The Gates of Sleep

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And I do mourn for them, as I would for any good folk who were my distant friends.”

  But not as much as I mourn to be separated from my aunt and uncles. She couldn’t help the involuntary thought; she wondered, with a pang of the real despair that she couldn’t muster up for her own parents, how long it would be before she could even get a letter to them.

  The girl Ellen made an inarticulate cry of horror, turning to point at nothing off to the side of the road, and any reply he might have made was lost as he turned to her. And then came the next surprise.

  She watched in astonishment as a glow of golden Earth magic rose up around him, a soft mist that clung to him and enveloped both him and his patient. And when she looked closely, she was able to make out the shields layered in a dozen thin skins that enclosed that power cocoonlike about them.

  She felt her mouth dropping open.

  What—

  Brownie snorted into her hair, startling her. She snapped her mouth shut before he could notice her reaction.

  Good gad—an Earth Master! Here! Why had Alanna never mentioned that the doctor was an Earth Master?

  Because she didn’t know?

  Had her parents ever even met Dr. Pike face-to-face? She didn’t recall a mention of such a meeting, if they had. But surely they would have noticed another Earth Master practicing his magics practically on their doorstep!

  Maybe not. Those shields were good ones, as good as anything Elizabeth Hastings was able to create. Maybe better; they were like thin shells of steel, refined, impeccably crafted. So well-crafted, in fact, that she hadn’t actually seen them at first.

  I’m not sure I’d have seen him raising power if I wasn’t used to seeing Earth Masters at work.

  And Alanna seldom left Oakhurst, except on errands to the poor of the village. It wasn’t likely she’d have encountered Dr. Pike on one of those.

  She heard more horses approaching, as the girl responded to the healing power of the Earth energies Doctor Pike poured into her by sighing—then relaxing, and showing the first evidences of calming.

  Another cart, this one slightly larger and drawn by a pair of shaggy Dartmoor ponies, stopped just behind Dr. Pike’s; and three people, two men and a woman, carefully got out.

  They were perfectly ordinary, and what was more, they didn’t seem to notice anything different about Dr. Pike as they approached him. If they had been mages themselves, they would have waited for him to dismiss the energies he had raised before reaching for the girl—which they did, and Marina had to stifle a call of warning.

  “Wait a moment,” he cautioned, just before their fingertips touched the outermost shield. “Let me get her a bit calmer first.”

  Let me take this down before you do me an injury, you mean, Doctor. But he was as quick to disperse the unused power as he had been to raise it in the first place, and within moments, his shields had contracted down to become one with his very skin.

  Oooh, that’s a neat trick! I wonder how he does it?

  “Here, Ellen, look who’s come to take you back home,” he said, carefully putting two fingers under her chin, and turning the girl’s face toward the attendants.

  Once again, although Marina would have expected her to react with fear, the girl Ellen smiled with relief and actually reached out for the hands of one of the men and the woman. More than that—she spoke. Real words, and not animal keening or moans.

  “Oh, Diccon, Eleanor—I’m sorry—I’ve had one of my fits again, haven’t I?” There was sense in her eyes, and although her hands trembled, her words indicated that whatever had turned her into a mindless, fear-filled creature had passed for the moment.

  “Yes, Miss Ellen,” the man said, sorrowfully. “I’m afraid you did.

  And we was stupid enough to have left you alone with the door unlocked.”

  Her tremulous laugh sounded like it was a short step from a sob. “Well, don’t do that again! I’m not to be trusted, remember?”

  But Doctor Pike patted her shoulder, and said admonishingly, “It isn’t you that we don’t trust, child. It’s the demons in your mind.”

  Ellen only shook her head, and allowed herself to be bundled into blankets and a lap robe in the cart and carried off.

  Doctor Pike watched them go, then turned to Marina.

  “That poor child is one of my charity patients,” he said, and his voice took on a tinge of repressed anger. “Her cousin brought her here—the poor thing worked in a pottery factory as a painter, and she’d been systematically poisoned by the people who make their wealth off the labor and deaths of girls just like her!”

