Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “I will play again,” he said to his visitors.

  The left side of his face was exposed now, crossed with livid red scars awaiting the hand of the plastic surgeon. He wore a patch over his left eye. The blackness of unshaven stubble over the scarred half of his face and neck, along with his half-shaven scalp, gave him a particularly brutish look, though some of the effect was offset by the fact that he was wearing his own clothes at last.

  His room at the rehabilitation clinic looked more like a bedroom in a luxurious hotel than like a sickroom. It had a panoramic view of the City, and there was even a fireplace. But the bed was outfitted with side rails and a call button, and all the pathways around the room were wide enough to allow the passage of a wheelchair.

  “Simon, there are other—” Alison began.

  “‘Other things to do with your life than play!”’ Simon mocked angrily. “Why, I could teach—or conduct—or compose. So Colin had been kind enough to tell me, the witless hypocrite! He’s a eunuch lecturing a whole man on the joys of chastity—”

  “Simon!” Claire said, shocked.

  Alison had said that Simon was being difficult, but until now Claire hadn’t known quite how difficult “difficult” was.

  “Yes, Simon,” Simon jeered. “And I’ll tell you—both of you—what I told him: I do not intend to lie down and seek the consolations to be found in groveling submission to the ineffable Will of God. That was never my way, and I don’t intend to take it up now. Why are we given power, if not to use it?”

  “You know the answer to that,” Claire said quietly.

  “I know the answer your loving God would have me choose,” Simon snarled, “but—”

  He broke off, stiffening in his chair. His head jerked to the side and he twitched spasmodically, as if an electric current were running through him. His lips were curled back from his teeth in a snarl that forced beads of blood through the surface of his half-healed scars.

  “Get the nurse!” Claire barked, jumping up from her chair and running over to him. “Simon—Simon, can you hear me?” The muscles under her hands were rigid, and Simon did not answer.

  In a few more seconds—though it seemed an eternity—the seizure had passed. Simon slumped against Claire, panting raggedly.

  “Mr. Anstey!” the floor nurse said, coming in just ahead of Alison.

  “All … right. I’m all right now,” Simon said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “He had another one of those spasms,” Claire said. Simon’s face was slick with mingled sweat and blood. She plucked the silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his dressing gown and blotted his forehead with it. The lid of his good eye drooped with exhaustion.

  “I think that you ought to get back into bed,” the nurse told Simon. “The doctor has written you a prescription for—”

  “No drugs,” Simon said breathlessly.

  “If they’ll help you heal, you should take them,” Alison said. Her face was twisted with the pain she felt for him. “The faster you heal, the less need you’ll have for them.”

  “Let me help you get him into bed,” Claire said to the nurse. It helped that they knew here that she was an RN; it made the staff more willing to rely on her.

  Between the two of them, Claire and the floor nurse quickly muscled Simon into bed and out of his dressing gown. He wasn’t able to be of much help—the wracking nerve spasm had left him weak—but the two of them got him tucked in easily.

  “Mr. Anstey, you really should—”

  “Go away,” Simon said tiredly.

  Claire understood why he was so unwilling to accept any of the painkillers the staff wished to give him. She herself rarely took anything stronger than aspirin, and never drank anything stronger than the occasional glass of wine. Both Alison and Colin had offered to erect the Wards that Simon was still too weak to build, but he had angrily rejected their help—calling it pennies to a blind beggar’s cup—and they could not act without his permission.

  But it was a hard row to hoe, relying on your own strength alone, and Claire’s heart wept for him. She took his good hand in both of her own. “Rest now, Simon,” she said gently. “I’ll watch with you.”

  “You’re a good girl, Claire,” Simon said. His fingers flexed momentarily about her own as he fell down into unguarded sleep.

  When Claire was certain he’d gone deep enough not to be pulled back into wakefulness by any lingering twinges, she tucked his hand under the covers and got to her feet, tracing the Seal of Man on his forehead with a light touch. She shook her head ruefully, gazing at Alison.

