Mercedes Lackey - Elemental Master 05 - The Wizard of London

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The Wizard of London by

Mercedes Lackey

ISABELLE Hellen Harton waited on the dock beside the gangplank for

the last of the steamer passengers from Egypt and Africa to disembark.

She was not the only person waiting there; there were a number of friends

and relations, eager to greet returning soldiers posted to distant climes,

tourists, hunters, adventurers, businessmen, and assorted missionaries.

But she was one of a small handful of quiet, soberly-dressed folk who were

waiting for some very special passengers indeed.

The vast majority of the passengers had come from Egypt; it was a

popular destination for those English who could afford it, especially in the

winter. There were not many soldiers; they generally returned on

troopships. Those who disembarked from this passenger liner were pale,

thin, sometimes missing a limb or an eye; invalided out and sent home by

the transport that they could get on first—or best afford.

For those who were returning under happier circumstances, there were

the usual gay greetings, crowds swirled, made noise, and left. And at last,

the final passengers made their solemn way down the gangplank.

A little gaggle of children, none older than ten, all very quiet and

subdued, were accompanied by their guardians; three young English

nannies, none pretty, all as subdued as their charges.

Isabelle fingered the letter in her pocket; she didn't have to read it

again to know what it said. And what it did not say in words written on

the page, but in those hopes and fears scribed between the lines, in

thought and emotion.

Dear Mrs. Harton: As terrible as it is for us, we must send our

daughter Sarah out of the dangers of Africa and back to the more

healthful climate and safety of England. As we have no relatives with

which to entrust our child, we cast about for a school, and yours has

come highly recommended by those we trust. She is our only child, and

very dear to us. We have been told that you are kind and caring, which

speaks more to us than that you have French tutors and dancing

masters.

Not mentioned, of course, was that the Harton School was not

expensive either. A pair of missionaries would not be able to afford a great

deal.

So—I suspect they must have asked about a great many schools before

they came to us. There was a dusting, a faint glow of true Magic about the

letter; not that Isabelle was a Magician herself, but she was sensitive

enough to detect it in those who were. The writer was no Master of any

Element, but was surely a practitioner of Earth Magic. Not surprising, in

one who had gone to Africa to be a Healer and serve at the side of another.

And the father—Doctor Lyon-White—was he, too, Magician as well as

Healer? That hadn't occurred to Isabel until now, and as she waited, she

brushed her fingers across the surface of the envelope and under the first

faint trace, discovered another, fainter still. Yes, another Earth Magician,

and this one, a Master.

But if this little daughter had been so gifted, the parents would have

sent her to another Elemental Mage to be schooled. So as she is not an

incipient Elemental Mage, and they have little money to afford the only

school that has a reputation for training the otherwise gifted among the

other Elemental Mages, they must have been quite desperate.

Once again, it was what was not written in the letter that resonated to

Isabelle's own finely-tuned—and "extra"—senses.

Sarah has gifts we cannot train, the letter whispered to her. Nor can

anyone we know. Those we trust tell us that you can—

But they could not put that into words, of course; they were writing to a

stranger, who might not be as they had been told, who might think them

mad for saying such things. Rumors of our special students at best among

their set; and among missionaries and the like, only the assurance that

we are kind and gentle. They could only be sure of this: that those who

ran this school would be good to a little girl who had been sent so far away

from everything she knew and loved.

Isabelle wondered just what it was that little Sarah Jane had been

gifted with, then dismissed it. Whatever it was, she would find out soon

enough.

Down the gangplank at last came the line of little girls and boys, two by

two, with one nanny leading and the other two following, all of them quiet

and round-eyed and apprehensive, subdued, perhaps, by the gray northern

skies, the smokes, the looming dark city that was so completely unlike

Cairo or Timbuktu.

Isabelle had eyes for only one of them, a slender, big-eyed child in a

shabby coat a little too large for her, who looked with reserve, but no fear,

all around her. Not pretty, brown-haired and brown-eyed, a little wren of a

child. This was Sarah Jane. She knew it, felt it, and felt something under

that surface that told her that Doctor and Mrs. Lyon-White had been very

wise in sending their child to the Harton School for Boys and Girls.

So it was Isabelle, of all of those waiting for their charges, who stepped

forward first, and presented her credentials to the leading nanny. "I am

Mrs. Harton, and I am here for Sarah Jane Lyon-White," she said in a

firm voice as the nanny looked the letter over with hesitant uncertainty.

And before the nanny could say anything more, she turned to the child she

had singled out, and held out her hand, and put all of the welcome and

love she could into her voice and gaze. "Come along, my dear. Your

parents asked me to meet you."

