Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 01, page 22
"The Work would change all that," Caradoc corrected her gently. "Blackburn felt that the Ritual of the Opening of the Way—it's two weeks of rituals, really, but everyone who talks about it talks as if the last one is all there is to it—would begin the chain reaction that would merge the realm of the Gods with the realm of Men again. And we could finally ask them why they left us."
Behind his quiet words Truth heard the crying of every abandoned child: Why did you leave me, Daddy? Mommy? Don't leave me, don't go—
"And the Gods would permit the reopening of this Gate?" Truth asked, voice level. She had her own reservations about Caradoc's belief that the Gods—if Gods there were—would simply let human beings knock down the wall They'd raised.
"Blackburn's philosophy held that anything Man was capable of doing, Man had a right to do; that the mind of Man should not be subject to the will of either Church or State. Of course, it isn't meant to excuse things like theft and mass murder," Caradoc added, an apologia Truth had the impression he made fairly often.
"Understood," Truth said briefly, although what she understood was that Thorne Blackburn's philosophy had excused a career of irreverence and license, self-indulgence and sheer folly, all in the name of Service to Higher Truth. Even putting the most charitable interpretation possible on Thome's aims, humankind just wasn't meant to survive adherence to such a rarefied moral code. She wanted to say something more, perhaps even to explain. But she couldn't find the words, and the moment passed.
"I guess I'll go see if Julian's up—tell him about the picture," Caradoc said reluctantly.
"He isn't here. He went driving with Light, Michael said," Truth remembered.
She was relieved to see that Caradoc seemed to take this at face value.
"He does that a lot. It seems to help. Poor kid. It'll be better for her once we open the Gate."
"How?" Truth couldn't help but ask.
Caradoc stared at Truth with faint impatience. "Once the Gate is open and the Gods return, Light won't be a freak any more. She'll be normal" he finally said.
"Your young men will dream dreams, and your old men will see visions.' Isaiah, isn't it?" Truth said.
"Something like that," Caradoc said, suddenly subdued. "Anyway, I'll catch Julian when he comes back. Want some breakfast?"
"No," Truth said, considering. "I've got some things to do. But thanks."
Caradoc left her then, and once more Truth had the haunting sense of a challenge met—or a test passed.
"Your young men will dream dreams, and your old men will see visions," Truth quoted to herself. But when the Biblical prophet Isaiah spoke those words, he had been speaking of the Eschaton—the end of time. The last days. Ragnarok. Armageddon. He could not have known what future centuries would make of his words.
But was Thorne Blackburn's interpretation that far from the prophet's? Didn't he mean the Opening of the Way as the beginning of the end?
If that were so, then what Julian intended to do was not some joyous ritual of enlightenment, but something darker.
Much darker.
True to the promises of the cellular phone company, Truth's newly-leased cellular phone did not work, and rather than see if the one phone at Shadow's Gate was working today, Truth had found herself taking the mile walk down to Shadowkill and its theoretically functioning and available telephones. At least the errand gave her the opportunity to move the necklace and ring from their concealment in her drawer to the safer sanctuary of the trunk of her car, allowing her to retrieve her purse as she did so.
It was all like some mad treasure-hunt-in-reverse; and Truth wondered despairingly how much longer she could keep one jump ahead of the unknown scavengers determined to pillage her treasures. Certainly these frequent trips to her car—when all her luggage was already inside—would make even the most trusting soul suspicious.
Alert this time to Shadow's Gate's uncanny influence, Truth had observed herself as best she could as she walked down the road to the gate. If she could trust her senses, Shadow's Gate exerted a perceptible influence on the emotions—or the imagination. Away from the site's influence, she discovered a strong urge to dismiss everything that happened there. Passing through the wrought-iron gates at the foot of the drive was like taking two Valium and a shot of scotch. No wonder she kept going back there, like the self-destructive heroine of a Gothic novel, if everything that happened there lost its emotional resonance once she left the property.