  “I wouldn’t want to be in charge of his treatment,” she said in a low voice. “He’s the worst sort of patient to have: bright, stubborn, and half-right.”

  The description, as she’d hoped it would, brought a smile to Alison’s face.

  “I know that Colin had to go back East, but you’ll stay with us awhile, won’t you, Claire?” Alison said, almost pleading. “I think Simon might listen to you. We’ve quarreled so much this past year that I think he’s just got the idea that I’m opposed to anything he wants to do, and I’m not.” There was a faint quiver in the older woman’s voice.

  “Well, if he thinks I’m going to go along with those crackbrained ideas of his about using magick to heal himself, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Claire said firmly. “It’s foolish, and it’s wrong.”

  “You’re right, my dear,” Alison said, sounding more like her old self, “but you have no idea how stubborn Simon can be.”

  “I’ve known a few stubborn men in my life,” Claire said, with a faint smile. “And however bad Simon is, he can’t be half as stubborn as Colin.”

  FIFTEEN

  GLASTONBURY, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1973

  He sought,

  For his lost heart was tender, things to love,

  But found them not, alas! nor was there aught

  The world contains, the which he could approve.

  —PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  THIS MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA, COLIN ADMITTED TO himself as he drove north along the Taconic Parkway. But staying in San Francisco and browbeating a helpless invalid—and Simon Anstey was still very close to being that, no matter how sharp his tongue—was not a useful course of action either, and Colin had barely been able to have a civil conversation with Simon any time in the last two weeks.

  John Cannon’s last book, Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today, had been edited and returned to Jamie Melford—along with a basic reading list, so that he and Barbara could begin to understand the strange world they’d been thrust into.

  Colin had been more than a little disturbed at the material contained in the manuscript. Now, rituals and techniques that had been closely guarded secrets for centuries—and had been at least hard to find in Thorne Blackburn’s heyday—were, through popularizers such as John Cannon, available to anyone with a dollar bill. And the easier they were to find, the more frivolously they would be used, with disaster the inevitable result.

  The Path was not a thing to be entered onto lightly out of a rainy day’s boredom; nor were its paths to power suitable to every individual’s state of mind, even in a democracy where—in theory—all persons were created equal. Far too many people were driven into the magickal underworld not by any inborn craving for the answers there, but because conventional science had failed to provide them any answers when their lives were interrupted by the Unseen. The only thing that could truly help these people was to open the closed minds of the physical sciences, and that could only be done by offering them proof on their own terms.

  And that was the heart of the reason why Colin was making his journey north to the Taghkanic College Campus, and the Margaret Beresford Bidney Memorial Psychic Science Research Laboratory.

  The college’s nearest neighbors were the town of Glastonbury and a small artist’s colony; Colin visited them both involuntarily before he finally found the campus. A recent snowfall—winter was harder here, north of NYC—made the roa
ds treacherous, and some of the smaller roads hadn’t been plowed at all. After ending up in the center of Glastonbury for the second time, Colin got back onto the main road and this time found the turnoff for Leyden Road. This time he crossed over the railroad tracks—the point at which he’d turned back last time—and made it all the way to the college. He felt an unreasonable sense of triumph as he passed between the fieldstone posts and beneath the wrought-iron gateway that said “Taghkanic College.”

  Even in the depths of winter, the college had a stark Victorian prettiness. Brick walkways, swept clean of snow, crossed the lawns between the black, winter-bare trees; when the trees were in bloom the campus must be dazzling. It was as if Colin had stepped two centuries back in time; the college stood like something preserved in Arctic ice, an echo of another age. He drove slowly past the red brick buildings and the clumps of anonymous students moving between them, looking for his destination. Dr. Newland had told him that the laboratory was impossible to miss …

  … and he’d been perfectly right, Colin decided a few moments later, standing beside his parked van and staring up at the snow-dusted structure with something like awe.

