Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “You’re riding back with me,” Colin said firmly, as Grey took the bike by the bars. “We can put that in the back of the car, but you’re not safe on the road.” With the backseat folded down in Colin’s now venerable station wagon there was just enough room to fit Grey’s bike lying on its side.

  “I suppose I owe you an explanation,” Grey said, as soon as the car was moving. “But I guess you’re going to have to chalk this one up to the ol’ instant karma. Sort of in the ‘there are things man was not meant to meddle with’ line.”

  “Is that what you think happened here?” Colin asked in his most neutral tones. Most people were willing to talk if given a little nondirective encouragement, and Colin doubted that Hunter Greyson was any different.

  “She wouldn’t see me,” Grey said numbly, as if he couldn’t believe it. “She wouldn’t come out. Her old man called the police.” His mouth twisted in a bitter sneer. “She always said they wouldn’t like me. She was right.”

  That was all the information Grey would provide—because, Colin realized after they’d stopped in Tarrytown for a late breakfast, there simply wasn’t any more information for him to provide. Winter Musgrave had gone home for spring break and never come back to Taghkanic. When Grey had gone to see her, her father’d had him arrested.

  “We loved each other,” Grey said, answering unspoken questions. “She wouldn’t do this.”

  But Colin noticed that he spoke of Winter in the past tense, as if a part of him already knew that what they’d shared was over.

  Could what you were doing at Nuclear Lake have frightened her that much? Colin wondered. But it would be too cruel to ask the question now, and it was one that Grey would ask himself soon enough—soon, and for the rest of his life. Whether, in the end, Winter came back or not.

  It was midafternoon by the time they reached the house in Glastonbury that Grey shared with several other Taghkanic students. “I don’t think you should be alone,” Colin said.

  “What do you think I’m going to do, slit my wrists?” Grey snapped, bridling. “I just want to get some sleep.”

  He shoved open the passenger side door and stood at the back, waiting for Colin to open the hatch. When the two of them had wrestled the cycle out of the back, Grey hauled it upright and prepared to wheel it off the street.

  “It’s going to take me a couple of days to get the money together to pay you back,” Grey said with sullen determination.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Colin said. I’m worried about you, Grey.

  Grey shrugged, as inarticulate as Colin had ever seen him. Flamboyant, theatrical, self-assured … at the moment Hunter Greyson was none of those things.

  “Thanks—for everything,” Grey said awkwardly, and turned away, walking the motorcycle toward the back of the house.

  It wasn’t over. Colin wasn’t surprised when Claire came to his door several hours later—in fact, though it was well after midnight, he was still fully dressed.

  “Nuclear Lake?” Colin asked.

  Claire nodded.

  “I won’t ask how you knew—as for how I did, it certainly didn’t require psychic powers: Cassie was down at Inquire Within with Janelle most of the afternoon, both of them weeping their eyes out,” Claire said.

  Colin grimaced, his gaze intent upon the road. The turnoff to Nuclear Lake was hard to find at the best of times, let alone in the darkest part of an overcast night.

  “I wish I knew what had happened,” Colin said. “All of it, and not just what Grey was willing to tell me—or knew himself.”

  “That would make a nice change,” Claire agreed darkly. “But—please hurry, Colin.”

  “I’ve just got to—ah, here’s the turn.”

  The road that had been easily passable in a Range Rover in February was a much dicier prospect in an automobile in April’s treacherous mud, and several times Colin feared that the Volvo would simply stick. But he finally gained the comparatively firm ground of the lakeside, and the car’s headlights shone full on the front of the laboratory … and on Grey’s motorbike, parked outside.

  Colin sighed, although he’d expected nothing else. He stopped the car and Claire darted out, running for the back of the building—she’d been more upset than she’d let on. Colin swore under his breath and followed her, leaving the car running with the brake on so that they would at least have the headlights to mark their way.

