Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (11 page)

 
          
"Yes,
yes—" The voice was expansive and faintly English. "And you must be
little Winter; how delightful."

 
          
Hesitantly,
Winter approached. Professor Rhys beamed—a ruddy-faced, white-haired cherub of
a man, he was only a few inches taller than she was.

 
          
"What
a pleasure it is to have the opportunity to visit with a former student. Do
come in, my dear, and tell me how you've been. Did you make a go of the
theatrical life, or did you decide to stay with painting instead?"

 
          
"Neither
one, actually." Swallowing dread, Winter forced her voice to match his
delight and cheerful tone. "And how have you been?"

 
          
She
followed Professor Rhys into his office. A corner room, it had windows on two
sides, and a small fireplace on the wall it shared with the office next door.

 
          
Yes,
that was right; the first-floor offices all had fireplaces; it was one of the
oddities of the building's construction.

 
          
Pleased
to have reclaimed even so small a scrap of her past, Winter smiled at Professor
Rhys.

 
          
"How
have I been? Oh, you know the academic life; moments of the most lively terror
interspersed with years of boredom. But come in, do, sit down." He lifted
a teetering pile of magazines and folders from the end of the cracked leather
couch and gestured for her to sit.

 
          
Winter
seated herself in the freshly cleared space and looked around. The office was
almost a parody of what she'd expect an absentminded professor's office to be
like: The built-in bookshelves were stuffed with books and papers and edged
with memorabilia; the mantelpiece of the small, green-tiled fireplace was
filled to overflowing with books, framed certificates, and peculiar objects
less easy to identify. It was a homely place, in the oldest sense of the word—a
place where one could feel at home.

 
          
"I
do hope you're feeling better now," Professor Rhys went on,
"although I don't know why I'm talking about it as if it were
yesterday—it was fifteen years ago, wasn't it?"

           
"I left without
graduating," Winter said, as if she were answering his tacit question.
Coming here had been a mistake, she realized. Professor Rhys didn't know that
she remembered neither him nor her college years—how could she expect him to
give her the answers she needed unless she could bear to tell him why?

 
          
"But
of course your diploma was sent later," Professor Rhys said firmly.

 
          
/
wonder if it was.
"Professor, I
was wondering; could you tell me—"

 
          
"Ah,
there you are, Johnnie!" The speaker did not bother to knock, but came
sailing in as if this were his office instead of John
Auben
Rhys's
.

 
          
Lion
Welland
was in many ways the physical antithesis of
Professor Rhys. Tall and heron-gaunt—his blond hair worn in a flowing mane
reminiscent of an old-time
impresario
—time
had given him the brow of Shakespeare and sculpted the hairline into a dramatic
widow's peak. He wore an open-collared shirt with
french
cuffs and a silk scarf tied around his throat
a la apache.

 
          
"Winter,
you remember Lionel
Welland
—he's head of Drama now.
Lion, this is one of my former students, Winter Musgrave."

 
          
"A
pleasure," Lion said briefly, his attention elsewhere. "Johnnie,
love, you are not going to believe what those macho
babus
over in admin have done
this
time—"
He leaned over Professor Rhys, his hand on the professor's shoulder, and
lowered his voice to a fierce murmur.

 
          
In
short, Lion was a textbook-perfect picture of a theatrical "queen,"
and it was obvious from the intimate way he leaned over the other man that he
and Rhys were a couple.

 
          
There ought to be a place for people like
that, where decent people wouldn't be exposed to them!
The sudden flash of
hatred was primal, irresistible—and somehow alien, as if neither the thought
nor the feeling were truly Winter's. The emotion made her feel dirty, and as
if she'd failed to live up to her good opinion of herself.

 
          
Had
the child she'd been thought and felt these things? Winter was almost certain
she had not. Confusion replaced disgust.

 
          
"It's
a
pleasure
to meet
you—again—Professor
Welland
," Winter said, with
such fierceness that Rhys chuckled.

 
          
"That
will serve you out for your rudeness, Lion," he said.

