The Serpent's Shadow

'Will you go to the garden? Or to—the other room?' he asked, as Peter Scott struggled to regain his composure.

'The garden for now, I think, Gupta. Please see that we are left alone,' she replied, knowing that Gupta would carry out her wishes to the letter. After all, she didn't need his physical protection in the garden. Nisha was in the garden, and it was well after dark. She would be awake and watching, and eagle-owls had been known to kill (if not carry off) newborn kids and fawns. If Peter Scott dared to lay so much as an unwanted finger on her, he would shortly be displaying a bloody, furrowed scalp.

Gupta simply bowed and vanished. Maya herself led her guest back through the house into the conservatory. Once there, she delayed the moment of truth for a little by lighting several more candle-lanterns, while Scott settled himself into the same chair he had taken yesterday morning. She glanced up, and caught sight of Nisha's eyes gleaming down at her from the shadows above.

A moment more, however, and a swirl of mongooses enveloped Peter Scott's ankles, while Charan took imperious possession of his lap. A laugh escaped him, and he looked surprised that it had.

I don't think he laughs very much, she thought, as she took advantage of her little friends' purposeful confusion to take possession of her chair. And I think that's a great pity.

Only when she was seated did they grant him relief from their deliberately exuberant greetings. They both looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Maya decided to be the one to break the silence.

'I am glad that you wrote to me,' she said, simply.

'I'm glad that you replied,' he countered. 'Very. Would it be too much to ask how it is that you—came to be what you are?'

'Not even half trained, you mean?' she responded ruefully. 'What magic I learned, I learned on my own, from street magicians and fakirs. My mother could not teach me—oh, she had magic enough, more than enough, but she said that my magic was not the magic of her land, that it came to me through my father, and it was from my father's people that I must learn it.'

'Ah.' She watched the shadows of his thoughts flitting across his face. 'Well, then,' he finally said, with a certain cheer. 'There won't be anything for you to unlearn.'

She had to laugh at that. 'One small blessing, and I suppose I must be grateful for every blessing in this sorry situation. So; please, start from the beginning. Explain to me; tell me about—' she thought quickly back to his letter '—explain to me about Elementals, and Masters, and all the rest.'

'What, am I to be your storyteller now?' he asked, in what was clearly mock indignation, much to her delight. 'Well, then, on your own head be it if you are bored—because I am very bad at telling stories!'

Actually, she thought, as she listened attentively to his explanations, he was a very good storyteller. Or to put it more truly, he was very good at making clear explanations of things she had felt, but could not articulate. She settled in to absorb all that she could, with all the intensity she had ever put into learning medicine.

There were no illusions about what she was about to learn, no matter how Peter Scott diverted her. This was more important than anything she had ever put her mind to, for if she did not master what she needed to know, and quickly . . .

... then she might never have the chance to learn anything ever again—other than the answer to the question of whether it was Christian Heaven, Hindu Wheel, or something else entirely that awaited after death.

SHADOWS moved in the corners of the room, but Kali Durga's priestess knew that there could be no one present here but herself. Her servants were afraid to come into the temple when the priestess was present, fearing, no doubt, that if a sacrifice was required and nothing appropriate was at hand, one of them would be taken. Silly creatures; Shivani would never sacrifice a servant, not unless the servant became intractable and disobedient, for where would she get a trained replacement? And no servant of Shivani's ever became disobedient. She never gave them the reason or the freedom to disobey. She never terrified them enough so that they felt pushed into an inescapable corner by their fears, and she never gave them enough leisure to contemplate any other life but this.

As for her followers, the thugees and the dacoits, they worshiped Shivani with a fervor second only to that which they very properly accorded the Goddess. She had told them never to enter while she was in meditation. Therefore, unless the temple was burning down around her ears, or the wretched English invaded it, they never would. It was quite that simple.