Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  "I'll look forward to it," Colin promised. "Why don't I give you a call in a few months, once I'm back in the Bay Area?"

  "I'll be expecting it," Miles promised.

  The meeting with Truth was an unsettlingly tangible reminder of how time was passing. That terrible night at Shadow's Gate did not seem that long ago, yet Thome's daughter had been barely two years old then and she was a grown woman now. A generation had passed; time enough for men and women to grow to adulthood for whom the decade of the sixties belonged to that vast prehistory of the time before their birth.

  The sense that time was passing—was running out, leaving him with many things undone—stayed with Colin even after he and Claire took the train back to Massachusetts. The days were dwindling toward the Sabbat, and soon the Antique Rite would act to anchor the ancient soul of Witch-Sara in the body of her descendant once and for all.

  But Colin and Claire had, themselves, been far from idle.

  It was just before dawn on the last day of July when Colin and Claire came walking up the hill toward the graveyard. Over his shoulder Colin carried an old battered canvas bag, grey with age and use; a bag such as plumbers carried their tools in. Claire carried nothing at all. They had left the Chevy parked at the edge of the road a mile away, not wanting to awaken either Sara or Matthew with the sound of the car's engine. But tonight was the night of the Great Sabbat, and there were many things Colin needed to do before then.

  "Pheugh," Claire said softly, as they reached the edge of the graveyard. The tumuli and broken stones were barely visible in the cold predawn light. "This stinks."

  She looked down at her stout walking shoes, as if expecting to see them covered in garbage.

  "I'm afraid it only gets worse before it gets better."

  Colin sketched a quick Sign in the air—his fingers tingled numbly—anc they went on, picking their way carefully in the dark. Colin paused at each of the trees and gravestones they passed to Seal them, and as he did, he became aware of an increasing dull ache in his chest that tingled down his arm. He put it down to exhaustion, but he could not stop now. They must be done and gone from here before it was full day.

  "Won't Hay notice what you've done?" Claire asked. "I've been watching the rest of the coven members, and they don't seem to have the power among them to light a candle with a box of kitchen matches, but Hay's got something."

  "Agreed. But it isn't as much as he thinks it is," Colin said. "I'd say that the Antique Rite's been riding on its reputation since his grandfather's time, at least. And my bet is, Hay's going to be focusing on Sally and Brian tonight, rather than on the magic."

  Brian Standish was the weak link in the resurrection of Witch-Sara. Brian was Sally Latimer's lover, not Sara's, and Sally's anchor to the human world of light and sanity. Colin had always known that the coven would need to destroy Brian in order to ensure Witch-Sara's ascendancy, and in fact—so Claire had heard from her uncle—there had even been a suspicious "accident" involving the brakes on Brian's car. But for the last several weeks it seemed that Sally had been protecting him from Hay and the coven, finally even going to the extent of driving Brian away by allowing him to catch her in bed with Matthew Hay and Tabitha Whitfield. The young doctor had been heartbroken—country gossip was both far-reaching and precise—but though Brian had avoided her since then, Colin had known that Hay's monstrous ego would not allow Brian to escape that easily.

  And he had not.

  "Wouldn't just arresting all of them do as much good as seeing this through to the ritual? They kidnapped Brian—he can swear to that," Claire said, glancing up toward the Hay house. There was a light on in the kitchen—country people kept country hours.

  "Swearing's one thing, but proof is quite another," Colin reminded her. "It would be his word against Hay's, and I'm sure Hay has a lot of people who would be happy to swear that Brian came to his house perfectly freely. Besides, stopping the coven's Lammas ritual won't do a lot to help Sally-Brian."

  "I'm not sure I like Brian being dragged into all this, though," Claire grumbled.

  "I'm not wild about it myself. Undoubtedly Sally bargained with Hay to leave Brian alone in exchange for renouncing him. But Hay can't afford to leave Brian alive if he's to get Sara back."

  "So Hay goes back on his bargain and Brian becomes the human sacrifice du jour" Claire muttered.

