Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  As quickly as he had caught the audience's attention, Blackburn released it, leaving his viewers euphoric in the quick titillation of a brush with the Unseen. He took the candle from one of his acolytes, and then the stage blacked out once more, leaving Blackburn's face lit from below by the golden flame of the candle.

  "The New Aeon is coming," Blackburn intoned. And blew out the candle.

  The darkness was almost immediately replaced by worklights on the stage, and the audience settled down, pleasurably keyed-up, for the headline act. Colin caught Claire's eye, and she nodded toward the edge of the stage. Blackburn would be coming off there. The two of them got to their feet and began moving toward the aisle.

  Well, now he'd seen the man, Colin told himself. But oddly enough, the more information he gained, the less he knew what to think.

  Claire led Colin through the door that led to the backstage. The crowded area was filled with people and equipment, but Blackburn was instantly recognizable—by the hat, if nothing more. He was surrounded by a coterie of what Colin assumed to be self-styled acolytes and well-wishers, and he was relieved to see that Jonathan wasn't among them.

  Blackburn looked up and saw Colin, and in the younger man's narrowed eyes and sudden suspicious expression—the suspicion with which everyone under thirty seemed to regard everyone over thirty these days—Colin saw a reflection of how out of place he must look here among the tie-dye and denim.

  Fortunately Deborah Winwood had been one of the acolytes in the hooded robes who had carried the props on stage. When she saw Claire, she squealed and flung her arms around the taller woman. Blackburn's expression changed to one of puzzled disinterest, and he turned away to speak to another of his followers.

  "Claire! I hoped you'd come," Debbie said. "You look so ... straight," she added, as if only just now seeing Claire for the first time.

  "I am straight," Claire said, smiling. "Square, too. Debbie, this is Colin MacLaren; I've told you about him."

  Deborah Winwood was one of those breathtakingly lovely women who had given rise to the cliche of the "California Girl." Her long blond hair was parted in the middle and hung in two shining straight wings down the sides of her face, and she stared at Colin, hazel doe-eyes wide, until he wondered what Claire could possibly have told the girl to put that expression on her face.

  "Pleased to meet you," Debbie said lamely, in a soft voice.

  She'd been about to say more, but the band on stage—a local favorite which had been greeting its audience rowdily for the past several minutes— suddenly began to play. Though they were insulated from the band by a thick wall—and were now behind the amplifiers, at any rate—Debbie shrugged apologetically, as if conversation had now become impossible instead of merely difficult. She beckoned to them to follow, and Claire and Colin stumbled after her through the half-light of the cluttered backstage area in Blackburn's direction.

  "Thorne, look!" Debbie said, when she was within range. "Claire came— the one I asked you to get the tickets for?—and she brought her friend, um, Colin?"

  She'd raised her voice to be heard over the band, and for a moment Colin didn't think Blackburn had heard, but then he turned away from the man he'd been talking to. He had already shed the top hat and tailcoat, and was dressed now in the nearly universal youth culture costume of jeans (if jeweled) and T-shirt.

  "I'm Colin MacLaren," Colin said, holding out his hand.

  At the same time, Debbie said: "Thorne, this is Claire—"

  For a moment Blackburn looked surprised; Colin had been right about his age—the man was in his early twenties, if that—which meant he'd accrued an impressive store of magickal credentials for someone his age. But he obviously decided to be amiable, even if only for Debbie's sake.

  Blackburn laughed and took Colin's hand. "City or Feds?" he asked cheerfully.

  It took Colin a moment to untangle this, not quite sure for a moment if he'd heard Blackburn correctly over the din. "No. I'm not a policeman." Not of this world, at any rate. "I'm on faculty at Berkeley. I believe you know one of my students—Jonathan Ashwell."

  Blackburn still looked puzzled, though he obviously placed the name. "You're here because of Johnnie? What's he said, then?"

  There was something not quite native about Blackburn's English; a certain working-class undertone that would have marked him as British even if Colin hadn't already known that about him.

