Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  And that would explain the curiously theatrical look of the Temple: it was, as its appearance had suggested to him at first, a stage-set. Nothing real at all.

  But no matter what else Hasloch was, in his own monstrous fashion he was sincerely devout. There was—there must be—a second Temple.

  He went back to the study, still carrying Rowan's purse. A little experimentation located the secret panel that let a section of the bookcase swing out. Boys and their toys, Colin thought sourly. He dragged a chair over to prop the bookcase open and went down the short narrow passage, caught halfway between hope and dread of what he would find.

  Another room, this one very modern but a dead end all the same. It contained a console with a bank of screens showing the elevator, the Temple through which Colin had entered, the driveway—empty, not that he had expected anything else—and what looked like a couple of opulent party rooms. There was a slot beneath each screen for a videotape; it wasn't hard to guess what they were used for, nor what use was made of the tapes of the activities there.

  Exhaustion pulled at him like a subtle poison, telling him he was reaching the end of his strength. If it had been at all possible, he would have left and returned another day, but there was no prospect of that. His entrance had probably been recorded on one of the cameras that Hasloch seemed so fond of; alerted to Colin's presence, Hasloch would easily guess his purpose and move Rowan.

  Or kill her.

  Colin was not certain where the conviction that Rowan was still alive came from: stubborn perversity, perhaps. But he knew as well as he knew the Light Itself that to abandon the search without absolute certainty—to leave a fellow soldier in enemy hands—would be a treason he could not live with. Better to die here, today, than to survive on those terms.

  Die on your feet or live on your knees? There's only one true answer to that, unpopular though it's become. , . .

  The entrance to the second Temple was in the show-temple itself, behind a sliding panel opened by a mechanism hidden in the back of Hasloch's marble throne. Colin hammered the golden crucifix between the door and its track to jam the mechanism open, then started on his way into the dark.

  The passageway went from finished stone, to brick, to raw bedrock with wires and pipes running along its surface. The corridor narrowed, and the roof sloped until it was only scant inches above Colin's head. When he opened the plain wooden door at the end of it and saw the Rune-Christ hanging on a floating panel suspended before the wall, he was overcome with a feeling of nausea and relief combined. His intuition had not failed him.

  Unwilling to enter the room unless he must, Colin glanced around from the doorway. Indirect lighting washed over the ceiling from some concealed source. The twisted tortured figure—perhaps the same one that had hung in the basement in Berkeley all those years ago—hung upon its ashwood cross above a black stone altar, surrounded by the paraphernalia of High Magick. The walls and floor were simple slabs of concrete, not gilded marble, but the chamber had a power that the finished, theatrical stage-set Colin had left behind lacked. The stench of what was done here was almost palpable, as much an assault upon the senses as the discovery of a mass grave.

  There were rings—iron rings, cast in the shapes of serpents—set into the head and foot of the black altar, and its surface was marred as though something had spilled there and then dried. Three walls were solid. The fourth was covered by a long red velvet curtain. Up to his old tricks, Colin thought to himself. Gritting his teeth, he walked across the chamber to the curtain and yanked it back.

  Open, the curtain nearly doubled the size of the room. Colin saw a light switch set into the wall just beyond the curtain, looking strangely prosaic and homely in this unnatural place. Colin flicked the light on, and stepped back, wincing at the sudden dazzle of illumination as overhead fluorescents stuttered into life.

  In the center of the room stood a long surgical table with thick leather straps, with a cart of gleaming instruments beside it. There was a drain set in the middle of the floor, its bright metal discolored just as the altar had been. This was a clinic where only the blackest medicine was performed.

  Everything on this side of the curtain was bright and clinical, with racks of metal shelving ranged along the concrete walls, yet it was also a seamless continuation of the medieval cruelty of the altar with its tortured image. The walls were lined with shelving that held the tools of the trade: there was a battery with cables, lengths of rubber hose; incense and oils shelved beside syringes and bottles of drugs. In the unforgiving light Colin could see everything here clearly: the implements of sorcery racked beside those of destruction.

