Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (14 page)

 
          
"Nina!"
she shouted, before realizing Nina Fowler couldn't possibly hear her this far
away. She hurried around the corner of the building and, as she did, a blast of
cold rain hit her in the face. There was a black squall line running up from
the south, and the surface of
Nuclear
Lake
was being whipped into a dirty froth with
the force of the wind.

 
          
"Nina!"
Winter shouted again, the icy chill of awakening terror almost enough to drown
her anger. It was not the wind that was causing this turbulence.

 
          
The
lake was
boiling.

 
          
"Nina!"
Where was she? Was she
all right? Winter took a step back from the lake. There was nothing natural
about what she saw: The surface of the water was bubbling, as if some
unimaginable creature were forcing itself up out of the ooze at the bottom.
Coming to the surface. Coming for
her.

 
          
Winter
looked around, looking for some way to escape. But there was nowhere to go
except toward the lake or back into the building, and her past was waiting
inside the building. Winter began to run along the path in the direction she'd
come, in the desperate hope that she could reach the car before whatever was
rising out of Nuclear Lake could reach her.

 
          
The
leading edge of the storm broke. Rain lashed into Winter's face, blinding her,
turning the broken paving into a slick and treacherous shifting surface. Anger
was gone, replaced by fear, and by some kind of tension that was building
inside her, drawing every nerve achingly taut. The rain pounded down with
growing force, and the roaring of the storm cut her off from her
senses—blinded, numb, and deaf, Winter ran toward safety, gaining ground with
the maddening slowness of a dream.

           
It was coming for her.

 
          
As
if some part of her still stood watching the lake, she could feel that. What
rose out of the lake was all blind terror and eternal appetite, and if it
reached her it would leave her skinned and mutilated body as testimony to that
hunger.

 
          
After
a nightmare eternity Winter reached the far side of the lake, feeling as if
there were a bar of hot metal transfixing her throat and her lungs. Every step
was agony, but if she stopped, she would be lost. She gasped for air, knowing
she had to warn Nina Fowler, knowing she lacked the strength even for that.

 
          
The
storm's force pressed her to her knees in the thin icy mud, and in a flux of
irresistible phantom terror Winter glanced behind her, to see the bubbling
surface of the lake bowed upward like a giant lens, its surface about to split
and reveal . . .

 
          
Thrusting
herself to her feet once more, Winter staggered onward, feeling the pain and
pressure growing behind her eyes.

 
          
Nina's
Honda was right where Winter had left it, lights on and windshield wipers
running. The promise of safety it represented brought tears to Winter's eyes.
The driver's-side door was open and Winter could see a foot encased in a muddy
running shoe; Nina was already inside, sheltering from the storm and waiting
for her.

 
          
Winter
felt the tautness inside her begin to uncoil and
reach;
flexing through her like electricity. An instinctive spasm
brought one arm up and out in a parody of a pulp-magazine priestess's mystic
gesture, and as she stared in helpless horror, she saw the spark collect on her
fingers in seeming slow motion and jump from her to the car.

 
          
No/

 
          
There
was a blue flash and the car's lights went dead and its wipers stopped
moving—and behind her, Winter could feel the malevolence that churned up out of
Nuclear
Lake
seeking its prey.

 
          
"Damn;
it just stopped," Nina said innocently as she looked up. "Good
Goddess, Winter, you—"

 
          
"No
time," Winter panted, plucking at Nina's arm with trembling fingers.
"Come. You've got to run."

 
          
"But
it'll just—" Nina began, and Winter, using the last of her strength,
hauled Nina out of the car.

           
"Please," Winter gasped,
choking on her own need to breathe. "Hurry."

 
          
There
was a sharp tang in the air now, apparent even over the smell of rain and wet
earth. A sharp ozone tang, as if lightning were about to strike—again—and as
Winter began to despair, it seemed that Nina caught some of her fear from her.
Nina's brown eyes went wide and the freckles stood out on her face like dark
raindrops. Without another word she grabbed Winter's hand and the two women
began to run up the path that led to the road.

 
          
Behind
them there was a crash—a flash too bright for lightning—and a howling that
could be heard even over the wailing of the v/
ind
.

