The Gates of Sleep (11 page)

Water, though, smelled exactly like the air the moment
before it was about to rain, mingled with new-mown hay; it tasted of all the
waters of the world, faintly sweet and cool, and it felt exactly like chilled
silk sliding across her bare arms. In color it was every shade of green there
had ever been, from the tender, yellow-green of unfolding leaves, to the deep black-green
of ancient pines in a thunderstorm. This was what she saw now, investing the
very air of the room, condensing out of it like fog, or like her breath on a
frosty morning, or a cloud blooming overhead in the sky. Tender threads, tiny
tendrils of it, coalescing out of nowhere, each one a different shade of green;
they sprang up and flowed toward Elizabeth, joining thread to thread to make
cords, streams, all of them flowing to her and into her, and she began to glow
with the growing power she had gathered into herself.

“Oh, my!” Marina breathed. But she wasn’t
going to just sit there and admire—Elizabeth had said to watch what the
older woman was doing, and she set herself to finding out just
how
Elizabeth was doing this.

It took some time of studying and puzzling before she
figured it out.

The clue was in what Elizabeth had said earlier, that the
energy was everywhere. It
was,
and it could be coaxed into a more
coherent form by application of the energies of her own mind, the ones that
Uncle Thomas had already taught her how to use.

“You see?” Elizabeth said softly, and she
nodded. “Good.” Abruptly the older woman stopped gathering in the
energies and looked at her pupil expectantly. “Now you try it.”

Knowing how it was done and doing it herself were two
different things… akin to the difference between knowing how to ride a
horse and actually staying on its back. But this was what she’d wanted,
wasn’t it?

Be careful what you ask for,
she reminded herself
ruefully, and set to work.

And
work
it certainly was. Elizabeth made it look
so effortless, but compared with dipping energy out of the aura of a
free-flowing stream, a spring, or a deep well, it was anything but effortless.

Exhausting was more like it. It took a peculiar combination
of relaxation and concentration that was infernally hard to master, and by the
time she had managed to coax the first tentative tendrils of power out of the
aether, she was limp with fatigue.

“That will do for now,” Elizabeth said, and she
let the burgeoning streamlets go with no little relief. “Luncheon, I
think; then a little rest for both of us, perhaps an hour or so, and we’ll
start again.”

So
soon?
she thought with concealed dismay. Uncle
Thomas had never made her work for this long! But it couldn’t be helped;
if that was what Elizabeth wanted, then there was probably a reason for it.

“I want you to have a firm grasp on this technique
today,” Elizabeth said, as she got up and offered Marina her hand to aid
her to her feet. Marina took the offered help; her knees felt so shaky she wasn’t
certain she could have stood up without it. “If we left things at the
point where they are now, by tomorrow it would all have to be done over again.
We have to make a pathway in your mind and spirit that rest or sleep can’t
erase.
Then
you can take a longer respite.”

Marina sighed, and followed her out; her stomach gave a
discreet growl, reminding her not only that she had used a great deal of
physical
energy, but that she would feel better about resuming once she wasn’t so
ravenous.

Aunt Margherita seemed to have anticipated how hungry she
would be, for the main course of luncheon was a hearty stew that must have been
cooking since breakfast or before. With fresh bread slathered with butter and
Margherita’s damson preserves, and cup after cup of strong tea, Marina
felt better by the moment. Sarah, Margherita and Elizabeth chattered away like
a trio of old gossips on wash-day, while Marina ate until she couldn’t
eat any more, feeling completely
hollow
after all her exertion.

Finally, when she’d finished the last bit of the
treacle tart Sarah had given her for dessert, Elizabeth turned away from her
conversation with the others. “Have you any lessons or other work you
need to do this afternoon?” she asked, but somehow managed not to make it
sound as if she was asking a child the question.

“Work, actually. German,” she replied, with a
lifting of her spirits.
“Die Leiden des jungen Werther,
I’m
translating it for Uncle Sebastian; he thinks he might want to paint something
from it.”

