Gravelight (18 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Gravelight
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“You're going to have to get it up here to open it,” Wycherly said.
“I can't even lift it!” Sinah protested.
“Have you got a towrope in your car? We can use that.”
Once the Jeep had been put in place she'd made several trips up and down by means of the chair and the towrope anchored to it. It was late afternoon before Sinah, backing the Jeep Cherokee carefully down the hillside away from
the cabin, could use the bright yellow, plastic towrope to drag the box up out of the root cellar. Wycherly waited by the trap, sitting awkwardly on the cabin floor, to make sure the rope they'd knotted around the box didn't break, and to raise the box over the edge with the crowbar from the Jeep Cherokee.
He felt every muscle in his back and shoulders protest as he levered the box up. As soon as it was free he waved frantically at the Jeep Cherokee and heard Sinah cut the engine.
By the time she'd gotten back, he'd untied the rope and the crowbar had broken the knot of wire away from the lock.
“It's lead,” Sinah said.
She was dripping with sweat and covered in cellar dust. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and neck, its honey color darkened with dampness. She looked more real than she ever had before, and Wycherly felt something kindle sluggishly inside him for a moment before it subsided.
“Lead doesn't corrode,” Wycherly said. “Whoever made this box wanted what's inside to last.” He pulled at the hasp, and then gently raised the lid.
Disappointingly, after all their long struggle, the box contained only a few small objects.
A knife, about six inches long. The handle was of deer horn, but the blade was stone, not steel—carefully chipped flint, sheened with oil.
A photograph in a tarnished silver frame. It was very old—the woman in the picture had the grim, pale-eyed look of the subjects of the earliest portraits, the trapped look of a wild thing caught in a cage—but the face in the picture was recognizably Sinah's own.
“I was right. It looks like this was your family's cabin,” Wycherly said. And the box contained, not a solution to the mystery, but a deepening of it.
“I don't like this,” Sinah said uncertainly.
“Tough,” Wycherly said, slapping the photo into her
hand. “You wanted to know. I told you that you wouldn't like what you found.”
“You can't judge the entire world by your own experience,” Sinah protested.
“Can't I?” Wycherly said. He reached for the last item in the box.
With the modern American craze for Native American spirituality, it was easy enough to identify this item as a medicine bag: the pouch—this one was beaded leather—that members of shamanic cultures all around the world wore to hold amulets and talismans, as well as other items of spirit medicine.
The medicine bag crackled between Wycherly's fingers as he held it up, the leather dried and brittle with the passing of unknown years. The leather was a deep amber color now, but he could tell that once it had been white. Sewn to the front of the bag, amid the decoration of seed beads and porcupine quills, was an unmistakably European earring, a glittering green stone in a gold-and-pearl setting.
“Where did she get it? Why did she keep it?” Indian captive? Frontier scout? Wycherly didn't expect any answer to his questions.
The story this pouch symbolized would probably never be told, but Virginia, like all of the United States, had been Indian country once, before the rising tide of white settlers had pushed this land's first inhabitants ever westward, until at last there was no place left for them to go.
“There's something inside.” The flap of the pouch was sewn shut, but the sinew disintegrated almost as Wycherly dug his fingers under it. There was a folded paper inside.
That's mine!
Only years of an iron self-discipline meant to conceal her gift kept Sinah from snatching the fetch-bag out of his hand. The ghost beneath her skin knew that object—had worn it in stubborn defiance of her fate long after all hope was dead.
But now I have another chance. Now, at last …
“Give it to me,” Sinah said harshly.
“It looks fragile,” Wycherly commented.
“
Give it to me.
”
Without comment, Wycherly passed the pouch to Sinah.
Sinah kept herself from crushing the pouch in her hand. Many years had passed since she—she?—had last held it. With trembling hands she lifted out the object, a many-folded piece of amber-colored parchment. It came to pieces as she unfolded it, and the edges flaked away like ash. She put the segments on the floor, assembling it rather as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, and a sweet smell like rotting leather filled the sweltering cabin.
