Gravelight (36 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Gravelight
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But if Wycherly were turning to the Left-Hand Path?
“But the reason I called is—Grey, what do you know about The Church of the Antique Rite?” Truth said quickly.
There was a moment of silence. “You haven't run into anyone saying he's a member, have you?” Grey asked warily.
“No, but I think I've found one of their old temples.” Truth paused, not certain of how to explain what had happened today. She didn't want to tell Grey about the Wildwood Gate—though, like all Blackburn Initiates, he knew about the Gates in theory.
But theory isn't practice—I'm living proof of that.
“Did you try to banish it?” Grey asked, skipping over several intermediate steps in the conversation. Anyone coming across such a tainted site—except, possibly, another disciple of the Left-Hand Path—would certainly try to cleanse the negative energies that would inevitably linger in the area.
“I did my best, but my best doesn't seem to be much good,” Truth admitted. “It's, um … determined,” was the word she finally settled for, knowing that Grey would be able to decode what she really meant.
It was good to be able to talk to one of her own kind, even though Hunter Greyson was not quite what she was. His power was the result of years of study, not inherited psychic gifts or
sidhe
bloodline. Hunter Greyson was human.
Grey chuckled, in acknowledgement of the effort Truth must have made and the resigned frustration in her voice. “You'll need a specialist, then. Do you or Dylan know any White Magicians?”
Grey was not referring to race, but to belief—White Magicians were members of the White Lodges, followers of the Right-Hand Path. In its simplest form, Christianity was White Magick, as opposed to Truth's own path as its profane mirror-image, Black Magick, was.
Michael Archangel.
Truth thought of the man her sister, Light, had chosen—the warrior of the Light who felt that Truth's own path was a grievous error that would lead only
to sorrow and pain. Michael Archangel was a White Magician.
“Yes. I think I know someone I can call.” She hesitated again about mentioning Wycherly and once more decided against it. “Keep well, Grey.”
“And you, too, Truth. Go with the wheel,” Grey said, bidding her farewell.
When Truth hung up the phone, it was a long time before she could bring herself to make the next call.
She'd invited Sinah to come and join Dylan and the others for dinner; Truth hoped to persuade the others into a jaunt into Pharaoh as a break from the tensions of the day.
Sinah had simply laughed at the invitation, though she'd been anxious enough for Truth to come back to spend the night that Truth was fairly sure it was the prospect of going to Pharaoh and not a desire to be alone that had prompted Sinah's refusal.
One more mystery to solve when she had the time.
But it was probably just as well that Sinah had refused, since that left Truth free to stop at Wycherly's cabin on her way down the mountain several hours later. But Wycherly was not there, and only the faintest trace of magick remained, cold and neutral as an unused hearth.
“You did
what?
” Dylan demanded.
Luned Starking had not been found, and by now everyone assumed the worst. Caleb Starking, Luned's father, had even—though with reluctance—filed a missing persons report with the sheriff's department, and tomorrow most of the area between the general store and Watchman's Gap would be searched with dogs.
With everyone so discouraged, Truth's suggestion of dinner in Pharaoh had been a welcome break from the tension of the last two days. The researchers had managed to find a nice restaurant—nice for Lyonesse County, anyway—and have a civilized, sit-down dinner in a setting a little more spacious than the camper's kitchenette. It was even air-conditioned,
which, after three weeks in Morton's Fork, seemed like the height of luxury. Rowan and Ninian had rushed through their dinners and gone off to see what other delights Pharaoh might provide, leaving Truth and Dylan alone. Truth had been relieved; she'd thought it would be nice to have a little more privacy than usual when she brought up the subject of additional magickal activity up at the sanatorium.
“I called a friend of mine to see if he'd be willing to come and cast out the doppelganger of Quentin Blackburn from the Church of the Antique Rite,” Truth repeated.
“Of all the—” Dylan said. He stopped speaking suddenly, but Truth could see the dark flush of anger across his cheeks.
“Dylan!” Truth said. “You saw yourself what was up there—you said yourself it was haunted.”
“I said it was haunted,” Dylan agreed shortly. “If it's haunted, that means we study it,” he added, as if he were speaking to a very simple-minded child. “We don't blot it out of existence.”
But what about the Gate?
Truth had known she was overstepping the bounds of Dylan's fragile tolerance when she'd made her call to Michael, but not by how much.
Truth had thought he'd be more sympathetic after this morning—even if he hadn't experienced what she and Sinah had, he'd seemed to believe what they'd told him about it afterward. But how much did Dylan really believe, and how much of his true opinions were masked by the professional courtesy of the researcher who does not wish to alienate his test subjects?
A test subject … is that what I am to him?
“That temple is too dangerous to just leave as it is,” Truth said. “Please, Dylan—I don't want to see you hurt.”
“You've stepped way over the line on this one, Truth,” Dylan said, and now his voice held an uneasy mixture of sorrow and regret. “I agree with you that there's something nasty in the wood pile up at Wildwood, and The Church of the Antique Rite is nothing you want to mess around
with. But the site, the congregation, and Quentin Blackburn all burned in 1917, and ghosts don't kill. The locals avoid the site—”
“Then what about Luned Starking? Where is she?” Truth demanded.
She kept her voice down with an effort, not wanting to disturb the other diners. The Lyonesse Pantry was a simple, plain, mom-and-pop establishment that would certainly not thank them for causing a flashy scene.
“Maybe she and Wycherly Musgrave eloped together,” Dylan suggested briefly. “That is not the point. The point is that Morton's Fork is my research project, and you're riding your hobbyhorse right through the middle of it. How dare you make a decision like this without consulting me—especially after how you slapped me down this morning?”
