Witchlight
Page 27
Fire and air; living and unliving earth; water and will—the symbols of the three dualities that the sidhe must call upon to work their will. All the Blackburn Work was built upon this central mystery: that of the Bright Lords whose realm this once had been. Truth felt her own sidhe blood—her father’s gift to her, as the control of the Gates had been her mother’s—waken in answer to this summoning.
Easily Truth shifted her consciousness into this larger reality, and now all darkness was gone from the basement. In its place were the colors and shifting auras of the real world—the world of rock and wind and sky.
Truth looked around, sorting through the shifting presences and traces of use until she found the red-and-silver image of the magick worked here so long ago. The images of the hours Hunter Greyson’s Circle had spent here fluttered past her senses like the shuffling of a deck of cards.
Yes, there had been power raised here once. Dormant now, its echo could be activated by the presence of any uncontrolled psychic—or by deliberate triggering. Easily Truth isolated the trace of Grey’s male energy—youthful and untrained, but holding the promise of mature strength. She looked further, and found to her surprise that there were two complimentary female resonances—one powerful but undisciplined, one showing the first signs of an Adept’s training. She wondered which of the two had been Winter. This many years distant, there was no way to tell.
Once Truth had located the psychic remnants she sought, she reached one last time into her bag and pulled out a slender rod about eighteen inches long.
One half of it was iron, its surface dark and sheened with the oil that kept it from rusting. The other half was glass, clear as water and gathering light like a lens. A thick ring of pure gold bound the two halves together.
Truth handled it warily, careful not to touch the iron and disrupt the symbolic language she was building. There were times when she thought that her mother’s earth witchery and her father’s sidhe blood were an even worse mix than logic and magick.
In quick succession Truth passed the rod through the candle flame and the incense smoke and over the surface of the liquid in the crystal bowl, reminding herself of the things they symbolized and gathering their attributes into the wand via the Law of Contagion. When she was ready, Truth touched the iron end of the rod to the nearest tinge of red in the room’s mingling auras.
She was the iron, and the iron was her will. The rod shuddered in her fingers, pulling to be free.
A member of the Astral Lodges would have called upon the White Light and the Word; a Black Magician upon the powers of Death and Hell. Truth was neither.
“In the name of Time and the Seasons, by the power of the Wheel and the Way,” she said in a low voice, “remake this place in the image of this place: All that has been since Time began, Begone!”
She unbound the last echoes of energy, sweeping the rod before her, and, turning, began to walk in a spiral, pushing cleanliness and emptiness before her, as though the slender wand in her hand was a broom. When she reached the walls, she ran the rod along them as well, draining away the power they had absorbed until they were as neutral and empty as the day they had been first erected.
It was very quiet when she was done.
To a natural psychic or other trained sensitive, the present condition of the room would be more unusual than its previous one, for no place on earth is innocent of contagion by the life that inhabits it. This place, too, would begin to collect impressions again almost immediately—Truth’s power was not harsh enough to seal it off completely, nor did she wish to—but the traces the Blackburn Work had left were gone: swept away.
“My work here is finished,” Truth said aloud, smiling to herself. Unlike her encounter with the magickal child that had attached itself to Winter Musgrave, this exercise of her ability left her vibrant, filled with energy.
Truth wondered—not for the first time—who had sent the artificial Elemental, and why. It seemed murderously furious, out of control—but nevertheless the work of a powerful Adept, and it was hard, looking at Winter, to think of her as anyone who might be familiar with the hidden world of magicians and magickal lodges. Carefully Truth slid the wand back into its protective case and then slipped it into her bag.
With a pang of regret for the work that replacing the liquid would entail, Truth took the bowl of Condenser and sprinkled it all around the room before wiping the bowl dry and putting it, too, back into her bag. She snuffed out the beeswax candle and filled the silver bowl with sand to smother the burning charcoal, then emptied the bowl, ground the last smoldering embers into dust against the floor, and put both objects away. Soon the only evidence that anything uncanny had ever happened here would be a smudge of dirt and a painted figure—now meaningless—on the floor.
Truth went back up the stairs.
The sky was overcast when she got back outside, and the damp wind off the river promised rain in the not-too-distant future. Truth sighed. It was an unfortunate fact of life that her father’s magick tended to bring bad weather with it, as well as deriving its greatest power from violent storms. As she made her way toward her waiting Saturn, Truth’s mind continued to mull over the odd puzzle of Winter Musgrave and the magickal child.
While it was true that Winter was a psychic, and a powerful one—as an adult poltergeist she would have to be, whether her power extended to setting fires or not—it was hardly the same thing as being a trained occultist, and if Truth knew anything for certain, it was that Winter was not trained. Yet someone, somewhere, in her life must be—trained and Adept both.
Was it Hunter Greyson, Colin MacLaren’s golden boy? Truth had already spoken to Lion Welland and some of the other faculty who had been at Taghkanic when both Grey and Professor MacLaren had been. Those who remembered them had all said the same thing: that Grey had been planning to do postgraduate work at the Institute directly under Professor MacLaren. And, though it was not widely known at Taghkanic, Irene Avalon, Truth’s teacher, had told Truth that MacLaren had made no secret of being an Initiate of the Right Hand Path. Had Hunter Greyson been intending to follow MacLaren in more things than one?
