Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  While Alison had been granted a long and peaceful life—she'd turned eighty-four this January—and a quick and peaceful death, Colin was once again reminded forcefully of something he had already known: that no day was a good day to die. Alison's death was like the removal of some invisible protection from his own mortality, forcing him to acknowledge what he'd thought he understood long before: that someday, fewer years from now than he had already lived, he must leave this life behind.

  Claire sat beside him in the chapel, weeping with silent unreconciled bitterness. Alison had been like a parent to her, and this fresh loss reopened old scars.

  Alison had requested that her ashes be scattered on Mount Tamalpais, and those she had known throughout her long life had gathered here in this eccentric nondenominational chapel to witness the fulfillment of her last request.

  At least one of Alison's own was here to conduct this last farewell. Colin glanced back toward the podium, where Kathleen Carmody stood. She and her husband had been members of Alison's Lodge since their introduction to the Path many years ago. Today Kathleen was dressed all in white—a long open robe over a more mundane turtleneck and pants—but the large gold ankh pendant she wore was all she needed as indication of her standing.

  She spoke of her years of friendship with Alison, of the many people seeking the Light whom Alison had helped in all her long life—a life in which the knowledge of the mystic arts had gone from being a secret shared by an elite few, to the common currency and public property of the flower children, to the trivial stuff of comic book entertainment.

  As the century—and the millennium—drew toward their ends, it seemed to Colin that mankind had withdrawn from the spiritual in the same way that the burned child spurned the fire. Today's world did not so much assert that nothing existed outside the material world of the five senses as it insisted that nothing was more important than that world and its potential wealth.

  Meanwhile, as if in some subtle corollary, crimes became more terrible. Only last September seven people near Chicago had died from taking what seemed to be randomly-poisoned Tylenol, and international affairs seemed ever more complicated and ghastly. Vietnam had been a simple little war fought for simple ends compared to current entanglements in Libya and Nicaragua, and in response to its worldly confusion, America was greedily returning to its enchanted political sleep of the 1950s.

  Only the world had grown too wide for that, Colin realized. And this slumber might well become a terminal coma, as the psychic rot at the root of its nation-soul continued to fester. Something was terribly wrong in the world: anyone could see that. But what was harder to see was what could be—what must be—done to change things for the better. . . .

  Conscious that he was letting his mind wander, Colin forced his attention back to Kathleen. As he focused on her, she suddenly stopped speaking, staring toward the back of the sanctuary with a stunned expression. It was impossible not to look, and so Colin did.

  Simon Anstey stood in the doorway of the chapel.

  The scars of his terrible maiming had faded with the years, but Simon still wore the black eyepatch over his left eye and both hands were gloved. He wore a black suit and tie, and looked formidably formal—as if he wore not a simple suit but the most potent armor.

  Colin did not need psychic powers to feel the ripple of distress that passed through the congregation at Simon's arrival. Colin supposed that mourning should cancel all feuds, but Alison had known her health was frail ever since the first stroke in 1972. If she had wanted Simon here at her memorial, she would have left explicit instructions to that effect.

  "How dare he come here?" Claire said in an outraged whisper.

  "He loved her too," Colin said. But was that really true, considering how much Simon had gone against Alison's wishes and pleas?

  Claire half-rose from her seat, and Colin put a restraining hand on her arm.

  "No," Colin said quietly. "He's probably counting on someone to cause scene."

  At the moment when the whispers of embarrassment might have broken into words, Simon moved, striding down the aisle, taking command of the space with the easy competence he still retained from his performing days. In all things save the use of his hand and eye, Simon seemed recovered from that traumatic accident of years ago.

  At least physically . . .

  The Path was no pastel sugar-coated confection of rainbows and moonbeams whose white-robed Adepts drifted through this life dispensing homilies like a television hero. To be an agent of the Higher Power meant much more than taking on the chains of manifestation long beyond one's required span. It meant the possibility of the sort of failure that could destroy not only lives but souls. It was just this dilemma that drove many Adepts to refuse the fearful burden of action when it was offered—and to steadfastly withhold action could also be a sin.

