Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (8 page)

 
          
It
was after
midnight
—
the older revelers who
filled the streets, intent on mischief rather than candy, had finally departed
for other localities or their beds, and the neighborhood was quiet once more
except for the blustering of the wind. Colin had nearly decided that whatever
the unrest was that had troubled him, he would not discover its source tonight,
when he heard the sound of a car engine coming toward him through the wind.

 
          
There
were few other residents along this dead-end street, and all of their houses
were dark at this hour. Colin was unsurprised when he saw the shine of
headlights sketch itself across the walls of his living room and heard the engine
stutter to a stop outside his house. He walked to the door and opened it.

 
          
The
night air was heavy with the promise of the rain that had held off all evening,
and the lights of downtown gave a faintly green glow to the low cloud-cover.
The car was unfamiliar
—
a gleaming late model with a scarlet finish that gleamed in
the streetlight
—
but when the inside lights went on, Colin recognized the
driver.

 
          
Jonathan
Ashwell.

 
          
Slender,
dark-haired, and intense, Ashwell was the highly-privileged son of East Coast
old money; his full name was Jonathan Griswold Ashwell III, and his father was
a U.S. Army general. Jonathan was the sort of student every teacher dreams of
having
—
engaged,
assertive, bright. And, unfortunately, young enough to believe that nothing
bad could ever happen to him. He was one of Colin's student advisees, and,
though ostensibly working toward a doctorate in psychology, Jonathan was
fascinated by that science's distorting mirror, parapsychology. Colin had liked
him at once, and so far he had been able to keep Jonathan's intellectual
curiosity in the comparatively safe shallows of the
Rhine
experiments and similar
research into the back alleyways of human cognition.

 
          
But
something had happened to change that. Colin understood that at once, watching
Jonathan bound up the steps two at a time, his face white and strained, his tie
askew.

 
          
"Professor!
Thank God you're here
—
I didn't know where else to go." He seemed almost
hysterical, and Colin feared the worst. There were so many missteps a young man
could make at this stage in his life. But it was not Jonathan's mistakes that
had kept him up waiting so late.

 
          
"Come
inside, Jonathan," Colin said, holding the screen door open. "I'm
sure we can figure out something."

 
          
"No
—
you don't understand
—
she's in the car
—
"

 
          
For
an instant Colin's blood went chill, and then he was sprinting down the steps
of the house, past a surprised Jonathan Ashwell.

 
          
There
was a girl in the passenger seat of the car. She was fair-haired, her light
blond hair worn in a short pageboy, and
—
Colin guessed
—
fairly tall. She was also
unconscious
—
or delirious
—
her head rolling from side to side against the back of the
seat. Her lips moved silently, and her hands twitched in abortive gestures, as
though she were dreaming an unheard conversation.

 
          
He
took her wrist. Her skin was cold and clammy, the pulse faint and fast. He
could see the rapid movement of her eyes beneath the closed eyelids, as though
she were in deep REM sleep.

 
          
"I
didn't know what to do," Jonathan said. "We were at this party, and
suddenly Claire keeled over and started yelling."

 
          
"Don't
you mean she yelled and keeled over?" Colin asked. He felt the girl's
forehead. It was dewy with a chill sweat.

 
          
"No.
Professor, I swear! Her eyes rolled up in her head and then she started saying
all kinds of stuff."

 
          
Colin
slapped the girl's face gently, trying to rouse her. "What kind of
'stuff?" he asked absently.

 
          
"About
—
oh, I don't know
—
the city of the temple and
the dragons in the earth
—
real sci-fi stuff," Jonathan said awkwardly.
"That the dragon would rise up against the city of the temple and against
the temple, that was it. And something about the path of the eclipse."

 
          
It
did not sound like ravings to Colin
—
in fact it sounded oddly cogent
—
like prophecies still held
by his own Order
—
but that might be mere coincidence. What was important now
was finding out just what was the matter with Jonathan's girlfriend.

           
At that moment Claire's eyes opened,
staring unfocusedly past Colin at something that only she could see. In the
illumination from the streetlamp he could see that the pupils were wildly
dilated, the iris only a pale silvery ring around the edge of the pupil.

 
          
"The
Sun," she said in a hoarse distant voice. "The City on the Hill
—
Master
—
He's hanging on the tree
and I won't
—
" Abruptly she jerked forward, trying to get out of
the car. "I can't stand it," she muttered in a more normal voice.
"Get out
—
get away. Stop it, stop it,
stop it!"

 
          
"Be
still," Colin commanded strongly. He suspected what her problem was, now.
Claire bore certain signs that Colin had been trained long ago to look for, of
a psychic Sensitive whose centers had somehow been forced open. Now she was
defenseless, with no shield against an onslaught of sensory input from this
world and the next. With the thumb of his right hand he sketched the seal of
the pentagram upon her forehead, and had his suspicions confirmed when Claire
fell back into her seat, limp.

