The Gates of Sleep (47 page)

Then the lights of Oakhurst appeared through the trees and
just above them, although the rain was showing no signs of slackening off.
Marina peered anxiously through the windows; lightning pulsed across the sky,
illuminating Oakhurst in bursts of blue-white radiance. The coach slowed as
they neared the front and pulled up as close to the door as possible, and
servants with umbrellas dashed out into the downpour to shelter both of them
inside and fetch the parcels.

To no avail, of course, with the rain coming as much
sideways as down; Marina was soaked to the skin despite the umbrella held over
her. Once inside the door she was swiftly separated from Reggie by Mary Anne
and chivvied off to her own—warm!—room to be stripped and regarbed
from the skin outward. For once Marina was glad, very glad, of the tendency of
her room to be too warm for her taste, for she was cold and shivering, which
combined with her headache made her ache all over. The flames in her fireplace
slowly warmed her skin as Mary Anne rubbed her with a heavy towel then held out
undergarments for her to step into.

“Madam’s got a bit of a surprise for you,”
Mary Anne said, lacing her tightly into a brand new corset, which must have
been delivered that very day. “Seems she found something in the attics
she thinks you’ll fancy. She must have been that bored, to send someone
to go rummaging about up there. Been raining all day, though, so perhaps that
was it.”

“I didn’t even know there was an attic,”
Marina ventured, wondering if she dared mention her splitting head to Mary
Anne. She decided in favor of it. “Now I wish I hadn’t asked Reggie
to take me to that pottery—I’ve such a headache—”

Mary Anne tugged her rustling silk trumpet skirt over her
head with an exclamation of distaste. “I shouldn’t be surprised!”
she replied. “Nasty, noisy, filthy places, factories. I’ll find a
dose for you, then you’re to go straight to Madam. She’s in the
sitting-room.”

The dose was laudanum, and if it dulled the pain, it also
made her feel as if there was a disconnection between her and her thoughts, and
her wits moved sluggishly. It occurred to her belatedly that perhaps she
shouldn’t have taken it so eagerly.

Well, it was too late now. When she stepped out of the door
of her room, she moved carefully, slowly, more so than even Madam would have
asked, because her feet didn’t feel quite steady beneath her. She was
handicapped now.

But I must look at her—really
look
at
her,
she reminded herself.
I must
know
for certain if she has
anything to do with that vileness.
It seemed days, and not hours ago,
since this morning, weeks since her encounter with what lay under the pottery,
months since she had vowed to investigate. She had gone from utter certainty
that Madam was behind it to complete uncertainty. She kept one hand pressed to
her throat, trying to center herself.

As she passed darkened rooms, lightning flashed beyond the
windows; the panes shook and rattled with rain driven against them and drafts
skittered through the halls, sending icy tendrils up beneath her skirt to wrap
around her ankles and make her shiver. The coachman had been right to gallop;
it was a tempest out there. It was a good thing that it had been too cold for
buds to form; they’d have been stripped from the boughs. The thin silk of
her shirtwaist did nothing to keep the drafts from her arms; she had been warm
when she left her room, and she hadn’t gone more than halfway down the
corridor before she was cold all over again.

The sitting room had a blazing great fire in it, and by now
Marina was so chilled that she had eyes only for that warmth, and never noticed
Madam standing half in shadow on the far side of the room. She went straight
for the flames like a moth entranced, and only Madam’s chuckle as she
spread her icy hands to the promised warmth reminded her of why she was here.

“A pity the horses were slow,” Madam said, as
Marina turned to face her. “Reggie has been complaining mightily and
swearing I should replace them.”

“I don’t think any horses could have gone
faster in the dark, no matter how well they knew the road, Madam,” she
protested. “Before the rain started, Reggie was angry that he was going
so fast, actually. And the coachman could hardly have made the
train
arrive any sooner,” she added, in sudden inspiration.

