The Gates of Sleep

by Mercedes Lackey

  Fortunately, there was a bit left in the original cask of vin ordinaire, and no one at the sanitarium drank wine.

  Isn’t that a line out of Bram Stoker’s novel? “I never drink… wine.…”

  Odd thought, that. But it was the truth at Briareley. The staff was Devon born and bred, except for Eleanor, and your true Devonian wouldn’t look at wine when there was cider about. Old fashioned fermented cider, that is, the stuff that had a kick like a mule, and was stronger than anyone outside the county usually suspected.

  He didn’t drink wine, either, as a rule. A glass of whisky by preference, if he felt the taste for spirits coming on—that was where Scotland had rubbed off on him. Otherwise, tea was his drink. And he’d never seen Eleanor touch a drop of spirit even when offered it; tea for her as well. So the fauns could have the wine and welcome to it.

  “Vine and harvest, bee-sup and butter and cheese, all to come if wearing word. We will remember, Earth Master,” the faun said, with a stamp of his hoof to seal the bargain.

  Then Andrew was once again alone in the clearing, with only the knowing eyes of Pan upon him, the faint purple stain and the bit of bread still on the plinth. The fauns would not take that bit of an offering to their god; a bird or a mouse might steal it, but that was Pan’s will.

  He saluted the god with no sense of irony, and turned to push his way back out of the grove and into the workaday world again.

  Marina sat at a desk in one of the inner offices and trembled. She had never been so glad of anything in her life as she was glad of the fact that Reggie had left the tour of the pottery to one of his underlings—and that business conferences with his managers had kept him pent up in his office all afternoon. Because it took her all afternoon to recover from what she found in the painting-room.

  It had been bad enough to discover that the pottery was a blight, a cancer, a malignant spring spewing poison into the land, the water, the very air. Everyone and everything around here was poisoned, more or less—the clay-lees choked the Exe where the runoff entered it, and no living thing could survive the murky water, not fish nor plant. Clay clogged the gills and smothered the fish, coated the leaves of water-plants and choked them. The clay choked the soil as well—and the lead from the glazes killed what the clay didn’t choke. Even the air, loaded with lead vapor and smoke from the kilns, was a hazard to everything that came in contact with it. But those were the least of the poisons here.

  The rather dull young clerk who took her around didn’t even notice when the blood drained out of her face and she grew faint on the first probing touch of the paintresses and their special environs. The girls themselves were too busy to pay attention to her—she was only a female, after all. There weren’t any of their gentleman friends there at the time, but Marina had the idea that they’d been chivvied out long enough for her to take her look around, and would pop out of hiding as soon as she was gone. So there was no one to notice that she clutched at the doorpost and chattered ridiculous questions for a good fifteen minutes before she felt ready to move on.

  Thank heavens that was the end of the tour, she thought, shuddering. The clerk had tucked her up in one of the managers’ offices with apologies that he couldn’t put her in Madam Chamberten’s office, because it was Madam Chamberten’s orders that it was locked up unless she was expected. She waved him away and asked for a pot of tea, then changed her mind and left it untouched when she realized how much lead must be in the water. She didn’t want to go into Madam Chamberten’s office. Not when—that sinkhole of evil lay so close to it.

  So instead, she propped her forehead on her hand and pretended to read her poetry book, strengthening her shields from her inner reserves, and trying to make them as invisible as all her skill could. One touch, one single touch had told her all she needed to know.

  Ellen was by no means the first, nor the only girl with untapped magic-potential that had been drained. Every girl in that painting-room was being drained, and more than being drained, was being corrupted. Oh, it was insidious enough; and really, Marina could not imagine how Ellen had escaped permanent harm. It began with being brought into the painting-room, with flattery as the poison worked its fatal changes and made the girls beautiful, with pretty dresses made available to them, and cosmetics in the form of the glaze-powders. Then the temptations began in the form of the men who visited, and their presents, invitations, the stories of good times and pleasure from girls who had been here a while. There were two of those girls whose sexuality was so robust and honest that they actually got no spiritual harm from yielding to that temptation. They enjoyed themselves to the hilt, taking what was offered and laughingly thrust away anything that was perverse, that was the wonder of it. But the rest were tempted to do things they felt in their hearts were wrong, saw themselves as fallen—because they saw themselves as fallen, they became fallen, grew hard, and then—

  And then realized with horror that they were dancing with death, as the first signs of trouble came on them. Understood that they were doomed, and saw themselves as damned by their own actions, and despaired.

