“And not just us. Not just here. Good people everywhere—and there are good people everywhere. America gave the Dream voice, and form, but we’re a nation of businessmen. We export our wares, and our dreams. You haven’t won. You’ve lost. Every Chinese dissident—every Hungarian freedom-fighter—is my countryman. You cannot defeat us all.”
From the corner of his eye, Colin saw Rowan’s head turn slowly toward him, as if she’d only just begun to listen. In a private chamber of his heart he mourned for all that she would lose if they died here.
But even her death would not be a lasting defeat. Colin realized that at last.
“Empty words, Colin; the fantasies of slaves. Your ‘dream’ is dead—and in fact, it never existed. Our victory parade is no farther away than the next election. A new Pax Americana will sweep across the globe—but I’m afraid you won’t like it very much.” The smile of triumph on Hasloch’s face was fixed. The gun in his hand gleamed silvery in the dim light.
“America doesn’t matter, Toller. Are you listening? It doesn’t matter. That’s what your kind has never gotten straight. We’ve been aiming toward this Celestial City—a City of the Light—for thousands of years. America is not the point—it’s only the closest approach we have yet to an ideal. Smash it, subvert it, we will rebuild the dream from the ashes a thousand times, and each time we’ll build it closer to the perfection that the Light has placed in our hearts.”
A joy he had not realized that he possessed transfigured Colin. This was the answer he had prayed for, the refutation of the evil and despair he saw around him, the rebuttal to the fear he’d felt in a thousand sleepless nights that Hasloch had won.
“Two thousand years ago, the Church was incarnated as a vehicle of the Light, to make men free and happy—”
“A failure!” Toller sneered, back on secure ideological ground.
“Granted,” Colin said easily. “It got bogged down in local customs and trying to legislate morality. The Church failed at what it was designed to do, but it passed the torch: to the Renaissance; to the Reformation; to the Industrial Revolution. None of them was perfect—each advance was bought at the price of blood and sorrow and injustice and thousands of lives—but each was a step closer to the dream we were made for. And that’s the bottom line: things get better.”
Hasloch sneered, but there was something halfhearted in the gesture. As if, deep within his withered soul, something that hungered to hear this was listening.
“We’re smarter, we’re healthier, we know better than any time since the Fall of Man who we are and where we’re going,” Colin said with fierce urgency. “There’s one for you—the Fall of Man. It’s one of our greatest triumphs—your Serpent won that round, and it took us ten thousand years to work our way back from the bottom of the Pit, but we did it. And we’ll keep right on doing it. Until you’ve killed every last one of us, your Shadow cannot claim victory—and at that, your victory will last exactly until a new Champion of the Light is born.”
The Shadow had not won, and it never would. No matter what happened. No matter how long and twisted and weary the road.
Rowan took a step toward him, smiling. There were tears in her eyes, but her face was radiant with an incandescent, impassioned Joy. She held out her hand to Colin, and he took it
“Go ahead,” Rowan urged Hasloch generously. “Kill both of us. But y’know, it isn’t going to do you any good. We’ll be back. We’ll always be back.” Her voice vibrated with that promise, bright as a sword blade.
“Give up, Hasloch. You haven’t won. And you never will,” Colin said quietly.
For the first time since he’d confronted them, real uncertainty crossed Hasloch’s face. “You are defeated,” he said plaintively. “You know you are. Why won’t you lie down and die?”
“It’s the American spirit,” Colin said with a tight grin. “Never say die.”
Rowan giggled, a shocking triumphant sound in this place of horror. “‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’” she quoted softly. ‘“Well? Do ya?”’
“Then die anyway,” Hasloch said, raising his pistol and taking aim. “Not elegant, but effective.”
The roar of a shot filled the room.
In that confined space the sound was deafening. Rowan screamed at the shock of it. There was a flash, and the stink of burnt gunpowder; instinctively Colin flinched back and covered his eyes, pulling Rowan against him in a futile gesture of protection.
But he was not the target, and neither was Rowan.
Hereward Farrar stood in the doorway in a gunsmoke haze, a double-barreled shotgun cradled in one arm.
Toller Hasloch lay arched back across his own altar, clutching at it for support. For whatever reason, Hereward had aimed low, and most of the load of shot had missed Hasloch’s heart and lungs; he was still alive.
His mouth worked, shaping parting words he would never get to say. His feet slipped in his own blood, and he slid wetly down into a sitting position on the floor. Colin imagined he could almost feel the moment that the spirit sprang free of its mortal vessel to return once more to the Wheel that turned for both Dark and Light.
“He’s getting away,” Rowan said, in a dull, disbelieving voice. “Shouldn’t we … ?”
