Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “He’s beautiful,” she said instead, still stroking the cat. “Did you find him here?” Some perverse reality-testing impulse impelled her to add: “Was he your Aunt Sara’s cat?”

  “Heaven knows,” Sally said dully, slumping into a chair. She laughed unsteadily. “Some of the locals have some theories about that. I call him Barnabas, after that old TV show.” She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. There were dark bruises beneath her eyes, more evidence of some sort of drug.

  “Have you eaten anything?” Claire asked, and, receiving the reply she expected, began to bully Sally into eating. As she did, she took a good look around the kitchen for the first time.

  It looked as if both the Jukes and the Kallikaks had been living here. Dishes and garbage were piled in the sink, and it was plain that no one had cleaned the kitchen since the death of that other Sara, seven years before.

  Claire’s face must have given her away despite all her good intentions, because Sally, watching her, suddenly began to cry.

  “I know—I know—it’s all horrible! But it’s because of Matthew—he said that I was Aunt Sara and I had to attend the Esbat, and I told him he was crazy—I tried to get away—I called Brian—but Tibby had a pet jackdaw and I kept getting lost—I couldn’t get to the bus stop—and then the bus left without me—and I went home and locked the door, but then Matthew came with Judith—and she had a strawberry shortcake—I didn’t eat it, but there was unguent on the plate and she drugged me, and then—and then—”

  For a moment Salty broke down completely, then finished her story in a wavering ragged voice: how she’d fallen down in a swoon with the witches’ unguent on her hands—the Esbat afterward that seemed half dream, half nightmarish reality—how she’d awakened, naked, in the graveyard at dawn. Clare listened to it all impassively, pouring Sally a cup of strong black coffee and setting it in front of her.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” Sally demanded. “Do you believe me, Claire?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Claire said cautiously. She had the evidence of her own senses that something terrible had happened here last night, but Sally’s story of her experience was almost too pat to be possible—it contained all the elements of the classic European witch-cult tales, and those tales had been created by the persecutors, not the practitioners, of the Old Religion. It was hard for Claire to believe that any Wiccan coven—or even any Satanist Temple—practiced rituals such as Sally had described.

  But then, the Church of the Antique Rite wasn’t either Wiccan or Satanic, although its tangled roots might lie somewhere in the pre-Christian folk worship that the missionaries from Rome had never entirely eradicated.

  “I believe that you believe it. And I must admit, I knew you were in some kind of trouble. That’s why I came.”

  “You knew—what?” Sally demanded with sudden suspicion.

  “That you were in trouble,” Claire repeated slowly. For a moment, something unlike the sunny young artist Claire knew had stared out through Sally Latimer’s eyes, and Claire felt a faint thrill of unease. “But right now you need food,” she said firmly, and turned to making the best she could of Sally’s meager supplies.

  Claire felt very much out of her depth—how much of what Sally had told her had a basis in objective fact? She wished that Colin were here. He knew more about the Church of the Antique Rite than she did, and would be able to untangle fact from drug-induced hallucination. But Colin wasn’t here, and Sally needed answers—and reassurance—now.

  “All right,” Claire said, as they ate. “Let’s assume that some of what you experienced was real. Why do you think it might have happened?”

  Sally’s mouth twisted in a sketchy parody of a smile. “I thought … a sick practical joke.”

  “To be that sick, a man would have to be a basket case,” Claire said roundly.

  “You don’t think Matthew Hay is capable of it?” Sally asked, again with that strange undertone in her voice that put Claire’s every instinct on guard.

  But what danger could Sally be to her? Sally had been the victim, not the instigator, of whatever had happened last night.

  Unless, of course, this wasn’t Sally at all … .

  She must not suspect you, Claire thought urgently, and did not question the rightness of that instinct. She had Rowan to protect as well as herself.

