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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Ghostlight
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Not her baby. Caroline had never had children. And not her sister's, either—Truth was elsewhere in the picture.
Not just other children—
Blackburn's
other children. That was what Aunt Caroline had meant—that Truth Jourdemayne wasn't the only child of Thorne Blackburn.
There were others.
The right side of the picture was torn away, the edge still sharp and white.
As if it were torn recently. Why?
All Truth's anxious study of the image could not produce any more children than her two-year-old self and the months-old infant, but Aunt Caroline had said “children.” Not just the children of Blackburn's followers mentioned so peripherally in the newspapers, but Truth's half brothers and sisters.
“The others. You must find the others.”
It was an effort not to imagine lost children, but this picture had been taken twenty-six years ago; even the baby pictured here would be a young woman now.
Or man. Why do I think it's a little girl? It could be either.
Caroline Jourdemayne would know.
Truth stood up, closing the album. There had to be a phone in Julian's office. She'd call her aunt right now and ask the questions—and hear the answers—that she dreaded.
She had stepped away from the table when the door opened.
“Well. I thought I'd find you here,” Fiona Cabot said triumphantly.
Even in the unforgiving noontide light Fiona Cabot did not look old, but the sunlight disclosed the marks of dissipation and overindulgence beneath the heavy, carefully applied makeup. Her hair, which owed more to henna than to nature, spilled over her bare shoulders; Fiona's off-the-shoulder leotard and designer jeans left precious little to the imagination.
“Good morning,” Truth responded, uncomfortably conscious of what a drab conventional figure she presented next to Fiona's outlaw flamboyance.
“Dug up any good dirt lately?” Fiona purred, edging closer to the table on which the albums lay. Irrationally, Truth felt the urge to protect the photographs from her,
although the plain truth of the matter was that Fiona had as much right as Truth and maybe more to dispose of them.
Fiona flipped open the nearest book. “You were such a beautiful baby,” she cooed, the implication being that Truth had not lived up to her early promise.
“Was there something you wanted?” Truth asked with frigidly correct politeness. Each word was bitten off with the frozen crack of a bough breaking in winter.
Fiona slammed the album shut with a carelessness that made Truth wince inwardly.
“I just wanted to let you know: You may come waltzing in here flaunting your illustrious parentage and thinking that Julian and the whole Circle will fall into your hands, but they won't.” Fiona had moved closer to Truth with every word, until now she was standing far too close. Truth recoiled, having a subliminal flash of something thin and ratlike with long needle teeth.
“Yes, that's right,” Fiona crooned. “You've come to it too late—
my
powers are honed, and what you need to know you'll never have time to learn. Julian deserves his true mate—and that's something you'll never be!” Fiona's blazing green eyes burned into Truth's, until Truth was afraid that Fiona meant to attack her physically.
“Of course, I don't think she'll ever be a toaster oven either, but I don't think it bothers her much,” a male voice drawled.
Truth jerked in involuntary surprise, and Fiona jumped back, turning toward the sound.
Hereward Farrar stood leaning in the doorway, smiling dangerously at Fiona.
“It's all right,” he told her with spurious compassion. “Redheads are supposed to be jealous. Too bad you don't come by the color naturally,” Hereward said.
Fiona glared murderously at him—and then back at Truth, who was regarding her inadvertent rescuer with
relief. Truth could tell when the other woman decided to cut her losses; Fiona stalked from the room, slamming open the other half of the double door and sailing past Hereward as if he wasn't there.
“She's got all the occult power of a coffee filter,” Hereward told Truth confidingly, “so don't worry. It's hard to get women for the Work, though, so in some sense you have to take what you can get,” he added. “Most of the ones who are interested are attitude cases of one kind or another, unfortunately.”
“As the men, I suppose, are not,” Truth commented caustically, still irritated about the morning's earlier conversation with Ellis. “Thanks for the timely intervention, Hereward; Fiona seems to have gotten some wrong ideas about things.”
“She thinks she's got some kind of claim on Julian. She's his Hierolator, that's all. Monogamy and the enslavement of women by marriage are both things that have no place in the Blackburn Work,” Hereward added.
Every time I start to think these people are going to talk sense, they start babbling nonsense.
“Well, thanks anyway,” Truth said awkwardly. What with Ellis, the revelation of the pictures, and the encounter with Fiona, all Truth wanted was to get away and think.
“Sure,” Hereward said. There was another pause, as if Hereward were waiting for her to say something more. She didn't, and he shrugged, turned away, and left.
Truth resisted the temptation to see if the library doors would lock. She compromised by leaning against them for a moment, and found her heart racing as if she'd been running.
Oh, get a grip. They can't kill you. They can't even hurt you
, Truth scolded herself. But suddenly she felt an almost desperate need to get away, a need that forced her out of the library, after first making her peer around the
edge of the half-opened door to see that no other members of Julian's Circle lay in wait.
 
