Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  In this second half of his life, a cloud seemed to have settled over him, as if he were somehow in exile through accident or unwise choice. Since Simon’s accident—and Hasloch’s murder—Colin felt as though he’d lost touch with something fine and meaningful, but dared not go in search of it lest he do some unimaginable unwitting harm. Slowly his life had come to be ruled by that fear, a dark spectator whose presence colored his every action.

  First, do no harm. The injunction that formed the basis of the Hippocratic Oath was a good one for any meddler, Colin thought to himself encouragingly, and nothing to be ashamed of.

  And now he’d better get inside, before his guests decided he’d gotten lost on the way to the house.

  “For he’s a jolly good fellow—which nobody can deny!” The raucous, friendly chorus—led by Grey and his girlfriend on their guitars—rang from the walls of the old farmhouse. A substantial fire blazed on the hearth, and marshmallows and chestnuts were laid by for later toasting.

  All Colin’s friends were there—even John Dexter, whose unexpected and baffling illness had forced his retirement from the Bidney staff the year before.

  “And a happy Groundhog Day to you, Colin, and the hope of many more,” Dexter said, coming over to stand at Colin’s side.

  His skin was sallow and almost reptilian, hanging from his gaunt frame in folds and covered with the livid bruising that was the result not of blows but of tiny spontaneous hemorrhages throughout his body. His doctors frankly measured Dexter’s future in months, and constant tremors in his hands had rendered him incapable of performing his beloved sleight-of-hand illusions, but he was unfeignedly merry as he joined the revelry.

  “And to you as well,” Colin said automatically.

  “Don’t be naive and sentimental,” Dexter said. “Or I’ll worry more than I do now about leaving the institute in your hands. I’ll be lucky if I see July Fourth, let alone next Groundhog Day.”

  “I wish there was something I could do,” Colin said.

  “Just keep the faith healers off me,” Dexter said. “I’ll go out as I came in, and I’m too old to start believing in hoodoo. Leave the mumbo to Jumbo has always been my motto.”

  “And you a magician,” Colin joked gently. It hurt him to see his friend this way, but in the face of Dexter’s steadfast refusal to consider what was now beginning to be called Alternative Medicine, his friends had no choice but to respect his wishes.

  “How’s my successor doing?” Dexter asked.

  “Quite well,” Colin assured him. Maskelyne Devant—the professional name of a man whose birth name was Houdin, and whose parents had obliviously christened him Henry Harrison—had been Dex’s handpicked successor, and the two men were as different as night and day.

  Devant’s performing tastes ran to smoke and mirrors—the gaudy, Vegas-style illusions of much of modern magic—and he carried his “man of mystery” persona with him offstage as well as on, something that irritated Colin more on some days than others. But Devant was just as hard-nosed and unforgiving as Dexter had been, and had already exposed a number of soi-disant “psychics” whose trickery had fooled Colin’s researchers.

  Without revealing the secrets of the Brotherhood, Devant also did several seminars each year at Taghkanic on the more basic forms of bait-and-switch, which was the central principle of most psychic fraud, as well as of stage illusionism.

  “He’s a good man,” Dexter said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get a slice of that cake before Claire gives it all away.” Leaning heavily on his cane, Dexter moved slowly toward the table set up at the far end of the room.

  “Happy Birthday, Colin.” Eden said, handing him a slender, gold-wrapped box.

  “Good heavens. A gold watch already?” Colin joked.

  “Not quite. And it’s from me, not the college—I have no intention of opening the ‘official gift from the administration’ can of worms again.”

  “Very wise.” They both abominated in-group politics, but Eden had less opportunity to steer clear of it than he did. Colin tore off the paper to reveal a silver Cross pen. It was engraved along the barrel. Success and Fortune: 2/2/81.

  “I’ll treasure it,” Colin said. Eden smiled.

  “And now I do have to dash,” she said. “Bobby would appreciate it if I put in an appearance at home occasionally, and I have yards of paperwork backed up.” She held out her hand and Colin shook it formally. “Happy Birthday, Colin.”

