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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

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She pulled her hand back as if she'd been burned. Though Irene had told Truth about pure Evil, Truth had never expected to experience it; her few experiences with Absolute Good had shown her that both that and True Evil existed in a continuum the practitioners of her own Balance weren't truly equipped to penetrate. Gritting her teeth and
invoking all her shields, Truth reached into the cold stove once again and extracted the book.
It seemed a very small and innocuous thing to be the source of so much psychic disturbance; roughly four inches by six and about half an inch thick, it was almost more of a pamphlet than a book. She flipped through it, wincing at the bloodstains: It looked like a facsimile of a much earlier book, printed in craggy antique type. She caught sight of some familiar symbols—Black Magick, without a doubt—but what interested her more than that at the moment was that the book had come from Taghkanic.
Due to the convergence of a number of circumstances, not the least of which was the presence of the Bidney Institute, Taghkanic College was one of the largest repositories of books on magick and sorcery on the East Coast. Only the various special collections at Miskatonic were larger, and neither they nor the Mount Tamalpais collection in California were as accessible to scholars.
And someone found this book a little too accessible.
It had obviously been stolen—the first page was stamped plainly with the words “Do Not Circulate,” and considering the contents Truth could see why.
She swaddled the book carefully in a sheet of newspaper from the stack beside the stove and stuffed it into her purse, then went over to the sink to wash her hands. The pump baffled her; she worked the handle desultorily a few times, but nothing happened.
“Who the hell are you?”
The rough male voice behind her made Truth jump. She turned around.
The speaker was a red-haired man somewhere in his thirties. He had pale skin that still showed the effects of a recent sunburn, and hooded, deep-set eyes in a curious, pale shade of amber. He looked strangely familiar, though Truth could not remember having seen him before.
“I'm sorry; the door was open—”
And there was blood on the floor.
His right hand was roughly bandaged—it was easy to
spot the source of the blood. He must be the one dabbling in Black Magick with
Les Cultes.
“I'm looking for a member of the Dellon family.” Truth brushed her hands together, trying to rid them of dried blood. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she'd stolen—
re
-stolen, rather—his book. “Would that be you?”
“Up the hill.” The stranger was brusquely uninterested in small talk, though Truth could tell from his voice that he was not local. But he knew who she meant, and seemed to think the Dellons might still be there. Relief held Truth speechless for a moment.
As she stood there, the man walked over to the sink and worked the pump handle briskly with his left hand until water spouted clear and cold from the opening. He plunged his head beneath the stream, gasping at the shock of it. Straightening again, he brushed his sopping hair back one-handed and wiped water from his face. Apparently there was no towel.
“Thank you,” she said, putting as much warmth into it as she could. “I've been trying to track down the—”
“Why?” The question was almost a demand, brusque and abrupt.
“I need to talk to a member of the family,” Truth said, trying to seem forthcoming without answering his question. “Are you a member of the family?”
“Hardly.”
And whoever you are, you aren't from around here,
buddy,
Truth thought grimly.
Not unless you've been away at school for a long, long time.
“I'm sorry; we haven't been introduced, have we? I'm Truth Jourdemayne; I'm here with Dr. Dylan Palmer. We're from the Bidney Institute in Glastonbury, New York.”
“The one at Taghkanic College,” the stranger said.
Truth was surprised. Not too many people had heard of the Bidney Institute, and still fewer knew of its scholastic affiliation. Of course, if he'd been stealing books from its library …
“Do you work in the field?” she asked.
“As a snake-oil salesman in a psychic sideshow? I don't think so,” the man said with a sneer.
You've got a helluva lot of nerve to jeer, considering you're the one doing bargain-basement Satanism.
“Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion,” Truth said aloud.
“That's right. This is my cabin. And I don't recall inviting you in.”
“As I said, I'm sorry for trespassing; but when I saw all the blood I thought someone was hurt. You'd better get your hand seen to by a doctor. You could pick up tetanus or worse out here.”
She hesitated, wondering if she ought to mention the book. She didn't sense the aura of power from him that would identify him as a practitioner in the field, Black or White; perhaps he was a victim rather than a villain.
But
Les Cultes
had been in his stove; it was bloody and his hand was cut …
The stranger waved dismissively with the bandaged hand, and reluctantly Truth headed for the door. When she'd stepped outside, he spoke again.
“You're one of those ghost-hunters Evan was talking about, the ones running all over the place up here trying to talk to spooks,” he said. The words had the faint tone of an accusation.
“That's right,” Truth said. There was no point in trying to correct his misinterpretation of the facts so long as it wasn't actively libelous.
“So maybe you've seen his baby sister? She's …” he seemed to grope for an adequate description for a moment. “She's blonde.”
“Is she missing?” Truth asked automatically.
