Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (31 page)

 
          
It
was almost as if some familiar presence stood beside her, guiding her. Winter
became aware of a subtle tingling sensation in her chest, almost a heaviness,
as though she had suddenly discovered the existence of a new internal organ
whose presence she had never before suspected. This was the source of the
strange painless flexing that was the somatic cue for one of her psychic
storms.

 
          
There. That's it. That's your center.

 
          
The
discovery pleased her—everyone always talked about how important it was to
find your center and now she'd found hers. Holding her awareness of this
feeling firmly in her mind in the way she had held the practice images, Winter
concentrated on the objects on the tray. She would move the key ring. . . .

 
          
Now!

 
          
The
ring of keys on its silver Tiffany tag jumped as if falling upward, and slewed
sideways off the end of the table. The bang it made as it hit the bare wood
floor made Winter jump, shattering her state of dreamlike alertness.

 
          
But
unlike a dream, the sensation did not end with waking. Winter's sense of
triumphant success was submerged in the dawning realization that it was much
easier to uncork the genie than it was to put it back into the bottle. Her skin
tingled and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up; she could feel the intensifying
potential
pressing outward through
her skin, seeking release in violence.

 
          
I've got to get rid of it somehow
—
ground the charge
—

 
          
But
it was too late. She felt the power gather itself; slip free of her control.
She felt something deep inside her
flex
—

 
          
The
bulb in the lamp did not so much shatter as dissolve, imploding with a clap and
a fat blue spark that left the darkened room reeking of ozone.

 
          
Winter
felt the residue of power drain from her body, carrying her energy with it—as
though the effort she had just made was not merely psychic, but physical as
well. Every muscle in her body ached, a familiar—if unwelcome—sensation. It was
just like all those times at
Fall River
— and before.

 
          
"Happy now?"
Grey said to her
inside her mind.
"Or just scared?
Once you take responsibility for things, they belong to you
—
and you belong to them."

 
          
But
the exhaustion was swirling through Winter's veins like a drug, and it was so
much easier to let it carry her into sleep than to answer.

THE HUNTING OF THE WREN

Summers pleasures they are
gone like to visions every one And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter
cometh on.

—JOHN CLARE

 
          
THE COLD AIR
ON HER SKIN ROUSED HER.  WINTER AWOKE early
that morning with the virtuous sense of well-being she usually associated with
an intense workout at her health club, and for a moment after she opened her
eyes that sense of satisfaction was so compelling that she could not imagine
what she was doing in this stark unfamiliar room. Then the memory of recent
events returned, and with them, the sense of guilt and uncertainty—and the
nagging sense of blame.

 
          
But for what?
Winter could not think of
anything she had done— other than end up in
Fall River
—for which she had to apologize. She
shivered in the chill, pulling the blanket haphazardly around her. To be fair,
there might be a number of sins in her past that she just couldn't remember
right now, but this feeling of
omission
seemed
much more immediate than something like that could account for.

 
          
But
she was feeling too restless to chase this particular puzzle for long. Winter
swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wincing at the chill, and barely
missed stepping on her keys. They were lying in the middle of the floor.

 
          
So I did do it!
That discovery made her
check the lamp as well, huddling the blanket around her as she stood. It
confirmed her recollection; while the shade was untouched, the remains of the
bulb were fused into the socket. There was no sign of broken glass anywhere.

 
          
Still a little room for improvement,
Winter
thought ruefully. She ran her finger gingerly around the welt of melted glass.
/
guess I owe Ramsey a new lamp.

 
          
The
flutter of the curtain caught her eye. No wonder it was so cold in here—the
window was open. She went over to it and pulled it slowly shut.

 
          
But did I open it last night before I went
to bed?

 
          
Suddenly
it was important to know. With a haste that left no time for shoes, Winter
pulled on slacks and a sweater and hurried out of the room.

 
          
"Ramsey?"

 
          
Her
voice was so low he could not possibly have heard it. Winter swallowed hard,
and pushed the front door shut, locking the spring lock and dead bolt and
security chain.

 
          
All
the living room windows were open. The heavy drapes were drawn back and the
thin white curtains underneath billowed in the morning breeze. She closed the
windows and pulled the drapes and then went back through the house. Every
window in every room was open, as well as closet doors, cabinet doors,
everything that could be opened. The dull resentful anger was a physical ache.
And escape was only an illusion.

 
          
It's here.

 
          
She'd
saved the kitchen for last, out of an unconscious expectation that the worst
demonstration of the
wrongness
that
stalked her would be there. But when she arrived, all she found was Ramsey,
incongruous in T-shirt and jeans, scrubbing his hands in the sink.

 
          
Scrubbing
them to the elbows.

 
          
Scrubbing
them
hard.

 
          
"Is
everything all right?" Winter asked. She'd hoped for bright neutrality,
but what came out was fear.

 
          
"You're
up early." Ramsey's voice rang as hollowly false as her own.

           
Winter glanced up at the clock.
6:30
.

 
          
"Careful
where you step, it's—" Ramsey stopped.

 
          
It's wet.
Winter mentally completed the
sentence. She looked down at her bare feet, at the gleaming, freshly scrubbed,
recently
scrubbed kitchen floor.

 
          
Who
mopped a floor at 6 in the morning?

 
          
"Ramsey,
what happened here?" Winter asked him, voice low.

 
          
"Nothing,"
he said with gallant dishonesty. But he could not meet her gaze.