The child's eyes lit up as she met Isabelle's gaze with her own. There

was relief there, too, a relief that told Isabelle how lonely the poor thing

had been on this journey, and how much she had hoped to find a friend at

the end of it.

Without asking for permission, she left the group and took Isabelle's

hand trustingly.

There was some fuss about getting the child's things sorted out from

those of the rest of the children, and then a bit more nonsense with getting

a cab. During the entire time, Sarah did not say more than ten words

altogether, but she was good and patient, despite a growing fatigue that

showed in her pinched face and shadowed eyes. Finally, they were settled

in the cab, and alone at last. As the horses drew away from the curb,

Isabelle put her arm around the child, and immediately felt the girl relax

into the embrace. For her part, she felt her own heart respond without

reserve to the trusting child.

"My dear, you are welcome with us," Isabelle said softly. "I won't insult

your intelligence by saying I'll be like a mother to you, and that you'll never

miss your home. You don't know me, and I don't know you. But in my

school, besides learning our lessons, we set a great deal of store by taking

care of each other, and being good to each other, and I do say that you'll

have friends here. I hope you'll be happy. If you are not, it will not be

because the rest of us have not tried to help you be as happy as you can be

so far from home."

Sarah looked up at her. And hesitated a moment. "My mother said—"

she began, then swallowed, and went on. "My mother said you might be

able to teach me things. The kind of things M'dela was teaching me?"

With that name came a flash out of Sarah's memory, of a very black

man with all the usual accouterments of a shaman… a man, as seen

through Sarah's eyes, with an aura and Talents and possessed of great

wisdom.

And Talents…

"Yes, my dear, I can." She tapped Sarah's nose gently. "And we will

begin by teaching you how to keep your thoughts and memo-ries out of

other people's heads unless you intend for them to see such things!"

Sarah gaped at her a moment and then laughed, and Isabelle smiled.

So. It was well begun.

Isabelle sat in her office, reviewing the progress of each student in the

day's lessons. The Harton School was not all that large, and she liked to

know where each of her pupils stood in his or her studies on a daily basis,

in no small part because if any of the teachers fell ill, it would be Isabelle

who took over the class until the teacher was well again. She felt it, the

moment her husband crossed the threshold, of course, the moment when

everything inside her relaxed and said, "Yes, my other self, my other half,

is at my side again." Her heart rose, as she looked up from her work,

feeling him draw nearer with every moment.

Her door was open—it was never closed, unless she was having a private

conference—and he limped in. Frederick Harton was a fine figure of a man

despite his limp, with broad shoulders, the unruly wheat-colored hair of

the Cockney street urchin he had once been, and merry blue eyes. "Well,

my angel," he said, with that open grin she cherished, "How is your newest

imp?"

"Not an imp at all," she replied, getting up and coming around to his

side of the desk to nestle unself-consciously in his arms. "Truth to be told,

she's a little dear. A touch of telepathy, both receptive and projective, I

believe, and as young as she is, it may get stronger. I can't tell what else.

She has the most remarkable set of tales about a pet of hers that she left in

Africa that I hardly know whether or not to believe, however!"

At his look of inquiry, she told him some of the stories little Sarah Jane

had imparted to her about her Grey Parrot. "I know she believes them to

be true—I am just not certain how much of it is imagination and how

much is real."

Frederick Harton looked down at her somberly. "This shaman gave her

the bird in the first place, did he not?" he asked.

She nodded.

"And he said the bird was to be her protector?"

"He did. And I see where you are going." She pursed her lips

thoughtfully. "Well, in that case, I think we should assume the tales are

true. I wish she had been able to persuade her mother to allow her to

bring the bird here."

"If the bird is meant to be with her, a way will be found," he replied,

and kissed the top of her head. "And I believe if a way is found, little Sarah

will prove to have more interesting Talents than merely a touch of

telepathy!"

He let her go, and rubbed his hands together. "Now, I am famished, my

love! I trust Vashti has prepared one of her excellent curries?"

She had to laugh at that and reached up to ruffle his hair. "How

fortunate we are that your tastes are so economical! Yes, of course she has,

and she is waiting in the kitchen to spoil her favorite man!"