“No; I've just been out looking for her all day for my health,” the stranger snapped. “Look, if you're looking for Sinah Dellon, she's up the hill. Now leave me alone.”
With a quick stride, the red-haired man crossed to where Truth was standing and slammed the door in her face.
Wycherly leaned back against the door and waited, shaking with the violence of his anger, until he was sure Miss Nosy Parker was gone. His hand throbbed malevolently, as if it were already turning septic though he'd only cut it a few hours ago—how dare the bitch who'd destroyed his family prate to him about infection like some sanctimonious district nurse?
What was Truth Jourdemayne doing here? Come to finish off the last of the Musgraves?
If only he were the last. A man could die happy, then.
His hand throbbed hotly, and Wycherly was reluctant to unwrap it to see how bad the injury really was. Why couldn't it have been his left hand? He was right-handed—what had possessed him to pick up the knife with his left? A set of stupid instructions?
Possessed. Now there's a good word for it
. Wycherly shied away from the thought. No supernatural mumbo jumbo, thanks. He could get into enough trouble in the real world with only his innate defects to motivate him.
He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer, pulling the tab awkwardly with his left hand, and chugged it back. The sandpaper ache in the back of his throat subsided somewhat, and he opened another, wincing at the awkwardness of it. His gashed hand had soaked through the dish towel and the bandage over it, and running all over the mountainside looking for Luned hadn't improved matters.
He thought about Luned.
Perversely, Wycherly tried to conjure an image of her dead violated body, but could not. Did that mean he hadn't killed her—or that he just didn't remember it? It seemed so possible that he had killed her, with the way the pictures in the book had been taking over his thoughts.
Wycherly had never raised his hand in anger to another human being in his life. His few relationships were far too distant for Wycherly to imagine any sort of conflict arising from them, let alone the possibility they could erupt into violence.
And although he'd daydreamed about some nebulous no-fault vengeance falling upon his two siblings, it was certainly impossible to consider standing up to Kenneth Sr. in any way—even in his thoughts.
So when had women's bodies become this delectable, disassembleable toy? He could no longer imagine anything else that could be as fascinating as cutting into one, peeling back the layer of muscle and fat and revealing all the body's inner treasures like some sort of delicious surprise package.
The direction of his thoughts caught him by surprise, making Wycherly groan aloud in denial. This was beyond a joke. This was beyond self-indulgence. This was sick, monstrous.
And for once—now that it had become this bad—Wycherly knew what to do. He'd call his psychiatrist—he thought Dr. Holmen was still treating him—and he'd tell her everything. He'd tell her a girl had disappeared—she would take care of all the necessary inquiries, protect him from the police if he were a suspect.
And she'd write the order to lock him up again, somewhere safe. Somewhere he couldn't hurt anyone else.
He felt a sense of relief, as though he had run a long hard race, but the finish line was now at last in sight. There was someone he could turn to and finally lay down the burden of choice. But first he had to burn the book. Evan's arrival—and then the nosy bitch's—had driven what he'd been going to do out of his mind until now.
He could not make his phone call until he'd burned the book. Otherwise
Les Cultes
would stop him somehow—he was sure of that. Burning it would be a good-faith gesture, proving that he hadn't wanted to do what he'd done. If he'd even done it.
Although it seemed so possible that he had … .
The matches were still down in the root cellar, and Wycherly thought now that it would be best if the book were
burned down there, too. But when he levered open the stove lid with his good hand, he discovered that all his good intentions were for nothing.
The book was gone.
AN EMPTY GRAVE
The wind doth blow to-day, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true love;
In cold grave she was lain.
—ANONYMOUS
HOW FRAGILE THE BORDER WAS BETWEEN PERSONALITY and habit, Sinah thought to herself. It was habit as much as anything else that gave each person his unique portfolio of quirks and desires. It had only been habit, after all, that had made Melusine Dellon think of herself as a little twenty-something actress when all along, deep inside, she had been Marie Athanais Jocasta de Courcy de Lyon.
Athanais … Melusine … Athanais … the way the names recurred in the bloodline showed how superficial a thing personality was. Just a game, really, to fool all the dull blind cattle with which one must share the world—because even brute beasts could be dangerous when frightened.
She was not frightened.
Parts of her memory were maddeningly elusive; others didn't matter. It was her sense of
self
that she had recovered; the way of looking at the world that dismissed the importance of anyone who stood between her and her goal. It was a way of seeing that had been honed through the
generations, and even now that the original purpose for which it had been forged was gone, the will remained.
For her, for all the bloodline, the world was divided into two classes of people: those who were Dellons, and those who were not. She was a member of the only true aristocracy there was—and as with any aristocracy, to be a member of the bloodline carried with it bitter responsibilities. Had not Athanais Dellon given up Jael, her only sister, to the Wellspring? Had not Rahab Dellon gone to it herself when her daughter—another Athanais—died in childbirth, so the covenant would be kept?