  "He said you were the hope of the New Age," Colin said baldly.

  Another man might have tried to soft-pedal such an unequivocal statement. Blackburn merely grinned wider.

  "I have come to lead you into a new era, where the great separation of the beginning of Time shall be healed; wherein heart and hand, mind and body shall all be as one," he intoned fulsomely, bowing in a theatrical fashion.

  "I'd be interested to hear how you plan to do it," Colin said tartly. "Jonathan said—"

  "Johnnie's a credulous fool, looking for a Messiah," Blackburn answered amiably. "I'll give him better than that. I'll give him a mind of his own before I'm through."

  The band stopped playing.

  "Thorne is almost three hundred years old," Colin overheard Debbie explaining to Claire in the sudden lull. "He used to be, like, this great French magician, Count Cagliostro, or something."

  Colin glanced back at Blackburn, who had heard the exchange.

  "Is this what you tell them?" Colin said, unable to keep the reproach out of his voice.

  "I tell them a lot of things," Blackburn said ambiguously. "If you want to hear more, why don't you come back to our place with us? There's a party."

  He turned away, motioning to Colin and the others to follow, and went out through the door—propped open with a cinderblock—that led into the alley. Behind them, the music began again.

  The warm summer air felt almost chilly after the sweltering stuffiness of the auditorium. The song—muted to a bearable level by the walls of the old movie palace—became a fitting backdrop to the tawdry glamour of the alleyway. The alley walls were papered with posters for acts and events, and a Volkswagen minibus was parked halfway up the alley, lights on and engine running. "Just follow us," Blackburn said over his shoulder as he trotted back to the minibus.

  "Thorne says you can come back with us! I'll show you where to go." Debbie had pulled off the cheap satin robe she'd worn on stages and stood looking at them hopefully.

  Colin shrugged infinitesimally, catching Claire's eye. He'd come to see the so-called Magister Ludens, and the chance to observe him on his home turf was not to be missed.

  On the way to the car, Debbie kept up a steady stream of chatter. Debbie Winwood seemed to be convinced that Claire, at least, had come to join the Master's crusade, and was telling her everything Debbie felt that Claire needed to know. By the time Colin had gotten back to the auditorium, he'd already learned that Thorne Blackburn was either the Comte de Cagliostro or his reincarnation, that he had been sired by an angelic being summoned into a magick circle by the wizard Merlin, and that he had possession of the Philosopher's Stone which granted physical immortality.

  Fortunately, Colin had been able to park the Ford nearby, but he was still a little surprised to find the others still waiting for him out in front of the auditorium. There was no mistaking their vehicle—the side panels were painted with what appeared to be the logo of Blackburn's underground newspaper, suitably embellished with flowers, stars, and rainbows.

  As soon as Colin pulled up behind it, the bus took off, and he was forced to follow at a breakneck pace through the streets of the Filmore District. Whoever was driving the bus was doing so with either consummate skill or reckless disregard—Colin wasn't sure which, even as he exerted all his skill to keep up with them.

  As he drove, Debbie continued to chatter amiably, at one moment explaining how happy all of them were living together in a communal apartment, and at the next, providing Colin with driving directions a heartbeat too late to do him any useful good. If he hadn't known the van's approxi
mate destination, he would have lost sight of it a dozen times, yet despite that, he did not believe that the others were deliberately trying to lose him. They were much too trusting for that. Trusting. An odd assessment to make of a group to which, scant hours before, he had imputed only the lowest of motives.

  And there did remain the fact that Thorne Blackburn had been banished from Colin's own Order, not something that could happen to a wholly innocent man. Yet now, having met Blackburn and the others, he was not certain that Blackburn was wholly guilty either.

  It would have been easier to dismiss the claims—and Blackburn himself— if Colin had not already seen the man and one of his peculiar rituals. An intelligence and power radiated from the young Magus that didn't match the image of the psychic frauds and bunco artists that both he and Claire were familiar with.

