Phoenix and Ashes by Mercedes Lackey Page A

his throat closing again at the thought of that earnest young face, at
the young voice that told him “Stille, stille, bitte. Ja, das ist gut,
stille.”
    “The
boys that came after me found some bits of his things, a letter from home, a
picture of his mother. His name was Wilhelm, that’s Hun for William, like
West in the next bed over from me in the ward. PBI, like young Willie, too.
Wilhelm Katzel. That’s
two
fellows that died because of me, in
less than five minutes.”
    She
nodded, but said nothing for a moment. “I think,” she finally said,
“When this is over—you should tell his mother how brave he
was.”
    That
was not what he was expecting to hear. “How will that help?” he
asked angrily.
    “I
don’t know,” she replied, not reacting to his anger at all.
“But I do know that it won’t hurt. It will let her know he
hadn’t lost his decency or his honor in this vile slaughter, and
that’s something for her to hold onto. This war has made beasts of so
many—perhaps it will comfort her to know that her Wilhelm was still a
man.”
    It
was not the answer he had been expecting, and he flushed a little. But she was
right. She was very right.
    But
of course, the worst was yet to come.
    “That
isn’t where the real trouble lies, though, is it?” she continued.
“Oh, it’s horrible, and you are burdened terribly with guilt, but
that isn’t the worst.” She tugged a little on his hand, forcing him
to look up, into her eyes. “The worst came when you were safe,
didn’t it? In the bunker. Buried alive.”
    He
almost jerked his hand out of hers, and began to shake uncontrollably.
“How did you—”
    “Reggie,
I’m an
Earth Master
. The ground in France and Belgium is
saturated
with blood,” she said, with a thin veneer of calm over her words.
“I
know
what that attracts. There are monsters in the earth of
France, Reggie, and they are fattening and thriving on that slaughter—and
when that shell hit that bunker, they had a tidbit of the sort they could only
crave and dream about in their power. Air and Earth are natural enemies, and
they had
you
in their territory, in their grasp, to do with what they
wanted.” His vision began to film over as panic rose in his chest; he
clutched her hands, as though clutching a lifeline, as she put into words what
he could not. “They had you, Reggie, their greatest enemy, a Master of Air
and
a Master of the Light, helpless, on
their
ground.”
He couldn’t see, now, as all the memories came flooding back. He heard
his breath rasping in his throat, his heart pounding, and could not move for
the fear. Dimly, through the roaring in his ears, he heard her ask the question
he did not want to answer.
    “What
did they do to you, Reggie? What did they do?”
     
    Maya
Scott sat with her husband in a place in the Exeter Club where—before her
marriage to Peter Scott—no woman had ever been before. It was a lovely
day outside, still; the windows stood wide open to the warm air, and the sun
streamed down onto old Persian rugs, caressed brown leather upholstery, and
touched the contents of brandy bottles with gold.
    “So,”
said the Lord Alderscroft, often called the Old Lion—older now than when
she had first met him, and aged by more than years. “You’ve seen
the boy.”
    She
nodded.
    Lord
Alderscroft sat like the King on his throne, in his wingback chair in his own
sitting room in his private suite on the top floor of the Exeter Club, and
raised a heavy eyebrow at Maya. “Your report, please, Doctor
Scott?”
    Maya
never sat here without feeling a distant sense of triumph. It had been her
doing that had broken down the last three barriers of the White Lodge housed
here in the Exeter Club—of gender, lineage, and race. She would have
failed the Edwardian tests on all three counts; female, common, and of mixed
Indian and British blood. But King Edward was gone, and King George was on the
throne, and after the defeat of her aunt, there was not a man on the