Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (10 page)

 
          
As
if to mock her vow, calm hours became calm days—and then a week—without any
disturbance at all.

 
          
The
Taghkanic
College library had been constructed in a
time when it was considered the height of fashion to ape English models, and so
Winter's notes and reference were spread out in a chamber that looked as if it
would have been at home in any of Oxford's colleges. Light streamed into the
main reading room through a wall of narrow, Gothic-arched windows, and a
twisting iron ladder provided entrance to the library's second floor.

 
          
Opposite
her chair, Winter had an unobstructed view of an enormous muddy-colored oil
painting hanging on the oak linen-fold paneling depicting a dissatisfied-looking
man in vaguely Puritan dress. Winter had been interested enough to inspect the
engraved nameplate, and so knew that it was the portrait of
Jurgen
Lookerman
, the original founder of the college.

 
          
Her
college.

 
          
Faced
with a riddle she could solve—her missing past—she had fastened on it with a
stubborn determination that would not admit of failure. And she had not
failed, though she had to admit that progress was maddeningly slow. Winter had
walked the campus until her feet ached and the security guards all greeted her
by name. She had poked into the classrooms, the student union, the dorms,
trying to kindle the fires of memory.

 
          
A
stop at the bursar's office had yielded proof of her attendance here, as well
as a copy of her college transcript. It sat, now, atop a stack of
Taghkanic
College
yearbooks, and a folder containing a sheaf
of photocopies from
The
Angulus
,
the student newspaper.

 
          
She'd
written poetry once. Yes, and had it published in the paper, too. Most of it
was pretty bad—the usual
overdramatized
self-obsession of late adolescence—but a few of the poems were actually pretty
good. That girl would have been a moderately competent poet—if she'd lived.

 
          
Don't be an idiot,
Winter reproached
herself, quelling even the tiniest sign of fancifulness. That girl was
her—she'd even checked to make sure that there hadn't been another Winter
Musgrave enrolled at the college in '81—and the poems, like it or not, were
hers.

 
          
And I'm not dead. At least I think I'm not.

 
          
But
what had happened to that girl and her impassioned poetry?—the girl who'd taken
Art and English courses with a fine disregard for the realities of earning a
living once she graduated? The girl who had joined the Drama Club and played
Juliet and accompanied strolling carolers on her guitar? Winter didn't even
own
a guitar—until she'd seen the
pictures of herself in
The
Angulus
she hadn't even suspected she could play one!

 
          
This is not right. This is not normal.
There's something
—
wrong
—
about this.

 
          
She'd
been doing a lot of research in the last several days. All the books she'd
consulted said that this form of amnesia was not unknown, but they all agreed
that it was symptomatic of a hysterical response to shock.

 
          
And
that made no sense. She'd had
a fine
life.
If she hadn't just checked herself out of
Fall River
, she'd have been worried about a brain
tumor, but she'd been tested for every possible physical explanation of her
problems before she'd been admitted.

 
          
She
was—more or less—young, healthy, and rich.

 
          
So,
what was the problem?

 
          
Winter
sighed, and turned back to her books. She'd come back to school in more ways
than one. On the table before her was a stack of books; in addition to copies
of the school yearbook, books on psychology, parapsychology, and any other
-
ology
that
could possibly help her.

 
          
She'd
even found herself reading more about Thorne Blackburn, trying to understand
how normal people could believe without evidence in the sort of thing that she
had evidence of but refused to believe in. It was true that she continued to
find the doors and windows unlocked at the farmhouse, but the weather was
warming into late spring, and it was often warm enough to open the windows
now—and she still did not trust her memory completely enough to know for sure
if she'd closed and locked a window she'd previously opened or simply forgotten
about it. A cup of the Centering Tea at bedtime seemed to ensure an untroubled
sleep, and as long as there were no more dead animals, she could live with that
ambiguity. Meanwhile, she continued to search for answers to her other
questions.

 
          
Winter
found that
Taghkanic
owned one of the largest
collections of occult and magical paraphernalia, and
the
largest collection of
Blackburniana
in the world; reasonable, she supposed, since his daughter worked here, but . .
.

 
          
"Well,
hello, Winter," a familiar voice said.

 
          
She
glanced up. Dylan Palmer stood beside her table, his arms full of books.

 
          
"The
librarian told me that someone over at this table had one of the books I wanted
today, and here it's you. How are you doing? Feeling better?"

 
          
"Oh,
um, fine," Winter said awkwardly. "Which one is it—which book, I
mean?"

 
          
"
Ha'ants
,
Spooks, and
Fetchmen
,
by Nicholas
Taverner
; the Appalachian poltergeist book." Without
invitation, Dr. Palmer set his books down on an unoccupied corner of the table
and sat down.

