Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 01, page 35
Truth shook her head, and was rewarded with a sharp jolt of pain and a reeling nausea. She lay back against the wall, panting.
"I'm going to let you out of those, but I need your help," Thorne said. "I want you to stay here and go with them when they come back. That little bastard has to be stopped, and I don't want anyone else hurt."
Truth nodded cautiously, though the effort made every tendon in her neck throb. She took a careful breath, and felt the nausea recede. "I guess I really blew it, didn't it? I'm not a very good hero."
Thorne smiled at her fondly and shook his head. "Oh, I don't doubt your bravery, baby—but I do wonder about your brains. What on earth possessed you to confront Pilgrim that way? He's nuts, you know," Thorne told her.
"So I've heard," Truth commented dryly.
Thorne crossed the little distance between them and reached for the cuff on her wrist. The cellar was cold; Truth could feel the heat radiating from Thorne's body—
—feel the grip of his hands as he steadied her wrist—
—see the makeup, carefully blended to cover the lines of age on his face; the hair, still long but now unnaturally golden—
One cuff sprang open, then the other.
"You're alive!" Truth yelped. She jumped up and grabbed his hands before he could pull back. They were hard and warm and real in hers— callused and worn and marked with age: the hands of a man in his fifties. Thorne's hands.
"You're alive," Truth repeated.
"Surprise," Thorne said, grinning.
Now that she looked for it, the mask of youth fell away—all it was was pancake and Clairol and expectation; antique clothes and careful lighting. This was no ghost. This was a living man, as real as she was.
"Oh, my God," Truth said, sitting down slowly. Her head reeled, and she closed her eyes tightly.
"Want a beer?" Thorne said, dragging the ice chest out of the corner. There was a blanket on top of it; he shook it loose and draped it around her shoulders.
"I've been here since 'sixty-nine," Thorne said. He was sitting beside her on the bench, his arm around her. Truth held a bottle of apple juice between her hands, and at intervals in his story Thorne would bully her into taking sips from it. "And with the muddle everything was left in at my, ah, 'death,' I expected I'd be able to stay here undisturbed until the end of my days."
Truth sipped at the juice. Thorne's tale, delivered in simple, matter-of-fact tones, was almost more unbelievable than anything else she'd heard at Shadow's Gate.
"I admit that Pilgrim's arrival was a shock, but not half as much of one as I got when I found out what he was up to. I was sure he didn't stand a chance—I didn't know where Venus Afflicted was any more than he did, and at first I had no idea who he was or how much he'd found out. And later— Well, that was later."
Truth reached out and patted his knee. "But how—? But why—? I mean, all these years, everyone was looking for you. ..." She closed her eyes, stunned and exhausted with the aftermath of her drugging and these new revelations.
"Wake up. Drink your juice," Thorne chided. "Well, to begin with, you may have noticed my rather unorthodox entrances and exists?"
Truth giggled, mostly with relief. "You scared me to death!”
"Hardly. You're like your mother—she'd walk up to Satan himself and spit in his eye to see him flinch. But playing ghost was easy—this place used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad that smuggled slaves into Canada. The place is riddled with tunnels."
"But Hereward said they'd all been filled in—or something," Truth protested, although by now she wasn't sure just what Hereward had said.
"What? Do you think they showed up on the architect's blueprints filed in the town hall? Nobody but the people who dug them ever knew they were there; the maze was built right over one of the main exits in eighteen ninety-something and nobody ever even noticed. Very convenient, those tunnels—I lived down there for quite some time while the heat died down."
She wasn't crazy. Relief coursed through Truth like strong medicine, warming and steadying her even more than a thick, woolen blanket and her father's presence. She wasn't crazy, she wasn't having a breakdown— Thorne was alive and here.
"After awhile I started venturing out—scavenging, doing odd jobs for the locals as a means of barter, that sort of thing. I don't know whether they thought I was a draft dodger, a radical on the run, or what—and mostly they didn't care. Drink your juice."
Truth sipped at it again—she was thirsty, but swallowing hurt. She was lucky, she supposed, that Pilgrim hadn't simply poisoned her.
