A Study in Sable (7 page)

Then again, maybe the fauns thought the rest of them couldn't see the Elementals for what they were. Or, not being Earth Magicians, Nan, Sarah, Mary, and John weren't dangerous in the sense that they were not able to coerce creatures of Earth.

“Here now,” Nan said, getting a bit impatient with their near-panic. “Look deeper into the millstone than just the surface, will you? My friend and I have leave under Oak, Ash, and Thorn to come and go and look and know—”

She was about to add something about the fact that being afraid of
them
was just silly, but all three fauns stared at her with eyes first rounded with alarm, then narrowed with concentration, then, suddenly, rounded again, but this time with awe.

“She has the hand of
him
on her!” the middle one bleated. “The Oldest Old Thing himself!”

Finally.
This was not the first time that Nan and Sarah had to coax Elementals to speak to them, but usually they saw what Sarah called “Puck's Blessing” on the girls right away, which at least acted as a sort
of passport to being considered trustworthy. So her impression had been correct; these three were so skittish that they hadn't even glanced at anyone but the single Earth Magician that had called for them.

“And look more. Air and Water Masters here as well, and none of us going to harm you,” Nan continued, since she had their attention. They looked over at the Watsons, and all three nodded respectfully to the pair, then returned their attention to Nan, and to Beatrice.

Now they crept close again, still nervous, but more willing to trust. Beatrice offered them the rest of the cakes, (probably well aware, as Nan and Sarah were, that by accepting the treats, the fauns put themselves in the Earth Magician's debt).

When the last crumb had been eaten, the fauns looked up at Beatrice with a little more calm. “You wished to chat, mage?” said the centermost one, a faun with oddly piebald skin that matched his hairy goat legs and ivory-colored horn-buds that were slightly longer than those of the other two. Nan guessed that he was the eldest of the three. Maybe the de facto leader. He settled onto his haunches, and so did the other two.

“I need knowledge,” Beatrice replied solemnly. “More than I have. I need to know of the Dark Thing, over yon—” She gestured in the general direction of Number 10.

The three fauns sprang together again and clutched each other, shaking, as they stared at Beatrice with their eyes starting out of their heads. “We cannot go there!” the middle one bleated in a panic. “Do not ask us! It is death! It is death!”

“Oh calm down, do,” Nan said a little crossly. “No one is asking you to go there. We only want to know what you know about it.”

Her matter-of-fact tone seemed to snap them out of their panic. They turned to look back at her. “Only that? And nothing more?” As usual it was the middle one that spoke. So far the only thing that had come out of the other two were frightened squeaks and bleats.

“Only that.” When nothing was forthcoming out of them voluntarily, Nan decided to take the initiative and start asking questions. “Was it here when you first came to dwell here?”

All three shook their heads.

“And how and when did you come here?” Sarah asked. “And why?”

“We came with the Legions,” offered their spokesperson, after looking at his two companions for a moment. “Our groves and forests were being cut down for farms. They loaded their ships with stones. We came with the stones and hid in the darkness. It was fearful, but losing our groves was more fearful.”

“They must have come with the ballast stones,” put in John. “But they aren't dryads, to be tied to the stones the way a dryad is tied to a tree. The stones must simply have given them something to anchor to, in order to make the crossing over so much water.”

“Even so,” agreed the Faun. “And we found here, where we are now, these groves near Londinium. It was a fair place, and so we homed. And the Black Thing was not here then. Sons of Adam came and went, but the trees remained, and so we stayed and stayed.”

“If the Sons of Adam trouble us not, we will not leave,” said the rightmost one, softly.

“When did the Black Thing come?” Sarah asked. “Did it come on its own? Is it a thing that perished here? Was it brought here?”

“By a Son of Adam, yes, it was brought,” agreed the talkative Faun. “Five tens of years ago, thereabouts.”

They all exchanged a look but Beatrice. “That accords with our research,” Mary Watson said softly.

“And what is it?” Nan asked bluntly. That put the Fauns in a panic again and they clung to one another.

“It is death! It is death!” the middle one cried in desperation.

