Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02

by Witchlight (v2. 1)

  It was her anger that saved her. Not the killing rage that, uncontrolled, brought on the psychokinetic storms that for so long she had ascribed to an outside agency, but a cold quiet determination to do what she had said she would do, no matter how great the odds were against her.

  At last Winter was able to lay her free hand atop the nearest cairn of stones. At once the pressure and disorientation ceased, and she and Grey, still holding hands, were able to walk quickly and easily into the center of the circle.

  Grey looked around. From the expression on his face he was seeing something different than she was—or perhaps remembering.

  "Well, here we are, at the death of hope," Grey said. His voice was cutting, and Winter flinched away inwardly from the anger in it. "You know, for years I hoped you'd come back."

  "I forgot," Winter said, and the bare truth sounded far uglier than she'd intended.

  "I know," Grey said, and now he only sounded tired. "I looked for you in dreams, on the astral—hell, even on the Internet."

  "Did you try New York?" Winter shot back. Why were they arguing now? Wasn't it years and lifetimes too late to matter?

  "I got tired of getting thrown off the family estate and then picked up for vagrancy," Grey said. He shrugged and tried to smile, but couldn't quite manage it. "I've got to admit that an arrest record makes a dandy souvenir when you try to get a job, though."

  Her parents had done that. Casually. Efficiently. Damn them. In this bodiless realm, her spiraling outrage had the seductive force of a jolt of speed. "I didn't do that," she said quietly. "I didn't even know."

  "I know." Grey's smile was gentle now. "But it took me too many years to figure that out. I'm sorry. But hurry now. We've got to rebuild the temple—it's coming, and if we can't restrain it when it gets here . . ."

  It's going to kill us. Winter's mind supplied the words Grey didn't say.

  And it was coming. A darkness on the horizon, the heaviness of a mindless hostility that Winter had glimpsed twice before. Grey cried out in a language that, for a confused moment, Winter felt she knew, and where the circle of tumbled stones had stood in the sourceless silver light, the walls of the temple began to rise, shadowy in the wavering air. Winter felt Grey draw power from her living body, but he needed more: her mind, her will, and her heart.

  She tried to give him what he needed—and realized, with sinking despair, that she couldn't. There was some fundamental quality that she lacked—if she'd ever had it at all.

  "Winter," Grey pleaded. She clutched his hand tighter, wordlessly shaking her head. He wanted her to fly, but her wings had melted long ago.

  It was nearly here, and they had no defenses. Grey had said the Elemental had more reality here; in this world Winter could feel the ground shake as it approached, and the storm that heralded its coming gained force. Beside her, Grey fought to raise the walls of the temple by himself, and Winter knew he wasn't going to make it.

  How could she expect—how could Grey expect—to create alone what it had taken five people once to make?

  And then it reached them. The storm broke over Winter like a towering wave: an icy vortex that chilled and deafened her, leaching the strength from her body until she could no longer feel Grey's hand. This isn't so bad, was Winter's first, false, reaction. She'd been expecting a monster, some kind of movie alien, not just darkness and crushing pressure.

  But her sense of relief was gone before it had truly been, gone in the realization of the true nature of the creature that Hunter Greyson had made.

  First came the pain. It was worse than the migraine headaches that had left her sick and dazed for days, worse than she could imagine pain could be. But even that was endurable, was welcome in comparison to the icy needles that slid into her eyes, her brain, carrying with them the knowledge of inhuman hunger and loss. Pain—and the soul Winter was not sure she possessed howled its despair. The Elemental had reached her, and here was its message: grief and pain, anger and betrayal, ripping away her sanity and self as easily as she might disjoint a chicken, destroying all that Winter was but leaving behind some screaming spark to know and suffer and sorrow.

  Forever.

  She didn't know when it stopped, only that she was running. Grey pulled her along, away from the temple, his hand in hers so hot and solid that Winter knew with a distant pang of wonder that even in this unreal place she was nearly on the edge of death.

