Mercedes Lackey - EM 1 - The Fire Rose

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The Fire Rose
By Mercedes Lackey
Prologue
Golden as sunlight, white-hot, the Salamander danced and twisted sinuously above a plate sculpted
of Mexican obsidian, ebony glass born in the heart of a volcano and shaped into a form created
exactly to receive the magic of a creature who bathed in the fires of the volcano with delight. It
swayed and postured to a music only it could hear, the only source of light in the otherwise
stygian darkness of the room. At times a manikin of light, at times in the shape of the mundane
salamander that bore the same name, this was the eyes and ears of the mage who had conjured it. He
was a Firemaster, and all creatures of the element of flame answered to him. They brought him the
news of the world now closed to him; what better source of information could he have? Where fire
was, there they lurked; candle-flame, or gaslight, coal-fire or stoked box of a steam-boiler,
burning hearth or burning forest-all held his informants, any of which could impart their
observations to him. What one saw, all saw; speak to one and you spoke to all of them, for such
was their nature.
Their patience was endless, but his, being mortal, was not. At length, he tired of watching it
dance, and determined to set it upon its task. He summoned the creature from the dish with a
thought; obedient to his will, it hovered above a pristine sheet of cream-laid vellum. This was
special paper, and more exclusive than it seemed, pressed with his own watermark and not that of
the maker.
He spoke out of the darkness of his velvet-covered, wingback chair, his voice rising from the
shadow like the voice of the dragon Fafnir from its cave. He was Fafnir; like the giant, now
utterly transformed to something no one who knew the former self would ever recognize.
Time to construct his letter, while the Salamander and all its kin considered his requirements.
"Dear Sir," he said, and the Salamander danced above the vellum, burning the characters into it,
in elegant calligraphy. "I write to you because I am in need of a special tutor for my-"
He paused to consider the apocryphal child of his imagination. A son? A lonely, crippled waif,
isolated from the laughter and play of his peers? No, make it two children. If the crippled boy
was not bait enough for his quarry, an intelligent, inquisitive girl would be.
"-my children. Both are gifted intellectually beyond their years; my son is an invalid, crippled
by the disease that claimed his mother, and my daughter the victim of prejudice that holds her sex
inferior to that of the male. Neither is likely to obtain the education their ability demands in a
conventional setting."
He weighed the words carefully, and found them satisfactory. Appropriately tempting, and playing
to the "enlightened" and "modem" male who would be the mentor of the kind of tutor he sought. He
wanted a woman, not a man; a male scholar with the skills he required would be able to find ready
employment no matter where he was, but a woman had fewer options. In fact, a female scholar
without independent means had no options if she was not supported by a wealthy father or indulgent
husband. A female had no rights; under the laws of this and most other states, she was chattel,
the property of parents or husband. She could take no employment except that of teacher,
seamstress, nurse, or domestic help; no trades were open to her, and only menial factory work.
There were some few female doctors, some few scientists, but no scholars of the arts, liberal or
otherwise, who were not supported in their field by money or males. He wanted someone with no
options; this would make her more obedient to his will.
"My needs are peculiar, reflecting the interests of my children. This tutor must be accomplished
in ancient Latin, classical Greek, medieval French and German, and the Latin of medieval scholars.
A familiarity with ancient Egyptian or Celtic languages would be an unanticipated bonus."
The Salamander writhed, suddenly, and opened surprisingly blue eyes to stare at its master. It
opened its lipless mouth, and a thin, reedy voice emerged.
"We have narrowed the field to five candidates," it said. "One in Chicago, one in Harvard, three
in New York. The one in Chicago is the only one with a smattering of ancient tongues and some
knowledge of hieroglyphs. The others are skilled only in the European languages you required; less
qualified, but-"
"But?" he asked.
"More attractive," the Salamander hissed, its mouth open in a silent laugh.
He snorted. At one point he would have been swayed by a fairer face; now that was hardly to the
point. "Have they relatives?" he asked it.
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"The one in Chicago is recently orphaned, one of those in New York was raised by a guardian who
cares nothing for her, and her trust fund has been mismanaged as she will shortly learn. Those
that do have families, have been repudiated for their unwomanly ways," the Salamander told him.
