Ghostlight (11 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Ghostlight
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“I look forward to it,” Julian said, smiling with intimate meaningfulness.
“I'll just go make sure everything's ready for Truth in her room, and then pop off down to the Temple, shall I?” Irene said. “I'll say good night now, dear.”
Irene got up from her place and came around to where Truth sat, leaning over to kiss her upon the cheek. Truth reached up and patted the beringed hand resting on her shoulder, biting back a sudden upwelling of tears. She was tired, that was all. That explained everything. Everything.
“Good night, Aunt Irene,” she said aloud.
Irene Avalon walked from the room bearing a candlestick before her like a flaming sword.
“Are you feeling strong enough to work tonight, dear?” Julian asked Light.
“Oh, yes!” Light responded.
Truth glanced at her. There was no doubt of Light's sincerity; her eyes sparkled in the candle flame and her delighted smile was entirely genuine.
“But won't you come too, Michael?” Light asked plaintively, turning to him. “You never do.”
“And I never will,” Michael Archangel told her kindly. “Each tailor to his own last.” He got to his feet.
“And each cat to his own rat,” Julian said. “We'll leave Michael to find the truth in his own fashion, and hope we can encourage our Truth to join us,” he finished punningly. Michael acknowledged the remark with a bow and a slight smile and left the room. He didn't bother to take a candle.
Oh, well, I suppose he's been here long enough to know the house.
Truth drained her coffee cup and stood. She could sense an undercurrent of anticipation among the remaining people at the table, an eagerness to be on about their business, or, rather, Thorne Blackburn's business.
“I'll say good night,” she said. “It's been a pleasure to meet all of you.”
But not much of one, all things considered.
“I'll light your way,” Ellis said, walking to the sideboard for another candlestick and lighting it from one of the ones burning upon the table. It seemed that the display Truth had thought only for show was entirely practical after all.
Not having a strong enough aversion to Ellis's company to make a scene, Truth followed him out. As she left the room, she could already see the other five drawing together in secret council.
Just like in some kids' club with passwords and secret
decoder rings
, Truth scoffed to herself through a faint tinge of jealousy. It was never pleasurable to be excluded from something, even if it was something you didn't really want to belong to.
Truth kept a tight rein on her imagination as she went up the wide stairs with Ellis. The candle flame seemed to conjure dancing animal shapes out of every corner, and despite the fact that she
knew
they were illusions, she flinched each time one seemed to spring.
Ellis, too, was wary, walking as if these imaginary dangers were real, and Truth's unease fed on his. She was very glad when they reached the door of the room Irene had given her earlier to rest in. The door swung inward at her touch, and Truth could see that Irene had indeed been here, turning down the bed and leaving a candle in a glass chimney burning on the bedside table.
Ellis stepped back for her to enter. The candlelight cast the curves and hollows of his face into sharp relief, making it a Mephistophelean mask. As he turned to go, Ellis hesitated.
“This is an old house, and so old advice seems best. Believe only half of what you see, and nothing of what you hear.”
Before Truth could frame a suitable rejoinder to this, he turned away and left her standing there.
 
As soon as the door closed Truth lifted the mattress.
Venus Afflicted
was there, just as she'd left it. She felt obscurely relieved, as though there were danger all around her which she was avoiding merely by dumb luck. After a moment's hesitation, she lowered the mattress again, leaving the book where it was.
A gust of rain struck the window with a faint drumroll, followed by the flash-and-flash-again of two lightning strikes nearly on top of each other.
Truth winced, hoping the storm wouldn't keep her awake all night. Though the Hudson River Valley was
famed as a mother of storms, there were usually more of them in the summer than in the fall. There'd be precious little fall color this year if the storm blew all the leaves off the trees now.
By the light of her single candle, Truth made ready for bed, hanging the blue dress up neatly in the empty closet. She tried to review the day's events and put them in some sort of mental order, but every time she tried they went spinning out of her grasp. Should she stay at Shadow's Gate as Julian seemed to expect? It would make her research easier—and though she wished now she'd never considered writing a book about Thorne Blackburn, she'd told so many people of her plans that she'd look very foolish backing out on them now.
She hated to look foolish, no matter how many times she told herself that other people's opinions didn't matter. And she certainly wasn't going to give up her project on the basis of nothing more than some sort of anxiety attack!
Such ringing declarations were all very well, but how closely should she ally herself with this new Circle of Truth? To do so might be to destroy her credibility as a serious researcher; on the other hand, information on them would be a valuable sidelight to Blackburn's bio, but then again—
A jaw-stretching yawn reminded Truth that she was in no shape to consider these matters now. Everything would seem clearer after a good night's sleep, anyway.
Truth slid into her borrowed bed and blew out the candle.
 
