The Gates of Sleep (51 page)

Then, after invoking his own personal shields, he “touched”
the book with a delicate finger of power.

Show me
—he whispered to it.
Show me your
author, and what was happening when he wrote these words.

He was hoping for a scene in the sphere, or at least a few
suggestive hints that he could concentrate on to bring things further into
focus. At best, he hoped for a clear image of the old Master in the midst of
his single combat with the Satanic magician he had tersely described in his
entry.

He did
not
expect what he got.

He was jolted—exactly like being struck by
lightning—as power
slammed
into him from the pages of the book
themselves, knocking him back in his chair, and breaking his contact with the
volume.

“Bloody
hell!”
he yelped, shocked
beyond measure. But before he—or either of the other two—could
react, a column of light flung itself upwards from the open book, reaching
floor—to—ceiling—a golden-yellow light, like sun on ripening
corn.

“Bloody
hell!”
Sebastian echoed, as
Lady Elizabeth yelped.

And in the very next moment, he found himself looking up
into the eyes of a vigorous man of perhaps late middle-years, bearded,
moustached, crowned with a flat cap and attired in a laced and slashed doublet,
small starched ruff, sleeved gown identical to an academic gown, hose and those
ridiculous balloonlike breeches that the Tudors wore. The fact that the fellow
was entirely colorless and transparent had no bearing whatsoever on the
sensation of
force
he radiated.

The light radiated from him, and it was as utterly
unlike
the black-green poison of the curse holding Marina as it was possible to be.
Andrew wanted to drink in that light, eat it, pull it in through every pore.
And as for that power, that force—

The man also radiated the palpable force of an Earth Master
as far above Andrew in power as Andrew was above Thomas Buford. And more.

Details of the man’s appearance branded themselves on
his brain. The square jaw underneath a beard neatly trimmed, but with one
untidy swirl, as if there was a scar under the hair. The bushy eyebrows that
overhung a pair of keen eyes that might have been blue. The doublet, dark and
sober, contrasting wildly with the striped satin of the puffy breeches and an
entirely immodest codpiece ornamented in sequins and bullion. The equally sober
robe he wore over both—a robe of velvet that had been badly rubbed in
places, as if it was an old and favored garment that the man could not bear to
part with, despite it being a bit shabby.

“God’s Blood!” the man
barked—audibly. And with a decided Scots brogue to his words.

Andrew started again; he hadn’t expected the
apparition to speak!

The spirit stamped his foot—no sound. “Devil
damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where gottest thou that goose-look? It’s
half mad I’ve been, wondering if thee’d the wit to use the book!
Damme, man, thee took thy leisure, deciding the menace here!”

A quick glance at Elizabeth showed she was fascinated,
staring at what could only be a spirit, as if she could hardly restrain herself
from leaping up to touch it. Sebastian Tarrant, however, was as white as
a
sheet. But it was Tarrant who spoke.

“You—you’re a ghost!” he bleated.
There was no other word for the absurd sound that came out of his mouth.
Formidable Fire Master Sebastian Tarrant sounded just like a frightened sheep.

The spirit favored him with a jaundiced eye. “That,
and ha’pence will buy thee a wheaten loaf,” he said dismissively.
He stepped down off the table, which at least put him at eye level with all of
them. He was—rather short. But no one would ever dismiss him as
insignificant. “Aye, I linked myself, dying, to yon book, in case one day
there was need and no one to teach.”

“Teach about the—” he began, and the
spirit made a hushing motion.

“Best not to talk about them,” he cautioned. “Not
aloud. And my time is short—so I’ll be brief. Thee has caught it, laddie—’tis
the selfsame enemy, mine and thine,
If
thee live through this, thee
will have to reck out how they done this. If; that be for later. And the on’y
way thee will beat them now is to divide them.
Thou
—” he
pointed at Andrew “—thou’lt confront the man. But
she
—”
he pointed at Marina “—the on’y way she’ll be free is
to fight the mother, herself.”