“Oh good heavens,
Sturm und Drang,
is it?”
she laughed. “Obsessed poets and suicide! Oh well, I suppose Sebastian
knows what is likely to sell!”

“Sebastian knows very well, thank you,” her
uncle called from the doorway. “Beautiful young dead men sell very well
to wealthy ladies with less-than-ideal marriages of convenience. It gives them
something to sigh and weep over, and since the young men are safely dead, their
husbands can’t feel jealous over even a painted rival.”

Marina didn’t miss the cynical lift of his brow, and
suspected he had a particular client in mind.

Evidently, Elizabeth Hastings hadn’t missed that cue
either. “Well,” she said dryly, “If the real world does not
move them, they might as well be parted from some of that wealth in exchange
for a fantasy, so that others can make better use of their money than they can.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Sebastian said, and with
the chameleon-like change of mood that Marina knew so well, beamed upon Sarah
as he accepted a bowl of stew from her hands. “Sarah, you are just as
divine as Miss Bernhardt! In a different sphere, of course—”

“Tch! The things you say! I doubt Divine Sarah’d
thank ye for that!” their own Sarah replied with a twinkle, and turned
back to her stove.

“I’ll come fetch you from your room in an hour
or so,” Elizabeth said to Marina, who took that as her cue to escape for
some badly needed rest.

Translating
Werther
was not what she would have
called “work,” even though Uncle Sebastian said it was. She had
taught herself German from books; she couldn’t speak it, but she read it
fluently enough. German seemed useful, given all of the medieval poems and
epics that the Germans had produced that could give Uncle Sebastian subjects
for his paintings, and so she had undertaken it when she was twelve.

Mind,
she thought, as she wrote yet another
paragraph of Werther’s internal agony,
I can’t do much with
figures. And as for science—all I know is what the old alchemists did!
She supposed her education had been rather one-sided.

She was amused, rather than enthralled, by Goethe’s
hero. She couldn’t imagine ever being so utterly besotted with
anyone
as to lose her wits over him, much less kill herself because she could not have
him. Poor silly Werther.

But he’d make a fine subject for a painting, her
uncle was right about that. Pining over his love, writing one of his poems of
wretchedness and longing, or lying dead with the vial of poison in his hand.

I suppose I’ll have to pose for
him,
too.
It wouldn’t be the first time that she’d stood in for a young,
callow man. Uncle Sebastian simple gave her a little stronger chin and thinner
lips, flattened her curves, and took care to give her a sufficiently loose
costume and there she was. More than one lady had fallen in love with the
masculine version of herself; Uncle Sebastian never enlightened them as to her
sex.

A tapping at her door told her that another sort of
lesson—and work—awaited her.

“Come in!” she cried, and put the book aside. “I’ll
just be a moment.”

Elizabeth pushed the door ajar, and gazed with delight on the
room. “I swear, I wish I could get your guardians to create something
like this for
me,”
she said with a chuckle.

“It would take them eighteen years, I’m afraid,”
she replied, tidying her desk and making sure that the ink bottle was securely
corked.

Elizabeth sighed. “I know. And it would cost me a
hideous
amount of money, too—I certainly couldn’t ask them to work for less
than their normal commissions.”

“You’d be surprised how many would,”
Marina said sourly, thinking of all the people who, over the years, had
attempted to trade on past acquaintance to get a bargain.

“No magician would,” Elizabeth said firmly. “No
magician
could.
Well, enough of that; back to work for us.”

Back down to the little workroom they went, and Marina saw
when Elizabeth opened the door that she had brought in a lamp and had moved the
table to the center of the room. And in the center of the table was a clear
glass bowl full of water.

“What’s that for?” Marina asked, as
Elizabeth closed the door behind them.

“Later,” her tutor told her. “When I’m
sure you’ve mastered the first lesson.”

Marina raised an eyebrow, but didn’t argue; Elizabeth
was the Master here, and had presumably taught more pupils in the art of the
Element of Water than she. She took a seat on one of the benches, and took up
where they had left off.