 
          
Winter
scrabbled through her pile of books until she'd found the title Dr. Palmer had
indicated. The
Taverner
book was one of the older
ones in her stack—1924, she remembered the date was—and dealt mostly with
folklore, although it did mention in passing a family of Ozark poltergeists.
It didn't seem to be especially germane to Winter's current situation, but
she'd been grabbing anything she could get her hands on.

 
          
"Here
it is," she said, holding it out and willing Dylan Palmer to go away.
Something more seemed to be called for. "I'm sorry I was so rude the other
day—barging in on you and carrying on like that. I've been under a lot of
stress lately. I'm sorry."

 
          
He
took the book but made no move to go. "You didn't make an appointment to
come back to the lab," he said.

 
          
Winter
felt her cheeks grow hot, like a child caught in a lie. "I decided not
to."

 
          
"Oh."
Dr. Palmer seemed to consider this. "Mind telling me why?"

 
          
"There
just didn't seem to be a lot of point. Truth—Ms.
Jourdemayne
—said
that it would just go away on its own, and the books all agree with her, so
there really doesn't seem to be a lot of point in laying out Tarot cards and
gazing into crystal balls in the name of Science."

 
          
"I
see." Dr. Palmer did not seem to be unduly offended by Winter's
declaration, and she felt herself relax a bit. "And how's the other thing
coming?"

 
          
"Beg
pardon?"

 
          
"The
search for your roots." Dr. Palmer tapped the stack of yearbooks.

 
          
"Oh."
This subject, though loaded, was safer. "I have an appointment with
Professor Rhys at two-thirty."

 
          
"You
were a student of his?"

 
          
"He
was my faculty advisor," Winter said. "I thought we could
get
together and talk about old
times."

 
          
"Which
you still don't remember," Dr. Palmer suggested with damning insight.

 
          
"I
remember . . . something," Winter protested.
Like a dream that I woke up from a long time ago. But at least in the
dream I was happy. . . .
"How can someone just
forget
their past?" she burst out helplessly.

 
          
"A
lot of people would like to," Dr. Palmer said. "Maybe you're
fortunate."

 
          
And maybe not.
"I'm sure it will
come back to me," Winter said, and this time she made the cool dismissal
in her words unmistakable.

 
          
Dr.
Palmer took the hint. "Well, good luck then. And if there's anything else
you need, Winter, remember that you have friends here." He stood, adding
the
Taverner
to his stack of books.

 
          
"Thank
you," Winter said formally. "You're very kind."

 
          
She
watched as Dr. Palmer walked away, and for a vulnerable moment she wished to
summon him back. He had been kindness itself—maybe he
could
help.

           
No. She didn't need anyone's help.
Whatever had to be done, she'd do herself. Needing other people only got you
hurt. She glanced at her watch. It was time to go. Winter gathered her things
together and stood up.

 
          
Professor
Rhys's
offices were in one of the older buildings on
the campus, though since nothing had gone up on the
Taghkanic
grounds since the Second World War, none of the campus buildings could be
called particularly new.

 
          
As
she crossed the campus, Winter could almost imagine that it was as familiar as
it ought to be; that the past year was only a bad dream and that there was some
other reason that she'd come back to this place where her younger self had
known so much happiness.

 
          
But
if that were to be reality, Winter was slowly coming to realize, then more than
the last year would have to vanish. During the past several days, she'd sought
in vain for traces of the woman she'd become in the girl who'd written poetry
and played madrigals, and could not imagine that child turning into the woman
she knew as Winter Musgrave.

 
          
But she did. She's you,
Winter reminded
herself.
So what if you can't imagine it
—
you've never been all that fanciful.
Brusquely
she forced away the insolent reminder that the writing of poetry and plays
requires a certain amount of imagination, and mounted the steps of the
rambling nineteenth-century building that was her goal.

 
          
Afternoon
sunlight slanted whitely through the windows at the end of the long hall, and
the—familiar?—scents of dust, apples, and old varnish tickled Winter's nose.
She peered down the anonymous line of glass-paneled doors, wondering which it
was. Professor Rhys had given her a room number, but there didn't seem to be
any numbers on the doors.

 
          
"Welcome,
my dear—welcome."

 
          
Winter,
peering closer at the nearest door, and just realizing that there actually were
brass numbers on them—tarnished to black and indistinguishable from the varnished
wood—jumped as she was hailed cheerily. She looked up.

 
          
From
the far end of the hall a man who looked more like a professor than anyone had
a right to leaned out his open doorway and waved.

 
          
"Professor
Rhys?"

 
          
If
he wondered, she had an excuse for asking—the glare made it difficult to see,
she could say. But the reality was, she could see him perfectly well; it was
her stubborn memory that refused to give up its horde, and Winter was left
feeling not as though she'd never known this place and people, but rather as if
she'd known them once, and forgotten.