  “I think Matthew Hay is capable of anything,” Claire said. She felt very much as if she were playing a part—the dim but goodhearted friend of the heroine in a creaky Gothic novel, there to offer pretend-sensible explanations for a battery of occult phenomena. She had the strong sensation that if she seemed to know too much—or too little—she would give the game away, and alert the not-Sally that she was watching from behind Sally Latimer’s frightened green eyes.

  So Claire prattled on as if she had no idea of Matthew Hay’s true motives for drugging Sally, and pointed out the evidence that she had been drugged (it would have been obvious to anyone with any medical training, and Sally knew she’d been a nurse), and counseled Sally about how hard it would be for her to prove anything that had happened the night before.

  “I just want to know that I’m not losing my mind,” the girl repeated, and Claire heard the plea for help concealed beneath those words. If she could just get Sally to come away with her, she’d drive her straight to Colin. Colin could certainly handle anything Sally—or her unwelcome guest—could throw at him.

  “Look here, Sar—Sally. Do you want to go to the hospital? The emergency room’s sure to be open—you could have a toxicology screening; I’m sure Brian would order one. At least they could treat your physical symptoms.”

  She saw Sally hesitate, looking at her like a prisoner gazing at freedom through the bars of her cell. Just as the girl drew breath to answer, the moment was shattered by the clang of the doorbell.

  Both women jumped. Sally quivered as if beset by a sudden chill; the coffee in the cup she held between her hands slopped over the sides.

  Claire got to her feet and glanced out the window that overlooked the kitchen steps.

  “Matthew Hay,” she said disgustedly. Claire had run into him once or twice at the general store in Madison Corners—a tall, gangly man with a face like a cold straight-razor and the pale blue eyes and washed-out mouse-colored hair that came with generations of inbreeding. Yet despite the fact that he looked like an unholy combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ichabod Crane, there was a sort of compelling power about him. “I suppose he’s come to check on your story.”

  “Stay out of sight, Claire,” Sally said quickly.

  Claire looked at her in surprise.

  “I mean … maybe if he thinks I’m alone he’ll say something to prove my story one way or the other,” she added. “At least then I’ll know.”

  “I don’t like to leave you alone with him.” And why do you want to be alone with him, Sally—if everything you’ve told me so far today is true?

  “You think I want to be alone with him?” Sally protested unconvincingly. She got to her feet, shooing Claire toward the back pantry with quick motions of her hands. “But you’ll be there if I need you.”

  Some inner warning prompted Claire to withdraw. This was her young friend—and yet it wasn’t. There was something else here, just beneath the surface of Sally’s normal personality.

  Disassociation, rape trauma, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder … Claire ran through the psychological buzzwords she’d learned in her college courses, and none of them seemed to fit. Only the older, darker term seemed right.

  Possession … .

  From her vantage point in the pantry, Claire could only see Hay, and not Sally. She didn’t dare move to a better position, lest she draw attention to herself. She listened as Sally and Hay bickered—there really wasn’t any other word for it—as if they both shared some peculiar assumption. The conversation even veered momentarily to the young woman whom Sally said had kept her from fleeing the day before—T
abitha Whitfield.

  “I notice you didn’t think twice about my being poisoned,” Sally drawled. Her voice was different; hard, somehow older, and there was a mocking note in her voice that Claire couldn’t remember ever having heard before.

  “Can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” Hay said, shrugging. The door behind him was still open, filling the kitchen with dank cold, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You’re alive, so why are you complaining?” He took a step toward her, and Claire felt a sudden rush of Power in the room.

  That’s quite enough.

  “So you admit it, Mr. Hay? You tried to poison Sally? Did you rape her, too?” Claire asked.

  Hay seemed taken aback by her sudden appearance—probably thought his occult powers should have warned him of my presence—and stared from her to Sally in shock. Claire was chilled to see the taunting smile on Sally’s face as she savored his discomfiture.