  "I doubt Sally knows about that—that's the point. And at any rate, Hay's plans for him will ensure that Brian remains alive and well—if not very comfortable—until tonight. We don't dare tip our hand by rescuing him, not if we're to save Sally too. Now, here's the lychgate. It made me uneasy, so be careful."

  Claire stopped a few feet short of the corroded bronze archway—no more than a dark shape in the dimness—and closed her eyes to concentrate. Almost at once she winced and staggered back, throwing up a hand to protect herself. The tiny gold cross at her throat glinted.

  "Yes," she said unsteadily. "It's bad. You'll need to haul out the big guns."

  Colin set down his bag and withdrew a pyx and a small vial of anointing oil. Murmuring prayers, he anointed the bronze gateway at several places. The metal was unpleasantly warm, though the sun was no more than a line of gold upon the horizon.

  Though Colin was not himself a Catholic, these objects had been symbols of the Light for almost two millennia and were still the object of reverence for the peoples of half the world. He had a dispensation to possess and to use them, ensuring that these tokens were at their most potent.

  Corrosion seemed to spread through the metal at the points Colin had touched with the holy oil. Opening the pyx, he removed a Consecrated Host and touched it to the four places on the archway he had previously anointed before breaking it in half and burying the pieces at the base of the archway. There was a sharp break in the atmosphere of the place, as though the air pressure had suddenly dropped.

  "Better now?" Colin asked.

  "Yes," Claire answered wanly. "But I'm not looking forward to the church."

  It was bad, as Claire had predicted. Using Claire as a spotter, Colin soon ringed the inside of the building with fragments of the Consecrated Host, making a holy barrier against the Shadow.

  The stone floor had once been carefully inlaid in a chessboard pattern, just as the floor of all Templar churches were, though time had faded the blocks to only vaguely dissimilar greys instead of their original stark black and white. The walls were carved with the cryptic symbols of a faith far older than Christianity. Fortunately the ornate carving inside the ancient church made it possible to conceal their meddling, and inside the building they could risk using the lantern.

  "Anything else?" Colin asked, after the circuit was complete.

  "That," Claire said, pointing toward the Black Altar.

  Colin advanced upon it, walking warily. It was about three feet high and looked almost like an altar in a conventional church. That similarity was only illusion. The Black Altar was a shaped outcropping of the native bedrock, and in fact the whole church had been built around it.

  Though he could anoint it, there was no place near it to conceal any of the more potent items in his arsenal. But as Colin looked closely, he could see that one of the paving stones around the back was loose; the mortar that held it flush with the altar eaten away by time.

  "Claire, give me a hand with this. There's a crowbar in the bag."

  Working together, they managed to lever the stone halfway out of its bed. Colin was gasping for breath when they were done, and his pulse was a thunderous redness behind his eyes.

  "Colin—are you all right?" Claire asked, worried.

  "Yes, of course. Never mind me now, we have work to do," he answered shortly.

  As Claire kept the tension on the bar, Colin scraped a small hole in the aged dirt beneath the stone and placed an unbroken Host there. Then he reached into his bag and removed one last item: a delicate gold rosary that Father Adalhard Godwin had given him just before he died.

  "Save it for a real eme
rgency, Colin, my boy. I'll trust you to know one," the old priest had said.

  Colin kissed the symbol of the One whom his Order revered as a fellow Master of their Craft, and placed the rosary against the ground as well. Then he and Claire lowered the stone back into place, and Claire brushed dirt over it until the evidence of their tampering was hidden. Colin knelt beside her, struggling to regain his breath. His chest felt as if there were an iron band about it, crushing away his strength. He wasn't looking forward to the hike back to the car.

  Not as young as I used to be, I suppose. But young enough.

  "I'd offer to call a doctor, but the only good one in fifty miles is tied up in Matthew Hay's basement," Claire said, covering her worry with a joke. "Colin, are you sure you're all right?"

  "We can hardly call the whole thing off if I'm not, can we?" Colin said snappishly. He pulled a handkerchief and mopped his face, wiping away the sweat that beaded there. "I'm sorry, Claire. I'm just not feeling quite myself. Tension, I suppose."

