Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light

by Tanya Huff

  “I do see, kiddo.” He reached out and took one of her hands, squeezing it gently. “And you’re right. It’s the ordinary things that are important. That’s what we’re all trying to save in our way.”

  Rebecca smiled and Roland felt the warmth of it wrap around him like two strong arms. “I knew you’d understand,” she said. She freed her hand and headed for the door. As she slid the chain lock open, she paused and glanced back.

  “It’s Friday,” she told him, as though she’d just realized a happy coincidence. “On Friday, I make blueberry muffins.” And then she was gone.

  Roland shook his head, slid the chain back on, and padded to the bathroom. When he came out, he paused beside the bed and stared down at Evan. In the dim light of the bed alcove, the Adept’s skin seemed to glow faintly. His head was tossed back, multihued hair spread over the pillows, and the long delicate line of his throat exposed. Most of the bruising had faded to ugly gray smudges and the wounds were fine white scars. One long-fingered hand lay curled on his stomach. The other had been flung out, as though even in his sleep he’d tried to hold Rebecca as she left, and now it dangled off the bed. Roland eased it up and carefully laid it on the sheet.

  He looks more fragile now, almost healed, than he did last night so badly hurt. Strong emotions surged through him and Roland tried to put a name to what he felt. It wasn’t desire, although he could—would—no longer deny that warmth was there. It wasn’t pity, although he felt that, too. A week ago, he would’ve seen where this was leading and gone no further. A week ago, he’d been a different man. He moved quietly out of the bed alcove.

  It must be love.

  Not for Evan, not really. But for what Evan was. For what Evan had agreed to do. To suffer and perhaps be destroyed so that a world not his own would not fall to the Darkness.

  Suddenly too restless to sleep, he lifted Patience from her case, sat down on a kitchen chair, and began to play, letting his emotions form the music. He sang the words as they came to him, allowing them to choose their own patterns. When he finished, the pale light of dawn had long since been replaced by the strong sunlight of a summer’s day and he’d found a song that would be a part of every piece of music he’d ever play from now on.

  “And I never can again be free

  For you are in my music

  And the music’s all of me.”

  It was the tag from one of his old songs, one of the ones that Rebecca had said, “wasn’t quite.” It suddenly had a new relevance.

  He stood, stretched, and realized he’d had an audience, for the movement sent them scurrying for cover. They moved too fast for him to really See, but hovering just on the edge of his awareness was the sense they approved. He checked his watch. Nine forty-five? He’d been playing for four hours?

  Christ. Time sure flies when you’re having … having … whatever it was I was having.

  Four hour’s without changing position should have left him all but crippled. He seemed fine. Except that his mouth was so dry it stuck to itself. Fortunately, because he just wasn’t up to making tea, herbal or otherwise, he remembered he’d shoved half a package of sugarless gum in his pocket yesterday. But which pocket? Two guitar picks, a crumpled Dominion receipt, sixty-two cents in change, and the letter from Tulsa later, he found it and popped a piece into his mouth with a sigh of relief. It’d hold him until he could get to a cup of coffee.

  He shoved the picks, the receipt, and the coins back into his jeans and took a closer look at the letter. It was unusually thin, their monthly correspondence tended more to bulk rates, and he hoped nothing had gone wrong. A quick glance into the bed alcove showed that Evan still slept, so he sat down again and tore open the envelope.

  There were two sheets of paper. Scrawled across the first was a single sentence: I don’t know why, but I thought you could use this. The second was a handwritten sheet of music with the notes sprawling sloppily up and down the staff, testimony to the speed in which they were written. Melody, harmony, chords; all there. And the lyrics …

  Roland propped the paper up against Rebecca’s teapot and again reached for Patience. Humming softly to give himself a reference, he slowly worked his way through the chording. It wasn’t difficult—D, Dm, C, Dm—but it took him a while to put it together with the eerie tune. Finally he nodded and started again from the beginning, this time actually singing the words.