Nan resisted the urge to reach out and shake some sense into the creature. “We already
know
it's death,” she said sharply. “We know it has killed Sons of Adam more than once. But besides that, what is it?”

They were still trembling, but at least they stopped making meeping sounds. “We . . . do not know. It is not of the Legions, though it hates them, and we can feel its hate when it thinks of them. It is not of the tribes the Legions drove away from here. It is not of the tribes that came here when the last of the Eagles left. It is not of the Druids, it is not of the Christians. It is not of the Winged Helms, nor any other
invader. It is not a lost spirit, and it is not a dead thing. It feeds upon the living. It feeds upon fear. It would feed upon us, could it reach us. And it is old, old, old. It is a thing that was here before the tribes, but a Son of Adam plucked it from its proper place, where it at least slumbered, and brought it here, and the bringing awoke it.”

Well, that at least gets us a lot farther along than we were when we started,
Nan thought.
We know places
not
to look.

“That is all we know,” the little faun said, desperately, as they looked at each other in silence. “Truly, truly, truly.”

“I believe you, pet,” said Beatrice comfortingly. “You've earned your cakes. Run along.”

One moment the fauns were there. The next, there were only a couple of stray leaves where they had been, and three squirrels running for another tree. They swarmed up the trunk and disappeared among the leaves.

It was pretty obvious from the utter lack of interest that anyone else was showing them that
they
were the only people who had seen the fauns for what they were.

“Oh!” said Mary Watson, suddenly.

They all turned to look at her, because the tone in which she had spoken that single syllable sounded as if she had had a revelation of sorts.

“What is it, my dear?” asked John, putting a hand on hers.

“I might know what it is,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I never thought all that delving into Celtic legend was going to come in handy quite so soon. I think it might be a Fomorian!”

3

N
AN
waited for the proverbial “other shoe to drop.” When it didn't, she sighed. “All right, what's a Fomorian?” she asked patiently.
Why is it that people who know something expect you to somehow pick it out of their mi—oh. Well, I could do that, I suppose, but it would be terribly rude.

Mary paused a moment, gathering her thoughts. “Well, according to really ancient Celtic stories, humans weren't the first people here—certainly weren't the first people in Ireland, where you find most of these stories, although the Celtic stories from Britain often as not mirror the Irish ones. The first ‘people,' if you can call them that, were the Fomorians. They were extremely powerful magicians. Most of them seem, at least in the legends, to be monsters of various sorts. Creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of animals and reptiles, or reptilian humans. Their leader, Balor, was a giant with one eye.” Mary paused, as Nan frowned.

“That sounds familiar,” she said.

“Like a Greek Cyclops,” Sarah added.

Mary nodded. “It does, doesn't it? We all know that some of these legends have some basis in fact, and this may well be one of them,
given that the Greeks and the Celts are not the only cultures to speak of one-eyed giants. But we can explore that at a later date.”

“Right.” Nan nodded. “So you were telling us what you know about the Fomorians.” The sun was getting low, and Nan really wanted to be back in the flat before dark.

Mary's brows creased a little in thought. “The Fomorians were conquered by the Tuatha De Danaan, another nonhuman race, but not until after some really terrible wars that left the earth torn up and melted in places and the lakes boiled dry.”

“Which sounds like a fight between Elemental Masters . . . or a fight between an Elemental Master and a very powerful Elemental.” John pursed his lips. “Interesting.”

“The Fomorians were supposed to be immortal. Although they
could
be killed, it was very difficult, and it was actually easier to imprison them somewhere. Under hills, in trees . . . or in objects.” Mary glanced in the direction of Number 10 and shivered. “And if this thing is a Fomorian, whatever a Fomorian might actually be, I don't think we are
nearly
prepared enough to take it on.”

“Not today, certainly.” John frowned, but agreed, and Nan breathed a sigh of relief.

“There are old warriors, and bold warriors, but no old, bold warriors,” Beatrice said philosophically. “And now that you have some semblance of a clue, I would very much like you to find me a nice hansom cab to take me back to Chelsea, John Watson. I fancy a bit of soup, and I promised one of my flock of chicks I'd read his sonnets before bed.”

