Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (44 page)

 
          
"Taken
in all, Winter spent nearly sixteen months here. I was— away—on a case of my
own when she arrived, but I inquired into the matter once I returned and saw
that ... a case falling within the bounds of my particular interests had been
admitted while I was away. Unfortunately, there were reasons I was unable to
obtain direct supervision of her care; however, Dr.
Luty
was reasonably forthcoming. He gave me to understand that Winter was very
agitated when she came in—delusional, in fact. He told me that at first she'd
even insisted that she'd been in a motorcycle accident. But of course Winter
has never even owned a motorcycle, and there had been no accident."

 
          
"Are
you sure?" Truth could not help but ask.

 
          
Dr.
Atheling smiled, and this time there was a certain bitterness in it. "You
will understand that Dr.
Luty
was careful to check
for himself. It is not always advisable to entirely endorse the family's
interpretation of the events in a guest's life."

 
          
Truth's
opinion of
Fall
River
rose slightly. Not the sort of rubber-stamp place where the inconvenient
children of the rich were cached—at least not entirely.

           
"Her family admitted her?"
Truth tried to remember if Winter had said anything about a family—but no,
Winter had spoken only of her
recent
past.

 
          
"She
admitted herself upon the advice of her family. If she had not, it would have
been impossible for her to leave in the manner that she did." Dr.
Atheling's neutral tones conveyed nothing of the struggle that must have
underlain Winter's unorthodox departure from
Fall River
.

 
          
Sixteen months . . .
"So Winter was
admitted because of... stress. And then she left again," Truth said, half
questioning.

 
          
"Yes—as
soon as she realized that her afflictions had their origins in external
objective reality, and as soon as she was able. Even so, she was far from well,
and in other circumstances I would not have been in favor of it. But as I've
said, Winter was not my patient, and though I could advise, I could not
interfere in Dr.
Luty's
handling of the case,"
Dr. Atheling said somberly.

 
          
They
reached a gently weathered wooden bench placed at the side of one of the brick
paths, and Dr. Atheling indicated that she should sit. Intrigued, Truth did as
he wished, smoothing her narrow skirt over her knees. The wood of the bench was
warm against her back, and some of Truth's misgiving faded, lulled by the
beauty of the place.

 
          
"But
you must tell me what you have discovered as well," Dr. Atheling said,
seating himself at the opposite end of the bench.

 
          
Even
with this opportunity to study him closely and in bright sunlight, Truth found
it hard to gauge either his age or his ethnicity. It was impossible, however,
to mistake him for anything but a trained Adept now that her senses had been
awakened to the power he wielded, and Truth hoped their paths would not lead to
confrontation. Dr. Atheling would be a formidable opponent.

 
          
"About
a month ago, Winter Musgrave came to the Institute seeking . . .
assistance," Truth said, choosing her words carefully. "Dr. Palmer
and I were available, so we were the ones who interviewed her. You will
understand that the Institute receives a number of requests each year for ... a
type of help it is not equipped to provide."

 
          
"Admirably
and tactfully put," Dr. Atheling said with a faint ghost of mockery in his
voice. "And what did the Institute discover?"

 
          
"Although
Ms. Musgrave never submitted herself for a formal evaluation, Dr. Palmer and I
concluded that the likely explanation for the majority of the presenting
phenomena—including an event which we both witnessed—was adult-onset
poltergeist phenomena, triggering event unknown."

 
          
"For
most of
the phenomena," Dr.
Atheling paraphrased. "But not all?"

 
          
Although
the day was warm, involuntarily Truth hunched her shoulders against the
remembered cold of the
magickal
attack launched
against her when she and Winter had summoned the Elemental. "But not
all," she agreed.

 
          
"Let
us not fence any longer," Dr. Atheling said abruptly. "You are aware
of who I am, and I am quite aware of what you are. What do you know of the
Elemental sending that has attached itself to Winter?"

 
          
Truth
carefully kept her face from showing her surprise, though such an Adept as Dr.
Atheling could certainly read it in her aura even more easily than upon her
face.

 
          
"That
it exists," she said, and half shrugged, embarrassed by her ignorance.
"That it wants . . . something, though we haven't yet been able to find
out what. That it draws its strength from the blood of the animals it
kills—larger ones as its power grows. And that it was sent by someone to whom
Winter has an emotional connection." Truth watched Dr. Atheling closely.

 
          
"Do
you know who sent it?" he asked, his tone mild once more.

 
          
"Do
you?"

 
          
"No,"
he said, "and if
you
did, you
would not be here."

 
          
It
was no more than the truth, Truth admitted to herself. "I
need
to know," she said slowly,
choosing her words with care. "Because it's dangerous. And because it
seems to become more powerful with each death—able to command larger blood
sacrifices. And because I don't think that Winter has any control over
it."

 
          
An
hour later, Truth drove homeward, her mind busy. Though she had learned a great
deal, perilously little of it seemed to have any immediate bearing on Winter's
problem. Dr. Atheling, too, had marked the
magickal
child for
what it was while Winter was still at
Fall River
, though he was as ignorant as Truth of its
ultimate origin. Bound by a combination of his oaths as an Adept and his oaths
as a physician, he had not opposed the creature directly, though he had done
what he could to help Winter cope with its effects, and Truth was convinced
that the
Elemental's
power and hunger had increased
sharply once Winter had left his sphere of influence.