“True enough.” Madam’s lips moved into
something like a smile, or as near as she ever got to one. “True, and
reasonable as well. So, my dear, you have begun to think like a grown woman,
and not like an impulsive child.”

Marina dropped her eyes—and took that moment to
concentrate, as well as she could through the fog of the drug, to search her
guardian for any taint of that terrible evil.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Magic might never exist at all for
all of the signs of it that Madam showed. Never a hint; marble, ice showed more
sign of magic than she.

Not possible then
—She didn’t know
whether to be disappointed or glad. “Mary Anne said you had found
something you wished me to see, Madam?” she said instead.

“Not I—although I guessed that it might exist,
given who and what the people your parents had sent you to stay with were.”
The words were simple enough—but the tone made Marina look up,
suspecting—something. What, she didn’t know, but—something.
There was something hidden there, under that calculating tone.

But as usual, Madam’s face was quite without any
expression other than the faintest of amusement.

“So,” she continued, looking straight into
Marina’s eyes, “I asked of some of the older servants, and sent
someone who remembered up to the attic to find what I was looking for. And here
it is—”

She stepped aside and behind her was something large
concealed beneath a dust-sheet. The firelight made moving shadows on the folds,
and they seemed to move.

Madam seized a corner of the dust cover and whisked it off
in a single motion.

The fire flared up at that moment, fully revealing what had
been beneath that dust-sheet. Carved wood—sinuous curves—a shape
that at first she did not recognize.

“Oh—” Of all of the things that she might
have guessed had she been better able to think, this was not one of them. “A
cradle?”

“Your
cradle, or so I presume,” Madam
said silkily. “Given your name and the undeniable
marine
themes
of the carving. Not to mention that it is clearly of—rather unique
design. An odd choice for a cradle, but there is no doubt of the skill of the
carver.”

Marina stepped forward, drawn to the bit of furniture by
more than mere curiosity. Carved with garlands of seaweed and frolicking
mermaids, with little fish and naiads peeking from behind undulating waves,
there was only one hand that could have produced this cradle.

Uncle Thomas.

She had seen these very carvings, even to the funny little
octopus with wide and melting eyes—here meant to hold a gauzy canopy to
shield the occupant of the cradle from stray insects—repeated a hundred
times in the furnishings in her room in Blackbird Cottage. All of her
homesickness, all of her loneliness, overcame her in a rush of longing that
excluded everything else. And she wanted nothing more at this moment than to
touch them, to feel the silken wood under her hand. With a catch at her throat
and an aching heart to match her aching head, she wanted to feel those familiar
curves and take comfort from them.

Madam stepped lightly aside as her hand reached for the
little octopus, moving as if it had a life of its own.

A lightning bolt struck just outside the sitting-room
windows; she was too enthralled even to wince.

Something bright glinted among the octopus’s
tentacles. Something metallic, a spark of wicked blue-white.

She hesitated.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Madam crooned,
suddenly looming behind her. “The wood is just like silk. Here—”
she seized Marina’s wrist in an iron grip. “Just feel it.”

Marina didn’t resist; it was as if she had
surrendered her will to her longing for this bit of home and everything else
was of no importance at all. She watched her hand as if it belonged to someone
else, watched as Madam guided it towards the carving, felt the fingers caress
the smooth wood.

Felt something stab through the pad of her index finger
when it touched that place where something had gleamed in the lightning-flash.

Madam released her wrist, and stepped swiftly back. Marina
staggered back a pace.

She cried out—not loudly, for it had been little more
than a pinprick. She took another step backward, as Madam moved out of her way.

But then, as she turned her hand to see where she had been
hurt, the finger suddenly began to burn—burn with pain, and burn to her
innermost eye, burn with that same, poisonous, black-green light as the evil
pit beneath Madam’s office!

She tried to scream, but nothing would come out but a
strangled whimper—stared at her hand as the stuff spread like oil poured
on water, as the burning spread through her veins like the poison it
was—stared—as Madam began to laugh.

