The Gates of Sleep em-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  He couldn’t see the young man’s face in the darkness, but he didn’t have to. This young man was a stout young fellow, a real Devonian, honest and trustworthy, and loyal to a fault. And not to Madam. Allies. Allies and spies, of the sort that Madam is likely to disregard. By Heaven—

  “Thank you, Peter,” he said heavily, and then hesitated. “There might be things you wouldn’t know to look for—”

  “Cook’s second cousin’s your cook,” Peter interrupted, in what appeared to be a non sequitor. “And your cook’s helper’s my Sally’s sister, what’s also her niece. Happen that if someone were to come by the kitchen at teatime, just a friendly visit, mind, and let drop what’s to be looked for, well—the right people would find out to know what to winkle out.”

  Good God. Country life… connections and connections, deep and complicated enough to get word to me no matter what. “I may not know anything tomorrow—perhaps not for days,” he warned.

  “No matter. There’s always ears in kitchen,” the young man asserted, then seemed to feel that he had said enough, and settled back into silence for the rest of the journey, leaving Andrew to his own thoughts. Thoughts were all he dared pursue at the moment. He didn’t know what had been done, and he didn’t want to try anything magical until Marina was safely inside triple-circles of protection. He certainly didn’t want to try anything with the girl held in a stranger’s arms, a stranger who might or might not be sensitive himself.

  All he could do was to monitor her condition, and pray.

  Andrew rubbed at gummy eyes and started at a trumpet call.

  No. Not a trumpet call. He glanced out of the window behind him, where the black night had lightened to a charcoal gray. Not a trumpet call. A rooster.

  It was dawn, heralded by the crowing of the cook’s roosters out in the chicken—yard.

  He turned his attention back to his patient, who could too easily be a mannequin of wax. Marina lay now, dressed in a white nightgown, like Snow White in the panto-face pale, hands lying still and cold on the woolen coverlet, in a bed in a private room at the back of Briareley, a room triply shielded, armored with every protection he knew how to devise. And she lay quite without any change from when he had seen her at Oakhurst, silent and unmoving but for the slight lift and fall of her breast. She lived—but there was nothing there, no sense of her, no sense of anything.

  No poison was in her veins, no blow to the head had sent her into this state. In fact, he found no injury at all, nothing to account for the way she was now. In desperation, he had even had one of the most sensitive of his child-patients awakened and brought to her, and the boy had told him that there was nothing in her mind—no dreams, no thoughts, nothing. “It’s like she’s just a big doll,” the child had said, his fist jammed against his mouth, shaking, eyes widened in alarm. “It ain’t even like a beast or a bird—it’s just empty—” and he’d burst into tears.

  Eleanor had taken the boy away and soothed him to sleep, and Andrew had known that he wouldn’t dare allow any more of his patients to sense what Marina had become. He racked his brain for a clue to his next move, for he had tried every thing that he knew how to do—ritual cleansing, warding, shielding—his medical and medical-magic options were long since exhausted. As the roosters crowed below the window, he sat with his aching head in his hands, pulling sweat-dampened hair back from his temples, and tried to think of anything more he could do. The fauns? Could they help? Would growth-magic awaken her? What if—

  Someone knocked on the door, and opened it as he turned his head. It was Eleanor, whose dark-circled eyes spoke of a night as sleepless as his own. “There’s someone to see you, Doctor—” she began.

  “Dammit, Eleanor, I told—” he snapped, when a tall and frantic-looking man with paint in his red-brown hair and moustache pushed past her, followed by another, this one dark-haired and tragic-eyed, and a woman who could only have been his sister, eyes red with tears.

  “God help us, we came as soon as we could,” the man said, “We’d have telegraphed, but the fauns only found us last night—and they were half-mad with fear. So we came—”

  “And we felt what happened,” said the second man, as the woman uttered a heart-broken cry and went to her knees beside Marina. “On the train. Christ have mercy—how could we not have!”

  “Fauns?” Andrew said, confused for a moment. “Train—” then it dawned on him. “You’re Marina’s guardians?”