  Thus, the first act of the Adept must be to call the fires of Karma into his own life, to burn away the merely human imperfections that lay there. This was the test that Simon had failed. He had summoned up the cleansing fire, but when the accident had taken his skill from him, he had refused to see it as the act of Karma that it was, and saw it instead as a flaw in the plans of the Lords of Light.

  But there are no accidents in this life. Simon was taught that much as any of us who walk the Path were. Only he could not bear to remember it—to take responsibility for his own maiming.

  Ignoring the consternation around him—though he surely heard it and must have expected it—Simon stepped up to the podium. Kathleen stepped back—or recoiled—ceding him the space.

  "I have come to say good-bye to Alison Margrave, the woman who gave me life, more so than any mother," Simon began. His rich, full, voice filled the room, casting them all irresistibly in the role of audience.

  "When I first met Alison Margrave I was a child ... a prodigy whose gift was a curse, insofar as it alienated me from those who surrounded me. Alison took me into her home and her heart and helped me to understand what I was . . . all that I was. Because in addition to being both healer and musician, Alison was more—she was Priestess.

  "For many of you, such an old-fashioned word conjures up lurid New Age images of young women playing at being witches, but Alison was a priestess in the older—I may say, oldest—sense. She was a guide and a refuge for the troubled, bringing the Higher Learning within their reach and setting their feet upon the Path. She did much good in the world, and that is what we— what I—will remember here today as we say good-bye: not the rigid insistence on cleaving to an archaic standard of practice that darkened her last years—"

  He can't leave it alone, even here, Colin thought. That left-handed slam at Alison's rejection of him was something that everyone here today would recognize. Undoubtedly her judgment of him still rankled: Simon's ego was Luciferian in its arrogance.

  "Good-bye and Godspeed, Alison Margrave. We will meet again," Simon finished.

  With an actor's sure intuition, he stepped from the stage just as the consternation among the gathering was about to break out into audibility. As quickly as he had come, Simon made his way through the doors at the back of the chapel and was gone.

  His appearance had cast a bad, dangerous glamour over the whole memorial, though others spoke after him, and even when those closest to Alison went to scatter her ashes to the turbulent spring winds, a troubling sensation lingered in their minds. And the sense of Simon's presence hovered over the gathering that followed as well.

  San Francisco had a long tradition of wakes—Janis Joplin's had been held here, in the city that she loved best—and Alison's was in the grand tradition. It was held at Greenhaven; the old house flung open to allow all who had known Alison to say one last good-bye. Next week the house would go on the market, its sale to benefit distant heirs, and Colin wondered who would be the next person to call these rooms home.

  Colin had been away from the Bay Area for nearly fifteen years, and even when he had been living here back in the sixties, he had never been
a part of what had since become "the New Age community." For many years, his mission had been to help those who had no previous experience with the Unseen, and it was their needs upon which much of his work with the Bidney Institute had been focused.

  Perhaps it was time now to change.

  Without conscious volition, his mind strayed back to Hunter Greyson. It was almost a year now since Grey had vanished.

  After that April night at Nuclear Lake, Grey had been withdrawn, but Colin had marked that down to the loss of Winter, something from which Grey would surely recover, given time. In his heart Colin had begun to hope that in this life Grey would be the disciple he'd sought, the one who would take all that Colin had learned in this life and carry it forward, taking up part of the burden Colin could not yet himself renounce, the burden of the Great Work. He had hinted as much, and Grey had seemed to welcome the challenge.

  Grey had left Taghkanic a few weeks later, at the end of the school year. When he had not returned for the summer lecture series, Colin had been concerned, but not yet worried, marking it down to Grey's need for solitude and healing.

  But Grey had neither called nor written over the summer, and he had not returned to campus in the fall. He had vanished. Even his school records were gone. Somehow, Colin had failed him.