"Pilgrim," she said, trying to get up.
Thorne shoved her back down without effort. "You're in no shape to take on Pilgrim just now."
Truth sat back, feeling the weakness in her body that told her Thorne was right. And there was so much she wanted to know; so many questions to ask.
"What about my mother?" she said.
Thorne sighed, and for a moment looked every day of his more than fifty years. "Grant me ... a little more time before we talk about Katherine. I've stolen so much from you, daughter, but—just give me a little time."
Truth nodded. "I hated you, you know," she confessed, embarrassed. "I thought you were some kind of monster, stringing everyone along with your lies for what you could get out of them. But—"
"Oh, I was sincere," Thorne said heavily. "God help me, that was the worst of my sins—that I believed. And I have sown dragon's teeth. Pilgrim—dear heaven, that my work could be so warped—what we did, we did in love and innocence, but all Pilgrim wants is power—the power that is bought with blood and lies and endless, endless pain. When I think of what he will do with it if he gets his way . . . I'm frightened."
"But can't you—?" Truth said.
"Call the police? Oh, sure—and Pilgrim would have my ass on toast and some fascist-pig lawyers to swear black was white and he'd be right back here next year with a new Circle ready to believe anything he told them. No, we have to close the Gate," Thorne said solemnly. "And I need your help to do it."
There was no Closing of the Gate in Venus Afflicted, but Truth supposed that Thorne could invent one if anybody could. "I'd almost forgotten you believed in all that nonsense," Truth said before she thought. Thorne laughed.
"Humor your old dad, sweetheart. Once I've got Pilgrim out of the way you and I should be able to shut the whole thing down without any trouble. I've learned a lot in the last twenty years. You'd be surprised— that is, you would if you knew anything about magick to begin with," Thorne amended wickedly.
"Don't worry—I won't ask you to do anything you can't stand up and confess to in church," he added, grinning as if he guessed her worries. Then the smile faded. "But it's . . . the only way I can make it right, don't you see?" His voice was almost plaintive.
Truth squeezed his hand. She knew what he wanted, and it would have been easy to agree without thinking, but she was determined this time to make the right choice, not just the logical one. She was stronger now, her head clear—she could ask Thorne to lead her out of here, call the police as she'd originally planned, stop the ritual and stop Pilgrim.
But Thorne was right about the lawyers. And while it was true that she could accuse Pilgrim of murder . . . which time had he been lying about Michael and Ellis's fates? If she did accuse him of their murder, and they turned up alive and well . . . Truth shuddered at the thought of the media circus that would be.
And Thorne Blackburn was still wanted for murder, a crime for which there was no statute of limitations. There would be no way to keep him out of this, no matter what, and in the frenzy surrounding Thorne's reappearance, any case against Pilgrim could simply disappear.
But suppose she and Thorne stopped Pilgrim's ritual first? If anything she'd been told was true, closing the Gate should shut down the paranormal activity at Shadow's Gate, just as she'd hoped. And then Pilgrim would not have the Circle's power to draw on—or the house's.
A month ago she would have called this line of thinking deluded raving—but she'd seen the members of the Circle, gray and drained, while Pilgrim bubbled with unwholesome vitality. She'd felt the power they raised, with the paranormal locus of Shadow's Gate to draw on.
Stop the ritual. Close the Gate. Seal the seeping psychic wound that tainted everything here, then settle the mundane matters.
That was the right thing to do.
"If I go along with you," Truth said, "you won't hurt anyone, will you?"
Thorne grimaced. "I won't kill Pilgrim, if that's what you're hinting at—I've never killed anyone and I'm too old to start now. But I think I can get Irene to slip him a mickey, and failing that, I can always hit him over the head." He smiled. "I think he at least deserves a headache."
"So do I," Truth said darkly, rubbing her own throbbing temples. "Okay, what do you want me to do?"
Thorne stayed with her a while longer. They talked of inconsequential things—books and movies, daily life at Taghkanic College. Truth found that Thorne's knowledge of popular culture stopped short in 1969—well, if he'd been living a fugitive's existence all these years, that was only to be expected. But toward the end he looked more and more uneasy, and finally admitted he ought to leave.