  “Damn poor guardians,” the tall man said in tones of despair. “Sebastian Tarrant, my wife Margherita, her brother Thomas Buford. Lady Elizabeth’s on the way; we left word at the station where to go, but half the town already knows Marina’s here, and the other half will by breakfast—oh, and she’ll sense us, too, no doubt.”

  “It’s the curse,” the woman said, lifting a tear-stained face. “It’s the curse, right enough. Damn her! Damn her!” and she began to cry. Her brother gathered her to his shoulder, trying to comfort her, and by the look of it, having no success.

  “Curse?” Andrew asked, bewildered by the intruders, their sudden spate of words that made no sense—the only sense he had was that these people were the ones he had sought for, Marina’s guardians. “What curse?” There was only one thing he needed, needed as breath, to know. “What’s happened to Marina? I’ve tried everything—”

  “Stronger Masters than you have tried everything, and the best they could do was to warp that black magic so that it sent her to sleep instead of killing her,” Sebastian Tarrant said gruffly, and patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. He glanced at the bed, and groaned. “And there’s nothing we can do in the next hour that’s going to make any difference, either.”

  Andrew shook his head, and blinked eyes that burned as he squinted at the stranger’s face, trying to winkle out the sense of what he was hearing. A curse… a curse on Marina. But—who—how—why? The man’s eyes shone brightly, as if with tears that he refused to shed. “You look done in, man,” Tarrant continued. “Come show me the kitchen and let’s get some strong tea and food into you. I’ll explain while you eat; you aren’t going to do her any good by falling over.”

  Sebastian Tarrant’s will was too strong to be denied; Andrew found himself being carried off to Briareley’s kitchen, where he was fussed over by cook and seated at the trestle table where a half dozen loaves of bread were rising, a mug of hot black tea and a breakfast big enough for three set in front of him. He ate it, untasted, as Sebastian Tarrant narrated a story that—if he had not seen Marina—would have sounded like the veriest fairy tale. A tale of a curse on a baby, an exile to keep her safe, and all the plans undone. A tale of blackest magic, sent from a bitter woman who should have had none—

  “And now I’m sorry we didn’t follow her here, and damned to Madam,” Tarrant said, the guilt in his face so overwhelming that Andrew didn’t have the heart to take him to task over it. “But we were afraid that if we showed our faces in the village, Arachne would take her somewhere we couldn’t follow, or worse. At least while she was here, we figured that Arachne hadn’t worked out a way to make her curse active again, and we knew she wouldn’t dare try anything—well—obvious and physical in front of people who’d known and served Hugh and Alanna. And the child didn’t write, so we had to assume that Arachne was keeping too close a watch on her for us to try and contact her that way.” Tarrant rubbed at his own eyes, savagely. “Dear God, how could we have been such cowards, such fools?”

  “But—what is this curse?” he asked finally. “How on earth can something like that do what it did?”

  “You tell me how someone without the least little bit of magic of her own could create such a thing,” Tarrant countered, wearily, running his hands through his hair and flaking off a few bits of white and yellow paint. “Not a sign, not one sign of the Mastery of any of the Elements on Arachne or her son—so where is the magic coming from? And how are they able to channel it, if they aren’t Masters and aren’t sensitive to it? But it’s there, all right, if you know
what to look for, or at least I saw it—the curse-magic is on Marina, like a shield, only lying right under her skin, a poisonous inner skin—a blackish-green fire, and pure evil—”

  Pure evil The words hit him between the eyes and he gaped at the stranger. “Pure evil? Pure evil?” he repeated, as all of the pieces fell together.

  Ellen—Madam and her son—the curse—the pottery in Exeter—curses, and black magic, in the traditional and legended sense of the words.

  And the stories, the accounts in those old traditions of the Scottish Masters—the tales of Satanists.

  And yesterday, Marina had gone to the pottery in Exeter, looking for whatever had attached itself, lampreylike, to Ellen with the purpose of draining her. What if she’d discovered black magic there, the Left-Hand Path, which needed no inborn abilities to walk? What if Madam realized that Marina was about to unmask that evil?