  “Thank you.” He watched as Eden made her way through the crowd toward the kitchen door—it was a more direct route to the orchard.

  “For God’s sake, man, don’t just stand here—enjoy yourself!” Morgan Ives, flamboyant as ever and more than a few sheets to the wind—Colin smelled the sharpness of bourbon on her breath—leaned against him confidentially, taking his arm. “Come have a drink.”

  Colin allowed himself to be drawn toward the table. There was a small pile of presents—something he’d unsuccessfully tried to discourage—Claire’s huge cut-glass punch bowl with its nonalcoholic contents (a wedding gift, Colin recalled, and something whose employment had baffled her for years), a copper wash-boiler filled with ice and champagne bottles, and a huge chocolate sheet-cake with white icing and a representation of the institute on it in pale blue.

  He’d already blown out the single candle, and the cake was being disemboweled for the guests. The gathering was fairly evenly split between teachers, members of the institute, and students. Dylan and Cassie were here, along with Grey and half a dozen other kids, including Grey’s latest girlfriend, Winter.

  “Here you are, Colin,” Claire said, handing him a large slice of cake on a paper plate. I brought you a present—you don’t have to worry; it’s cookies,” she said, nodding toward the large box wrapped in gold paper that sat beside the cake.

  “You spoil me,” Colin said, accepting the plate and picking up his fork. He looked with mock-apprehension toward the rest of the parcels. “Any idea what else there is?”

  “Well, Jamie sent books, but he always does. It’s a big box—I put them in the kitchen. And there are a lot of cards, but—” Claire lowered her voice conspiratorially “—I think one of your students knitted you a muffler.”

  Colin rolled his eyes in silence. “Well, at least it isn’t a Fair Isle sweater.” He took a bite of cake.

  “Hey, Ramsey—you coming out to the Lake later?”

  A lull in the conversation around him brought Janelle’s words to Colin clearly, and if he had not been looking in the direction of Grey and his friends, he would have missed what came next.

  “How’s the spring play coming?” Winter asked, too quickly and too loudly for the words to be anything but a hasty change of subject. The others around Grey spoke up quickly, covering the moment, but Colin had seen the look of guilty complicity among the five of them, as clearly as if they’d shouted it aloud.

  He glanced away, not wanting to let them know he’d heard, and said something offhand to Claire. When he looked back a few seconds later, he caught Grey watching him expressionlessly.

  To follow the Path required the kindness of the surgeon, the clarity of the general, and the willingness to stand aside while innocents endured the suffering they had chosen for themselves before their entry into this life.

  Faced with the need to intervene once more, Colin was not certain he still had the strength. The shameful guilt of his one irresistible impulse to act against the Law was still with him. He prayed that never again would he face such a moment of hubris and false mercy as that had been—it was the sort of failure that could destroy not only lives but souls.

  But he had taken on that burden willingly, though the guilt remained—and it seemed, as the years passed, that the pain had itself become a kind of temptation, a lure to renounce all responsibility, to reject the possibility of doing good out of fear of doing harm. It was a temptation to which he dared not surrender.

  “Claire, do you ever hear anything about Nuclear Lake?” />
  Janelle had mentioned “The Lake,” and for residents of Amsterdam County, there was only one: Nuclear Lake.

  On maps, its name was Haelvemaen—Half Moon—Lake, and it was on a small parcel of private land tucked into a corner of Huyghe State Park. Some sort of private research group had used the area, and since its departure, Nuclear Lake had collected the usual assortment of unlikely local folktales about itself. The property had been unoccupied for about ten years, give or take a few; sporadically the college attempted to buy the acreage for its own use, but so far without success.

  “Not much,” Claire said slowly. As she mused, she reached out and rubbed Monsignor under the chin. The dignified black-and-white tom immediately flopped over on his back, purring, while Poltergeist, a white queen, remained more aloof.