  The effect was very much as if someone had plunked down a Greek temple among a group of log cabins. The building’s shallow porch was supported by seven Doric columns, and above them, in bronze letters weeping verdigris into the porous white marble were the words: MARGARET BERESFORD BIDNEY MEMORIAL PSYCHIC SCIENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE. The relief above the name depicted classical themes: Helios, Pandora, Prometheus; all examples of mankind reaching for the power of the gods.

  It was a pity, Colin reflected, that all those tales ended in tragedy, but the Greeks weren’t much on happy endings to begin with. Colin climbed the shallow steps and stepped onto the porch. The stone above the bronze entryway was carved with the quotation from Joel 2:28: “Your old men shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions.” Colin pulled open the door and walked in.

  He found himself inside a small rotunda, as if this were truly the temple its form mimicked. The marble beneath his feet was inlaid in an elaborate knot, and the domed glass roof filled the room with light. The elaborate bronze clockface set into the wall opposite the door told him that he was only a few minutes late for his appointment.

  The receptionist was obviously one of the students who attended the college; she had a pile of textbooks beside her elbow, but she looked up alertly when Colin entered. Oversized aviator glasses with wire frames gave her the look of a helpful dragonfly.

  “Hi; I’m Leonie. Nesbit?” she added, as if she weren’t quite sure. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Colin MacLaren. I have a two o’clock appointment with Dr. Newland, but I’m afraid I’m a little late—”

  “Oh, Dr. MacLaren! Yes, Dr. Newland is expecting you. Go right through that archway and all the way down the hall—it’s the door at the end.” She pointed over her shoulder.

  Colin went in the direction she indicated, past a row of white doors with names beside them that led into office cubicles. At the end of the hallway there was a cross corridor, and just before it an open area, with file cabinets, a couple of vacant secretarial desks, and a coffeepot and refrigerator.

  The place seemed oddly deserted; even the coffeepot was empty. Straight ahead was the door that Leonie had mentioned; set into it in severe bronze letters were the words: Dr. Reynard Newland, Director. Colin knocked, then opened the door.

  Dr. Newland was sitting behind a massive rosewood desk in an office that was almost a stereotypical recreation of the study of an Oxford don. The windows on the left side of the office looked out on a screen of snow-covered pines through which could be seen some of the other campus buildings. Built-in bookshelves set into oak-paneled walls were filled with a variety of exquisite and well-loved books, and there was a tall glass cabinet filled with curios along the other wall. There was a coffee table and a set of club chairs in the far corner for more relaxed seating, and the jewel-tones of an antique Persian carpet glowed upon the floor.

  Dr. Newland was in his mid-seventies, Colin guessed, and the ill-health that was the reason for his retirement had given his skin a waxy pallor. But he was cheerful enough as he rose from his seat behind the desk and motioned Colin to a chair.

  “Sit down, Dr. MacLaren. You look rather frazzled—not too much trouble finding the college, I hope?”

  “Not after I’d exhausted every other possibility,” Colin agreed, smiling. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “Oh, not at all. I was just catching up on my professional reading; the place practically runs itself.” Dr. Newland gestured toward a familiar pile of professional journals lying on the corner of his desk. “But I’m overlooking the niceties. Would you care for a cup of coffee? Tea?”

  “Tea, but I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” Colin demurred. Dr. Newland had already buzzed for Leonie, and there was a short pause while he gave her directions and sent her off again.

  As Michael Davenant had predicted, Dr. Newland had been eager to interview someone of Colin’s caliber regarding the upcoming vacancy. Unfortunately, as Davenant had further suggested, Dr. Newland was rather inclined to take the college’s view of matters.

  “It’s sad, really—me whole Bidney endowment sitting here, all tied up by the institute, while the college goes begging for funds. The trustees won’t accept federal money; no, the college still operates on the terms of its 1714 charter, and it is funded entirely by private contributions. But these days …”

  Colin knew that liberal arts colleges all across the country were closing, unable to keep tuition costs low enough to attract students.