  “Wind’s four quarters, air and fire

  Earth and water, hear my desire

  Grant my plea who stands alone—

  Ma …”

  “Roland!”

  The intensity of the cry jerked Roland to his feet and spun him around.

  “Roland, Where did you get that song?” The Adept was framed in the door to the bed alcove, panting slightly, hair wild, eyes bright.

  “A friend sent it,” Roland offered, keeping his voice soothing, wondering if this was some sort of crazy reaction to the damages of the night before. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the answer! Don’t you see? It’s a goddess invocation!”

  “A goddess invocation?” Roland began to protest, then paused. He didn’t read much, Uncle Tony was right about that, but he seemed to remember from a comparative mythology course he’d once taken that back even before all the Olympus stuff people had worshiped a goddess of some kind. Or a couple of goddesses. “Okay, a goddess invocation.” It still sounded strange, but then things hadn’t been exactly normal lately anyway.

  Then another memory surfaced. Mrs. Ruth’s voice came out of the past. This world is sort of a buffer zone between the Light and the Dark. When life indigenous to the world developed, barriers were raised around it.

  Roland pulled the Dominion receipt out of his pocket and turned it over.

  Who raised the barriers?

  Silently, he handed it to Evan, willing to bet he now knew the answer.

  “I am such an idiot!” the Adept exclaimed, first reading Mrs. Ruth’s message, then scanning through the lyrics of the song. He hadn’t sounded happier since he’d arrived. “We can stop him! As late as it is, we can stop him!” Laughing with relief, he grabbed Roland by the shoulders and swept him up into an enthusiastic embrace.

  After a few seconds of mutual back pounding, they pulled apart.

  “Now,” Evan punctuated the word with a wave of his arm, “we …”

  “Uh, Evan …” Roland swallowed heavily. The imprint of warm flesh still clinging to him made it difficult to think. “Before we do anything, could you please put some clothes on.”

  Evan looked down the length of his body, then up at Roland.

  “Sorry,” he said, and dashed into the alcove to dress.

  Not bloody likely you’re sorry. Roland gave a mental snort, but he couldn’t stop a stupid grin from taking up residence on his face. First we save the world. Then we think about … whatever.

  When Evan came back out, the clothes that had been all but destroyed during the battle were clean and new. His bracelets and earring sparkled with light and even the happy face button was back on his T-shirt.

  “Now,” he began again, wrapping the third belt around his hips and buckling it, “we kick ass.”

  “How?” Roland asked, tucking Patience back in her case. “We use this song to call up some goddess and she sends the Darkness back where it belongs?”

  Evan got an apple out of the fridge and bit into it. “Essentially,” he said, wiping a dribble of juice off his chin with the back of his hand.

  Roland sat back on his heels. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

  “There is,” Evan agreed cheerfully.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What!”

  “Look, Roland, there’s millions of people in this city. One of them has to be a witch.”

  “I think you got hit too hard on the head last night. Witches, as in ugly old ladies with warts and broomsticks, are not real.” A sudden memory of a child baked crispy and brown left his lips pressed

white. “At least not here.”

  “No, not here,” Evan agreed, his voice soothing away the terror. “But witches, as in pagans, worshipers of the old ways, are real. And all we have to do is find them. They’ll know how to use the song.”

  Roland sighed and stood. “Okay,” he said and found himself, smiling. Evan’s mood was catching. “How do we find them? The Yellow Pages?”

  Evan spread his arms, his eyes shining. “Why not? It’s a place to start.”

  There were no witches in the Yellow Pages. Or the white pages. Nor was there anything listed under wicca or its derivatives.

  “Wicca?” Roland asked.

  “Mmmm.” Evan flipped to the Churches listing. “It’s the old word. Unity, Wesleyan, damn. Maybe under temples.” A moment later, he slammed the book shut. “I don’t believe that in a city this size there’s no listing for temples.”

  “Try occult,” Roland suggested.

  There was nothing listed under occult.