  The shop smelled pleasantly of cinnamon and sandalwood, and radiated a sense of serene peace. Inquire Within had been such a good idea that Colin couldn’t imagine how he’d ever gotten along without it. Claire’s bookstore provided a perfect nonconfrontational meeting place for those curious about the Unseen. It provided answers for those with questions, a way for them to meet one another, and a place to go before their troubles became too grave. And Claire was in her element, providing tea and no-nonsense advice to anyone who needed it.

  At least twice a month, Claire made it her business to cook dinner for him in her little apartment above Inquire Within, apparently on the theory that without her he might starve. While that was not entirely true, it was true that without Claire’s home-cooking he’d get pretty tired of TV dinners and diner food. Colin was no cook and had never claimed to be.

  “It’s a preferred make-out spot, of course, because the park rangers don’t patrol it and the sheriff’s deputies don’t get up there much either, so I hear. Why?”

  Because they all looked so guilty … .

  “I’m wondering if you’ve heard anything ‘odd’ about it. Odd in our particular line, of course,” Colin said.

  He picked up one of the Tarot decks piled on the counter beside the register in hopes of tempting patrons and turned it over in his hands. Pride had always been his besetting sin, and he’d been proud of the communion he’d forged with his students. Knowledge of that pride vexed him nearly as much as worry about what these students had gotten up to.

  “Not about Nuclear Lake in particular, really,” Claire answered thoughtfully. “The local coven goes up there, I think. Going down to the river’s too dangerous and probably too public for them, and the lake is, after all, reputed to be a place of power,” Claire finished dryly, picking up Monsignor. She gestured at her bookshelves with a free hand.

  “I’m not an expert, but my stock is. There isn’t much folklore about Amsterdam County other than the Grey Angels—and you’ll find them up in Columbia and down in Dutchess as well—and I don’t think I’ve seen anything at all about Nuclear Lake.”

  Colin frowned. Students played pranks and pushed the rules—those things had been true even when Colin was a student. Drugs, illegal as ever, were still a part of college life, as were freewheeling sex, bootlegged music tapes, and ghostwritten term papers. But Colin couldn’t believe that those kids would have looked so guilty about any of those things, Grey particularly.

  And around me of all people! Colin thought, amused at how much the notion pricked his vanity.

  “You’re thinking again,” Claire accused him. She went through the curtain to get her keys, and Poltergeist appeared as if by magic, trotting toward the sound and miaouing. She knew that the jingle of keys led to the sound of the can-opener, when Claire took the cats upstairs for the night.

  The space that Claire had rented for Inquire Within was actually almost square, but a brick wall down the center of the space divided it nearly in half. The landlord had been willing to knock it down, but Claire had chosen to keep it, adding a second drywall partition that sectioned the left side of the store off into two storage rooms, one of which was also used for discussion groups. Though Claire sold herbs, she could not bear the thought of her stock being tampered with or contaminated in any way, and so kept it under lock and key.

  “Ready?” Claire asked.

  “So tell me,” Claire said later. “What are you worried about Grey getting up to? Group sex? Orgies? Satanic rites?”

  Colin stared down into an after-dinner cup of coffee, as though he were a psychic and could see answers there.

  “I wish I knew. The five of them are doing something—and try as I might, I can’t imagine what.”

  “Well, no one’s ever accused you of a lack of imagination before,” Claire observed, setting the cake plate down on the table. “Maybe it’s just too much imagination this time. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Ask him what?” Colin sighed. “I don’t even know how to frame the question. If it was something Grey wanted me to know about—or didn’t care if I knew—he would have told me. Lord knows he’s told me about enough other things: rehanging the Lookerman portrait from the library, tampering with the key sheet on the physics exam, putting the brandy in the coffee urn … .”

  “Not to mention smoking the Christian Prayer Fellowship out of the Student Union with asafetida and petitioning for permission to found Students for Satan,” Claire said, “although that was perfectly legal, just silly. Colin, I think you’re worrying too much. But if you like, I’ll go up to Nuclear Lake and take a look around.”