  "Grey— Stop— Grey—" Winter panted. She wanted to scream—she wanted to die—she would do anything to keep that creature from touching her again, anything—

  Grey stopped and took her in his arms, holding her body tightly against him. Winter imagined she could feel the fluttering beat of his heart. She would have wept, but terror had burned away all her tears.

  "We're toast," Grey said, with a ghost of his old mocking lightness.

  "Grey!" Winter protested, as if his disrespect could gain them greater punishment.

  "No." She felt him shake his head, denying her false hope. "It's too strong. I broke free this time; I can probably even do it again. But it'll get us in the end."

  "No," Winter moaned. And there was no place to run—here or in the real world it would come for her.

  Was this what Cassie had felt before she died?

  Was it?

  Deep within Winter, faint fires of anger and guilt trembled. She coaxed them to life. Anything was better than the terror: anger, guilt, pride—anything she could use to shield herself she would gladly use.

  "You told me we could kill it," Winter said, in a voice she hardly recognized. "You lied." Cold. Cold as the hate-serpent; cold as ice; a shield that had been forged only for this ultimate extremity. Useless—dangerous—in the real world, here it was her only hope.

  Grey looked behind them. On the horizon, the storm was gathering once more.

  "Not kill," Grey corrected her, his voice steady. "Unmake it—understand it, unbind it from the task it was set. Name it, command it, set it free. How could I— I even think it would listen if we could just hold it long enough—shield ourselves from it somehow—but we can't. Lord of the Wheel—" and now Winter heard real agony in his voice "—I would give up all I am, all that I might hope to be, all my advancement on the Path, if I only could stop what I have set in motion here!"

  "We need the others."

  Where had this sudden certainty come from, the sense that she was somehow something more than herself?

  "Cassie's dead," Grey said, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice now.

  "I can get her." Whatever the certainty's source, she had to believe in her own Tightness. Help me, help me—help us! Winter prayed. A scrap of memory came back to her. Lords of the Wheel—Lords of the New Aeon—your children call upon you. . . .

  "If you can get them, and bring them here, do it now," Grey's voice was flat. "Because here it comes again."

  It was as if sheer desperation had transformed her at last from a creature of careful logic to one of unthinking instinct. The power within Winter beckoned—she seized it, and felt as if she'd plunged her hands into the white-hot heart of the sun.

  Cassilda, Ramsey, Janelle . . .

  Cassilda stood at the gates of Death, lingering in the borderland, holding on valiantly as she waited for the summons she knew would come. Winter reached for her and took her hand, and it was cold, so cold. . . .

  In the courts of Sleep, Ramsey Miller and Janelle Baker lingered.

  She found them.

  A dream, Winter—something we can all share! Grey's swift demand. Hurry!

  And remade the world in her own image.

  The stadium was packed, a million roaring faceless bodies in the darkness, projecting their passion and energy onto the stage. Winter stood alone upon the empty platform, handmaid of forces greater than herself, and summoned Nuclear Circle into being.

  A dream we can all share. To mold them, to bind them, to make them one once more.

  The music called, and Winter let it in.

 
Grey came first, laying down the melody in a dance of electrified strings, smoothing the way for the others, living and dead, to join them—

  Ramsey, a little behind, but with a rhythm strong and sure, able to follow where any of them led—

  Cassilda, her work in the world cut short, pushed them forward on the insistent beat of the drums, urging them onward—

  And, last of all, Janelle danced in and out, the sound of her fiddle mocking the two guitars. Winter drew a deep breath and flung herself into the web of sound, the bright silver skirl of her flute finishing all, sealing the circle and shaping the power. Grey led them on, but it was Winter who blessed and blazed the trail.

  Musk, Winter. Sound and rhythm, the first awareness; the place it starts—

  She looked without sight, seeing them all—and saw, too, that none of them was whole. Each of them had failed, somewhere in the world, once they had left the golden time.

