Phoenix and Ashes

But to complete the plan, she would need time. Time for the boy to heal physically enough to be sent home on recovery leave. Time for Lord Alderscroft's introduction to bear fruit. Time for her spells to work, time for Carolyn—or Lauralee—to be the answer to his prayers, time for him to propose and for a proper society wedding. And then more time, for she did not intend for him to survive the war, and he would have to recover from his shellshock and go back to the Air Corps, and if the Yanks entered the War—

America was full of brash young men who were perfectly willing to fling themselves into combat. America was wealthy; within months she could turn her factories from making frying pans into making cannon and machine-guns. And America had immense, untapped resources on her own soil; she did not depend on ships to bring those resources to the factories. If America entered the war, it could be over within a year.

Unless—

She couldn't stop them. But she could add a new enemy to the equation . . . one that should add to the attrition in the trenches, and slow the number of troops coming over.

'Carolyn, dear, I believe that we ought to hold a little farewell dinner for all those fine young men at the embassy,' she said, in a tone that made Carolyn's eyes narrow. 'We ought to thank them for being so willing to serve. Invite them to a little supper tomorrow night.'

Lauralee also caught the scent of something in the air. 'Mama—' she began, then shook her head. 'Come along, Carolyn. Let's go write invitations. I think there are six or seven of them, including the ambassador's son, Mama.'

'When you are finished writing the invitations, make the supper arrangements with the Savoy chef,' Alison replied, already unpacking what she needed from her trunk. 'You should know what to do already.'

'Yes, Mama,' her daughters chorused, and Alison smiled with content. Well-trained and obedient, everything a mother could ask for.

By the time that all the arrangements were complete, and the invitations sent to the embassy by messenger, Alison was ready. Her implements—deceptively simple ones—were set out on the thick silk cloth that she used as her portable Working table. It already had the runes and circles of containment embroidered into it, dyed with blood—hers, and others. She spread it out over the table they used when they dined en-suite, summoned the girls, doused the electric lights, and lit the candles she had unpacked.

'This may be one of the most underrated incantations in our arsenal, girls,' she said, as the two of them moved closer to stand on either side of her. 'And yet, it requires surprisingly little power, especially here, in the city. We are going to call an Earth Elemental. The trick to this is that you have to remember to be very specific about what you want from this entity. You already know that one of the great Gifts of the Earth Mage is to heal—but the converse is also true. Watch.'

With the precision of a surgeon, Alison placed a deceptively plain bowl (made of clay dug from a graveyard and fired in the same fire as a cremation) in the center of her Working cloth. Into it she dropped a tiny bit of rotting meat (she always kept some sealed in a small jar with her when she traveled), and several more equally distasteful ingredients, burying them all beneath a layer of dirt dug from the piles of tin-waste near a mine. Then she closed her eyes, held her hands over the bowl, and let the power flow from her, into it, chanting her specific invocation under her breath and concentrating with all of her might, and the sullen ocher-colored energies flowed out of her fingertips and into the bowl, pooling there in the candlelight.

Carolyn gasped, and at that sign, she opened her eyes.

The Earth Elemental standing in the now-empty bowl might not look like much—it was a squat little putty- colored nothing, with the barest suggestions of limbs and a head, the sort of crude and primitive object that might be found in an ancient ruin. It looked utterly harmless—but properly used, it was one of the most powerful of all of the inimical Earth Elementals, because it was one of the most insidious.

It was called a maledero, and it brought, and spread, disease.

'I need an illness,' she told it. 'One that spreads in the air. It should seem harmless, but kill. I don't want it to fell everything that catches it, no more than one in four, but no less than one in ten. It should bring death quickly when it does kill, it should lay out those it does not kill, and it should be hardest not on the very young nor the very old, but those in the prime of life. It should spread rapidly, and be impossible to stop, because by the time victims are dying, it should have passed on to others.'

The putty-colored thing smiled, showing a mouth full of jagged and rotting teeth, while above the mouth, a pair of bottomless black eyes looked at her. 'How if it spreads through a sneeze?' it suggested. 'If it be spread by any other means, this might be countered.'

She nodded. 'Ideal. There will be six young men here tomorrow night for dinner before they journey homewards. You will infect them, and only them, and you will lie dormant within them until they have ended their journey in a place where there will be thousands of young men like them. Then you will release yourself, and be free to spread as far as you please, across the whole world, if you like—except to myself and my daughters.'

'Easily done,' the thing croaked, and it—divided, right before their eyes, into six identical creatures, each one-sixth the size of the original. 'We pledge by the bond,' they chorused.

Alison nodded, and tapped the side of the bowl with her willow-wand. 'Then I release from the bowl. When