“But—” Andrew began.

“But me no buts!” the spirit interrupted,
scowling. “There be twa things thee’ll need to do, an’ I
dinna get much time to explain them, so listen proper the first time.”

Sebastian had recovered, and nodded, moving closer, as did
Elizabeth. Andrew noticed then that the light surrounding the spirit was dimmer
than it had been. Perhaps the power stored in the book was all that held the
spirit here. If that was the case—

Later, later. Live through this, first.

The spirit continued, resting his left hand on his book. “The
first thing is for all of ye—all five—t’ takit hold of that
cursed magic she’s put on the girl an’ give it a good hard
pull.
Ye shan’t hurt her, but ye’ll get the mother’s attention.
Then…”

Holding their breaths lest they miss a word, the three of
them leaned forward to take it all in.

Marina was in a garden. A very, very small garden. Not a
paradise by any means; this was a tiny pocket of dead and dying growth,
struggling to survive in dim and fitful light, and failing, but failing with
agonizing slowness. It was walled twice, first in curving walls of brambles
with thorns as long as her hand, and beyond them, a wall like a sphere or a
bubble, curving gray surfaces, opaque and impermeable—but which flickered
with that black-green energy that had engulfed her before she had blacked out.
She was disinclined to touch either the walls of thorn or the walls of
energy—assuming she could even reach the latter. She mistrusted the look
of the thorns—she suspected that they might actually move to hurt her if
she approached them. And she’d already had too much close acquaintance
with that peculiar magical energy.

Madam was behind this; somehow she had attacked Marina
through the medium of her old cradle, and sent her here. The only question in
her mind was—was this “here”
real,
or a construction
of her mind? And if it was real—was it solid, everyday real, was she,
body and all, sitting in this blighted garden? Or was this her spirit only,
confined in some limbo where Madam’s evil magic had thrown her?

She was inclined to think it was the second—not
because of any single piece of objective evidence, but because she didn’t
think that Madam was powerful enough to have created anything magical that
could and would successfully hold up physically for any length of time. Why?
Because if she had been able to do so, she would have done something to
eliminate her niece on the journey to Oakhurst. And if Marina just vanished,
there would be a great many questions asked now, questions which could be very
uncomfortable for Madam.

Marina also didn’t think she was dead—not yet,
anyway. Elizabeth had taught her all about the magical connection of spirit and
body, the thing that looked to some like a silver cord. Although she had not
yet made any attempt to leave her own body, Elizabeth’s descriptions had
been clear enough. And now that she was calm enough to look for it, that tie of
body to spirit was, so far as Marina could tell, still in existence; a dim
silver cord came from her, and passed through the gray wall without apparent
difficulty.

Well, there’s my objective evidence, assuming I’m
not hallucinating the cord. “Here” isn’t “real”

So somehow Madam had separated spirit from body and
imprisoned the former here.

Marina felt her heart sink. That
would suit her very
well. My body is going to live for a while—for as long as she can get
doctors to keep it alive. And why shouldn’t she? That would neatly
eliminate any suspicions that she had anything to do with what has happened to
me. There probably won’t be a sign of what she did. It will all be a
terrible tragedy, and of course, in a few weeks or months, when—well, she’ll
inherit everything, with no questions asked.
She moaned; after all, there
was no one here to hear her.
I suppose there’s no chance it would be
Andrew Pike she calls. No, it will probably be some high-fee London physician,
who’ll get to make all manner of experiments to see if he can “wake”
me.

Marina was able to think about this with a certain amount
of calmness, in no small part because she was already exhausted from what must
have been hours of sheer panic, followed by more hours of rage, followed by more
of weeping in despair. There was, of course, no way of telling time here. And
although she was exhausted, when she lay down in the withered grass, she was
unable to sleep, and in fact, didn’t feel sleepy. Another point in favor
of the notion that she was only imprisoned in spirit. The evidence at this
point was certainly overwhelming.