  Janelle's failure had been of nerve, Ramsey's of heart, and Cassie's of will, but her own had been the worst, her cowardice a failure of faith, of trust not only in the future but in some essential constant of good.

  The music wavered.

  But that didn't matter, Winter told herself fiercely. Together they supplied one anothers' lack, strengthening each other against the world, against the past.

  The Elemental reached them, and Winter felt it: need and despair, sorrow and rage—but now, against that, she set the best of them: Janelle's bravery and Ramsey's love, Grey's yearning, and Cassilda confident and steady beneath it all. Living and dead together, linked in a covenant that transcended birth, that kept their music strong and sure against it. Here, in this time outside of time, was the golden time when they had all been gods, and nothing was beyond their power.

  She concentrated on the Elemental—

  And the metaphor shifted again, and now Winter was dancing barefoot and short-skirted on a high hill. The melody they wove was older, richer, deeper: drums and pipes, and she whirled in Grey's arms as the music led in and out, the hounds and the hare, but this time it was the hounds who led the hare on, weaving a web of sound and magick to hold it in.

  "Caught!" she heard Grey cry exultantly, but to catch it wasn't enough; Grey had to unweave it, spinning this child of his intention safely back into the starstuff from which the universe was made.

  There was something not right in that, something she had overlooked, but there was no time for thought or doubt, and now Winter led the circle again, as the definition of the world slid from Grey's mind to hers and shifted one last time.

  And she was reaching out into the electronic architecture, linking the file-servers, pulling up application after application, the definition of the world for a child of the Computer Age—

  As the opening bell rang the floor of the Exchange came to its feet in one many-throated roar; here was Chicago, one hour behind New York; it was already afternoon in London and the gold-fix was hours old; Japan was in bed and it was already tomorrow in the Far East and the data poured in across a dozen computer screens and there was only one thing faster, one thing surer, one thing that could integrate that flood of data and build a world from it; a world where time was money, and money was the phantom dance of the EFTs across a thousand world markets. . . .

  And this realm of intention and command came alive for her, an extension of her will, her mind. Armored in her applications, her programs, her subroutines, Winter reached out, to deal with:

  —demon—

  —virus—

  —bad art—

  She felt Grey reach through her. . . .

  "That which I commanded is fulfilled, and the term of your years is run. By fire and water, the word and the will, by living and unliving earth I remind you of your making and unmake you now—"

  . . . laying gentle merciless hands on the thing that did not belong in this perfect pattern that was the blueprint of all creation . . .

  And the Hunt closed in— And the music swirled to a crescendo— And the system loaded and began to run— And all the metaphor was gone.

  She felt Cassie slip away first, with a gentle laugh and a last caress, down the Spiral Path to the beginning of creation.

  Born again to the Goddess. Good-bye, Cassie.

  Then Ramsey and Janelle, tumbling back down into sleep, perhaps to take the courage for change with them into the waking world.

  Sleep well, my loves. Dream true.

  Gone, all of them, and she and Grey stood alone, hand in hand, in the desolation where only one other thing remained.

  She was thirteen, the age she would have been if she'd lived. In her face, Grey's features and Winter's melded.

  "Mommy—" The child-wraith wavered; hungry, needing. . . . Winter started forward.

  "Don't go to her," Grey said harshly. His grip on Winter's hand stopped her. "She isn't alive. Step outside the circle and you'll wander forever. You won't be able to find your way back to your body any more than I could to mine once the silver cord was snapped."

  Surprised, Winter looked down. Just in front of where she was standing was a line of pale quartz river stones, forming a line that curved around to become the circle Grey spoke of.

  "I don't care! She's—"

  My daughter.

  Winter pulled, but now it was Grey who would not release her. He gripped her hand so tightly it hurt; tightly enough that she stared at him in puzzled anger.

  "Mommy," the wraith keened again, and the sound came near to breaking Winter's heart.