 
          
Back where I started,
Truth thought to
herself. No answer to
what
was
chasing Winter—and
why.

 
          
Only
she was not quite as ignorant as before. There was now the puzzle of Dr.
Atheling himself to consider. Truth's path and those of the others who studied
the Unseen World must inevitably cross if her life continued in the direction
it was going. And even after more than a year, Truth wasn't sure how she felt
about that.

 
          
Though
Truth
Jourdemayne
was only a beginner in the study of
the Occult—her gifts having been more a matter of inheritance than
training—the months she had spent researching her father's life and his
magickal
discipline had given her some understanding of the
many different coteries who studied that group of arts and philosophy
invariably lumped together under the catch-all label "The Occult."
Meeting Dr. Atheling made Truth more aware than ever of the fact that, though
she thought she moved alone through a labyrinth of scholarship and phenomena,
she was in fact only one Seeker among many. Far older than the Blackburn Work,
and the source for much of it, was Dr. Atheling's Right Hand Path, the Western
Mystery Tradition epitomized by the White Lodges. Though the trappings of each
Lodge were different, each traced its ultimate origin back to the learning of
Ancient Egypt, and beyond that, to storied Atlantis herself.

 
          
Instructed
as she was in the Blackburn Work, Truth had made little contact with other
traditions. Thorne Blackburn had been a rogue and a rebel against that
wellspring of tradition, believing that humankind should seek perfection in the
world they had been given rather than seeking an alien perfection in realms
that only a chosen few could aspire to— and then only if transformed by a
lifetime's rigorous training. The White Lodge in which he had received his
earliest instruction had cast him out for such ideas, but though they had
pronounced anathema on him, Thorne had not, as many believed, turned to the
Dark. The Left Hand Path in all of its guises had, in fact, as little use for
Blackburn
's philosophy as did the Right.

 
          
In
the Unseen World, as elsewhere, Truth
Jourdemayne
walked alone.

           
As if entirely of its own volition,
the Saturn moved left off the highway, toward an exit that led to a different
destination than
Glastonbury
,
New York
.

 
          
There
was one place she could still go to for answers.

 
          
The
padlocks and chains were back on the iron gates and the gravel drive showed the
marks of several seasons' neglect when Truth drove up to Shadow's Gate and
parked in front of the gatehouse. Thorne Blackburn's estate was once more in
legal limbo; for his children to inherit was now a matter of tedious legal
formalities that would take years. For now, the 100-acre parcel remained
untouched, a memorial and a monument to the
Blackburn
legend.

 
          
Truth
got out of her car, admitting ruefully to herself that her dressy suit would
probably not survive this expedition. There was a certain freedom, however, in
doing what you wanted no matter how you were dressed. The question was, who was
to be the master, as Humpty
Dumpty
had once said to
Alice
, and Truth felt that her desires—even her
whims—should be more important than a suit of clothes.

 
          
It
was easy enough to circumvent the gatehouse with its forbidding iron bars, and
walk along the fence until the formidable iron spikes became a low fieldstone
wall—easy enough to climb over, even in a narrow skirt. A caretaker lived on
the property and saw to keeping the grass cut back, so getting across the lawn
wasn't a problem. Truth walked up the hill toward the house.

 
          
The
contrast between
Fall River
and Shadow's Gate was enormous.
Fall River
was mannered and manicured, groomed and
tamed until it lost all individuality. Shadow's Gate belonged to itself far
more than it did to any human force: Since the first Europeans had come to the
Hudson
Valley
and fallen beneath the spell of this land
just as their native-born brothers had, Shadow's Gate had ruled the lives and
the destinies of all within its reach.

 
          
Truth
cut back to the drive once she was well past the gatehouse, and walked on a
gently upward slope through woods in full spring leaf. Half an hour brought her
to the crest of the small rise from which she'd gained her first sight of Shadow's
Gate less than three years ago.

 
          
The
old house still stood in a hollow of ground surrounded by low hills and
rambling woodland. To the right Truth could see the boxwood maze whose contours
concealed secret passages that would let her into the house itself. The maze
was noticeably overgrown now, though some attempt had been made to keep it
clipped back. Truth shook her head sadly. Someone would have to do something
about Shadow's Gate, and soon. But her destination today was not the house, nor
anything that lay close beside it. It took her almost another hour to reach her
real destination.

 
          
Here
in the woods behind the house lay the
henge
Thorne
Blackburn and his acolytes had made: a horseshoe shape of man-sized granite
pillars in a forest clearing. At the head of the circle, in the place the
thirteenth pillar should have been, stood a massive oak tree, its bark thick
and twisted with age. Carved into the wood, at the level of her heart, Truth
could see the symbol of the Circle of Truth, like and yet unlike the symbols
that had been painted at
Nuclear
Lake
. With some difficulty, Truth clambered into
the circle and placed her hand over the sign. The wood was warm and alive
beneath her hand. She stroked it meditatively.