Now the time was near, and the bloodline was called to make another such sacrifice: her Wycherly, her bonny sweet Jamie, had to die. She had no other kin—it must be her lover, and pray that he had rooted a child in her belly; she was the last one left of the Dellon line that had sprung so proudly from England's dust to take root in this strange New World soil. There was no other she could send to the Wellspring, and she could not go herself as Rahab had—she was the last.
And only when Wycherly was dead would she—Athanais, Melusine, Rahab, Jael—be truly safe, for Wycherly was Quentin Blackburn's creature, and carried on the decades-old battle between the bloodline's needs and Blackburn's blind search for power.
Worn, familiar memories pulsed through Sinah's mind, as familiar as any she had ever borrowed from a passing stranger, but hers beyond doubt. As if it had happened last week she remembered her anger at her brother Arioch's foolish, feckless sale of their family land. She remembered the joy she'd felt when she'd first seen Quentin Blackburn—tall and handsome with his Eastern ways. Athanais would gladly have taken him as her consort, and spared him from the
teind
all the years of his life. He could have given her many strong children; women to serve the Wellspring and men to serve the bloodline … .
But Quentin had held foolish ideas about what the power that lay here in these hills could be turned to—just as
Athanais de Lyon once had, centuries ago. He had laughed indulgently when she tried to explain—had offered her a share of his profit from her own stolen power, the power of the Wellspring. He had thought she was powerless against his book-magic; that she was only a woman, and weak.
Quentin had gambled against her and lost.
Or at least he would lose, and soon, Sinah thought. Quentin had gambled on his ability to seduce Wycherly and claw his way back from the gates of death by using her pretty lover. Quentin still hoped to end the bloodline forever and take the Wellspring's power for himself.
And if this white-livered descendant of the bloodline had been his only opposition, he would have succeeded. But in reaching out to Wycherly, in making his man's magick upon the Black Altar, he had given Athanais the power to return as well. And she would serve her trust just as the bloodline always had since the first spirit-warriors of the People had come to this place, following the sun.
Sinah picked up a hairbrush and began to brush her honey-colored hair with slow sensuous strokes. She felt a pang of regret that it was not longer; men loved long hair, and she would need a new lover soon, when she had given her beloved Wycherly to the Wellspring. With that gesture, she would keep the age-old covenant and consolidate her power.
And then she would remind the citizens of Morton's Fork of why they had always feared the Dellon line.
Truth walked up the hill in the late-afternoon heat and hoped that Sinah Dellon would be easier to talk to than the redheaded man had been. His face had been naggingly familiar, as if he were someone she ought to recognize, but so far, inspiration had not come.
Maybe Dylan would know who he was.
The ground rose steeply—something Truth remembered from her previous trip up Watchman's Gap Trace. Ahead,
through the trees, she could see a building that might be Sinah Dellon's cabin.
It was clear that the old frame building had once been the schoolhouse for the local children, but a skilled hand had been at work on it since then—Truth could see where the roof had been raised and an addition built out through the back. The tall windows were filled with stained glass and covered with ornamental screens, and a brick apron had been laid around the foundation to showcase planters filled with artfully chosen wildflowers. There was a dark green four-wheel drive vehicle parked next to the front door, and electric lights shone through the clear glass of the fanlight over the door.
But the closer Truth got, the less this place looked as if anyone was living here at all. Weeds were taking over from wildflowers in the terracotta planters, and everywhere about the building there was an odd air of neglect, as though its inhabitant no longer cared about such things. Had Truth come all this way—tried everything she could think of—only to turn down one more blind alleyway?
There was only one way to find out. And if Sinah Dellon was here, all Truth had to do was convince a strange woman she had never met that she, Truth, wasn't a raving lunatic.
Truth stepped up to the door and knocked.
It wouldn't be Wycherly, Sinah thought, setting down her hairbrush and turning away from the mirror. He'd been gone this morning when she woke up—he often was, as if the devils that seized him in sleep could be outrun in waking—but when he returned, having eluded them or despaired of doing so, he'd use his key to gain entry. She'd become used to wakening in the middle of the night to see him standing over her bed, but she was not afraid. He was too weak, too gentle, to act with the same harsh necessity that the bloodline knew. Unless Quentin gained the power to mount him fully—and that meant blood sacrifice—he was no danger to the bloodline or the Wellspring.
She glanced out the east window in the loft, looking down on her front doorstep. There was a dark-haired woman standing on the step, hand raised to knock again. A stranger; not someone local.
Why?
Suspiciously, Sinah hastened down the steps.
“Yes?”
“
Why, she looks perfectly normal!”
Though the strange numbing of Sinah's gift persisted, granting her only the surface of the other's emotions, it wasn't hard to guess the woman's thoughts from the expression on her face. So the stranger had expected to see the witch-woman of Morton's Fork, had she? Sinah smiled to herself. This one should be easy enough to send on her way.