"They are suffragettes, proponents of rights for women, and no longer welcome in their parents'
homes."
Tempting. But relatives and parents had been known to change their minds in the past, and welcome
the prodigal back into the familial fold.
"Show me the one in Chicago," he demanded. She seemed to be the best candidate thus far. The
Salamander left the vellum page and returned to its obsidian dish, where it began to spin.
As it rotated, turning faster and faster with each passing second, it became a glowing globe of
yellow-white light. A true picture formed in the heart of the globe, in the way that a false
picture formed in the heart of a Spiritualist's "crystal ball." The latter was generally
accomplished through the use of mirrors and other chicanery The former was the result of true
Magick.
When he saw the girl at last, he nearly laughed aloud at the Salamander's simplistic notion of
beauty. Granted, the girl was clad in the plainest of gowns, of the sort that a respectable
housekeeper might wear. He recognized it readily enough, from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog
left in his office a few years ago by a menial.
Ladies' Wash Suit, two dollars and twenty five cents. Three years out-of-mode, and worn shabby.
She wore wire-rimmed glasses, and she used no artifice to enhance her features. In all these
things, she was utterly unlike the expensive members of the silk-clad demimonde whose pleasures he
had once enjoyed. But the soft cheek needed no rouge or rice-powder; the lambent blue eyes were in
no way disguised by the thick lenses. That slender figure required no over-corseting to tame it to
a fashionable shape, and the warm golden-brown of her hair was due to no touch of chemicals to
achieve that mellow hue of sun-ripened wheat.
"She is orphaned?" he asked.
The Salamander danced its agreement. "Recently," it told him. "she is the most qualified of them
all, scholastically speaking."
"And possessed of no-inconvenient-family ties," he mused, watching the vision as it moved in the
Salamander's fire. He frowned a little at that, for her movements were not as graceful as he would
have liked, being hesitant and halting. That scarcely mattered, for he was not hiring her for an
ability to dance.
From the look of her clothing, she had fallen on hard times-unless, of course, she was a natural
ascetic, or was donating all of her resources to the Suffrage Movement. Either was possible; if
the latter was an impediment to her accepting employment, the Salamander would have rejected her
as a candidate.
"We will apply to her-or rather to her mentor," he decided, and gave the Salamander the signal to
resume its place above the half-written letter. "I am willing to pay handsomely for the services
of any male or female with such qualifications, to compensate for the great distance he or she
must travel. The tutor will be installed in my own household, drawing a wage of twenty dollars a
week as well as full room and board, and a liberal allowance for travel, entertainment, and books.
San Francisco affords many pleasures for those of discriminating taste; this year shall even see
the glorious Caruso performing at our Opera." Clothing he would have supplied to her, having it
waiting for her if she consented to come; easier to supply the appropriate garments than to hope
the girl had any kind of taste at all. He would not have a frump in his house; any female entering
these doors must not disgrace the interior. While his home might not rival Leland Stanford's on
the outside, the interior was enough to excite the envy of the richest "nob" on "Nob Hill." There
would be no cotton-duck gowns from a mail-order catalog trailing over the fine inlay work of his
floors, no coarse dark cottons displayed against his velvets and damask satins.
"I hope you will have a student that can match my requirements," he concluded without haste. "Your
scholarship is renowned even to the wilds of the west and the golden hills of San Francisco, and I
cannot imagine that any pupil of yours would disgrace the master. To that end, I am enclosing a
rail ticket for the prospective tutor" it was not a first-class ticket for a parlor car; such
might excite suspicion. A ticket for the common carriage would be sufficient, and a journey by
rail would be safe enough, even for a woman alone. "I am looking forward to hearing from you as
soon as may be."
"The usual closing?" the Salamander asked delicately. He nodded, and it finished, burning his name
into the vellum with a flourish. It continued to hover above the paper, as the paper itself folded
without a hand touching it, and slipped itself and a railway pass into a matching envelope. The
Salamander sealed it with a single "hand" pressed into the wax, then burned the address into the
obverse of the envelope.
