Gravelight (48 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Gravelight
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Through the grille set into the door's upper portion, Sinah could see the key, hanging on the wall beyond. It was iron and as long as her arm. She could already feel it in
her hands—cold, and heavy, and her passport out of here.
“Yes,” Sinah said, but she wondered if that was true. What if there was a whole world out there that went with the cell? A world in which she would be a hunted alien, never really belonging, forced to survive by her wits and what powers she could summon?
Sinah cast an anguished look toward Athanais: the ghost beneath the skin, the thing she'd always feared most—insanity and death. She could despise Athanais de Lyon all she wished, but how much real difference was there between Athanais de Lyon and Sinah Dellon? Sinah had been willing to condemn Wycherly to death for her own convenience—had accepted the bloodline's imperatives without really trying to fight back—had nearly poisoned a woman who had only been trying to help her.
The temptation to stay where she was—to refuse to try for the key and thus ensure she'd never taste the bitter failure that had brought Athanais to this cell—was a sweet lure. Maybe she should just take the time to think the whole thing over carefully, maybe take a nap here on this bunk.
No. You've got to escape. You've got to get back to the others. Truth's right; if I can't make up for the past I can at least take responsibility for the future—good or bad!
Sinah gritted her teeth, squared her shoulders against everything she'd ever feared, and stepped forward.
She passed through the door.
This was real.
Dylan stood in the doorway of his office, seeing the copper key gleaming on the desk/double cube only a few feet away. He could already sense how it would feel in his hands, chill and smooth and heavy.
This was no dream, no reverie, no stress-triggered hallucination. This was reality—Truth's reality.
This was what she'd been trying to tell him. She did not live by fantasy or acts of faith; she saw reality—her reality—and acted accordingly.
For a moment Dylan wavered. He could close his eyes,
turn back, slam the door. Not come down four-square on the side of—of sorcery, for God's sake; not an allegory,
not
a metaphor—real
magick.
Something far removed from religion or even prayer; a willful reaching into some invisible realm to …
To make a laughingstock of yourself insisting that things exist which aren't even important to most people.
But the key was here. And if it was real, so was all the rest. If he had the courage to believe in it.
“Observer-created reality.” A catchphrase the boys in the physics department liked to bandy about flitted through Dylan's head. So be it. This was the reality he created, and God have mercy on his soul.
“In the beginning … .”
Dylan reached for the key.
Wycherly stood on the edge of the river for one agonizing moment. He knew that in one sense this was not real—that no matter what he did in the next few moments, Camilla would still be dead a dozen years ago.
He looked back at his father—at the image of his father. It was not really Kenneth Sr.—even if Wycherly threw himself into the river now, he would not change his father's opinion of him. Even if he went home, confronted the Honorable Randolph J. Benson with the truth, got him to confess that he'd been the one driving that night—it would not matter. In his father's eyes—in the world's eyes—Wycherly would always be a failure.
It was easier to be a failure.
It was safe.
There was something out there in that river—if not Cammie, then the ghosts of everyone else he'd hurt or betrayed throughout his life. They were waiting for him, waiting to drag Wycherly down to lingering, agonizing death. He could see the white gleam of their serpent-bodies beneath the black glass of the water. They were out there. They were as real as the car, the key, Camilla … .
With a sob, Wycherly stumbled into the water, shambling
clumsily out until it was deep enough to swim.
The water was icy, numbing his body until he could not tell whether serpent hands caressed him or not. He reached the Fiat, clinging to the door to keep from being swept away by the current while he worked to open it. When it finally yielded, the shock made the car slip beneath the surface.
Only seconds.
Wycherly reached for Camilla, and felt the clasp of ophidian fingers, burning and implacable, closing about his ankle. Tears of terror ran down his face as he ignored them, dragging Camilla out of the car, up to the surface. He felt her body shudder as she dragged life-giving air into her lungs, and knew that this moment was the end of every certainty in his life.
He reached past her for the gleam of gold still inside the car.