Here, yes
,
here
—
so close
,
all the years of my life! See
,
blood-of-my-blood. See what awaits you
… .
“It's … a horoscope?” Sinah said blankly.
Open, the sheet of paper was about twenty inches square, written on in colored inks that had barely stood the test of time. The shape of the horoscope—the nested circles divided into twelve wedges, one for each house of the Zodiac and filled with astrological notations—was unmistakable.
“That, and something else,” Wycherly said. Only half the paper was occupied with the horoscope. The other half seemed to be a crudely distorted map of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, with longitude and latitude drawn in, as well as—
“Dragon's Head—and there's the Dragon's Tail,” Wycherly said, pointing. “Geomancy. I only recognize the symbols—it's some kind of fortune-telling, I think. I'm not sure.”
Sinah rocked back on her heels, frozen in the struggle within her mind, a battle against a ghostly avarice that yearned to walk in the sunlight once more. Now that she had some information at last, she felt farther away from any answers than before. A photograph and some ancient scraps of hoodoo hardly added up to a complete biography. And they didn't explain the reptilian presence slithering beneath the surface of her mind.
Nervous breakdown
, Sinah told herself flatly. She was sure she could find many to agree with that diagnosis and
provide appropriate treatment. Only she didn't believe it.
Reincarnation? The bag—and the artifacts found with it—seemed to imply that it belonged to an ancestor of hers. Was she doomed to have her powers turn inward, to shut out the minds of others as she'd prayed to do, only to find herself subject to a chorus of ancestral voices?
Is that how my mother died? And all the others?
Still clutching the buckskin bag, she reached out and took Wycherly's hand.
It was callused—that surprised her—and she felt the hot tender spots that meant new blisters were starting. But his raw hungers and stifled passions poured into her without any barrier, driving the other—
Marie Athanais Jocasta de Courcy de Lyon, at your service
,
nithling wench.
—back away from the surface of her mind to become just another of the stolen souls that lived deep within Sinah's memory.
“Well, it's old,” she said uncertainly, still clinging to Wycherly's hand. “Parts of Virginia were settled in the early 1700s, but—”
“But the Founding Fathers didn't go around carrying horoscopes in Indian medicine bags, no matter what you may read about Thomas Jefferson in your revisionist schoolbooks. And while this is all very amusing, it doesn't bring you any closer to finding out what happened in 1969,” Wycherly observed acidly.
Sinah folded the pieces of paper back together and tucked them into the bag again. She slipped the string over her head, and let the bag lie against her skin. Jewels worthy of a sachem's daughter,
her
daughter …
And this Judas-headed young drunkard, with his money and his family, I can keep him as an expensive pet … .
The thought carried with it a chill disinterest that made Sinah shudder. Not gone, not banished—Athanais was too powerful and cunning to be cast out by borrowed pain. Sinah fell backward when she tried to reach out and steady
herself; Wycherly clutched reflexively at the hand he still held.
She stared at him, seeing her wild-eyed expression echoed in his own.
“Dizzy spell,” Sinah croaked out, hearing her voice as if it were someone else's, a stranger's—hearing, to her horror, not even the flat West Virginia drawl she'd worked so hard to eradicate from her voice, but the strange, slurred accents of long ago and far away. As if the alien impulse that had taken over her mind now was reaching out to claim her body as well.
“Some dizzy spell,” Wycherly agreed neutrally, letting go of her hand. “I'm supposed to be the one who does these unscheduled brodies, remember?”
You almost drowned in the creek below the ruins. What happened to you up there, Wych? What made you fall?
Sinah hesitated over the questions. To ask would give him the right to ask questions of his own, and Sinah didn't dare answer them—with lies
or
the truth.
“Okay,” she said. “I'm okay.”
“The rest of your answers are probably in those boxes down there,” Wycherly said, “which means it's going to take Indiana Jones to make head or tail out of it—the stuff's probably already rotted to pieces.”