Some unknown time later Truth wrenched herself to wakefulness from a vivid dream of water. Welling up from the earth, falling from the sky … Random scraps of dreamed conversation skirled through her mind:
“Come thou elemental prince, Undine, creature of water: Thou who was before the world was made—”
But the dream was not what had wakened her. Truth stared into the darkness, every sense straining to the utmost to discover what it was that had roused her. The rain had stopped, and a scent that managed to be sharp and cloying at the same time filled the silent room, making her throat dry and ticklish.
Incense
, Truth realized.
It must be coming up through the vent from somewhere else in the house.
Hadn't Irene mentioned there being a temple on the premises?
That she could smell the incense in her room meant that there had to be a vent connecting the two—somewhere. Maybe she could close the one in here before the incense smell permeated every article of clothing she'd brought.
If there were matches with the candle her touch-search of the area around it failed to find them, but by that time her eyes had adjusted enough to discern a faint glow coming from the wall near the floor—the vent opening she sought.
Now to close it. Truth climbed out of bed and went over toward it. Just as she had thought, the scent of incense was strongest here, making her eyes water with its intensity. She crouched down on her heels, running her hands over the metalwork to see if she could close it.
“Get
out
!” The voice was loud: masculine, angry—and inches from her face.
Truth flung herself backward in reflex, stifling the scream that threatened to burst from between her tightly clenched teeth. She scrabbled away from the wall on heels and elbows, conscious only of a desire to put as much distance between herself and the voice as she could.
She cracked her head painfully against the bed frame, and the sudden pain shocked her into rationality, although it did little to stop the racing of her heart.
There was no one behind the grate.
The voice had not been talking to her.
It was only a freak of the house's acoustics, carrying a voice from elsewhere into her ears.
There was no one there—
no one
!
She believed that, Truth told herself. But after she scrambled back into bed, clutching the covers up to her chin, she lay awake, stiff and trembling in the darkness, until the sky turned gray with dawn.
THE MIRROR OF TRUTH
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
 
 
 
THE NEXT TIME TRUTH AWOKE THE SUN WAS HIGH IN the sky. She stretched creakily, wondering why she was so stiff. Suddenly memory of the events of the previous night clicked into place; she glanced around and located the vent she had crouched beside. It looked harmless in the morning light, its white-painted grille nothing more than the covering for a duct of the kind that abounded in these old houses. Harmless.
Had it only been her imagination? A dream perhaps, brought on by the rich food and strange surroundings? Truth got out of bed and crossed to the window, looking out. The day was crystalline, blue and untroubled, and the only evidence of last night's storm was the new patterns of wet autumn leaves blown in drifts across the lawn.
She glanced at the watch on her wrist and groaned. Ten thirty! She'd hoped to catch Julian this morning at breakfast and settle matters between them. Even though
she hadn't quite made up her mind to accept his offer to stay at Shadow's Gate, at least she could have worked out some kind of schedule for her use of the collection.
On the other hand, one of the others might be able to tell her where he was, and whether he was busy. She dressed hurriedly in an olive cotton sweater and khaki skirt, and gazed in dismay around the room's disorder. It seemed that every item in her suitcase and train case both had been unpacked and left strewn around the room. How had she managed to make such a mess in just one night?
Well, she could just take care of it later. After she saw Julian.
She stepped out into the hall and headed downstairs. On her tour of the house yesterday afternoon she had seen no other arrangements, so she assumed that breakfast would also be served in the dining room. At least that would be the place to start looking. She wondered why Irene or Ellis hadn't mentioned a time for breakfast last night; she could have set her alarm, something she ought to have done anyway.
 
