Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  Colin looked out over the heads of his latest freshmen class—had he ever been so young? It seemed that they got younger as the world turned darker, and while his students in the dawn of the sixties had spoken of changing the world, at the end of the seventies, students spoke of finding a place in the world as it was, as if change were no longer possible.

  "Professor MacLaren?" A hand went up in the back—Jeremy, a good student but cautious. "Could you tell us—in your opinion—what it's all for? I mean, supposing you can prove that psychic powers exist, everybody still isn't going to have them. So what practical use could they have?"

  It was a common question, for which Colin had a practiced answer. For a moment his mind wandered—to his contemporaries, to those other students whose lives he had touched through the years. To Grey, who in his senior year remained an endless challenge to authority. He thought of the sacrifices two generations had made, the losses both had suffered in trying to realize their dreams. Was it all for this—that the world should end neither with a bang nor a whimper, but with some slow inexorable dwindling, impossible to mark?

  February second fell on a Monday, and the New Year had come in with a bitter black cold that did not fall as snow, but sheathed every stem and branch with a brilliant coating of dense ice. Colin had been director of the institute for eight years now, and was beginning to look toward the day when he'd hand the institute off to someone else. But not yet. He still had more to do here.

  Colin drove carefully along the slippery roads. It would not do to put the car in a ditch and be late for his own surprise party.

  He was, of course, not supposed to know, though half a dozen clearer heads had warned him clandestinely—including Christie, who knew her boss's temperament well enough to know that surprise parties worked out better when the victim cooperated. Since he'd known what was afoot, it had been easy to collaborate in all the runaround errands designed to keep him from getting home too soon.

  Sixty-one this year. I hope they haven't tried to put a candle on for every year— they'll burn the house down, Colin thought whimsically. He'd done his best to avoid this sort of observance of his birthday—a date of interest, now, to no one but himself—but since it was inescapable, he found himself actually looking forward to it. You're turning into a foolish old man, Colin MacLaren.

  He turned onto Greyangels Road and could now see the farmhouse in the distance. All the windows were dark, but nothing could disguise the wealth of tire tracks leading up the empty drive.

  / wonder where they parked? Colin thought to himself, before deciding that it was probably down in the old orchard. The apple orchard behind the house was long past its fruiting days, though it still produced blossoms in spring and a few apples in the fall, and the ground was hard-frozen enough to allow the easy passage of even Eden's 4WD Jeep. He spared a hope that Grey'd had the sense to hitch a ride with someone else—a motorcycle wasn't safe on these winter roads, though Grey rode his year-round in most weather, with a fine disregard for his personal safety.

  Colin pulled in to the top of the gravel drive and stopped. Leaving the motor running, he got out to drag open the doors of the woodshed-cum-garage before getting back into the car and driving it inside. The wide wood planks of the floor testified to the building's earlier incarnation as a stables and carriage house.

  Several cords of wood—a winter's supply—were stacked along the side wall, and along the back were a wheelbarrow and various gardening implements, the grace notes of country life. Fortunately Greyangels' owner, Ted Zacharias, took care of what groundskeeping the place required. Colin was no gardener and had never had any ambitions in that direction, though Claire, who had an apartment in Glastonbury, came out and fussed over his flowers occasionally. She'd offered him a kitten from Poltergeist's latest litter, but Colin had not accepted; cats were at far more risk in the country from foxes and weasels than in the city, though it was never a good idea to let a pet animal roam.

  Running her own bookstore agreed with her; Colin had to admit he hadn't seen Claire this happy since Peter had died. He only wished he could say as much for himself.

  In this second half of his life, a cloud seemed to have settled over him, as if he were somehow in exile through accident or unwise choice. Since Simon's accident—and Hasloch's murder—Colin felt as though he'd lost touch with something fine and meaningful, but dared not go in search of it lest he do some unimaginable unwitting harm. Slowly his life had come to be ruled by that fear, a dark spectator whose presence colored his every action.

  First, do no harm. The injunction that formed the basis of the Hippocratic Oath was a good one for any meddler, Colin thought to himself encouragingly, and nothing to be ashamed of.

