Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Colin wanted to ask Lockridge a question, but just then the car came over the rise, and he caught his first glimpse of Shadow’s Gate.

  The sprawling Victorian, made of red brick and the pale local stone, had much the same look of a fairy-tale castle as the gatehouse had. Three cone-roofed towers set with long narrow windows rose up from the corners of the rambling structure, and clustered around the front door were more emergency vehicles. The surrounding grounds were covered with storm detritus, and Colin could see the white scars of downed trees all across the grounds and into the forest beyond. The echoes of some force greater than the storm still echoed over these hills.

  “And none of those kids’ll give us the time of day. They keep yammering on about First Amendment rights—dammit, this is a murder investigation!”

  Katherine dead, Thorne missing. And the police willing to believe it’s murder because of Thorne’s reputation, and the FBI involved because of … the Weather Underground? That’s ridiculous!

  “How did Miss Jourdemayne die?” Colin asked, voice even. Thorne had never used any safeguards in his rituals, and now the retribution had come.

  “Drugs, probably. That’s what the ME said.” Lockridge shrugged. “Stark naked, and not a mark on her that I saw. Hippies.”

  The contempt in his voice was indictment enough.

  The survivors of Thorne’s band—already that seemed the right word to use—ad been gathered in the dining room. Other than the wan light of dawn streaming in through the windows, the only illumination in the room was provided by candles: the power was out at Shadow’s Gate.

  He saw Jonathan Ashwell, still in his ritual robes, stroking the back of a weeping woman. Since the last time Colin had seen him, Jonathan had grown a beard; it was dark and bushy, and with his long hair, it gave him a passing resemblance to the mad monk Rasputin. About half of those gathered in the room were still wearing their ritual robes, and of the rest, some were in pajamas, some in street clothes. Caroline, wearing a sensible pantsuit and aviator-frame glasses, looked as if she had come from another world. Several of the women were holding crying babies, and young children clung to the adults’ legs and whimpered. Most of the women, and some of the men, were crying, sobbing unashamedly as children. How could anyone think that Thorne Blackburn was a fugitive, when here in this room was all the evidence of his death that anyone should ever need?

  With the grieving survivors surrounding him, the anguish of the tragedy was overpowering. Sternly, Colin forced himself to concentrate, to shut out the emotions that filled this room, the sea of agony through which the officers walked as if it didn’t exist

  “Colin!” Caroline. said, coming over to him. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she’d been crying for so long her eyes were swollen and dry. She threw her arms around him—a young woman who had suffered the most intimate of all bereavements, the loss of a twin, desperate for comfort.

  For a moment he simply held her as her body shook with unsheddable tears. Then she pushed herself away.

  “Caroline?” Colin asked. He needed to know what had happened here. She shook her head, as if no matter what he said, she had no answer.

  “Caroline, where’s Thorne?”

  Her eyes focused on him then, fathomless wells of pain. “I don’t know. They were all in the temple. I helped both of them get ready for the ritual. And … Katherine’s dead,” she finished, as if it were a new discovery.

  “I know,” Colin said gently.

  Colin could feel the seething currents of violence that eddied beneath every action in this room. Thorne had not been well liked in Shadowkill, and he’d never done well with authority at the best of times. With a pang of memory, Colin thought back to that day in Golden Gate Park. Two years ago. A lifetime for Thorne Blackburn.

  The deputy standing in the doorway glared at Colin. “And who the hell let you in here?”

  “MacLaren’s our big city voodoo expert,” Deputy Lockridge said mildly, defusing the scene as much as he could. “Let me see if I can find Detective Hodge and see what he wants done, Mr. MacLaren.” He walked away quickly.

  Colin spared a useless wish that Claire were here. Somehow she always had the ability to calm tense situations just by her presence. He could use a little of that calm now.

  “It’s no use,” Caroline said quietly, in a voice made rough by weeping. “They hate him too much. He made fools of them and now they’re going to destroy everything he ever worked for. It’s finished. The New Aeon is dead.”