  For a moment, she wondered why he was telling her this—did he know about Arachne and her manufactories?

  But how could he? The villagers didn’t know; they all thought, when they thought at all, that Arachne must own something like a woolen mill. Surely Dr. Pike had no idea that she had heard about the dangers of the potteries from the other side of the argument.

  And I’d believe the doctor a hundred times over before I’d believe Madam.

  The doctor continued, the angry words spilling from him as if they had been long pent up, and only now had been able to find release. “They use lead-glazes and lead-paints—the glaze powder hangs in clouds of dust in the air, it gets into their food, they breathe it in, they carry it home with them on their clothing. And it kills them—but oh, cruelly, Miss Roeswood, cruelly! Because before it kills them, it makes them beautiful—you saw her complexion, the fine and delicate figure she has! The paintresses have a reputation for beauty, and they’ve no lack of suitors—” He laughed, but there was no humor in the laugh. “Or, shall we say, men with money willing to spend it on a pretty girl. They might not be able to afford an opera dancer, or a music hall performer, but they can afford a paintress, who will be at least as pretty, and cost far less to feed, since the lead destroys their appetite.”

  She shook her head, sickened. Yes, she knew something of this—because her Uncle Sebastian had warned her about the danger of eating some of his paints, when she was a child. And there were certain of them, the whites in particular, that he was absolutely fanatical about cleaning off his hands and face before he went to eat.

  Yes, she believed Dr. Pike.

  His voice dropped, and a dull despair crept into it. “Then it destroys everything else; first the feeling in their hands and feet, then their control over their limbs, then their minds. And there is nothing I can do about it once it has reached that stage.”

  No, he can’t heal what has gone wrong when the poison is still at work inside the poor thing! But—what if it was flushed out? Can Water magic combined with Earth do what Earth alone cannot? She felt resolve come over her like armor.

  “Perhaps you cannot,” she said, making up her mind on the instant. “But—perhaps together, you and I can.”

  With that, she raised her own shields, filled them for just a moment with the swirling green energies of water. Then she sketched a recognition-sigil that Elizabeth had taught her in the air between them, where it hung for an instant, glowing, before fading out.

  And now it was his turn to stare at her with loose jaw and astonished eyes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MARINA moved back to Brownie and pulled the reins out of the hedge where she’d tossed them. A small hail of bits of twig and snow came down with them. She took her time in looping the reins around her hand and turning back to face the doctor.

  He bowed—just a slight bow, but there was a world of respect in it. She was very glad for a cold breeze that sprang up, for it cooled her hot cheeks.

  “It seems I must reintroduce myself,” he said, then smiled. His smile reached and warmed his eyes. “Andrew Pike, Elemental Master of Earth.”

  She sketched a curtsy. “Marina Roeswood, Elemental Mage of Water,” she replied, feeling oddly shy.

  Now he looked puzzled. “Not Master? Excuse me, Miss Roeswood, but the power is certainly within you to claim that distinction. And forgive my asking
this, but as one mage to another, we must know the strengths of each other.”

  “The strength? Perhaps. But not, I fear, the practice,” she admitted, dropping her eyes for a moment, and scuffing the toe of her riding boot in the snow. “I only began learning the magics peculiar to my Element a few months ago, and then—” She looked back up. “Doctor Pike, this is the first time since I was taken from the place that I considered my home that I have been able to even think about magic without a sense of—well, nervousness. I can’t think why, but there is something about my aunt that puts me on my guard where magic is concerned. I thought it was only that I didn’t know her, and I am chary of practicing my powers around those who are strangers to me, but now I am not so sure.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully, holding out his hand, but not to her—a tiny glow surrounded it for a moment, and she was not surprised to see his horse pace gravely forward until its nose touched, then nudged, his hand. He caressed its cheek absently.

  “I don’t know anything about the magicians of this part of the country,” he admitted. “Is she, perhaps, the antagonistic Element of Fire?”

  “She’s not a magician at all, so far as anyone can tell. I have never seen anything about her that made me think that was not true. And again, I thought that might be the reason for my reluctance, because I have been taught to be wary around those who do not have the gifts themselves—but even in the privacy of my own rooms, I cannot bring myself to summon the tiniest Elemental.”

