The Serpent's Shadow

Earth Magic native to this island Logres, but it was not being used in the same way.

What in the bloody hell?

A policeman on his beat eyed him dubiously for a moment; Peter met his gaze, straight on, eye to eye, then gave him a friendly nod, waited a moment, and folded his paper, once again on his way.

There was that other thing going on, too—that 'I'm not here,' the touch of 'go hunt elsewhere,' the gentle but insistent push to go away and look somewhere else that the others had described. Definitely there, all right, but not of much use as a defense unless you were trying to scry from a distance. Once on the spot, ridiculously easy to get past. All he needed to do was find the place where the push to not look was the hardest, and he'd find the source.

It took some sauntering—cheerful sauntering was good in this neighborhood, though once in a while if he touched his cap to a lady he got an unmistakable invitation in return that he didn't have the time (or the wish, for that matter) to follow up on. Bobbies on the beat had a well-fed and fairly relaxed air about them, which meant that whatever went on around here, as long as it wasn't in the public street, or occasioning a scream for help, they reckoned it wasn't any of their business to interfere.

That was good for him, since they assumed he was either looking for something but wasn't going to make trouble when he found it (oddly enough, the actual truth), or he was out of work, but not so long out of work that he was out of temper as well. He circled the neighborhood like a shark following the scent of blood in the water, moving in a tighter and tighter spiral, until at long last he came to his real goal.

And when he found it, his source, the place from which the skewed and strangely sculpted magic emanated, he stared at it with a gape on his face like a country cousin at the British Museum.

Doctor M. Witherspoon, said the discreet brass plaque beside the door. Physician and surgeon.

He shuttered his expression quickly, and wandered a slight distance away for a moment, taking out his paper to distract the eyes of passersby again, and sending out his own peculiar magic callings.

And got yet another gob-smacking shock.

Yes, there were happy little water sprites within that wall of protection. And no, they were not coming out, thank you. It was nice here, and they weren't going to leave— or provide him with any information—without being forced.

Peter Scott had never forced a Water Elemental to do anything it didn't want to in his entire career as a Master, and he wasn't about to jeopardize his standing with them by doing so now. There were, after all, more mundane ways of getting at some of the information locked inside that shell of magical protection.

He suddenly developed a much more pronounced version of his limp, and staggered, leaning on his walking stick, to the white-painted doorway. He stood there just a moment, then reached out and rang the bell.

It was answered, with great alacrity, by a stonyvisaged, gray-haired man arrayed in pristine white chalwars and tunic, who looked him up and down with the same disconcerting thoroughness that Lord Alderscroft had used.

Peter hastily removed his cap. 'Knee went all wonky,' he said with great earnestness. 'The doctor free?'

The Indian gentleman gave him a second head-to-toe examination, then nodded, though grudgingly. 'You may wait,' he said, as if conferring the Victoria Cross, and motioned Peter inside.

There was only one other patient waiting on the benches lining the hall, a young woman with a distinctly worried expression wearing a very cheap imitation of a fashionable gown (taffeta instead of satin, and trimmed in ribbon already fraying), who kept twisting her handkerchief in her hand as if to wring it dry. Peter studiously ignored her, keeping his eyes on the floorboards, as the Guardian of the Door kept watch over them both. They were very clean floorboards, that much he saw. There was a faint astringent scent in the air, but no odor of sickness.

A moment later, one of the doors into the hall opened, and a woman with a baby in her arms emerged. There were signs on her face that she had been weeping, and her eyes were still red, but her face was wreathed in smiles. 'God bless 'ee, Miss Doctor!' she whispered; to whom these words were addressed, Peter was left in doubt, for between the bulk of the lady herself and the shadows of the doorway, he could only make out an imperfect form.

'Never hesitate to bring her in again, Delia,' said a low, pleasant voice. 'I've got plenty of stockings and other things needing mending, and I'd be just as happy to barter your skills for mine. Just take her home, put her to bed, and come back for the mending when you've got someone to watch her. Gupta will have it for you.'

The patient—or perhaps, more correctly, the patient's mother, bowed her head in a brief nod of relief and agreement, then the shadowed figure caught sight of the first patient as 'Delia' hurried out the door that Gupta (Peter presumed the man was the 'Gupta' previously mentioned) held open for her with a more polite bow than he had offered to Peter.

The girl sprang up off of the bench as soon as Delia had cleared the way, and the shadow exclaimed, 'Oh, Sally, not again!'