Gravelight (11 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Gravelight
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Having spent her life trying to shut others out, Sinah lacked the skills to probe further, and told herself she would not have chosen to in any case. Still, she wished there was someone here to tell her who he was and how he'd gotten here—both to Morton's Fork and into his current trouble.
And just what are you going to do with him now?
an inward voice asked her. Though he wasn't musclebound, he still weighed more than she did, and she couldn't carry him anywhere—nor could she get someone to come and move him for her; the natives of Morton's Fork were barely on speaking terms with her.
“Hey? You?” Sinah said tentatively. She dipped her hand in the icy water and flicked some drops at his face.
The effect was immediate and electrifying. With a rush, all the architecture of his mind woke to life again, dragging itself up through the veils of unconsciousness. Sinah tasted a faint, grudging anger—confusion, and fear, but most of all a strange blankness, as if the hot immediacy of his real feelings had been somehow siphoned off.
He opened his eyes. They were a startling pale brown, almost light enough to be called amber. Sinah removed her hand from his face; her sense of him receded slightly, but she could still sense his emotions swirling through each other in a shifting, changing panorama that only she could perceive.
Fear spiked and then receded as he got a good look at her.
“ … pretty eyes—too thin—looks like a normal girl—blackout? Haven't had a real drink in three days at least; not long enough; it isn't fair—”
Fragments of his internal monologue came to her like scraps of a conversation being held in the next room. His inner voice jumbled into unintelligibility when he spoke.
“Hello? I don't suppose you've seen a St. Bernard with a cask of Benedictine around its neck?” His voice was educated,
cultured, with a sort of flat drawl that placed him squarely on Long Island, New York to Sinah's theater-trained ear.
“I think they only send them out for skiers.”
Sinah sat back on her haunches to put as much distance between them as she could, but there was no real way to shut out the chaotic spill of his thoughts and feelings when she was this close. She'd need to be at least thirty feet away, and no one could spend their entire life staying thirty feet away from every other human being.
Wary approval. Assessment, its measuring of factors flashing by faster than verbalization could keep up. She had a sense that he was surprised to be here—as if he had evaded some danger—but whatever peril occupied his thoughts, it was not concrete enough to come to the surface of his mind.
“Well, I'll just have to manage on my own, then,” the man said. She almost had his name, but it flitted from her mental grasp like a recalcitrant goldfish.
“I'll do what I can. My name's Sinah. What's yours?”
Musgrave-failure-son.
“I'm Wycherly Musgrave. Call me Wych.”
A cascade of powerful images accompanied his words—all unpleasant. Sinah never got the option of learning about people slowly, or of discovering the mitigating circumstance. She had it all, and all at once: the North Shore and its Green Mile, hereditary wealth and unmet expectation. Alcoholism. Violence.
Vicious spoiled drunken rich boy said
Wycherly's mind.
“Let's get you up, then,” Sinah said evenly.
It looked like it was going to be easy—or at least possible—until the moment Wycherly tried to put weight on his left foot. The pain made him lose his balance; his feet slid out from under him and he fell back to the ground, jarring the bad ankle painfully.
“I can't stand up.” His voice sounded bewildered and childish, even to him. Wycherly gritted his teeth angrily. It
wasn't so much that he wanted to impress her, as that he didn't think his response would be entirely rational if she laughed at him. He tried to get to his feet again with even less success. All the muscles still hurt from the crash yesterday, and overriding all those aches was the bright, hot pain in his left ankle.
“I think it's sprained,” he said evenly.
To distract himself he took a closer look at his rescuer. Not a local. She looked … expensive. Wide grey eyes and shoulder length pale brown hair—no, light brown was too ordinary a description; it was actually a ruddier color than that, with streaks of red and gold in it, like an autumn forest. She was dressed in a softly stonewashed denim shirt embroidered with Indian patterns, a pair of white cotton jeans, and Mephisto trekking boots. Small white stones glittered in her double-pierced ears. The whole look was one of more sophistication and money than Wycherly had seen in all the rest of Morton's Fork.
“It looks like it,” the woman—Sinah?—said in a neutral voice. “I think you'd better get that shoe off before someone has to cut it off.”
Wycherly studied her warily, wondering if he knew her, if she'd been sent to bring him back. But no. She was someone he would like to know, certainly—at least if she wouldn't nag him—but not anyone he knew. Although there was something very familiar about her face … .
“Do I know you?” he asked suddenly.
Her fingers were cool on his ankle, pushing up his pant leg and pulling at his shoe.
“Ouch!”
“I'm sorry—does that hurt?” she asked.
“Of course it hurts!” Wycherly snarled, instantly out of patience. “The damned thing's broken!”
“I don't think so,” she said. “It would be a lot more swollen if it were.”
How the hell do you know?
“Do you want to debate it?” Wycherly snapped, losing his hold on his better self. His
head hurt, and he felt nauseated by the dank, rotting smell of the river.
Sinah pulled his leather deck shoe free, and Wycherly unwarily wiggled his toes. It was a mistake. He gritted his teeth. He wanted a drink—or two—or
ten—
and though he knew it was ridiculous, he could not keep himself from watching the surface of the river to make sure nothing came up out of it. Nothing white, and sinuous, with huge dark eyes and pointed teeth—
“—all right?” she said. “Wycherly?”
“I'm fine,” he grunted. A blackout—a small one. He had to get away from this woman before the beast came back.