Sinah looked so despondent that Wycherly actually wanted to say something to make her feel better. He looked around for something to distract her.
There was writing on the bottom of the inside of the lead box. The inscription was as fresh as the day it'd been made, bright silver against dark, carved into the bottom of the box by a more recent hand than that which had drawn the horoscope or beaded the bag which held it. Now that the box was empty, the marks could be seen clearly—a purposeful line of symbols, terse as a command. Symbols Wycherly had seen recently.
He felt a faint indignation—he'd managed to convince himself that everything he'd seen up at Wildwood had been
a particularly vivid hallucination. To see proof—incontrovertibly displayed—that it wasn't so, struck Wycherly as a form of cheating.
“This is from—” he began falteringly. “Up at Wildwood. There's a sub-basement with some kind of altar in it. These are the same symbols.”
LINEAMENTS OF GRAVE DESIRE
Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
as a seal upon thine arm:
for love is strong as death;
jealousy is cruel as the grave.
—THE SONG OF SONGS
WYCHERLY LEANED BACK IN THE FULL-LENGTH SUNKEN tub, pure sensualism driving every other thought from his mind. As with every other room in the renovated schoolhouse, Sinah Dellon had poured money lavishly into the bathroom's appointments. It had stained-glass windows, hanging ferns, a sauna, heat lamps, a professional-quality wall of lighted mirrors, and the bathtub came outfitted with a Jacuzzi and was easily large enough for two.
A disinterestedly malicious desire to meddle had caused Wycherly to suggest that more answers might be found up at the sanatorium, and Sinah had agreed they should go first thing in the morning, suggesting in turn that he might like to spend the night at her cabin further up the mountain in order to get an early start. With a lot of strapping, ice-packs, and a night's rest, Wycherly might actually be able to walk tomorrow.
He had to admit that this was a more pleasant place to spend the night than his own hot and airless cabin was. Roughing it was all very well if you were one of those
people who believed that privation conferred purity, but Wycherly wasn't. He associated asceticism with a series of only semi-voluntary incarcerations in treatment programs, and he'd never liked it much. Sinah must have some liquor somewhere.
He broke off the automatic assessment, grinning sourly at the habitualness of it. He wasn't going to do that any more, right? A few beers—just enough to lull the black beast and keep the flying mice at bay—but no
serious
drinking.
It occurred to Wycherly for the first time that with his father dying, his days of being forced to check in to places like Fall River Sanatorium in order to retain his allowance were over. Mother would complain about his drinking, but since she'd always ascribed it to his inheritance of her own nervous sensibility, she'd never do much to interfere with it.
All the more reason not to go back to Wychwood, he decided sagely. Especially now that he'd found the woman of his dreams—one with indoor plumbing. Wycherly watched the steam rising from the water through heavy-lidded eyes.
“How are you doing?” Sinah asked from the doorway.
He could see her image reflected in the mirror, but because of the angle she couldn't see him. She'd taken a quick shower before filling the bathtub for him, and now was dressed in slim, elegant, raw linen pants, sandals, and a sleeveless, knitted-silk turtleneck in taupe. Small gold knots gleamed in her ears, and her hair was held back by a narrow suede headband. She looked …
She looked like a woman of his own class, a subspecies from whom Wycherly had fled his entire life.
“I'm fine,” he said quickly, struggling upright and stifling a hiss of pain as his ankle banged against the side of the tub. In the mirror, he saw her wince in sympathy.
“If there's anything you need, just yell. I've brought a robe that should fit you; I keep it for … company. Your
clothes should be out of the dryer soon. And dinner will be ready in half an hour.”
She retreated.
It was all so domestic and civilized, Wycherly thought sourly as he slid back down beneath the water. He didn't want a lover, no matter how convenient. Lovers clung and tried to make you into their mirror image. And the one thing he'd shown real aptitude for in his misspent life was killing women.