  “But surely, turning over Miss Bidney’s bequest to the college isn’t the answer?” Colin said tactfully. “I’d think that the presence of the institute could be a major asset to Taghkanic. Very few places offer a degree program in Parapsychology these days, you know.”

  “Very true,” Dr. Newland said doubtfully. “But it all seems rather pointless, somehow. What are they to do with their degrees once we’ve awarded them? Psychic phenomena simply cannot be quantified; it merely devolves into smoke and mirrors. The scientific method is anathema to the manifestation of the Unseen World.”

  “I don’t believe that’s completely true,” Colin said slowly, unwilling to offend his host. “Certainly psychic phenomena haven’t necessarily consistently demonstrated a cause-and-effect relationship under laboratory conditions in the past, but it’s possible that this is simply through our own ignorance of the number of variables involved. And human subjects introduce human error—what if you were attempting to prove the existence of perfect pitch, and 99.999 percent of your test group were tone-deaf? You’d need a much larger statistical pool to even begin to isolate the thing you wished to study.”

  As Colin paused, there was a knock at the door, and Leonie entered, carrying an enormous silver tray. Staggering a little under the weight, she set it carefully down on the table in the corner, smiled cheerfully at the two men, and flitted out again.

  There was another pause in the conversation as Colin and Dr. Newland moved to the less formal seating in the corner.

  “Good heavens,” Colin said mildly, gazing down at the tray. It held macaroons and sliced cake in addition to the tea things. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

  “I have always held that a proper English tea is a civilizing influence,” Dr. Newland said firmly, “and I will admit, I am pleased to be entertaining a fellow tea-drinker. Will you pour?”

  It was not the most bizarre circumstance Colin had ever experienced—to discover that whether or not he got the job he’d come to interview for hinged not on his qualifications, but on his preference for tea over coffee—and he was no believer in accident at the best of times. Though he possessed no psychic gifts, Colin began to believe that he had been foredestined to take Dr. Newland’s place.

  As they chatted over tea and cakes, Colin found that Reynard Newland was a parapsychologist of the old school. H
is interests lay almost exclusively with ghosts—that most subjective of psychic phenomena—and he took very little interest in quantifiable talents such as clairvoyance and psychokinesis. Needless to say, Dr. Newland’s worldview did not even admit of the possibility of nonhuman noncorporeal entities, and Colin was wise enough not to raise the question. But it became tragically easy to see how the Bidney Institute had dwindled over the last few decades to simply an extension of Dr. Newland’s avocation, and why the college considered it to be moribund—overfunded—deadwood.

  “But surely it would be very difficult for the college to simply assume the Bidney endowment?” Colin asked a little while later.

  “Oh, dear me, no, young man. Taghkanic has always been the residuary legatee for the bequest. In the event that the Bidney Prize were to be awarded, the endowment fund would certainly have to be liquidated to pay it out, and in the event that the institute can no longer support itself afterward, any balance of funds is to be paid to the college.”

  Margaret Bidney’s entire fortune had been willed to fund research into the psychic sciences—incidentally creating the Bidney Institute—but her will also made proviso for a prize of one million dollars to be awarded to the individual who conclusively provided absolute and verifiable proof of paranormal abilities. Though competitors had been attempting to attain it for over half a century, the prize had never been claimed.

  “I don’t suppose you consider the possibility of someone winning the prize very likely?” Colin asked diffidently.

  “Oh, my, no,” Dr. Newland said, smiling gently. “When I came here back in the thirties, I’ll admit that I was all on fire with the thought that someone might come in and claim the prize at any moment, revolutionizing the world of science as we then knew it—and certainly a week didn’t seem to pass without someone trying for it. But the criteria for its bestowal are so very strict—this is one of the reasons why the institute keeps a stage illusionist on retainer—that no one has ever managed to claim it.”