 
          
They
ran until the exhausted Winter could run no farther, and crouched on the
blacktop of the access road while Nina stood over her. Both women were soaked
to the skin, bramble-torn, and covered in mud.

 
          
"Go—
Go on," Winter gasped, waving in the direction of the road.

 
          
"No."
Nina was nearly as winded. "No, wait. Can't you hear?"

 
          
Winter
raised her head. "Hear" was not the right word, but she understood
what Nina meant. It was quiet now; even though it was still raining, the raging
storm and the coiling sense of dreadful passion both gone as if they'd never
been.

 
          
And
now that they were gone, it was hard to believe that they ever
had
been.

 
          
Winter
raised her head and looked at Nina. The younger woman's round cheeks were
flushed with running, her curly brown hair plastered flat against her head. Her
eyes were wide and puzzled, as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.

 
          
"Some
kind of storm, eh?" she said, in cheerful tones completely divorced from
her apprehensive mood of only moments before. "It's a good thing you got
me out of the car—I know it's a good idea to stay in your car when there's a
lightning storm, but it's not so good an idea to be in your car when a tree
falls on it, is it?"

 
          
Is that what you think happened, Nina?
Winter
bit her lip to keep from saying the words aloud, a new and entirely mundane
apprehension staggering the trip-hammer beat of her heart. Wasn't Nina's
reaction just what her own had been—denial and some soothing, plausible story?

           
Even now, the events of the past few
hours tried to smudge and blur themselves in her mind, as if some malignant
hand was wiping the slate of memory clean.

 
          
No!
Winter concentrated on the image of
that profane fetal shape rising up out of the storm-whipped blackness of the
lake, and felt her lagging heartbeat increase in response.

 
          
"Maybe
the car will start now," Nina said uncertainly.

 
          
"No."
Winter stood up with painful effort, forcing her legs to hold her now that the
danger was past. "It won't start. The electrical system's shot."
And I did that
—
me
—
not the thing in the lake.
"We'd better see if we can flag down someone on the main road."

 
          
"Yeah."
Nina straightened up and stretched, and regarded Winter with a guileless
untroubled countenance. "And it isn't really too far; we can walk back to
town if we have to."

 
          
Fortunately
they didn't have to walk, though for Winter the worst part of what followed was
that by the time they'd reached the
County Road
and flagged down a vehicle Nina Fowler had
completely convinced herself that what had happened had amounted to nothing
more than a brief but intense lightning storm.

 
          
It seems as if it would be safer to think
that,
Winter mused thoughtfully, sitting crowded next to Nina in the pickup
truck's cabin,
just as I'd be happier
thinking that all that happened was one of my panic attacks and a little
overwrought imagination. But I don't think it was.

 
          
And I don't think it's
safe
to pretend it was.

 
          
"I'll
call Dave; he can take me back out there with the wrecker and pick up Old
Reliable tomorrow," Nina said cheerfully. Their ride—one of the
villagers—had gone out of his way to drop them back up at the
Taghkanic
campus.

 
          
"Why
don't you take my car in the meantime," Winter said, fishing in her jeans
pocket for the keys. She held them out to Nina. "I'm too whipped to drive;
I'm going to take a taxi home."

 
          
"Oh,
but I couldn't!" Nina protested, but Winter could see her hesitate.

 
          
"Of
course you can—didn't it used to be your car? And it was my fault that you were
out there in the first place, getting your car . . . struck by lightning."
And only luck that I didn't get you
killed,
Winter thought somberly.
And
not by lightning.

 
          
"Well,
if you're sure," Nina said, reaching for the keys. "Can I run you
home, Winter? You really do look tired."

 
          
"I'll
call Timmy Sullivan when I'm ready. There's something I have to do first."
And if you want to live, Nina, you'll
stay far, far away from me.

THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN

When the hounds of spring are
on winter's traces.

 
— ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

 
          
SHE'D
THOUGHT SHE'D BE MORE RELUCTANT TO COME back here with another harebrained
story, but it was amazing how much perspective nearly getting killed by The
Creature From The Id could give you. If what Winter thought had happened at
Nuclear
Lake
had really happened—if she wasn't
crazy—then she needed help. If she
was
crazy
. . .