She had never been so utterly, so completely alone. She had
thought that she felt alone when Madam had first taken her away from Blackbird
Cottage—but at least there had been other people around, even if they
were strangers.

If I am just a spirit—maybe I can call for help?
The cord that bound her to her body was able to penetrate the shell around
her—maybe magic could, too.

The trouble was, there was no water here; not so much as a
puddle. And search though she might, she could find no well-springs of Water
energy, nor the slightest sign of the least and lowliest of Water Elementals.
Small wonder the vegetation was dying or dead.

So all that remained was—thought, and whatever magic
she held in her own stores. Which was not much.

And I was appallingly bad at sending my thoughts out
without the help of magic.
On the other hand, what choice did she have?
Perhaps
I can use the cord, somehow.

She concentrated on a single, simple message, a plea for
help, trying first to reach Margherita, then Sebastian, then Elizabeth, then,
for lack of anyone else, Andrew Pike. Last of all, she sent out a general plea
for help, from anyone, or anything. She tried until she felt faint with the
effort, tried until there were little sparks in front of her eyes and she felt
she had to lie down again. But if there was any result from all of her effort,
there was no sign of it.

There was no change in the walls holding her imprisoned, no
sense of anyone answering her in her own mind. The only change might have been
in the cord—was it a little more tenuous than before? A crushing weight
of depression settled over her. She gave herself over to tears and despair
again, curling up on her side in the grass and weeping—but not the
torrent of sobs that had consumed her before. She hid her face in her hands and
wept without sobbing, a trickle of weary tears that she couldn’t seem to
stop, and didn’t really try. What was the use? There was nothing that she
could do—nothing! There was no magical power here that she could use to
try and break herself free, nothing of her own resources gave her strength
enough, and she was as strong now as she was ever going to be. As her body
weakened—and it would—the energy coming to her down that silver
cord would also weaken. Until one day—

She would die. And then what would happen? Was it possible
that she would be trapped here forever? Would she continue to exist as a sad,
mad ghost here, hemmed in by thorns, driven insane by the isolation?

“Oh, my dearest—she cannot hold you then,
at least
—”

The sound of the strange female voice shocked her as if she’d
been struck with a bolt of lightning. Marina started up, shoving herself up
into a sitting position with both hands, although the unreal grass had a
peculiarly insubstantial feeling against her palms.

A man and a woman—or rather, the transparent images
of a man and a woman—stood at the edge of the thorns. When had they
gotten there? How had they gotten there? Had they come in response to her
desperate plea for help?

She had no trouble recognizing them, not when she had
looked at their portraits every day of her life for as long as she could
remember.

“Mother?” she faltered. “Father?”

With no way to measure time, not even by getting tired and
sleepy, Marina could not have told how long it took the—others—to
convince her that they were not figments of her imagination, not something sent
by Madam to torment her, and were, indeed, her mother and father. Well, their
spirits. They were entirely certain that the “accident” that had
drowned them was Madam’s doing; that made sense, considering everything
that had followed. And if Madam had sent a couple of phantasms to torment her,
would she have put those words in their mouths? Probably not.

Perhaps what finally convinced her was when, after a long
and intensely antagonistic session of cross-questioning on her part, Alanna
Roeswood—or Alanna’s ghost, since that was what the spirit
was—looked mournfully at her daughter and gave the impression of heaving
an enormously rueful sigh.

“After nearly fifteen years of rather formal
letters, I really should not have expected you to fling yourself into my loving
arms, should I
the spirit said, wearing an expression of deep chagrin.
“It’s
not as if I wasn’t warned.”

Marina held her peace, and her breath—well, she had
lately discovered that she didn’t actually breathe so she couldn’t
really hold her breath, but that was the general effect. Perhaps being dead
gave one a broader perspective and made one more accepting of things.

Especially things that one couldn’t change. Like one’s
daughter, who had grown up with a mind and will of her own, and who considered
her birth mother to be the next thing to a stranger.