The object of their discussions was tucked up in bed in her own room,

although it was a room that had another empty bed in it, feeling very

mixed emotions. She was horribly homesick, and longed for her parents

and her parrot, Grey, and her friends among the African tribe that had

adopted the little family with an intensity that was painful—but she was

not as unhappy as she had been on the journey here. In fact, there was a

part of her that actually felt as close to happy as she had been since she

left. Memsa'b Har-ton was everything Mummy and Papa had promised,

and more, kind and warm and always with a comforting hug for anyone

who looked in need of one. The journey from Africa to London had been

sheer misery. Once alone with the children, the nannies had been horribly

standoffish and cold, scolding anyone who cried or even looked as if they

wanted to. The children had had to share the tiniest of cabins, two to a

bunk. The food had been bland and mostly cold. The other children had

not been particularly nice, and one of the boys, Nigel Pettigrew, had three

older brothers who had made this trip before him and he was full of

stories about "schools" and how terrible they were until all of the children

were ready to weep with fear as they got off the ship.

For Sarah, at least, the nightmares had vanished like morning fog, and

now she felt sorry for the others, who were not being sent to the Harton

School, even though some of them had looked down their noses at her

because she wasn't being sent to a "first-class academy."

When Memsa'b had determined that Sarah's tummy wasn't going to

revolt, she'd done her best to give her a supper like the ones she was used

to, the same as the grown-ups were getting. Most of the children and both

cooks were from India rather than Africa, so it was, at best, an

approximation, and she had milk for the first time in as long as she could

remember (milk tended to go "off" very quickly in the Congo). She'd never

had a "curry" before, but it all agreed with her, and if it tasted strange, it

also tasted good, and didn't make her feel half starved like the

watered-down tea and toast and thin broth and gruel which was all the

three English nannies seemed to think suitable for children on the ship.

Now she was in a soft bed, with enough blankets to make a tropic-raised

child finally feel warm again, and with a little fire in the grate to act as a

night light. She sighed, and felt all of her tense muscles relax at last.

For all of her nine years until this moment, Sarah Jane Lyon-White had

lived contentedly with her parents in the heart of Africa. Her father was a

physician, her mother, a nurse, and they worked at a Protestant mission

in the Congo.

She had been happy there, not the least because her mother and father

were far more enlightened than many another mission worker—as Sarah

well knew, having seen others when she and her mother visited other

mission hospitals. Her parents took the cause of Healing as being more

sacred than that of conversion, even though they were technically

supposed to be "saving souls" as well as lives. Somehow that part never

seemed to take any sort of precedence… and they undertook to work with

the natives, and made friends instead of enemies among the shamans and

medicine people. Because of this, Sarah had been a cherished and

protected child by everyone around her, although she was no stranger to

the many dangers of life in the Congo.

When she was six, and far older in responsibility than most of her

peers, one shaman had brought her a parrot chick still in quills; he taught

her how to feed and care for it, and told her that while it was still an

immature bird, she was to protect it, but when it was grown, it would

protect and guide her. She had called the parrot "Grey," and the bird had

become her best friend—and she missed Grey now more, even, than her

parents.

Her parents had sent her to live in England for the sake of her health.

Now, this was quite the usual thing. It was thought that English children

were more delicate than their parents, and that the inhospitable humors

of hot climes would make them sicken and die. Not that their parents

didn't sicken and die quite as readily as the children, who were, in fact, far

sturdier than they were given credit for—but it was thought, by anxious

mothers, that the climate of England would be far kinder to them. So

Sarah's Mummy had carefully explained to her, and explained that the

climate of England would probably be bad for Grey, and so Grey would

have to remain behind.

Though why, if the climate was supposed to be good for Sarah, it could

be bad for Grey, Mummy had not been able to sufficiently explain.

"Perhaps if I'm good, Memsa'b will tell Mummy that Grey must come

here," she whispered to the friendly shadows around her bed. Some of the

other children already had pets—two of the boys and one of the girls had

rabbits, one girl had a canary, and there were fine, fat, contented cats

roaming about perfectly prepared to plop into any lap that offered itself,

all of whom seemed to belong to the school in general rather than anyone

in particular. So it seemed that Memsa'b was more than willing to allow

additions to the menagerie, provided any additions were properly taken

care of.

If there was one thing that Sarah was well versed in, it was how to take

care of Grey, and she had already determined that the same

vegetable-and-rice curries that the cooks made for the school meals would

serve Grey very well. So food would not be a problem. And this room was

warm enough. And Memsa'b had explained (and Sarah saw no reason to

doubt her) that she had made it very clear to the cats that while they were

welcome to feast on as many mice and rats and insects as they could

catch, anything with feathers was strictly off-limits. So that was sorted. All

she had to do, really, was figure out a way to ask Memsa'b to explain to

Mummy—

And as she tried to puzzle out how to do that, the weariness of a journey

that had been much too long and too stressful, and the release of

discovering she was in a safe and welcoming place, all caught up with her,

and she fell asleep.

Sarah's first day had been good, but the ones that followed were better.