  The back door to the building was propped open with a brick, and when Colin reached it he realized why Claire had been so upset. He could already smell the smoke.

  “Claire!” he shouted, dragging out his flashlight.

  When Colin reached the top of the stairs, he could see flames, and the air was hazy with smoke.

  “Grey—don’t!” Claire’s voice.

  When Colin reached the bottom of the stairs, he could smell the reek of acetone mixing with the smell of burning. The acetylene lantern with its pressurized chamber of fuel was hissing away brightly in the corner, and Colin winced; acetone was flammable. He looked around. Claire was standing in the corner, unhurt. But this entire basement could go up like a torch at any moment, and take Grey—and both of them—with it.

  “‘I’ll break my staff—bury it certain fathoms in the earth—and deeper than did ever plummet sound—I’ll drown—burn—my book!’” Grey shouted. He had a five-gallon can of acetone in his hands, and was slopping it about the painted sigil that made up the Floor of the Temple. The caustic liquid pooled on the cement floor, and where it did the outlines of the brightly painted figure began to soften and blur.

  Colin wasn’t sure that Grey knew he had an audience at all; he tossed the can aside and went back to the smoldering pile of books. The bookcase had been smashed, and the books on it ripped to shreds, piled atop the splintered boards in one of the footlockers. There was broken glass on the floor from the smashed jar-candles; the card table and its chairs had been knocked over, and one of the footlockers stood open.

  “Grey!” Colin shouted.

  Grey turned to Colin. “Hi, Colin,” he said, as mildly though they were meeting on any city street, though his eyes were red with tears and his voice was hoarse with shouting. “I didn’t see you guys come in”

  “Grey, I know you’re upset,” Claire began.

  “Of course I’m upset,” Grey told her in a voice of faintly exasperated patience. “Everything I’ve ever believed in has gone to hell.” He reached into his pocket and came out with a lighter in his hand. When he flicked it the flame erupted in a long jet.

  “Don’t do this,” Colin said.

  “So I figured I’d just bag it,” Grey said, as if Colin hadn’t spoken.

  He tossed the lighter over his shoulder; it hit the inside of the footlocker’s lid and slid down it, still burning. There was a faint huff as whatever he’d poured into the footlocker ignited and began to burn with a sickly bluish flame, consuming Grey’s books, his magickal journals, all of his ritual paraphernalia.

  “That’s it. I’m done,” Grey said, walking toward them.

  “Come on,” Claire said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him quickly toward the staircase.

  The acetone might ignite at any moment, or the three of them might be lucky. Neither Colin nor Claire had been moved to bring a fire extinguisher, and Colin wasn’t sure he’d have used it if he had—there were already enough volatile chemicals down here.

  They were lucky. Claire got Grey into the clearer air of the ground floor without incident, and Colin followed them outside. He left the back door propped open, in the faint hope that the vapors from the solvent Grey had slopped around would dissipate instead of igniting.

  Standing at the back of the building, they could see the light shining out through the row of low windows; the leaping orange of the burning books, and the steady white of the acetylene lamp. The room was filling with black smoke; Colin could see it streaming up through the flames.

  “What were you doing?” Claire scolded, all but shaking him.

&
nbsp; “It’s all over,” Grey said again. “Everything’s finished.”

  “Come on,” Colin said, putting a hand on Claire’s shoulder. “It could still blow up.”

  “My bike,” Grey said, when Claire began leading him toward the car.

  “Get it later,” Colin told him curtly. He was in no mood for the lengthy process of wrestling Grey’s bike into the back of the Volvo just now.

  “I’ll ride it back.”

  “No you won’t,” Claire told him fiercely. “Grey, you could have been killed in there tonight—and we won’t even mention the fact that arson’s a crime. What if there’s an explosion? What if the fire spreads?” she scolded.

  “Frankly, Scarlett—” Grey began.

  “Oh, get in the car!” Claire said, yanking open the door and shoving him toward it.

