Especially when a scurvy lot of ne’er-do-wells materialized around them as Norrey stopped halfway down, just outside a little hole in the wall that might be what passed for a pub in these parts. Certainly there was some sort of light passing through the greasy, cracked windowpanes, and the sound of shrieks and laughter coming from inside.
“These are m’ mates,” Norrey said, gesturing with her free hand to the dozen or so cutthroats and footpads around her. “These are the blokes for Miss Maya, lads.”
“Don’t unnerstan’ more’n ‘alf whut Norrey sez,” spoke up the tallest and nastiest-looking of the lot. “But she ‘ad th’ White Cough, an’ she ain’t got it naow, so—” He shrugged. “Reckon Miss Maya fixed ‘er, an’ since there ain’t no cure, ‘adda bin—magic, I guess. So I guess there cood be magic as ‘as ‘urt ‘er.”
Peter was at a loss, but Almsley wasn’t. “We’ve got work for you, whether you believe in magic or not—and if we don’t get to these people and stop what they’re doing, Doctor Maya will die,” he said, stepping forward, with Mala mantling on his wrist.
Norrey hissed at the leader and tugged at his sleeve; he made as if to cuff her, until one of the mongooses ran up on her shoulder and showed its teeth at him. He laughed uneasily, then turned back to Almsley. “Aye, some on us owes Miss Maya—but some on us don’t,” he replied aggressively. “So whut’s in it fer all on us?”
Almsley leaned forward, his eyes glittering in the dim light from the single street lamp at the corner and the fitful illumination from the pub. “I’ll not spin you any Banbury tales,” he said, “but think about this. Those people must have bought that building they’re in—a whole building—or they couldn’t be doing what they are without a landlord nosing around! Where did that money come from? They don’t work and don’t steal—but they have to eat, so where’s their living coming from? There’s more money in that place; there has to be.”
“Eh,” the leader replied thoughtfully, stroking the sparse whiskers on his scruffy young chin.
“Hindu women have all their wealth in gold jewelry,” Peter spoke up suddenly, out of his own memory. “Oh, surely you’ve seen that, seen one or two of them walking around! Well, the woman who bosses all of those men is from a high-caste family—and she’s a powerfully important person in her own right, too! Doctor Maya came to England with all her people, bought her house, rebuilt it, and started her surgery with what she got from her own jewelry, and she wasn’t nearly so high-caste or important. What do you think that woman’s fortune looks like?”
“Ah!” said the leader, as some inarticulate mumbles from the rest of the group indicated their growing interest.
“And besides all that, there’s a temple in there somewhere,” Almsley concluded triumphantly. “You know what’s in temples!”
That got them muttering. Perhaps one or two of them had gone into the British Museum out of curiosity. The rest would have heard the stories from returning soldiers or even seen a moving picture.
Almsley went on persuasively. “Even if there’s no gold and gems, there’ll be silks and statues and lots of things you can sell, and not to some pawnbrokers either! Whatever is in there is yours. All we want is the woman herself.”
“Done!” said the leader, holding out his hand to Almsley, who shook it with the full solemnity the pact deserved. “Let’s get ‘em!”
Maya woke.
Between the time that she fell into blackness and the time that she woke, her mind had not been idle. There were conclusions ready for her the moment that she was conscious—that the old apple seller must have been her aunt Shivani, or in Shivani’s pay, that this had been a trap. She knew when she woke that she would awaken in Shivani’s power, and that Shivani expected her to be frightened, disoriented, and helpless.
Shivani was wrong. She woke angry, and prepared to fight.
So when she found herself floating—in midair—unable to move or make a sound, it was the “floating” part that momentarily confused her, and not her surroundings.
How can I—wait—of course. She had learned enough from Peter, had traveled in the realms of Earth Magic often enough, to recognize after a moment that Shivani had somehow managed to magically dissociate her spirit from her body, and now held the spirit captive. When she looked for it, she could still find the frail “silver cord” that attached her to her physical body, but Shivani had done something that made it impossible for her to follow it back home.
Stop. Look. Where am I?
If she couldn’t move or speak, she could still see and hear, and what she observed did not bode well for her.
She hovered, as it were, just above something that could only be an altar. Behind her was a many-armed, brightly painted statue of a woman bedecked in necklaces of flowers and skulls. Each hand held a different weapon, or a severed head. She had no difficulty in recognizing Kali Durga, and that was no great surprise—though it was odd that the statue’s eyes were closed.
Didn’t I hear something about that, somewhere, in a street tale? That someone in Ganesh’s temple once offended him, and the statue of Ganesh closed its eyes to show that Ganesh would no longer answer his prayers?
She was immediately distracted by the sight of her aunt, however, who now bore no resemblance to the old apple woman at all. Shivani, the Priestess of Kali Durga, was, in fact, remarkably young-looking; except for a very few fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, she looked just as young as Maya. Her hair was black and glossy, plaited into a thick braid along with thin gold chains. She might have been considered a handsome woman except for those lines, which gave a cast of cruelty to her features, and except for her eyes, which were hard and cold. Anyone seeing her would have known at once that she and Surya had been sisters—and would have known at once that they were nothing at all alike.
The woman knelt at a brazier just in front of the altar, casting bits of this and that into it so that smoke rose in thin curls from the charcoal. Beside the brazier was a tube of red—Maya’s own blood, still in the syringe. Involuntarily, Maya strained toward it.
“You are awake,” the woman said, in a calm, and silky voice. “Do not trouble to speak; you cannot.”
Do not trouble to boast, I am not impressed, Maya retorted, forming the words and thinking them fiercely at her captor, as she had learned to do when her spirit went deep into the realm of Earth Magic.
Startled, the woman looked up from her task in spite of herself. Their “eyes” met, and Maya strove to put nothing in her own gaze but defiance as she held her thoughts behind a tightly woven shield.
“I will have you,” Shivani said quietly.
You will not. You cannot overcome me. You may kill me, but you will never have me. With that challenge, and before Shivani could react to it, Maya gathered her strength, and drove her self down into the earth below, searching for a link into Earth Magic.
It was tainted, stinking with blood; she drove down further, sensing that behind her Shivani had leaped to her feet and was belatedly trying to prevent her from going in this unanticipated direction. She felt her progress slowing, as Shivani “pulled” against her flight, using whatever hold she’d put on Maya’s spirit to drag her back.
She strained against the pull, striving to inch herself clear of the polluted soil, trying to get even a fraction of her “self” into a place where she, and not Shivani, had the advantage. It was like trying to swim to the bank of a stagnant cesspool with a rope around her waist and someone pulling her deeper into the pool with it.