  And that cesspit, that sinkhole hidden beneath the floor of the painting room, drank it all in and stored it up, aged and refined it, then distilled it in a dark flame of pure evil.

  And then what?

  She didn’t know. Something came and tapped off the unwholesome vintage, more poisonous than the lead dust that floated in the air of that place. It was power, that wine of iniquity; power stolen from the girls, from their magic, from their guilt, from their despair. Three separate vintages blended into a deadly draught that something or someone drank to the dregs.

  And she had a horrible feeling that she knew who that someone was.

  The office door opened, and she looked up. “Ready to go?” asked Reggie, with obscene cheer. “We have a train to catch!”

  She set her mouth in a false smile, and got up. “Of course,” she replied, and managed to step quite calmly into the coat he held out for her.

  He caught up her hand and all but propelled her out of the offices and down to the street to the inevitable cab. A glance at the station-clock as they arrived showed the reason for his haste; they were cutting it fine, indeed, and she broke into an undignified run beside him as they dashed for the train.

  It was only as the train pulled out of the station and she settled into their compartment and caught her breath—taking care that she put her face in shadow, where her expression would be more difficult to read—that Reggie finally spoke to her again.

  “Well, cuz, did you learn all you wanted to?” he asked genially.

  And she was very, very glad for her caution, because she was certain that her eyes, at least, would have betrayed her, as she answered him.

  “Oh yes, Reggie,” she said, exerting every bit of control she had to keep her voice even. “I certainly did. More than I ever dreamed.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  MARINA had never been so sure of anything in her life as she was that Reggie and his mother were behind the dreadful evil beneath their pottery.

  And yet within the hour, Marina was sitting across from Reggie in the dining car, a sumptuous tea laid out on the table between them, listening to him chatter with bewilderment.

  “Good for me to show the face every so often there,” he said, after she had sat across from him, numb and sick, trying to get as far from him as she could and still be unobtrusive. “Never on a schedule, of course. Unexpected; that way they can’t play any jiggery-pokery. Mater gives me a pretty free hand there—well, except for that emergency, I don’t think she’s set foot in the place for a year. So the running of the place is my doing.”

  Madam hasn’t been there for a year? How could that be possible? That sinkhole didn’t have that sort of capacity, and it must have been tapped off several times in the last year. Could Reggie be tapping it?

  Surely not—”Of course, when things happen like kilns blowing up, Mater wants to get right in there; in her nature, you might say
.

  But the Exeter works are half mine, and she reckoned it was a good place for me to get m’feet wet, get used to running things.” He grinned at her, as pleased as a boy making the winning score at rugby.

  Surely not Reggie—

  That sort of seething morass couldn’t be handled at a distance—yet Madam couldn’t have tapped it. So if she wasn’t tapping that unhealthy power, who was?

  Surely not Reggie. Not possible. No matter what Shakespeare said, that a man could “smile and smile and still be a villain,” evil that profound couldn’t present a surface so—banal.

  And besides, there was nothing, not the slightest hint of power, evil or otherwise, about him! Nor, now that she came to think about it, was there anything of the sort about Madam.

  She had followed him out of the compartment at his urging as contradictions overwhelmed her and left her confused and uncertain. The touch of his hand on her elbow left her even more uncertain. There was nothing in that touch. No magic, no evil, nothing to alert her to danger. Perfectly, solidly ordinary, and no more odious than the Odious Reggie usually was, in that he took possession of her arm as if he had already taken possession of her entire person and was merely marking his claim to her.

