Gravelight (49 page)

Read Gravelight Online

Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Gravelight

8.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

PROLOGUE

MORTON'S FORK, AUGUST 14TH, 1917

This grave shall have a living monument.

âWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE POWER OF THE WELLSPRING SURGED AROUND HER, even through the thick stone walls that kept her from it. The hour was late, and the mountain would have been robed in moonlight save for the summer storm boiling up through Watchman's Gap.

Attie swore under her breath as she shook the sanatorium's locked doors. How could Quentin dare to try the Wellspring and think she would not know? She could forgive him much, but she could not forgive him this. The Wellspring was hersâhe'd stolen her land with his flat-lander lawyers and her brother's weakness, but he could not steal this. It was in her blood, in her mother's blood, back to the Bright Beginning. But he'd balked her at every turn, binding her with chains of law and wealth and making her powerless in his search for power.

“Quentin!” Attie's voice cracked like a whip. She slammed the heavy glass-and-oak door with the flat of her hand, knowing that wherever he was he heard her, that he must have expected her to come. Expected her to join him.

But he was wrong.

“Quentin!”
Attie shouted again. The storm was through the Gap now, and the first fat drops of rain made fat dark stars on the fancy flagstone terrace.

She abandoned the front door and turned, running to the back of the building, where the kitchen door was. As she ran, she felt in the pocket of her nurse's uniform for the ring of keys. Quentin had been so pleased to have her come work for him at his fancy hospitalâas if she'd had any choice, her with a daughter to feed and no man's help to command as if by right. Briefly she thought of her young daughter at home asleep in her bed. Little Melly, whose charge the Wellspring would one day beâor would have been. Already she thought it might be too late; Quentin Blackburn had flung open the sacred path to the Bright Lords with no thought for the consequencesâthere was no escape now, for either of them.

A bright blue-white flash of lightning illuminated the pale stone wall beside her, and, as if this were a signal, water fell from the heavens like the spill from a broached dam. The icy drench took Attie's breath away, shocking her consciousness back into the material realm, but its effect lasted only a moment. The Wellspring was roused, and the power of it made the natural world around her seem like something in a conjure-man's shew-glassâunreal. Attie moved forward as if she were underwater, and in her mind she was already within, in the vault above the Wellspring with Quentin and his loathsome congregation. Their words echoed in her inner ears:

“We call upon the Goat to command thee! Come, thou elemental prince, Undine, creature of water: Thou who was before the world was madeâbornless, uncreated, exile from the elemental City! As death calls to death, as slave to master, we call theeâ”

Attie shook her head, trying to drive the chanting from her mind, and as she did the fear returned, stronger than before. For a hundred generations, the Dellon women and those who'd come before them had approached this hidden
Wellspring in dread and lamentation. Even now she would have begged mercy for her lover from the powers that he had so rashly awakened, but the Bright Lords were as implacable as the stony earth itself.

She reached the back door. Her stolen key opened the lock.

The darkened kitchen reverberated like a drum with the sound of rain. The matches trembled in her hand, and she broke three before she coaxed one to light. Once the kerosene lamp was lit, the hulking shapes of the black iron stove and purring kerosene refrigerator cast shifting, looming shadows upon the whitewashed plaster walls. The hanging pots swung faintly, as if disturbed by the power in the air. Attie clutched the lamp tighter.

Carrying the fragile lantern carefully, Attie hurried through the kitchen into the dining room beyond. Lightning flared through the tall glass windows and the tables, already set for breakfast, glowed with white damask and silver plate.

Where was the entrance to his temple?
Where?
He had been so secretive. What if she could not find it?

“Quentin â¦” Attie moaned, and this time her voice held a note of defeat.

One hundred feet below the surface of the earth the liturgy approached its peak in the temple Quentin Blackburn had made. The stone of its building had once comprised the walls of a convent's chapel in France, infused with centuries of the prayers of holy virgins. The altar upon which the sacrifice lay was a thing of an even older magic; from its Egyptian temple the worn black basalt had seen the rise and fall of Imperial Rome herself.

Surrounded by the members of his black coven, Quentin Blackburn, Magister Magus of The Church of the Antique Rite, loomed over the naked woman upon the altar, the goat-horn crown upon his head, his robes open to reveal his own painted nakedness. The red-hilted knife of sacrifice was in his hand, and the consecrated blade seemed to quiver
with eagerness to be about its bloody work. He had told Sarita that tonight would bring her immortalityâbut he had not told her how.

Around the walls, the torches that were the room's only light leapt and guttered, painting the walls with dancing shadows as his congregation whipped themselves with chant and dance to new orgiastic heights, but it was Sarita's blood that would bind the power of this Gate Between the Worlds to him â¦ if the Gate accepted the sacrifice of one not of the Bloodline.

He could have had this power months ago, if the little Dellon girl had cooperated. How dare she set her foolish backwoods superstitions against the illumination of the full power of twentieth-century Occult Science? Couldn't she see how the old world was changing? Even now, the war that was the earthly manifestation of the conflict on the Inner Planes was raging across the map of Europe, sweeping away the old order in the name of the evolution of the Superman to whom all the races of the Earth would someday bow. Once the power was his, Attie Dellon would bow down to him as wellâor she would be his next gift to the Gate.