  Colin knew that much of her ruthlessness was sheer relief that nothing worse had happened, and at least it seemed to be having a practical effect on Grey, since he did what she told him.

  By the time they reached Greyangels, Grey’s teeth were chattering, and he was hugging himself through the fringed leather jacket.

  “Build up the fire,” Colin told Claire as he shut off the ignition. “I’ll get something hot into him.”

  They went about their business with the ease of long practice. Claire led Grey inside and wrapped him in the afghan from the couch, and settled him in the chair in front of the fire.

  As she worked with matches and tinder—Colin always left a fire laid in the grate, for just such occasions as these—he went on into the kitchen and lit the range. Finding a small saucepan, he half-filled it with cider from the local mill, then added a generous dollop of unpasteurized honey. As it was heating, he rummaged about the pantry just off the kitchen until he found a bottle of brandy. It wasn’t Colin’s preferred drink, but someone had given him a bottle and—pack rat that he was—he’d tucked it away in a corner for future use. Now he poured several ounces of it into a cup and added the steaming cider. No matter what had happened out at Nuclear Lake tonight, it had been a serious ordeal for Grey, and appropriate measures must be taken.

  When he came back into the living room, Claire had the fire going and was sitting on the hassock, holding Grey’s hand and talking to him.

  “Here. Drink this,” Colin said, handing him the cup.

  Grey took it without comment.

  “I’d better go back out there and make sure the fire hasn’t spread,” Colin said. “Will you two be all right here?”

  I think I can hold my own,” Claire said. Grey shook his head slightly, a gesture that might mean anything, and pulled the afghan tighter around himself.

  Colin picked up the fire extinguisher from beside the front door and drove back to Nuclear Lake.

  He could smell the tang of smoke in the air when he got out of the car, but there was no sign of a blaze. When he reached the back of the building, the basement windows were dark, and cool to the touch.

  Odd … and interesting. The footlocker was right under this one, and I’ve only been gone half an hour, if that. The stuff should still be burning.

  But when he shone his flashlight in through the window, the panes were clear, not smoke-darkened, and there was no sign of a fire.

  Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice, Colin thought to himself. He retraced his steps to the back door—still propped open—hesitated, and went inside.

  The basement was full of acrid smoke—but not as much smoke as there ought to have been. Colin descended the stairs warily, ready for anything.

  The basement floor was covered with a gritty ash that hadn’t been there before, but the glyph was still visible, blurred from the acetone; apparently it had not ignited. The lantern in the corner had shattered, leaving a scorch mark on the wall, and pieces of blackened glass were scattered around it in a fan pattern. Colin swept his flashlight back and forth; this might be an investigation better done in daylight, but he was here now.

  The candles were spread pools of melted wax that had pooled around the broken blackened jars. Colin bent over and touched the blobby white mass of wax. It was still faintly soft, as though it had only cooled recently. That was strange enough, but what Colin saw when he reached the footlocker convinced him that the Uncanny had been here in this place.

  The footlocker was almost unrecognizable, its metal walls warped and twisted, half-charred by a fantastic heat. What it had held had been reduced to greasy ash and a few small blobs of metal—including the pine planks, which should have taken hours to burn.

  Grey had left the other footlocker closed, and had done nothing to it that Colin had seen, but there were scorch marks all over the outside, and when Colin cautiously flipped it open, all that it held was a thick grey-black ash.

  But the insides of the second trunk weren’t even scorched.

  Colin let the lid fall back down. It hit with a hollow sound, and a dust of ash as fine as talc puffed out around the edges of its lock.

  Colin walked back to the center of what had been the Floor of the Temple. The half-dissolved paint was slightly greasy under his shoe soles.

  As Colin knew from his reluctant studies, there were seven Gates and four Summonings for the Initiate to master in the early stages of the Blackburn Work; the Summonings were four of the six rituals involved in Laying the Floor of the Temple, and involved the Elemental Powers: Earth, Wind, Ocean, and Fire. A Blackburn Circle could—at least in theory—call on any of the Elemental Kings to manifest, though that was a dangerous proposition at best.