  It was so baffling it made her head ache, and she sought comfort in the familiar rituals of teapot and jam jar. Although the teapot was heavy silver, and the jam jar not a jar at all, but a dish of elegant, cut crystal, the tea tasted the same as the China Black from Aunt Margherita’s humble brown ceramic pot with the chipped spout, and the jam not quite as good as the home-made strawberry she’d put up with her own hands. Still, as she poured and one-lump-or-twoed, split scones and spread them with jam, the automatic movements gave her a point of steadiness and familiarity.

  “… jolly fine deposit of kaolin clay under the North Pasture,” Reggie was saying, showing almost as much enthusiasm as he’d had for his flirtations with all those strange young women today.

  “With Chipping Brook so deep and fast there, we’ve got water-power enough for grinding, mixing, anything else we’d want. Plenty of trees in the copse at the western edge for charcoal to fire the kilns—plenty of workers in the village—the road to the railroad or going up north to the sea for cheap transport—there’s nothing lacking but the works itself!”

  Chipping Brook? North Pasture? My North Pasture? Her scattered thoughts suddenly collected as she realized what he’d been babbling about for the past several minutes.

  Putting a pottery—another of those poisonous blots—in the North Pasture beside Oakhurst. On her land. Spewing death into her brook, her air—devouring her trees to feed the voracious kilns, turning her verdant meadow into a hideous, barren scrape in the ground.

  And taking the villagers, people I know, or their children, offering them jobs and then poisoning them with lead dust and overwork.

  “I think I can do without that, Reggie,” she said, attempting to sound smooth and cool, interrupting the stream of plans from her cousin. “Your potteries are astonishing, and surely must be the envy of your peers, but I haven’t the interest or the ability to run one, and I prefer the North Pasture as it is. I certainly have no desire to live next to a noisy factory, which is what I would be doing if you put a pottery in the North Pasture.”

  “Well, cuz, obviously you don’t have to live next to it—there are hundreds of places you could live!” Reggie said with a fatuous laugh as the train sped past undulating hills slowly darkening as the light faded. “Why live at Oakhurst, anyway? It’s just an old country manor without gas, much less electricity, and neither are likely to reach the village in the next thirty years, much less get to the manor! A London townhouse—now there’s the ticket!”

  She winced inwardly. That much was true, too true. But she wasn’t about to admit to him that she would very much have liked to have the option to modernize within her own lifetime. “Nevertheless, Oakhurst is my inheritance, to order as I choose, and I do not choose to have it turned into a factory, so you can put that notion out of your mind,” she said sharply—so sharply that he was clearly surprised and taken aback.

  Oh dear. She softened her posture immediately and smiled winsomely. “Silly man! I haven’t even gotten to know the place, and already you want to change it entirely! Haven’t you come to know me well enough by now to know that given any other choice, I would still live here? I like the countryside, and Oakhurst is particularly beautiful. Surely there are cities enough where you can put another factory without ruining my peace and quiet and my views!”

  Reggie regained that superior smirk. “I forgot, cuz, you’re just a little country-cousin at heart,” he said condescendingly.

  “I’m afraid so,” she admitted, lowering her gaze and looking up at him through her lashes. “After my trip today, I am only more confirmed in my notions, I must admit. Exeter was exciting but—there were so many people!”

  She might have despised herself for being so manipulative; might, except for all that was at stake. She could not, would not allow another diseased blight to take root here. She would fight it to the last cell of her body.

  “You’ll change your mind,” he said, dismissing her and her concerns out of hand. “Especially when you’re out, when you’ve had a real London season, when you’re going to parties and balls and the theater—you’ll like cities so much you’ll wonder how you ever thought a pasture worth bothering your pretty head about. Heh—and when you start seeing how much of the ready it takes to buy all those gowns and froofahs and things you ladies are so fond of, you’ll realize just how much good a factory could do your pocket-book. Can’t be seen in the same frock twice, don’t you know. You can’t support a lively Town style on farm rents. It needs a lot of the ready to be in the mode.”