  "I've never known you to get stage fright," Claire said. She bit her lip nervously, obviously deeply concerned.

  Well, neither have I, come to that. But we can t just pack it in and come back later, and this isn't something Claire can handle alone. Thank God Rowan's out of it, at least.

  The first rays of the sun were shining down through the chinks in the old slate roof, and enough light streamed through the open door to make the electric lantern unnecessary. Colin reached out and shut it off.

  "How is it now?" he asked Claire, partly to distract her from his distress.

  Claire sat back on her heels and closed her eyes. She looked as drawn and weary as he did; the work of both Sensitive and magician exacted its subtle toll from the practitioner.

  "Clear," she said at last. "At least I'm pretty sure it is. No longer consecrated by intention, at any rate. When Hay comes here planning to raise up his Dark Forces, he's due for a big surprise." She forced a smile.

  "And a bigger one, I hope, than just finding out that his dark gods have deserted him," Colin said. The pain in his chest was finally easing and he could draw a full breath again. He smiled encouragingly at Claire. "C'mon, old girl. Let's get moving before anyone finds we've been meddling here."

  Sunset. The ancient church was filled with the twelve men and women who made up the members of the coven itself and the eight who were their acolytes and associates.

  How can they not know? How can they not care? Claire wondered in despair as she gazed toward the bound figure upon the Black Altar. She'd told Uncle Clarence nothing more than that she would be staying with friends overnight. He'd been worried enough about her going out on August Eve in the first place to accept her vague tale without comment. Fortunately, neither he nor Justin was in danger, since the family Gift had bypassed both of them. Thank God for Taghkanic College—she did not know what she would have done if she'd had Rowan to protect tonight as well.

  From where she stood, Claire could see Brian Standish's eyes glitter with fear and fury, but there was nothing she dared do to let him know that help was near. Twenty men and women had gathered here tonight expecting to see the murder of a human being. This was twentieth-century America, yet they treated tonight's event as though they were going to the movies.

  She crowded closer to Colin, trying not to let her distress show. She was huddled inside a too-hot hooded robe borrowed from the Miskatonic Drama department and still felt horribly exposed. When she'd been introduced tonight as Colin's acolyte, she'd been careful to keep her hood well forward, lest Hay recognize her as the woman who'd thrown him out of Sally's house in May. But Hay was far too excited by tonight's ritual to be paying close attention to an insignificant hooded figure accompanying a man he trusted.

  Colin stood rock-steady beside her, as impassive as a statue, waiting for the moment to strike. Claire envied him his calm—although perhaps the gun he was carrying had a little to do with it.

  It took almost an hour before Hay began the ritual by lighting the incense, adding to the choking summer heat in the crowded space. Sally was not present; she would come later, after the ceremony had begun.

  Claire squinted her eyes, trying not to look as Matthew Hay—naked, painted, and masked—made his obeisances to the Great Horned One and the Black Virgin and their lesser devils amid clouds of acrid smoke. After what she and Colin had done this morning, all this was now mere playacting. They had banished the echoes of the Evil that had been done in this place, leaving it inert, bereft of influence. In fact, Hay's posturings would even have been funny, if Hay weren't intending to kill Brian Standish.

  Claire did her best not to flinch when Hay lifted a squirming kitten from a basket behind the altar and gutted it as carelessly as another man might open a can of beer. In the dead animal's blood he anointed Brian at the Five Points, and then marked a smeared cross over his heart—no Christian cross this, but a sign of sacrifice, showing the High Priestess where to strike. Claire felt tears gather in her eyes, and took as much comfort as she could from the fact that the poor animal was the last thing that would die at the hands of the Church of the Antique Rite.

  Now the congregation began to chant and sway, working themselves into a trance state—not that this was difficult. Claire could smell cannabis mixed with the incense and see smears of grease on several foreheads. She remembered that Sally had mentioned an unguent that the coven members anointed themselves with. Everybody here was already as high as the proverbial kite, and the contact high began to make Claire uncertain of her own perceptions.

  At an unspoken signal, the congregation fell silent and began to shuffle backward, opening up a corridor between the altar and the door.