Wycherly came instantly awake, every nerve quivering. The pale, cold light of earliest dawn filtered in through the stained-glass windows on every side, turning the room into a watercolor in charcoal hues. He was sleeping on the living room couch.
He needed a drink. The need was tinged with panic, a sense that the beast that he fled from had nearly reached him. He could feel the shaking through all the deep muscles of his body, an acknowledgment of the deepest levels of his hunger.
She must keep something here. The unquestioned assumption drove him to his feet. His ankle only twinged a little. Another day or so and it ought to be good as new.
It was tucked into a corner, but Wycherly's radar found it unerringly. In his T-shirt and shorts, he padded over to the reproduction cherrywood tea chest. It contained four bottles and as many glasses. He lifted the triangular green one out. Glenlivet. She even stocked his brand.
There was no point in bothering with a glass; it would only leave evidence of his drinking behind. Hastily, Wycherly uncapped the bottle and tilted its neck to his lips. Scotch burned his tongue and the inside of his mouth as he swallowed again and again. Fire raced down his throat, into his stomach, outlining all of his organs in flame.
Terrific. You didn't even make it to the end of the first week
, he thought when he stopped for breath.
Self-loathing was as strong as the craving had been only moments ago. Carefully, Wycherly placed the bottle back
inside the tea chest and closed the lid. His hands no longer shook. He felt like a new man, although the effect of such a small drink would begin to wear off almost at once.
You can afford to buy your own booze
. A revulsion that had nothing to do with his drinking suffused Wycherly. He might be the lowest of the low, but he'd never stooped to stealing pennies from a blind girl's cup when his parents were available to wheedle.
And he didn't actually want to drink anyway.
So he told himself.
“Wycherly?” Sinah appeared, leaning over the rail, a ghostly form in a Mickey Mouse sleep shirt. “What's wrong?”
“Couldn't sleep,” he lied glibly.
“Oh,” Sinah said. “Neither could I. Are you hungry? We could make breakfast and get an early start.”
It was, after all, nearly five A.M.
“Sounds great,” Wycherly said easily. Sinah disappeared and he limped back to the couch to retrieve the rest of his clothing.
The mist of early morning hung in the air and swirled thickly about the ground when they stepped outside. The waste heat that cities produced had long since put an end to the pea-soup fogs that they had once hosted, and now morning mist was something that only country-dwellers were familiar with. It hid most of the trees and turned the rest to grey, dewspangled phantoms. The Jeep Cherokee was a vague, dark shape in the distance, its windows misted to opacity.
Wycherly hobbled after Sinah, using a carved walking staff she'd found among her possessions. Someone named Jason Kennedy had given it to her as a gag gift. His ankle still ached piercingly, but now he could walk on it, at least a little.
It occurred to him, as he got into the car, that he didn't really want to go back up to Wildwood Sanatorium and find out which part of what he'd seen was real and which belonged to the beast. But Sinah was set on it, and as usual,
Wycherly couldn't find the strength to protest in the face of such a vital personality.
He leaned back against the seat as Sinah drove cautiously up the dirt road that was the continuation of the paved one in Morton's Fork, searching for the gates to Wildwood. She'd brought one of her trophies from yesterday with her, the postcard of Wildwood in its glory days was balanced on the dash, its tamed and tailored garden an unsettling counterpoint to the neglected wilderness outside the windows.
Wagging canes of wild rose brushed over the windows and roof of the Jeep Cherokee like goblin fingers. Sinah drove slowly through the misty dawn, the car rocking laboriously over the obstacles in the drive. Everything around them was green, a closely woven veil of life.
He wanted to rest, to sleep—and more than that he wanted the liquor that would replace those needs, wrap his consciousness in a soothing barricade that no harshness could penetrate.
What's the point of being alive, if you're just going to spend it sealed away like that?
Wycherly wondered idly, and grinned to himself. He didn't know. Why was anyone alive? It was the central riddle of existence, and Musgrave's failure son was not going to be the one who solved it.
“There they are,” Sinah said.
