The Serpent's Shadow

Maya's lips formed a surprised 'O' although she made no sound.

He decided at that point that both of them had enough of abstracts for the moment. 'Just so you know. Forewarned and all that. Are you ready to try some of those basics?'

'I think so. Can we work here?' Her last words were hesitant, and he suspected that she had preserved a chamber here in the house where she worked her spells. He also suspected that it was an annex of her own bedchamber, and she hesitated to bring a man and a stranger so near to it. I am a stranger, he reminded himself. No matter that it seems less that way with every minute that passes. I'm lucky she lets me in here alone with her at all.

'We can,' he said, and was rewarded with a genuine smile of relief. 'Of course we can. Especially since the first of your lessons will be in constructing protections between your household and whatever is—' he waved his hand in the general direction of the street, '—out there. The difference between what you've been doing until now and what I'll show you is that we'll be building those protections on a foundation based in your own Element.'

Oh, Peter, that made you sound like a right pompous ass! He winced. She didn't notice, though; or at least, she was too polite to show that she had.

He rose: she did the same. 'Would you feel more comfortable with some concrete symbols of what we're doing, or not?' he asked diffidently. 'I mean, would it help you if I actually drew chalk diagrams on the floor, or outlines, or whatever?'

'I think,' she said, with a flavoring of irony, 'that we needn't frighten the others with chalked diagrams. As a doctor, I have to imagine what is going on inside my patients, to lay them bare in my mind so that I can treat them.'

He flushed with acute embarrassment, and tried to cover it by getting to his feet. 'Right—ah—well, if you were a real beginner, I'd have told you how to cleanse the area that you're going to protect, but as it happens, it's already cleansed. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be here.'

He pointed to the fountain where, attracted by a Master of their own element inside their domain, two undines drifted in the lower pool, forms visible as an occasional undulation of wave-into-arm or a transparent face briefly showing on the surface. Maya looked, and then looked again, staring.

'I never saw them before!' she exclaimed.

'They wouldn't show themselves, not to you, without me being there; you aren't their Element, and you aren't a Master yet,' Peter replied, hoping that she didn't think his automatic smile was patronizing. 'The point is that they're here, which means that the earth through which they had to go to get into your fountain is clean. By that, I don't mean that it's sterile or anything like that; I mean that there's none of the usual city poisons in the water and earth here—you can't help the ones in the air—and no poisonous energies here either.'

'But how—' she began.

'They probably got in here the last time it rained, following the runoff, or perhaps there's a connection to an underground water supply on your property. There are lots of old wells and springs that have been forgotten.' Peter shrugged. 'The point is that this kind of Elemental can't move through anything that's unclean.'

'But how did it become clean?' she asked, frowning. 'I did nothing'

Peter could only shrug again. I wish she'd stop asking questions I don't know the answer to. I really don't want to look like a right dunce in front of her. 'I don't know,' he admitted. 'But there are parts of the city that manage to stay clean no matter what. A lot of them are old shrines or even the sites of old churches that got built over. What's been cleansed stays cleansed, unless someone comes along and deliberately deconsecrates it. Gods have a way of hanging onto what's theirs, and of making where they live into a place where they can be—oh, I don't know—I suppose the word is comfortable. And only a Dark god is comfortable in a place that's contaminated.'

Maya opened her mouth, and Peter waited expectantly. Then she shut it again, abruptly. 'Never mind,' she said. 'Never mind.' He was faintly disappointed; he would have liked to hear her think out loud again, but plowed on regardless with the lesson.

'Well, you need to actually establish the boundaries of your clean area first,' he said, waving his hand at the wall around the greenhouse. 'You said you can see Earth Magic—go ahead and see where it ends.'

She turned toward the back wall of the conservatory, dropped her gaze to the foot of the wall, and frowned. Then, slowly, understanding drifted over her features.

'If you hadn't told me, I'd never have looked for it,' she said carefully, her eyes alight with satisfaction. 'But there is, there is a boundary space right at that wall, and it isn't the one I made! It's where the earth in my garden stops, and something else that isn't as— nice—starts.' Now it was her turn to grope after words.

'That edge is what you're going to use, and not just a 'fence' of power either,' he told her. 'Now that you see where I want you to put it, I want you to drain the power out of the existing barrier. Go on—' he urged, as she hesitated doubtfully. 'I'll have a shield of my own in place before you can drain yours away.' And he quickly made