“Can I help you? Are you lost?” Sinah said, schooling her voice to a youthful sweetness.
“Are you Sinah Dellon? I'm Truth Jourdemayne. Can I talk with you for a moment?”
Sinah smiled wider and opened the door.
“You have a lovely home,” Truth said, looking around the great room.
“Thank you. Can I get you something cold to drink?” Sinah said. Let her lull the chit with fair speech until she'd cozened the purpose of her visit from her.
“I'd appreciate it,” Truth said frankly, “it's a long walk up that hill. But let me introduce myself. I'm Truth Jourdemayne, and I'm looking for Sinah Dellon. The Dellons used to live around here; they sold the land Wildwood was built on.”
“That was my brother,” Sinah said without thinking. Never would she forgive Arioch for that foolish act of greed and rebellion against the bloodline; never, never, never—
“Who are you?” Truth demanded. “Are you the Guardian of the Gate?”
Sinah stared at her, grey eyes narrowing, and suddenly Truth Jourdemayne shimmered with a strange authority, a
brightness that banished the bloodline's overmind as if it were only a fever-borne delusion.
“Gate? What Gate?” Sinah demanded, rattled. “Who
are
you?” She felt giddy and nauseous, and groped for the safety of a chair.
“I am Truth Jourdemayne, Gatekeeper of Shadow's Gate. I know that your great-great-grandmother once owned the land that Wildwood Sanatorium is built on. And I know there's an open Gate up at Wildwood—a gate that you need to close.”
For the next hour Truth spoke as persuasively, as compellingly, as honestly as she knew how. She told Sinah all she knew about the
sidhe
Gates, holding nothing back—and realizing as she spoke that she knew far less of them than she needed to. She explained about the guardianship, the bloodlines—and the terrible power an open Gate possessed to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting lives around it.
Sinah listened with a grave, unreadable expression upon her face—as if she was listening not only to what Truth said, but to what she left unsaid as well. It was an expression Truth had seen many times—on her sister Light's face.
“You're a telepath, aren't you?” Truth said. “You can read minds.”
For years Sinah had half-unconsciously awaited that accusation and had planned many times what she would say in response. Now it had come—now when her power was leaving her—and all Sinah could do was weep.
Truth held the younger woman in her arms, rocking and soothing her as if Sinah were younger still.
“How did you know?” Sinah finally asked. Truth's emotions were a faint backdrop to her own thoughts, as peaceful and even as the ocean. Sinah felt as empty and hollow as a bell without either outside thoughts or the bloodline's chorus to fill her.
“My sister is a telepath—although I suppose you might call her gift something closer to second sight. She was institutionalized
for it, before I knew her. True psychics don't have an easy time of it in our culture.”
It was a simple acceptance that healed a wound Sinah hadn't known she'd suffered; an acknowledgment that, however different Sinah Dellon might be, she too was human.
“I—” Sinah hovered at the edge of telling Truth everything—about the bloodline, that it had killed many times over, that she was about to kill again.
Was this woman kin to her? Was she a sacrifice that the Gate would accept? Sinah heard the faint question in the back of her own mind; the inward chorus seeping back, as inexorably as groundwater rose after rain.
“I'm not what you think,” Sinah finally said. “You don't know what I—what we—have done.”
“The Gate demands a human sacrifice in each generation,” Truth answered. “Did you think I didn't know? But it's the Gate that kills, Sinah—not you or your family. And if you close it you can stop the deaths once and for all.”
“No.” Sinah spoke in a low voice, clasping her hands in her lap and staring down at them. “You don't understand. The Wellspring—what you call the Gate—takes its tithe; that's so. But it only chooses if you don't choose for it. We've always had to choose.”
“And who have you chosen?” Truth asked.
Sinah hung her head, not answering.
“Sinah, it doesn't have to be this way. If you close and seal the Gate, no one else will have to die. The Gate won't be able to choose anyone, and you won't have to either. Do you
want
to kill people?” Truth asked.
“No.” The bitter necessity of generations of the bloodline rose up in her to answer that. Oh, to be free of those intolerable choices, of the deaths of lover, brother, son … !
But if she sealed the Wellspring, her power—for good as well as for ill—would vanish. Sinah stared at Truth with wide grey eyes, feeling the painful division between her trueborn self—city girl, Broadway actress—and the bloodline
through which the passions and memories of countless generations of Dellon woman had endured.
“But I can't. I don't have any control over the Wellspring,” Sinah gasped wildly.
Oh, help me, help me, help me
, she cried inside. “You don't understand; I'm not really me at all … .”
“You can control the Gate, Sinah, I swear it. Come with me, let me show you—” Truth said.
“I thought I'd find you here. Which one of you bitches has it?”

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