Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (13 page)

 
          
As
if it were a mundane grace-note to his bleak thoughts, the front doorbell
chimed. Colin ignored it. Among the oaths he had sworn was one to conceal the
very existence of his Order. He could hardly answer the door in all the panoply
of the Light and expect not to raise questions that he could not answer. A
parapsychologist was an odd enough fish on the
Berkeley
campus
—
a working magician would be
beyond the regents' ability to tolerate entirely.

 
          
But
the doorbell continued ringing, a maddening, insistent two-toned chime that
mixed with the heavy patter of the rain. Whoever was standing outside on the
steps must be thoroughly soaked by now, continuing to ring despite the fact
that they received no encouragement from the dark and silent bungalow.

 
          
Who
could it be?

 
          
Reluctantly
—
but with a growing sense of
urgency
—
Colin
removed his habiliments and tossed them quickly into the brass-bound cedar
chest. Grabbing up his wool plaid bathrobe
—
far too warm for the climate
but retained out of sentimental feeling
—
and donning it hastily,
Colin stepped from his study and closed the door.

 
          
The
ringing doorbell had been replaced with a fainter
—
but equally determined
—
banging. Colin switched on
the living room lights and opened the door. Rain hissed down, turning the night
to silver. Claire London stood on the doorstep, looking like a drowned rat.

 
          
Her
hair was plastered to her head. Mascara made faint dark smudges beneath her
eyes, accenting their color and giving her a faintly demented look. Her
camel-colored coat was drenched from shoulders to waist, and heavily water
spotted below that.

 
          
"May
I come in?" she asked. There was no trace in her voice of the urgency that
must have impelled her here, or of any consciousness that she was standing
unprotected in an icy winter's downpour.

 
          
Colin
stood back to allow her to enter. Her loafers made a squelching sound as she
stepped inside.

 
          
"I'm
afraid I'm going to drip on your rug," she said, without any apology in
her voice.

 
          
"Claire,
what are you doing here?" Colin said. "Was it something that couldn't
wait until office hours tomorrow? It seems a bit late for a social call. And on
a night like this ..."

 
          
"Who
cares what kind of a night it is?" Claire snapped. "What I want to
know is why you've decided to ignore me. It's been almost two weeks, and I
haven't heard word one from you. Did you mean anything that you said that
night? Or was it all hand-holding and head-patting?"

 
          
"Let
me take your coat and get you something dry to put on," Colin said,
placatingly. He could deal with the concerns that had brought Claire here once
she was drier; she was risking pneumonia otherwise.

           
As she shrugged off her dripping coat,
Colin turned up the heat and went in search of something for Claire to wear.
The best he could come up with was an old wool fisherman's sweater, and he
brought it back to the living room just as Claire was kicking off her sodden
penny-loafers. She was wearing a jumper with a white blouse so wet now that it
was nearly transparent.

 
          
"The
bathroom's back that way," Colin said, handing her the sweater. "I'll
put on the kettle."

 
          
While
she was gone, Colin took the opportunity to dress again
—
bad enough, should it come
to anyone's attention, that he had an undergraduate of the opposite sex in his
house unchaperoned, without him being in his bathrobe as well.

 
          
When
he returned, Claire was standing in front of the heater, holding her blouse out
to the warmth. She'd rolled up the sleeves of the grey wool sweater as much as
she could, but the sleeves still swam on her, and the hem of the sweater came
down to mid-thigh. She was still wearing her slip beneath it.

 
          
"I
suppose this will dry
—
or at least get less damp. I've never been so glad for
Antron polyester in my life
—
if that jumper had been wool, it'd be ruined."

 
          
He
was becoming used to her mercurial changes of mood by now; they were an attempt
to shield herself from her own feelings, as much as from anyone else's.

 
          
"I
did mean what I said at Alison's, Claire. It's just that I've . . ."
I've
been busy,
Colin wanted to say, but in truth, he could have made the time
if he'd wished to, as he had for Jonathan. His failure to follow up with Claire
was simply more of that queer failure of nerve that he had experienced tonight,
as if some inner heartlight had become extinguished without his noticing.

 
          
"Yeah,"
Claire said cynically. "But it isn't that. Well, it isn't all that,"
Claire emended. "It's
—
there's something else, too, more . . . oh, I don't know
what to say!" She waved her blouse as if it were a toreador's cape.

 
          
"Just
drape that over a chair," Colin said. "I'll make you a cup of
tea."

 
          
"I'll
make it," Claire said firmly. From the look on her face, she hadn't meant
to say anything like that, but she gamely forged on. "If you'll show me
where the kitchen is, at least. I never met a man yet who could even boil water."

 
          
Claire
London knew her way around a kitchen, Colin decided a few minutes later. She'd
unearthed his kettle, run the tap until the water was cold and filled it, and
set it on the coils of the electric stove to heat.

 
          
She
was the most decisively self-reliant person Colin had ever met; the sort of
person who would stubbornly walk off the edge of a cliff rather than ask directions.

