Mercedes Lackey - The Serpent's Shadow

A few steps back in the direction of the wall, and the water was gone, the floor dry once more. The mist thinned a little, and they made their way back to the wall while they could still see it. Was that a good sign, or a bad one? As the mist dissipated, it took the light with it, leaving them in darkness again. They reached the wall in the nick of time before it vanished altogether, leaving Peter blinking and feeling uncomfortably helpless. Without the revolver, his only weapon was Gupta's knife, and he wasn't a particularly good knife fighter. He groped for the support of the rough wood behind him.

Was Almsley coming up against any of this?

Probably not. With her physical guards busied elsewhere, and no way to divide her forces once they were engaged, the priestess must have called up her supernatural protections to deal with the second invasion. With any luck, she didn't even know where they were exactly, or how many of them there were — only that there was another enemy to be driven out or killed.

"Right," Rhadi said, loud enough for all of them to hear; Gupta grunted agreement.

"Got a door!" Norrey exclaimed a moment later.

"Cor—this hain't the door we was lookin' at before. 'Ang on a mo—"

There was a scratch, and ordinary, yellow light flared up from the match that Norrey held in her hand. Beside her was a perfectly normal door, past it was a storage closet. Peter swallowed disappointment.

" Ai !" said Rhadi, before Peter could speak. He suited his action to his words, flew across the closet to the far wall, and landed on a broom. And there was a click. The broom moved, and the wall pivoted in its center, showing a set of spiral stairs that led down into what looked like a storage cellar. That was all they saw before the match burned down to Norrey's fingers and she dropped it with a curse.

"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, ift gets loight agin, yew gimme one o' them popguns, 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. "Carefull" 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. "Up!"

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

"Morel" Rhadi insisted. Then, "Right! Morel" 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.

Peter!

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 defeated. 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.

Good God—

"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.