  “Rape? Is that what she told you?” Hay said, sounding like any man the morning after trying to soft-pedal an assault. “All right, Sara, you’ve had your joke and your revenge,” he added, turning away from Claire. “Now get this old hag out of here so we can get down to serious matters.”

  “I’ll go when Sally asks me to,” Claire said boldly. “My own impulse is to just throw you out.”

  Hay’s smile widened to a sneer. “Sara, this has gone too far for a joke.”

  Claire was watching Sally’s face. Whatever was going on here, Hay was making it worse. The girl she had known was almost gone, submerged in the dark awareness that was growing in Sally’s very bearing.

  Because Hay was here?

  “Now, damn you—out,” Claire snapped. Hay stepped toward her, and she shoved him—hard.

  The technique she used borrowed a little from every martial art. It was called victim-proofing, and Claire had taken the courses along with the women she counseled back in San Francisco.

  “I warn you—” Hay said. When he reached for her again, she grabbed his wrist and twisted it up behind him.

  “Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass ‘Go.’ Do not collect two hundred dollars,” Claire said. As he staggered off balance, she pitched him out through the door.

  Hay sprawled in the muddy yard, and for a moment Claire feared that she’d really hurt him, but then he got to his feet and glared murderously at her. Claire gripped the edge of the kitchen door, ready to slam it in his face if he charged.

  “You’ll regret this, Sara,” Hay shouted. “I can be your most loyal supporter—and priest—or your worst enemy! It’s up to you!”

  He shook his fist in the air, as if summoning down the wrath of the heavens, and right on cue it began to rain harder. The theatrical absurdity of the gesture was too much for Claire; she began to laugh, closing the kitchen door and leaning against it.

  Sally was staring at her, a strange expression of her old-young face. Under that eldritch gaze, Claire sobered quickly. There was something inhuman about that steady, green-eyed regard.

  “Let’s see about getting you to that hospital,” Claire said, trying to regain control of the situation. “And on the way, we can swing by the state police barracks—I can make a report, or you can, and—”

  “No,” Sally said quickly.

  Claire stared at her in worried surprise. Hay seemed pretty sure you’d be on his side. You aren’t—are you?

  “Claire, I—” It was Sally’s voice—and it wasn’t. As if something inside her skin were playing the part of Sally Latimer, feeling out the reactions a young woman would have to the scene she had just witnessed.

  “Are you all right, Sally?”

  “Oh. Yes. But … you’d better go now. I need to rest. Matt won’t try anything else now; let’s forget him.”

  She knows I know. The conviction was enough to paralyze Claire for a mo-ment; and suddenly the only important thing seemed to be that she get away and warn Colin what was going on here. Whatever transformation had begun last night was complete now, and Claire had no power to undo it.

  “After all … there’s no law against practicing witchcraft, is there?” Sally said, but it was not Sally who gazed out through those cat-green eyes. It was Sara—Witch-Sara, High Priestess of the Church of the Antique Rite, and Matthew Hay’s partner in damnation.

  “We’re too late,” Claire told Colin simply as they sat drinking coffee at the only diner in Arkham. “Whatever it is, it’s got her—and I’m afraid that Rowan may be next.”

  She’d come straight to Arkham after leaving the Latimer house, hurrying to find Colin and tell him the evil news. Only Colin stood between the Antique Rite and the destruction of those whom Claire held dear; though Colin had never confided in her completely, Claire knew this as surely as she knew her own name.

  To protect and to serve: that was Colin’s burden in this life, just as it was her own, but Colin’s power had been secured with oaths and promises that Claire had not made. Often before she had blessed the freedom that this gave her simply to meddle, knowing that whatever she did it was a part of that Great Design mandated by the Architects of that Path which they all walked.

  Colin did not have the same freedom. He had taken full responsibility for each of his actions in this life, and that promise bound him not to meddle in the affairs of those he called the Unawakened except by their own request. At the moment she wished that were not so: she could not remember ever before feeling quite so helpless as she did in the face of the sheer nastiness going on out at Witch Hill.