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"Take it to Professor Cathcart's office and leave it there," he instructed, and the Salamander
bowed. "If she does not take this bait, we will have to devise something else."
"She would be a fool not to take it," the Salamander replied, surprising him a little with its
retort. "She has no other place to go."
"Women are not always logical," he reminded the creature. "We were best to assume that the initial
attempt will be balked at, and contrive another."
The Salamander simply shook its head, as if it could not understand the folly of mortals, and it
and the sealed letter vanished into thin air, leaving the Firemaster alone in the darkness.
CHAPTER
ONE
Rosalind Hawkins answered the door with her entire being in a knot of anxiety; expecting yet
another aggressive creditor, she schooled her face into a calm she did not feel. Outside, the
dreary, drizzling day was giving way to another dreary night. The home that had once been her
sanctuary was now under siege-and no longer hers.
How long must I bear this? How long can I bear this?
"I'm sorry," she began as the heavy oak door swung wide, "But if you have a claim, you will have
to apply to Mr. Grumwelt of Grumwelt, Jenkins and-"
But the figure outside the door was no hostile stranger. "Do I need to apply to a solicitor to
visit, now, Rose?" asked the short, slender, grey-haired man on the front porch in surprise. She
started, and began to laugh with relief at seeing a friendly face for the first time since the
funeral, her emotions making her briefly giddy-and she hoped she did not sound hysterical. "Of
course not, Professor Cathcart!" she exclaimed, "It's just that I've had Papa's creditors at the
door all day, and I've gotten into rather a habit of-" She stopped at the sight of the Professor's
confusion. "Oh, never mind, please come in! I'm afraid I cannot offer you any refreshment," she
added, ruefully, "but the grocer came with a seizure notice and a policeman and carted away
everything edible in the house before breakfast."
A week before, that simple admission would have been unthinkable. Too many unthinkable things had
happened since then for her to even think twice about this one.
Professor Cathcart, Ph.D. and expert in medieval and ancient languages, her mentor at the
University of Chicago, widened his colorless eyes with shock. He took off his hat as he entered
the door, and stood in the entryway, turning it in his hands nervously, twisting the soft felt.
Rosalind closed the door behind him and led him into the parlor. She had all the gaslights on,
burning in reckless abandon. After all, why bother to save the gas? The bills were already too
great to pay.
He sat down gingerly on the horsehair sofa-which tomorrow would probably be gracing someone else's
parlor. His elongated face was full of concern as well as shock, and he appeared to be groping for
words. She felt a stirring of pity for him; after all, what could one say in a case like this?
He licked his lips, and made an attempt. "I knew that Hawkins was not well off after those
speculations of his, but I had no notion that things had come to such dire straits!"
"Neither did I," Rosalind said simply, as she sat down on the matching chair, groping behind her
for the arm of the chair to assist her. "While he was alive, his salary at the University paid the
bills, and the extra tutoring he did for those brainless idiots in the Upper One Hundred kept the
other creditors at bay. Now-" She turned her palms upward in her lap and examined them, unable to
meet his eyes and the pity in them. "Now they descend."
Professor Cathcart sounded dazed. "He left you nothing, then?"
"Nothing but a stack of unpaid bills and this house-which has been seized by the creditors," she
replied wearily. "They have graciously allowed me to retain my personal possessions-excepting
anything of value, like Mama's pearls."
"They're taking the pearls?" Cathcart was aghast. "Surely not-"
"Took, the pearls," she corrected, pushing her glasses up on her nose with a cold finger, trying
not to remember how she had wept when they'd taken the only inheritance she had from her mother.
"Yesterday. And other things-" She gripped the arms of the chair, trying to hold off the memory,
the horror, of watching strangers sort through her belongings, looking for anything they might
seize as an asset. "The books in Papa's library are already gone, the furniture goes tomorrow, and
the house itself whenever Mr. Gramwelt finds a buyer, I suppose. They say I can stay here until
then. I could camp out on the floor until the buyer appears, if they'd left me the camping gear-"
She was saved from hysteria by a wave of faintness that made her sway a little and catch at the
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arm of the chair to keep from falling. The Professor was instantly out of his seat and at her
side, taking her hand and patting it ineffectually. But his words showed a surprising streak of
practicality.
