Ghostlight (14 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Ghostlight
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That meant that Shadow's Gate was built over an underground stream.
In some way that parapsychological researchers were only just beginning to understand, most psychic manifestations involved some aspect of magnetism—from dowsing, which seemed to relate to the ability to sense almost infinitesimal changes in the Earth's magnetic field, to psychokinetic—poltergeist—activity, which generated a magnetic field strong enough to stop watches and blank recording tape at the same time it flung chairs and dishes through the air. Dylan even claimed you could magnetize ghosts, although Truth wasn't quite sure how you could test a hypothesis like that.
But she did know that in a significant proportion of all cases of haunted houses, it was found that the houses had been built over underground streams, springs, or covered wells. There was something about water that either unlocked the forces of the Sixth Sense or drove people crazy. Truth wasn't sure which.
But she thought she had the answer to part of the riddle of Thorne Blackburn.
It wasn't that he was a great magician with the occult powers he claimed.
It was that he'd bought a haunted house.
It was not an hypothesis that would commend itself to everyone, Truth supposed, but parapsychology was her field, and she'd far rather spend her time trying to map paranormal activities than to—
Invoke undines, the elemental spirits of water?
Truth pushed the thought away. Maybe Julian had been doing just that—in
Venus Afflicted
, as she had reason to know, the first four of the ten rituals were called “Crowning the Elemental Kings”—but even if he had done that ritual it didn't mean that an actual Elemental had objectively gone and destroyed Mary Lindholm's house.
But it was awfully convenient, wasn't it? Because now you're going to have to ask Julian if you can accept his kind offer after all—and stay at Shadow's Gate.
That was ridiculous.
She didn't have to.
She
wanted
to.
Truth separated her notes from the books and clippings, and went to find the local history librarian.
Laurel Villanova was carefully paging through a back issue of the
Times Eagle
when Truth approached.
“Done already?” she asked.
“For today,” Truth said. “I might want this material again later in the week, though.”
“I'll keep it out for you, then,” the librarian promised. “Is there anything else you'll need?”
“I'll let you know,” Truth said. “I don't really know myself, yet.”
“Well, if there's anything I can do,” Laurel said, rising to let Truth out of the office.
 
Truth realized that she had only the foggiest idea of the time as she stood on the library steps. Though sunset
was hours away yet, the air held the clear, water-glass promise of twilight. She stuffed the day's notes willy-nilly into her shoulder bag and headed for the car at a rapid pace, as eager to get back to Shadow's Gate as she had been to leave it earlier. Julian must think she'd fallen off the face of the earth.
She reclaimed her car without too much trouble—it was silly, really, to drive when the center of town was two miles, at most, from the house. She'd know better next time.
She drove in through the gatehouse—Gareth waved—and on up to the house. Parking the car next to a white Volvo station wagon and a black BMW she suspected of belonging to Julian, she locked her Saturn carefully before skipping up the steps to the house. On an impulse, she tried the door before ringing the bell, and found it unlocked. She stepped inside.
“Truth. A word with you, if I may?”
Michael. With the sound of his voice all the psychic weight of the house descended on her again, and the serenity that her afternoon in Shadowkill had lent Truth vanished in a seething rush of apprehension.
She turned around. Michael Archangel stood in the hall, grave and cool and formal as she had always seen him, but once again she had the quick fearful vision of a panther chained by lightnings.
“Certainly.” What else could she say?
“By the way, I hear you're a member of the Inquisition; turned any good thumbscrews lately?”
He'd think she'd lost her mind.
“Why don't we go out to the garden?” Michael said.
He led her out a side door onto a tiny terrace tucked into a corner of the house. It had a bench, table, and chairs on it, and looked like a lovely place to linger when the weather was warmer, but the setting sun cast it in shadow now, and Truth shivered just a bit.
“It will be warmer in the sun,” Michael promised, leading her down the steps.
Here, directly behind the house, something remained of the formal gardens that must have surrounded the fourth Shadow's Gate in its heyday. Flagged walkways were edged with rosebushes and flower beds settling now for their yearly sleep. To the right, across a perfect expanse of green now raked clear of the storm's detritus, the severe geometric shape of what Truth knew from her researches to be a labyrinth created of boxwood hedges formed a smooth, dark green wall. One of the paths led in that direction, and Michael followed it.
“You seem somewhat more reconciled to us than you did last night,” Michael said.
“Do I?” said Truth.
I suppose familiarity breeds contempt.
“Julian says that you are a scientist. A parapsychologist.” Michael rolled the word around in his mouth as though he'd never heard it before.
“My specialty is statistical parapsychology; you could say I've specialized in learning to see what's there.”
And nothing else.
“Yet those who are the most rigorous in their examination of the merely physical world miss much: the beauty of a poem, the song of a lark—”
“If I can file the poem and record the lark I'll settle for not appreciating them,” Truth said curtly. “My field is facts. How long have you known Julian?” she asked, moving to the attack.
“Oh, quite some time,” Michael said easily. “He has accomplished a great deal in a very short time—and wishes to do more. He is a man of great power.”
“Occult power, you mean?” Truth asked, fencing for a way to turn the question around to Michael.
“Why should I praise him according to the standards of a system in whose existence you refuse to believe?” Michael said, smiling.
“But in which you believe?” Truth asked.
Michael smiled. “If I said yes, you would discount everything else I have to say.”
“Which is?” The question bordered on rudeness and Truth was sorry for it, but the last thing she wanted just now was another round of ritual-cloak-and-sacred-dagger.
“Often we find ourselves determined to know things when to know nothing would be the wiser and happier course—not only for ourselves, but for those around us,” Michael began. “It is not that learning is, in and of itself, wrong, but—”
“But there are things that Man was not meant to know?” Truth shot back.
“Would you give a baby a loaded gun?” Michael said quietly. Truth was stung to silence by the image he'd presented, and Michael continued. “No. No one would. But a grown man may handle a gun safely, although the potential for abuse and sorrow is still enormous. If I tell you that there are things which exist, which have existed from the creation of the world, things that Man may someday wield, but which his wisdom is not yet great enough to bear—”
“I don't think you—or any other person—has a right to draw the line between things that can be studied and things that can't. There is nothing which cannot be studied.”
Michael smiled. “There speaks the voice of Science.”
They had reached the edge of the maze. Truth stopped, and looked back toward the house, but if anyone was watching them from its various windows she could not see them.
“I don't think that happiness is more important than knowledge. And I don't believe in magick,” Truth said flatly.
“If you do not believe in magick—in the supernatural—how can you believe in evil?” Michael's voice came from behind her.
Shadow's Gate cast long slanting rays of darkness
across the lawn. Truth took a deep breath and counted to ten before she spoke. How could a mere two miles' drive in her car make so much difference to how she felt? She'd be seeing ghosts and fairies next.
“I do not wish to disparage your beliefs,” she said, turning to face Michael, “but in my book, the only evil in the world comes from what people do to other people and there isn't a damn thing supernatural about it. There is no such thing as magick—there are only natural laws that we don't yet fully understand.”
“And if I told you that such a thing—magick—exists outside your laws?”
“Then—I'm sorry—but I would have to tell you to have a nice day. I don't share your beliefs.”
“And so you will stay to learn that of which you would have been happier to remain in ignorance. For I tell you this and truly: If magick is evil, there is evil here. And sorrow.”
Truth opened her mouth—and closed it, firmly. “I have to go now. I guess I'll see you at dinner, Michael?” she said with determined diplomacy.
“Of course,” he said with grave courtesy.
She turned to go back to the house.
“And, Truth?”
She stopped.
“Have a nice day,” Michael said without a trace of humor.
 