 
          
Then
she wanted drugs, electroshock—all those things that Truth
Jourdemayne
had said would burn to ash the part of her brain that bred these chimeras.
"The sleep of reason begets monsters.
..."
Because she couldn't bear to go on living with them inside her.

 
          
And
if, as Winter had slowly begun to believe, they
weren't
delusions, she might not have a choice.

 
          
Winter
walked up the path that led to the doors of the Margaret
Bidney
Beresford Memorial Psychic Science Research Laboratory. The Neoclassical white
marble
faqade
looked serene as always, and the
imposing oak, bronze, and glass doors gave it much the look of an ancient Greek
temple.

 
          
She
pushed open the door. There was no one in the reception area, and Winter
glanced at her Cartier tank watch for the time, only to find that it had
stopped sometime around
two o'clock
. But the clock on the wall said that the
time was only a little after four, so where was the receptionist?

 
          
Winter
walked past Meg Winslow's desk in the direction she had gone the last time
she'd come here, but instead of stopping at the interview room she'd been in
before, some intuition drew her on past the closed doors of the offices, until
she was standing in a huge open-plan area at the back of the building,
obviously of more recent vintage than the Institute's stern classical facade.

 
          
The
room looked like the
Hollywood
version of a mad scientist's laboratory,
from the banks of monitors and recording equipment to the vaguely sinister
padded couches. Overhead there were swags of power lines and connecting cable,
and everywhere that Winter's glance fell it rested on a dizzyingly dense array
of technological objects. She looked around, confused. The lab seemed to be
completely deserted.

 
          
"Can
I help you?" The familiar voice came from above. Winter looked up, and saw
what she had missed before: A catwalk crossed the space above, a door leading
to it from somewhere on the Institute's second floor.

 
          
"Truth?"
To Winter, her voice sounded very small and childlike in the vast, echoing
space.

 
          
"Who—
Oh, Winter. Did you— Oh, wait just a moment, I'll be right down," Truth
said. She crossed the catwalk to its end, and descended to the floor via one of
the starkly functional white-painted metal staircases that edged the wall. When
she reached the ground floor Truth hurried over to Winter, her face concerned.

 
          
"I
was going to ask if you'd decided to come for tests, but it's more than that,
isn't it? Something's happened—is someone dead?"

 
          
Winter
felt the same strange
flexing
inside
herself that she'd felt just before she'd flung the lightning bolt at Nina
Fowler's car. But this time it was weirdly perfunctory, as if some vital
resource had been temporarily exhausted.

 
          
"I'm
losing my mind," Winter said. Her voice shook with exhaustion and fear.
"I don't know who else to come to. I know I said I was losing my mind
before—but this time I
am
—unless
there's a monster living beneath
Nuclear
Lake
!" Winter finished raggedly.

 
          
"Come
and sit down and tell me what happened," Truth said calmly. She led Winter
over to a corner, where two upholstered chairs with a small round table between
them made an incongruously homey oasis in the forbidding technology of the lab.
Winter sank into one of the chairs gratefully, all too aware that nerve and
will could only carry her so far.

 
          
And
desperate enough at last to trust someone. She took a deep breath.

 
          
"I
remembered . . . that I used to go up to
Nuclear
Lake
with my friends when I was a student here.
So I decided to go up there again and see if I could jog anything loose—I
didn't really want to go alone, so I took Nina Fowler with me—from the alumni
office?"

 
          
"I
know Nina," Truth said. "Is she all right?"

 
          
"She's
fine. She thinks—" Winter swallowed hard, and realized, to her horror,
that she was about to cry. "—She thinks her car was struck by lightning.
That all that happened there was a storm." Winter drew a shaky breath.

 
          
"I'm
not a psychologist," Truth said, "but even I know that denial is the
mind's first line of defense against something that just doesn't fit with its
preconceptions. Sometimes it can be pretty scary when other people say you
didn't see what you know you saw."

 
          
Winter
searched the other woman's face closely, trying to see if she was being
humored. She closed her eyes tightly, willing the impending tears away.

 
          
"I
know what I saw—and sensed. It was
real.
But
... I suppose that's what the mad think, too. I need you to tell me if I'm
crazy. I don't need you to be kind."