From the insulated vantage point of a modern car, the tumbledown gates looked even more forlorn, and Wycherly suddenly remembered the bag he'd picked up from inside the pillar, the one filled with coins and beads. He'd taken it out of his pocket and put it in his shoulder bag when he'd given Sinah the pants to wash, but as he felt carefully around inside his pocket, his fingers touched a corner of it.
What was it doing here?
The half-formed question vanished as Sinah turned up the drive, heading for what had once been the terraced front entrance of the sanatorium.
“I don't think I can take the car any farther,” she said a
few minutes later, applying the brake and shutting down the ignition.
Wycherly looked at the eight steps and two terraces leading up to the ruined doorway. Suddenly he remembered the doorway in the deepest cellar of the mysterious ruin, the staircase leading further into the earth and the rushing water below.
“Drive around. There's a staircase leading down from the north wall,” Wycherly said.
Monsters live there.
The notion was childish, unreal; chagrin stifled his impulse to warn Sinah against trespassing into the monsters' domain. He glanced toward her—she was watching him with a half-questioning expression on her elfin face, lips slightly parted.
Sinah drove carefully around the edge of the ruin. The flash of revulsion and terror she'd caught from Wycherly was still making her heart race. The image of the steps, the doorway, and the hideous river far below was vivid in her mind. Of course he wouldn't have mentioned them to her—but why hadn't he
thought
about them until now?
It was almost as if he were trying to lure her in, somehow.
Oh, knock it off, Sinah! Now who's being a moron?
She pressed her hand over the bag beneath her shirt. The bag itself had been too fragile to wear, but she'd tucked it into one of those wallets-on-a-string that tourists and joggers wore around their necks. She could still feel it crackle as she pressed down on it.
She turned the key in the Jeep's ignition and pulled back the emergency brake. They were here.
“Why don't you run on ahead?” Wycherly said. “Yell if there's something interesting.”
“Sure,” Sinah said. She would have been more upset by his dismissive tone if she hadn't been able to clearly sense how afraid he was. His internal monologue was chaotic;
the voice of someone shouting so that he could not hear another's words.
She opened the door and stepped out. After the air-conditioning in the Jeep, the morning air was wet and clammy: a stifling blanket. While she'd rambled all over these grounds in the last several weeks, she'd always stayed away from the ruins, fearful of accident. After the big quake a year or so ago out in L.A., no one who'd lived there had the least curiosity about what a ruined building looked like, and Sinah had felt no impetus to investigate.
But things were different now. And if black magic would bring her primacy inside her own mind, she would embrace it unhesitatingly. She got to the edge of the ruins and looked down, braced by Wycherly's memories for the sight of the curving staircase and the altar below.
She didn't see it.
This is ridiculous.
Sinah looked up to the sky—high, hazy, pale blue, open here where no trees grew—and back down. No altar. No black staircase, more to the point, since while she might not recognize an altar when she saw it—even from borrowed memories—everyone knew what a staircase looked like.
She turned and went back to the Jeep.
Wycherly had rolled down his window for ventilation. Though he'd seemed to be asleep, he turned and looked out at her challengingly as she approached.
“I don't see it,” Sinah said. “I looked. It isn't there.”
“Oh, bloody hell, girl, of course it's there—it's right in front of you.”
The legacy of forgotten English nannies surfaced in Wycherly's voice as he opened the door and climbed out of the car. He dragged the encumbering walking stick after him and glared at her, as if the need to go walking was entirely her fault.
“I don't think …” Sinah began.
“Help me,” Wycherly demanded. Reluctantly, Sinah came forward. He put an arm over her shoulders and started
for the edge of the ruin, the image of the black stairs sharp and clear in his mind.
It had to be there. He'd seen it, touched it, accepted its reality without question.
It had to be there
. He heard Sinah gasp under his weight; pain lanced through his ankle as he dragged himself up to the edge of the ruin.
He looked out over the devastation, searching. The relief he felt when he saw it was so great he could have wept.
“There.” He pointed.

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