  There were knives of gold and silver and stone—whips braided of a curious fragile leather with small triangles of lead tied into the thongs—a refrigerator and sink—a small alcohol lamp, waiting ready for use beside boxes filled with hand-cast candles—an acetylene torch—a cabinet that looked mundane enough to hold vestments, and probably did. Bile rose up in the back of Colin's throat. The enormity of what he saw crushed the breath from his lungs. Everyone talks, Colin had told Dylan, and it was true. Once someone entered this room, all choice would be gone. You would talk, and then you would die, for the greater glory of Hasloch's Luciferian dream. A dream that was stronger than any one man's ability to oppose it.

  The faint flicker of movement—the gentle movement of breath—finally caught his attention. In one corner of the room there was a cell, perhaps four feet deep. It was made of heavy diamond-paned steel mesh, painted institutional green. Colin had nearly missed it; the room was so full of things he did not wish to see clearly. Even the slenderest prisoner could not fit more than a fingertip through its holes; there was no lock, only a simple drop-latch on the outside to keep the door shut. Whoever was held here would have nothing to do except contemplate the equipment in that room and think about its purpose. The ghastly refinement of cruelty was like the signature of a familiar artist.

  Numbly, exhausted by the strength of his revulsion, Colin walked over to see who—or what—was inside. He swung the simple latch up and slid the door back on its tracks.

  Rowan Moorcock lay on the floor of the cell, one arm flung up to cover her face. She was wearing a long-sleeved white turtleneck and jeans. If not for that, Colin might not have seen her at all, might have mistaken the mesh for the door of another storage cabinet. Stiffly, he knelt beside her, dreading what he would find, and pulled her arm away from her face.

  But she had not been harmed—at least not in any physical fashion that Colin would see. Her long red hair was still neatly braided. The white shirt was grey now with dust along the cuffs and elbows, but she was still fully dressed,-down to her scuffed white sneakers. There was no blood on anything.

  But Colin could not wake her.

  She did not have the reflexes even the sick or the drugged would possess.

  Her pupils did not contract when Colin shone his pocket flash into them, and when he took her pulse he could feel her heart beat with the slow, measured regularity of one in deep trance. She breathed as if she were asleep—or as if her body, alone, were present.

  Colin knew already that Rowan was a strong Sensitive, and that made her vulnerable in ways that an ordinary person, or even a trained Adept, was not. If she had unwarily opened herself to the taint of this shrine, the shock might have blasted her spirit free from her body and doomed it to wander the Overlight until her body died—the same fate Colin had once attempted to engineer for Hasloch.

  But if this were indeed merely the insensate animal shell left behind after an accident—or deliberate destruction—of that sort, Colin did not think Hasloch would have bothered to keep it. If Colin knew his old enemy at all, Hasloch still had plans for Rowan, and that meant that Rowan was here.

  Somewhere.

  If it had been possible, Colin would simply have carried her out of here and worried about trying to summon back her wandering spirit later. But he could not lift her, much less carry her down that long shaft to th
e elevator and the surface. And there was no help he could summon—Farrar would certainly be gone by now, even if Colin were willing to risk retracing his steps to go in search of him.

  The police? It was all-too-possible that if he called them, Colin would be merely summoning Hasloch's allies. His only real chance to get Rowan out of here was if she could move under her own power.

  There was a way.

  The powers for which Colin's Order stood guardian were the secrets of Life Itself—those powers that welled up from the dark heart of Nature, carrying such risk to their user. Colin MacLaren was both Magician and Priest, and none knew better than he of the dark temptation of Power unfettered by Duty. Here in the enemy's stronghold, tempted to despair and hatred, there was an immense temptation to use the forces he could summon to blast the Evil out of existence—but to do such a thing was to invite the corruption of those Secrets entrusted to him, which would mean ultimate ruin in a future Colin must take on trust.

  Could he take up the Power—and then set it aside, even in the face of defeat, death, and ruin?

  Was he as strong as that?

  Colin drew a deep breath. Not my will, he prayed. Not my will. I resign all my will, in perfect love and perfect trust. No matter how absolute defeat looks, I will not doubt Your ultimate and unknowable goodness. . . .

