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Authors: Mercedes Lackey

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She shook her head. “No. After I cleaned out all of
the mess that had been left from before we took the land, I haven’t had
any trouble.”

“It’s probably just some disgusting factory
then,” Elizabeth said with a frown. “Honestly! You would think that
when fish and animals begin to die, the owners would figure out for themselves
that the poison they’ve dumped in the water is going to spread!”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “How can they
do
this?”

“But it never spreads to where they live,”
Sebastian pointed out dryly, though anger smoldered in the back of his eyes as
well. “That’s the thing. If it was their children that suffered,
coughing out their lives in black air, dying from poisoned water, it would be
different. It’s
only
the children of the poor, of their workers.
And there are always more children of the poor to take their places.”

“It’s doing things to the magic.”
Elizabeth’s frown deepened. “Twisting it. Making it darker. I don’t
know—if I were able to find a Left Hand Path occultist behind some of
this, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. But I haven’t, and
neither has anyone else.”

“Then it has to be just a coincidence,” Thomas
said firmly. “Don’t look for enemies where there are none. We have
enemies enough as it is.”

Elizabeth let out a long breath. “Yes, and I should
be concentrating on—and training our newest Mage to deal with—those
existent enemies, shouldn’t I? Well said, Thomas.”

Enemies? We—I—have enemies?

“The least of the many things you need to teach her,
and I am profoundly grateful that you are here, my dear,” Thomas replied
with a smile. “I hope I have given her a thorough grounding, but your
teaching will be to mine as university education is to public school.”

It is?
The thought of enemies evaporated from her
mind.

“Which leads to the question—when do you want
to start?” Margherita asked.

“Tomorrow,” Elizabeth replied, to Marina’s
unbounded joy, though for some reason, there seemed to be a shadow over the
smile she bestowed on her new protegee. “Definitely tomorrow. No point in
wasting time; we have a lot to share, and the sooner we start, the better.”

 

Chapter Four

BREAKFAST was a cheerful affair, despite the gray clouds
outside. The rain had stopped at least, and one of Margherita’s favorite
roosters crowed lustily atop the stone wall around the farmyard. Sarah did the
breakfast cooking. She excelled at solid farm food, and her breakfasts were a
staple at Blackbird Cottage. Everyone ate breakfast together in the kitchen,
including little Jenny the maidservant, with Sarah joining them when she was
sure no one else would want anything more.

This morning there was a new face at the table when Marina
came down: Elizabeth, with her hair braided and the braid coiled atop her head,
a shawl about her shoulders, cheerfully consuming bacon and eggs and chatting
with old Sarah.

The cook was one of those substantial country women, once
dark-haired, but now gone gray in their service. She was seldom without a shawl
of her own knitting about her shoulders; plain in dress, plain-spoken, she had
mothered Marina as much as Margherita, and usually was the one to mete out
punishments that the soft-hearted Margherita could not bear to administer.

What she thought of the strange guests that often stayed
here, she seldom said. Certainly she was plied for information about her
employers whenever she went down to the village, but if she ever gossiped, no
harm had come of it. And she was the perfect servant for this odd household;
she was the one who found the new maidservants (usually from among her vast
network of relatives) when their girls were ready for more exacting duties (and
higher pay) in larger households. The hired man John was one of her many
nephews. Sarah was the unmoving domestic center of the household, the person
who made it possible for all three artists to get on with their work without
interruption. She trained the succession of maids—Jenny was the
eighth—and made them understand that the free-and-easy ways of this
household were not what they could expect in the next. Thus far, the girls had
all chosen to move on when places in wealthier households opened, but it looked
as if Jenny might stay. She was timid by nature; they all treated her with
consideration for her shyness, and Sarah had confided to Marina one day that
the idea of going into a Great House was too frightening for Jenny to
contemplate. Sarah had seemed pleased by that; Marina thought that their cook
was getting tired of the continual succession of girls, and would welcome an
end to it.

“Oh, bless you, mum,” Sarah said, in answer to
some question of Elizabeth’s that Marina hadn’t heard. “E’en
when this table’s crowded ‘round with daft painterly chaps, I’d
druther be workin’ for Master Sebastian.”