"Child, when did you eat last?" he demanded. She shook her head, unable to remember-and that, in
itself, was disturbing. Was she losing her memory? Was she losing her mind? "I haven't had much
appetite," she prevaricated.
He snorted. "Then that is the second order of business; the first is to get you away from here. Go
upstairs and pack your things; I'm not leaving you here to be jeered at by tradesmen a moment
longer."
"But-" she protested, knowing his own resources were slender. He cut her off at the single word,
showing an unexpected streak of authority.
"I can certainly afford to put the daughter of my old friend up in a respectable boarding-house
for a few days, and take her to dinner too. And as for the rest well, that was what I came here to
speak to you about, and that would be best done over dinner, or rather, dessert. Now, don't argue
with me, child!" he scolded. "I won't have you staying here! The next thing you know, they'll
probably cut off the gas."
At just that moment, the gaslights flickered and went out, all over the house, leaving them in the
grey gloom of the overcast day, the uncertain and haunted hour before sunset. Suddenly, the house
seemed full of ghosts. If nothing else, that decided her.
"I'll just be a moment," she said, truthfully, since most of her belongings were already packed
into a carpetbag and a single trunk, with only a valise waiting to receive the rest. Mr. Grumwelt
had watched her with his nasty, beady eyes, like a serpent watching a bird, the entire time she
packed; presumably to make sure that she did not pack up something that no longer belonged to her.
Fortunately he did not recognize the value of some of the keepsakes she had managed to retain, or
he would doubtless have confiscated them as well. He had made it very clear to her that anything
she carried away, she did so on his sufferance. The trunk already stood in the hall; she had only
to finish packing her valise and carpetbag. "I find myself in the position so many philosophers
like Mr. Emerson profess to admire-unburdened by possessions."
"I'll get a cab," the Professor replied.
----------
Bergdorf's was not crowded at this time of the early evening; the theater crowd had not yet begun
to arrive. Fortunately, the German restaurant had never been one of her father's choices for
dining out, or the memories the place evoked would have been too painful to permit her to eat. No,
she had no sad ghosts waiting for her here, and Bergdorf's was clearly professor Cathcart's
favorite, for the waiters all recognized him and they were shown to a secluded table out of the
way of traffic. She wondered what they made of her; too plain to be a member of the demimonde, too
shabbily dressed to be a fiancee or a relative. Did they assume she was his housekeeper, being
granted a birthday treat?
Perhaps they take me for a suffragette relation, or one who has a religious mania and has given
all her worldly goods to Billy Sunday. No matter. The respect they accorded to Professor Cathcart
extended even to such peculiar females as he chose to bring with him; service was prompt and
polite, and the headwaiter treated her with the deference that might be accorded to one who wore a
gown by Worth, rather than one from the cheaper pages of Sears and Roebuck.
She had once worn fine gowns not by Worth, perhaps, but by one of the better Chicago seamstresses.
That had been before her father's run of bad luck with his investments, and she had chosen to
economize on her gowns as well as in other household matters. It had not mattered to her teachers
and fellow students; they probably would not have noticed unless she had donned the chiton and
stola of an ancient Greek maiden, and perhaps not even then. Her economies had gone unremarked,
which had saved her pride. Since another of her economies was to abjure eating out, she was not
forced to parade the slender state of their purses in public.
The Bergdorf was comfortably warm, lit softly with candles and a few well-placed gaslights. The
only sounds were those of conversation and the clink of silver on china. The Professor was one who
gave a gourmet meal all its due reverence, so they ate in silence. Rosalind was not loath to do so
either; the peculiar sour-savory tang of the sauerbraten awoke a hunger of intensity she had not
realized was possible, and although she seldom drank, she joined the Professor in a lady-sized
stein of the Bergdorf's excellent beer. The food vanished from her plate so quickly she might have
conjured it away, and the attentive blond-haired, blue-eyed waiter brought her a second serving
without being asked.
"Vielen dank," she said to him, surprising a smile from him. He winked at her, and hurried to
answer the summons from another table.
She devoured her second helping with a thoroughness that would have embarrassed her a month ago.
