“Man looked like he’d been squeezed to death!” Fotheringay blurted, raising his head again, his blank eyes looking, not over the table, but into the recent past. “Never seen anything like it—demme if I have!” He shuddered violently. “Didn’t have to check; the stink of power was all over him, but nothing like ours!” He squeezed his eyes shut again, much to Peter’s relief. That blank stare was nothing less than unnerving.
“Indeed. And, might I add, nothing at all like that Hindu woman you investigated for us, Scott, though it definitely is Indian,” Alderscroft continued, unaware that his words had sent a chill down Peter’s back. “This was my analysis, and it was confirmed by the one thing that linked all the other victims—and we have identified four, who all perished in the same way last night. All of the victims had served in India. The first victim we found had done so in a purely civilian capacity, two of the others in the Army, the last was born and raised to adulthood in the Raj and only recently returned home when his father died. Quite a young man, actually,” Alderscroft added, meditatively. “It was that which confirmed to us that we were dealing with an extraordinary force. One old man, even three old men, could perish in the night of—say—magically induced apoplexy. That requires precision, but not a great deal of power. This, however—”
“Squeezed to death!” Fotheringay repeated, thoroughly unnerved. He’s going to be good for nothing for a while, Peter decided.
Peter was just as unnerved as Fotheringay, though for different reasons than the others of the Council. Maya had not yet told him what it was she had been protecting herself from with those cobbled-together shields. Indeed, she had not even admitted to him that she was hiding herself.
This could not be coincidence. Whatever, or whoever, had killed those men was probably Maya’s enemy, or at least, was the person (or persons) Maya was trying to hide from. And that only led to more questions, entirely different questions from the ones the rest of the Council now pondered.
She expected this power to follow her from India, or to be here already. Follow her, I think, or we’d have seen murders before this. But why is it killing Englishmen?
There must be a clue in the fact that it had taken only those who had been in India. Many spells required something of the target in order to be launched; had these men left articles behind that were now being used against them?
The only problem was that assumption implied that whoever had murdered them had brought those objects with him. That seemed unnecessarily complicated. Surely, surely, this thing was not operating from India itself?
“We must assume that it is possible this deadly force is operating from India itself,” Alderscroft rumbled. “You all know how the natives have been foolishly agitating of late for the end to British guidance. The continent teems with their numbers, and they can easily fill temples to overflowing with worshipers lending their crude force to the focused power of an Adept. Why they have chosen to murder these men, I do not pretend to know. We must, however, assume that this is but the opening salvo to a war of the Unseen.”
“Then we must seal the country!” someone blurted. “We must create a shield over England at once!”
“That is my conclusion,” Alderscroft agreed, and a buzz of talk erupted, aimed at planning just how to create such a shield.
Peter could only watch and listen, helplessly. That—I can’t believe that, he thought. First of all, how would anyone, even an Eastern Adept, be able to focus power over that great a distance? Oh, of course, there were legends of such things, but not ever in Peter’s experience—and he had a great deal when it came to India and the East—had such a thing ever been accomplished. And why would anyone bother with such small fry? To kill at such a distance would require enormous power. Why waste it on four nonentities? If these four had done anything that heinous, certainly they would not have been such—nobodies. And if this was meant as a strike against British rule, why strike at nobodies in the first place? Why not go after someone in a position of power in India—the Viceroy, or the Colonial Government?
Alderscroft had jumped to his own conclusion, however, and from the look of things, he wasn’t going to budge from it.
“Simple shields, made large enough, should disrupt power operating at such an extreme distance,” Alderscroft said, loud enough for his voice to carry over the general babble, pulling Peter’s attention back to the matter at hand. “I think we have enough Masters on hand to make such a shield, and as soon as we can gather all the members of the Exeter Club and White Lodge together at Stonehenge, we will have enough to make such a shield impervious.”
Stonehenge? We’re all supposed to make an excursion out to Stonehenge? Peter thought incredulously. This is insane!
But what he said aloud was, “Lord Alderscroft—what if the menace isn’t coming from outside England?”
He pitched his voice strongly enough to also carry over all the rest, and his words created a sudden silence. Alderscroft raised his eyes and stared at him. “What was that?” the Head of the Council demanded.
Peter cleared his throat nervously and repeated himself. “What if the menace isn’t coming from outside England? What if it’s right here? Won’t we be sealing it in here with us? Essentially cutting us off from—oh—outside help?”
Some of the members snorted at that; the rest looked contemptuous. Only Almsley regarded him thoughtfully, as if giving his suggestions the full weight of being taken seriously.
“If there had been anyone with that sort of power among us in London, or even in England, Scott, we would have detected them before this,” Alderscroft said, with a hint of warning in his tone. “The closest we came was that little doctor of yours, and she didn’t have enough power or expertise to create a horror like the one we face.”
Would you have detected it, can you be sure? What about those shields of Maya’s, the ones that essentially made you look elsewhere? If those had been formed correctly, would you ever have noticed her? He wanted to ask those questions, but glanced first at Almsley, who shook his head very slightly and pursed his lips a little in warning. The Head of the Council was not going to listen to one of the most junior members of the White Lodge; he had already made up his mind. To force a confrontation at this point would accomplish nothing, and leave him unable to talk to Alderscroft later when events either proved or disproved the Head’s conclusion.
Someone will die if that happens… but getting myself thrown out of the Club and the White Lodge won’t do any good either.
Unsatisfied, he held his peace, as Alderscroft finished the design of the magic ritual they would all perform to create the initial shield.
“Don robes, and we will assemble in the second chamber,” Alderscroft ordered, standing up and shoving his chair away from the table in a single decisive movement. Peter hung back a little, delaying the moment that he joined the others; there was a brief scramble for the robes, then those nearest the pegs began passing the common robes back to those behind them.
Some few of the members had special embroidered, personalized robes of various antique cuts and quaint designs. There was no uniformity to these robes; they ranged from something the most austere monk would feel comfortable wearing, to an elaborately embroidered creation that the Pope himself would have felt excessive for High Mass at Easter. Some were designed along the lines of those a Member of Parliament or a University don wore, others seemed to be recreations of a medieval burgher’s festive attire. Alderscroft’s hooded robe, of brilliant scarlet velvet, was somewhere between the two extremes.