  A redhead in a red robe, her heavy makeup running down her face in black tear-streaks, came over and put her arms around Caroline.

  “Now hush, lovey. Kate’s gone on to a better place, you know that. And Thorne … don’t you grieve for him. He’s free. No one can hurt him now.” Colin recognized Irene Avalon from Thorne’s San Francisco days. She looked at Colin beseechingly. “Make them let us go, Colin,” she begged. “We haven’t done anything. And there are children here.” She pointed at the corner where a black-haired toddler slept on a folded blanket, clutching a battered teddy bear to her cheek.

  “Get your hands off me!”

  Colin turned toward the familiar voice in time to see a uniformed officer shove Jonathan Ashwell back into a chair. Colin could just imagine what he looked like to the officer, between the long hair and the ritual robes. Just another wild-eyed loonie, right, boys? Colin thought derisively.

  “Just cool your heels, sonny-boy,” a uniformed officer said.

  “You Nazi Neanderthal,” Jonathan snarled. “You’ve got no right to hold us here. You’re tearing the house apart—where’s your warrant? ‘Miranda’ was ratified three years ago!”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Colin said to Irene. He walked over to Jonathan.

  “Suspicion of a crime in progress, longhair,” the officer snarled at Jonathan. “And I’ll ‘Miranda’ your ass, you little—”

  “Back off, pig, or I’ll have you up on charges faster than you can say ‘ACLU,’” Jonathan snarled. The mingled anger and grief with which he regarded the policeman did nothing to make him look any saner.

  “Jonathan,” Colin said quietly. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Hey,” the uniformed officer said. “The lieutenant doesn’t want these guys talking to each other.”

  “Arrest me, pork rind,” Jonathan sneered.

  The officer started for him; Colin hastily interposed his body between them.

  “Jonathan, shut up. Officer, I’m Colin MacLaren; I’m a consultant to the New York City Police Department. This young man is one of my former students. I’d appreciate the opportunity to talk to him.”

  Colin had told no lies, but he had subtly managed to convey the notion that he had been called in by the police. He saw the uniformed officer relax and step back.

  “Sure. Take him on into the kitchen. There’s coffee there.”

  Colin took Jonathan’s arm and led him through into the house’s old Victorian kitchen. It had obviously become a base of operations for the police; there were several cardboard boxes on the kitchen table, filled with Styrofoam coffee cups bearing the logo of a deli down in Shadowkill. Colin sorted through until he found two that were full, and handed one to Jonathan.

  “Now. Quickly, as we may not have much time. Tell me what happened here, Jonathan. I have to know before I can help.”

  “Thorne’s gone.”

  The last time Colin had seen such a look of blank bewilderment in someone’s eyes it had been in the eyes of the refugees in the DP camps after the War. He pushed the memory aside.

  “Gone where, Jonathan?”

  “Gone.” Jonathan shrugged helplessly, much as Caroline had done. “Kate’s dead,” he added, as if this were news.

  “Tell me what happened,” Colin said.

  He was unprepared for Jonathan’s answer.

  “No.”

  Colin stared at him in disbelief.

  “I can’t. You aren’t Sealed to the Circle. I can’t te
ll you what happened. You’re not one of us.”

  “For God’s sake, Jonathan,” Colin burst out, before he could stop himself, “this is serious!” And I would have given the same answer, if our positions had been reversed

  “So is the Work,” Jonathan said wearily. With a gallant effort, he pulled himself together. “Do you think I don’t know what’s going to happen when we tell the police that? If they’re going to hold us as material witnesses, we don’t have any Miranda rights—not to an attorney, and not to a trial. It isn’t going to be pretty, but we haven’t got any choice. But I’ll tell you what I can. Maybe Caroline can tell you more—she isn’t one of us. Not Sealed to the Circle, at least, but I know she believes in what Thorne’s doing. Anyway, we were doing a working tonight, during a big storm. Something … went wrong.”