But then Winter left, then Grey left, then Professor MacLaren left, and nobody knows why. Truth frowned. Winter was looking for Grey now, that much Truth knew, but could she find Hunter Greyson first?
The wind riffled the reeds along the edge of the lake, and the dimpled surface of the water turned to hammered silver. Truth sighed, shifting her grip on the bag in her hand. The supercharged atmosphere of the ritual in the basement seemed light-years away now in both time and tone.
Find Hunter Greyson? Maybe. If he were still alive, or tied somehow to this world. If he had continued his forays into the Otherworld. If he were willing to be found.
If.
BUT ONCE she had thought of the possibility, Truth could not simply dismiss it, and so midnight found Thorne Blackburn’s daughter once more engaged in her own peculiar blend of magick and science.
The candle she lit this time had a purely pragmatic use—its reflection in the shewstone she intended to use would give her a point to focus on visually.
Truth sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her living room coffee table, an oval of polished jet resting on her palms. The candle burned brightly, and she could see the gold sheen of its flame reflected in the mirror’s polished black surface.
The theory and technique of scrying was extensively documented; whether the focus was a crystal ball, an ordinary mirror, a bowl of water, or a speculum of polished jet such as Truth now held, the object of the exercise was to see pictures of distant people and unknown events; a form of external-projection clairvoyance. As with most divinatory systems, the tool—whether a mirror, a candle, a pendulum, or cards—was only a focus, and had no intrinsic power. The Institute frequently used an entire range of them in their tests, trying to fit the potential psychic expression to its most comfortable tool. Dylan’s favorite trance psychic used gaming dice to overcome her occasional clair
voyant blocks.
The living room was dim and quiet, and the only other illumination came from a light in the kitchen. Truth had deliberately chosen the witching hour to work because the psychic background noise that people usually took for granted was much diminished at a time when most of the people in the immediate surrounding area were asleep—one of the many reasons that most hauntings and similar psychic manifestations took place at night.
Truth settled herself more comfortably as the jet—an organic material, just as amber was—warmed in her hands. She wasn’t really sure how well this would work; clairvoyance wasn’t her strength, even though her mother and her aunt had both been psychics. Her father had once told Truth that her magickal technique consisted mainly of dragging the Powers into compliance by yelling at them until they cooperated in self-defense.
Truth smiled at the memory, trying to relax enough to let her mind float free. She hoped Thorne was right; if yelling was what it took to find Hunter Greyson, that’s what she’d do. Winter was outclassed and Truth was all but helpless—somewhere there had to be an ally against the pursuing Elemental and its monstrous, destructive hunger, and Truth didn’t think she could afford to be too scrupulous about recruiting him.
At last the material world fell away; the constant insistence of Reality that it was the only truth dimmed, and Truth was able to rebuild the world out of the fires of her own conviction and belief. With practiced ease she set the four Otherworld Guardians about herself, so that her spirit had reference points to return to. Once that was done, out of her father’s magick, Truth called up her servants and Guardians on this plane: the Red Stag and the White Mare, the Black Dog and the Grey Wolf. These creatures were the shapes of her power, the astral servants who would do her bidding in this realm; creations of earth magic and sidhe magic both.
She mounted the mare and began to ride, with the wolf and the dog loping at her heels and the stag bounding along before, its red coat shadowy in the mist.
Here were the landmarks of the astral temples the other Blackburn Circles had erected; there, less visible to Truth’s psychic senses, were the marks of other travelers through this realm; Adepts and wicce and others. Beyond that, all was mutable: the Otherworld—called the Inner Planes or the Astral Realms in the books Irene had forced upon Truth—was very much a creation of the observer, taking on the shape its visitors expected.
Which may explain why it looks so much like a foggy, featureless plain to me. I have no expectations of what I “ought” to see.
But even when she had gained access to the Otherworld at last, it did not bring with it success in her quest. Truth wandered for subjective hours in featureless Otherworld grayness, but she found no hint of Hunter Greyson’s presence.
The pull to return to her body grew stronger as she searched, until resisting it became an effort and she knew that—this night at least—she had failed to find Hunter Greyson. It occurred belatedly to Truth that perhaps she had been too hasty in banishing all trace of Grey’s Circle from Nuclear Lake; she could have used its presence as a starting place for her search, at least. Now, though she had spent hours calling upon the powers beholden to her as far as she dared, Truth could gain no hint of the Master of Nuclear Circle’s location.
At last she allowed her body’s animal need to tug her back from the Otherworld, and opened her eyes on her own familiar living room.
It was nearly dawn. She was chilled and stiff from immobility, and the candle had long since drowned in its own wax. But Truth was far from defeated.
“ARE YOU SURE you’re going to be all right?” Dylan said, standing by the door of the car.
“For heaven’s sake, Dyl, I’m driving to Massachusetts, not off the edge of the earth,” Truth said good-naturedly.
