The Gates of Sleep

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was consideration of how much she could carry and not anything else that led her to limit her selection. She decided that since she wanted some volumes anyway, there was no harm in feeding Reggie’s assumptions about her. So in her chosen stack there was some poetry, and some novels, and some very interesting volumes that Elizabeth had recommended, books that raised an eyebrow on the clerk who was tallying them up. He didn’t say anything though, and Reggie was deep in another flirtation with a lady wearing one of those frothy confections of lace and velvet that made her wilt with envy, knowing how silly she would look in it, at the front of the store. And when he finally did make his way to the till, he picked one of the books up and looked at the title with no sign of recognition, anyway.

  “Madam Arachne Chamberten’s account,” he said as usual. “Have the parcel made up with this young lady’s name on it and send it to the station to catch the afternoon train to Eggesford. The four-fifteen, that would be. Have the porter stow it in our compartment. And here—” he handed over the hat- and glove-boxes. “Send these along with it, there’s a good fellow.”

  “All but this—” Marina said, taking one of the poetry books out at random, mostly because it was small and fit in her reticule. Just in case, she wanted to have something with her to read. Reggie might choose to abandon her someplace for a while.

  The clerk bowed, Reggie grinned, and she tucked the book into her bag. “Yes, sir,” the clerk said, briskly. “Marina Roeswood, Oakhurst, by way of the four-fifteen to Eggesford.” He wrote it all down on a card that he tucked into the front cover of the topmost book, and handed off the lot to an errand boy. Reggie handed the lad a half crown by way of a tip as Marina bit her lip in vexation. The boy grinned and averred he’d take care of it all personally.

  Then there was nothing for it, but to let Reggie sweep her off into yet another cab, which disgorged them on the premises of an hotel. The Palm Court proved to be its restaurant, which must have been famous enough in Exeter, given the crowds of people. Not merely middle-class people, either; there wasn’t a single one of the ladies there who wasn’t be-gowned and be-hatted to the tune of several tens of pounds, judging by the prices that Marina had noted today. She felt so drab in her black—at the next table was a woman in a wonderful suit of French blue trimmed in purple velvet, with a purple silk shirtwaist and a huge purple velvet rose at her throat, cartwheel hat to match. She felt raw with envy, even though you had to have a neck like a Greek column to wear something like that flower at the throat, not an ordinary un-swanlike neck like hers. Then Reggie spoiled everything when the waiter came and he ordered for her, before the waiter could even offer her a menu, quite as if she hadn’t a will (and taste) of her own.

  Marina got a good stranglehold on her temper and smiled as the waiter bowed and trotted away. “I’ve never had lobster salad, Reggie,” she said.

  “Oh, you’ll like it, all ladies do,” he said vaguely, as the waiter returned with tea and a basket of bread and rolls. He chose, cut and buttered one for her. Was this supposed to be gallantry?

  She decided to take it as such, or at least pretend to, and thanked him, even though it was a soft roll, not the hard sort with the crunchy crust that she preferred.

  She did actually enjoy the lobster salad when it came, although it wasn’t the meal she’d have chosen on a cold day. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of those things that she did know how to eat, although she had waited for its appearance with growing dread, not knowing if this meal was a sadistic ploy on Reggie’s part to discomfit her in public. But Reggie was either inclined to treat her nicely today, or else had been ordered to be on his best behavior, because other than taking complete charge of everything but the actual choice of hats and books for the entire day, he’d treated her rather well.

  Perhaps it’s because I haven’t objected to all those flirtations, she thought, watching him exchange another set of wordless communications with a lady two tables over, whom he evidently knew of old. There was the glover’s girl, the milliner’s apprentices, the lady at the bookshop—and now here. Whatever the exchange portended, however, must not have been to his benefit, as the lady shortly after welcomed another gentleman to her table with every evidence of pleasure, and Reggie applied himself to his saddle of mutton with an air of having been defeated.

  The defeat must have been a very minor one, though, as he was all smiles again by dessert.