 
          
"You
told me to follow my hunches," Claire said. "So I did. Which brings
us to this." She shook loose tea into Colin's brown Rockingham teapot and
poured the kettle's boiling contents over it. "Why am I here? Was it my
idea, or yours?"

 
          
"Not
mine," Colin admitted. "At least, I did not summon you on any
conscious level. And without any great impetus, I don't think you'd have come
out on such a wretched night, would you?"

 
          
Claire
shook her head.

 
          
"So
what does that leave? What sort of things does your Gift tell you?"

 
          
"How
should I know?" Claire burst out crossly. "I don't want the damned
—
darned
—
thing in the first place.
It's lucky, that's all I know
—
lucky for others."

 
          
Colin
regarded her steadily. He could not force her to continue, and he did not want
to coax her. When a psychic saw manifestation of his or her gift as a route to
praise and attention, they would manufacture false information when the true
intuition failed. Colin wanted Claire to listen to her inner self and tell the
truth.

 
          
"I'm
sorry, Claire. I'll explain what I can, but I'm not even a Sensitive, and every
psychic has a different sort of, well, you might call it a knack. I can help
you interpret your experiences, but I can't tell you in advance exactly what
sort of experiences you'll have
—
or why."

 
          
Claire
turned away and poured out the tea into two waiting mugs. Colin added milk and
sugar to his, and reached for a glass jar on the counter. "Have a
biscuit," he invited.

 
          
"A
. . . ? Oh, a
cookie,"
Claire said. She stirred sugar into her tea,
then helped herself to a couple of pink-frosted sugar cookies from the bakery
near the college. Colin waited, hoping she'd explain of her own accord.

 
          
"I've
never been particularly lucky," she said, sipping her tea. "I'm not
complaining, you understand
—
it's just that there are some people who're lucky
—
and they
know it. I'm not like that.
Never was."

 
          
"Go
on," Colin said neutrally.

 
          
"But
I'm lucky for other people, I've noticed. I'm always turning up in the nick of
time with an extra safety pin, that sort of thing. I'll take a bus on a whim,
just to ride around, and end up taking the seat next to someone who needs a
shoulder to cry on. Whenever someone's in trouble, I just seem to be
attracted
to them somehow. Same now. But somehow, Professor, you don't look like
someone in trouble."

 
          
"I
might be," Colin admitted. With an inward sigh, he surrendered to the
guiding hand of fate. "There's something I need to do, and I'm really not
sure how to tackle it."

 
          
"Tell
me about it," Claire said. "I'm good at solving problems
—
other people's problems, at
least," she added.

 
          
"I'm
afraid this might be out of your usual line," Colin began hesitantly.
Claire was on the threshold of her life
—
a life that until now had
not included the truths that Colin had lived with for longer than he could
remember. How to begin, especially knowing that Claire was not bound to the
Path in this life?

 
          
"Toller
Hasloch is holding a Black Mass tonight," Colin said bluntly, "and
I'm not sure what to do about it." As good an explanation as any, for something
that both was and was not a crisis of faith.

 
          
Claire
blinked, though she didn't seem as fazed by Colin's words as he might have
expected. She thought matters over for a minute or so before she spoke.

 
          
"Why
do you
—
I
mean you particularly
—
have to do something about it? Satanism isn't illegal
—
at least, I don't think it
is. 'Do whatever you want, so long as you don't do it in the street and scare
the horses,' as the old saying goes."

 
          
"So
long as no illegal acts are committed during the ceremony, I believe the matter
comes under the Freedom of Conscience heading," Colin admitted.
"Though if you're talking about Satanism, freedom to make a damned
—
and I use the word
advisedly
—
fool of one's self is more to the point."

 
          
"Only
you don't think Toller's joking," Claire said flatly. "Well, neither
do I
—
though
if he is, it's just as bad, since he has a well-deserved reputation for nasty
jokes. You see," Claire said, brandishing a familiar flyer pulled from the
sleeve of Colin's sweater, "I even have an invitation." She shrugged
helplessly, unable to articulate what she felt. "Still, that begs the
question
—
why you?"

 
          
"It's
a complicated question, but I hope you'll forgive me if I have to give you a
simple answer," Colin said. "It's my job."

 
          
Claire
stared at him, cradling her cup of tea in her hands. Obviously, she expected
more.

 
          
"A
number of years ago, probably around the time you were being born, I was over
in
Europe
, but not with the armed
forces. I'd been a student at
Oxford
when Hitler invaded
Poland
in '39- I could have come
home then, but my teachers asked me to stay, knowing I'd be needed. What isn't
common knowledge
—
the Allies kept it pretty quiet, and in their place I
imagine I would have, too
—
was that Herr Hitler didn't only see himself as a
conqueror, but as a messiah. National Socialism was as much a cult as a
political platform, and like any cult, it had its priests and its
rituals."