“Go through that door,” the bright presence said. “Or … stay here with us.”
Truth looked around herself, and all of a sudden her perspective shifted. THIS was the Bright Realm. She had already passed through the Gate. Beyond the door lay only the Otherworld that led to human realms.
She could stay here and leave the confusion of soft emotions behind, flee a world that thought of her as a cross between a sideshow and an outpatient. Return to a world that was Truth's own far more than Earth could ever be. Dylan didn't want her—he didn't believe in her; he'd never be her proper mate.
She could stay here. She could even close the door from this side, a parting gift to the foolish Earth-children who'd presumed to treat her as an equal. This would be the only chance she would ever get. Stay.
And be as much an outsider here?
Truth looked at the shining being. Cold, perfect, pure …
And heartless. Stay, and the part of herself that loved would have no place.
“No,” Truth said sadly, and stepped through the door.
She reached for the silver key. It was cold and smooth and heavy in her hands.
“I am the key for every lock … .”
No one was perfect. No one person could be enough. But this time it was human weakness, not human strength, that the spell was woven of, the lacks in mind and heart and hand and will that all of them fought and lived with every day—those everyday battles became the substance of the battle they fought now.
And Sinah chose good—
And Dylan chose freedom—
And Wycherly chose love—
And Truth chose service—
Not aiming for miracles, not aiming for perfection, but trusting that human strength and human goodwill would be enough.
And in the end it was. The fourfold being took the key forged from all of them, courage and honesty and persistence and patience, and set it into the lock.
As if the will and the gesture had been enough, the Gate swung shut, pulling the key from their hands, and then the key, the lock, the Gate, the hill—all were gone.
Truth opened her eyes.
The hazard flare still burned.
“When do we …oh,” Sinah said, meeting Truth's eyes with sudden comprehension.
“‘Oh,' indeed,” Dylan said, opening his eyes. He took a deep breath. “Darling, I think it's time for a long talk—a real one, this time.” He smiled.
“It worked,” Truth said, shutting her eyes tightly against the stinging of sudden tears.
Never to go home, never, never, never …
a part of her mourned. But she'd made her choice.
They all had.
Wycherly groaned, opening his eyes and reaching out
groggily. His bandaged hand brushed Sinah's knee and he recoiled with a mew of pain.
“Oh … God,” Wycherly moaned faintly, lying back against Sinah and closing his eyes in exhaustion.
Truth scurried to rescue her working tools, looking to Dylan before she snuffed the candle. She packed them away carefully.
“Wycherly—no!” Sinah cried in protest.
The bandage had darkened where Wycherly had bumped it; Sinah had unwrapped it, thinking of bleeding and burst stitches, but what she found instead caused her to cry out in dismay. If there had ever been stitches they'd been torn out long since by the swelling, and the raw, blood-red edges of the cut gaped wide.
The foul smell of infection rose from the wound. A jellylike, greenish-white pus oozed from pockets on the palm and the wrist, and the skin around the incision was the deep purple-black of emperor grapes. Angry red lines ran up his arm, as bright as if they were painted on. Gangrene.
“This doesn't look good,” Dylan said, shining the torch down at Wycherly's hand. The white light made all the colors more vivid, brilliantly ugly.
“We've got to get him to a doctor—him and Luned both,” Truth said. “Dylan, can you spare a T-shirt to get that wrapped up again?”
“No. Let me,” Sinah said suddenly.
She lay Wycherly down on the scuffed chalk sigil. His eyes glittered feverishly with the pain, fixed on her face as if the sight of her could save him.
So each of them had looked who had come to her for healing.
The bloodline's knowledge was fading from Sinah's mind-the knowledge, the power, her own fey gifts, all fading away now that the Wellspring was sealed. But for a few minutes more some scrap of power remained.
She knelt beside Wycherly, and clasped his swollen, seeping hand between both of her own, summoning the
spirit of the Athanais Dellon who had been the bloodline's greatest healer.