  He took Rowan's hand in his, his long fingers closing over her wrist, measuring the slow pulse. With his free hand he sketched a Sign upon her forehead—a Sign of such Power that it would summon back the soul to the body that was dead, not merely to one that slept. He felt her pulse flutter as her heart began to beat to a faster rhythm.

  But she still resisted, unwilling to be called back to that excruciating reality from which she must have tried so desperately to escape. What he had dared so far had not been enough.

  There were stronger magicks in his arsenal, but to wield them would be to incur a debt that not he, but Rowan, must repay. To force her into such an unbreakable obligation without her will or consent would be Black Magick indeed, leading to nothing but evil. As he had promised, he must be willing to fail.

  Or he must have her consent. . . .

  "Rowan," Colin said aloud. "Rowan Moorcock. Do you hear me?"

  Hear me, Child of the Light, by the Light that is in you . . . Colin said silently. He closed his eyes—

  And he was home, once more.

  The Field of Stars lay outside the City of the Sun, outside the Temple precinct that a thousand generations of exiled Adepts had recreated in the Over light in memory of their lost homeland. The soft swell of its hillside was covered with the tiny blue flowers that gave the place its name.

  Why was he here? This was not the place he had expected to find Rowan. Hurt, in shock, she would have retreated to whatever place her deepest mind considered safe: a childhood playground, perhaps, or some image gleaned from movies or TV.

  Had the magicks of Hasloch's temple led Colin astray—or was this a summoning from a Higher Power, bidding him to attend?

  Colin looked around himself carefully, trying to gather the meaning of what he saw. Where was the one who had summoned him? Why—if he had been called—did he not now stand without the great gate of the Temple of the Sun?

  As he gazed out across the field, toward the desert and the distant mountains beyond, he saw that a cowled figure stood waiting among the flowers. The maiden wore the simple white robe of the Scribe, that caste from which the Priests and Adepts of the City of the Sun took their disciples.

  She was waiting for him.

  For him.

  Waiting for her master, for the Adept who would set her feet upon the Path. Waiting for the one who would entrust to her his deepest secrets, his power, who would trust her absolutely. . . .

  A woman—! Colin felt a sense of profound shock, even as he recognized the penetrating peal of the Astral Bell. And not just any woman, but one who was already known to him.

  Rowan Moorcock.

  Her? How could it be her? How could I have known of her for so many years and not known her at all? But it is said "when the student is ready, the Teacher will appear." Have I been waiting all these years for her to be ready? her? It was not, he told himself as he sternly mastered his shock and amazement, unheard of for a woman to become an Adept. The man who was in this life known as Colin MacLaren had known many such through his lives; there were women even in his own Order. But he had never thought that the disciple he had sought through all his own long years might be a woman. And Rowan, of all women, was the one he would least have sought: facile and frivolous, glib and superficial—

  Blindness. And arrogance. My besetting sins, in more lives than this, the Adept remembered sadly. Here and now, in this moment of greatest peril, the Great Book of Life was open to him, the pages stark and clear for him to read.

  "Choose now, Riveda." The deep and awesome voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, its tone as deep and penetrating as that of a bell. "For this moment the Book is open for you to read, that you may know how the Black can become Grey, and the Grey become White at last."

  And Colin saw all the lives he had lived before this—the lives lived beneath the Adept's great burden: of Knowledge dedicated to Service alone. And he saw the karmic burden that had bound him to the Wheel for a thousand lifetimes. . . .

  In the Great Hall of the Temple of Light, a man stood in chains—a tall man, with grey hair and piercing rain-grey eyes. He had been condemned to death by those who had once been his peers, condemned for black transgressions against the Law. Healer and Priest he had been, but for him, that had not been enough. In his arrogance, he had done first good work—returning the Grey-robes to their rightful path as scholars and healers—but in his unwillingness to relinquish the completed task, Riveda had gone too far, had reached for the power of the very Gods, meddling in the blackest mysteries of blind Nature. He had bowed his head to no Law save that of his own devising, and now in punishment he must bow down to the greatest Law of all: Death.