  We’ll see about that, she thought grimly. If the choice was between fine feathers and the preservation of this land—she would be willing to make a regular guy of herself in London. She would do without that promised London season! No gown, no string of balls, nothing was worth despoiling Oakhurst, raping the land, poisoning the waters.

  The real question was—since she had no direct control of her property, how was she to keep Reggie from plunging ahead with his plan no matter what she wanted? She had no doubt that Madam would be only too happy to give ear to this idea, and Madam was the one who was making the decisions at the moment, where Oakhurst was concerned.

  “Oh, Reggie, you can’t want to make me miserable!” she pouted. “That pottery just gave me the awfullest headache, and I just know I’d have nothing but headaches with one of those things right in the next field!”

  “But you wouldn’t be here, you’d be in London,” he tried to point out, but she sighed deeply and quivered her lower lip.

  “Not all the time! And how can I have house parties with a factory in the next field? People don’t come to house parties to see factories, they come to see views, and to shoot—and oh, everyone around here of any consequence will just hate us, for the shooting will be quite spoilt for miles around!”

  That actually seemed to get through to him, at last, and he looked startled. Encouraged, she elaborated. “Oh, we’ll be a disgrace! My season will be a disaster! No one will want to be seen with the girl who had the audacity to drive all the game out to the moor!”

  “Well—not to the moor, surely—” he ventured, looking alarmed.

  She turned an utterly sober gaze upon him. “I’m the country-cousin, remember? Oh, do trust me, Reggie, all it will take is for your factory to drive the red deer out of this neighborhood—or worse, the pheasants!—and we will be entirely in disgrace and everyone who is anyone will know what we’d done and who’s to blame! You just wait—wait and see how your London friends treat you when shooting they were counting on isn’t there anymore! Not everyone goes to Scotland, you know—people depend on Devon and Surrey for their sport!”

  That turned the trick; he promised not to do anything about his plans until she knew she would want to live in London and not at O
akhurst, after all—and until he had made certain that there were no notable shoots anywhere around the vicinity.

  “But you just wait, little cuz,” he laughed, as he escorted her back to their compartment. “Once you’ve had a taste of proper life, you won’t care if I blow the place up if it buys you more frocks and fun.”

  She settled herself in the corner under one of the ingenious wall-mounted paraffin lamps that the steward had lit in their absence. He dropped onto the seat across from her beneath the other and opened his paper. She took out her poetry book and stared at it, turning the pages now and again, without reading them.

  “You won’t care if I blow the place up if it buys you more frocks and fun.” Callous, unfeeling, greedy, selfish—but is that evil? Evil enough to account for that horror beneath Exeter? Or is it just plain, ordinary, piggy badness? It didn’t equate, it just didn’t—evil wasn’t bland. Evil didn’t worry about ruining its reputation by running off the game. Evil probably would be perfectly happy to ruin anything.

  If not the son, what about my first thought, the mother? She’s the only parent he’s had for ever so long, so she’s had the only hand over him—he should reflect her. Madam was cold, yes. Selfish, yes. Utterly self-centered. And she’s all business and money and appearances. Still. That doesn’t add up to horror either. Evil should slaver and gnash its teeth, howling in glee at the rich vein of nourishment beneath Madam’s office. It shouldn’t wear stylish suits and smart frocks and give one strenuous lessons in etiquette.

  There was only one possible conclusion here. There had to be something else behind the cesspit of vileness back there in Exeter.

  And she would be hanged if she could figure out who was feeding off of it. Or what.

  My head hurts. She felt a sinking sort of desperation. Out of her depth, unable to cope. Too much was happening at once, and on such wildly disparate levels that she couldn’t begin to imagine how she was to deal with it all. I am out, completely out, of ideas or even wild guesses. She stared at her poem, unseeing, as the railway carriage rocked from side to side. Someone else will have to solve this mystery. They can’t expect me to solve it—all they asked me was to see if there was anything there, after all… come to that, they never asked me, I volunteered to look.