“And I would very much like to do that for you, Beatrice Leek,” John replied, getting to his feet and offering a hand to Mary, then one to Beatrice. “You've been immensely helpful. I don't think we'd have gotten nearly this far, this fast, without you.”

They all returned to the street, where John had the luck of hailing two cabs: a hansom for Beatrice and another hackney for the rest of them. He put Beatrice into the first, paid the fare in advance, and handed the rest of them into the second. “221 Baker Street,” he told the cabby through the little hatch in the roof.

“Right, guv'nor,” the cabby replied, and closed the hatch, and they were off at—an amble. This was a very stylish and quiet neighborhood, with the exception of Number 10, and one just did not send a horse into a noisy trot on this street. Which was fine with Nan; those sandwiches at tea were enough to keep her until dinner, and only Beatrice had actually expended any energy calling the fauns.

“I think more research in Lord Alderscroft's archives is in order,” Mary Watson said, as the cab turned onto a less refined street, and the cabby gave his horse the signal to go a bit faster.

Nan nodded agreement, as did Sarah. “Do you think there would be anything more about Fomorians in the British Museum?” Sarah asked.

But Mary Watson shook her head. “I embarked on a course of study of Celtic legends because they had become so popular,” she explained, “And I wanted to be ready in case some fool accidentally invoked something. I've gone over every book they have on public offer, and I have checked the catalogue in the Rare Manuscript Room, but there is nothing of interest there. Most of what
is
there is analysis by linguists and other learned gentlemen who pay more attention to declensions of verbs than context.”

Nan raised an eyebrow. “Do people
often
invoke things by accident? I thought magic was harder than that.”

Mary shrugged. “Sometimes it's a matter of will and a smattering of Talent. Sometimes it's because whatever breaks through was trying very hard in the first place, and the person in question just managed to open a crack that it could exploit.”

Sarah nodded sagely. “That happens with malign spirits, too.” She sighed. “You just can't save fools from themselves, can you?”

“Would that we could,” John replied. “That's one reason why Beatrice is here in London—well, Chelsea—rather than some place out in the deep countryside. She's trying to keep an eye on the artistic set, since that lot are the ones most likely to go into obscure religions and mysticism and get caught up in magic. As a magician rather than a Master, she's not quite as sensitive to the poisonous things people
in town have done to the earth. If anything comes up that she can't head off, she's got the Hunting Lodge at her disposal.”

“And the other reason?” Sarah asked, archly.

John smiled. “Because she's always been a bohemian herself. And she has a bit of a past among the artistic set as well. She posed for quite a few painters in her reckless youth, and—though a gentleman never pays attention to rumors—there are rumors she had more than a few amorous adventures among them.”

“She may be a bit of a bohemian, but everything I heard out of her tells me she has enough good common sense to be able to keep a small herd of flighty artists out of trouble,” Mary replied with some affection. Nan smothered a smile; it was obvious that Mary had warmed up to Beatrice immediately.

“That she does,” John agreed. He regarded all of them soberly. “Do any of you feel that there is any urgency in taking care of Number 10? I'm not only asking about logic and reasoning; I am asking about instincts.”

Nan leaned back in her seat and clasped her hands on her knee. Sarah got a faraway look in her eyes. “I'd like to ask the birds before we come to a conclusion,” she said, finally. “But I'm not getting any sense that we need to move in the next—three or four days, at least. Sarah?”

Sarah shook her head. “No feelings of nameless dread here. And speaking logically—Doctor Watson, won't the police be doing their best to keep anyone out of Number 10 for a while?”

“It's been boarded up, and yes, whoever is patrolling Berkeley Square as his regular beat is going to be keeping an eye on the place to keep the curious out,” Watson said in a decided tone of voice.

“Then let's do what we seldom get a chance to do,” Mary Watson chimed in. “Let's do what
Holmes
does, survey the site, get the plans of the house, gather information on our foe.”

“Speaking of Holmes, I wonder how he's coming with that missing girl case?” mused Watson. “Or if the raven was wrong, and it's too ordinary for him to care about?”