  “Still—if she is the antagonist Element, but has been equally reluctant to practice around you because of possible conflicts that could only complicate your situation with her?” he persisted.

  She frowned at him. “Possible, but there are no signs of it, none at all. As for the antagonistic Element, I’ve lived with my Uncle Sebastian all my life, and the worst clash we ever had was over which of us got the last currant bun at tea.” She tilted her head to one side, as his expression turned thoughtful.

  “In that case—could it simply be that you resent your aunt’s interference in your life?” he hazarded, then shook his head. “You must forgive me again, but I am accustomed to asking very uncomfortable questions of my patients. Very often the only way for them to begin recovery is to confront uncomfortable, even painful truths.”

  “I thought of that, but—” she would have said more, but the sound of another horse’s hooves approaching from the direction of Oakhurst made her bite off her words. Curse it—she thought, knowing immediately that it must be one of the servants, or Reginald, or even Arachne herself come looking for her. “Dr. Pike, I spend every Wednesday afternoon with the vicar playing chess,” she said hurriedly, thinking, All right—it was only one Wednesday, but surely I can turn it into a regular meeting. And she had no time to say anything more, for around the corner came Reginald, riding one of the hunters, a big bay beast with a mouth like cast iron and a phlegmatic temperament. Riding easily, too, which she would not necessarily have expected from someone she thought of as a townsman. His riding coat and hat were of the finest cut and materials, but she would not have expected less.

  “Marina!” he called, his voice sounding unnecessarily hearty, “I thought I would ride down to meet you. Is there anything the matter?”

  “Nothing at all, Reggie,” she said smoothly. “This is Dr. Pike of the Briareley Sanitarium. We’ve had a chance encounter—Dr. Pike, this is my cousin, Reginald Chamberten.”

  “It was something less convenient for Miss Roeswood, I am afraid,” Doctor Pike said, as cool and impersonal as Marina could have wished. “One of my patients took unauthorized leave, and Miss Roeswood here was kind enough to detain her long enough for my people to arrive, persuade her that all was well, and take her back.”

  Reggie’s eyebrows assumed that ever-so-superior angle that Marina had come to detest. “Well, Doctor, you’ll have to do better about keeping control of your patients! Dangerous lunatics running about the neighborhood—”

  But Pike interrupted him with an icy laugh. “What, a little girl, frightened out-of-doors by a loud noise? Hardly dangerous, Mr. Chamberten. I do not keep dangerous patients, only those whose delicate nerves are better served by pleasant surroundings in the quiet of the countryside. And, sadly, a few who are, alas, in no condition to take notice of anything, much less leave their beds.”

  “Hmm.” Reggie looked down his handsome nose at the doctor, and seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in being his arrogant worst. “Still, patients escaping—frightening young ladies—”

  “I was hardly frightened, Reggie,” Marina objected, suddenly tired of her cousin’s little games. “I was far more concerned that the poor child didn’t run off into the fields and come to grief. Even Brownie was more indignant than startled when she popped up under her hooves.” Reggie’s eyes narrowed, and she decided that it was politic to say no more. Instead, she put her foot in the stirrup and mounted before either man could offer her help. No small feat in a corset and long skirts—and into a sidesaddle; delicate young ladies accustomed to fainting at the least exertion couldn’t do it. She thought she saw a brief flash of admiration in Dr. Pike’s eyes before he returned to his pose of cool indifference.

  “Still, letting your patients run off like that strikes me as careless,” Reggie persisted.

  “When the patients are themselves unpredictable, it is difficult to imagine what they are going to do in advance,” the doctor replied in a tone of complete indifference. “That is one of the challenges of my profession. And if you will excuse me, I had better get on with my business so that I can get back to them. Thank you again, Miss Roeswood. A pleasure to meet you. Good day, Mr. Chamberten.” With that, he hopped into his little gig and sent the horse briskly down the road toward the village.

  “The cheek!” Reggie muttered, glaring after him.