  Through the Mercy Cup he would go unrepentant into the Night, and the harm he had done in his life would continue on, until it had destroyed the very physical fabric of the Temple and the City beyond, scattering its priests into the young kingdoms that lay beyond the City's gates.

  Here in the Field of Stars, Colin came back to himself, shaken to the core of his being by what he had learned. Truly, the forgetfulness those on the Path brought with them into Life was a great mercy—how could he ever have lived with the intimate knowledge of that great crime? He had labored a thousand lifetimes since to atone for what he had done. . . his lives expended in Service and acceptance, but at that moment, Colin did not feel it was enough.

  "Yet know this, Son of the Sun—that all Paths are spokes of the Wheel, leading but to one Center. And that the greatest of the Mysteries is that Life proceeds from the very hand of Death. ..."

  Was it all for this? The man who was known in this life as Colin MacLaren asked. Was it all for You—the betrayal and the rebirth—the pain, the shame, the lives wasted?

  "All," said the tolling voice within Colin's own heart. "For this is the center of My Mystery: and all Life is Mine, I waste none. ..."

  And now it was for him to choose again, as he had chosen a thousand times in a thousand lives, so that Perfect Freedom and the Divine Will were as one force.

  The man once called Riveda walked across the Field of Stars, and he could smell the perfume of the flowers he crushed beneath his sandaled feet. The young woman looked up as he approached, and as he looked into her eyes he saw the face of the daughter he had never seen—the child that ancient magician had died without knowing. And he knew by this sign that the vast debt was repaid at last, and he was to be free at last of the Great Wheel that bound souls into matter.

  He reached out and took her hand. She startled as if awakening from a deep sleep, staring at him in surprise.

  "Eilantha," the once-Lord of the Grey-robes said. "I call you to awaken into Life. Come with me."
r />   The feel of Rowan pulling her hand from his roused Colin to consciousness again. He opened his eyes.

  Rowan was propped up on one elbow, regarding him warily, as if she were not quite certain who he was. "Dr. MacLaren," she said blankly.

  "Do you know who I am?" Colin asked her. He felt as if he had simply dozed, although he knew in his heart that what had transpired was much greater than that, though the memory of all but the glory of the Presence was fast fading. But he must know what she remembered—if anything—from her time in the Overlight.

  "You're—" She stopped. "You know, I had this completely bizarre dream, where ..." Her voice trailed off as she got a good look at her surroundings. "It wasn't a dream. I was there—on that hill where the Secret School meets. And so were you."

  The Secret School. The name given by many who visited it only in dream and spirit to the Temple of the Sun. It seemed his original instinct had played him false: if Rowan knew of that place, she was no superficial participant or dilettante of the obscure.

  "No. It was no dream, Rowan," Colin said, even while a part of him wondered: This woman? This girl? SHE is to be my chela.^ How could he teach her? What did he have to say to her?

  What I must. What we have chosen together, she and I.

  Her memory of the experience she'd had in the Overlight was fading quickly—Colin could see that in her eyes—to be replaced by the awareness of this place and its attendant horrors. She sat up, groaning with the stiffness of long-unused muscles.

  "What happened? The door's open—did Dylan get the message? I've been hiding out for months, trying to get somebody to just listen, but it sounds just too X-Files for anyone to take seriously—there's a man named Toller Hasloch. He's a big-shot Washington lawyer, and he's murdered at least eight people that I know of. He's got a whole Nazi temple down here, and there's this presidential candidate. ..."

  "There isn't much time," Colin said, interrupting her. "We've got to get you out of here, but there's one thing you must do first, for your protection. You must take the Oath on the physical plane that you have already taken on the Astral, and place yourself beyond Hasloch's power to harm you in any way that matters. By the Power I bear, I seal and sign you to the Power, to Serve the Light until Time itself should end. Is this your True Will?" Colin asked as he raised his hand in the Sign. Irrelevant to Rowan or not, the question must be asked—and answered.