 
          
A
magickal seal would have had no effect on any mundane ailment, but it had
worked here, giving Claire a momentary peace. Without knowing how the Kether
chakra had been opened, he did not dare to try to close it, and it would take
him time that Claire did not have to find out. She needed to be in a safe place
until her centers could be closed once more.

 
          
While
one of the basic tenets of parapsychology held that the psychic powers were
not at all supernatural
—
being a gift that, though rare, was a normal part of the
human sensory appartus
—
it was axiomatic that unless one were dealing with a strong
Sensitive, forcing open the psychic centers of the mind would lead at most to a
flurry of wild hunches and perhaps a few bad nightmares. Not to the sort of
reaction Claire London was manifesting
—
unless she truly had not had
any inkling of what she was.

 
          
Colin
glanced back at the house. Take her inside? But no
—
if she was already open and
unshielded, bringing her there could be the worst possible thing for her.
Colin's wards were strong, but what lay inside them, though it was of the
Light, was something too intense for the uninitiated to stand against. Taking
her into the house would only make matters immeasurably worse.

 
          
Who
did he know in the Bay Area who was equipped to handle this sort of crisis?

 
          
"Alison,"
Colin said aloud.

 
          
Greenhaven
was a protected place, one dedicated to the Great Work, and Alison Margrave was
rigorous and conscientious in her banishings. No force that Alison did not
choose to admit could enter this place while its guardian lived. Claire would be
safe there.

 
          
"Professor?"
Jonathan's voice was frightened. "What did you do? What's wrong with
Claire?"

 
          
"Don't
worry, Jon, I think she'll be all right if we can get her the kind of help she
needs. I'm going to take her to a friend I know. See if you can
get
her
into the backseat; I'm going to go get my coat."

           
It was after two by the time they
neared Greenhaven. He'd phoned Alison before he'd left, but no one had
answered the phone. There might be a dozen reasons for that, and Claire's
trouble could not wait. If Alison was not there when they arrived, Colin could
get inside Greenhaven anyway. Without that sanctuary, he feared Claire would
die.

 
          
Blessedly,
Jonathan had trusted him without question, and followed Colin's directions
without hesitation even when they led him away from both the on-campus medical
services and Kaiser Hospital. What he must have been thinking as Colin directed
him across the Bay and into the foggy hills of
San Francisco
, Colin hesitated to guess,
though he was in the boy's debt for his wholehearted compliance.

 
          
Though
he renewed the Seal again and again, all during the journey, Claire kept
breaking free of its benign influence. She raved and struggled, weeping and
crying out against things Colin could not see. At times it took all of Colin's
strength to restrain her, and he was grateful that he'd had the foresight to
have Jonathan put her in the backseat
—
and to ride back there with
her himself. If she'd been in front and able to grab the wheel, they'd probably
already have gone off the road more than once.

 
          
And
as it was, Jonathan was completely terrified. Colin had tried to take his mind
off Claire by questioning him in the lulls between her seizures. He learned
that Claire London was nineteen, a nursing student attending school on a
scholarship, and had been born and raised in Burlingame, which made her that
rarest of all creatures, a native Californian. Jonathan didn't know her well,
though he'd dated her a few times the previous year. He hadn't come to the
party with her, though he'd met her there.

 
          
"It
was just one of Toller's bashes, you know, Professor. A Halloween party; a
couple of people done up as gypsies telling fortunes, Ouija boards
—
that kind of thing."
His voice was bewildered. "Nothing happened to anyone else
—
not like that."

 
          
"Did
Claire try the Ouija board?" Colin asked. The so-called game was said to
be harmless, but in the wrong hands
—
innocent or otherwise
—
it provided an undefended
route into the unconscious mind as harmful, and potentially lethal, as an amateur's
attempt to repair his television set with an icepick and a hammer.

 
          
"No,"
Jonathan said. "She hates that sort of thing. Says it's self-delusion.
Parlor tricks. When she saw there was one there, she almost knocked it off the
table."

 
          
"Hmn,"
Colin said. An interesting reaction from such a strong Sensitive.

 
          
Claire's
head lay against his shoulder, her pale hair darkened to honey brown with
sweat. Her skirt and sweater were soaked through; her body exuded the thick
chemical scent of the sickroom and her pulse had a thready rapidity that Colin
did not like to feel. He'd thought he had enough time to risk taking the girl
to the safety that Alison could provide, but now he began to think he'd been
overconfident.

 
          
It
was a flaw his teachers had warned him about
—
with easy mastery of the
Path came a brash impetuosity that could lead the Seeker into contests beyond
anyone's strength. Failure tempered the spirit and taught conscientiousness
and care, his Masters had told him, but Colin had never allowed himself to
fail. Knowing even before he had been born into this life how high the stakes
in his youthful battles would be, he had taken the risk in this incarnation of
retaining the power and control that were normally the fruits of a long life of
striving. As a result, the young Colin MacLaren had been sanguine in the face
of hopeless odds . . . and was perhaps too optimistic now.