  “He’s a doctor, cousin,” Marina retorted, tapping Brownie’s flank with her heel, and sending the horse back toward Oakhurst. “I believe arrogance even to the point of rudeness is required of them, like a frock coat. Otherwise they lose that air of the omniscient.”

  Reggie stared at her for a moment, then burst out with a great bray of a laugh, startling his horse. “Oh, well put, little cuz,” he said, in tones that suggested he would be patting her head if he could reach it. “Now, the reason I came down here in the first place was because the mater and I had an early tea, and we’re going to be going off for a day or two. Not more than three. Business, don’t you know, a bit of an emergency came up—we’ll be taking the last train tonight. Mater’s left orders with the servants to take care of everything, and Mary Anne has been put in charge of them, so you won’t have to trouble your pretty little head about anything.”

  She turned wide eyes on him. “That is very kind of her,” she said, wondering if she sounded as insincere as she felt. The only possible benefit to all of this was that Mary Anne might consider it enough to oversee her behavior at mealtimes and leave her alone the rest of the time. She thought about asking whether she would still be allowed to ride out, and then decided that she wouldn’t ask. If she didn’t say anything, Arachne might forget to forbid her.

  Reggie smiled down at her from his superior height. “I suppose that old pile of Oakhurst seems rather overwhelming to you, doesn’t it, cuz?” he laughed. “Bit different from that little cottage in Cornwall.”

  “It’s not what I was used to,” she murmured, dropping her eyes to stare at Brownie’s neck.

  “I should think not. Well, you just let us take care of it all for you,” he said in that voice that drove her mad. She made monosyllabic replies to his conversation, something that only seemed to encourage him. Evidently, despite direct evidence to the contrary, he considered her timid.

  But at least his monologue gave her plenty of information without her having to ask for it. Something had come up in the course of the afternoon that required their personal attention having to do with the factory near Exeter; they had called for tea and ordered the servants t
o pack, then Reggie had been dispatched to the Rectory to fetch Marina back. The carriage would take them to the nearest station to catch the last train, and there was some urgency to get there in order to make the connection. It sounded as if there hadn’t been time for Arachne to issue many orders; in order to get to the station in time, they would have to leave immediately.

  So it proved; when Marina and Reggie rode through the gates the carriage, the big traveling one that required two horses, was already at the door, and one of the grooms waited to take Reggie’s horse. Arachne seemed both excited and annoyed, but more the former than the latter. “Amuse yourself quietly while we’re gone, Marina,” she called, as Reggie climbed out of the saddle and into the carriage. “We’ll be back by Saturday at the latest.”

  Then the coachman flicked the reins over the horses, and the carriage rolled away before she could issue any direct orders to Marina or anyone else.

  For a moment she sat in her saddle as still as a stone. She was quite alone for the moment. She was on a fresh horse. And the two people with authority to stop her from leaving were gone. I could ride right down to the village and past. I could go home—

  Oh yes, she could go home. But if she did that, it would be no more than a week at most, and probably less, before Arachne appeared again at Blackbird Cottage with her lawyers and possibly more police, and she would be perfectly within her rights to do so.

  I could only make trouble for Margherita and Sebastian and Thomas. The police, at the least, would not be happy, not happy at all.

  What could Marina claim, anyway, as an excuse for escaping from her legal guardian? That her aunt was somehow abusing her with the lessons in etiquette, and the bizarre meals they shared? Arachne ate the same food, which was presumably wholesome, if unpalatable. And as for the etiquette, it could be reasonably argued that Marina was ill-educated, even backward, for her position in life. She had never gone to school, never had a proper nurse, nor a governess, nor tutors. She had never been exposed to the sort of society that her parents moved in. She was certainly ill-equipped to function in the social circles in which Arachne moved. That she didn’t particularly wish to function in that social strata was of no purpose—her inherited wealth and rank as a gentleman’s daughter would require her to do so. Anyone in authority would see Marina’s rebellion as a childish tantrum, the result of having been spoiled by her erstwhile guardians, a reaction to the discipline that she badly needed.