The frenzy reached its peak. Quentin raised the dagger over his head, not caring now if Sarita saw it.

“Stop!” The cry cut across the nimbus of power like a flash of cold lightning. The rhythm of the ceremony faltered; the momentum of the worshippers was lost. Quentin Blackburn raised his head and met Attie Dellon's eyes. On the altar, Sarita sat up abruptly. She pulled her ritual robe around her and stared, whimpering, at the knife in Quentin's hand.

There were two loci for the power now, and it swirled between them, pulling the man and the woman together, binding them into one great event. Silence spread out from Attie Dellon like the ripples from a stone dropped into a pool. She was dressed in whiteâher nursing uniformâand held a burning kerosene lantern in her hand.

“So you've come to join us, Athanais Dellon?” Quentin
said, forcing a confidence into his voice that he was far from feeling.

“No.” Her voice was as hard and as harsh as stone. “I've come to stop you, Quentin Blackburn.”

Her body was haloed in a golden haze; it took Quentin a few moments to realize that he was seeing that halo through temporal, not spiritual, eyes. It was the light of the lantern in her hand reflecting from the smoke in the air that surrounded her.

“I warned you from the first not to trifle with the Wellspring,” Attie said. “You've stolen everything else from my family, Quentin Blackburn, but you won't steal this. I warned you,” she said again, and now, at last, over the perfume of the incense, Quentin could smell the smoke.

Quentin beganâslowly, oh so slowlyâto move toward her. In the center of the elaborately decorated temple the members of his coven milled, frightened and disorganized, turning toward the entrance that Attie blocked.

“Stand aside, woman!” Quentin barked, summoning up the power that had let him raise an encampment of The Church of the Antique Rite in this place. And Attie did move, but the mantle of a greater Power was about her now, and she curtseyed in mocking silence as she stepped away from the passage.

Half a dozen worshippers rushed into the stairwell in that instant, their elaborate ritual robes an impediment now rather than a manifestation of the occult forces at their command. A moment afterward the first screams came, as someone opened the door at the top of the stairs and a wall of oily black smoke began rolling down into the passage. Distantly, above the screams, Quentin could hear the iron tocsin of the sanatorium's fire alarm.

Wildwood Sanatorium was burning.

He ran to the doorâthe other door, the one whose steps led down, not upâand dragged futilely at it. It was locked, and, thinking himself clever to be so on guard, he had not brought the key down with him tonight. Tonight there was only one exit from the temple.

There was a crash behind him. Quentin whirled, searching for Attie and finding her standing before the altar, laughing madly as the spilled fuel from the lamp she'd flung ignited the altar's draperies. The roar of the flames eradicated any other soundâthe storm, the shouting, the raging cthonic waters over which they stood.

“Why?” His demand was a roar of disappointment and rage.

“I warned you.” He saw her lips move in soundless reproach, saw the fire that licked among her skirts, feeding on anything it could catch.

He could see the tears that coursed down her cheeks in the moment before the surviving members of the coven surged around him, pushing the two of them apart as they pleaded with him to save them where there was no deliverance possible. For one betraying instant the man broke through the mask of the Magus; in despair he shouted out his lover's name.

“Athanais!”

And then there was nothing but the fire.

TOR BOOKS BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

Dark Satanic
The Inheritor
Witch Hill
Ghostlight
Witchlight
Gravelight
Heartlight

“A master of science fiction and historical fantasy, Bradley proves herself equally adept at contemporary fantasy with a Gothic twist. Mixes parapsychology with the occult and strong characterizations.”

âLibrary Journal

“Fans of supernatural suspense will enjoy this high-spirited, smoothly told novel from a fantasy master.”

âPublishers Weekly

“The story line is fast-paced, filled with action, and quite entertaining. Truth be told, nobody does it better.”

âThe Midwest Book Review

“Fine mystery and psychic connections weave a tight plot with unexpected twists and turns.”

âBookwatch

“A tightly plotted and highly suspenseful tale.”

âBookpage

“Bradley's colorful compelling writing style will not disappoint her fans. But don't just give it to them. Give it to those who have enjoyed Lois Duncan â¦ those who enjoy Terry Brooks's Magic Kingdom series â¦ and pass it along to fans of Barbara Michaels and Victoria Holt. Readers who enjoy stories about families and self-discovery will also not be disappointed. [A] book by a master storyteller.”

âVOYA
on
Ghostlight

“Fans of
The Mists of Avalon
will recognize familiar plot elements in this contemporary fantasy quest. Bradley can still spin a wicked web of tangled relationships and motivations.”

âPublishers Weekly
on
Witchlight

“A well-told tale full of mystery and wonder, centered around character whose realism makes it easier to believe in the fantastic.”

âRapport
on
Witchlight

“A tour de force of occult fiction.”

âLibrary Journal
on
Heartlight

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

GRAVELIGHT

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^Â®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429992763

First eBook Edition : February 2011

First edition: September 1997
First mass market edition: June 2003