  It looked—at least from the damage done here tonight—as though Grey had indeed summoned one of them: Salamander, Prince of Fire. He’d said he would burn his books, and he’d kept his word. Colin shuddered at the thought of the power that had been so casually unleashed here.

  No, not casually. Deliberately—the power of the Adept’s will fueled by strong emotion—misery and rage—drawing its power from man’s animal nature as the Blackburn Work taught. Furious and grief-stricken, Grey had known precisely what he was doing: he’d summoned Fire without any attempt to balance it, and this had been the result. No wonder the boy was dead on his feet, if that was what he’d been doing.

  But Fire was gone now, and the woods were in no danger of burning. He’d better get back before Claire started to worry.

  Colin drove back to the farmhouse in a contemplative frame of mind. Grey plainly blamed the Blackburn Work for his break with Winter—or blamed it for not getting her back for him, which amounted to the same thing in the end. If what Colin had seen here tonight was any indication, Grey had chosen to make a clean break with the Work.

  That might be a foundation we can build on. Colin shut the thought out of his mind—it was too pragmatic to truly appeal to his sense of himself—but he could not deny its allure. He had wanted Grey to renounce the Blackburn Work, and now, for all intents and purposes, he had.

  It was only later that Colin realized how much more Grey had given up that night.

  He’d given up everything.

  SEVENTEEN

  SAN FRANCISCO, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1983

  Even here prowess has its due rewards, there are

  tears shed for things even here and mortality touches the heart.

  —VIRGIL, Aeneid

  ON A WINDY DAY IN MARCH, IN THE CITY BY THE BAY, ALISON Margrave’s friends gathered in a chapel on a hill to pay their last respects and to see her to her final resting place.

  While Alison had been granted a long and peaceful life—she’d turned eighty-four this January—and a quick and peaceful death, Colin was once again reminded forcefully of something he had already known: that no day was a good day to die. Alison’s death was like the removal of some invisible protection from his own mortality, forcing him to acknowledge what he’d thought he understood long before: that someday, fewer years from now than he had already lived, he must leave this life behind.

  Claire sat beside him in the chapel, weeping with silent unreconciled bitterness. Alison
had been like a parent to her, and this fresh loss reopened old scars.

  Alison had requested that her ashes be scattered on Mount Tamalpais, and those she had known throughout her long life had gathered here in this eccentric nondenominational chapel to witness the fulfillment of her last request.

  At least one of Alison’s own was here to conduct this last farewell. Colin glanced back toward the podium, where Kathleen Carmody stood. She and her husband had been members of Alison’s Lodge since their introduction to the Path many years ago. Today Kathleen was dressed all in white—a long open robe over a more mundane turtleneck and pants—but the large gold ankh pendant she wore was all she needed as indication of her standing.

  She spoke of her years of friendship with Alison, of the many people seeking the Light whom Alison had helped in all her long life—a life in which the knowledge of the mystic arts had gone from being a secret shared by an elite few, to the common currency and public property of the flower children, to the trivial stuff of comic book entertainment.

  As the century—and the millennium—drew toward their ends, it seemed to Colin that mankind had withdrawn from the spiritual in the same way that the burned child spurned the fire. Today’s world did not so much assert that nothing existed outside the material world of the five senses as it insisted that nothing was more important than that world and its potential wealth.

  Meanwhile, as if in some subtle corollary, crimes became more terrible. Only last September seven people near Chicago had died from taking what seemed to be randomly-poisoned Tylenol, and international affairs seemed ever more complicated and ghastly. Vietnam had been a simple little war fought for simple ends compared to current entanglements in Libya and Nicaragua, and in response to its worldly confusion, America was greedily returning to its enchanted political sleep of the 1950s.