She reached her room without difficulty, only remembering after she'd gained its refuge that Shadow's Gate was apt to play nasty tricks on those who tried to navigate its corridors. She closed the door and turned around.
Someone had been here. The anxiety that Truth had felt downstairs sharpened. She ran over to the bed and yanked up the mattress.
Venus Afflicted
was still there.
Truth stared at it, realizing that the cliché “giddy with relief” was nothing more than a literal description. She took a deep breath, and shoved the grimoire a little farther in before lowering the mattress. The lump of book was almost unnoticeable as Truth smoothed the candlewick coverlet back into place. The reverse of “The Purloined Letter” method; as long as no one thought to look for it, it was safe here.
She looked around. The room was not as she had left it. Now her suitcase was set up on a stand, and the clothing she'd left lying around was set neatly back inside it. Irene. It must be. She could not imagine Fiona doing something so considerate, nor—for other reasons—did she think this was the work of any of the men she'd met last night.
There was a folded sheet of paper lying on the smooth coverlet of the newly made bed. Truth picked it up; it was a sheet of good stationery, covered with firm italic writing in black ink.
My dear Truth
(she read)
I hope that you have had the chance to meditate upon the collection and the company and to decide that the one is valuable and the other harmless. I found you gone when I came by this morning and thought I'd rather leave you a note than take the chance of interrupting your studies. If you need me, I'll probably be in my office, and I look forward to talking to you soon. Julian.
Truth bit her lip in indecision. She needed to talk to Julian about using the collection; she needed to decide whether to stay here or in town. But the thought of staying here long enough to do either of those things made her hands tremble with the need to get
out.
She barely suppressed a scream when she heard the sound of a knock at her door.
“Truth?” a low voice called. Michael.
Truth recoiled, a vivid tactile memory of last night racing over her skin. She was drawn to Michael, but as the moth is drawn to the candle flame—and after Ellis's disclosure this morning she wasn't sure how she could face him without blurting out a bunch of crazy accusations. For that matter, she couldn't bear to face anyone right now.
The tapping came again as she stood frozen in the middle of the room, praying he wouldn't try the unlocked door. But Michael Archangel was a gentleman, and a moment later she heard his footsteps walking away.
When she was sure he wouldn't hear, she bounded over to the door and quickly locked it. Feeling safer now—though how could Michael threaten her?—Truth drew a deep breath.
She needed to get out—out of this house where all these forceful personalities pressed in on her so stiflingly. What had seemed so reasonable in the sunlit library seemed more impossible by the moment, and all Truth could think of was flight.
Truth drew a deep breath. She was honest enough to admit that she was teetering on the edge of panic at this very moment. But that honesty raised more questions than it answered, because she could not think of any explicit reason for her fear.
The voice last night? A dream or maybe an echo from somewhere else in the house. Either way, not an immediate threat.
The misdirection on her way to breakfast? More
interesting than anything else, actually; she knew enough from listening to Dylan to know that “hauntings” fed on the emotions of their victims, and if one could remain detached, a haunting could not harm.
Fiona? The conversation had been unpleasant, surely, but nothing more than that.
Michael? Was it the thought of seeing Michael again that was driving her to panic?
No. Yes. She didn't know. All she knew was that she had to get out of here—get out of this house—before something dreadful happened.
She had to go down to Shadowkill; she had to call her aunt; she had to keep
Venus Afflicted
safe. Clutching her purse to her as if it were a baby, Truth eased open the door of her room and looked anxiously out.
THE SONG OF TRUTH
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
 
 
 
SUCH HIGH GOTHIC TERRORS SEEMED TO BELONG TO another universe the moment Truth started her car down the drive. The noon sunlight sparkled on the rainwashed woods, and Shadow's Gate seemed as harmless and somnolent as some lath-and-plaster Sleeping Beauty's Castle in a California amusement park.
She'd seen no one on her way out of the house. No one stopped her at the gatehouse, and in fact the scrolled iron gates stood open, so she did not even have to stop and open them herself. Once she'd crossed Old Patent Grant Road and was heading down County 13 toward Shadowkill, the last of her anxiety vanished like a bad dream.
She still wasn't certain why she felt that concealment of the grimoire was so necessary, but it was the only thing she
was
still certain of. Possibly Blackburn hadn't been entirely a criminal fraud—Truth wasn't willing to commit herself on that one—but even if you believed
that every ridiculous claim he made was the literal truth, should mere mortals be given the power to storm heaven's gates? Or to think they could?
She spared a moment to try to imagine Gareth wearing the fantastic ritual robes she'd seen in the pictures, but even imagination failed. Gareth seemed far too normal.
But that's the thing. Normal people get caught up in this magickal dreamworld. Why?
No answer was forthcoming, and Truth reached the village of Shadowkill. The little Hudson River town was vivid in the crystal-clear autumn air, and Truth, now calm, decided to tackle her chores in order and drove to the Bed-and-Breakfast she'd been supposed to stay at last night.
 