“No,” Colin said. He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “Let him go. He’ll be back. But maybe, in time, he’ll begin to learn. Remember that when you see him again.”
And reverberating through the chamber, Colin heard the soft sound of a Book closing.
But not forever.
“Isn’t it time for you two to get moving?” Farrar said. He held out his key ring toward Colin. “I called the sheriff’s department before I came down here—I had to leave the car in the driveway, but it ought to be okay there for a few minutes at least. Just leave the keys in it when you’re done with it. Park it anywhere.”
“Who the hell are you?” Rowan demanded with dazed bemusement. She pushed herself away from Colin and glared at Farrar, holding herself upright now by sheer force of will.
“Nobody in particular,” Farrar said, smiling faintly. “Just somebody who was in the right place at the right time—finally.”
“What will you do?” Colin asked him.
“Oh, I imagine I’m probably going to jail,” Farrar said. “I just killed a man. Hasloch certainly needed killing, but you don’t evade the consequences afterward. You take the hit—you don’t make things worse. That’s the rule.”
And then, someday, your atonement is complete … .
“You weren’t sent by the department,” Colin said.
“No,” Farrar said simply. He stepped out of the doorway and carefully broke the shotgun open. “Go ahead. I’ve got a few things to do here before I go.” He gestured. “Right down that hall.”
“And straight on till morning,” Rowan muttered, taking a hesitant step toward the door.
The return down that endless passageway was worse than the first journey had been. The secret door still stood open, and the two of them passed through it hand in hand.
Rowan was staggering blindly, exhausted by her ordeal and the psychic agony of the Temple, and Colin felt the full weight of every moment of his years. But both of them were moved by the same driving motivation: the desire not to spend a moment more than they had to in this unspeakable place.
For one horrible moment Colin thought that the Temple doors would not open without their key, but on this side all that was needed was the simple push of a button. The doors swung inward, and across the antechamber they could see the lights of the elevator, standing with its doors open.
“We should wait here for him,” Rowan said, collapsing against the inside wall of the elevator. “Right?”
“I don’t think so,” Colin said. “We have to get you out of here and safe. You’re the best witness if this mess ever goes to court. Toller wasn’t working alone. We’ll only have leverage if we have something to expose.”
“Like an underground Satanist Temple in Virginia?” Rowan said w
ith weary humor. She pushed herself away from the wall and pushed the button. “Geraldo Rivera, here I come.”
The elevator doors opened into darkness. The door at the end of the short hallway was closed.
“Come on,” Colin said to Rowan. His voice sounded hoarse and strange to him—like a parody of age. But the old man had won one for the home team. “Just a flight of stairs and we’re home free.”
Rowan was reaching for the knob when the door was jerked open from the outside. She yelped, jumping backward into Colin and nearly knocking them both over.
A Fauquier County sheriff’s deputy stared back at her, gun drawn.
TWENTY-SEVEN
GLASTONBURY, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1999
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land;
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
TOLLER HASLOCH HAD BOASTED OF THE FRIENDS HE’D HAD IN high places, but apparently he’d had nearly as many enemies there. The deputies who had arrested Rowan and Colin took them to the nearest hospital, and while they waited for treatment—Rowan for dehydration and shock, Colin for the supposed frailty of his advanced age—the uniformed deputies had been replaced by sleek civilians who discouraged questions of any sort.
For a while Colin wondered if he had defeated Hasloch only to fall prey to the rest of Hasloch’s monstrous network, but after the hospital released them, their keepers simply drove them to a Washington hotel just off the Mall, where the two of them spent three days locked incommunicado in a suite on the eighteenth floor before they were driven to the airport and released.
No one ever asked either of them any questions, and Colin was content to have it so. He had done what he had come to do. And more—he had found the last work of his life.
“I hope Claire and Daddy are having fun,” Rowan said, looking into the fire.
“Probably they’re having as much fun as it is possible to have in Rhinebeck,” Colin assured her gravely.
Last spring, Claire had finally succumbed to Justin’s persuasions and moved permanently to the old farm in Madison Corners. The countryside was much changed from the days when the Church of the Antique Rite had held sway there: though still suffering from the same economic depression that gripped other agriculturally-dependent parts of the U.S., it was a more wholesome sort of stagnation than before, if such a thing were possible. Claire had found a great deal of use for all the skills she’d acquired in the course of a long life, from nursing to crisis intervention, and from what Colin had seen when they came for Christmas, she and Justin were very happy.