  Failure was something an Initiate of the Light must learn to accept with grace—though true failures were rare. What the world saw as failure, the Initiate saw as a postponement, sometimes to a future lifetime, it was true, but what was to be, would be. Even so, Colin wished he had been able to give Grey what he had needed, for the sake of the dear friend Grey had been to him before this life, and for the sacrifices that friend had made.

  But he had not. He had not acted in the case of Hunter Greyson, and so had lost him, for good or ill. Now the problem of Simon Anstey was before him—Simon whom he had known almost from childhood—and Colin prayed he would know what to do, and when to do it.

  Filled with his own solemn thoughts, Colin wandered through the house. There were recordings of Alison's keyboard work playing over the sound system, and the rooms were filled with people who had come to say good-bye. Every strata of San Francisco society was present, from formidable professional women in severely tailored suits, to late-blooming flower children in tie-dye and denim. Mercifully, Simon had not made an appearance here, though it was almost as if he were present, so much was he upon the minds of those who gathered here.

  Colin's attention was caught by one long-haired young man with eyes of a startling forest green, who looked much too young to have ever known Alison. Colin was wondering how they could have met, when he focused on the woman standing next to the boy.

  "Cassie!" Colin crossed the room to greet her.

  "Professor MacLaren!" she said, unfeignedly pleased. "Frodo, this is Colin MacLaren—he was one of my teachers back East. Professor, this is Frodo Frederick."

  A small gold pendant flashed at her throat; Colin recognized, with resignation, the North Gate sigil that many Blackburnites wore. Grey's apostasy had not ended Cassie's involvement in the Work after all. Colin said nothing.

  Frodo was wearing the more common silver pentacle of the Pagan and Witch. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir, but I'm sorry that it has to be on such a somber occasion." He held out his hand.

  Colin shook it. The boy had beautiful manners, he thought—and chided himself mentally for thinking anything of the sort. That sort of thinking was the mark of a crotchety old age, and Colin was far from ready to embrace such a thing.

  "So am I. Had you known Alison long?"

  "All my life." The boy grinned. "Well, since I was twelve, anyway. She caught me climbing the wall into her garden, and I thought for sure she was going to make a big fuss, but she didn't. She just gave me some cookies, and told me that any time I wanted to see her garden, all I had to do was come around to the front door and ask. And when I was leaving, she asked if I liked to read, and suggested that if I did, there were a couple of authors I might like.

  "Madeline L'Engle was one of them, I remember. And when I got older, she had some other authors for me. I'm going to miss her," Frodo said sadly.

  "We're all going to miss her," Colin agreed. In some ways, Alison had been the still point around which the entire Bay Area New Age Community had revolved. The West Coast was traditionally a breeding ground for kooks and nut-cultists of every description: who would it be who set the tone for the Lightworkers now?

  "So, how are you enjoying the real world?" Colin asked Cassie, trying to lighten the subject.

  She grimaced. "You know the old saying: for this I spent four years in college? But I'm glad to run into you here, Professor. I was going to write to you and ask—do you hear anything from Grey? I wrote him at the Glastonbury address, but all my letters came back marked 'Moved, No Forwarding.'"

  "I'm sorry," Colin said, and saw her face crumple in a disappointment that she tried hard to conceal.

  When Grey had not returned to Taghkanic in the fall, Colin had sought him in the Overworld within the limits of the Law he served. He had found | that Grey was alive and physically whole, but no more than that. He had not raised the matter with Claire, for fear that she would not understand ... or would understand too well. Like it or not, Colin had been shut out of Hunter Greyson's life for good or ill.

  "I'd been wondering if he kept up with any of his old friends," he said, trying not to hope.

  "No." Cassie's response was quick and comprehensive. If she was still studying the Blackburn Work, Colin imagined she'd looked for Grey even harder than he had. Her eyes glistened, brimming with tears. "Oh, well."