  The bus finally stopped—as precipitously as it had started—double-parked on a slanting side street that overlooked the Panhandle section of Golden Gate Park. In city blocks it was not that far from Greenhaven, but it might as well have been in another world. The street was lined with a row of seedy Victorians long since converted to apartments, their first floors hosting a variety of marginal businesses all now closed for the night. Despite the lateness of the hour, there were people still on the street, all wearing the bright fantastic clothes of the hippie movement.

  All four doors of the minibus opened and its occupants began to exit; apparently they planned to leave the bus parked where it was. Colin looked up and down the street. There was no other parking in sight, and street parking in San Francisco at any time was notoriously difficult.

  "I'm afraid I'm going to risk the ticket," Colin said to his passengers as he pulled in behind the bus. "It's almost midnight; if anybody wants to move their car tonight, I'm sure they'll honk." And he didn't want to miss this opportunity to satisfy his curiosity—if that was really the right word—about Blackburn and his coterie. Shutting off the engine, he followed the two women into the building the others had entered.

  Colin could hear the music even before the door was flung open; despite the fact that there had been nearly a dozen people in the minibus, there were more already in the apartment, along with the ever-present haze of drug smoke.

  The noise level went up sharply as Blackburn entered the apartment; everyone was talking at once, and in the background, the acid-laced music of the Doors played on. Unnoticed by anyone, Colin and Claire followed Debbie into the room.

  The apartment was one of those rambling spaces so beloved of San Francisco residents, its interior proportions left oddly unbalanced by the conversion from private home to apartments. A bay window overlooked the street and the green space beyond. The apartment was furnished in a thrift-shop jumble of mismatched pieces: a sagging couch, sheets tacked up over most of the windows in lieu of curtains, posters covering the cracked unpainted walls. If Blackburn was going after Jonathan Ashwell for his money, it was obviously the first time he'd tried something like that; the offices and living space of the Voice of Truth looked as if its inhabitants were surviving on handouts.

  There was a tang of incense in the air as well as the riper smell of marijuana, and books were piled everywhere, along with piles of what Colin guessed must be unsold copies of the newspaper.

  "I'm going to have to be fumigated before I go home," Claire muttered. "I can just imagine what Peter will think if I show up smelling like this."

  As they entered the main room, a small child came running down the hall through the crowd of people, shouting Blackburn's name. Blackburn scooped it up into his arms and hugged the child fiercely, then shifted the child to one arm and accepted a beer from a dark-haired woman who had not been at the performance. Blackburn's preaching seemed to attract more women than men, but that was hardly uncommon in any cult with a charismatic male leader.

  "This is my son Pilgrim," Blackburn said, turning to Colin with the child in his arms.

  Colin had assumed the child was female until Blackburn had spoken. Pilgrim looked to be about four or five; his eyes were the same startling vivid color as his father's, but almost green rather than a true blue. His black hair was long and flowing, and he wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, several bead necklaces, and a pair of jeans that had been lovingly embroidered with a pattern of vines and flowers. There was a blue star drawn on his forehead and daisies painted on each cheek.

  "Oh," said Colin politely. "I didn't realize you were married, Mr. Blackburn."

  "I'm not," Blackburn said calmly. "Why should I enslave women under an archaic religious or legal code? Until we reinvent marriage to suit the demands of the New Aeon, I refuse to practice it."

  He gazed challengingly at Colin, obviously expecting a disapproving response.

  "I suppose that's between you and the young lady," Colin said evenly. "Or ladies, as the case may be," he added.

  " 'An it harm none, do as ye will'—so said the sage of Thelema. But come on, crash with us for a while." Blackburn made a gesture that seemed to take in the entire apartment. "Ask anybody anything. You don't look like the sort of people who usually come to hear the truth, but I'll be happy to tell it to you."

  "A truth, anyway," a tall man in the corner drawled. He was dressed like a cartoon cowboy, down to the wide suede chaps that covered his jeans.