Several minutes later Truth was staring at an unfamiliar hallway in puzzlement. The wallpaper was dark cream with a pattern of flowers in blue, completely unlike the blue-and-white stripe in the hall outside her own room. She didn't recall seeing it on yesterday's tour, either. She ran her fingers lightly over the wall; the covering beneath her fingers shifted and crackled, as if it were old and dry; neglected as nothing else she had seen in Shadow's Gate had been.
How had she gotten here? The path from her room to the stairs was very straightforward: down to the end of the hall, turn right, and the stairs were at the end. The picture of the dark oak newel posts carved with acanthus leaves was sharp in her mind.
The stairs had to be around here somewhere.
She backtracked, feeling certain she should be able to at least find her room again, and instead found herself faced with a narrow, unfamiliar flight of stairs going
up.
This is ridiculous. I was up and down that front staircase twice last night—and I haven't taken any stairs this morning.
Truth frowned. Julian had certainly hinted heavily enough that Shadow's Gate was haunted, and this kind of spatial disorientation was a common “symptom” of the kind of paranormal events associated with so-called haunted houses.
Of course, getting lost might also simply be the result of a combination of too little sleep and too much incense—assuming she hadn't dreamed it. But no, her room had still smelled faintly of incense when she'd awakened this morning. For a moment Truth's mind flicked back to that disembodied voice of the night before. Had it really happened—and if so, was it an indication of a haunting?
Even allowing for the voice being natural instead of supernatural, it presented a pretty puzzle. Who had been speaking and who had been being told to get out? She didn't think the speaker had been either Julian or Michael, and she hadn't heard the other men talk enough to be certain about identifying their voices.
By a determined counting of steps and turns, Truth regained first the familiarly patterned wallpaper and then her own bedroom door.
She looked back the way she had come. The hall looked “normal” up to the turn—and at the moment, Truth wasn't willing to go and check what might lay beyond. She stood with her back to her door for a moment, consciously calling up a picture in her mind of the route to the stairs before setting off again. This time she found them easily—the only mystery was how she'd managed to miss them in the first place.
As she started down she glanced again at her watch and felt a sick pang of alarm lance through her.
The watch's hands registered eleven o'clock, and the steady motion of the second hand testified to the fact that her battery, at least, was still working.
Only she'd left her room at about eleven, and she'd been wandering through the halls looking for the stairs for at least twenty minutes.
How could it still be eleven o'clock?
 