  “Parachute,” Evan murmured. “Parade supplies, Paralegal agents, Parapsychologists, see Astrologers, Psychic Consultants, Etc. Well, it’ll give us a jumping off point.”

  “You really think this is going to work?”

  “Yes. It feels right.” The way Evan said right left no room for doubt.

  There were twenty-five listings under Astrologers, Psychic Consultants, Etc., in the Toronto Yellow Pages, from simple listings of personal names, to tea rooms, to companies that sounded more like slick investment firms. Roland pulled Rebecca’s phone out from under the couch and plugged it in. He listened. Unplugged it. And plugged it back in again.

  “I’m not getting a dial tone.” He tapped the receiver gently against the floor. “Still nothing.”

  Evan took the receiver and held it to his ear. After a second his lips drew back and his brows drew down.

  Roland assumed the Adept heard something he hadn’t. He was sure of it a moment later when Evan slammed the phone down with enough force to crack the plastic. “We’re cut off?” he asked tentatively.

  “Yes,” Evan agreed, and the anger in the word made Roland flinch. “He dares to detail to me what the Darkness will do to this world. Beginning with those who have helped me.”

  Roland backed out from under the lilacs and stood, dusting his knees off. “As far as I can tell, she hasn’t come back yet.”

  Evan drummed his fingers on his uppermost belt and looked distressed. “I hope she hasn’t been taken by Darkness.”

  “Yeah.” Roland relived a few moments of what that meant. “So do I.” He took a deep breath. “Well, do we go get our future told. See if it lasts beyond tonight?”

  Two of the listings in the Yellow Pages were in the Bloor/Spadina area. The first was almost directly across the street from Mrs. Ruth’s cubbyhole. Madame Alaina, said the warped and fading sign in the second floor window, Stars, cards, palms. No appointment necessary.

  A smaller and even more faded sign had been tacked to the door leading up and over an ancient drugstore; at least Roland thought it was a drugstore. The light was so bad and the windows so dirty he couldn’t be sure. The stairwell smelled strongly of cooked cabbage.

  “This is nuts,” Roland whispered as they reached the first landing and Evan raised his hand to knock.

  “Trust me,” Evan told him.

  Roland sighed.

  Evan knocked.

  A few minutes later the door opened and a girl of about fifteen looked them up and down. She ignored Roland, her dark eyes fastening on Evan as if he was a present she’d like to unwrap. Without adjusting the volume of the cassette player she wore on her belt, she pushed a pair of headphones down around her neck and smiled broadly. The hit song of a popular new wave band came tinnily through the tiny speakers.

  “Can I do something for you?” she asked, looking hopeful.

  “We need to see Madame Alaina?”

  “Oh. Her opinion of them dropped a few obvious notches “You’re not cops, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, grandma’s not seeing anyone today.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Yeah, it always is.” She shrugged lycra-covered shoulders. “Doesn’t make any difference. She won’t even get out of bed. Says it’s the end of the world. Try coming back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow will be too late.”

  Her eyes grew shiny at the pain in Evan’s voice.

  Yeah, well, teenage girls are susceptible to that sort of thing, Roland thought, ignoring the moisture that had risen in his own. “Uh, wait a minute …” he added aloud.

  She half looked at him, most of her attention still on the Adept.

  He took a deep breath and continued, feeling like a fool. “You, uh, wouldn’t know any, uh, witches, would you?”

  This time she really looked at him and didn’t like what she saw. “Witches, yeah, right.” She took a fluid step back and closed the door firmly in their faces.

  Roland turned to Evan and shrugged. “Guess not.”

  Evan sighed.

  They clattered down the stairs and back out onto the street.

  “I would have liked to have spoken to the grandmother,” Evan said quietly as they walked west toward the neighborhood’s other astrologer. “She would have had wisdom to pass on.”

  “What? Evan, the woman was in bed because she thinks the world is going to end.”

  Evan’s silence spoke louder than words.

  Roland felt himself flush. “Oh. Yeah.”