It was his second winter in the old farmhouse on Greyangels Road. The house had welcomed him back last fall as if he had never left; Winter Greyson (née Musgrave) was its current owner, and the Greysons had been pleased to find so congenial a tenant. Grey had taken a particular delight in shipping Colin’s pack-rat collection of books and papers to him; though Rowan was not as capable a secretary as Grey had been, she had learned quickly. Much of Colin’s collection would pass directly to her use in the years to come.
“They’ll be staying until Monday,” Colin reminded her. “But they do have a home of their own to go to. And an old house needs looking after, especially during a New England winter.”
“Yes, but …” Rowan said, and let the sentence drop.
Colin knew what she was thinking. While Claire and Justin were here, Rowan was able to maintain the pretence of a normal life. The furnishings of the Sanctuary—which normally occupied the second upstairs bedroom—were tucked away, and the regime of meditation and spiritual exercises that occupied Rowan’s time—outside of her mundane studies—was suspended.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” Colin said. “I’ve seen too many of them to care, but you ought to be out celebrating, not staying here keeping me company.”
Rowan made a rude graphic noise. “And who am I supposed to go out with? Ninian? And do what? People—ordinary people—just seem so … oblivious. I know it’s wrong, but I don’t have anything to say to them, and what could they say to me? I feel like we’re on different planets.”
The path of the disciple had not been—and still was not—an easy path for either of them. The passage to membership in Colin’s Order was long and arduous, and many of its time-worn practices seemed meaninglessly archaic to Rowan, who rebelled strenuously against them. For all her manifest dedication to the Light, Colin still sometimes felt that Rowan took the Great Secrets of Initiation far too lightly.
But the past year had taught them much about each other. In the spring Rowan would be finished here at Taghkanic, and Colin would take Dr. Rowan Moorcock to visit Nathaniel, and then—with his permission—would take her on to London, for formal initiation into the Order.
“Well, just as you like,” Colin said. “Next year is the real turning of the Millennium, anyway—not that it’s anything but an arbitrary benchmark. Just as long as you don’t feel you’re missing anything.”
Rowan shook her head, not looking at him. In some ways her path was harder than his own had been: it was far easier to endure secrecy and isolation than the knowledge that what you were doing would be a source of incredulous mockery if it was ever revealed. Colin was not sure he could have faced what Rowan faced every day with mindfulness and a still heart.
But she has been born for her own age, as I was born for mine. In each lifetime we are given the Tools we need to perform the Great Work, though in every century they are different.
At Midsummer the newest Daughter of the Sun would be received into the Temple of Light as it existed on the Outer Plane, and she would become heir to all of Colin’s power and the wisdom of more lives than this. His heritage would pass safely into the hands of his disciple for safekeeping into the third millennium.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Colin said. “I have a present for you.” He’d meant to give it to her next June, but it seemed right that she should have it now.
“A New Year’s present?” Rowan said, getting to her feet as Colin levered himself out of the chair in front of the fire.
“Of a sort. Wait here.”
Colin went through the kitchen to his bedroom and took an object off his desk. Carrying it carefully in both hands, he came back into the living room and held it out to Rowan.
“Many years ago, a friend gave this to me. It’s served me well all these years—as a sort of reminder, you might say. Now I’m passing it on to you. Call it a legacy.”
“It’s beautiful,” Rowan said.
She held the paperweight up so that it caught the firelight: a sterling sword, its surface soft with the patina of age, pierced an anvil set into a block of white stone.
EPILOGUE
AND KING HEREAFTER
I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
IT WAS SOMETHING OF A SURPRISE TO FIND MYSELF LIVING AT Moorcock farm once more. When Uncle Clarence died, the farm passed to Justin, with the caveat that I should always be welcome to make my home there if I wished to. It took Justin some years to persuade me that I should really be happy there, but it is a good feeling to have family around me once more. Rowan can share something with Colin that I never could, for all the years of our friendship. It is strange what contentment I find in knowing that he has found it at last.
And so we pass from darkness to darkness, rejoicing at our little time in the Light. All is a sleep and a forgetting, save for those few walking among us who have chosen to shoulder the burden of awareness from Life to Life. As the years pass, the darkness that someday claims each of us becomes more real to me, and more and more I think on what Colin said to me when he first set m
y feet upon the path I was to follow all my life:
“The great mass of humanity neither knows nor cares about magick and they have the right to keep things that way—to not be troubled by forces outside the scope of their daily lives, or manipulated by forces they have no way of resisting. When I find someone interfering in people’s lives with magick in that fashion, it’s my duty to stop them if I can—for their own sake, as well as for the sake of the lives they may harm.”
It is as good a summation as any, for a life’s work and a dear friend. Walk in the Light, Colin MacLaren. I know we will meet again.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves.
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
TOR BOOKS BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
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