Intrigued, she tested it, something easier to do on foot than in a car. The boundary was not sharp-cut, and Truth suspected that it moved, but it was there. She wondered why none of the others had mentioned it. Maybe they didn't leave the property often enough—but Gareth spent at least part of each day in the gatehouse. Surely they'd noticed what Shadow's Gate was doing to them.
Unless it wasn't doing it to them, but only to her—Thorne Blackburn's daughter.
Grudgingly, she admitted that it was at least possible that the Shadow's Gate event was targeting her. At the very least, there had been an upswing in the number of Paranormal Events since she had arrived.
But targeting her how? Truth wondered, once she had safely arrived in the town. At Shadow's Gate she was on an abnormal emotional roller-coaster, true—but wasn't that a reasonable reaction to the emotionally-fraught investigation of her past? And if it was, didn't that make her calmness here and now abnormal?
Once that would have been an easy judgment—surely this was her normal state, and the hysterical fantasies she experienced at Shadow's Gate the illusion.
But Light had been hurt. The picture had fallen. Let anything else you like be dream or vision, Truth told herself, those things were real—just as real as the cold spot on the library floor. Something was going on in the house that had once belonged to Thorne Blackburn. And like the heroine in the Gothic novel—but for much better reasons—Truth would go back to Shadow's Gate again, and force the house to give up its secrets.
If she could.
"Dylan? It's Truth."
"Truth! Hey, this is great! Where are you?" Dylan was unfeigncdly glad to hear from her, and Truth felt a faint twinge of guilt for the fact that she was only calling to beg a favor.
"I'm in a little place called Shadowkill. It's in Dutchess, I came here to see Shadow's Gate, and—"
The practiced phrases came easily to her tongue; the history of the house as she had unearthed it; her belief that it was a center of paranormal energy, the events that had occurred in the house so far.
"—just a little PK and some channeling; a cold spot in the library but I don't think that's where the real action is. There's a trance medium living there, and—" And she's my sister, Truth added silently. She went on explaining what she'd learned and what she'd guessed.
"—he's not really interested in strangers showing up around the place, but he doesn't have too much objection to the monitoring equipment, so I thought—"
She'd come back to the library in Shadowkill to use its phone, and was perched on the narrow, angular bench in its old-fashioned wooden booth. Through the glass door she could see the library information desk, and the rows and rows of books in their turn-of-the-century shelving beyond.
Shadowkill was a nice town, simple and friendly. Then why did she feel so afraid—as if there were something she would soon try to protect it from, and fail?
"What? Dylan, I didn't hear you." Abruptly conscious that her mind was wandering, Truth was jolted back to the present by the interrogative note in Dylan's tone.
"I said, why not let me drive up this weekend with a truck and a couple of my grad students and set the stuff up and run a few tests. I can take you out to dinner, and—"
"No." The refusal was so instantaneous that it was rude, and she hastened to amend it. "Julian doesn't want any strangers here."
There was a pause. "Ah," Dylan said, and now some of the warmth was gone from his voice. "Julian, is it? The reclusive new master of Shadow's Gate?"
"Honestly, Dylan, you sound like a bad Gothic novel," Truth snapped. At the moment she didn't remember her wistful fantasies of opportunities lost; she was thoroughly irritated with Dylan and it was difficult to recall that she was trying to get him to do what she wanted.
"It's just that— Look, of course the man is filthy rich and could probably afford to buy the Institute's whole array out of pocket change—"
Dylan laughed. "Not unless his pockets are two point five million dollars deep."
"Well, they may be," Truth said, thinking of what she'd seen so far. There was a silence.
"He's doing the Blackburn Work," Truth blurted out suddenly.
"Does he know who you are?" Dylan asked carefully.
"Yes." To the devil, a daughter. "It's just that I— I have— My sister's here, Dylan, and—"
"I'm coming down there," Dylan said, cutting her off. "You don't know what you're getting into with these people."
His matter-of-fact assumption of the right to meddle grated on her sensibilities, but a chill distant part of her was amused—that this innocent should be presuming to protect her, all unknowing of what she was.
The moment passed.