“I just hope he doesn't expect to dragoon you into it before we
finish with Number 10,” Mary said darkly. “I'll . . . I'll organize his case files if he dares.”

“Mary!” John clutched at his chest in pretended shock. “You wouldn't!”

She looked mock contrite. “No, I wouldn't. But I
will
see to it that Mrs. Hudson burns all his toast.”

“That, he wouldn't notice. He scarcely notices when his food is ice-cold.” Watson snorted. “Still, we should look in on him on the way up. And we should decide if you are dining with Mary and me, ladies.”

Nan answered for both of them. “I wouldn't impose on Mrs. Hudson's good nature without advance warning. Tomorrow night, however, we would be delighted.”

On arrival at 221, the quartet headed straight up the stairs to B, opening the door to the strains of, “Watson! Bring the young ladies in! I need the feminine perspective!”

Watson's eyebrows rose, but he waved the women in ahead of them, and they all fitted themselves into the somewhat chaotic sitting room. Holmes was deep in perusal of what looked to be a thick packet of papers, his brows furrowed, as he waved them all to seats. “This case is . . . very interesting, Watson. On the face of it, it would be a simple elopement. However, there is nothing
simple
about it, once one gets past the surface. Take these letters, for instance. Here, take them indeed!” He divided the packet into three, and handed one third each to Nan, Sarah, and Mary. “These are not the originals, of course; these are translations. Read those over, and tell me what you think. You, in particular, Mary.”

“Translated by whom?” Mary asked, accepting her packet. “You know what they say about translations . . . they can range from incomplete to inaccurate.”

“By me, of course,” Holmes replied. “These are part of my case notes. I promise you, I have been careful to reproduce the least nuance.”

Nan read her letters . . . and at first, they seemed very commonplace. Addressed to the missing girl's parents, there was nothing in
them to excite any sort of suspicion. In fact, they were utterly dull recitations of where the girl had gone and what she had done.

. . . perhaps, a little
too
dull.

No, a great deal too dull.

“Had this young lady ever been anywhere away from home before?” Nan asked, more sharply than she intended.

“Ha!” exclaimed Holmes. “I believe you have seen what I have! No, despite her sister's profession, Johanna had never been away from home for as much as a night. She had never traveled beyond the borders of her city.”

“It's more what I
haven't
seen, Mister Holmes,” Nan pointed. “There's no excitement here. She's never been outside of her home city you say, never been to a strange country at all, and yet, these . . . descriptions, if you could call them that, are like a particularly stodgy guidebook. She doesn't exclaim about things that surely must seem odd to a German. She doesn't go into raptures over a beautiful building, or a stained glass window, or even, for heaven's sake, the interior of St. Paul's. There's nothing of the personal in any of the letters you have given me.
Nothing
about fashions, and the first thing most young women would talk about would be fashion, because there are always differences in things we women notice between countries. Surely she should have been on the lookout for the Professional Beauties, and yet . . . there is nothing.
Nothing
about the new food she has been trying. Nothing about the opera other than the description of the opera house! And absolutely no sense of excitement in any of it.” She frowned. “In fact, these are letters that are devoid of
people
as well. Didn't she meet anyone besides her sister?”

Sarah nodded agreement. “Wasn't she introduced to
anyone?
Surely, with her sister performing her London debut, there must have been all manner of nobility and notables swarming about, but you'd never know it from these letters. Nothing about the opera house dandies. Nothing about the artistic set. Nothing about musicians. She mentions no one, least of all this mysterious Canadian. He should have appeared somewhere in these letters at the beginning,
even if she attempted to hide a growing infatuation by eliminating him from later missives.”

Mary was frowning even more deeply. “Sherlock,” she said sharply. “Even assuming that this girl was the dullest, shyest creature on the planet, there is nothing in here that shows me she was in love enough with a stranger to elope with him. A woman in love does tend to wax poetic and rapturous about even the smallest of trifles, if it can be related at all to the beloved. I would have
expected
poems of praise to any little thing that recalled him to her mind.”