  Sally Larimer appeared in the doorway.

  No, not Sally. This was Witch-Sara, three hundred years a Priestess and Witch. She stalked—there was no other word for it—slowly toward the Black Altar, wearing a long loose gown of embroidered silk. Hay slipped a black iron knife into her hand, and Sara raised it high over her head.

  Claire waited for Colin to produce his gun and stop the ritual, but he did not. She was about to cry out, when the knife came down—but not to kill.

  "Run, Brian!" Sally screamed, sounding like herself at last. "Call the cops!"

  With a cry, she cut through the single rope that was looped around Brian's body in an elaborate cable-tow. Once the cord was broken, he began struggling free. Sally flung the knife as far from her as she could; Claire heard it ring out as it struck the rock.

  Claire wasn't sure what good Sally thought Madison Corners police would be—ten to one, there were a few of them already here—but it was a brave gesture.

  "Kill them both!" Hay roared.

  Claire could feel his fury, and such was the power of the coven's Horned One over them that his congregation was ready to do murder without a single qualm. But in the moments it took them to rally themselves to do his bidding, Colin stepped forward, drawing his gun at last. As they surged toward the Black Altar, he fired toward the roof.

  "Back!" he shouted.

  They stopped where they stood, temporarily startled by the gun, and Claire saw Colin reach up to clutch at his chest with his free hand. She started toward him, then stopped as she heard a hideous howling from behind her. She turned, to see Hay advancing upon Brian menacingly, the Black Beast glaring out of the smoke-reddened eyes visible beneath the mask he wore.

  But Brian was too furious to reckon the difference in their sizes—he grabbed the heavy carved mask of the Horned One and ripped it from Hay's face . . .

  And hit him with it.

  The whole thing took only seconds. Hay fell backward, his mouth spraying blood, and hit the corner of the altar with an awful, final sound. By the time he stopped moving, no one in that room had any doubt that he was dead.

  Someone screamed. Panic ripped through the room, borne on a wave of psychoactive drugs. Ritual ecstacy was transmuted into the mother of all bad trips in less than a heartbeat. People turned on—or to—one anothe
r blindly. Brian grabbed Sally in his arms, and Colin turned slowly toward them, gesturing with his gun. His face was grey with pain.

  "Come on!" he shouted hoarsely, and began to push through the mob.

  / spend too much time in sickrooms, Claire thought sourly. Thank God it wasn't a stroke—thank God Brian's a doctor—or Colin would be dead now.

  Arkham General Hospital was a small rural hospital without a cardiac care wing; the doctors there had freely confessed that Colin would receive better care in Boston, and plans were being made now to fly him out.

  They'd been at the police station, making their statements—carefully edited of anything that would sound impossible to mundane ears—when Colin had fainted. She'd known all day that he was in pain, and the diagnosis, from the symptoms, was pretty obvious. But there had been nothing they could do until Brian and Sally were free, and Claire hadn't realized just how serious Colin's illness was until he collapsed. The first thing Claire had feared was some kind of magickal backlash from the Antique Rite; a simple heart attack seemed wholesome and innocent next to the corruption they had faced together earlier that night. Fortunately he recovered enough to tell Brian his symptoms—and Brian had taken the trouble to retrieve his medical bag on the way to the police station.

  "You've got to be on the lookout for this sort of thing when you get to be his age," one of the interns had said offhandedly when they got to the hospital. Colin had been admitted over his protests—Brian had been fiercely insistent—and > Claire had stayed with him, watching over him as he slept.

  By the next morning, the previous night seemed as much like a dream to Claire as it must to the surviving members of the coven—who were, reasonably enough, also at Arkham General. Matthew Hay was dead, and a woman named Tabitha Whitfield was under heavy sedation, but everyone else would recover in a day or so with no particular ill effects. Sally and Brian had shrugged the whole experience off with surprising speed, but Claire had seen behavior like that before. It was the mind's attempt to cope with something it couldn't understand by simply sweeping it aside. The two of them were already talking about getting married—but it was tacitly understood that Brian would have his rural medical practice somewhere else.