  Colin sighed again. He knew what Claire was offering, and what they both worried about—that Grey’s irrepressible curiosity would lead him down the same dark path that Simon Anstey seemed to be following. If Grey was meddling in Black Magick, Claire’s Gift would pick that up immediately.

  “It feels too much like spying,” Colin said, “but the real reason I’m going to turn you down is that if it isn’t outright Ungodliness—or even something mundane, like selling drugs—”

  “Not Grey!” Claire protested.

  “Oh, I don’t mean he’s the local pusher, but grass is illegal, too, even if most of the students smoke it. It comes from somewhere, and if that’s what he’s up to you’d have no way of telling. And I think it’s probably something like that; drugs are one of the Paths to Power, after all.”

  “But you don’t encourage that at all, Colin; it’s dangerous. And Grey looks up to you. He’d do what you said.”

  “Oh, I suppose that generally he thinks I know what I’m talking about, which is more than he grants most of his professors. But as for blind obedience …”

  “No,” both of them agreed in chorus.

  “I’ll just go up and take a look around myself,” Colin said. “If I don’t find anything, probably there isn’t anything to find, and I can just forget the whole thing.”

  He prayed he could forget the whole thing.

  Though the poets would have it otherwise, February, not April, was the cruelest month in Amsterdam County. The day dedicated to the little God of Love—later a Catholic saint—was bitterly cold, and a sudden heavy snowfall a few days before had made travel a difficult proposition. The eight inches of snow that had fallen was powdery and dunelike due to the still-bitter cold, but where the plows had shifted it the snow had melted and refrozen itself into crusty knolls that formed impassable barriers to traffic. And on the unplowed roads, a shifting coat of snow concealed an inch or two of pack ice.

  The weather was probably the reason that Colin had chosen today for his expedition to Nuclear Lake—that, and the fact that the weekend gave him a whole free day. It wasn’t likely that he’d be disturbed. Only a fool would try these back roads in a car, but Colin had possessed the foresight to borrow a friend’s Range Rover for his expedition, and the 4WD vehicle took the snowbound track in its stride.

  Soon the lake—its snow-covered, frozen surface only discernible by the cattail growth that rimmed it—was in sight, with the building beyond it. Colin pulled up in a place he guessed to have once been the parking lot and got out.

  The heavy snow deadened even the sounds
that he would normally have heard this far out in the country, save for the faint tinkling of ice-bound tree branches and the occasional hiss as a snowmass slid to the ground. The wind off the river lifted veils of snow from the ground and carried them for a few feet before they dropped. The sky was a pale blue, and reflection from the snow washed out all the colors around him, giving the world an ethereality that contributed to the dreamlike quality of the moment.

  The front door of the building opened easily to one of Colin’s skeleton keys, and a quick search of the building revealed nothing more nefarious than a few discarded wine bottles and a mattress someone had dragged into a corner of one of the offices for the obvious purpose.

  But Colin knew there was more than this to the place, and when he found the stairway leading down into the basement he wasn’t surprised.

  There was enough light from the windows along the south wall to make the contents of the room dimly visible in the afternoon light, though Colin was glad enough that he’d thought to bring a flashlight. The basement was all one large room, thirty feet by about twice that. The sinks along the windowed wall and the complicated sockets drilled into the cinderblock above them were indication that this had once been some kind of laboratory, but all the original furniture had been long since removed. Its current tenants had put up a set of brick-and-board bookcases in the corner, and brought down a couple of footlockers, a table, and some folding chairs.

  In contrast to the rooms above, this space was painstakingly clean. The cement-slab floor had been scrubbed until it shone, then painted with a complex multicolored design that covered an area almost twenty feet across. Three tall jar-candles were set at the points of a triangle just inside the outer rim, which had nine candles spaced evenly around it. There was a thirteenth candle set between the inner and outer rings just at the foot of the stairs: cardinal North.