“Oh … hello. Are you from the insurance?” The woman who had come to the door in answer to Truth's knock was wearing a stained sweatshirt and equally grubby sweatpants, carrying a mop in one hand and a sponge in the other. She looked harried.
“Um, no. I'm Truth Jourdemayne. Mrs. Lindholm?”
“Oh, my God,” Mary Lindholm said. She hesitated, biting her lip. “Well—come in.” She held open the screen door.
Truth stepped into the foyer and instantly saw what was behind Mrs. Lindholm's reluctance.
“What … happened?” she said, stunned.
“What didn't?” Mrs. Lindholm said bitterly. “Part of the roof blew off, the water heater exploded, the pipes burst—God alone knows why, at this time of year—and—well, see for yourself.” She gestured sweepingly. “It's a good thing you weren't here last night—you might have drowned.”
The walls bore a high-tide mark as of a great outrushing of water. The wallpaper was crinkled and bowed, obviously soaked through, and the ceiling was soggy, cracked, and seemed to sag downward.
“So if you want your room …” Mrs. Lindholm said helplessly.
“Um, no,” Truth said. “In fact, I came to apologize for wimping out on you at the last moment, but some friends have invited me to stay, and—” She listened to herself spouting this plausible half-truth with a sort of detached amazement. She hadn't come here meaning to say anything of the sort—and while, after seeing the water damage here at Mary Lindholm's, she knew she couldn't possibly stay here, there was always the prospect of another B-and-B in the area, or even a chain hotel.
Mrs. Lindholm gave her a weary smile. “Actually, I'm glad you didn't show up last night, all things considered. And if you see an insurance adjuster out there anywhere, send him up, will you?”
“Sure,” Truth said, bidding Mrs. Lindholm a grateful farewell.
It was only after she was in her car and driving away that she remembered her dream of the night before:
“Come thou elemental prince, Undine, creature of water—”
Coincidence
, Truth told herself firmly.
It was raining outside—why shouldn't you dream of rain?
The faint nagging feeling that there must be some connection between her dream and the condition of Mary Lindholm's Shadowkill Bed-and-Breakfast was easy to dismiss; science was a great believer in coincidence.
She parked in the public parking located in the center of town and set off on foot. The October sun, unseasonably strong, was a welcome warmth on her shoulders, and the brightly decked shops on every side gave a welcome respite from the problems plaguing her.
A rumbling in her stomach reminded her that coffee and bread at eleven wasn't much in the way of either breakfast
or
lunch. Truth stopped at a sidewalk deli and bought a salad and coffee. Sitting at one of the outside
tables provided for customers, she caught sight of a green-and-white sign that told her what her next stop must be.
 
The Shadowkill Public Library was housed in a turn-of-the-century building that had the grandiose architectural ornament common to public buildings of that period. Since Shadowkill was a rich township, its library did not suffer the cheeseparing and overcrowding common to area libraries—a new modern wing in bland limestone angled off at the back, and the interior of the older building was beautifully kept.
“Excuse me, is there a public phone here?” Truth asked the librarian at the information desk.
The librarian pointed, and Truth detoured to an alcove where a bank of public phones stood. It took several minutes of juggling purse, wallet, and phone card before she managed to put her call through.
“Hi, this is Janine,” an unfamiliar voice said brightly.
“I'm sorry; I must have dialed the wrong number,” Truth said.
“Were you trying to reach Caroline Jourdemayne?” the voice asked carefully.
Truth felt a sinking sensation. “Yes.”
“She's asleep right now,” Janine said. Truth took a deep breath of relief. “If you want to call back after four, she should be awake then. I'm Janine Vaughan, Ms. Jourdemayne's aide.”
“I'm Truth Jourdemayne,” Truth said. “Is she—”
“Oh, you're her
niece
!” Janine said excitedly. Truth felt privately that nobody could possibly be that pleased about everything, but it was probably a defense mechanism against working with terminal patients all the time.
“How is she?” Truth asked.
“Oh, about the same,” Janine said, her tone flattening a little. “She's still pretty alert. Dr. Vandemeyer doesn't think he'll have to move her to the hospital just yet.”
“Well, that's good,” Truth said. What else was there to say? “I'll call her back later.”
“Shall I tell her you called?” Janine asked animatedly.
“No,” Truth said. “I don't want her to worry when everything's fine. I'll call her back.”
“After four,” Janine said.
Truth hung up the phone and walked slowly back to the information desk.
Her first impulse had been to run to Aunt Caroline for information, but now she saw that she should think carefully before acting on impulse. Aunt Caroline was frail, dying, her mind possibly clouded by drugs. Truth would have to frame any questions she posed in a manner that wouldn't cause Aunt Caroline to be unnecessarily upset.
Whatever way that might be
, Truth thought with a glint of black humor. What
was
the tactful way to open a discussion about the number and current location of Thorne Blackburn's bastard children?
“Excuse me,” Truth said, returning to the pleasant woman at the desk. “Do you have a local history collection?”
 