It was easier this time; at Elizabeth’s signal, she
released the power, then gathered it in again. A dozen times, perhaps more, she
raised the power and let it flow out again, until the gathering of it was as
natural as breathing and almost as easy.

Only then did Elizabeth stop her, this time before she
released it.

“Good. Now, hold the power, and watch me again.”
Elizabeth cupped her hands around the bowl, and gazed into the water.

Then Marina sensed something curious—she felt a
tugging within her, as if she heard a far distant call or summons.

Strange
—

Was the summons coming from—Elizabeth?

Yes! It was! Marina concentrated on it, and on her mentor.
Slowly she deciphered the silent message written in power, sent out into the
world. Not a summons, but an invitation.

But how on earth did Elizabeth expect it to be answered?
There were no streams here for the Undines to follow, no way for them to get
into this sealed room.

How—

Something stirred in the bowl, like a trail of bubbles in
the clear water, a momentary fog passing over the surface. The water in the
bowl rippled, as if Elizabeth blew on it, or moved the bowl, but she did
neither.

And then—there, perfect in miniature, were an Undine
and a Naiad, looking up at Elizabeth in expectation.

And Elizabeth looked up at her pupil, a roguish smile on
her lips.

“But—but—” Marina could only stare.
How could the Elementals have gotten there—and how, why were they so
small?

“They’re creatures of spirit and magic, not
flesh, no matter how they look to us, Marina,” the older woman said
softly, as the two Elementals gazed around themselves with curiosity. “They
don’t follow the rules of the flesh and blood world. Like the energies of
Water, they can go where they will, so long as there is a place of their
Element waiting for them.”

Now Marina thought about all the times she’d been
with the Undines and Naiads, the other elemental creatures of spring and
stream—how they would appear and disappear, seeming to dissolve into the
water only to appear elsewhere. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before?

“And you just call them?” she asked.

“It isn’t
quite
that easy, but I’ll
show you how to form several sorts of summons. They all require Water energies,
of course.” She bent over the bowl. “Thank you, my friends. Would
you care to go, or stay?”

“Shall we go, and see if our Fleshly Sister can
properly call us too?”
asked a tinkling voice that was as much in
Marina’s head as in her ears. The Undine cast an amused glance at Marina,
then turned her attention back to Elizabeth.

“I think that would be very gracious of you, if you
would be so kind,” Elizabeth replied gravely.

“Then we shall.”
The two tiny figures
seemed to spin in the water for a moment; it sparkled in the light from the
lamp, then there was only a trail of bubbles, then they were gone.

Elizabeth looked up into Marina’s eyes. “Now
then—your turn.”

Marina was glad that she had eaten a full lunch, because
somehow teatime slipped right past them. It wasn’t until after dark that
Elizabeth was ready to let her go, and she still hadn’t mastered that
most basic of summonings, the simple invitation. As Elizabeth had warned, it
was harder than it looked.

Marina felt as limp as wilted lettuce when Elizabeth
decreed an end to the work for the day, and as her mentor opened the door and
the aroma of tonight’s meal hit her nose, her stomach gave a most
unmannerly growl.

Elizabeth laughed at that, and picked up the bowl of water.
“Blow out the lamp, dear, and let’s get you something to eat before
you faint. That sort of behavior might be
de rigueur
for debutantes,
but I think your uncles would have more than a few harsh words with me if they
thought I was overworking you.”

“You’re not!” Marina protested. “I
could have asked you to stop any time, couldn’t I?”

“Yes, you could. I trusted that you had gone far
enough in magic to be able to judge for yourself when you needed to stop.”
Elizabeth waited while Marina closed the door behind herself, and the two of
them went out into the library.

Candles and lanterns had already been lit, and warm pools
of light shone around them. A savory aroma drifted in from the kitchen, and
Marina’s stomach complained—silently, this time.

“Have you any notion where I could pour out this bowl
of consecrated water?” Elizabeth asked. “It doesn’t do to
just pour it down a drain, it really ought to go somewhere it can do some good.”