Truth reached the house minutes later in a state of simmering fury that her colleagues at the Bidney Institute had long since learned to recognize and walk softly around.
How
dare
he make fun of her? Lead her on, force her to listen to all sorts of stupid mystic psychobabble, spout clichés too tired even for “B” movies, and then, when she tried to be polite, twist her own words and use them to mock her! She would
not
be mocked—how dare he raise his eyes to such as she was … .
She lunged up the stairs and twisted savagely at the knob of the terrace door. It opened and she passed into the house, coming within a hair's breadth of slamming the door behind her.
He was going to be sorry. Was he trying to make her leave Shadow's Gate? She'd take out a long lease. Were there things Man was not meant to know? Lead her to them. So you shouldn't give a baby a loaded gun? She'd give it a bazooka. She'd—
“Truth. There you are,” Julian said warmly. He crossed the foyer and took both her hands in his. “You're so flushed. Have you been running?”
Her raging arrogance vanished like a popped bubble at the warm touch of Julian's hands, and for a moment she was dizzy with the suddenness of the change. What had she been thinking?
Or was the question,
who
had been thinking?
“Only running around in circles,” she said to Julian, with an unforced smile. “I'm sorry to have missed you earlier, but I had to go down into town for something and I just got back.”
“Will you be staying, then?” Julian asked. He was still holding her hands, his fingers moving slightly, stroking her wrists.
No!
Truth cried mentally. Not when something in this house seemed to turn her into a madwoman each time she crossed its threshold!
“Well, as a matter of fact, I was going to ask you if I could—if the offer was still open,” Truth heard herself say. “I know it's—”
“Wonderful,” Julian finished firmly. “The others will be delighted—especially Fiona. She was just telling me how much she likes you.”
I just bet
, Truth thought. But her decision was made. And even if it wasn't the one she'd meant to make, she was curiously reluctant to change her mind now. “So—great. I'll spend the next week—probably the next month—
going over what you have on Blackburn and getting my notes in order. Damn—I should have brought my notebook computer with me.”
“I'm afraid it wouldn't work very well here,” Julian said. “The power supply, as I told you, is very irregular, and batteries lose their charge too fast to be of any real use. I can loan you a manual typewriter, if you like, and we do have a copier—you may make copies of anything you like, as long as the electric is working.”
He was still holding her hands, and tension of another sort was growing in her, driving out the confusion and anger with a warmer and purely mundane emotion. Her fingers curled in Julian's, and she felt suddenly shy.
“Great,” Truth said. She'd taken notes by hand all through school; it wouldn't be that hard to go back to it for a while. And she'd ask Meg to send her computer anyway, just in case.
“And stay as long as you like,” Julian went on warmly. “It cannot have escaped your notice that my—resources—are not easily taxed. I would be honored to provide any help I can to your work.”

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