"If you know, Dylan, then I'm worried about you," Truth said, fighting for lightness. "And I, of all people, know exactly what 'these people' are like."
"A sister. You said a sister," Dylan said. He sounded flustered.
"Blackburn fathered other children," Truth said baldly. "One of them is here. That's all."
There was a fulminating silence on the other end of the line that told Truth that, in Dylan's opinion, that was far from all.
This conversation was not going well at all. Had she always been this clumsy in her handling of other people? Or was it only because Dylan Palmer took the time to try to pierce her chilly armor?
A choice, her inner intuition whispered. You have a choice to make here, Daughter of Earth.
"Look," Truth said, trying to bring the subject back on track. "The important thing right now is to map the extent of the Paranormal Event taking place in Shadow's Gate. Julian's willing to have you bring a team up to the house in November and do anything you want, but I really think we need to start mapping now. I need you." It's dangerous here, Dylan, but if I tell you that you won't listen to anything else I say.
Truth broke off, sighing, and rubbed her forehead with her free hand. Her sleepless night made her bones ache with exhaustion, but it wasn't only that. Everything seemed to be tiring these days, as if her weariness formed the invisible walls that constrained her to follow the path appointed for her.
"I need you," she repeated, "to get me the equipment. The cameras. Some of the monitors. I know what I'm asking, Dylan—"
"No, I don't think you do," he said quietly, and the conversation died again.
"What do I have to say to make you do what I want?" Truth blurted out in frustration. If this was a sample of the sort of so-called normal life people were always urging on her, she'd stay the way she was, thank you. "I need those monitors. I need to know. Before someone gets hurt," she added in an undertone.
Over the long-distance line she heard Dylan sigh.
"Truth, it's not that—These monitors aren't cheap. Even if I only bring up one of the barometric arrays and a camera . . . Do you know that film costs one hundred twenty dollars a roll? Which budget line am I supposed to hide those costs in?"
"I'll pay for it myself," Truth muttered.
"It doesn't work that way. Truth—" She heard him sigh again, and imagined she could feel his breath stir the tendrils of hair coiling against her cheek—and did that image repel or attract her? "What are you doing up there?" Dylan asked helplessly.
This time her emotions went spinning out of control, and her self-command shattered like a thrown plate. "What am I doing, Dylan? I'm doing what you and everyone else has always badgered me to do. I'm getting involved. I'm being reckless. I'm getting in touch with my feelings. Hell, I'm even getting in touch with my father." The laugh that followed was mocking and barely controlled. "I'm getting to know my father better, Dylan—isn't that something you'd think was appropriate?"
She felt the song of power rise up in her; the headiness of knowing that if she only chose to use it she had the ability to wound with a word, to change the course of others' lives, to force them to obey because she had the power to command—
"I'm coming up there and I'm bringing you back with me. And if this Julian of yours tries to stop me—" Dylan's voice was edgy, harsh. Truth could feel the tension thrill between them like a tight-drawn whiplash, shocking her back to the world.
''This Julian of mine' will rightly point out to you, Dylan Palmer, that you've got no grounds for treating me like a teenaged runaway," Truth said. She held her trembling voice even and low with an effort; every instinct urged her to shrill at him; if he were here she would claw. . . . "I'm a grown woman. I need that equipment. I thought you'd help me. You won't. That's all." Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath.
"I'll help you." Dylan's voice was so low she had to strain to hear it. "I'll see what I can sign out. Is there a number where you can be reached?"
She'd won, but the victory didn't make her happy. "I'm staying at Shadow's Gate, but the phones aren't very reliable. I've leased a cellular, only it isn't working yet. You can try them both." She gave him both numbers; he read them back to her.
Truth hesitated; Dylan did not deserve this treatment from her. "I'm sorry I snapped at you, Dyl. I—"
She wavered over telling him about Aunt Caroline's death, then recoiled from the thought of using her aunt's death to buy cheap sympathy. No matter what, she would not do that.