 
          
Scrubbing
and scrubbing . . . was it only in her imagination that Winter could smell that
faint sweet stench; stale and organic like swamp water on a hot morning, or
spoiled meat. . . .

 
          
"I
have to go," Winter Musgrave said.

 
          
He
did not argue. Ramsey's curse was that he could not tell comforting lies to
himself or to others, no matter how unwilling he might be to face the truth.
Huddled together forlornly in the kitchen's breakfast nook, they shared one
last meal, and Winter wondered if she would ever see him again. On the counter
in front of her a cup of tea stewed and cooled, and scrambled eggs neither of
them had the appetite for turned rubbery and dry.

 
          
"You'll
be okay, won't you? I guess you're going back to
New York
now?" Ramsey said hopefully. There was
an undercurrent in his voice Winter didn't quite understand.

 
          
"I
need to find Grey," Winter said stubbornly. Lately it seemed as if
everything she tried to hold onto slipped through her fingers like grains of
sand, until she existed alone, without anyone to reach out for or to touch.
There was no time left to be patient with Ramsey's evasions. "Do you know
where he is? Have you kept in touch with him?"

 
          
Ramsey
shook his head, but it wasn't an answer. "It wasn't the same at
Taghkanic
after you left, Winter." But that was not an
answer either.

 
          
"Where
is he?" she said urgently.

 
          
"I
... don't know. Cassie would," Ramsey said, relief obvious in his voice at
having even this much answer for her. "Cassie kept in touch with him. I'm
sure she did."

 
          
"I've
got an address for her in
Berkeley
. ..." Winter began doubtfully.

 
          
"No.
That's old. She moved to SF about four years ago, when she got the job managing
that bookshop." Ramsey spoke with decision, just as if Winter should know
what bookshop and why Cassie should be managing it. "I'll get it for
you." He left the kitchen quickly.

 
          
Winter
pushed her nearly untouched breakfast away from her. Ramsey was as helpful as
if he were anxious for her to be gone, and after what she suspected had
happened this morning she did not blame him.
But be didn't act outraged or puzzled about it, or try to blame
someone. As if be expected it. . . or as if it had happened before.

 
          
"Ramsey?"
Winter called, suddenly apprehensive.

 
          
"Here
it is," Ramsey said, coming back into the kitchen. He set a three-by-five
card on the table in front of her, an address copied out on it in Ramsey's neat
penmanship.

 
          
Ancient Mysteries Bookstore,
Winter
read, and an address on
Haight
Street
in
San Francisco
. She felt a faint surge of discomfort; with
a name like that it almost had to be a place like
Inquire Within;
one of those whole-hearted surges into the
irrational. How could Cassie
do
this
to her? Of the lot of them, Cassie had always been the sensible one, the one
with both feet firmly planted in reality. . . .

 
          
A
reality, anyway.

 
          
"Are
you going to go see Cassie?" Ramsey asked.

 
          
"If
I can." Winter wasn't sure what impulse made her qualify her promise.
"Ramsey, about this morning ... it wasn't you; it was—"

 
          
"If
you do, will you do something for me?" Ramsey interrupted her as if he
hadn't heard. "I'm—oh, God, I'm no good at this."

 
          
He
sat down across from her. The harsh illumination of the alcove light made him
look suddenly old, harsh downward lines pulling his face into a frozen mask of
age. "If you're going, you have to understand, I ... When you were asking
about
Nuclear
Lake
..." His voice drifted to a stop.

 
          
"All
my life I never took anything seriously I couldn't see or touch. Used cars;
there isn't much more rock-bottom real than that, is there? I didn't want to be
blindsided by things I didn't have any chance of beating—you know me, Winter;
I always liked a fight, but only if it was a fair one. Up at Nuclear Lake
..." His voice trailed off in a sigh.

 
          
So he
DOES
remember!
Winter felt a primal flash of triumph.

 
          
"I
didn't like it, but what we did, what happened there, if it didn't come from
outside—from objective reality—then it came from
me,
do you see? I had two choices and I didn't like either one.
Jannie
was just the opposite; she loved it and I think when
she couldn't find that magic any more something in her just . . . broke. A long
time before Denny." He picked up his mug and fiddled with it, not meeting
her eyes. "Anyway, I didn't forgive reality for being different than I
expected. And lately . . ."

 
          
Winter
could feel him gathering the determination to go on, to say what was obviously
so hard for him to say.

 
          
"There
was something Cassie wanted to tell me, Winter. Something that worried her. She
wrote to me—pages of stuff. I wouldn't even read it. She even called, and you
know, we didn't stay close, at least not that way. But she called me, and I
wouldn't even let her talk to me about it. She was looking for help, I
think—and I wouldn't let her ask for it. Because I knew that she hadn't run away;
she'd stuck with, you know, this
stuff—"

 
          
And then she was in trouble
—
or you thought she was
—
and you couldn't bear to think about it,
because of what it might be.
"Oh, Ramsey," Winter said with soft
compassion. She put her hand over his.

 
          
"So
when you see Cassie, help her, would you? Find out what she needs?" Ramsey
said.

 
          
"I
will," Winter promised.

 
          
A
half an hour later she was on her way.

 
          
As
she backed out of the garage Winter could see Ramsey watching her through the
living room window, as isolated as a castaway on a desert island. Although she
was only yards away, Winter already felt as though she couldn't go back, as if
there were some force pushing the two of them apart. She willed herself not to
care, to look to what came next. There was no way to go back, after all—there
was no "back" to go to.