"There's not much I can do to pull the wool over their eyes if they walk in and catch me here," Thorne said apologetically.
"Go on, then. I'm not afraid of the dark."
"Oh, I'll leave you the lantern and the rest of the stuff. Let them explain that as a 'conflation of mystic energies,' " Thorne snorted. He stood to go.
Truth stood, too, and hugged him. He was only a few inches taller than she was, and what had once been the slenderness of youth was now the painful thinness of undernourished age.
"You're so thin!" Truth said. "Are you sure you're eating enough?"
"Worry about yourself." Thorne laughed. "You don't believe in magick yet—not quite. But before the night is out we're going to put on a show here that I guarantee you'll never forget."
"I'm looking forward to it," Truth said, and this time it was the truth.
Thorne raised his hand, the first two fingers spread. "Peace," he said. He walked around a crook in the cellar wall and was gone.
Truth sat back down, pulling the blanket around her again. Now all she had to do was wait.
There were sandwiches in the cooler and after a while Truth ate one, but it was boring sitting in the cellar with nothing to read except an apple juice bottle, and after some unmeasurable time Truth dozed off. She was awakened some unknown time later by the rattle of keys against a padlock, and a moment later the door across from her opened and Fiona stepped in.
"Well," Fiona sneered, looking around at the lantern and the ice chest. "All the comforts of home. Was this your idea, Gareth?"
"Uh, no." Gareth entered the cellar behind Fiona. They were both in green robes, and Gareth looked uncomfortable.
"Well, come on—since you've managed to get out of those cuffs already," Fiona snapped. Truth stood up, stretching.
"Shouldn't we—?" Gareth began.
"Oh, Jesus Christ—what do you want me to do, read her her rights? Okay, bitch—you have the right to do just what I tell you or get your face rearranged. And if Gareth won't do it, Julian will."
"There is no Julian," Truth said.
"Oh yeah? That's sure going to come as a big shock to the guy upstairs in the antlers. Move your ass." Fiona grabbed Truth's arm and yanked.
Truth staggered forward, and would have fallen if Gareth hadn't caught and steadied her.
"Gareth," Truth said. "Why are you going along with this? You know it isn't right."
"I—" Gareth said.
"He's doing it for me" Fiona said mockingly. "Because I love him. Isn't that right, Gareth?" She grabbed Truth's arm, digging in with sharp nails, and between them, the two members of the Circle of Truth hustled Truth out of the cellar and up the stairs.
As soon as they reached the first floor Truth knew that things had gone somehow horribly wrong. Power radiated from the Temple as from the open mouth of a blast furnace, and everything in her vision seemed to have acquired multicolored haloes, making phosphorescent trails through the trembling air.
It was raining outside, a hard driving downpour that Truth could hear clearly, but over the sound of the storm she could hear the chanting, as certainly as if she were already in the room with it. The sharp smoke of the incense was in her nose, her throat, choking her.
They reached the door to the Temple, and at last Truth understood. This was not the start of the ritual, when she and Thorne could easily seize control and change things. The ritual had already been going on for hours.
Where was Thorne? Why hadn't he come and gotten her?
Gareth opened the doors.
As if the mere physical barrier could hold back intangible psychic power, a new wave of force rolled over Truth—a black sucking whirlpool that nourished as it devoured. The energy dragged at her, pulling her into the past, into the other night, the other death . . . and the baby girl, barely two, whose frantic attempts to follow her mother into the courts of Death had caused her agony enough to seal off her psychic powers forever . . . until now.
As if she had suddenly been released from a too-tight garment, Truth felt her perceptions flower and change, until with newfound confidence she could sense the rhythm of Being and Becoming as it flowed though her. This was the real world, to which she had been awakened perhaps too late.
Inside the Temple, the perimeter of the circle was a blaze of candles, the sound of drumming—the rain, magnified a thousand times by the room's acoustics—and Light's chanting pounding at her with a force that made her shudder—a force far beyond the power of the Temple's inhabitants to produce. Truth strained to see, though her vision was filled with a galaxy of sparks and blazing rainbows, and her entire body vibrated to the beat of the house's power.
