Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  At last Colin picked up the phone and dialed a number he had held unused in memory for more than forty years.

  Xavier’s was a trendy District “drinkeateria” located near Capitol Hill. As such, it was well supplied with pseudo-Victorian stained glass, blond oak veneer, and even a few ferns. It was the sort of place to which the tragically hip repaired to meet and mate, as anonymous and impersonal as a paper cup.

  The message had been left at the desk of Colin’s hotel sometime during the night: spuriously intimate and relentlessly cheerful, suggesting that old friends meet for a drink at Xavier’s that evening. Almost out of simple curiosity, Colin had come, though the message was from no one he’d ever heard of, and certainly not from an old friend. But that really didn’t matter. He had not called that number to play things safe, but to redeem an old promise.

  The evening was rainy. The faceted windowpanes of the bar were sequined with raindrops, and cars passing through the streets made hissing sounds like downhill skiers. The man who sat down opposite him at the table near the window was a stranger.

  The stranger’s dark blue trenchcoat was dark with rain over the shoulders, and rain had managed to get past the shield of his umbrella to star the surface of his long, sleeked-back red hair with droplets. He was a young man, less than half Colin’s age, and wore a grey three-piece suit as if it were an unfamiliar uniform. He did not take off his gloves.

  “Professor MacLaren—it’s been quite a while since I had the privilege of sitting in on one of your lectures,” the young man said with careful cheer.

  Though Colin did not remember every pupil he’d ever had—no teacher could—in that moment he was certain that this young man had never been one of them. Perhaps it was the amusement with which he watched Colin through fox-bright pale eyes, as if this were all some sort of elaborate prank.

  But in that case, who was the victim?

  “I know you were sure I’d never amount to much—oh, don’t try to deny it—but I have made something of a success of myself. You see, here’s my card.”

  It appeared between his gloved fingers as if through a magician’s trick. He held it out and Colin took it.

  “Hereward Farrar. Consulting.” No address or telephone number, I notice.

  The waitress approached. Farrar ordered a Kaliber; Colin was still nursing his double Scotch.

  It was nearing seven o’clock, and workaholic Washington was starting to trickle in for a drink before a working dinner or a late-evening meeting. The noise level rose proportionately.

  “And what do you consult on these days, Mr. Farrar?” Colin asked.

  “This and that,” Farrar said, smiling. “And you’re wondering who sent me, and what I’m up to, and no matter what I say you’ll still wonder if you can trust me.”

  The waitress returned with a bottle and a glass and left again. Farrar seemed to concentrate on pouring his drink to the exclusion of all else.

  “Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way,” Colin commented dryly, “it seems we’ve reached an impasse.” Perhaps it was the effect of age, but he realized that he no longer had the taste for this sort of cloak-and-dagger feint and double-feint, necessary though it might sometimes be.

  “Maybe.” Farrar did not sound particularly convinced of it. “I must say, we were awfully surprised when you walked into Hasloch’s office yesterday morning—and when you called last night.”

  “So was I,” Colin said blandly.

  The voice at the other end of the line rattled back the number he had just dialed with a robot’s perfection. And waited.

  Forty years. An eternity in Washington politics. Colin had not been certain the number would still be good at all. But this was the response he’d been trained to expect, a long time ago in a world now dead. How long had this number been kept active, a listening-post on the frontier of a war that had never ended?

  “This is Stormcrow. I have a message for Kestrel. Tell him the dragon awakes.”

  “Thank you for calling, Stormcrow,” the voice responded. Then the line went dead.

  So this was the sort of person who worked for Department 23 these days—assuming he had come in response to Colin’s call at all. Department 23 had been an outlaw operation set up by the OSS as a counter-Ahnenerβe to fight Black Magick with White. It had bound together occultists from a dozen different traditions in the Free World’s hour of greatest need, but now the days when the West had been desperate enough to try such things were long past, and other forces were ascendant in today’s intelligence community. Farrar’s presence might simply be another kind of trap. He’d given Colin none of the half a dozen safewords and countersigns that Colin remembered from the war; possibly he did not know them.