  And now he'd better get inside, before his guests decided he'd gotten lost on the way to the house.

  "For he's a jolly good fellow—which nobody can deny!" The raucous, friendly chorus—led by Grey and his girlfriend on their guitars—rang from the walls of the old farmhouse. A substantial fire blazed on the hearth, and marshmal-lows and chestnuts were laid by for later toasting.

  All Colin's friends were there—even John Dexter, whose unexpected and baffling illness had forced his retirement from the Bidney staff the year before.

  "And a happy Groundhog Day to you, Colin, and the hope of many more," Dexter said, coming over to stand at Colin's side.

  His skin was sallow and almost reptilian, hanging from his gaunt frame in folds and covered with the livid bruising that was the result not of blows but of tiny spontaneous hemorrhages throughout his body. His doctors frankly measured Dexter's future in months, and constant tremors in his hands had rendered him incapable of performing his beloved sleight-of-hand illusions, but he was unfeignedly merry as he joined the revelry.

  "And to you as well," Colin said automatically.

  "Don't be naive and sentimental," Dexter said. "Or I'll worry more than I do now about leaving the institute in your hands. I'll be lucky if I see July Fourth, let alone next Groundhog Day."

  "I wish there was something I could do," Colin said.

  "Just keep the faith healers off me," Dexter said. "I'll go out as I came in, and I'm too old to start believing in hoodoo. Leave the mumbo to Jumbo has always been my motto."

  "And you a magician," Colin joked gently. It hurt him to see his friend this way, but in the face of Dexter's steadfast refusal to consider what was now beginning to be called Alternative Medicine, his friends had no choice but to respect his wishes.

  "How's my successor doing?" Dexter asked.

  "Quite well," Colin assured him. Maskelyne Devant—the professional name of a man whose birth name was Houdin, and whose parents had obliviously christened him Henry Harrison—had been Dex's handpicked successor, and the two men were as different as night and day.

  Devant's performing tastes ran to smoke and mirrors—the gaudy, Vegas-style illusions of much of modern magic—and he carried his "man of mystery" persona with him offstage as well as on, something that irritated Colin more on some days than others. But Devant was just as hard-nosed and unforgiving as Dexter had been, and had already exposed a number of soi-disant "psychics" whose trickery had fooled Colin's researchers.

  Without revealing the secrets of the Brotherhood, Devant also did several seminars each year at Taghkanic on the more basic forms of bait-and-switch, which was the central principle of most psychic fraud, as well as of stage il-lusionism.

  "He's a good man," Dexter said. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a slice of that cake before Claire gives it all away." Leaning heavily on his cane, Dexter moved slowly toward the table set up at the far end of the room.

  "Happy Birthday, Colin." Eden said, handing him a slender, gold-wrapped box.

  "Good heavens. A gold watch already?" Colin joked.

  "Not quite. And it's from me, not the college—I have no intention of opening the 'official gift from the administration' can of worms again."

  "Very wise." They both abominated in-group p
olitics, but Eden had less opportunity to steer clear of it than he did. Colin tore off the paper to reveal a silver Cross pen. It was engraved along the barrel. Success and Fortune: 2/2/81.

  "I'll treasure it," Colin said. Eden smiled.

  "And now I do have to dash," she said. "Bobby would appreciate it if I put in an appearance at home occasionally, and I have yards of paperwork backed up." She held out her hand and Colin shook it formally. "Happy Birthday, Colin."

  "Thank you." He watched as Eden made her way through the crowd toward the kitchen door—it was a more direct route to the orchard.

  "For God's sake, man, don't just stand here—enjoy yourself!" Morgan Ives, flamboyant as ever and more than a few sheets to the wind—-Colin smelled the sharpness of bourbon on her breath—leaned against him confidentially, taking his arm. "Come have a drink."

