Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (52 page)

 
          
"Bang.
You're dead."

 
          
The
fat blue spark that exploded out of the respirator's casing made her jump back
and yelp in
startlement
, and then hiss in disgust at
her own fright. But, to Winter's relief, no one came to investigate, and that was
all that happened. The respirator was unmoving, dark, and silent, and so was
the alarm box.

 
          
She
went back to the bedside and looked down at Grey. It was over.

 
          
"Good-bye,
Grey," Winter said. She swallowed hard. "I could have loved you—if I
hadn't been such a damned coward." She reached out and pulled the hose
away. Then she took his hand. The room was utterly silent.

 
          
"Okay.
What are you waiting for?" she said aloud.
Come on, nightmare
—
here I
am.

 
          
When
the vertigo struck she realized that she still expected with some part of her
mind to hear the bell that signaled the opening of trading on the floor of the
Stock Exchange.

 
          
She
was on the Astral Plane, and it was dark. But the Otherworld, Truth
Jourdemayne
had said, was created as much from their expectations
as by any external force.

 
          
Let there be light.
Winter willed light
and her surroundings brightened, sharp with an eerie blue-gray illumination
that made the place look like the Twilight Zone.

 
          
—
Winter!
— It was a summons her mind did
not recognize as sound; sharp and urgent as the sudden remembrance of a thing
forgotten. She turned toward it and saw Grey, farther away from her than he'd
ever appeared before, wavering like an image seen through water. She ran
toward him, reaching out as he drifted farther away, concentrating on feeling
his hands grasping her own.

 
          
She
touched him; her fingers grazed his as she yanked at him, clutching him
tightly. With a sob of relief, Winter dragged him back into reality once more.

 
          
"Grey!"
she said inadequately. He'd seemed almost insubstantial when she'd touched him,
but moment by moment he was becoming more solid beneath her touch.

 
          
He
freed one hand, brushing the hair back from her face. He smiled, and Winter
felt her heart clench in a promise of grief to come.

 
          
"Don't
let go, whatever you do," Grey said. "Without you, I'll just fade
away." His supercilious expression mocked the literal truth of his words.

 
          
"All
right." Winter held his hand as if they were orphans in a fairy tale about
to walk into the dark forest.
How does
being dead feel, Grey?
"What else do you want me to do?"

 
          
"This
is going to sound really simple. We need to walk over there— see the stones?—to
where
Nuclear
Circle
's astral temple used to be. Getting there's going to be harder than you
think, but then comes the easy part. We rebuild
Nuclear Circle
's astral temple, and then—"

 
          
Winter
almost pulled free. "In God's name, Grey—you brought me here for
that?
I make light-bulbs explode—I can't
do anything like, like—"

 
          
Grey
shook his head in frustration—at least, so Winter saw him. "You have to.
Just imagine it the way it was; this is the Astral Plane: Wishes
are
horses here, and thoughts are real.
You remember the image we all worked on? Just hold that in your mind."

 
          
Yes,
thoughts were real, Winter thought, at the edge of panic. And how could she
tell Grey that out of a past edited by trauma and drugs, the memory of
imagining
Nuclear Circle
's astral temple was one she didn't have?

 
          
"Come
on!" Grey pulled at her, impatient. Helplessly she let him lead her toward
the circle of
cairns
.

 
          
It
was like moving through water. Each step was an effort, and Winter quickly
understood why Grey had said it would be hard to reach the temple: If she did
not concentrate with all her will on the tumbled stones, Winter found herself
forgetting where she was going; veering off in another direction, or stopping
altogether.

 
          
It
was her anger that saved her. Not the killing rage that, uncontrolled, brought
on the psychokinetic storms that for so long she had ascribed to an outside
agency, but a cold quiet determination to do what she had said she would do, no
matter how great the odds were against her.

 
          
At
last Winter was able to lay her free hand atop the nearest cairn of stones. At
once the pressure and disorientation ceased, and she and Grey, still holding
hands, were able to walk quickly and easily into the center of the circle.

 
          
Grey
looked around. From the expression on his face he was seeing something
different than she was—or perhaps remembering.

 
          
"Well,
here we are, at the death of hope," Grey said. His voice was cutting, and
Winter flinched away inwardly from the anger in it. "You know, for years I
hoped you'd come back."

 
          
"I
forgot," Winter said, and the bare truth sounded far uglier than she'd
intended.

 
          
"I
know," Grey said, and now he only sounded tired. "I looked for you in
dreams, on the astral—hell, even on the Internet."

 
          
"Did
you try
New
York
?"
Winter shot back. Why were they arguing now? Wasn't it years and lifetimes too
late to matter?

 
          
"I
got tired of getting thrown off the family estate and then picked up for
vagrancy," Grey said. He shrugged and tried to smile, but couldn't quite
manage it. "I've got to admit that an arrest record makes a dandy souvenir
when you try to get a job, though."

