Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (53 page)

           
Where had this sudden certainty come
from, the sense that she was somehow something more than herself?

 
          
"Cassie's
dead," Grey said, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice now.

 
          
"I
can get her." Whatever the certainty's source, she had to believe in her
own Tightness.
Help me, help me
—
help us!
Winter prayed. A scrap of
memory came back to her.
Lords of the
Wheel
—
Lords of the New
Aeon
—
your
children call upon you. . . .

 
          
"If
you can get them, and bring them here, do it now," Grey's voice was flat.
"Because here it comes again."

 
          
It
was as if sheer desperation had transformed her at last from a creature of
careful logic to one of unthinking instinct. The power within Winter
beckoned—she seized it, and felt as if she'd plunged her hands into the
white-hot heart of the sun.

 
          
Cassilda
, Ramsey, Janelle . . .

 
          
Cassilda
stood at the gates of Death, lingering in the borderland,
holding on valiantly as she waited for the summons she knew would come. Winter
reached for her and took her hand, and it was cold, so cold. . . .

 
          
In
the courts of Sleep, Ramsey Miller and Janelle Baker lingered.

 
          
She
found them.

 
          
A dream, Winter
—
something we can all share!
Grey's swift demand.
Hurry!

 
          
And
remade the world in her own image.

 
          
The
stadium was packed, a million roaring faceless bodies in the darkness,
projecting their passion and energy onto the stage. Winter stood alone upon the
empty platform, handmaid of forces greater than herself, and summoned
Nuclear Circle
into being.

 
          
A dream we can all share.
To mold them,
to bind them, to make them one once more.

 
          
The
music called, and Winter let it in.

 
          
Grey
came first, laying down the melody in a dance of electrified strings, smoothing
the way for the others, living and dead, to join them—

 
          
Ramsey,
a little behind, but with a rhythm strong and sure, able to follow where any of
them led—

           
Cassilda
,
her work in the world cut short, pushed them forward on the insistent beat of
the drums, urging them onward—

 
          
And,
last of all, Janelle danced in and out, the sound of her fiddle mocking the two
guitars. Winter drew a deep breath and flung herself into the web of sound, the
bright silver skirl of her flute finishing all, sealing the circle and shaping
the power. Grey led them on, but it was Winter who blessed and blazed the
trail.

 
          
Musk, Winter. Sound and rhythm, the first
awareness; the place it starts
—

 
          
She
looked without sight, seeing them all—and saw, too, that none of them was
whole. Each of them had failed, somewhere in the world, once they had left the
golden time.

 
          
Janelle's
failure had been of nerve, Ramsey's of heart, and Cassie's of will, but her own
had been the worst, her cowardice a failure of faith, of trust not only in the
future but in some essential constant of good.

 
          
The
music wavered.

 
          
But
that didn't matter, Winter told herself fiercely. Together they supplied one
anothers
' lack, strengthening each other against the world,
against the past.

 
          
The
Elemental reached them, and Winter felt it: need and despair, sorrow and
rage—but now, against that, she set the best of them: Janelle's bravery and
Ramsey's love, Grey's yearning, and
Cassilda
confident
and steady beneath it all. Living and dead together, linked in a covenant that
transcended birth, that kept their music strong and sure against it. Here, in
this time outside of time, was the golden time when they had all been gods, and
nothing was beyond their power.

 
          
She
concentrated on the Elemental—

 
          
And
the metaphor shifted again, and now Winter was dancing barefoot and
short-skirted on a high hill. The melody they wove was older, richer, deeper:
drums and pipes, and she whirled in Grey's arms as the music led in and out,
the hounds and the hare, but this time it was the hounds who led the hare on,
weaving a web of sound and
magick
to hold it in.

 
          
"Caught!"
she heard Grey cry exultantly, but to catch it wasn't enough; Grey had to
unweave it, spinning this child of his intention safely back into the
starstuff
from which the universe was made.

 
          
There
was something not right in that, something she had overlooked, but there was
no time for thought or doubt, and now Winter led the circle again, as the
definition of the world slid from Grey's mind to hers and shifted one last
time.

 
          
And
she was reaching out into the electronic architecture, linking the
file-servers, pulling up application after application, the definition of the
world for a child of the Computer Age—

 
          
As
the opening bell rang the floor of the Exchange came to its feet in one
many-throated roar; here was Chicago, one hour behind New York; it was already
afternoon in London and the gold-fix was hours old; Japan was in bed and it was
already tomorrow in the Far East and the data poured in across a dozen computer
screens and there was only one thing faster, one thing surer, one thing that
could integrate that flood of data and build a world from it; a world where
time was money, and money was the phantom dance of the
EFTs
across a thousand world markets. . . .

