Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02

by Witchlight (v2. 1)

"Dr. Luty's specialty is psychopharmacology, as related to post-traumatic-stress-related disorders," Dr. Atheling said. "He's designed a number of quite successful drug therapies. His patients have . . . minimal dysfunction."

  Post-traumatic stress. The aftermath of kidnapping, rape, or other violence. "But that wasn't Winter's problem," Truth said. "How could he be treating her?"

  "I believe the family arranged it," Dr. Atheling said blandly. He slanted a glance sideways at Truth and his amber eyes glowed in the sunlight. "And certainly Dr. Luty's treatment can have a ... calming effect on certain forms of stress."

  What you mean is, Dr. Luty drugged her nearly insensible! Truth mused furiously.

  "Now, let me ask you a question," Dr. Atheling continued. "Why did Winter seek out the Bidney Institute after she left Fall River?"

  Truth hesitated, wondering how much she should tell this man who seemed to fit in so oddly with everything else she'd seen of Fall River. "Poltergeists," she finally said. She might as well tell him the truth, after all; she could hardly damage her reputation—or Winter's—further, at least in the eyes of Fall River.

  "A classic presentation, wouldn't you say?" Dr. Atheling said.

  Truth looked at him sharply. Her eye was drawn once more to the bright azure spark of the scarab Dr. Atheling wore about his neck. Almost instinctively she shifted her sight to see him, not as this world saw him, but as he appeared in the Otherworld.

  Blinding white light; a rigorous discipline refined down through centuries; of life after life dedicated to the Great Work . . .

  Truth recoiled, involuntarily flinging up a hand to shield herself. Dr. Atheling was an Adept; a follower of the Right Hand Path, but unlike any such Adept she had met before. At the same moment, she saw him quickly sketch a symbol in the air; meant for defense against the Darkness and the Great Unmaking, it barely touched her.

  "So," Dr. Atheling said. "It's true. There are . . . others."

  He studied her intently, as if trying to solve a riddle that Truth knew to be unsolvable. Not Black, not White, but . . . Gray. "What is your interest in this matter?" he added pointedly. His manner was no more hostile than it had been a moment before, but there was a stern watchfulness present now, as of a warrior awaiting the summons to battle once more.

  "Winter Musgrave came to the Bidney Institute for help," Truth said honestly, dismissing her personal curiosity for the moment. "If you've heard of us, you'll know that we receive many requests for help each year from people who are certain they are haunted ... or possessed."

  Dr. Atheling gazed at her intently for another frozen moment, then seemed to come to a decision. He relaxed, and smiled at her again with genuine warmth.

  "And which did you find Winter to be?" he asked.

  "Neither," Truth said, accepting the tacit apology for what it was. "As you say, what our initial interview revealed was almost a classic presentation of adult-onset poltergeist phenomena."

  "Something that Dr. Luty, alas, could not bring himself to accept," Dr. Atheling admitted. "He felt that drug therapy and the talking cure would answer—but alas, they did not."

  "The talking cure"—that quaintly old-fashioned phrase coined by the father of psychiatry to describe the science he had invented. But it had long since fallen into disuse, and no one now living could have studied with Sigmund Freud in the Vienna of the 1880s.

  Could they?

  "Was Winter comfortable here?" Truth asked, shifting her ground and probing for more information.

  "For a while—at least, as much so as was possible to one so harshly medicated; I am afraid my colleagues consider me a bit of a naturopath, but I do not hold with the use of drugs save in extremis. But you have not come all this way to hear my views upon the proper treatment of the afflicted, but to hear about Winter." He seemed to gather his thoughts, and when he spoke again his voice had taken on a certain formal timbre, as if he were providing Truth a carefully edited report of events.

  "Taken in all, Winter spent nearly sixteen months here. I was— away—on a case of my own when she arrived, but I inquired into the matter once I returned and saw that ... a case falling within the bounds of my particular interests had been admitted while I was away. Unfortunately, there were reasons I was unable to obtain direct supervision of her care; however, Dr. Luty was reasonably forthcoming. He gave me to understand that Winter was very agitated when she came in—delusional, in fact. He told me that at first she'd even insisted that she'd been in a motorcycle accident. But of course Winter has never even owned a motorcycle, and there had been no accident."