  Colin waited, but Jonathan was obviously finished talking.

  “That’s all you have to say?” Colin said, striving to keep the incredulousness out of his voice. “‘Something went wrong’?”

  “Kate’s dead,” Jonathan repeated, as if the thought kept suddenly occurring to him. “And Thorne’s …” There was an almost unbearable hesitation. “Thorne’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” Run away? Colin couldn’t believe it. He could believe that Thorne might have killed Katherine Jourdemayne with malice aforethought sooner than that he had fled the scene of even the worst mishap in fear. Thorne was utterly fearless, and fiercely loyal. He would never abandon his followers. Never.

  “Gone.” Incredibly, there was a note of amusement in Jonathan’s voice. “Just … gone, Colin, and no one will ever find him.” His voice broke, and he struggled for self-control. “And Kate’s dead. Oh, God, we were trying a new mix; Thorne said it would keep her ‘there.’ But she must have taken too much. He was always on her about that … .”

  He put his hand over his face, and his next words were muffled. “And now the cops’re looking for a scapegoat. And it’s going to be us. And it doesn’t matter. Because he’s gone.”

  “Gone.” That was the word all of them had used, Irene and Caroline, and Jonathan. Gone. Not dead, not fleeing. Just … gone.

  “Where did he go?” Colin demanded. “Jonathan, if you know, you have to tell me. Thorne needs a lawyer—protection—”

  Protection from the police. Colin could not now even remember the moment in which that last innocence had died and he’d come to understand that even the guiltless were punished in this brave new America.

  This time Jonathan laughed. “Oh, Colin, you don’t get it, do you? Thorne never left the Temple.” He slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and leaned on the table, resting his head on his folded arms. “They will never find him.”

  The sentence had the finality of an epitaph. And despite Colin’s pleas, Jonathan would say nothing else.

  It was another hour before Colin managed to see Lieutenant Hodge. He’d gained permission for a couple of the women to go upstairs—under police escort—and bring down things for the infants and children, and Caroline and Irene had moved into the kitchen, producing fresh coffee and a scratch breakfast for everyone. Caroline Jourdemayne was thoroughly respectable—a spinster librarian—and she used that respectability like a weapon, forcing the officers to acknowledge her.

  But the situation was still tense. No one had been arrested yet, but that could happen at any moment. And Pilgrim and two other children were missing, no one knew where.

  “Dr. MacLaren. I’m Lieutenant Hodge.”

  Lieutenant Hodge was a few years younger than Colin, but already comfortably entrenched in middle age. He was fair and balding, as so many natives of this area of the country were, and he wore a rumpled trenchcoat over a grey suit.

  “Lieutenant,” Colin said.

  “Deputy Lockridge thinks you’re pretty groovy,” Hodge said. “But what I want to know is, what are you doing here?”

  He was, Colin reflected, getting pretty tired of answering that question.

  “I’m a friend of Caroline Jourdemayne,” he said again. “She called me and asked me to come. I came. I don’t want to intrude on your show, Lieutenant,” he added, “but I may be able to help. I have a certain amount of experience in this area, as Lieutenant Becket and a number of other people can tell you.”

  “Do tell,” Lieutenant Hodge rasped, sounding irritable and tired. “And suppose you tell me what your ‘experience’ tells you.”

  It was a setup question, since all Colin had seen was the dining room. He hadn’t gone into the Temple or even seriously questioned any of the members of Thorne’s Circle other than Jonathan.

  “Well, first of all,” Colin said, “these people aren’t Satanists. As far as I know, they aren’t worshiping any deity at all, least of all the Christian Devil. Blackburn’s Temple—where, I gather, Katherine Jourdemayne died, probably of an accidental drug overdose—is a place where Blackburn and his followers practiced ritual magic, which is, at its simplest, a collection of consciousness-altering techniques derived from experimental psychology. This being the case, I wouldn’t expect to see any animal sacrifices or blood offerings—as are typical of voudoun, for example. And I’d be very surprised to see any Christian iconography at all, let alone any desecration of the Cross or the Host.”