Burning black, flickering yellow-green, spread over her,
under her shields, eating into her, permeating her, as Madam’s triumphant
laughter rang in her ears and peals of thunder answered the laughter. She
staggered back one step at a time until she stood swaying on the hearthrug,
screams stillborn, trapped in her throat, which could only produce a moan.
Until a black-green curtain fell between her and the world, and she felt her
knees giving way beneath her, and then—nothing.

Reggie stepped out of the shadows and stared at the
crumpled form of Marina on the hearthrug. “By Jove, Mater!” he
gasped. “You
did
it! You managed to call up the curse again!”

Arachne smiled with the deepest satisfaction, and prodded
at the girl’s outstretched hand with one elegantly clad toe. “I
told you that I would, if I could only find the right combination,” she
said. “And the right way to get past those shields she had all over her.
Not a sign of them from the outside, but layers of them, there were. No wonder
she didn’t show any evidence of magic about her.”

“So you knew about those, did you?” Reggie
asked, inadvertently betraying that
he
had known about the
shields—and had not told his mother. Arachne hadn’t
known,
she had intuited their presence, but she hadn’t
known.
She’d
simply decided that they must be there, and had worked to solve the problem of
their existence.

So how had he known about them, when nothing she had done
had revealed their presence?

“Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it?” she
prevaricated. “I decided to take a gamble. It occurred to me that shields
would only be against magic, not something physical—and that no one would
think to shield her
beneath
the surface of her skin.”

She watched him with hooded eyes. He frowned, then nodded,
understanding dawning in his face. “Of course—the physical
vehicle—the exposed nail—delivering the curse past the shield in a
way that no one would think of in advance. Brilliant! Just brilliant!”

She made a little sour
moue
with her lips. “It
won’t do for you to forget that, Reggie dear,” she said acidly. “I
am
far more experienced than you. And very creative.”

Would he take that as the warning it was meant to be?

He stiffened, then took her hand and bowed over it. “Far
be it from me to do so,” he replied. But his face was hidden, and she
couldn’t see the expression it wore.

Resentment, probably. Perhaps defeat. Temporary defeat,
though—

“But surely that wasn’t all,” he
continued, rising, showing her only an expression as bland and smooth as Devon
cream. “If that was all, why all the rigmarole with the cradle?”

“Because the vehicle had to be something that was
within the influence of the curse when I first set it, of course,” she
said, with a tone of as you
should have figured out for yourself
covering
every word. “That was why the cradle—and why I had that little
octopus-ornament removed. I wanted metal as the vehicle by preference, and the
nail holding the octopus in place was perfect. At that point, it was easy to
have it reversed and driven up and out to become the vehicle.”

“Brilliant,” Reggie repeated, then frowned, and
bent over Marina’s form. “She’s breathing.”

Arachne sighed. “She’s not dead, sadly,”
she admitted, meditatively. “The curse was warped, somehow; it sent her
into a trance. I did think of that—I have her spirit trapped in a sort of
limbo, but that was the best I could do. But she will be dead, soon enough. She
can’t eat or drink in that state.”

The solution was simple enough; call the servants, have her
taken to her room, allow her to waste away. How long would it take? No more
than a few weeks, surely—less than that, perhaps. Reggie’s jaw
tightened. “Mater, we have a problem—” he began.

“Nonsense,” she snapped. “What problem
could there be?”

“That someone is likely to think that we poisoned
her—”

“Then we call a doctor in the morning,” she
said dismissively.

“And if we let her waste away, that people will say
that we did so deliberately!” he countered angrily. “There will be
enquiries—police—even an inquest—”

She felt anger rising in her. “Then get a doctor for
her now!” she responded, throttling down the urge to slap him. Here she
had done
everything,
and he had the cheek to criticize her! Why
shouldn’t he stir himself to deal with these trivial problems? “Use
some initiative! Must I do everything? For heaven’s sake, there’s a
sanitarium just over the hill—call the doctor and send her there!”

“What, now?” he replied, looking utterly
stunned.