A few minutes later Truth sat at a small table in a long room on the second floor of the library. Folders full of dusty newspaper clippings were piled high at her elbow.
“That's everything we have in the clipping files on Thorne Blackburn and Shadow's Gate. Don't mix up the files,” local history librarian Laurel Villanova said.
“I won't,” Truth promised. “There's just one more thing. Would you have anything on the …”—she cudgeled her memory for the name—“on the old Elkanah Scheidow patent grant?”
“Oh, you want the early history material.” Laurel's brow cleared. “I think there are a couple of books in the noncirculating collection. Let me go check.”
Laurel left. Truth paged through the file on Blackburn's life as reported by
The Shadowkill Times-Reporter,
The Poughkeepsie Journal, The Albany Times
, and other area papers. There wasn't anything much that she hadn't seen before: Blackburn had resided in Shadowkill for about eighteen months, during which time he'd fought constantly with the town council and had minor skirmishes with the Dutchess County Sheriff's Department. She put the wad of clippings dealing with her mother's death back into the folder unread. There might be more about Blackburn's children in them, but there would be time enough to face them later. After all, she had waited more than a quarter of a century already.
The second file, the one on Shadow's Gate itself, was more interesting. The earliest clippings were dark brown and flaked when she touched them. The paper had been called
The Shadowkill Times Eagle
then, and the earliest clipping in the folder dated back to 1934.
“Here you are,” Laurel said, coming back with three books. “This should give you what you need.”
“Thanks,” Truth said, handing back the file on Blackburn. She settled down with the remaining folder and the books and began to read, taking notes as she did so.
 
A few hours later Truth looked up from her note-taking, working the cricks out of stiff shoulders and back. She'd found what, subconsciously, she'd hoped and expected to find, and wondered what she ought to do next.
The house called Shadow's Gate that she'd stayed in last night had been built, as she'd thought, out of an excess of High Victorian Gothicism in 1881—the same year, oddly enough, as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral which signified the end of the Wild West. It was the fourth building on the site, the first being Scheidow's own 1648 house and trading post, of which only engravings survived. Those pictures showed a typical seventeenth-century Dutch frontier home, built of mortar and local stone, small, low-roofed, and narrow-windowed.
The second house on the site of Scheidow's
gehucht
,
or hamlet, had been built in 1714 and also survived only in pictures—the British had burned it to the ground during the Revolutionary War, sometime in the 1770s.
Of the building which must have occupied the site for some part of the next hundred years she found no record at all.
It would have been easy to dismiss the sources that spoke of the current building as the
fourth
house, not the third, save that there were so many of them—and if there really had been no house here for over a century, why did every source on the 1881 house speak of it as a
re
building of Shadow's Gate? Surely the name would not have survived so long, attached to an empty field?
For that matter,
when
in this period had the name of the early town been Anglicized and transferred to the house? The Scheidows—variously spelled—had certainly remained in the area. In fact, the Schydows, Skydoes, Cheidows, Cheddowes, Shaddows, and Shatterses—names culled from the Shadowkill genealogy the librarian had brought, still filled several columns of the local phone book and continued as an active presence in local affairs.
Most of the information Truth had came from one book:
A History of the Early Days of Scheidow's Kill
, written by Matthew Cheddow, descendant, and privately published in 1923. Matthew had been living in Shadow's Gate at the time, and in the rambling fashion of amateur historians, had included a chapter on his house. She went back and looked at it again. Yes, there it was:
Incorporating what he could of the original foundation, the builder began work on this, the fourth house to grace Ancestor Scheidow's lovely rural coign, in 1878.
She scanned a few paragraphs more and found something else.
The underground stream, whose spring had proved so beneficial to early settlers but whose chthonic waters had proved so challenging to previous builders, was carefully reinforced with a sub-basement before building began once more on Elkanah Scheidow's original site. The spring was incorporated into the design of the house.
How?
Truth wondered. She turned back to her other source:
Hudson Colonial Days, With a Brief History of the Scheidow and von Rosenroth Patent Grants
, and took another look at the original map of the area. Yes, there was a spring indicated, just about where the modern house stood. Each house had been built near—or over—that spring.

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