  If Hodge didn’t stare at him in slack-jawed amazement, he did at least regard Colin with something closer to respect.

  “Well, aren’t you the little expert? Why don’t you and me take a little walk?” Hodge flicked on his flashlight and indicated the door. “Frank, me and the Professor are going for a walk—keep Cheshire off my back, would you?”

  Lieutenant Hodge led Colin through the shadowy halls of Shadow’s Gate, stopping outside a room that was garishly lit with battery lamps. The double doors had been ripped from the hinges, and even the metal of the hinges was pulled and distorted.

  “That wasn’t us,” Hodge said, noting the direction of Colin’s gaze. “The doors were like this when we arrived. They’re in here.” Hodge stepped through the doorway.

  Following him, Colin could see the doors lying just inside the doorway, as though whatever force had ripped them free had let them fall almost immediately.

  The room was round, thirty feet in diameter and almost twice that in height. Heaven only knew what this room had originally been. The ceiling had been painted—long before Thorne had owned the place—with the signs of the Zodiac, gold against blue. Below its dome there was a band of stained-glass windows, some of them open. Watermarks stained the walls below. Around the edge of the black-and-white marble floor, gigantic papier-mâché figures of the Egyptian gods alternated with banners in red, black, white, and grey—at least they had, before some force had flung the statues about the room as if they were ninepins and ripped the banners from the walls.

  Colin stared around himself, searching for familiar landmarks of the Inner Tradition in vain. There was no Table of Hermes. The edge of the circle had been marked by candles, but whatever force had ripped the doors off their hinges had dashed the candles against the walls as well. Colin could see six from where he stood, and thought there must be more.

  This was like no Temple, Light or Dark, that he had ever seen. The four banners were not hung at the cardinal points, nor were they of the cardinal colors, nor were the Four Tools or the Four Elements represented anywhere. These banners had the figures of animals: the red banner had the figure of a white horse, the black banner had a red stag, and so on.

  Nor was the double-cube altar present, though there was a low couch in the center of the floor, directly beneath the apex of the dome. The couch was covered with animal furs and pine boughs, now in disarray. Their green scent warred with the heavy bitter scent of frankincense and another odor Colin couldn’t quite place.

  What had these children been doing? What sort of magick had Thorne been working here—and what had he summoned? Colin felt no sense of presence here in Thorne’s Temple, but without Claire he couldn’t be sure. If only he had some idea of what they’d b
een doing … .

  A cold sense of failure settled heavily over him. He should have made it his business to know. Who was he sent to protect, if not innocents such as these? He’d been distracted by the more obvious threat of the Thule cult reborn. Only now, when it was too late, did he realize that there had been a more subtle, less glamorous battle to fight—one well within his power. But his pride had blinded him, dismissing what Thorne did as childish mummery, without content.

  And so it had come to this.

  “Dear Lord.” Colin sighed. “Forgive me, all of you … .” Arrogance was the shadow-self of competence; though the easy mastery he had once possessed had faded with the fires of youth, the hubris had remained.

  Never again.

  Never again would he turn away from a battle because it was too small, too insignificant, the adversary too harmless. Never again would he set conditions to his participation in the fight. He had thought that Thorne’s maverick magick did not matter, and he had been wrong.

  Everything mattered. Each moment of inattention brought the Shadow closer. Each tiny compromise, irrelevant in itself, diminished the Light.

  Colin set those painful thoughts aside for later contemplation. He was here now. He must do what he could for the living.

  There were two swords lying on the floor, as though they had been carelessly tossed aside. He walked over to them, looking down.

  “Don’t touch those,” Hodge said sharply. “We still have to dust for fingerprints.”