Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (41 page)

 
          
A
member of the Astral Lodges would have called upon the White Light and the
Word; a Black Magician upon the powers of Death and Hell. Truth was neither.

 
          
"In
the name of Time and the Seasons, by the power of the Wheel and the Way,"
she said in a low voice, "remake this place in the image of this place:
All that has been since Time began,
Begone
!"

 
          
She
unbound the last echoes of energy, sweeping the rod before her, and, turning,
began to walk in a spiral, pushing cleanliness and emptiness before her, as
though the slender wand in her hand was a broom.

           
When she reached the walls, she ran
the rod along them as well, draining away the power they had absorbed until
they were as neutral and empty as the day they had been first erected.

 
          
It
was very quiet when she was done.

 
          
To
a natural psychic or other trained sensitive, the present condition of the room
would be more unusual than its previous one, for no place on earth is innocent
of contagion by the life that inhabits it. This place, too, would begin to
collect impressions again almost immediately—Truth's power was not harsh enough
to seal it off completely, nor did she wish to—but the traces the Blackburn
Work had left were gone: swept away.

 
          
"My
work here is finished," Truth said aloud, smiling to herself. Unlike her
encounter with the
magckal
child
that had attached itself to Winter
Musgrave, this exercise of her ability left her vibrant, filled with energy.

 
          
Truth
wondered—not for the first time—who had sent the artificial Elemental, and why.
It seemed murderously furious, out of control—but nevertheless the work of a
powerful Adept, and it was hard, looking at Winter, to think of her as anyone
who might be familiar with the hidden world of magicians and
magickal
lodges. Carefully Truth slid the wand back into
its protective case and then slipped it into her bag.

 
          
With
a pang of regret for the work that replacing the liquid would entail, Truth
took the bowl of Condenser and sprinkled it all around the room before wiping
the bowl dry and putting it, too, back into her bag. She snuffed out the
beeswax candle and filled the silver bowl with sand to smother the burning
charcoal, then emptied the bowl, ground the last smoldering embers into dust
against the floor, and put both objects away. Soon the only evidence that
anything uncanny had ever happened here would be a smudge of dirt and a painted
figure—now meaningless—on the floor.

 
          
Truth
went back up the stairs.

 
          
The
sky was overcast when she got back outside, and the damp wind off the river
promised rain in the not-too-distant future. Truth sighed. It was an unfortunate
fact of life that her father's
magick
tended to bring
bad weather with it, as well as deriving its greatest power from violent
storms. As she made her way toward her waiting Saturn, Truth's mind continued
to mull over the odd puzzle of Winter Musgrave and the
magickal
child.

           
While it was true that Winter was a
psychic, and a powerful one—as an adult poltergeist she would have to be,
whether her power extended to setting fires or not—it was hardly the same thing
as being a trained occultist, and if Truth knew anything for certain, it was
that Winter was not trained. Yet someone, somewhere, in her life must
be—trained and Adept both.

 
          
Was
it Hunter
Greyson
, Colin
MacLaren's
golden boy? Truth had already spoken to Lion
Welland
and some of the other faculty who had been at
Taghkanic
when both Grey and Professor
MacLaren
had been. Those
who remembered them had all said the same thing: that Grey had been planning to
do postgraduate work at the Institute directly under Professor
MacLaren
. And, though it was not widely known at
Taghkanic
, Irene Avalon, Truth's teacher, had told Truth
that
MacLaren
had made no secret of being an Initiate
of the Right Hand Path. Had Hunter
Greyson
been
intending to follow
MacLaren
in more things than one?

 
          
But then Winter left, then Grey left, then
Professor
MacLaren
left, and nobody knows why.
Truth
frowned. Winter was looking for Grey now, that much Truth knew, but could
she
find Hunter
Greyson
first?

 
          
The
wind riffled the reeds along the edge of the lake, and the dimpled surface of
the water turned to hammered silver. Truth sighed, shifting her grip on the bag
in her hand. The supercharged atmosphere of the ritual in the basement seemed
light-years away now in both time and tone.

 
          
Find
Hunter
Greyson
? Maybe. If he were still alive, or
tied somehow to this world. If he had continued his forays into the Otherworld.
If he were willing to be found.

 
          
If.

 
          
But
once she had thought of the possibility, Truth could not simply dismiss it,
and so
midnight
found Thorne Blackburn's daughter once more engaged in her own peculiar blend
of
magick
and science.

 
          
The
candle she lit this time had a purely pragmatic use—its reflection in the
shewstone
she intended to use would give her a
point to focus on visually.

 
          
Truth
sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her living room coffee table, an oval
of polished jet resting on her palms. The candle burned brightly, and she could
see the gold sheen of its flame reflected in the mirror's polished black
surface.