  “Question one: Why help me at all?” Colin asked.

  Farrar seemed to think about that for a moment, carefully choosing his words before he spoke.

  “I’m here because you called me. Some jobs just need a lot of doing, don’t they?”

  Colin was still unconvinced, but part of him was wondering if Farrar’s bona fides were really important, in the long run. If Farrar were acting under Toller Hasloch’s orders, then anything he did to Colin would generate information for whomever must next follow Colin into the serpent’s nest. If Colin disappeared, Nathaniel would know what he had been hunting when he vanished. Dylan would certainly investigate—and more to the point in this particular instance, so would his wife. Truth was ferocious where her family was concerned, and Hasloch had threatened Pilgrim.

  In short, Colin’s disappearance would cause a lot of fuss, both mundane and occult, and Hasloch would be subjected to the sort of fifteen-minute notoriety that could destroy years of careful planning … or even drive him underground once more. If Farrar were his agent.

  Still, Farrar might really be working for the modern incarnation of Department 23. He was precisely the sort of person whom Colin’s old allies might have sent—someone low enough in the hierarchy of things to be immune to the Thule Group’s infiltration of high office.

  “Let’s come to the point, young man. This isn’t Berlin in the forties, and the Cold War is over. You haven’t told me who you are, or why you’re here, or given me a good reason why I should listen to anything you say. Undoubtedly you already know anything I could tell you about Toller Hasloch—”

  “If you keep up with your old students it won’t surprise you to hear that Toller Hasloch is one of our inside-the-Beltway kingmakers,” Farrar said, his tone as chatty as if he were doing nothing more than passing on gossip. “The Cincinnatus Group is an important power here on the Hill—a lot of people get their appointments in line with its recommendations. A number of people owe its chairman favors—and the type of people to whom Mr. Hasloch owes favors in turn tends to disturb some people. People who still remember who you used to be.”

  Who I used to be … . Farrar spun a pretty story calculated to fan the embers of an old man’s ego and convince him to go charging off into battle one last time—to use him, as ruthlessly as Colin had once used others, to win a battle, if not the war.

  “So your friends don’t like Mr. Hasloch,” Colin said. “Well, I don’t like him much myself. But I’ve learned to live with things I don’t like, Mr. Farrar. I’m here for another reason. If your intelligence is as good as you’d like to imply that it is, you’ll know that I called at the Cincinnatus Group yesterday to speak to Caradoc Buckland, not Toller Hasloch.”

  There was a flicker in Farrar’s pale eyes. “Mr. Buckland’s not a very nice man. A friend of his shot me once, so I’m in a position to judge. He’s very good at doing what he’s told, though. I’d forget about all this and go home, if I were you,” he added seriously.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Colin said, and waited.

  The silence stretched for several moments, until finally Farrar broke it.

  “All right,” Farrar admitted. “You’ve a right to be suspicious of me. For what it’s worth, my name really is Hereward Farrar. W
ho’d make something like that up?” He smiled encouragingly, but Colin refused to be influenced. He continued to wait.

  “What can I tell you that will convince you I’m on the side of the angels? I could swear—”

  There was a candle on the table, burning deep inside a plastic-wrapped glass chimney. Farrar cupped his left hand around it. His voice became deeper and more solemn, and for a moment it seemed to Colin that the light filled his hand like a solid thing.

  “—I could swear by the Light that if I am other than what I seem, I am not heir to the Dragon. Would that help?” he added in his normal voice, and the momentary summoning of Power Colin had sensed was gone.

  “All right,” Colin said. It was confirmation of a sort: Department 23’s code name for the Thule Group had been the Dragon. And more important, no matter how good an actor he was, no matter how diminished Colin’s own powers were, Colin knew that someone tainted by the Shadow could not summon Power in that fashion without revealing his true nature.