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Now her capacity for being embarrassed had been exhausted, and her pride flattened like a sheet of
vellum in a press.
The waiter returned at the Professor's signal, and cleared away the plates as the Professor
ordered Black Forest torte for both of them. Rosalind did not even make a token protest; it might
be a long time before she ever ate like this again. Her torte was long gone before the Professor
had finished his, and she settled back in her chair with a sigh of melancholy mixed with content.
I must think of some way to earn my way. She had a vague idea that she might take a position as a
governess somewhere, or even as a schoolteacher in some Western state. Any thought of achieving a
Ph.D. in the classics and medieval literature was out of the question now, of course. She only
hoped that she could convince someone that her unconventional education had made her fit to teach
the "Three Rs."
The waiter arrived to clean off the dessert plates, and with him came coffee. Professor Cathcart
settled back in his chair as she sugared and creamed hers liberally, cradling his cup in both
hands.
"You must forgive your old friend and teacher his bluntness, but how did you come to such a pass?"
he asked. "I had not thought your father to be the improvident sort."
She shook her head, bitterly. "You may lay the cause of our loss at Neville Tree's door," she
replied, with bitterness not even the savor of her dessert could remove from her mouth. The
Professor had the grace to blush, then, for it was he who had introduced that scion of prominent
politicians to the elder Hawkins.
He said nothing more, for indeed, there was no more to be said. For all of Neville Tree's
illustrious parentage, the man was no better than a common sharpster. He had come looking for
investors in his bank, and he got many, including Professor Hawkins; he then ran the bank into the
ground with his poor management-all the while drawing a princely salary-leaving investors and
depositors alike holding nothing but air and empty promises. Not content with that, he concocted
another scheme, with many promises that he would get the money back and more-he would go and find
oil and make them all rich. Throwing good money after bad, Professor Hawkins and others had fallen
for his plausible tale a second time, and once again found themselves with shares of useless stock
in a company that had drilled for oil where no geologist would ever anticipate finding any.
Presumably he had taken himself to another state with more schemes designed mainly to allow him to
draw a handsome wage at the expense of others.
Under the table, Rosalind's hand clenched on her napkin. When her father had told her of the loss
of all of their savings and more, she had not had the heart to reproach him. "I only wanted to
give you what you should have had, Rose," he had said plaintively...
"But the History Department Cathcart began again."
"You know that none of them have ever approved of my 'unwomanly' interests," she retorted sourly.
"Doubtless, if they knew, they would be pleased enough, and advise me to go and get married like a
proper female."
As if any young man had ever, or would ever look twice at me. Plain, too clever by half, and with
the curse of always saying what I think. That latter habit had gained her no friends among her
fellow students, who could look elsewhere for romantic interests. Any man at the University can
find himself a nice, stupid girl with good looks or money who will assure him he is the cleverest
creature on earth. Why should he take one with neither who will challenge him to prove he is her
equal?
"Your mother's people-" Cathcart ventured.
He knew nothing about her parents' relationship with her maternal grandparents-Professor Hawkins
had been careful to keep that unsavory situation very private. It was natural for Cathcart to
bring them up, but only the fact that she had already borne with so much already made it possible
for her to bear this as well. "They appeared the day of the funeral," she said. I will not call
those-creatures-my grandmother and grandfather. "They insulted my father, slandered my mother, and
told me that if I admitted some specious sort of guilt, agreed to be a good and obedient girl, and
gave up my nonsense about a University degree, they might consider permitting me to take up some
position within their household. I assume they meant for me to come be a drudge to Uncle Ingmar,
and be grateful to them for the opportunity."
Cathcart's expression grew horrified. "Even when he was still sane, Ingmar Ivorsson was not fit
company for a female, and certainly is not to be left alone with one!" he blurted.
She only nodded. "I told them what I thought of them, what Mother had thought of them, and what
they could do with Uncle Ingmar, and showed them the door." That might have been what brought Mr.
Grumwelt down upon my head with such uncanny swiftness. They probably went off and alerted every
one of Papa's creditors. Did they expect me to come running to them as soon as the vultures
arrived, begging forgiveness?
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