Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (96 page)

 
          
There
were knives of gold and silver and stone
—
whips braided of a curious
fragile leather with small triangles of lead tied into the thongs
—
a refrigerator and sink
—
a small alcohol lamp,
waiting ready for use beside boxes filled with hand-cast candles
—
an acetylene torch
—
a cabinet that looked
mundane enough to hold vestments, and probably did. Bile rose up in the back of
Colin's throat. The enormity of what he saw crushed the breath from his lungs.
Everyone
talks,
Colin had told Dylan, and it was true. Once someone entered this
room, all choice would be gone. You would talk, and then you would die, for the
greater glory of Hasloch's Luciferian dream. A dream that was stronger than any
one man's ability to oppose it.

 
          
The
faint flicker of movement
—
the gentle movement of breath
—
finally caught his
attention. In one corner of the room there was a cell, perhaps four feet deep.
It was made of heavy diamond-paned steel mesh, painted institutional green.
Colin had nearly missed it; the room was so full of things he did not wish to
see clearly. Even the slenderest prisoner could not fit more than a fingertip
through its holes; there was no lock, only a simple drop-latch on the outside
to keep the door shut. Whoever was held here would have nothing to do except
contemplate the equipment in that room and think about its purpose. The
ghastly refinement of cruelty was like the signature of a familiar artist.

 
          
Numbly,
exhausted by the strength of his revulsion, Colin walked over to see who
—
or what
—
was inside. He swung the
simple latch up and slid the door back on its tracks.

 
          
Rowan
Moorcock lay on the floor of the cell, one arm flung up to cover her face. She
was wearing a long-sleeved white turtleneck and jeans. If not for that, Colin
might not have seen her at all, might have mistaken the mesh for the door of
another storage cabinet. Stiffly, he knelt beside her, dreading what he would
find, and pulled her arm away from her face.

 
          
But
she had not been harmed
—
at least not in any physical fashion that Colin would see.
Her long red hair was still neatly braided. The white shirt was grey now with
dust along the cuffs and elbows, but she was still fully dressed,-down to her
scuffed white sneakers. There was no blood on anything.

 
          
But
Colin could not wake her.

 
          
She
did not have the reflexes even the sick or the drugged would possess.

           
Her pupils did not contract when
Colin shone his pocket flash into them, and when he took her pulse he could
feel her heart beat with the slow, measured regularity of one in deep trance.
She breathed as if she were asleep
—
or as if her body, alone,
were present.

 
          
Colin
knew already that Rowan was a strong Sensitive, and that made her vulnerable in
ways that an ordinary person, or even a trained Adept, was not. If she had
unwarily opened herself to the taint of this shrine, the shock might have
blasted her spirit free from her body and doomed it to wander the Overlight
until her body died
—
the same fate Colin had once attempted to engineer for
Hasloch.

 
          
But
if this were indeed merely the insensate animal shell left behind after an
accident
—
or deliberate destruction
—
of that sort, Colin did not
think Hasloch would have bothered to keep it. If Colin knew his old enemy at
all, Hasloch still had plans for Rowan, and that meant that Rowan was here.

 
          
Somewhere.

 
          
If
it had been possible, Colin would simply have carried her out of here and worried
about trying to summon back her wandering spirit later. But he could not lift
her, much less carry her down that long shaft to the elevator and the surface.
And there was no help he could summon
—
Farrar would certainly be
gone by now, even if Colin were willing to risk retracing his steps to go in
search of him.

 
          
The
police? It was all-too-possible that if he called them, Colin would be merely
summoning Hasloch's allies. His only real chance to get Rowan out of here was
if she could move under her own power.

 
          
There
was a way.

 
          
The
powers for which Colin's Order stood guardian were the secrets of Life Itself
—
those powers that welled up
from the dark heart of Nature, carrying such risk to their user. Colin MacLaren
was both Magician and Priest, and none knew better than he of the dark
temptation of Power unfettered by Duty. Here in the enemy's stronghold, tempted
to despair and hatred, there was an immense temptation to use the forces he
could summon to blast the Evil out of existence
—
but to do such a thing was
to invite the corruption of those Secrets entrusted to him, which would mean
ultimate ruin in a future Colin must take on trust.

 
          
Could
he take up the Power
—
and then set it aside, even in the face of defeat, death,
and ruin?

 
          
Was
he as strong as that?

 
          
Colin
drew a deep breath.
Not my will,
he prayed.
Not my will. I resign all
my will, in perfect love and perfect trust. No matter how absolute defeat
looks, I will not doubt Your ultimate and unknowable goodness. . . .