Though many of the staff at the Bidney Institute were also members of the Taghkanic faculty—such as Dylan—Truth was not one of them. Without classes to cover, it was comparatively easy for her to gain a few days’ leave.
“It’s only a couple of days since you were laid out cold in the lab,” Dylan pointed out ruthlessly. “Where in Massachusetts?” he added suspiciously.
Truth sighed, capitulating. “Fall River. I was just going to—”
“Meddle,” Dylan finished flatly. Truth rewarded him with a dazzling smile that deceived neither of them.
“Right,” she said. “But, for heaven’s sake, Dylan, it’s only a little meddling.”
“And I can’t stop you anyway,” Dylan finished for her.
Truth tried to look repentant and failed. “I’ll be back in a day or so.”
Dylan stood back from the car as Truth started the engine. She waved as she drove off, glancing back at him occasionally through the rearview mirror until she’d passed out of sight.
THE CLOSER TRUTH got to Fall River Sanatorium, the more forbidding it seemed. She drove along a tree-lined road, edged with discreet accesses to private drives, and tried not to think about what lay ahead. Money was power, and Fall River seemed to be the site of a great deal of money—at least if the neighboring estates were any guideline.
Fall River Sanatorium was built on a hill, a gleaming white edifice that did not so much sprawl as recline amid lawns as green and unreal as the turf of a golf course. As Truth drove toward it, she could catch glimpses of artfully landscaped brick paths laid among the ornamental plantings, and once, in the far distance, a solitary gleaming figure in nursing whites.
She had not called beforehand, preferring not to give the sanatorium’s staff an additional opportunity to turn her away. The rich were notoriously efficient at protecting their privacy; now that Truth had more of an idea of what sort of hospital Fall River was, she realized that it was more than likely that the doctor who had treated Winter Musgrave would refuse to speak to her at all.
But if Winter had been a patient at Fall River for any length of time the staff must have been aware of the poltergeist phenomenon that dogged her, and the Margaret Beresford Bidney Institute’s reputation was almost as well known in psychiatric as in parapsychological circles. Maybe she’d get lucky.
THE SIGN at the front gate said private drive, and Truth passed two more signs saying much the same thing before she reached the building. She parked beneath yet another one, located this time in the visitors’ parking lot. Her little Saturn looked positively frumpy next to the Mercedes and Lincolns that made up the majority of the occupants of the lot, and Truth tried not to be covetous of the gleaming expensive vehicles. The white BMW that Winter had told Truth she drove must have fit right in here.
And so had Winter. Or had she?
Truth locked her car and walked briskly toward the main entrance, blessing the impulse that had caused her to dress as if she were going to a particularly conservative professional conference. Her dark wool/silk suit and severe cream linen blouse would add an additional air of respectability to what Truth now saw more than ever as a harebrained escapade.
No one in his right mind would have come so far on such a slender hope of information, but now that she was here and the compulsion to come was gone, she recognized it for what it was: some message from the more-than-rational world; beyond instinct, beyond intuition …
Yet, having brought her so far, it had deserted her.
Now what?
Truth looked toward the entrance. The doorway was an imposing affair of double doors and leaded glass panels, sheltered beneath a deep portico. As good a destination as any. Truth put her hand to the gleaming brass latch and walked into Fall River Sanatorium.
She glanced around the foyer quickly, taking in the Oriental rugs, the chandelier, the furnishings that looked like costly antiques and probably were, and her hopes for the success of her mission slipped another notch. Everything she saw was designed to give the illusion that the viewer had been invited into a gracious private home—an illusion that was necessarily spoiled by the desk with its sign-in register that stood just to the right and inside the entrance.
“May I help you?”
“I’d like to see your director of admissions, please,” she said. “Or your supervising clinician.”
“Do you have an appointment?” the woman responded promptly.
“I’m with the Bidney Institute in Glastonbury,” Truth said, letting her voice supply the suggestion that it was a place similar to this one. She held out her card and watched as the woman read it. Margaret Beresford Bidney Memorial Psychic Science Research Institute had a distinguished ring to it, and most people confused “psychic” with “psychological,” at least at first glance.
“I’d hoped to be able to consult with … ?” Truth prompted.
“That would be Dr. Mahar, the director,” the woman supplied. Truth felt a small flare of victory. “Come with me, please, Dr. Jourdemayne.”
Truth did not feel it necessary to correct her. She did, after all, have a doctorate—in mathematics.
HER GUIDE CONDUCTED Truth down a short corridor to a reception area so luxurious and tranquilizing that Truth was sure this must be where anxious would-be patients awaited their initial interviews with Dr. Mahar. Everything Truth had seen in her few brief minutes inside the sanatorium proclaimed to her the sort of place this was: a sort of psychological factory where human problems were as likely to be tidied away as treated. Another professional sentry, this one an older woman in a starched white suit and slightly archaic gull-wing cap, rose from behind her desk as Truth and her escort entered the room.
“Dr. Jourdemayne to see Dr. Mahar,” the first woman said. She offered up Truth’s business card to the second receptionist and retreated in the direction of her outside post.