“And why would that be, Sarah?” Thomas asked,
grinning over a slice of buttered toast. “Could it be that our company is
so fascinating that you would be bored working for anyone else?”

“Lor’ help you, ‘cause none of you lot
ever wants breakfuss afore eight.” Sarah laughed. “Farmer, now,
they’re up before dawn, and wants their breakfuss afore that! As for a
Great House, well e’en if I could get a place there, it’d be
cooking for the help, an they be at work near as early as a farmer. Here, I get
to lie abed like one of th’ gentry!”

“You
are
one of the gentry, Sarah,”
said Margherita from the doorway, her abundant dark brown hair tumbling down
around her shoulders, shining in the light from the oil lamp suspended above
the kitchen table. “You’re a Countess of Cooks, a Duchess of
Domestic Order.”

Sarah giggled, and so did little Jenny. “Go on with
you!” Sarah replied, blushing with pleasure. “Anyroad, as for going
on to a Great House, like I says, my cooking’s too plain for the likes o’
they. And I’m not minded to fiddle with none of your French messes.
Missus Margherita can do all that if she wants, but plain cooking was good
enough for my old mother, and it’s good enough for me.”

Margherita took her place at the broad, heavy old table and
Sarah brought over the skillet to serve her fresh sausages and eggs.

Marina poured more tea for herself and her aunt. She wanted
to ask their guest what they were going to start with, but she was constrained
by the presence of the two servants.

“I think I’ll borrow one of your workrooms for
my visit, Margherita,” Elizabeth said casually. “The little one
just off the library. I’d like to organize the notes I brought with me,
then get started on my project.”

“Project, ma’am?” said Sarah, who was
always interested in at least knowing what the guests at Blackbird Cottage were
about. Perhaps in any other household, she’d have been rebuked or even
sacked for her curiosity, but curiosity wasn’t considered a vice here,
not even in servants.

And Elizabeth already knew that from her previous visits,
so she answered Sarah just as she would have another guest, or a visitor from
the village. “I’m trying to do something scholarly, collecting old
songs, Sarah,” she said. “Very old songs—the ones that people
might have heard from their grandparents.”

“What, them old ballads? Robin Hood an’ Green
Knights an’ witches an’ ghosts an’ all?” Sarah
answered, looking both surprised and a little pleased. “Is this something
for them university chaps?”

“Why, exactly! How did you know?” Elizabeth
might very well really have been here to collect folk ballads from the way she
responded. Marina wasn’t surprised that Sarah knew that scholars were
collecting folk songs for their studies; with all of the talk around this
table, Sarah picked up a great deal of what was going on in the world outside
their little village.

“Well, stands to reason, don’t it? Clever lady
like you? Went to university yourself, didn’t you?” Sarah chuckled,
and tenderly forked slices of thick bacon onto Marina’s plate, then onto
little Jenny’s. After all these years, she knew exactly what each of them
liked best, and how much they were likely to want. “I could ask around,
down in village for you,” she offered deferentially. “Some folks
might know a song or two, and a pint would loosen tongues, even for a strange
lady.”

“If you would be so kind, I would greatly appreciate
your help, Sarah,” Elizabeth replied with all sincerity, though her eyes
were twinkling. Marina knew why; her feigned errand had gotten an unexpected
touch of veracity.

“Pleased to, ma’am,” Sarah replied, and
turned back to her cooking with a flush of pleasure.

But Marina knew that the “little workroom” was
the one room in the house used for serious and involved Magical work.
Margherita had put compulsions upon the door that worked better than any orders
forbidding Jenny or Sarah—or anyone else who was not a
magician—from entering. That was a special ability of the Earth-Master, to
create compulsions that worked even on those without a hint of magic in their
souls. Oh, others could do it, but the trick came most easily to Earth Masters.