  “It’s never too late, Claire,” Colin told her firmly. “I know that sounds like the worst sort of cliché, but it’s true. While this isn’t at all pleasant for Sally, she isn’t in any real danger yet.”

  “How can you say that?” Claire burst out, frightened and troubled. “She told me what happened last night—while she still could—and Rowan’s being drawn into it as well! And if you’d only seen Matthew Hay up there, strutting and gloating like a randy he-goat!”

  Colin raised his hand to silence her. “I didn’t say that Sally—or Sara, I suppose we should call her now—was enjoying this. But if we can drive Witch-Sara back where she came from—I suppose psychologists would call it the collective unconscious, or some such idiocy—she’ll leave no lasting marks on Sally. And after a while, Sally won’t even remember what she did while she was overshadowed.”

  “But others will—and she’ll have to live her life with that. And what if we can’t drive her out?” Claire demanded. “What then?”

  “Claire, even if Sara’s managed to take over Sally, her grip on existence won’t be secure until she’s been reunited with the Antique Rite as well. That involves a special ceremony, and they won’t be doing that until the next of their Greater Sabbats, August first.”

  “And until then?” Claire snapped. “Even if Sally isn’t responsible—”

  “In some sense she is responsible,” Colin said austerely, “and if this is the path she has chosen to expiation, neither you nor I have the right to take her penance from her. If we move against the cult at the right moment, we can destroy them with one stroke. Fail now—out of misplaced compassion for Sally—and who knows when the next opportunity might be? That’s worth the risk.”

  Claire stared at Colin. Though he’d killed men before her very eyes, she could not remember ever hearing him sound so ruthless before.

  “And Rowan?” she said evenly.

  “No harm will come to Rowan, Claire—I swear it. I don’t think Hay has any immediate interest in anything beyond getting Sara back, but I’ll go and pay a call on him just to be sure. I need to get myself invited to his Lammas Sabbat, anyway—not that it should be particularly difficult.”

  “You’re going to go?” Claire said in disbelief.

  Colin smiled grimly. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  WITCH HILL, MASSACHUSETTS, SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1990

  And thou—what needest with thy tribe’s black tents

  Who hast the
red pavilion of my heart?

  —FRANCIS THOMPSON

  THOUGH MADISON CORNERS WAS ONLY ABOUT ELEVEN MILES from Arkham as the crow flew, it was a thirty- to forty-five-minute drive along the rutted, twisting, one-and-a-half-lane road which was the only route through this lost corner of Eastern Massachusetts. Colin babied his Chevrolet Citation carefully along the crown of the road wherever possible; he had no desire to end up in a ditch and have to be towed out by a local farmer and his team.

  To Colin’s great relief, Claire had reported that Rowan’s sleepwalking had stopped with the Esbat. He did not think there would be any more trouble until Lammastide. And on that night, one way or another, the problem of Matthew Hay and his loathsome church would be settled, once and for all.

  Ten years ago—or even five—Colin might have chosen another method of battle than this cat-and-mouse waiting that distressed Claire so. But the power that such an action would require was no longer Colin’s to wield. His share of that power and glory had been expended in the struggle which had reclaimed Simon Anstey’s soul for the Light, and he was beginning to worry that he might lack the physical stamina needed to carry out even the subtler plan he had devised. He never felt as if he could quite catch his breath these days, though so far he had kept anyone from noticing.

  But Nathaniel had sent him after the Antique Rite precisely because mere strength would not serve to win this battle. More than scattering the coven—which any Lightworker might have done at any time—Colin must discover what ties they had to others who worked in the shadow.

  What was that bumper sticker he’d seen? “Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” Colin supposed that on this occasion it was entirely apposite, but somehow knowing that didn’t make him feel any better. Today’s activities would not tax him, though; they were no more than the opening clash of sabers in a duel to the death—a reconnaissance of sorts.

  For matters were often not what they seemed … .