  Whoever Hereward Farrar was, he was of the Light.

  “If you’re proposing to help me, Mr. Farrar, I have a small shopping list … .”

  TWENTY-SIX

  FAUQUIER COUNTY,VIRGINIA, MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1998

  If I do prove her haggard,

  Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,

  I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind,

  To prey at fortune.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello, III.III.260

  THE VIRGINIA COUNTRYSIDE WAS STILL BRIGHT WITH AUTUMN—the richest colors were past, but the landscape had not yet softened into the dun-browns of winter. Tonight was All Hallows Eve, the night on which the Wild Hunt roamed the earth, free either from Hell itself or from some harsh Celtic underworld. All Hallows Eve wasn’t truly a festival of Hasloch’s cult—but Christian or pagan, the spirits that would roam this night brought only danger and death—someone would die tonight.

  And if the one who died were Colin, then ten days from now, on the anniversary of Krystallnacht, Rowan Moorcock would also die.

  Farrar had been true to his promise of help. Colin had told him little enough—not even Rowan’s name—but Farrar was able to supply the information Colin needed: the location of Hasloch’s temple.

  Or so Colin believed. Colin was gambling that Hasloch was important enough in the American branch of the Thule Gesellschaft to have its inevitable unholy place under his direct control. If he did, it would almost certainly be located somewhere in his house, just as it had been thirty years before. He glanced down at the dossier that lay on the car seat beside him.

  Toller Christian Hasloch, born November 9, 1938, in Baltimore, Maryland. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard. Traveled extensively through Europe. Law practice in New York 1966–1972. Served in an advisory capacity on a number of obscure committees. Attached to Berlin Embassy 1973–1975. Joined the Cincinnatus Group in 1975. Appointed chairman in 1986. Never married, never arrested, no children, pets, or longtime girlfriends.

  Residences: a permanent apartment at the Watergate Hotel, and a country house, The Hallows, somewhere off Route 66 between Manassas and Front Royal. That was where Colin was heading now, in an anonymous sedan that could be any of a hundred government cars. Farrar was driving. Cars with drivers were a common sight in this affluent Washington exurb. A driver could answer questions, divert suspicion, raise the alarm if needed. And Colin must husband all his strength for the battle ahead.

  The Hallows was a rambling brick house that dated back to the turn of the century. They cruised slowly past it and made a series of turns down winding country lanes.

  “It’s through that hedge,” Farrar said, as if he were announcing the weather. The sedan rolled to a stop at the side of the road. There was no other traffic. The area’s inhabitants had already left for their public and private sector jobs—and Colin expected Hasloch to be safely at his Georgetown desk as well.

  “How long do you think you’ll need?”

  “Not long.”

  Colin suspected that it would not be hard to get into the house. He had not told Farrar about the crucifix, but even now it was a cold weight in the breast pocket of Colin’s jacket. It must be some sort of key—there was no other reason for Rowan to have kept it, when keeping it was so dangerous in both the magickal and mundane worlds.

  “Good hunting, then,” Farrar said, as if Colin had given him a definite answer. He picked up the newspaper that lay beside him on the bench seat of the sedan, seeming to become as engrossed in it as any hired driver awaiting his master’s pleasure.

  Colin stepped out of the car. There was a break in the hedge, and he passed through it, walking through the yard and across the terrace of The Hallows.

  The house, like the house of any rich man, was safeguarded in a number of ways, from dead bolts and double-locked windows to an electronic link to a security company and the police station. A cleaning service came twice a week, and a cook-housekeeper and butler were here on weekends, but on a Monday morning Colin could expect The Hallows to be die-serted. He did not worry about discovery in any event. An arrest would serve his purposes far better than it would Hasloch’s, and if an embarrassing scene ensued, well, Colin no longer had anyone’s honor to look to save his own.