  “All right, m’gel,” he said, when the bill was settled, to the waiter’s unctuous satisfaction, “It’s off to work for us! Let’s collect our traps and hie us hence.”

  All the pleasures of the day faded into insignificance at that reminder of what she was here for in the first place. And as they collected their “traps” from the cloakroom girl and piled into yet another cab, Marina tried to prepare herself to hunt—even though she didn’t really know what she was looking for.

  Andrew Pike drummed his fingers on the desk-blotter, stared into nothing much, and tried not to worry too much about Marina. After all, it wasn’t as if she was going to open herself up to anything dangerous just by passive observation. And it wasn’t as if they’d had any evidence that either her guardian or the Odious Reggie (how he loved that nickname!) were the ones responsible for the occult drain on Ellen. It was just as likely that the pottery had been built on the site of some ancient evil, and that the presence of someone with Ellen’s potentials had caused it to reach out and attach itself to her. For heaven’s sake, it was equally possible that she’d done something unconsciously that awoke the thing! It was equally likely that one of her so-called gentleman friends had done it, figuring the girl was ignorant, and perfectly willing to drain her and throw her away when he was satisfied. After all, the rotters were equally willing to do the same sort of thing physically.

  Still.

  Still, just because Madam hasn’t shown any signs of otherworldly abilities, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them.

  Andrew was not a Scot—he was from Yorkshire, actually—but he had taken his medical degree in Scotland, where there was a strong occult tradition—which was how he’d come to find another Earth Master to teach him beyond what his Air Mage mother had taught him in the first place. And up there, he’d encountered a number of—interesting fragments. There had been rumors among the Scots Masters for centuries, for instance, that perfectly ordinary folk, without any discernible magical abilities, could steal magic from others by frankly unpleasant means. Yes, and use that magic too, even though they were effectively working blind. Some of those fragments attested that a cult of Druids were the ones who practiced this theft, some that it was a splinter of the Templars that really did worship the old god Baphomet as was claimed, and some—well, the majority actually—said it was Satanists. A group of Satanists recruited and taught by the infamous Gilles de Rais to be exact, who then came to England when he was caught in his crimes and brought the teachings with them. The trouble was, no one had any proof—and it was a difficult proposition to track down what was essentially a Left-Hand Path magician when he didn’t look like a magician, didn’t have shields like a magician, and could not be told from ordinary, non-magical folk.

  And as it happened, neither Madam nor her son looked like magicians, had shields like magicians, or seemed in any way to be anything other than ordinary, non-magical folk.

  He had many questions that were bothering him at this point, of which one was why, exactly, had Marina not been living here with her parents? No one in the village knew—although there were stories that something terrible had happened shortly after the child’s christening that had sent Marina’s mother into “a state.” Coincident with that, it seemed, the child was sent away.

  Why was it that no one had seen or heard anything of this sister of Hugh’s for years? Interestingly enough, it was common knowledge that Madam had had a falling-out with her parents over her choice of husband, and had not been seen at Oakhurst ever again until the Roeswoods died so tragically. But why, after the parents were
dead, had brother and sister not made some attempt to reconcile? Unless Hugh Roeswood was of the same mind as his parents about Arachne. But then, why not have a will, just in case, to prevent Arachne from ever having anything to do with the Roeswoods? But if the rift was so insurmountable, why had Arachne claimed the girl and taken her directly into her household? Why not just leave her where she was, washing her hands entirely of her? No law could force her to become Marina’s hands-on guardian.

  It was all fragments that instinct told him should fit together, but which didn’t.

  He wished that he’d had more uninterrupted time to talk to her. He wished that Clifton Davies had discussed more of her past and less of chess-moves and music with her. Merely mentioning her mother seemed to make her wary, as if there was something about her mother that she didn’t much want to think about.

  Though what it could be—if there was anything—he was hanged if he could imagine!

  Well, old man, there is one route to find out what you can about her that you haven’t taken.