  "Are you sure?" Truth could not help but ask.

  Dr. Atheling smiled, and this time there was a certain bitterness in it. "You will understand that Dr. Luty was careful to check for himself. It is not always advisable to entirely endorse the family's interpretation of the events in a guest's life."

  Truth's opinion of Fall River rose slightly. Not the sort of rubber-stamp place where the inconvenient children of the rich were cached—at least not entirely.

  "Her family admitted her?" Truth tried to remember if Winter had said anything about a family—but no, Winter had spoken only of her recent past.

  "She admitted herself upon the advice of her family. If she had not, it would have been impossible for her to leave in the manner that she did." Dr. Atheling's neutral tones conveyed nothing of the struggle that must have underlain Winter's unorthodox departure from Fall River.

  Sixteen months . . . "So Winter was admitted because of... stress. And then she left again," Truth said, half questioning.

  "Yes—as soon as she realized that her afflictions had their origins in external objective reality, and as soon as she was able. Even so, she was far from well, and in other circumstances I would not have been in favor of it. But as I've said, Winter was not my patient, and though I could advise, I could not interfere in Dr. Luty's handling of the case," Dr. Atheling said somberly.

  They reached a gently weathered wooden bench placed at the side of one of the brick paths, and Dr. Atheling indicated that she should sit. Intrigued, Truth did as he wished, smoothing her narrow skirt over her knees. The wood of the bench was warm against her back, and some of Truth's misgiving faded, lulled by the beauty of the place.

  "But you must tell me what you have discovered as well," Dr. Atheling said, seating himself at the opposite end of the bench.

  Even with this opportunity to study him closely and in bright sunlight, Truth found it hard to gauge either his age or his ethnicity. It was impossible, however, to mistake him for anything but a trained Adept now that her senses had been awakened to the power he wielded, and Truth hoped their paths would not lead to confrontation. Dr. Atheling would be a formidable opponent.

  "About a month ago, Winter Musgrave came to the Institute seeking . . . assistance," Truth said, choosing her words carefully. "Dr. Palmer and I were available, so we were the ones who interviewed her. You will understand that the Institute receives a number of requests each year for ... a type of help it is not equipped to provide."

  "Admirably and tactfully put," Dr. Atheling said with a faint ghost of mockery in his voice. "And what did the Institute discover?"

  "Although Ms. Musgrave never submitted herself for a formal evaluation, Dr. Palmer and I concluded that the likely explanation for the majority of the presenting phenomena—including an event which we both witnessed—was adult-onset poltergeist phenomena, triggering event unknown."

  "For most of the phenomena," Dr. Atheling paraphrased. "But not all?"

  Although the day was warm, involuntarily Truth hunched her shoulders against the remembered cold of the magickal attack launched against her when she and Winter had summoned the Elemental. "But not all," she agreed.

  "Let us not fence any longer," Dr. Atheling said abruptly. "You are aware of who I am, and I am quite aware of what you are. What do you know of the Elemental sending that has attached itself to Winter?"

  Truth carefully kept her face from showing her surprise,
though such an Adept as Dr. Atheling could certainly read it in her aura even more easily than upon her face.

  "That it exists," she said, and half shrugged, embarrassed by her ignorance. "That it wants . . . something, though we haven't yet been able to find out what. That it draws its strength from the blood of the animals it kills—larger ones as its power grows. And that it was sent by someone to whom Winter has an emotional connection." Truth watched Dr. Atheling closely.

  "Do you know who sent it?" he asked, his tone mild once more.

  "Do you?"

  "No," he said, "and if you did, you would not be here."

  It was no more than the truth, Truth admitted to herself. "I need to know," she said slowly, choosing her words with care. "Because it's dangerous. And because it seems to become more powerful with each death—able to command larger blood sacrifices. And because I don't think that Winter has any control over it."