Sinah ran a hand over her forehead, brushing her hair back. Sunlight sparkled off a sudden dew of perspiration on her skin.
“I don't think it's broken,” she said. Repeated? “But you can't very well walk out on it—or stay here until it mends.”
Wycherly darted a wary glance at the river. It was stupid to be afraid of a little water, but he couldn't shake the irrational conviction that it was
after
him somehow, impossible as that was.
Or was it? What if Camilla climbed out of it while Sinah was here? That was something to think about. No, better not.
His head hurt.
“What is it you suggest that I do?” he asked, enunciating with venomous clarity. “Or do you just go wandering through the woods addressing oblivious homilies to helpless strangers?”
“I
could
just leave—and let you try to find your way out of this by yourself,” Sinah shot back tartly.
“Go ahead,” Wycherly suggested, glaring at her coldly.
There was a long pause while the two of them locked gazes. Wycherly tried to shift to a more comfortable position, and was rewarded with a new jab of pain. A flicker of distaste crossed Sinah's features. She looked away.
“I believe you think I would,” she said after a pause.
“Why not? I'm sure you know that what makes most
people behave according to the dictates of society is the fear that they're being watched.”
I'm being watched.
“Aren't we?” Sinah asked, looking around.
Coming for him, sliding up out of the dark water—
She was cruel, cruel to tease him this way. Wycherly firmly shut visions of undines out of his mind. “No. And if you can't think of anything else to do, why don't you be a good girl and go down to the general store and—”
He stopped. She wasn't listening to him. She was looking back over his shoulder, up the mountain, and on her face was the purest expression of terror that Wycherly had ever seen.
“Smoke.” Her voice was high with strain, flattening out from her carefully educated vowels into an Appalachian drawl. “Don't you smell the smoke? Something's burning.”
“Nothing's burning.”
Sinah heard the words only faintly, but his hands on her wrists were like an anchor, his pain and anger keeping her from being drawn in as swiftly as she had been the first time. This time, the flames receded, and Sinah was outside the walls of an enormous yet strangely familiar building, seeking to gain entrance. She felt dread and a need to hurry. There was a stored wealth of information cached tantalizingly out of reach, if she could only merge with it she could gain all of the answers she sought, but her hands were chained with fetters of red-hot iron—
“Sinah!
”
She felt herself being shaken, felt her mind fill with the selfish fear of being abandoned here, injured and sick, unable to get away to hide before the shakes began and the need for a drink—
The impact of the slap knocked her sprawling, wiping the traces of that strange possession from her mind. Her cheek stung; she put her hand to it as she backed away on hands and knees.
“Nothing's burning,” Wycherly said hoarsely.
Sinah got to her feet and looked at him. He was kneeling awkwardly, clutching at a bush for support. She could feel the suffering that radiated from him in waves, but somehow it was distant, as impersonal as a news report.
“Don't ever hit me again,” she said evenly.
He stared at her, frustration and guilt written so plainly on his face that it didn't take a mind reader to see it. She was far close enough to him to hear his undervoice plainly:
What else was I supposed to do?
What had she done to provoke that reaction from him? Had he seen the fire, too?
“Sorry,” Wycherly said briefly.
He collapsed to a sitting position again with a groan of effort, and closed both hands over his injured ankle, squeezing it as if he could crush away the damage and make it do what he wanted. It showed a streak of ruthlessness that seemed oddly inconsistent with the whipped-dog flinching and snarling of his surface personality. But the surface of most people's minds were a lie they told themselves. That was the first thing someone, who was cursed the way Sinah was, learned.
The fiery vision was fading, sliding off into her unconscious mind again. Each time it came it was less frightening and seemed to give her more room to manipulate it. But once she had control of this new manifestation … what then?
What would be next—and would it kill her?
“The first thing we need to do is get you back to civilization,” Sinah said, standing up.
No! He'll tell—
“Doctor … ?” Wycherly groaned.
Pills—drugs—make it all go away—
“Well, the nearest one's probably in Pharaoh,” Sinah said, trying to ignore his conflicting emotions. “I've got a car. I'll be happy to drive you there—but I've got to get you down the mountain first. Wait right here.”
Wycherly's sudden flash of murderous rage was enough to make Sinah step backward hastily. A moment later she'd taken to her heels and was fleeing down the mountain.
There were old trails leading from the Little Heller to practically everywhere on this side of the mountain, and after living shunned here for a month Sinah knew them all. It was an easy matter for her to grab some emergency medical supplies, throw them into the back of the Cherokee, and head back up the hill.
“This is stupid,” Wycherly said when she reached him. He eyed the Jeep parked a few yards away.
“Would you like to walk?” Sinah answered. “Take the pills.”
Wycherly looked at the bottle of over-the-counter Tylenol she'd handed him with the bottle of spring water. He flung it into the river in eloquent silence, and began rummaging through his jacket.
He produced a brown pharmacy bottle at last and shook several pills into his hand. As Sinah watched—calmly, because her gift told her exactly what they were and his tolerance for them—he tossed them back and followed them with a few reluctant swallows of water.
Without waiting for further permission, Sinah got out the Ace bandage she'd brought with her and began wrapping his swelling ankle tightly. The important thing, whether Mr. North Shore Redhead realized it or not, was to get him out of the sun before it finished cooking him. She didn't think the ankle was badly sprained, and he'd probably be able to walk on it after a day or so if he was careful. And somehow, after the reaction to her offer to drive him into Pharaoh, she didn't think he was going to be any too keen on seeing a doctor.

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