  Colin allowed himself to be drawn toward the table. There was a small pile of presents—something he'd unsuccessfully tried to discourage—Claire's huge cut-glass punch bowl with its nonalcoholic contents (a wedding gift, Colin recalled, and something whose employment had baffled her for years), a copper wash-boiler filled with ice and champagne bottles, and a huge chocolate sheet-cake with white icing and a representation of the institute on it in pale blue.

  He'd already blown out the single candle, and the cake was being disemboweled for the guests. The gathering was fairly evenly split between teachers, members of the institute, and students. Dylan and Cassie were here, along with Grey and half a dozen other kids, including Grey's latest girlfriend, Winter.

  "Here you are, Colin," Claire said, handing him a large slice of cake on a paper plate. I brought you a present—you don't have to worry; it's cookies," she said, nodding toward the large box wrapped in gold paper that sat beside the cake.

  "You spoil me," Colin said, accepting the plate and picking up his fork. He looked with mock-apprehension toward the rest of the parcels. "Any idea what else there is?"

  "Well, Jamie sent books, but he always does. It's a big box—I put them in the kitchen. And there are a lot of cards, but—" Claire lowered her voice con-spiratorially "—I think one of your students knitted you a muffler."

  Colin rolled his eyes in silence. "Well, at least it isn't a Fair Isle sweater." He took a bite of cake.

  "Hey, Ramsey—you coming out to the Lake later?"

  A lull in the conversation around him brought Janelle's words to Colin clearly, and if he had not been looking in the direction of Grey and his friends, he would have missed what came next.

  "How's the spring play coming?" Winter asked, too quickly and too loudly for the words to be anything but a hasty change of subject. The others around Grey spoke up quickly, covering the moment, but Colin had seen the look of guilty complicity among the five of them, as clearly as if they'd shouted it aloud.

  He glanced away, not wanting to let them know he'd heard, and said something offhand to Claire. When he looked back a few seconds later, he caught Grey watching him expressionlessly.

  To follow the Path required the kindness of the surgeon, the clarity of the general, and the willingness to stand aside while innocents endured the suffering they had chosen for themselves before their entry into this life.

  Faced with the need to intervene once more, Colin was not certain he still had the strength. The shameful guilt of his one irresistible impulse to act against the Law was still with him. He prayed that never again would he face such a moment of hubris and false mercy as that had been—it was the sort of failure that could destroy not only lives but souls.

  But he had taken on that burden willingly, though the guilt remained— and it seemed, as the years passed, that the pain had itself become a kind of temptation, a lure to renounce all responsibility, to reject the possibility of doing good out of fear of doing harm. It was a temptation to which he dared not surrender.

  "Claire, do you ever hear anything about Nuclear Lake?"

  Janelle had mentioned "The Lake," and for residents of Amsterdam County, there was only one: Nuclear Lake.

  On maps, its name was Haelvemaen—Half Moon—Lake, and it was on a small parcel of private land tucked into a corner of Huyghe State Park. Some sort of private research group had used the area, and since its departure, Nuclear Lake had collected the usual assortment of unlikely local folktales about itself. The property had been unoccupied for about ten years, give or take a few; sporadically the college attempted to buy the acreage for its own use, but so far without success.

  "Not much," Claire said slowly. As she mused, she reached out and rubbed Monsignor under the chin. The dignified black-and-white torn immediately flopped over on his back, purring, while Poltergeist, a white queen, remained more aloof.

  The shop smelled pleasantly of cinnamon and sandalwood, and radiated a sense of serene peace. Inquire Within had been such a good idea that Colin couldn't imagine how he'd ever gotten along without it. Claire's bookstore provided a perfect nonconfrontational meeting place for those curious about the Unseen. It provided answers for those with questions, a way for them to meet one another, and a place to go before their troubles became too grave. And Claire was in her element, providing tea and no-nonsense advice to anyone who needed it.

  At least twice a month, Claire made it her business to cook dinner for him in her little apartment above Inquire Within, apparently on the theory that without her he might starve. While that was not entirely true, it was true that without Claire's home-cooking he'd get pretty tired of TV dinners and diner food. Colin was no cook and had never claimed to be.