So he was still sulking about that, was he?
I do it because
I have to. It's my job
. The realization that this was no more than the truth—and that Dylan could not be expected to accept it—grieved her. It had not seemed like such a momentous decision when she'd first made it, but day by day, hour by hour, Truth's decision to follow her father's path was separating her from the realities of mundane existence.
And from those she loved.
“I'm sorry, Dylan,” Truth said evenly, though her heart wept. “I feel that the place as it stands is more of a danger than you seem to think—to Sinah, certainly, since whatever's up there has a personal interest in her—and also to Wycherly, if he's gotten tangled up with The Church of the Antique Rite as he seems to have. You know that impressions linger in a place—you've told me that's what a lot of hauntings are, just the playback by a susceptible mind of recorded images—and I think Wycherly's unstable. I think that place could reinforce unstable elements in his own personality.”
“Do you think he's killed Luned?” Dylan said. His voice was still hard with anger; he had not forgiven her.
“I know that Sinah doesn't think so,” Truth said slowly, thinking back to that last scene at Sinah's house. “I …
don't know. Luned wasn't at Wycherly's when I stopped there yesterday, and he said he'd gone out searching for her. He didn't ..
. feel
… as if he'd killed someone recently,” she added.
If Wycherly had killed Luned, traces of her life force—her purely animal part, not her soul—would still have been clinging to him hours later, perceptible to anyone with Astral Sight. But the Astral Sight began first and foremost with the willingness to see, and without that Dylan had no way to experience any of the things Truth spoke to him of. She began to wonder—as she had so many times over the last weeks—how much of what she'd told Dylan about her Overworld experiences he believed, and how much he had only refrained from openly disputing.
“Well, that's reassuring,” Dylan said sarcastically. He threw his napkin on the table. “His aura says he didn't kill anybody, so it has to be a Gate that nobody can find but you. I guess dinner's over. Let's go find the kids.”
Why are you being so unreasonable? Yes, maybe I should have talked this over with you first—but then you should have said yes, you know you should; we both know that uncontrolled psychic loci are dangerous … . Is it because you're as afraid as I am—and not of this? Dylan …
Before she could speak, Dylan got to his feet, summoning the waiter. As the waiter left with Dylan's charge card and the check, he turned back to Truth.
“Did your exorcist give you any idea of when he was going to show up?”
“The day after tomorrow,” Truth said crisply. “He'll be flying into Bridgeport and driving out the morning of the fourteenth.”
August 14th. Lammas, Old Style, and the Wildwood Gate must be fed with the blood of the Gatekeepers.
… “I'll be staying at Sinah's tonight, in case she has any more problems.”
“I see,” Dylan said.
The charge-slip was brought and he signed it, then gestured for Truth to precede him from the restaurant.
Wycherly stood beside Sinah's Jeep Cherokee, looking across the street to a little
boîte de nuit
calling itself the Lyonesse Pantry. Kitchen smells of roasting and baking hung on the hot night air that molded Wycherly's shirt against his skin.
Through the large lighted open windows, he could see fake oak panelling, scattered square tables draped in tired white linen, the worn red carpet and the straight-backed wooden chairs. There were plastic flowers on the tables, and votive candles in tall soot-smeared chimneys, making this easily the most upscale eatery within sixty-five miles.
The thought brought a sneering smile to his face. This was how the other half lived—fat contented sheep, slumbering their way toward Armageddon.
He wasn't one of them. Not him. He'd seen Hell already.
His right hand throbbed, awkward in the light rigid cast that was supposed to keep him from tearing the forty-eight stitches taken in his palm and wrist. It had taken him most of a day to make up his mind to go to a doctor—but even after he'd rebandaged the wound with supplies bought from the Walgreen's in Pharaoh, it had throbbed sullenly, and the thought of infection had frightened him. Finally he'd driven all the way to Elkins and gone to an emergency room, suitably fortified for the drive by several beers and a fifth of Scotch.
As long as he could reach for a bottle, it kept him from reaching for a knife.
It was a good thing he'd held onto his AmEx, because it had cost him over four hundred dollars to get his hand cleaned and sewn up, and himself inoculated with antibiotics against infection. The intern had scolded him for letting his injury go untreated for so long before bringing it in, but Wycherly hadn't listened. He'd had other things to do, but first he'd needed to find a hotel room, and a bank.
He'd found the room, though the bank would have to wait until tomorrow. He'd thought he might like food, but gazing at the trite domestic scene made him realize that he
wouldn't. There was a bottle back in his room—and, frankly, whether his stomach or his liver or anything else would hold out much longer was finally a non-issue. He'd come to these hills to find out the truth, and he'd found it—or enough of it. The subtleties of good might be beyond his reach, but his unruly stubbornness rebelled from being anyone's—any
thing's—
helpful servant.
For a while he'd thought that loving Sinah might save him, but she was just like all the rest—she saw the money and the family name and nothing more. Why else would she have indulged him so much with her body and her attentions?
And if that wasn't the way things really were, he didn't have time to find out what the truth was. Wycherly had things to do—the things he could do best: ruining people's plans, disappointing those who depended on him, failing those who trusted him, and breaking things. He was weak, he was useless—everyone had always said so. And if he'd discovered anything in the last few weeks, it was that he didn't
want
to be of use to anyone.
He was weak. Now someone would discover just how dangerous a weak man could be.
“Happy birthday,” Wycherly sang tonelessly under his breath. “Happy birthday to me … .”

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