Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (18 page)

 
          
The
lights flickered, then slowly dimmed. Winter felt a faint, not unpleasant
vibration that seemed to enter through the soles of her feet and leave through
the top of her head, and the room was suddenly quieter.

 
          
Truth
turned to her and smiled, and Winter saw that she was now wearing a magnificent
amber necklace with a hanging gold pendant; a sumptuous piece of jewelry that
clashed oddly with the prosaic green surgical scrubs. /
wonder where that came from,
Winter thought.

 
          
"Sometimes
when it's really crazy at the Institute I just wish I could come in here and
switch this thing on. Quiet, isn't it?" Truth said.

 
          
"Yes,"
Winter said, surprised.

 
          
"And
if we could only figure out whether a strong magnetic field enhances
psi
—or damps it—and why, we'd know something," Truth
complained good-naturedly.

 
          
She
walked over to the nearest of the candles and retrieved an object from the
floor beside it. When she straightened, Winter saw that she was holding the
small dagger in her hand.

 
          
"I
told you I was going to call up the Elemental that's bound to you. To do that,
I'm going to have to use a symbol set it's familiar with. Don't worry,"
Truth soothed. "While the Elemental has what you'd call an objective
reality, these things
are
only
symbols—the candles, the chalk marks, everything here is only a symbol of what
I'm going to do with my will. These things have no power except what I give
them, really. The unconscious mind communicates by symbol—just think of it as
a very powerful computer with very stupid software. Now, I'm going to want you
to sit here and be very still for a while, no matter how peculiar things start
to seem. I know Tabby gave you a set of centering exercises along with the
tea—have you been doing them?"

 
          
"Sort
of," Winter said. After yesterday she'd meant to, anyway.

 
          
"Well,
just concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply—and stay in the chair, please,
until I tell you to stand up. No matter what you see and hear, you are in no
danger—that's what the circle's for. To protect you."

 
          
"Okay,"
Winter said, taking a deep breath.

 
          
With
that, Truth seemed to forget her completely. Barefoot now, she walked toward
one of the candles, holding the black-handled knife high, like a madwoman in
grand opera.

 
          
/
must be
tireder
than I thought,
Winter told herself. Her head didn't hurt, but everything
had developed colored haloes: The copper web of the Faraday Cage was outlined
in violet fire and she could locate Dr. Palmer in the dimness beyond by the
faint corona of blue about him. Within the cage itself, Truth
Jourdemayne
left trails of blue fire as she walked, and the
knife she held flared and wavered brightly in Winter's sight.

 
          
Winter
tried to push the illusions from her vision and see the world the way it was,
but try as she might, the web of colored light superimposed on the real world
wouldn't go away.

 
          
Maybe I'm starting a migraine,
she told
herself hopefully, willing momentarily to welcome the thought of the pain
rather than to surrender to this new flood of unreason. But it was false reason
that was the villain here, Winter told herself fiercely. There was too much at
stake for her to afford the luxury of self-delusion. Conscientiously, she took
the deep slow breaths that Truth had counseled her to, and forced herself not
to care what she saw, no matter how weird it was.

 
          
Truth
had Laid the Floor of the Temple and saluted the first Guardian, Winter saw,
and did not question where the knowledge came from. The first candle was a
pillar of scarlet fire that somehow held the wavering form of a stag; as Truth
approached the second, it erupted into a bolt of pure silver light.

 
          
Red spirits and white; black spirits and
gray

 
          
Come horse, come hound, come stag and wolf
to bear my soul away. . . .

 
          
South,
then, and a pillar of blazing ebony brighter than any color became the Black
Dog. West, and a white blaze; the White Mare. Then back again toward the North,
and it seemed to Winter now that Truth carried a star in her hand instead of
the knife she had seen before—a star that pulsed and waned in time with her
heartbeat. Truth held the star out to the North pillar and the Grey Wolf, and
Winter felt a sense of completion, as if some great machine had wakened to
throbbing life.

 
          
Truth
walked around the chair where Winter sat again, and this time stopped facing
her. She sketched a shape in the air between them: white fire that dimmed to
silver, to a shape as real and tangible as the dinner plates in Winter's
kitchen cupboard. She almost reached for it, but Truth anticipated her, taking
it and tossing it in the direction of the scarlet pillar. Winter saw the white
spark submerge in the red, and then Truth was facing her again, drawing another
symbol into the
aethyr
and flinging it away to the
white pillar of the South.

 
          
I've fallen asleep,
Winter said to
herself.
How embarrassing.
But she
watched as Truth repeated the action twice more, all in a silence that was
somehow more unreal than the polychrome light, and realized that what she was
watching now was the summoning of the creature that Truth had promised to bind.

 
          
This isn't going to work.
The voice was
outside her, but part of her; the voice Winter had learned to trust even as it
urged her to doubt. For the first time since she had come here tonight Winter
was afraid—not of Truth's magic, or even of the idea of magic itself, but of
the too-real unimaginable danger that Truth was so casually calling up.