           
The theory and technique of
scrying
was extensively documented; whether the
focus was a crystal ball, an ordinary mirror, a bowl of water, or a speculum of
polished jet such as Truth now held, the object of the exercise was to see
pictures of distant people and unknown events; a form of external-projection
clairvoyance. As with most divinatory systems, the tool—whether a mirror, a
candle, a pendulum, or cards—was only a focus, and had no intrinsic power. The
Institute frequently used an entire range of them in their tests, trying to fit
the potential psychic expression to its most comfortable tool. Dylan's favorite
trance psychic used gaming dice to overcome her occasional clairvoyant blocks.

 
          
The
living room was dim and quiet, and the only other illumination came from a
light in the kitchen. Truth had deliberately chosen the witching hour to work
because the psychic background noise that people usually took for granted was
much diminished at a time when most of the people in the immediate surrounding
area were asleep—one of the many reasons that most
hauntings
and similar psychic manifestations took place at night.

 
          
Truth
settled herself more comfortably as the jet—an organic material, just as amber
was—warmed in her hands. She wasn't really sure how well this would work;
clairvoyance wasn't her strength, even though her mother and her aunt had both
been psychics. Her father had once told Truth that her
magickal
technique consisted mainly of dragging the Powers into compliance by yelling at
them until they cooperated in self-defense.

 
          
Truth
smiled at the memory, trying to relax enough to let her mind float free. She
hoped Thorne was right; if yelling was what it took to find Hunter
Greyson
, that's what she'd do. Winter was outclassed and
Truth was all but helpless—
somewhere
there
had to be an ally against the pursuing Elemental and its monstrous,
destructive hunger, and Truth didn't think she could afford to be too
scrupulous about recruiting him.

 
          
At
last the material world fell away; the constant insistence of Reality that it
was the only truth dimmed, and Truth was able to rebuild the world out of the
fires of her own conviction and belief. With practiced ease she set the four
Otherworld Guardians about herself, so that her spirit had reference points to
return to. Once that was done, out of her father's
magick
,
Truth called up her servants and Guardians on this plane: the Red Stag and the
White Mare, the Black Dog and the Grey Wolf.

           
These creatures were the shapes of
her power, the astral servants who would do her bidding in this realm;
creations of earth magic and
sidhe
magic both.

 
          
She
mounted the mare and began to ride, with the wolf and the dog loping at her
heels and the stag bounding along before, its red coat shadowy in the mist.

 
          
Here
were the landmarks of the astral temples the other Blackburn Circles had
erected; there, less visible to Truth's psychic senses, were the marks of other
travelers through this realm; Adepts and
wicce
and others. Beyond that, all was mutable: the Otherworld—called
the Inner Planes or the Astral Realms in the books Irene had forced upon
Truth—was very much a creation of the observer, taking on the shape its
visitors expected.

 
          
Which may explain why it looks so much like
a foggy, featureless plain to me. I have no expectations of what I
"ought" to see.

 
          
But
even when she had gained access to the Otherworld at last, it did not bring
with it success in her quest. Truth wandered for subjective hours in
featureless Otherworld grayness, but she found no hint of Hunter
Greyson's
presence.

 
          
The
pull to return to her body grew stronger as she searched, until resisting it
became an effort and she knew that—this night at least—she had failed to find
Hunter
Greyson
. It occurred belatedly to Truth that
perhaps she had been too hasty in banishing all trace of Grey's Circle from
Nuclear
Lake
; she could have used its presence as a
starting place for her search, at least. Now, though she had spent hours
calling upon the powers beholden to her as far as she dared, Truth could gain
no hint of the Master of Nuclear Circle's location.

 
          
At
last she allowed her body's animal need to tug her back from the Otherworld,
and opened her eyes on her own familiar living room.

 
          
It
was nearly dawn. She was chilled and stiff from immobility, and the candle had
long since drowned in its own wax. But Truth was far from defeated.

 
          
"Are
you sure you're going to be all right?" Dylan said, standing by the door
of the car.

 
          
"For
heaven's sake,
Dyl
, I'm driving to
Massachusetts
, not off the edge of the earth," Truth
said good-naturedly.

 
          
Though
many of the staff at the
Bidney
Institute were also
members of the
Taghkanic
faculty—such as Dylan—Truth
was not one of them. Without classes to cover, it was comparatively easy for
her to gain a few days' leave.

 
          
"It's
only a couple of days since you were laid out cold in the lab," Dylan
pointed out ruthlessly.
"Where
in
Massachusetts
?" he added suspiciously.

 
          
Truth
sighed, capitulating. "
Fall River
. I was just going to—"

 
          
"Meddle,"
Dylan finished flatly. Truth rewarded him with a dazzling smile that deceived
neither of them.

 
          
"Right,"
she said. "But, for heaven's sake, Dylan, it's only a
little
meddling."

 
          
"And
I can't stop you anyway," Dylan finished for her.

 
          
Truth
tried to look repentant and failed. "I'll be back in a day or so."