  An hour later, Truth drove homeward, her mind busy. Though she had learned a great deal, perilously little of it seemed to have any immediate bearing on Winter's problem. Dr. Atheling, too, had marked the magickal child for what it was while Winter was still at Fall River, though he was as ignorant as Truth of its ultimate origin. Bound by a combination of his oaths as an Adept and his oaths as a physician, he had not opposed the creature directly, though he had done what he could to help Winter cope with its effects, and Truth was convinced that the Elemental's power and hunger had increased sharply once Winter had left his sphere of influence.

  Back where I started, Truth thought to herself. No answer to what was chasing Winter—and why.

  Only she was not quite as ignorant as before. There was now the puzzle of Dr. Atheling himself to consider. Truth's path and those of the others who studied the Unseen World must inevitably cross if her life continued in the direction it was going. And even after more than a year, Truth wasn't sure how she felt about that.

  Though Truth Jourdemayne was only a beginner in the study of the Occult—her gifts having been more a matter of inheritance than training—the months she had spent researching her father's life and his magickal discipline had given her some understanding of the many different coteries who studied that group of arts and philosophy invariably lumped together under the catch-all label "The Occult." Meeting Dr. Atheling made Truth more aware than ever of the fact that, though she thought she moved alone through a labyrinth of scholarship and phenomena, she was in fact only one Seeker among many. Far older than the Blackburn Work, and the source for much of it, was Dr. Atheling's Right Hand Path, the Western Mystery Tradition epitomized by the White Lodges. Though the trappings of each Lodge were different, each traced its ultimate origin back to the learning of Ancient Egypt, and beyond that, to storied Atlantis herself.

  Instructed as she was in the Blackburn Work, Truth had made little contact with other traditions. Thorne Blackburn had been a rogue and a rebel against that wellspring of tradition, believing that humankind should seek perfection in the world they had been given rather than seeking an alien perfection in realms that only a chosen few could aspire to— and then only if transformed by a lifetime's rigorous training. The White Lodge in which he had received his earliest instruction had cast him out for such ideas, but though they had pronounced anathema on him, Thorne had not, as many believed, turned to the Dark. The Left Hand Path in all of its guises had, in fact, as little use for Blackburn's philosophy as did the Right.

  In the Unseen World, as elsewhere, Truth Jourdemayne walked alone.

  As if entirely of its own volition, the Saturn moved left off the highway, toward an exit that led to a different destination than Glastonbury, New York.

  There was one place she could still go to for answers.

  The padlocks and chains were back on the iron gates and the gravel drive showed the marks of several seasons' neglect when Truth drove up to Shadow's Gate and parked in front of the gatehouse. Thorne Blackburn's estate was once more in legal limbo; for his children to inherit was now a matter of tedious legal formalities that would take years. For now, the 100-acre parcel remained untouched, a memorial and a monument to the Blackburn legend.

  Truth got out of her car, admitting ruefully to herself that her dressy suit would probably not survive this expedition. There was a certain freedom, however, in doing what you wanted no matter how you were dressed. The question was, who was to be the master, as Humpty Dumpty had once said to Alice, and Truth felt that her desires—even her whims—should be more important than a suit of clothes.

  It was easy enough to circumvent the gatehouse with its forbidding iron bars, and walk along the fence until the formidable iron spikes became a low fieldstone wall—easy enough to climb over, even in a narrow skirt. A caretaker lived on the property and saw to keeping the grass cut back, so getting across the lawn wasn't a problem. Truth walked up the hill toward the house.

  The contrast between Fall River and Shadow's Gate was enormous. Fall River was mannered and manicured, groomed and tamed until it lost all individuality. Shadow's Gate belonged to itself far more than it did to any human force: Since the first Europeans had come to the Hudson Valley and fallen beneath the spell of this land just as their native-born brothers had, Shadow's Gate had ruled the lives and the destinies of all within its reach.