 
          
I've got to stop this,
Winter thought in
tardy alarm, half-rising from her chair.

 
          
But
it was already too late.

 
          
A
wave of cold rolled over her, as if someone had just opened the door of a
gigantic freezer. The violet fire of the copper mesh flashed into darkness as
the Faraday Cage was sucked empty of current. The lights in the laboratory
beyond flared into full illumination for a moment, blenching the flaming
pillars into pallid might-be illusions, and then everything went dark.

 
          
There
was a crackling noise and a cascade of purely mundane sparks. Winter heard Dr.
Palmer curse and say something about the circuit breaker and emergency
overrides. She heard him stumble away in the darkness, and over the sound of
his shuffling footsteps she heard the first mutter of thunder.

 
          
"It's
coming," she whispered, and heard the fright in her own voice.

 
          
"I
know. Hush," Truth said.

 
          
At
the lake it had come in the full force of its power, willing to terrify by its
mere display of strength. This time it slipped in, at first only the faintest
of presences as it challenged Truth's wards, then—as if it were some astral cat
bored with its terrestrial mice—came more fully real; strengthening as the
storm did, as the thunder
crescendoed
and the
candles of the Guardians flickered and died.

 
          
"Oh,
damn," Truth said in a quiet voice.

           
Winter had not realized how much she
had trusted in the circle until its protection deserted them. Lightning lit the
laboratory's high windows to a
strobed
blue-whiteness, making the following dark seem even more impenetrable. She felt
suddenly naked and, as every exposed piece of glass in the darkened laboratory
shattered, she screamed at the sound of breaking. The tumult served only to
underscore their vulnerability, and raw impersonal terror made Winter's throat
tight and her mouth metallic.

 
          
Winter
would have run if she could have seen somewhere to go, except for the fact that
the cage, which had looked so flimsy before, was still locked in place, and
despite its seeming fragility the inert web of copper wire formed a completely
mundane trap. It marked out a killing floor, on which Winter Musgrave would
die.

 
          
"I
charge you—" Truth's voice rang out diamond hard, defiant despite the loss
of all her protection. She placed herself between Winter and that which had
been summoned—Winter could sense this, even in the choking blackness—and
seemed to gather darkness in her hands, weaving a net to tangle the summoning
in.

 
          
But
what had come would not be bound. It swatted Truth aside, and then instead of
going on to attack Winter, it coiled around Truth, distracted by pure
elemental fury from its lawful, rightful prey.

 
          
Winter
sensed Truth's struggle, and for a moment the too-real surroundings of the
Institute's lab blurred; her past reared up like a cresting wave and drowned
her in the sights and urgency of the trading floor, where deals that defined
the economic nature of reality rested on the heart and mind and will of one
frail human vessel.

 
          
And
she was there, amid the puts and calls, her blood hammering hot with the sheer
predatory joy—of the victory that meant others were forced to lose. Hers would
be the victor's crown—the triumph and the spoils—there was no room for
second-best on the Street and she was the best; she would defeat them all—

 
          
In
this
uprush
of passion the tiny voice that dared her
to question her assumptions was all but lost—

 
          
How did it reach you so easily? How did it
get here?

 
          
—but
Winter's third self, her
real
self,
the self that was battered and hauled between these two opposing forces,
listened, and saw:

 
          
Just who the hell does this bimbo with her
mumbo jumbo think she is? If she thinks she's going to take me for a ride here
she's got another thought coming
—

           
The Elemental had not needed to
breach the barriers Truth had made, because its ally was already within them:
the serpent of Winter's hate; the rejection of everything that might defy
it—blind intolerance and knee-jerk prejudice, a hatred that fenced Winter in to
a safe and ever-shrinking circle of things that would not challenge her
preconceptions. Winter could almost see the darkly luminous umbilicus
projecting from her body, reaching out to and twining with the serpentine
elemental form, rising ice-pale and malevolent to devour anything that
opposed it.

 
          
It.
Opposed
it.
Not her.

 
          
She
clung to that one thought as to a promise of salvation.
It.
The serpent-hatred was not her. She was not her hate—it was
something that sheltered within her, pursing its own goals—
using
her.

 
          
She would not be used!

 
          
Hot
human anger—a blind determination to be free at any cost— drove Winter toward
the place where Truth lay, and sought something to lash out against.

 
          
"No!"
Truth shouted. "Don't! You'll make it worse! Don't give it power!"

 
          
Truth's
cry was like a dousing of cold water, washing away anger and disbelief, leaving
behind only the fear. With clumsy, untutored instinct Winter tried to draw her
anger back into herself, to defeat the serpent that way, by making a still
center of quietude in which she could shelter.

 
          
But
all the effort she could muster wasn't enough. The creature fed on her, was
bound to her, but was not
of
her. She
could not control it.

 
          
From
the storm outside the lightning flashed, giving Winter a snapshot image of
Truth crouched upon the floor by the melted puddle of what once had been one of
the candles and its silver holder. She heard Truth cry out, a hoarse, furious
sound of pain and rejection.