  "It's a preferred make-out spot, of course, because the park rangers don't patrol it and the sheriffs deputies don't get up there much either, so I hear. Why?"

  Because they all looked so guilty. . . .

  "I'm wondering if you've heard anything 'odd' about it. Odd in our particular line, of course," Colin said.

  He picked up one of the Tarot decks piled on the counter beside the register in hopes of tempting patrons and turned it over in his hands. Pride had always been his besetting sin, and he'd been proud of the communion he'd forged with his students. Knowledge of that pride vexed him nearly as much as worry about what these students had gotten up to.

  "Not about Nuclear Lake in particular, really," Claire answered thoughtfully. "The local coven goes up there, I think. Going down to the river's too dangerous and probably too public for them, and the lake is, after all, reputed to be a place of power," Claire finished dryly, picking up Monsignor. She gestured at her bookshelves with a free hand.

  "I'm not an expert, but my stock is. There isn't much folklore about Amsterdam County other than the Grey Angels—and you'll find them up in Columbia and down in Dutchess as well—and I don't think I've seen anything at all about Nuclear Lake."

  Colin frowned. Students played pranks and pushed the rules—those things had been true even when Colin was a student. Drugs, illegal as ever, were still a part of college life, as were freewheeling sex, bootlegged music tapes, and ghost-written term papers. But Colin couldn't believe that those kids would have looked so guilty about any of those things, Grey particularly.

  And around me of all people! Colin thought, amused at how much the notion pricked his vanity.

  "You're thinking again," Claire accused him. She went through the curtain to get her keys, and Poltergeist appeared as if by magic, trotting toward the sound and miaouing. She knew that the jingle of keys led to the sound of the can-opener, when Claire took the cats upstairs for the night.

  The space that Claire had rented for Inquire Within was actually almost square, but a brick wall down the center of the space divided it nearly in half. The landlord had been willing to knock it down, but Claire had chosen to keep it, adding a second drywall partition that sectioned the left side of the store off into two storage rooms, one of which was also used for discussion groups. Though Claire sold herbs, she could not bear the thought of her stock being tampered with or contaminated in any way, and so kept it under lock and key.

&n
bsp; "Ready?" Claire asked.

  "So tell me," Claire said later. "What are you worried about Grey getting up to? Group sex? Orgies? Satanic rites?"

  Colin stared down into an after-dinner cup of coffee, as though he were a psychic and could see answers there.

  "I wish I knew. The five of them are doing something—and try as I might, I can't imagine what."

  "Well, no one's ever accused you of a lack of imagination before," Claire observed, setting the cake plate down on the table. "Maybe it's just too much imagination this time. Why don't you ask him?"

  "Ask him what?" Colin sighed. "I don't even know how to frame the question. If it was something Grey wanted me to know about—or didn't care if I knew—he would have told me. Lord knows he's told me about enough other things: rehanging the Lookerman portrait from the library, tampering with the key sheet on the physics exam, putting the brandy in the coffee urn. ..."

  "Not to mention smoking the Christian Prayer Fellowship out of the Student Union with asafetida and petitioning for permission to found Students for Satan," Claire said, "although that was perfectly legal, just silly. Colin, I think you're worrying too much. But if you like, I'll go up to Nuclear Lake and take a look around."

  Colin sighed again. He knew what Claire was offering, and what they both worried about—that Grey's irrepressible curiosity would lead him down the same dark path that Simon Anstey seemed to be following. If Grey was meddling in Black Magick, Claire's Gift would pick that up immediately.

  "It feels too much like spying," Colin said, "but the real reason I'm going to turn you down is that if it isn't outright Ungodliness—or even something mundane, like selling drugs—"

  "Not Grey!" Claire protested.

  "Oh, I don't mean he's the local pusher, but grass is illegal, too, even if most of the students smoke it. It comes from somewhere, and if that's what he's up to you'd have no way of telling. And I think it's probably something like that; drugs are one of the Paths to Power, after all."

  "But you don't encourage that at all, Colin; it's dangerous. And Grey looks up to you. He'd do what you said."