  Child Slaughtered at King’s College Circle! The headline stopped them both and they stared for a moment at the paper. Smaller headlines read: Man Deliberately Strikes Four With Car and Arsonist Torches Nursing Home, Seventeen Die.

  “It begins,” Evan said, and walked on.

  In the distance, sirens wailed.

  The second address led them to a small frame house, bright blue and looking out of place among all the exposed brick and open concept renovations. Knee-high weeds filled the lawn, but upon closer inspection they turned out to be wild meadow flowers. Roland recognized the daisies and black-eyed susans although the rest still looked like weeds.

  Evan rang the bell and they could faintly hear the first two bars of Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” chime through the interior.

  The woman who answered the door wore her long salt-and-pepper hair parted in the middle. Her flowered dress dropped yards of fabric from a square cut yoke to just above her ankles. On her feet, Roland noticed, were a pair of hundred dollar German sandals.

  “Yes?” she said, smiling at them.

  “We’re looking for Sky Mackensie.”

  “I’m Sky. But you’re looking for something else.”

  “That’s right.” Roland had always thought Astrologers, Psychic Consultants, Etc., were a group of loons and charlatans and here was the second one proving him wrong.

  “You’re looking for a past-life justification for why you turned your backs on society to pursue a forbidden love in this existence.” Behind her, crystals strung all along the hall split the sunlight into rainbows.

  “Uh, no.” Score one for the loons and charlatans.

  “No?”

  “No,” Evan told her firmly. “We’re looking for witches. Wiccans?”

  She touched one hand to her breast. “I went to university with a witch. She kept filling the bathtub with herbs and dripping candle wax all over the porcelain. We didn’t stay in touch, though. I married Owen and I think she joined a lesbian terrorist group. I’m sorry. That’s probably not much help.”

  “Not much,” Roland admitted. The cuckoo clock in the entry said it was almost twelve. They had to get moving. “But thanks for your time.”

  “And if you ever do need to find a past life …”

  “We’ll keep you in mind.”

  “I take VISA and Mastercard,” she said and closed the door.

  On the walk to Chinatown, Roland could feel Evan’s mood hardening with every step. “Penny for your thoughts?” he offered at last.

  “In a city of this size, someone must be following the old ways,” Evan sighed. “After last night, the balance has shifted too far for me to stop him on my own.”

  “You’re not on your own,” Roland reminded him.

  “Yes. I know.” He tossed his hair back off his face and two middle-aged women dressed all in black fell silent to watch him pass. “But we have so little time.”

  The Chinese astrologer was, like Madame Alaina, up a flight of stairs and over a shop. But where Madame Alaina had worked from a crowded apartment—the glimpse they’d had of it through the open door had shown that it overflowed with embroidered pillows, beaded curtains, and fringe—this looked more like a small doctor’s office, white and clean. Two padded chairs faced a large desk, the walls were hung with calligraphy, and interesting smells came from the large jars that filled a floor to ceiling wall unit.

  “Can I help you?” A young Oriental man came through an interior doorway which led to a small kitchen.

  “We’re looking for,” Roland pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and ran down the list, “John Chin.”

  “I am he.”

  “Oh.”

  The young man smiled. “I know,” he said, “you thought I’d be older.”

  “Well …”

  “It’s all right. I’m used to it. I …” His voice trailed off and he stared past Roland.

  Roland turned. Evan was just Evan as far as he could see, all traces of aspect tidily tucked away, but the astrologer looked as if he were having a vision.

  John took a step forward and bowed. “How may I help you, Holy One?”

  Maybe he is having a vision. Vision or no, John Chin was undeniably aware of what Evan was. Roland tried not to feel jealous and for the most part succeeded.

  Evan took the question at face value. “We need to find those who know the old rituals of the goddess.”

  “The Wiccans?” John asked, never taking his eyes off Evan. “They run a store called Arcane Knowledge up on Dupont. I can get you the exact address.”

  “Please.”

  He went to his desk and pulled out a brown leather address book. “Fourteen forty-six Dupont,” he said after a moment.

  -->