Light stood at the head of the altar, head thrown back. She was deep in trance: Her eyes were closed; she cried out line after line of speech in some unknown tongue and her body was a pillar of viridian flame in Truth's new sight. Each word seemed to hang upon the air, as if the sound waves had suddenly become visible, and Light trembled with the power pouring through her, oblivious to the others. Light's will and that of what spoke through her held the ritual in focus—having come this far, Pilgrim no longer needed the others.
Irene stood frozen, her face a paint-streaked mask of incredulous tears. Beside her, Hereward knelt upon the floor, his hands folded tightly against his stomach. His face was ghastly pale and there was blood on his mouth, and more blood oozing between his clutching fingers. Blue light pooled about him on the floor—his life force, slowly draining away.
As Truth entered he looked toward her. Sorry, he mouthed and shook his head, trying to get to his feet.
Caradoc stood beside the altar. He held a censer of incense, and his face was perfectly blank. Was this sort of thing what he'd had in mind? He gave no indication that he'd noticed that anything out of the ordinary was going on at all. Truth looked at Caradoc and saw nothing, only a howling silence, the leading edge of a gale upon which some soaring inhumanity spread its wings.
Where was Donner? She looked for him and found him at last. He was standing very still, his entire strained attention focused on Pilgrim.
"Looking for your white knight?" Pilgrim said to Truth. His cheeks were flushed, and he wore an elaborate antlered headdress and a wolfskin about his shoulders. He was naked, and held an enormous ritual sword in one hand and a small black pistol in the other, pointed at the only other person in the room who was likely to do him harm. The gun glowed like a burning coal in Pilgrim's hand, scarlet with recent use to Truth's otherworldly sight. He'd already shot Hereward—was Donner next? Were these the deaths that Pilgrim was counting on to fuel his sorcery and open the Gate?
Or was the death to be hers?
Truth began to struggle. She tore loose from Fiona's grip, but Gareth's hand was locked around her arm like an iron vise.
"Let me go! Gareth—for God's sake!" Truth cried. She felt the power Pilgrim had called drawing her forward, sucking her irresistibly into the pattern Pilgrim had created, the pattern that would end in the horror of Chaos come again.
"I'm afraid your god and his messengers won't be coming tonight— and neither will Thorne Blackburn!" Pilgrim shouted over the sound of her voice and Light's. "Really, Truth—did you think one feeble old man who has rejected the gift of the gods could defeat me? Now come here— I'm going to cut your heart out, you stupid bitch—once the Gate is open I don't need you! Come on, Gareth—it is expedient that one woman should die for the good of the people!"
Pilgrim laughed crazily, but the gun never wavered from Donner's chest.
Incredibly, Gareth began to drag her forward—out of weakness, of being lost in the ritual, in the desire to give himself to anything outside himself. Truth fought him, and even then she might have broken free, but Fiona hit her in the stomach with one of the heavy candlesticks and when Truth gagged at the blow Gareth wrenched both of her arms up behind her back.
He brought her in front of Pilgrim. Heat radiated off Pilgrim, and power—she could see it with her new senses; a dull violet glow gathering on the surface of his skin, as if some astral double inside him were soon about to burst this mortal chrysalis.
"Now we chain her to the altar, violate and mutilate her, and cut her heart out. Oh come on, Irene, stop sniveling—these aren't the sixties any more! Donner, be a good boy and come over here and help," Pilgrim said, his face a maniacal mask of glee.
Oh how could any of them think he'd let them live after what they'd seen here tonight? How many of them were here like Irene—secretly, illegally, with no one to notice when they were gone?
"Donner! Don't do it!" Truth screamed. "He'll kill you!"
Pilgrim brandished the gun and laughed again, the sound high and jagged against Light's chanting. Even if you didn't believe in magick, couldn't feel the power raging here, there was still the gun. Truth felt Gareth lift her toward the altar, and she began to kick.