By the time she reached the dining room Truth had pushed this latest disturbing addition to her steadily growing list of questions to the back of her mind. She couldn't come up with answers to these puzzles alone—and it was starting to become disturbingly apparent that no one here in Shadow's Gate would have any answers to give her that didn't involve the intercession of Thorne Blackburn.
Oddly enough there was no scent of incense anywhere on the ground floor, although almost certainly the Temple must be here. She wondered exactly where the Temple was, and thought with a traitorous flutter in the pit of her stomach that undoubtedly it wouldn't be at all difficult to get Julian to show it to her.
The doors to the dining room were open; when she glanced through them she was surprised to see Ellis Gardner, presiding over the deserted table like a reigning monarch. He smiled when he saw her.
“Well, my dear, you're up early. Come, have some coffee—the power came back on sometime in the early hours and Mr. Hoskins has provided us with the necessities. We're less formal than at dinner, you will note.”
He gestured to the basket of rolls and the thermal carafe on the table. On the sideboard, the silver candelabra of the night before had been replaced by stacked cups waiting, hotel-style, for use.
“There's no need to be quite so offensive,” Truth said, selecting a cup from the sideboard. “I know it's after eleven, but I overslept.”
Somehow
, the small inward voice commented.
Ellis's eyes opened wide in genuine surprise. “My dear girl—or should it be ‘woman' in these decadent days?—I meant it in all sincerity,” he protested. “I didn't expect to see anyone else for hours yet. Between Julian's all-night rituals and Michael's all-night prayers, there's usually not a creature stirring here before two in the afternoon.”
“Prayers?” Truth asked, sitting down within reach of the coffee. Praying seemed an odd occupation for a magician.
“Oh yes, indeed,” Ellis said with relish. “Our fallen Archangel is not what he seems—but then, the Roman collar is a trifle archaic, fashionwise, and does tend to put people off, so its omission should come as no surprise.” Ellis pushed the carafe toward her.
“You're saying he's a priest,” Truth said. She picked up the pot and poured, and the rich fragrance of freshly ground and freshly brewed Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee surrounded her. She inhaled deeply.
“A lay brother, merely,” Ellis said with arch courteousness, “serving in some humble capacity with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—or, as it was formerly known, the Holy Office of the Question.”
“Michael's a member of the Inquisition?” Truth said incredulously, once she'd sorted out what Ellis had said. “You've got to be kidding!” She'd never seen anyone who looked less like a priest—or an Inquisitor.
“If I must, I must,” Ellis said dismissively. “But you might ask him sometime who he is, and what he's doing in Julian's library. Oh, and you might ask why he and Julian have concocted that silly cover story between them.”
Ellis had the look of one who wanted to be badgered into giving up his secrets, and though Truth wasn't certain that she had the stamina for it this morning, under the tonic influence of coffee she decided to take a stab at it.
“Okay, Ellis, I'll bite: What cover story?”
Ellis paused to sip at his coffee—or, judging from the smell, coffee and brandy. She remembered what Julian had said last night about Ellis's drinking. Apparently it was both heavy and chronic.
“That Michael and Julian are old friends. They aren't, you know. I've known Julian longer than anyone here, and I can swear to that,” Ellis said.
“‘And why are you telling all this to me, a traveling musician'?” Truth asked, quoting W. S. Gilbert to good purpose.
“‘I spend my time walking up and down in the world, seeing what mischief I may perform,'” Ellis responded, capping her quotation with one of his own. “And as you're Thorne's daughter, I felt you ought not to operate under so much of a handicap.”
While she was no more resigned to that relationship, Truth was certainly becoming more desensitized to it through these constant reminders of it by everyone she met.
“Did you know Thorne Blackburn?” she asked. She wondered what imp of perversity possessed her to act so against her own deepest desires. She certainly didn't want to hear about Blackburn over morning coffee.
And she was pretty sure the answer would be no, anyway—Ellis looked to be in his forties, not old enough to know a man who had died twenty-six years before.
“I met him once,” Ellis answered, surprisingly. “Nineteen sixty-seven; I was seventeen. The Glass Key opened for him on the East Coast leg of the Universal Mystery Tour.”
The Universal Mystery Tour had been Thorne Blackburn's melding of music and magic; six weeks of barely controlled chaos; Blackburn's last big public display before vanishing into the wilds of Upstate New York.
“So you're an ex-rock 'n' roll star?” Truth asked, trying for a light touch. It was hard to believe, looking at Ellis's tweedy professorial bearing.
“Every man and every woman is a star,” Ellis said, “as Nietzsche didn't precisely say. I was their drummer; in fact, I think there are some pictures of Glass Key in the collection—Thorne used to photograph everything, and Julian found several albums full of old photographs here when we moved in.”
Ellis's face was wistful, looking back to a time that had held more of joy and meaning than the present did.
“Ellis, why are you here?” Truth asked intently.
He blinked, focusing on her once more. “Where else should I be? The heart has its reasons.” He gestured, waving the question away. “But you'll be wanting to go about your father's business. A word of advice first, if I may.”
Truth, struck spellbound by the change in his manner, nodded assent.
“First, remember that the old saying ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend' is not so very often true. Beware our friend Michael: Ultimate goodness has so little in common with humanity that it might as well be its opposite.”
“And second?” asked Truth, with what she felt was admirable composure.
“When dealing with that which you do not understand, to thine own self be true. Honesty is the best policy, so remember that you are human, dear Truth—or nearly so.”
Ellis moved with the expert grace of the veteran actor, and so he had crossed the room before Truth realized he was moving. The closing of the dining room door behind him followed so neatly on the end of his exit speech that it took Truth a moment to realize what he'd said.
“Remember you're human, or nearly so?” What the hell is that supposed to mean?
It was, she supposed peevishly, another piece of the great Blackburn riddle. Everyone here must have some sort of connection to Blackburn, even though Julian,
Gareth, Donner, Caradoc, and Hereward—and, to be fair, Fiona—could only have been children when Blackburn had been alive.
And, dammit, she hadn't had a chance to ask him about Julian.
She brooded through a roll and a second cup of hot coffee, filing Ellis's cryptic and unbelievable revelations and warnings about Michael in the same mental folder as all the peculiar things that had happened to her since she got here.
If they'd really happened. If she weren't just having some kind of causeless breakdown.
She lingered as long as she could bear to but no one came to join her. The only sounds anywhere were the faint clinks and thumpings of food preparation coming from the kitchen, and she was forced to the conclusion that Ellis was at least being accurate about the household's nocturnal habits. Julian was probably still in his bed. The entry hall and the stairs above held nothing but silence when Truth made her cautious way from the dining room to the room housing the Blackburn collection.

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