 
          
Lion
turned to Winter and advanced upon her, both hands extended. "My dear
lady—forgive my obliviousness. We of the theater tend to live in worlds of our
own, you know—until someone makes it impossible for us," he added darkly.

 
          
"The
administration is saying that Lion ought to charge for the Shakespeare
festival, rather than ask for an increase in his budget," Professor Rhys
supplied.

 
          
"The
point of theater is that it should be
performed
—not
paid for," Lion said peevishly. "Everyone enjoys it—and you made such
a lovely Portia in your time, my dear."

 
          
The quality of mercy is not strained,
Winter
quoted mentally. "Thank you," she said, putting real warmth into her
voice. "I don't get a chance to do much acting now."
Unless my whole life's become an act. All
the world's a stage, and everyone but
me's
a featured
player.

 
          
"Well,
not everyone can be a Hunter
Greyson
," Lion said
comfortingly. "Tell me, how is Grey? You do keep in touch, don't
you?"

 
          
Hunter
Greyson
.
Grey.
A tension headache flared behind Winter's eyes like sudden summer
lightning, and the creature slumbering in her bones roused itself.

 
          
"Now,
Lion, you haven't given Winter a chance to open her mouth. Not everyone keeps
in touch with college friends."

 
          
"Do
you?" The words came out of her mouth as a harsh croak. "See
Grey?" Tantalizing hints of the past swirled through Winter's mind;
kaleidoscopic impressions rather than true memories.

 
          
A
vase on the end of the mantelpiece began to rock.

 
          
Grey.
His hair was blond—white blond—straight, pale—worn in a tight ponytail; the
harshness of the style giving his face the severe purity of an angel of
judgment—until he smiled. And then Grey became a different sort of angel
entirely; he—

 
          
There
was a faint crackling; the noise hot glass makes when it cools too suddenly,
just before it breaks.

 
          
All
of them had followed Grey—laughing, mercurial Grey—into whatever fancy caught
his interest. She would have followed him anywhere; she—

 
          
Winter's
headache had grown to a searing lightless pressure that felt as if it would
burst her head from within. But even the clamor of the blood in her ears could
not block the sound that filled the room; the antic vibration of the
paperweights and mementoes on the shelves.

           
There was a crash. Something fragile
had worked its way to the edge of some shelf and fallen.

 
          
"What
the
bell?"
Lion yelped.

 
          
Something
very bad would happen if she stayed here.

 
          
"Winter?"
Rhys asked.

 
          
"I—
I'm sorry. I haven't quite been myself lately. It's just that things have been
so different and I'm really not used to it yet so sometimes things happen and I
really—"

 
          
She
was babbling and she knew it, but it seemed that only words would keep the
internal betrayal at bay. She groped to her feet, frantically clutching her
purse to her, as if by holding it she retained her grip on reality as well.

 
          
"I
have to go."

 
          
The
atmosphere in the room was that of the oncoming storm; both men were on their
feet.

 
          
"I
have to go," she repeated.

 
          
"Winter,
can I—" Rhys said.

 
          
"Keep away!"
Winter cried, and
the picture over the mantelpiece fell. The world burned out in a blaze of pale
fire, and Winter did not stay to see more. She ran, and this time no one
stopped her.

 
          
 
ALL HEADS TURN WHEN THE HUNT GOES BY

And every winter change to
spring So runs my dream: but what am I?
— ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

 
          
YOU HANDLED THAT SO WELL, WINTER TOLD HERSELF
bitterly, straightening up from her retching and reaching into her bag for a
wad of tissues. She wiped her mouth, shuddering with disgust. The flaring pain
had subsided to a sick background ache, though its pressure forced meaningless
tears from her eyes. She leaned against the old cider mill—now the Alumni House
and headquarters for
The
Angulus
—and gasped for breath, every muscle trembling
from the unaccustomed exertion.

 
          
And 1 thought I was doing better. Almost an
entire week without a psychotic break. How could I have been so stupid?