Each compulsion was gently tailored to the individual. For
Jenny, the moment she touched the door, she would be under the impression that
she had just cleaned the room and was leaving. Sarah, on the other hand, would
suddenly think that there must be something on the stove or in the oven that
needed tending. Visitors would believe that the door was locked, even though it
wasn’t, and would promptly forget about the room the moment they turned
away.

“That will be fine, Elizabeth. Would you like Marina
to help you?” Margherita replied casually.

“I certainly would! You know me—completely
hopeless when it comes to organization!” Elizabeth laughed, and the
conversation went on to other things, leaving Marina tingling with excitement
and anticipation.

Elizabeth lingered over her tea until Marina finished her
breakfast, then nodded at her as she rose. Marina jumped to her feet, and
followed the older woman out of the kitchen and down to the workroom. As an
Elemental Master herself, Elizabeth was not affected by the compulsions on the
door, and opened it without a pause, beckoning to Marina to follow.

According to Uncle Thomas, many Elemental Masters preferred
to have a religious cast to their magical workrooms; they often had an altar
and religious icons such as crucifixes, statues of ancient gods or goddesses,
censers for incense, and other religious paraphernalia. But since this room was
shared by three—counting Marina,
four
—magicians, all of
whom had their own very definite ideas about their magic, the compromise had
been reached of leaving it bare. Uncle Thomas had installed cupboards with
shutters to close them on all of the walls, and whatever each person felt was
absolutely necessary to his or her working lived in the cupboards until needed.
There were two benches pushed up against one wall, and a small table (which
could presumably serve as an altar) against another. Although the room did not
have a fireplace of its own, the back wall of the library fireplace radiated
quite enough warmth for the small space.

And it had only one small window, ivy-covered and high.
Marina would have had to stand on tiptoe to see through it. So it would be
fairly difficult for anyone to spy on whatever was going on in here.

The floor was of slate, like the rest of the ground floor
of the farmhouse; the panels of the shutters were of wood with grain that
suggested far-off landscapes and distant hills. Between the panels, Uncle
Thomas had carved the graceful trunks of trees that never grew in any living
forest. The two benches were also Uncle Thomas’ work, as was the table.

“Close the door, dear,” Elizabeth said, and
pulled one of the benches out further into the room while Marina did as she
asked. “Now, come sit down, please.”

Obediently, Marina did so.

“One of the great advantages of using a permanent
workroom is that the basic shields are already in place, and one needn’t bother
with putting them up,” Elizabeth said with satisfaction. “I know
that you’ve been taught perfectly well in all the basics, so I shan’t
bother going over them again. Nor am I going to put you through a viva
voce
exam on the subject.”

Oh! Well that’s a relief!
Marina had been
expecting something of the sort, and was very pleased to discover she was going
to escape it.

“No,” Elizabeth continued, “What you need
first from me is the understanding of how you access the energy of your own
element.”

“Shouldn’t we be outside for that?”
Marina asked curiously. “Near the stream or something?”

But Elizabeth shook her head. “Nothing of the sort.
Water is all around you; in the ground beneath your feet, in the air—good
heavens,
especially
in the air around here!” She laughed, and
Marina giggled nervously. “You would be hard pressed to isolate yourself
from a single element; even in the heart of the driest desert on earth there is
water somewhere, if only in your own body. Each element has a sphere in which
it can
dominate,
but none can be eliminated. Now, I assume you know
how to recognize the energy of Water?”

Marina nodded.

“Good. Then call upon your inner eye, and watch what
I do.”

Marina clasped her hands in her lap and let fall the guard
she usually kept on that sense that Thomas called Sight, but which was so much
more than merely seeing beyond the material world. And the moment she did so,
she was aware that the room was alive with energies.

The golds and browns of Earth Magic and the reds of Fire
invested the shields around them, forming an ever-changing tapestry of moving
color, scent, taste, and sensation. Earth magic had a special scent to Marina,
of soil freshly-turned by the plow; its taste, rich and smooth,
vanilla-flavored cream. And it seemed to wrap her in warm fur. Whereas Fire
tasted of cinnamon, smelled of smoke, and felt like the sun on her skin just
before she was about to be sunburned.

BOOK: The Gates of Sleep
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