There were two patterns here—the thing as it was, and the thing as it ought to be, whole and healed. Slowly Sinah/ Athanais erased the discrepancies between them, and as she did, she felt the power that she wove with slip away, fading as a stove's heat does once the cooking is done.
Until at last the power was gone, the last echoes of it stilled.
And the hand between her own bled freely—clean, honest blood with no taint of rot in it.
The last echoes faded, and Sinah was alone.
Wycherly opened his eyes and sighed. “I had the strangest dream,” he whispered to her, reaching for her with his free hand.
No. Not alone.
“Come on,” Dylan said, holding out a hand.
“Dylan—look!” Truth said.
All three of them turned to where Truth was pointing.
The surface of the Wellspring was sinking, as though, with the passing of the power, the water, too, was vanishing into the living rock once more. In moments, all that was left was a small pool cradled in the bottom of the bare rock basin, and then that too was gone.
Truth shrugged wryly and hefted her tool bag onto her shoulder. Dylan turned back to Wycherly.
“Can you stand?”
“On my own two feet,” Wycherly said, as Dylan and Sinah helped him upright. “And doesn't that sound damned significant?”
THE PEACE OF THE GRAVE
But an old age, serene and bright,
And, lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
IT WAS AUGUST 17, AND TRUTH WAS BIDDING FAREWELL to two of the three people she was now closer to than anyone else on earth. After all that had happened, there didn't seem to be a lot of reason for the party from the Bidney Institute to stay in Morton's Fork any longer. Rowan had already driven the rental car back to Elkins, and the other three would pick her up there in the camper before beginning the long drive back to New York.
Wycherly's hand was back in bandages, though this time the cut was healing normally. Luned Starking was still in the hospital in Elkins, being treated for shock, exposure, and her long-term immersion in the icy waters of the spring. Wycherly had taken cheerful responsibility for the hospital bill, and according to the doctors, her arm had escaped permanent damage. Luned should recover from her ordeal without any ill effects.
“Are you two sure you're going to be all right?” Truth asked again.
“For the tenth time—yes,” Sinah said, laughing. Wycherly
tightened his good arm around her waist.
Truth doubted that either Wycherly or Sinah had the least desire for any more involvement with the Unseen World, but she didn't have to choose her friends on the basis of their magickal power.
She supposed she ought to phone and tell Michael the Gate was sealed. He could come back sometime and consecrate the site of Quentin's temple to his heart's content. At least, he could consecrate whatever he could find after the explosion. None of the four of them had seen any reason the site should remain at all, and they had needed to dispose of the dynamite, if not of quite so much of it as Wycherly had originally carted down there.
“You'll visit?” Truth asked. “You'll write? You both have to come to the wedding—oh, Wycherly; your sister will be there—” she said contritely.
“That's all right,” Wycherly said grandly. “I suppose I ought to get a look at the fortune-hunting gigolo she married,” he added banteringly.
“And I guess I'd better actually make those phone calls and see if I have a career left,” Sinah said. “Or if I even want one. I may not even be any good any more,” she said halfheartedly.
“You can find that out when the time comes,” Dylan said. “And if there's anything I can do to help … ?”
“Do you really mean that?” Sinah said, only half joking. “It's going to be harder than I ever imagined—guessing what people mean instead of knowing. I'll make so many mistakes!”
“Everyone does,” Truth said. For a moment her eyes were remote, but the shadow passed. “And you, Wycherly?”
“I'm going home to say goodbye,” Wycherly said. “My father's dying. I suppose I owe him a last chance to tell me I'm worthless.” He smiled—only a little bitterly—at Sinah. “Want to come with me? It's a great place to practice guessing the truth, and Mother will have a fit.”
“Let her,” Sinah said. “I have ancestors that fought on
both sides in the Civil War and met the Mayflower, besides. And Morton's Fork isn't really home for me—it never was. Maybe we can find home together.”
To which Truth, her arm around Dylan's waist, could only add “Amen.”
A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea.
But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly,
And eat our pot of honey on the grave.
—GEORGE MEREDITH
“MODERN LOVE”

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