"I've been having some personal problems lately," she finally said. "And I'm worried about these people. They're playing occultist in a haunted house and I think they're playing with fire."
"And with the money you say this Julian's got, they can afford a really expensive box of matches," Dylan said, finishing her unvoiced thought. "If there's— If there's anything else I can do, Truth, just tell me. Maybe Colin—"
"No outsiders," Truth said quickly. "Julian . . ." What could she say that wouldn't rouse Dylan's misgivings again? "Just wait a few weeks, Dylan, okay? After Halloween everything will be all right." Even to Truth, the sound of her words had a forlorn echo: whistling past the graveyard.
"If you say so," Dylan said doubtfully. "I'll do what I can."
"Thank you," Truth said honestly. She wanted to say something more, but hated the thought of saying something that wasn't true. "When I needed help, I thought of you," she finally said. The words came with reluctant honesty.
She could hear Dylan's pleasure in his indrawn breath, and had a sudden disturbing insight into the strength of his feelings for her. She'd done nothing to deserve them; that Dylan felt so strongly about her made her feel trapped, almost unworthy.
No, not unworthy. Almost sorrowful, as if to love her was to court destruction.
"Well, just keep thinking of me, okay? And I'll give you a call tomorrow, assuming I can get through," Dylan answered.
"Sure." A few minutes later Truth hung up the phone, most of the conversation already fading from her mind, leaving the memory of Dylan's hurt feelings and willingness to help behind them like a psychic sore tooth. Dylan deserved better than to wait for a kind word from her.
For a moment she let her mind run free to speculate about what it would be like simply to talk with Dylan about inconsequential things, to wander across the Taghkanic campus with no ulterior motive or end in mind. To find out what Dylan Palmer was like—and what she would be like with him.
Then reality intervened like the closing of an iron-bound door. Even assuming Dylan was interested in such a colossal waste of time, why should he be interested in wasting it with her? If he knew what she was—
And what is that, precisely?
But he did know—didn't he? And he hadn't run screaming into the night yet.
Ready to run screaming into the night yet, Truth? Hereward's voice from the first night she'd come to Shadow's Gate echoed in her memory.
But this time the words weren't funny.
Truth dawdled in Shadowkill as long as she could, buying lunch at the Chinese restaurant on Main Street, browsing through all the pricey little boutiques for some accessories to freshen up her wardrobe. If she was going to be staying at Shadow's Gate for an extended period she was damned if she'd do it looking like a poor relation.
At one of her stops Truth found an exquisite chenille shawl in dark blue yarn; silver threads of Lurex woven through it gave it the look of the sky on a starry night, and though she had no idea what she might possibly wear it with she bought it on the spot. A long vest in bright patchwork velvets from the same store joined her purchases, and a pair of green onyx and marcasite-set silver earrings. She was on the street again, having regretfully decided she'd already spent far too much, when she saw the dress.
The store's name was "innovations," and Truth had decided, looking at the chaste gold-lettered sign in the display window's bottom corner, that she'd better not even look inside. That was before she looked at the dress in the window.
It was on a dressmaker's form of woven wicker, and the sand-washed silk clung to the wicker's weave like poured cream. It was all the possible shades of green, from the blued fire of an emerald's heart to the peridot-yellow of a tiger's eyes. The silk had been marbled; the dye colors laid on with a wavy flame pattern of a book's endpapers.
The cut was simple—a princess line, with a sweetheart neckline piped in green velvet cord—but it was the skirt that truly made the dress special. Even seeing it hanging on the dressform in the window, Truth could see that the handkerchief hem of the skirt had been inset with a dozen gores of opalescent silk-illusion netting, giving the long skirt a fairytale fullness, as if one of Cinderella's ballgowns had wound up in the village of Shadowkill by mistake.
The dress sparkled.
"How much is it—the one in the window?" Truth found herself asking a few moments later. The saleswoman she spoke to was far too wise to answer straight away; she took the dress off the dummy in the window and handed it to Truth first. The fabric slid over Truth's hands like wintery cream, supple and heavy and gleaming in the light.