 
          
And
this realm of intention and command came alive for her, an extension of her
will, her
mind.
Armored in her
applications, her programs, her subroutines, Winter reached out, to deal with:

 
          
—
demon
—

 
          
—
virus
—

 
          
—
bad art
—

 
          
She
felt Grey reach through her. . . .

 
          
"That which I commanded is fulfilled,
and the term of your years is run. By fire and water, the word and the will, by
living and
unliving
earth I remind you of your making
and unmake you now
—"

 
          
.
. . laying gentle merciless hands on the thing that did not belong in this
perfect pattern that was the blueprint of all creation . . .

 
          
And the Hunt closed in
—
And the music swirled to a crescendo
—
And the system loaded and began to run
—
And all the metaphor was gone.

 
          
She
felt Cassie slip away first, with a gentle laugh and a last caress, down the
Spiral Path to the beginning of creation.

 
          
Born again to the Goddess. Good-bye, Cassie.

 
          
Then
Ramsey and Janelle, tumbling back down into sleep, perhaps to take the courage
for change with them into the waking world.

           
Sleep
well, my loves. Dream true.

 
          
Gone,
all of them, and she and Grey stood alone, hand in hand, in the desolation
where only one other thing remained.

 
          
She
was thirteen, the age she would have been if she'd lived. In her face, Grey's
features and Winter's melded.

 
          
"Mommy
—" The child-wraith
wavered; hungry, needing. . . . Winter started forward.

 
          
"Don't
go to her," Grey said harshly. His grip on Winter's hand stopped her.
"She isn't alive. Step outside the circle and you'll wander forever. You
won't be able to find your way back to your body any more than I could to mine
once the silver cord was snapped."

 
          
Surprised,
Winter looked down. Just in front of where she was standing was a line of pale
quartz river stones, forming a line that curved around to become the circle
Grey spoke of.

 
          
"I
don't care! She's—"

 
          
My daughter.

 
          
Winter
pulled, but now it was Grey who would not release her. He gripped her hand so
tightly it hurt; tightly enough that she stared at him in puzzled anger.

 
          
"Mommy,"
the wraith keened again, and the sound came near to breaking Winter's heart.

 
          
"I
unbound it," Grey said hoarsely. "All that
Nuclear Circle
once created is gone. But
she
remains." His face twisted with
revulsion—and fear. "I created what I could not control, but I'm no black
magician—I would
not
bind a human
soul into anything I made. She was my— She was our—
I did not bind her here!"

 
          
He
tugged against her grip, but this time Winter held fast. After what had gone
before, there should be nothing left that could kindle her bruised emotions,
but there was one thing left.

 
          
"No,"
Winter said. "I did." Hating, needing, never letting go—
Hate dragged her back. The power of hate.

 
          
Grey
said all five of them together had created the Elemental in its original form.
If that was true, then there'd been something left of Winter in it even after
all those years, enough to let Grey's
magickal
child
break
free of Grey's fragile control and go searching for—

 
          
Their
daughter. "This is my fault. I'm why she's here. Grey, let me go. I have
to go to her."

           
"No." Grey's voice was
tired. "We have to call her in." His eyes met hers. "Can you do it?"

 
          
"Of
course I—" Winter began, and stopped. Could she really? Could she accept
that she'd brushed this life aside out of her own selfish fear and confusion?
Could she accept that its presence here now was a testimony, not to any noble
emotion, but to the strength of her self-obsessed hate? Could she bear to see
herself that clearly? Was she even willing to try?

 
          
And
what was the price of failure?

 
          
"Yes,"
Winter said in a strangled voice.

 
          
Still
clasping her hand—gently now—Grey stooped and lifted one of the stones free of
the circle. "Call her."

 
          
What
name, what name to give to the daughter who had never been? Wordlessly, Winter
held out her hand. The child—a girl on the edge of womanhood, really, and
everything about her an illusion—drifted forward, through the gap in the
circle, and then Winter pulled free of Grey to hold her tightly in her arms.

 
          
Cold, so cold. . . I made a mistake. It
isn't always, not for every woman. If I'd really thought it through I might
have done it anyway. But I should at least have thought hard before I did it!

 
          
Grey's
arms circled them both, and for a moment Winter could feel his thoughts as
well: grief, and self-contempt; an angry guilt that he had not tried harder to
soothe her fears all those years ago, to try to be the man she thought she
wanted.