 
          
Truth's
eyes met hers, and in their searching blue gaze Winter felt as if her very soul
was being weighed and measured.

 
          
"You
don't have to go all the way to crazy, Winter, to see what other people
don't," Truth said gently. "Any number of things, from stress-induced
hallucination to drug flashbacks to an old-fashioned psychotic break can
explain it—and they're all temporary conditions; nothing to be ashamed of in
this day and age. Are you sure you want to pursue this any further?"

           
"I have to know," Winter
insisted stubbornly. If this were a challenge, it was one that Winter would
meet if it took her last ounce of strength.

 
          
"Even
if knowing won't bring you either peace or happiness?" Truth persisted.
"Even if what you discover changes your life permanently?"

 
          
She
was being offered a choice, Winter realized—a choice between the truth and one
last comforting lie.

 
          
"I
want to know," Winter repeated. "I have to."

 
          
Truth
stood. "All right. Let's go back out to
Nuclear
Lake
."

 
          
Truth
drove them in her own car; a late-model Saturn. Fortunately she knew the way;
Winter was not certain she would have been able to reconstruct it. On the way
back to
Nuclear
Lake
, Winter told Truth every detail she could
remember: the sudden storm, the way she had felt that it was somehow connected
to her even though it resisted all her attempts to control it.

 
          
"But
it wasn't as if it were something I was
creating
—there
are a lot of times I've felt that—as if I were controlling events outside
myself—but this was different. And Dr.
Luty
and Dr.
Mahar
both said that feelings of disassociation were a
common symptom of deep depression," Winter finished bleakly.

 
          
Truth
made a rude noise without taking her eyes from the road. "Psychotherapy!
The so-called science of making every human peg fit the same round hole, no
matter how hard you have to hammer. And like a stopped clock, it's right twice
a day!"

 
          
Winter
was surprised into a blurt of laughter. She'd have to stop judging people,
like books, by their covers. Who would ever have expected prim and proper Truth
Jourdemayne
to say something like that?

 
          
"So
you don't . . . ?" she faltered.
Believe
them? But if they weren't right, what
is
the truth?

 
          
"Dylan
says I should have more charity, but I don't. My sister was in an institution
for years, tortured by people too stupid or too lazy to have a spark of either
compassion or imagination!" Truth said fiercely.

 
          
"What
happened to her?" Winter asked, after a moment.

 
          
"She's
living with a man who loves her now, and who is helping her reach an
accommodation with the world. And while I'd be the last person to say there's
no such thing as mental illness, I'd say a good proportion of the people in
institutions are just people who can't manage to survive in the world human
beings have built for themselves."

 
          
"It's
a pretty messed-up world sometimes," Winter admitted.

 
          
"Sometimes,"
Truth agreed. "But there are always ways to make it better."

 
          
When
they reached the road that led toward the lake itself, Winter was faintly
surprised to find Nina's car still blocking the way. Its door hung half-open
and the keys were in the ignition. Truth parked her Saturn behind it and got
out. She walked up to Nina's car, slid into the rain-drenched driver's seat,
and turned the key that was still in the ignition.

 
          
Nothing.
Not even the grinding of the starter motor.

 
          
"I
think I killed it," Winter said, with a brave attempt at lightness. /
wonder what Dave Kelly's going to say
—
two in one week.

 
          
Truth
didn't seem particularly surprised. "Some poltergeists have an affinity
for electrical systems, especially battery-driven ones. Did you do things like
this a lot when you were a child? " Truth asked.

 
          
The
question caught Winter off guard; automatically she tried to answer it—

 
          
—and
encountered a rejection so emphatic it made her psychic teeth hurt. She tried
to force words past that barrier—any words—and was as helpless as any
stutterer
to produce articulate speech. She shook her head
helplessly, coughing.

 
          
"Well,
never mind that now," Truth said in that same easy casual way. She got out
of the car, shut the door, and locked it carefully. "Not that I expect
much in the way of human vandals up here," she said in response to
Winter's unvoiced question, "but there isn't a lot left of the inside of a
car once raccoons get into it, either. Now, do you want to show me where the
trouble was?"