 
          
He
took Rowan's hand in his, his long fingers closing over her wrist, measuring
the slow pulse. With his free hand he sketched a Sign upon her forehead
—
a Sign of such Power that it
would summon back the soul to the body that was dead, not merely to one that
slept. He felt her pulse flutter as her heart began to beat to a faster rhythm.

           
But she still resisted, unwilling to
be called back to that excruciating reality from which she must have tried so
desperately to escape. What he had dared so far had not been enough.

 
          
There
were stronger magicks in his arsenal, but to wield them would be to incur a
debt that not he, but Rowan, must repay. To force her into such an unbreakable
obligation without her will or consent would be Black Magick indeed, leading
to nothing but evil. As he had promised, he must be willing to fail.

 
          
Or
he must have her consent. . . .

 
          
"Rowan,"
Colin said aloud. "Rowan Moorcock. Do you hear me?"

 
          
Hear
me, Child of the Light, by the Light that is in you . . .
Colin said
silently. He closed his eyes
—

 
          
And
he was home, once more.

 
          
The
Field of Stars lay outside the City of the Sun, outside the
Temple
precinct that a thousand
generations of exiled Adepts had recreated in the Over light in memory of their
lost homeland. The soft swell of its hillside was covered with the tiny blue
flowers that gave the place its name.

 
          
Why
was he here? This was not the place he had expected to find Rowan. Hurt, in
shock, she would have retreated to whatever place her deepest mind considered
safe: a childhood playground, perhaps, or some image gleaned from movies or TV.

 
          
Had
the magicks of Hasloch's temple led Colin astray
—
or was this a summoning from
a Higher Power, bidding him to attend?

 
          
Colin
looked around himself carefully, trying to gather the meaning of what he saw.
Where was the one who had summoned him? Why
—
if he had been called
—
did he not now stand without
the great gate of the
Temple
of the Sun?

 
          
As
he gazed out across the field, toward the desert and the distant mountains beyond,
he saw that a cowled figure stood waiting among the flowers. The maiden wore
the simple white robe of the Scribe, that caste from which the Priests and
Adepts of the City of the Sun took their disciples.

 
          
She
was waiting for him.

 
          
For
him.

 
          
Waiting
for her master, for the Adept who would set her feet upon the Path. Waiting
for the one who would entrust to her his deepest secrets, his power, who would
trust her absolutely. . . .

 
          
A
woman
—
!
Colin felt a sense of profound shock, even as he recognized the penetrating
peal of the Astral
Bell
. And not just any woman,
but one who was already known to him.

 
          
Rowan
Moorcock.

 
          
Her?
How could it be her? How could I have known
of
her for so many years and
not known
her
at all? But it is said "when the student is ready,
the Teacher will appear." Have I been waiting all these years for her to
be ready? her?
It was not, he told himself as he sternly mastered his shock
and amazement, unheard of for a woman to become an Adept. The man who was in
this life known as Colin MacLaren had known many such through his lives; there
were women even in his own Order. But he had never thought that the disciple he
had sought through all
his own long years might be a woman. And Rowan,
of all women, was the one he would least have sought: facile and frivolous,
glib and superficial
—

 
          
Blindness.
And arrogance. My besetting sins, in more lives than this,
the Adept
remembered sadly. Here and now, in this moment of greatest peril, the Great
Book of Life was open to him, the pages stark and clear for him to read.

 
          
"Choose
now, Riveda."
The deep and awesome voice seemed to come from everywhere
at once, its tone as deep and penetrating as that of a bell.
"For this
moment the Book is open for you to read, that you may know how the Black can become
Grey, and the Grey become White at last."

 
          
And
Colin saw all the lives he had lived before this
—
the lives lived beneath the
Adept's great burden: of Knowledge dedicated to Service alone. And he saw the
karmic burden that had bound him to the Wheel for a thousand lifetimes. . . .

 
          
In
the Great Hall of the
Temple
of
Light
, a man stood in chains
—
a tall man, with grey hair
and piercing rain-grey eyes. He had been condemned to death by those who had
once been his peers, condemned for black transgressions against the Law. Healer
and Priest he had been, but for him, that had not been enough. In his
arrogance, he had done first good work
—
returning the Grey-robes to
their rightful path as scholars and healers
—
but in his unwillingness to
relinquish the completed task, Riveda had gone too far, had reached for the
power of the very Gods, meddling in the blackest mysteries of blind Nature. He
had bowed his head to no Law save that of his own devising, and now in
punishment he must bow down to the greatest Law of all: Death.

 
          
Through
the Mercy Cup he would go unrepentant into the Night, and the harm he had done
in his life would continue on, until it had destroyed the very physical fabric
of the Temple and the City beyond, scattering its priests into the young
kingdoms that lay beyond the City's gates.