  And if Madam and her son were Satanists, if they had set up the pottery as a place where they could batten on the energies of the marginally gifted as they were poisoned, physically and spiritually—that could be the source of the power behind the curse. That would be why no one had seen any signs of Power on or around them. They didn’t have any power until they stole it, and once stolen, they had to discharge it immediately, store it elsewhere, or lose it.

  And that would be why Andrew could not unravel the dreadful net that ensnared Marina. It was like no magic he or any Master he knew had ever seen before. Certainly nothing that any Master still alive had seen before. Ah—still alive—

  As it happened sometimes when he was exhausted, the answer came in a flash of clarity. Still alive; that was the key to this lock, the sword to sever this Gordian Knot. Because there were Masters of the past who had certainly seen, yes, and even worked to combat such evil.

  And to a Master of Earth, the past was an open book.

  “My God,” he breathed—a prayer, if ever there was one. “Tarrant, I think I have an idea—”

  “Well, I’ve got one, at least,” Sebastian interrupted him. “Thomas and Margherita are Earth Masters themselves—not strong ones by any means, but one thing they can do is, keep Marina going. We’re fresh; you’re not. Do you want to get to work on this idea of yours now, or get a spot of rest first?”

  He wanted to work on it now, but what he was going to try would need every bit of concentration he had. “I need to go look through my magic books,” he decided aloud. “There’s one in particular I need to find, what used to be called a grammar in Scotland and Northumberland and—” he shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll find it, make sure it’s the one I need, then I’ll drug myself. I’ll need my wits, and you’re right, if I don’t get a couple of hours of rest, I won’t have them about me.”

  “Good man.” Tarrant nodded approval. “We’ll make sure Marina’s all right, you can leave that to us. What about the rest of your patients?”

  “Eleanor can see to them—did you say your wife is an Earth Master? Would she be willing to help?” he asked, desperate for anything that might take the burden off his shoulders during this crisis.

  “When Lady Elizabeth gets here, I’ll tell my wife to have your nurse Eleanor show her what to do, and I’ll send someone down to the village to telegraph for some more help,” Tarrant promised. “There’s not a lot of us out here in the country, nor powerful, but we’re Devonians, even those of us who weren’t born here. When need calls, we answer.”

  “But—the telegraph—?” he replied, puzzled.

  Tarrant fixed him with a minatory glance. “Why use power we should save for helping her to do what a telegraph can do, and just as quickly?”

  Andrew winced; it was one of his own Master’s constant admonitions. Why use magic to do what anyone can do? Save it for those things that hands cannot accomplish, ye gurtfool.

  He closed his eyes as a moment of dizzy exhaustion overcame him, then opened them. “Me for my old books, then—” he shoved away from the table.

  “If you’ve got any clues, Doctor, you’re miles ahead of the rest of us,” Tarrant said, his jaw set. “And if you’ve the will and the strength and the knowledge—then you let the rest of us take your burdens off you so you can do what needs to be done. We’ll be the squires to your knight if that suits you.”

  He nodded, and headed for his own room at a run, his steps echoing on the staircase as he made for the second floor. An apt comparison, that. Perhaps more so than Sebastian Tarrant dreamed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  AS Andrew sat on the edge of his bed and depressed the plunger on a syringe containing a very carefully minimized dose of morphine, he reflected that somewhere in Scotland, his old Master was rotating in his grave like a water-powered lathe. The old man wouldn’t even take a drop of whisky for a cold; he was a strict Covenanter, and how he could reconcile that with talking to fauns and consorting with brownies was something Andrew had never quite managed to get him to explain.

  Well, the old boy had a phobia about needles as well; he couldn’t stomach the sight of anyone being injected, much less someone injecting him, and still less the thought of what Andrew was doing, injecting himself. Andrew pulled the needle out of his arm, and the tourniquet off, and felt the rush of immediate dizziness as the drug hit his brain. He didn’t like doing this—he was nearly as against it as his old Master!—but it was the only way he was going to get any sleep.