  Not that he hadn’t thought about it—but magicians as he knew them up in Scotland were odd ducks. Insular, self-protective, and inclined to keep things close to their chests. Those that had formed groups tended to look a little suspiciously on outsiders, and if anyone was an outsider here, it was definitely Dr. Andrew Pike, with Clifton Davies from the Welsh Borders a close second. Still—

  They’re sending their sick to me, and mage-born children of ordinary parents when they find them in trouble. So I might not be so much of an outsider that I can’t get information out of these Devonian mages after all. It’d serve me right to discover that the only reason no one’s told me anything is because I didn’t ask.

  Fauns would be the best messengers, he reckoned. They weren’t at all troubled by cold weather—didn’t go dormant to sleep until spring like some Earth Elementals. They went everywhere there was a patch of wildwood, and every Earth mage he had ever seen had a patch of wildwood somewhere about. That was one reason why they didn’t much like being in cities, truth to tell. When he got done sending out his messengers, he could get Clifton to send out—oh, Sylphs, he supposed. They were the Air Elementals he was most familiar with, though perhaps there was something else that was more suitable. Then… hmm. Who did he know that he could trade on favors to help him with Water and Fire?

  Oh, good Lord—two of the children, of course! Naiads hung about Jamie Cooper like bees around a honey pot, and Craig Newton was always talking to Salamanders in the fire. He couldn’t send messengers from those two Elements, of course; the children didn’t command anything at the moment, and now that he’d gotten them over their fears that they were going mad, his main job was to shield them from the nastier Elementals of their types until they could protect themselves. But he could ask them to ask their Elementals to do the favor, and if the creatures didn’t lose interest or get distracted by something else, they probably would.

  But—send out his own Elementals, first, and see where that got him.

  The one good and reliable thing about Fauns was that unlike Brownies, they were pitiably easy to bribe with things from the human world. Unfortunately, they were also scatterbrained. But as long as they could lick their lips and taste the honey he’d give them, and as long as their little flasks held the wine he’d offer them, they’d remember, and they’d keep to the job.

  After a quick stop in the kitchen for a peg of the vin ordinaire that the departing family had deemed too inferior to take with them or to try and sell, a big cottage-loaf, and a pot of honey, he bundled himself up in his mackintosh and went out into the wet, tying his hood down around his ears.

  It was a wild day, one of the “lion” days of March, full of wind and lashings of rain, and he was glad that there hadn’t been two fair days in a row, for weather like this would doom any buds that had been coaxed out before their time. He bent his head to the rain and trudged down to the bottom of the garden, then beyond, into the acres that had once been manicured parkland but had been allowed to fall into neglect. Near the edge of the property he owned was a coppice that had grown up around what had once been a tended grove of Italian cypress, and in the center of that grove was still a marble statue of Pan in one of his milder moods—Pan, the musician, boon companion of Bacchus, not Great God Pan of the wilderness and Panic fear. Even without casting a shield-circle and doing a formal invocation, such a setting was still potent to bring and hold the little fauns (and he sometimes wondered if they were homesick for the warmer winds and cypresses of Italy that they came so readily here).

  He shoved his way into the grove, past a couple of gorse bushes grown up like rude boys pressing on the edge of the circle of cypress trees. Something about this spot had suited the cypresses; they had grown tall and thick in this place, and what had once been a circle of graceful, thin, green columns with marble benches at their bases facing the statue that stood at the south-point of the circle, was now a green wall. He edged himself sideways between two of the Italian cypresses, whose dark green, brackenlike branches resisted him for a moment, then yielded.

  Then he was within the tiny grove itself, a disk of rank, dead grass, protected from the wind and so marginally warmer than the space outside it. There was Pan, staring down at him with a benign, slightly mischievous grin, holding his syrinx just below his bearded lips. The benches were all toppled, shoved over by the roots and thickening trunks of the cypresses. The marble of the statue was darkened with grime in all the crevices, which had the effect of making it look more like a living creature rather than less. The hair was green with moss, a green which in this light looked black, and the eyes had been cleverly carved so that they seemed to follow whomever walked in front of it.