 
          
It
had been the room, the closeness—the strain of pretending to remember things
she didn't that had brought on the panic attack.

 
          
The
panic attack.

 
          
That
was all it had been.

 
          
A
panic attack.

           
Old buildings settled—even New York
had quakes—someone next door or upstairs had banged the wall hard enough to jar
the picture loose. And the vase would have fallen anyway. The rest was just
weak-willed self-indulgent hysteria.

 
          
Just
another panic attack. They were what had driven her to
Fall River
, weren't they? There was nothing
supernatural about a panic attack.

 
          
A
panic attack. Nothing more. And cats killed pigeons all the time, and raccoons,
probably—and weren't there coyotes around here now? She'd read something in the
local paper, and if she hadn't, she
could
have . . .

 
          
The
comforting rationalizations settled into place as they always had, soothing
away her will to believe in the impossible. Only one bright spark of desperate
self-preservation blazed through.

 
          
Who was Hunter Grey son?

 
          
Again,
that frustrating tickle of half-memory; something between dream and fantasy
that slithered from her grasp just as she tried to pin it down.

 
          
She'd
known Hunter
Greyson
—rather well, she gathered, if
her faculty advisor expected her still to be in touch with him all these years
later. And he'd help her; he would—the conviction existed even without memory
to support it. She needed to find Grey . . .

 
          
She
levered herself away from the building and took a few tottering steps. She hurt
in every bone and muscle as if she'd fallen down a flight of stairs, and her
head still throbbed painfully, sending flashes of light through her vision. The
parking lot was a long way from here—Winter wondered if she could make it that
far.

 
          
Mistrustfully,
she looked behind her. If she wanted to find Hunter
Greyson
,
reason said that the alumni office was the logical place to start.

 
          
But
tomorrow. Now she only wanted to crawl away and hide.

 
          
She
made it home by driving with agonizing slowness, but just the sight of the old
farmhouse restored some of her energy.
Greyangels
.
Named for the road, or for the creatures that her taxi driver had said walked
these hills? When Tim Sullivan had talked about the Grey Angels, she'd thought
of watchful nature spirits, bound neither to good nor evil, taking their direction
from the emotions in the hearts of those who sought them.

 
          
Regretfully
she dismissed the notion. There was nothing in this world to reward and punish
like some all-seeing Santa Claus. There were only people, and the certainty
that even the best intentions turned to ashes in the end.

 
          
Her
melancholy mood gave way to a spiraling absentmindedness once she entered the
house; over and over as afternoon became evening Winter would come back to
herself with a jolt, to discover the sink overflowing, the kettle boiled
dry—though what she'd been thinking about the moment before she didn't know.
When at last she found herself sitting in the rocker beside the hearth in the
front parlor, staring out into the night without the slightest idea of how
she'd gotten there or what time it was, Winter gave up. If this was a sample of
the unconscious rebellion that Dr.
Luty
had been so
fond of assigning her problems to, then she'd just let her unconscious win the
field for once. She was going to bed. And let Dr.
Luty
make what he chose of that!

 
          
But
tonight sleep, when it came, was an unsettled thing, filled with confusion and
fear—and a sense of fleeing desperately from the truth.
But that's stupid,
Winter thought half-lucidly,
why would someone not want to know the
truth?

 
          
How
bad could knowing be?

 
          
After
what seemed an eternity of false awakenings and
strugglings
with sleep, Winter opened her eyes groggily. The room was filled with chilly
morning light; and her bed was a mare's nest of knotted sheets and twisted blankets.
Her head no longer hurt, but she was filled with a curious exhausted
blankness, as if some fever had finally broken.

 
          
She
turned over to reach for the light and felt a stabbing pain in her thigh.
Grabbing for the hurt, her fingers encountered a thin hard shape— a pencil? She
clutched it in her fingers, inspecting the wound. A scrape; nothing serious,
but surely she had not taken a pencil to bed with her?