  Though he would have liked to have a Sensitive with him, Colin could think of no one whose safety he would hazard by bringing them here. As he had told Dylan, people who pried into affairs of this nature had a way of simply … disappearing. At least he would make a more disagreeable mouthful than most.

  The attached garage had a door which opened easily to Colin’s skeleton key—there was no alarm, and if necessary he could have broken a pane in its window and gotten through that way. It was a loophole that many homeowners left in their security, and apparently Hasloch was no exception.

  A moment later Colin was inside the garage, safe from prying eyes. It was a two-car garage, but both sides were empty. The back was piled with the usual mundane clutter that any homeowner accumulates: lawn mower, snow blower, bags of salt and mulch. Colin glanced at his watch. 9:45.

  The door that led through into the house itself was far more secure: steel-core, from the look of it, with both a key-bolt and an electronic touchpad. But the LEDs on the touchpad were dark, as were the lights on the alarm box mounted high on the wall beside the door.

  Farrar’s doing? It was better not to stand around wondering about it, at any rate. The fifth skeleton key that Colin tried dragged back the dead bolt, and the door was open.

  Pantry … kitchen … dining room … each room he passed through was perfect and deserted, like a museum exhibit. Despite the fact that the sentry system was down, no one seemed to have come in answer to the alarm that must have been sent. Colin passed quickly through the ground-floor rooms. None of them, even the library, gave a hint of the person Hasloch truly was, the new-minted creature of Evil called out of the stuff of the Shadow by those who trusted their creation to see their plan through to its ultimate culmination.

  A wave of giddiness passed over Colin, so that he had to clutch at the doorframe to retain his balance. He felt lightheaded, disconnected by a combination of too much stress and adrenaline, and unequal to the task before him. It was as if there were something here he did not want to face, some darkness. Suddenly he was cold—cold as if he did not stand in a suburban living room but instead within a crypt, a dark shrine cut into the living stone hundreds of meters below the surface of the sun-kissed earth, before an idol that was the mask of a god as yet unrevealed … .

  He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, and with a trembling hand wiped cold sweat from his face. In his chest he could feel his heart clenching and unclenching, its blows as hard and distinct as if it were a prisoner pounding against the wall of his chest for release.

  He fumbled in his jacket for his pillbox, placed a pill beneath his tongue, and felt the painful hammering slowly ease. It came to Colin that all it would t
ake for Hasloch to win was for him to die, and that he might well die here, from nothing more malignant than the inevitable failure of that balky beast, the body.

  It was over half a century since he had last faced the united forces of the Shadow in pitched battle. He remembered the date exactly: October 31, 1945, and each Halloween thereafter had carried with it some threat, some echo of that eternal battle.

  Old ghosts surrounded him now: dead comrades, summoned once more into battle by the force of memory. Michael Jaeger—who had been reborn into Colin’s life once more—Marian Shipton, David Fouquet, Dame Ellen, Alison Margrave, Father Godwin, Nigel St. Clare, and others he had known only by their codenames: Kestrel, Peregrine, Shrike. Lamplighter. The Roman. Fellow soldiers in the Light, each of whom, in a sense, had given his or her life so that Colin could stand here today and strike in their name.

  He would not fail them.

  Colin concentrated on his breathing, willing his senses to steady. After a few moments he took a deep breath and focused once more on his task, his hand clenched around the black talisman in his pocket. Hasloch’s Temple was here, and Colin was gambling that Rowan was being held somewhere within it. Fortunately he had the advantage of being able to count on Hasloch’s colossal ego: it was unlikely that he would leave the prize in anyone else’s hands.

  Now all he had to do was find his way in … .

  The cellar steps were behind a door in the back hall. No one would see a light from the road. Colin flipped the wall-switch and made his way down the stairs. He looked at his watch. 9:55. He wondered if Farrar were still waiting—and if so, how much longer he would wait. At the bottom of the stairs, he shone his light around the space, his mind straying to that other cellar, that other desperate search, so long ago. Somehow it seemed as if they were both one moment, and all the years between them an illusion.