  Here was relative warmth, peace, no Cold Iron, the trees of the Italian peninsula and wilderness. Only two things were lacking to bring the Fauns—food, and drink.

  He pulled the cork from the bung-hole of the cask, and dribbled a little on the plinth that Pan stood upon, tore off a bit of bread, dipped it in the honey, and laid it at Pan’s feet. Ideally, he’d have had olive oil as well, but that comestible was a bit difficult to come by in the heart of Devon.

  “You could have brought butter,” said a piping voice at his elbow. “We’ve gotten used to butter. Cheese, too, we like cheese.”

  “Next time, then I will,” he replied, looking down into the slanted, goatlike golden eyes of the little faun. The shameless little faun, without even a loincloth to cover his privates. Unlike Pan’s—which in the statue were modestly screened by an enormous fig leaf. Fortunately, fauns were not as priapic in nature as the god of whom they were the votaries and earthly representatives.

  “It would only get wet,” the Faun pointed out cheerfully. “Have you ever worn a wet leather loincloth? Misery.”

  “You have a point,” he admitted. “And I have a favor to ask.”

  He sensed more of them all around him, some in hiding, some stealing up behind him. The faun at his elbow sniffed at the wine-smell longingly, his nose twitching. “They don’t make wine here,” he complained. “Only cider. It’s very good cider, really excellent cider, but we’re tired of cider.”

  “So this should be very welcome,” he responded, putting the cork back in the bunghole, and carefully placing the cask, bung-end up, on the ground. He added the loaf of bread and the jar of honey beside it. “I’m trying to find anyone who knows the Water Mage up the hill and would be willing to talk to me. The girl-mage, not the man.”

  “Not the Christ-man in the village?” This was another faun, who practically quivered with eagerness as his nose filled with the scent of bread and wine.

  “No, the young lady who lives in the big house now—”

  “We can’t get near,” complained a third, drumming on the ground with one hoof. “They drove us out of the garden and closed the bounds! She made us welcome there, the gentle She with sad eyes, but they drove us out when they came!”

  That would have been Madam and her so
n—small wonder. He’d seen the garden now, manicured to a fare-thee-well, and bristling with wrought-iron ornaments. Madam apparently liked wrought-iron trellises and arbors, lampposts and what not. Taming the wildness and planting iron everywhere would have made the fauns flee as fast as they could.

  “You don’t have to try and go near her to catch her scent; she has come to me once, and many times to the Christ-man,” he said patiently. “Besides, to look for those who know her, you do not need the scent. You only need the name. Names are like scent to men.”

  “Both is better,” said the first, “But we can do this, if we can find her scent. Did she do magic there, too?”

  Fauns needed a great deal of simple explanation, sometimes. “Yes, she did—Water magic, for she is a Water Mage. Her scent will be there, where the Christ-man dwells, with their magic mingled with mine. And her name is Marina Roeswood.” He stepped away from his offerings, just in case any of the Cold Iron he was wearing in tiny bits all over his person troubled them. Fauns were fairly robust about that, but it didn’t hurt to be certain. “To the fruit of the vine, the harvest of the field, be welcome,” he added, the litany that allowed them to take what he had placed there.

  A half-dozen of them swarmed his offerings like locusts, and a moment later, they were all gone but the one that had first addressed him. That one stood hipshot, still looking up at him.

  “Marina Roeswood, blood of Earth, born of Water,” the faun said. Andrew nodded, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant. “Good. We will send askings, for as long as we remember.”

  “Then remember this, too. I will continue to bring Vine and Harvest here every two days for the next six, so if you have anything to tell me, there will be more to share.” He smiled to see the faun’s eyes widen. “And since you have gotten accustomed to butter and cheese, there will be some of that, as well.”

  “Butter is good,” the faun said meditatively. “And cheese. I think remembrance will run long, if you come every two days.”