The Wizard of London

The light from the lamps strengthened, and with each word, she felt a warmth increasing inside her, a fierce strength pouring into her. Was it from her feathered companion, just as the words were? Or was it the words that brought this new power?

No, it wasn’t the light behind her that was increasing! It was the light around her!

Cor—

A golden halo of light surrounded her, increasing in brightness with every word that spilled from her lips. And now Grey joined in the chanting, for chanting it was. She caught the pattern now, a repetition of some forty-two syllables that sounded like no language fragments Nan had ever heard. She knew what Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese all sounded like, even if she couldn’t speak or understand them, for folk of all of those nationalities thronged the slums where she had lived, from Whitechapel to Limehouse. She knew what Latin, Greek, and French all sounded like too, since those were taught at the School. This language definitely wasn’t any of those. But when Grey took over the chant, Nan stopped; she didn’t need to speak anymore. Now it was Grey who wove an armor of words about her—and a moment later, Sarah’s voice, shaking, faltering, but each syllable clear, if faint.

Then—she went all wobbly for a moment. As if something gave her a good cuff, she experienced a sort of internal lurch of vision and focus, a spirit earthquake. The room faded, thinned, became ghostly. The walls receded, or seemed to; everything became dim and gray, and a cold wind buffeted her, swirling around her.

On the other side of that door, now appallingly transparent, bulked an enormous shadow; that was what was oozing under the door, reaching for them, held at bay by the golden light around her. The shadow wasn’t what filled her with horror and fear, however—it was what lay at the heart of it, something that could not be seen, even in this half-world, but which sent out waves of terror to strike devastating blows on the heart. And images of exactly what it intended to do to those who opposed it—and the one it wanted.

Now the shadow was on their side of the door, and there was no getting past it. The shadow billowed, and sent out fat, writhing tentacles toward her.

But Nan was not going to break; not for this thing, whatever it was, not when her friend needed protecting from this horror that was going to devour her and take her body for its own!

She brandished her club—and as the weapon in her hand ripped through the thick, gray tendrils of oily fog the thing sent toward her out of the shadow, she saw with a shock that she no longer held a crude wooden club. Not anymore—

Now she held a shining sword, with a blade polished to a mirror finish, bronze-gold as the heart of the sun. And the arm that swung the blade was clad in bronze armor.

She was taller, older, stronger; wearing a tunic of bright red wool that came to her knees, a belt of heavy leather, her long hair in a thick plait that fell over one shoulder. And Neville! Neville was no heavier than he had been, but now he was huge, surely the size of an eagle, and his outspread wings overshadowed her, as his eyes glowed the same bronze-gold as her sword and the golden aura that surrounded them both.

But the form within the shadow was not impressed.

The shadow drank in her light, swallowing it up, absorbing it completely. Then it began to grow…

Even as it loomed over her, cresting above her like a wave frozen in time, she refused to let the fear it wanted her to feel overwhelm her, though she felt the weight of it threatening to close in on her spirit and crush it. Defiantly, she brandished her sword at it. “No!” she shouted at it. “You don’t get by!”

It swelled again, and she thought she saw hints of something inside it… something with a smoldering eye, a suggestion of wings at the shoulders, and more limbs than any self-respecting creature ought to have.

She knew then that this was nothing one single opponent, however brave, however strong, could ever defeat. And behind her, she heard Sarah sob once, a sound full of fear and hopelessness.

Grey and Neville screamed—

And the ghost door burst open behind the horror.

In this strange half-world, what Nan saw was a trio of supernatural warriors. The first was a knight straight out of one of her beloved fairy books, broadsword in hand, clad head to toe in literally shining armor, visor closed— though a pair of fierce blue eyes burned in the darkness behind the visor with a light of their own. The second bore a curved scimitar and was wearing flowing, colorful silken garments and a turban centered with a diamond that burned like a fire, and could have stepped out of the pages of the Arabian Nights, an avenging jinn.

And the third carried not a sword, but a spear, and was attired like nothing Nan had ever seen except in a brothel or a filthy postcard—in the merest scrap of a chemise, a bit of draped fabric that scandalized even Nan, for inside that little wisp of cloth was—

Mem’sab?

The shadow collapsed in on itself—not completely, but enough for the knight to slam it aside with one armored shoulder, enough for the jinn and Mem’sab to rush past it, and past Nan, to snatch up Sarah and make a dash with her for the now open door, with Grey flapping over their heads in their wake.

Nan saw the shadow gather itself, and knew it was going to strike them down. “Bloody hell!” she screamed—or at least, that was what the words that came out of her mouth meant, although she certainly didn’t recognize the shape of the syllables. And, desperate to keep it from striking, she charged at the thing, Neville dove at it, and the knight slashed frantically upward.

Again it shrank back—not in defeat, oh, no—but startled that they had dared to move against it.

And that was enough—just enough—for Mem’sab and the jinn to rush past bearing Sarah, for Nan and Neville and Grey to follow in their wake, and for the knight to slam the door shut and follow them down the stairs—

Stairs which, with every footstep, became more and more solid, more and more real, until all of them tumbled out the front door of Number Ten, Berkeley Square, into the lamplit darkness, the perfectly ordinary shadows and smoke and night sounds of a London street.

Neville fluttered down, panting, to land on the ground. Sahib slammed the front door shut behind them and leaned against it, holding his side, and breathing heavily. Gone were his armor, his sword—he was only ordinary Sahib again, with a cane to help his bad knee. Selim—and not the jinn—put Sarah down on the pavement, and Grey fluttered down to land on her shoulder. Neville looked up at Nan and quorked plaintively, while Mem’sab, clad in a proper suit, but with her skirt hiked up to scandalous shortness, did something that dropped her skirt from above her knees to street length again.

“Are you two all right?” she asked anxiously, taking Sarah by the shoulders and peering into her face, then doing the same with Nan.

“Yes’m,” Nan said, as Sarah nodded.

“Faugh,” Sahib coughed, as he straightened. “Let’s not do that again any time soon, shall we? I’m getting too old for last-minute rescues.”

Last minute rescues—‘cause we went off alone, like a pair of gormless geese! “Oh, Sahib—Mem’sab—” Nan felt her eyes fill with tears, as it suddenly came home to her that her protectors and benefactors had just put themselves into deadly danger to save her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’ mean—”

“Nan, Nan, you aren’t to blame!” Sahib said immediately, putting one strong arm around her shoulders. “You did nothing that you shouldn’t have done, and if you hadn’t been so careful, we wouldn’t have known where you were until it was too late! No, it was our fault.”

“It certainly was,” Mem’sab said grimly. “But it was someone else’s as well… and there is going to be a reckoning when I find out who. But let’s get away from here first. I don’t altogether want to find out if the bindings keeping that thing confined to this house will hold under provocation.”

Sahib took Sarah’s arm, giving her Grey to tuck inside her coat, and Selim offered a hand to Neville, who was so tired he hopped onto it without a protest, and then lifted the raven onto Nan’s shoulder. As they walked quickly away from the building, Mem’sab continued.

“Someone came to me a few days ago with a story about this place, how some haunt was making it impossible to rent out and he was in dire difficulty because of it. He wanted Sarah, or me, or both of us together to lay the spirit—but I have heard all of the stories about this address, and I knew better than to try. Something came to dwell there, over a hundred years ago, and it is not a thing to be trifled with. Men have died here, and more than one, and many people have gone mad with fear. Whatever that thing was—”

“Is old,” Nan put in, with a shudder. “Real, real old. I dunno how it got ‘ere, but it ain’t no spook.”

“Well, evidently this person decided to force our hand,” Sahib said thoughtfully—and as Nan looked up when