 
          
Her
parents had done that. Casually. Efficiently.
Damn them.
In this bodiless realm, her spiraling outrage had the
seductive force of a jolt of speed. "I didn't do that," she said
quietly. "I didn't even know."

 
          
"I
know." Grey's smile was gentle now. "But it took me too many years to
figure that out. I'm sorry. But hurry now. We've got to rebuild the temple—it's
coming, and if we can't restrain it when it gets here . . ."

 
          
It's going to kill us.
Winter's mind
supplied the words Grey didn't say.

 
          
And
it
was
coming. A darkness on the
horizon, the heaviness of a mindless hostility that Winter had glimpsed twice
before. Grey cried out in a language that, for a confused moment, Winter felt
she knew, and where the circle of tumbled stones had stood in the
sourceless
silver light, the walls of the temple began to
rise, shadowy in the wavering air. Winter felt Grey draw power from her living
body, but he needed more: her mind, her will, and her heart.

 
          
She
tried to give him what he needed—and realized, with sinking despair, that she
couldn't. There was some fundamental quality that she lacked—if she'd ever had
it at all.

 
          
"Winter,"
Grey pleaded. She clutched his hand tighter, wordlessly shaking her head. He
wanted her to fly, but her wings had melted long ago.

 
          
It
was nearly here, and they had no defenses. Grey had said the Elemental had
more
reality
here; in this world
Winter could feel the ground shake as it approached, and the storm that
heralded its coming gained force. Beside her, Grey fought to raise the walls of
the temple by himself, and Winter knew he wasn't going to make it.

 
          
How
could she expect—how could Grey expect—to create alone what it had taken five
people once to make?

 
          
And
then it reached them. The storm broke over Winter like a towering wave: an icy
vortex that chilled and deafened her, leaching the strength from her body until
she could no longer feel Grey's hand.
This
isn't so bad,
was Winter's first, false, reaction. She'd been expecting a
monster, some kind of movie alien, not just darkness and crushing pressure.

 
          
But
her sense of relief was gone before it had truly been, gone in the realization
of the true nature of the creature that Hunter
Greyson
had made.

 
          
First
came the pain. It was worse than the migraine headaches that had left her sick
and dazed for days, worse than she could imagine pain could be. But even that
was endurable, was welcome in comparison to the icy needles that slid into her
eyes, her brain, carrying with them the knowledge of inhuman hunger and loss.
Pain
—and the soul Winter was not sure
she possessed howled its despair. The Elemental had reached her, and here was
its message: grief and pain, anger and betrayal, ripping away her sanity and
self as easily as she might disjoint a chicken, destroying all that Winter was
but leaving behind some screaming spark to know and suffer and sorrow.

 
          
Forever.

 
          
She
didn't know when it stopped, only that she was running. Grey pulled her along,
away from the temple, his hand in hers so hot and solid that Winter knew with a
distant pang of wonder that even in this unreal place she was nearly on the
edge of death.

 
          
"Grey—
Stop— Grey—" Winter panted. She wanted to scream—she wanted to die—she
would do anything to keep that creature from touching her again, anything—

 
          
Grey
stopped and took her in his arms, holding her body tightly against him. Winter
imagined she could feel the fluttering beat of his heart. She would have wept,
but terror had burned away all her tears.

 
          
"We're
toast," Grey said, with a ghost of his old mocking lightness.

 
          
"Grey!"
Winter protested, as if his disrespect could gain them greater punishment.

 
          
"No."
She felt him shake his head, denying her false hope. "It's too strong. I
broke free this time; I can probably even do it again. But it'll get us in the
end."

 
          
"No,"
Winter moaned. And there was no place to run—here or in the real world it would
come for her.

 
          
Was
this what Cassie had felt before she died?

 
          
Was
it?

 
          
Deep
within Winter, faint fires of anger and guilt trembled. She coaxed them to
life. Anything was better than the terror: anger, guilt, pride—anything she
could use to shield herself she would gladly use.

 
          
"You
told me we could kill it," Winter said, in a voice she hardly recognized.
"You lied." Cold. Cold as the hate-serpent; cold as ice; a shield
that had been forged only for this ultimate extremity. Useless—dangerous—in the
real world, here it was her only hope.

 
          
Grey
looked behind them. On the horizon, the storm was gathering once more.

 
          
"Not
kill," Grey corrected her, his voice steady. "Unmake it—understand
it, unbind it from the task it was set. Name it, command it, set it free. How
could I— I even think it would listen if we could just hold it long
enough—shield ourselves from it somehow—but we can't. Lord of the Wheel—"
and now Winter heard real agony in his voice "—I would give up all I am,
all that I might hope to be, all my advancement on the Path, if I only could
stop what I have set in motion here!"

 
          
"We
need the others."