Not that the other children were all angelic darlings who took her to

themselves and never teased her—because they weren't. But bullying was

not allowed, and teasing was met with remonstrations from every adult in

authority, from the two Indian ayahs who cared for the babies to Memsa'b

herself, so that it was kept to a minimum. And if Sarah didn't make any

bosom friends (partly because she was more used to the company of adults

than children), she at least got along reasonably well with all of the other

children her own age and for the most part enjoyed their company. As far

as schooling went, she was ahead of most of them in most subjects, since

both Mummy and Papa had given her lessons, so that wasn't a worry. And

it wasn't that she didn't make fast friends—because she did. It just wasn't

another child.

The third day of her residence, she went into the kitchen in search of a

rag to clean up some spilled water, to find a very slim, quite diminutive,

very dark man in a turban sitting patiently at the table, waiting for tea.

There was something about him that drew her strongly; perhaps it was

that she could not hear his thoughts, and yet there was no sense that he

was hiding anything, only that he had the kind of knowledge and

discipline that Memsa'b was trying to train her in. He turned to look at

her as she came in, and nodded to her, or she would not have said

anything, but the nod seemed to invite a response.

"Hello," she said gravely, and offered her hand. "I'm Sarah Jane. I've

just come. I'm from Africa."

He took it, and bowed over it. "I am Agansing," he told her, just as

gravely. "I am from India. I am a Gurkha."

As it happened, there had been enough British military visitors passing

through the Congo and taking advantage of the mission's medical facilities

and hospitality that Sarah knew what a Gurkha was. In fact, she had seen

some, and her Papa had told her about them; that they were exceedingly

brave, exceedingly good warriors, and so trusted they had their very own

regiment. She blinked. "Why are you here?" she asked boldly, because

while many, many Gurkhas were in service to the Empire, once they

retired, they always went home to the hills in Nepal rather than coming to

England.

"I have no family, except Memsa'b and Sahib," Agansing said, without

taking offense. "My family perished in a mudslide when I was younger

than you, and I never had other family except my regiment and my sworn

brother, Sahib Harton. When Sahib was to muster out, he offered me a

home and work. It is also so with Selim and Karamjit, who are his sworn

brothers as well. Karamjit is a Sikh. We three guard Sahib, Memsa'b, and

you children, though I am usually with Sahib at his warehouse."

Selim, she knew from the name alone, was likely to be a Moslem, and

her eyes went round. Many Indians came to Africa to become storekeepers

and the like in the cities, and Sarah knew very well how unlikely it was

that a Gurkha, a Moslem, a Sikh, and the other Hindu and Buddhist

servants that she also knew were here would coexist amicably in the same

household.

Agansing smiled at her surprise, and then smiled over her head.

"Karamjit, my friend," he said. "Little Missy Sarah is come to us from

Africa, and we surprise her."

Sarah turned; another surprise, because she could almost always tell

when someone had come up behind her and she had not

sensed—anything! There was a very tall, very dark man in a turban

standing there regarding her with grave eyes. "Welcome, Missy Sarah," he

said, holding out his hand. She shook it. "We are a surprising tribe here, I

do think. Though you will not meet with Agansing and Selim often, you

will see me. My duties keep me mostly here."

Though she could sense nothing from them, she had the feeling, a

feeling so strong that she had never felt anything like it except in the

presence of the shaman M'dela who had given her Grey, that she could

trust these men with anything. And she gave Karamjit one of her rare

smiles. "We need guarding, Mr. Karamjit?" she asked.

He nodded. "The leopards and tigers that prowl outside our gates are of

the two-footed kind," he told her solemnly, "and the more dangerous for

that. So you must not venture out of the garden, except with another

grown person."

She nodded then hesitated, and looked from one to the other, for she

knew, without knowing how she knew, that both these men had knowledge

that she needed. "Can you—" she hesitated, then ventured it all. "Can you

help me be quiet in my mind like you are?" she begged. "Memsa'b gives

me lessons, but you're better than she is, because you're so quiet you

aren't even there. And I know I need to be better."

The men exchanged a glance, and it was Karamjit who answered.

"I will, if it suits Memsa'b. If I do, you will pledge me the obedience that

I gave to my master, for the teaching is not easy, and needs much

patience."

And she knew at that moment that she had gained the respect and the

friendship of both these men. "I promise," she swore.

She went and told Memsa'b what she had done at once, of course, in

order to gain that permission, and as she had suspected, Memsa'b entirely

approved. "Karamjit and Agansing both know meditation techniques that

I never learned," she said to Sarah.

"And if you have the patience at your young age to learn them, they will

be very good for you. You can use the conservatory; it's quiet, and you can

tell Karamjit I have given you permission to do so, and thank him for

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