  Frodo put an arm around her shoulders; a gesture that seemed to hold more of comfort than possessiveness.

  "You knew Simon Anstey, didn't you?" Frodo asked Colin, changing the subject.

  "For many years," Colin answered, a little warily.

  "Do you think he'd listen to you?" Frodo asked. His manner seemed com- 1 posed of equal parts determination and embarrassment.

  "Frodo, don't," Cassie pleaded.

  "Somebody has to," Frodo said stubbornly. "Anstey, he's . . . he's doing some really bad things."

  It was the very banality of Frodo's words that convinced Colin that the boy was serious. People who were inventing horrors took care to make their words as vivid, dramatic, and compelling as possible. Those who had looked upon < the actual face of Evil were usually reduced to insipid generalities.

  "Tell me," Colin said quietly.

  "He's . . . they say he's . . . sacrificing animals. Taking their life force and adding it to his own, so that the nerve grafts the doctors are doing on his fingers now will take, and he'll get the use of that hand back," Frodo said in a rush.

  "Have you seen him do this?" Colin asked. The most serious crime an Adept could commit against the Light was to take—to take the life and soul of another to feed his own power. Colin could not afford to take Frodo's words I lightly.

  Frodo passed a hand over his face, as if trying to blot out his own words. | "No. And nobody I know has, either. But you hear things; San Francisco is really a small town, especially when it comes to anyone who's into what Ali- J son was into. And Simon's quick enough to tell the rest of us that we're cow- ards and idiots, and he's the only one who understands the full true secrets of I magick." Frodo didn't sound bitter—only tired and a little afraid.

  "Yes, that sounds like Simon . . . unfortunately," Colin agreed.

  There were certain practices that the Light strictly forbade—it was the basis of Colin's long-ago break with Thorne, his quarrel with Grey. To manipulate the material world for personal gain through the use of the Art was one; to use the Art to sway the minds of the Unawakened for one's own end was another. These were the things that the Blackburn Work had in common with the Left-Hand Path, but apparently Simon Anstey had gone even further into the Kingdom of the Shadow, into those practices which could not be justified by even the most tolerant apologist.

  "The blood is t
he life" wasn't simply a phrase from a classic horror novel; to an Adept it was the simple—literal—truth. This was the secret meaning behind the blood sacrifice, and why it had been held in such abhorrence by all civilized cultures. The power a Black Adept gained in this way could be used to heal the body, to hold back the ravages of age, even to raise the dead—but each use, each sacrifice, separated the Black Adept more irreversibly from communion with the Light.

  Colin knew that Simon had dabbled in blood sacrifice as a child—if he had returned, in desperation, to those old habits to gain the power he felt he needed . . .

  Suddenly Colin felt—rather than heard—the sound of a deep chime that seemed to resonate within his chest. It was the vibration of the great Bell which hung in the Temple of his Order, though its physical manifestation had ended centuries in the past. That Bell rang only in moments of greatest need, or to signal the blackest peril. Colin had not heard it for many years.

  Was it tolling for Simon? The peril to his soul was great, and it was possible that now at last it was time for Colin to intervene. He had held off from meddling in Grey's life until it was too late—perhaps this was a sign that he must not make the same mistake twice.

  He glanced around the room, seeing members of a dozen different Magickal Lodges mingling freely with Witches and Pagans and Blackburnites. It had taken Alison's death to overcome the barriers that kept them apart . . . and it came to Colin suddenly, borne upon the impetus of the Astral Bell, that they must not be allowed to fall back into the paths of divisiveness. Opposition to the Shadow was not a simple matter of tilting at windmills in darkness: it was the creation of a Positive Energy to supplant the Negative. They must look for their common ground, not focus upon their differences.

  Perhaps if Colin had concentrated on what the Blackburn Work shared with the Light . . . but no. That was the path of equivocation that Simon had followed down into the darkness of the Left-Hand Path, and now he had reached its deepest shadows.