 
          
Winter
turned on the light and looked around, shivering in the morning chill that was
the inevitable result of failing to build up a fire in the bedroom stove the
night before. Apparently she'd taken not only a pencil but paper as well; she
recognized the notebook from the kitchen on which she'd written down her
grocery list a few days before.

 
          
She
picked it up—and swallowed hard as she realized that page after page was
covered in writing; loopy, straggling writing; the scrawling letters nearly
impossible to read.

 
          
Names,
written over and over as if by some mad and desperate journalist. Janelle
Baker,
Cassilda
Chandler, Ramsey Miller, Hunter
Greyson
.

 
          
She
knew them. They were her friends—had been her friends. They'd all gone to
Nuclear
Lake
together. . . .

 
          
Elusive
remembrance came—for once—at her bidding. Janelle's red hair. The blond streak
Cassie dyed into the front of her brunette mop; she'd looked like a demented
Lhasa
Apso
. Ramsey had . . .

 
          
But
the memory blurred into uncertainty again; its image, the distortion of shapes
seen through mist, and Winter was left with the conviction that these people
were real, that she'd known them, and little beyond that.

 
          
It's just a meaningless dream,
she told
herself uncertainly.
False memory
syndrome is all over the news these days
—
half the time they find out that those so-called recovered memories are
phantoms the mind has created under stress. You've been reading the college
yearbooks; even if those turn out to really be the names of
Taghkanic
students you could have picked the names up from there. No matter how real this
seems, it isn't. You can't trust your memory
—
not after what you've been through.

 
          
But
she
was
her memory! Winter cried out
silently to that oh-so-reasonable inner voice.
"'Who will be for me, if I am not for myself?"

 
          
She
did not think she could trust the inner insistence that she reject the evidence
of her eyes and mind. That inner voice would do anything, say anything, to lull
her back into unreasoning acceptance; to assure her the abnormal was normal;
that flying glass and slaughtered animals had nothing to do with her; a lulling,
lying voice that would prefer her to be a monster than to admit the existence
of such a simple thing as a poltergeist.

 
          
She
could not trust that voice.

 
          
Boy, talk about getting in touch with your
inner paranoid. . .
Winter gibed desperately.

 
          
But
for the moment she would trust the instinct that said not to trust. She would
believe that the people in her dreams were real, and that they had been her
friends. The best and worst of friends—and lovers. The people who held the key
to her past.

 
          
A
past she had to reclaim ... to survive.

           
"Have you ever heard of a place
called Nuclear Lake?"

 
          
Practical
to her marrow, Winter began her quest at the alumni office, to see if any of
the people she remembered from the Class of'82 were on file with the office.

 
          
"Nuclear
Lake
? Oh, my, I haven't thought about
Nuclear
Lake
in years."

 
          
Nina
Fowler was short, plump, and pretty, with brown eyes and faintly freckled skin.
She was the alumni office's one full-time employee, a combination of desktop
publishing wizard and school historian, and had become familiar to Winter over
the last several weeks as Winter came to her with request after request, all of
which Nina had found some way to fill.

 
          
"We
all used to go up there when we were kids."

 
          
Nina
stopped paging through the drawer of file cards and gazed off into space.
Winter had taken one look at her initially and dismissed her as "one of
those women who'd let herself really go," without wondering where the
knee-jerk impulse to belittle the other woman had come from. Now some
life-affirming impulse to distrust her facile disdain of every human being that
crossed her path made Winter reexamine her hasty judgment.

 
          
Just
what was wrong with Nina Fowler? It was true that she wasn't wearing a
Chanel
suit and a lot of expensive makeup, but when had
fancy dress or the lack of it made a difference to what a person really was?
When had Winter started judging other people solely on the cost of their
clothes?

 
          
"I
did, too," Winter said, smiling.

 
          
"It
gave us all the creeps," Nina said, laughing, "I guess that's why we
went there! That—and to make out; the place is smack in the middle of nowhere,
isn't it? We used to tell each other stories—how it was a research facility
back in the nineteen seventies, and how some really horrible experiment got
out of control and the government came in and closed it down."