  "I unbound it," Grey said hoarsely. "All that Nuclear Circle once created is gone. But she remains." His face twisted with revulsion—and fear. "I created what I could not control, but I'm no black magician—I would not bind a human soul into anything I made. She was my— She was our— I did not bind her here!"

  He tugged against her grip, but this time Winter held fast. After what had gone before, there should be nothing left that could kindle her bruised emotions, but there was one thing left.

  "No," Winter said. "I did." Hating, needing, never letting go— Hate dragged her back. The power of hate.

  Grey said all five of them together had created the Elemental in its original form. If that was true, then there'd been something left of Winter in it even after all those years, enough to let Grey's magickal child break free of Grey's fragile control and go searching for—

  Their daughter. "This is my fault. I'm why she's here. Grey, let me go. I have to go to her."

  "No." Grey's voice was tired. "We have to call her in." His eyes met hers. "Can you do it?"

  "Of course I—" Winter began, and stopped. Could she really? Could she accept that she'd brushed this life aside out of her own selfish fear and confusion? Could she accept that its presence here now was a testimony, not to any noble emotion, but to the strength of her self-obsessed hate? Could she bear to see herself that clearly? Was she even willing to try?

  And what was the price of failure?

  "Yes," Winter said in a strangled voice.

  Still clasping her hand—gently now—Grey stooped and lifted one of the stones free of the circle. "Call her."

  What name, what name to give to the daughter who had never been? Wordlessly, Winter held out her hand. The child—a girl on the edge of womanhood, really, and everything about her an illusion—drifted forward, through the gap in the circle, and then Winter pulled free of Grey to hold her tightly in her arms.

  Cold, so cold. . . I made a mistake. It isn't always, not for every woman. If I'd really thought it through I might have done it anyway. But I should at least have thought hard before I did it!

  Grey's arms circled them both, and for a moment Winter could feel his thoughts as well: grief, and self-contempt; an angry guilt that he had not tried harder to soothe her fears all those years ago, to try to be the man she thought she wanted.

  But you can't live just for someone else, Grey, Winter thought sadly. You have to live for yourself, too. There has to be a balance.

  The cold seemed to
sink into her very bones as the child-spirit slipped free, unbound at last.

  Soon, Mommy. Someday . . .

  A line from the half-forgotten Blackburn Work came back to her and Winter spoke aloud: "Here is the Third Gate, the Gate of Making and Unmaking, where Life becomes Death, and Death, Life."

  And Winter's arms were empty.

  "Now it's my turn."

  Winter looked at Grey. He stepped away from her, dressed now as she remembered him best, in beads and buckskin and acid-washed jeans. Behind him a road she had not seen before stretched arrow-straight into the distance; a long straight track, paved, not with yellow brick, but with shining silver.

  "Thanks for coming," Grey said, gesturing as if he knew the words were inadequate. "Thanks for setting me free—for setting us both free. I hope— 1 hope you can be happy." He turned to go, toward the waiting road.

  Once he reaches it, it will be too late.

  "No—wait!" Winter said, grabbing for him. The fringe of his jacket slithered through her fingers, and she clutched only air.

  "Are you just going to give up?" she cried.

  Grey looked back at her, faintly puzzled. "Give up? I'm dead, Winter."

  "No you aren't—not yet. You said there isn't any time here. You aren't dead yet." There was nothing she could reach him with except her words. "Come back with me—come back to me. We can— There has to be some way we can try again," she pleaded.

  "I can't do it." There was fear in Grey's voice. "I can't make it back. It's too far—you don't understand. The cord is broken. I can't find my way. You've got to let me go."

  "No I don't!" Winter said, willing him to look at her, to see. "You said you love me—prove it! Or else it was all for nothing—there's no point in trying because the mistakes we make last forever. Prove that they don't— that no matter what we've done wrong we can take it back, start again, so that it doesn't have to be forever—" Her voice broke.

  Grey took a step toward her, away from the beckoning road. There was a sound in the air, a faint and distant wind.