  Blackburn turned toward him, smiling sunnily. "They're all true, Tex; every single one. All things are true, even false things." He walked off, deeper into the apartment, with Pilgrim staring back over his shoulder. ,

  "An interesting philosophy," Claire said, settling cautiously into a chair whose stuffing was leaking out of the top.

  "Everything Thorne does is interesting," the man Blackburn had addressed as Tex answered. He was older than most of the other people Colin had seen here tonight. He had a deep Texas drawl and looked to be somewhere in his thirties. "That's because he's a conduit of the Aeonic Current that will reunite the world of Gods and Men. If we aren't all bombed out of existence first. Can I get you something to drink, ma'am? We've got ice tea— t'isn't anything funny in it, you know, Thorne don't hold with that, nohow."

  Claire glanced over his shoulder, to where the young dark-haired woman who had given Blackburn the beer was rolling joints from a sandwich bag full of grass on the coffee table in front of her. Claire's raised eyebrow was eloquent.

  Tex glanced in the direction of her gaze and grinned. "Oh, well, ma'am, I'd guess they know what they're smoking, wouldn't you? That's different."

  "I suppose you're right," Claire said reluctantly, though not as if she believed it.

  "We were at the auditorium this evening. Can you tell us anything about what Mr. Blackburn was trying to accomplish tonight on stage? It was fascinating," Colin said.

  "That was some tay atra sack ray" Tex said, his drawl mangling the French to the point that it took Colin a moment to figure out just what he'd said. Theatre sacre. Sacred theater.

  "The first duty of the magician is to enact sacred theater," Blackburn said, coming back into the room. He'd showered and changed, and now was wearing a garishly patterned dashiki over faded bell-bottoms. His damp hair was held back with a strip of buckskin and his feet were bare. He draped an arm companionably around Tex's shoulders. "All the world's a stage, an' all that."

  "But what purpose does it serve?" Claire asked, looking up at Blackburn. "Is it serious or not? The audience thinks it's all for fun."

  '"He who has eyes to see, let him hear,'" Blackburn misquoted cryptically.

  Though he didn't seem eager to promote his philosophy, Blackburn sat down on the floor at Claire's feet and began to talk about the work he was doing in San Francisco. It all sounded like arrant moonshine to Colin, all the more so for containing a number of unlikely assertions: such as that Blackburn was over two centuries old, of nonhuman parentage, and come as a savior to bring about a golden age for mankind. Claire listened to all of this with commendable gravity.

  As for Jonathan and his intention of donating all his money to the Voice of Trut
h, Blackburn continued to point out, when challenged, that anyone who wished was free to follow him or not as they chose, and that all of them held their property in common.

  "The trouble with pure Communism is that it's inefficient for a large-scale economy. We have to dismantle the nation-states and recreate society on the tribal level before we can truly say we have buried the evils of Capitalism," Blackburn said sagely.

  Looking around, Colin had to admit that he didn't see any particular evidence of wealth, though he supposed it was just barely possible that Blackburn had a large bank account stashed somewhere. Neither, beyond the doting attention of his women, was Blackburn being treated with the exaggerated deference that marked the leader of one of those insidious mind-control cults that were springing up all over the place like mushrooms after rain.

  In fact, Blackburn was a very slippery fellow altogether. Beneath all the glib patter there was a hint of something real—though what it might be remained as baffling to Colin now as it had been before he'd met Blackburn. And though the man was unfailingly polite, Colin could not escape the feeling that somehow Blackburn was laughing at him, like the Trickster-god Coyote laughing at the moon.

  "But I've taken up enough of your time," Colin said finally. He could see that Claire had been bravely stifling yawns for the last half-hour or so, and in any event Colin didn't think he'd learn anything more this evening. It was late, and by now most of the others had drifted off to bed, though two young dark-haired women—alike enough to be twins—remained, sitting unselfconsciously beside Blackburn on the floor.

  "Come again—we're always here, except when we've left. And don't worry about Johnnie, Colin—I promise I'll make an unbeliever out of him before I'm done," Blackburn said cheerily.