of him. Someone small, and very warm. Eleanor?

He continued to lie quietly as the sound of the others moved off a little. The way he was positioned, he couldn't see anything anyway; his face was turned towards the megalithic stone, and the other person had been dropped behind him.

But he was sure it was Eleanor. It wasn't just the sense that it was her, or instinct. Logic said that was the likeliest—but why? What was Alison planning?

It was nothing good for either of them, but it was Eleanor he was worried about the most. He represented the means to a very large fortune, as well as a kind of life she clearly aspired to. If she got rid of him, she lost her access to that life; Lady Virginia would see to that. No, it made more sense, far more sense, for her to try and work some bedazzlement on his mind, to make him pliant and willing to marry one of her wretched daughters.

It was Eleanor that he was concerned about. He still didn't know how Eleanor factored into all this—except that she was now clearly an obstacle in the path to Alison's goals. He couldn't dismiss the idea that they meant to murder her—after all, who would notice? No one in Broom even gave her existence a second thought now.

Even more chilling was the thought that Alison might murder Eleanor in order to get the power she needed to control him.

And he was patently in no shape to take them on in a straight-on physical contest. He wasn't even sure he could manage a successful escape. The longer this situation dragged on, the less confident he became. And on top of that, as bad as his physical condition already was, he knew it was rapidly deteriorating. Lying here on the ground was making his muscles stiffen, and there was no point in pretending otherwise, he had a concussion that wasn't getting any better either. His head pounded, and though he tried to think through the pain and the nausea, it was getting harder to put two coherent thoughts together with every passing moment; his mouth was dry, and a slow serpent of fear had begun crawling up his spine, making him feel weak and helpless.

He could sense power rising very near by—Earth power, and even though it only brushed by him in passing, the moment it touched him, he felt panic stifling him. He knew that sort of power—born of blood and death. He had met its like before.

When he had been buried in that trench.

Alison began chanting somewhere on the other side of the stones, her voice echoing strangely, and he sensed the power awakening and answering her call—

He felt a whimper rising in his throat—

And a small, warm hand clamped itself over his mouth.

"Shh," Eleanor breathed in his ear. "It's all right; try not to make a sound. Alison and the rest are busy right now. If we're very careful, we might be able to get away before they realize we're gone."

And go where? he thought wildly, but he knew she was right. Whatever Alison was up to, there was a point she'd be so preoccupied with controlling what she was raising that she should be oblivious to anything but what she was doing.

The only question was, could he even walk, much less run?

It's not as if I have a choice, he reminded himself. It's run — somehow — or lie here and let her do whatever she's going to do.

Even though fear was welling up inside him and making him want nothing more than to curl up where he was and hide inside himself. Trying to huddle inside himself was not an option now. Even if he had felt willing to let them do whatever they wanted to him, what were their plans for Eleanor? If he gave up to the fear, he would be abandoning her.

But the fear had a mind of its own, where he was concerned. Despite his efforts to resist it, and all the work that Lady Virginia had done with him, he felt it taking him over, paralyzing him, flooding his heart with chill, until there was nothing real for him except that fear. His control slipped to the edge of loss, and tremors shook his body.

And then the miracle occurred. Eleanor's hand moved down from his mouth to rest over his heart, and warmth began to spread from it.

Not just physical warmth, either—a psychic warmth that stopped his shaking, and drove the fear back, a wonderfully fierce passion that had no time for creeping terror. It was like magic—

No, it was magic! It was Fire magic, the complement and perfect partner to Air—Fire magic being directed by the sure hand of someone who, if she was not yet a Master, would certainly one day become one!

Before he could wonder where she had suddenly gotten that skill, a set of shields grew up around both of them; slowly, so slowly that at first he thought the perimeter of warming around him was some side-effect of the magic she was working on him. The he realized that she was building shields—not as he would have expected out of a Fire Mage, with a showy rush of upwelling, vibrant power, but slowly, as if beginning from the barest, glowing coals and building a fire by patiently feeding those coals a little air, a little fuel, straw by straw.

By that time he was no longer shaking; though his head still ached and he felt sick, his mind was clear again. Not that he wasn't afraid— and so was she, he sensed it in the rigidity of her body where it lay wedged against his, and the way she was trembling—but fear was no longer paralyzing him.

I need to help her — and it has to be just as subtle, so that we don't alert Alison to what we're doing.

First he needed to help her with those shields. Then—could he call a Sylph and sent it for help? Would one even come so near the poisonous, dark Earth power that Alison was raising?

He had to try; the nearest help was Lady Virginia, and the only way to get word to her was via an Air Elemental.

But it would be the first time he had called one since the crash. Would they even come to him anymore?