  Which I really should do now—he thought dimly, lying down.

  Five hours later—long enough for the morphia to have worn off—Eleanor shook him awake. He had the luck to be one of those who came awake all at once, rather than muzzily clambering up out of sleep. “There’s no change, Doctor,” she said sadly as he sat up, pushing the blanket aside that someone had laid over him. He hadn’t expected there to be any change—but if only—

  “But Miss Roeswood’s guardians have been wonderful,” Eleanor continued. “Mrs. Tarrant is so good with the children, and Mr. Buford has charmed the lady guests—and gammoned them into thinking he’s a specialist-doctor you brought in especially to see that they were all right.” She brightened a little at that, for the “lady guests” were especially trying to her. And, truth to tell, to Andrew to a certain extent. There was always the worry of keeping what the real patients were up to away from them, and the fuss they tended to cause as they recovered from their exhaustion, becoming bored but not quite ready to leave. “Oh, and Lady Elizabeth Hastings is here as well. She kept the telegraph office busy for a solid hour, I think.”

  He nodded; that was a plus. Say what you would about the old aristocracy, but they were used to organizing things and pushing them through, used to taking charge and giving orders. That was one area, at least, that he would not have to worry about. Lady Hastings had obviously got the more mundane aspects of the situation well in hand.

  And right now, he wanted to concentrate solely on the grammary he’d extracted from the old trunk he’d brought with him from Scotland. He’d even put it under his pillow for safekeeping before letting the drugs have their way with him. Now he drew it out, a dark, leather-bound volume of rough-cut parchment; it dated back to before the first James—probably to the time of the Scots queen, Mary. There were no actual dates in it, but Mary had brought courtiers with her from France and had been raised and educated there—and at that time, there was something of a fad for Satanism in the French Court. Some of the Masters of the time blamed it on the Medici influence, but Andrew was inclined to think it went back further than that. There had been enough suspicious deaths and illnesses in the French Court for centuries to make him think that there had been a dark influence there from almost the time of Charlemagne.

  He pulled the book out and held it; bound in a soft leather that had darkened to a mottled brown the color of stout, it was entirely handwritten, part journal and part spell-book. Sebastian had taken one look at it and pronounced it a grimoire, rather than a grammary, which at least meant that the artist recognized it for what it was. Andrew could never think of
the book without thinking of the old ballad of “The Lady Gay”:

  There was a lady, and a lady gay, of children she had three. She sent them away to the North Country, to learn their grammary.

  Most, if not all, scholars thought the song meant that the children were being sent to learn reading and writing. Little did they know the song spoke of the long tradition of wizards and witches of the North Country, who fostered the children of Masters and taught them the Elemental Magics that their parents could not… a tradition which Andrew himself had unwittingly replicated, though he’d gone up to Scotland rather than the North of England.

  He shook himself out of his reverie. He was going to need a protector while he worked his magics, and for that, he thought, Sebastian Tarrant would be the best suited. Despite not being of the same Element as Andrew, Tarrant had more of the warrior in him than either his wife or brother-in-law. If they could strengthen Marina and pick up his duties—

  He pulled on a clean shirt and went to find the newcomers—and predictably, two of the four were with Marina. As Eleanor had said, Margherita and Thomas were—God bless them!—tending his patients. Sebastian and Lady Elizabeth were at Marina’s side, and both stood when he entered.

  And the moment he laid eyes on Lady Elizabeth, he knew that she would be better suited to guard his back as he scryed into the past than Sebastian.

  In fact, he had to restrain himself from bowing so deeply over her hand that he looked like a fop. He did take her extended hand, and he shook it carefully. “You must be Lady Hastings,” he began. “I’m Andrew Pike—”

  “We haven’t time for formalities, Doctor,” she said crisply, before he had done more than introduce himself. “What is it you wish us to do?”

  He nodded gratitude, and hoped she saw it as he released her hand. “I’m going to use this to scry into the past, Lady Hastings,” he said, holding up the book that was tucked under his other arm.