  Truth cut back to the drive once she was well past the gatehouse, and walked on a gently upward slope through woods in full spring leaf. Half an hour brought her to the crest of the small rise from which she'd gained her first sight of Shadow's Gate less than three years ago.

  The old house still stood in a hollow of ground surrounded by low hills and rambling woodland. To the right Truth could see the boxwood maze whose contours concealed secret passages that would let her into the house itself. The maze was noticeably overgrown now, though some attempt had been made to keep it clipped back. Truth shook her head sadly. Someone would have to do something about Shadow's Gate, and soon. But her destination today was not the house, nor anything that lay close beside it. It took her almost another hour to reach her real destination.

  Here in the woods behind the house lay the henge Thorne Blackburn and his acolytes had made: a horseshoe shape of man-sized granite pillars in a forest clearing. At the head of the circle, in the place the thirteenth pillar should have been, stood a massive oak tree, its bark thick and twisted with age. Carved into the wood, at the level of her heart, Truth could see the symbol of the Circle of Truth, like and yet unlike the symbols that had been painted at Nuclear Lake. With some difficulty, Truth clambered into the circle and placed her hand over the sign. The wood was warm and alive beneath her hand. She stroked it meditatively.

  What should she do? Should she summon the magickal child here? This was the place of her greatest power, where her mother's and father's heritage combined—if she had any hope of containing or commanding the creature her hope was here, not at the Institute.

  But there was only a slight chance she could prevail, even here. The Elemental had been sent against Winter; it drew its power from the very fact of her existence to such an extent that Truth wondered if anyone but Winter could possibly destroy it. If only Winter were willing to accept her link with that nightmare sending, and use it. ...

  Truth remembered the steely ice-maiden who had come to the Institute for help. Even at her most vulnerable, Winter Musgrave did not seem to be the sort of woman who could yield, gracefully or otherwise. The Elemental would surely destroy her before she would ever accept it into herself. Truth leaned against the tree and closed her eyes.

  . . . Wait. . .

  It might almost have been the wind in the leaves that carried with it that sense of hushed expectation. Truth cocked her head, listening, but heard nothing further. Still, she had the answer she'd instinctively sought. This fight was not hers. Not yet. Perhaps never.

  Truth circled the trunk with her arms, and rested her cheek against the bark of the tree. For a long time she stood like that, unmoving, the sun that shone down falling equally on her and th
e great oak. The sense of peace that she felt welled up from the roots of the earth, carrying with it the promise that there was time for all things. Time, even, to discover her own purpose in the world.

  At last Truth roused herself from her trance and stood away from the tree. She felt rested, refreshed—and certain, at last, of her proper course. She turned to go, but before she left the enchanted circle Truth spoke aloud for the first time.

  "Thank you, Father."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALL THE WORLD IS WINTER

  He disappeared in the dead of winter.

  — W. H. AUDEN

  DRIVING ONCE MORE THROUGH GLASTONBURY IN THE direction of the college, Winter wondered if coming back here had been a mistake. It felt too much like saying good-bye.

  She had never said good-bye to Grey.

  Winter set her jaw and concentrated on moving her car through the light traffic on the road approaching Glastonbury. Her bandaged hands were slippery on the wheel, and she grasped it carefully. It had been weeks since she'd left; it was late spring now, less than two months to the end of the school year. There was a certain grisly justice to coming back here now: It was almost as if she were returning to college after spring break, fourteen years too late. She had never finished the part of her life that Taghkanic represented.

  And now, when desperation compelled her to go back to what should have been over long ago and stir up old ghosts, she found that the shades of those innocent college days had become something . . . darker. If coming here felt as if she were saying good-bye, it was because she was. All that was left after she'd seen Truth was to go back to San Francisco, find Rhiannon somehow and receive Cassie's message, and then—

  Grey. The Elemental. Images tangled in Winter's mind, a web of choking guilt and responsibility that seemed as if it would grow tighter forever. What could she have changed in the past to make the present other than it was?

  There was no answer to that; there never had been an answer for as long as people have been asking that question. But if Winter could not find some way to change the present, there would be no future at all.