The Gates of Sleep

by Mercedes Lackey

  “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.”

  “Aunt Margherita has a little conservatory off her loom room,” Marina replied, after a moment of thought. “She grows herbs and things in there—”

  “Just the thing; that’s probably her personal workroom. Go join everyone and tell them I’ll be there in a moment.” Elizabeth took the left-hand door that went further into the house. After a moment of hesitation, Marina took the right.

  Supper was just being served in the dining room; a shaded oil lamp above the table shone down on the pristine linen tablecloth, and wisps of steam arose from the dishes waiting in the center. Thomas and Margherita were there and already eating, but Uncle Sebastian wasn’t, yet. Marina sat down and helped herself from a random bowl in front of her; it proved to contain mashed squash, of which she was inordinately fond. “Elizabeth had a bowl of water—” she began.

  “Ah. She’ll be watering my herbs with it, then,” her aunt said immediately. “Just the thing.”

  “That’s what she said—” Sebastian came in at just that moment, trailed by Elizabeth, who still had the now empty bowl.

  “I found this prowling in your workroom, dearest, what would you like me to do with it?” Sebastian said, pulling a laughing Elizabeth forward by the wrist.

  “Invite it to supper, of course, you great beast. I trust everything went well for the first lesson?” Margherita replied, with a playful slap at her husband’s hand.

  “Zee student, she progresses with alacrity!” Elizabeth said, in a theatrical, faux-French accent, which garnered a laugh. She took her place between Margherita and Marina, and spread her napkin in her lap.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I assume that means we can socialize this evening?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “Certainly. All work and no play—speaking of which, Sebastian, are you going to need the student for work tomorrow?”

  Sebastian chewed meditatively on a forkful of rabbit for a moment, thinking. “I could use her. I need more work on the hands at the moment; hard to get them right without her. And I’d like to do some sketches for the next projects. Werther and the Wife of Bath.”

  “Then I absolve you of lessons in the morning, but in the afternoon, we’ll take up where we left off,” Elizabeth decreed, and reached for the platter nearest her plate. “Now, what have we here. Stewed rabbit! Nothing illegal, I hope?”

  “Sarah’s hutches, and she brought them up this morning. Really, Elizabeth, I hope you don’t subscribe to the notion that everyone living in the country poaches!” Thomas looked indignant, and Marina had to smother a laugh, because she knew very well that Sarah didn’t have rabbit hutches, and that her dear uncle had been talking to Hobson, who did poach, just that morning, for she’d seen him out of her bedroom window.

  “Now, don’t you try to pull the wool over my eyes, sirrah!” Elizabeth retorted. “I know the taste of wild bunny from hutched, and this little coney never saw the inside of a wire enclosure in his life!”

  “I am appalled—” Thomas began.

  “And I did not fall off the turnip-cart yesterday!” Elizabeth shot back.

  The two of them wrangled amicably over dinner, until Margherita managed to interject an inquiry about what Elizabeth’s husband was up to. That led to a discussion of politics, which held absolutely no interest for Marina. In fact, as the conversation carried on past dessert and into the parlor, Marina found it hard to keep her eyes open.

  She finally gave up, excused herself, and left politics and a pleasant fire for the peace and quiet of her equally pleasant room. Jenny had left a warm brick in the bed and banked the fire; Marina slipped into a flannel nightgown, brushed and braided her hair, and with the sound of rain on her window, got into bed. She thought she’d stay awake long enough to read, but after rereading the same page twice, she realized there wasn’t a chance she’d get through a chapter. And the moment she blew out her candle, that was all she knew until morning.

  Chapter Five

  RAINING again, rain drumming on the window of the workroom, making the air alive with the energy of the storm. Marina had always been fond of rain, but now it meant so much more than a cozy day indoors, watching the fat drops splash into puddles. Now it meant a ready source of power, power she was only just beginning to learn how to use.

  “Watch carefully,” Elizabeth said—as she had so many times during the lessons. But then she added, “Of all the things that you can do with the magical energy you gather, this may be the most important. Everything depends on it.”

  Marina was hardly going to be less attentive, but those words put just a fraction of a tingle of warning down her spine.

  Because Elizabeth was right, of course. This was the most important thing she could learn to do—because now that she could gather in Water energies almost without thinking, and summon Elementals to the most unlikely places, she was going to learn the shields peculiar to a Water Master.

  The basic shields, those walls of pure thought that she placed around her mind and soul, were not enough, she had already learned that much this summer. They couldn’t even contain her thoughts away from anyone else of the same affinity—or her Elementals—when she was thinking hard, or her emotions were involved. How could she expect them to defend her if something really did decide to test them?

  So she watched Elizabeth with every particle of concentration she had, her brow furrowed with intent, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. The workroom seemed very quiet, the sound of the rain on the window unnaturally loud.

  She had watched Thomas build the shields of an Earth Master and had dutifully tried to copy them, but with no success. He had built up layer upon layer of heavy, ponderous shields, patiently, like building a series of brick walls; somehow she could not manage to construct even a single layer, and had felt defeated and frustrated.

  And now, watching Elizabeth, she knew why she had failed—

  Elizabeth had taught her how to bring in power from the very air, then had shown her how to touch, then handle, the stronger currents that tended to follow the courses of the waters of the physical world. For instance, there was a water source, an artesian well that was in turn fed from a d
eep spring, from which the farmhouse pumps got their water. It actually was right underneath Blackbird Cottage; it was also a wellspring of the energies they both used, and Elizabeth tapped into it now.

  Marina watched the power fountain up in answer to Elizabeth’s call and waited, her breath catching in her throat, to see how Elizabeth could possibly turn the fluid and mutable energies of Water into the solid and immutable shields that Uncle Thomas had shown her. What did she do? Freeze them, somehow? But how could you do that?

  Green and sparkling, leaping and swirling, the energies flowed up and around Elizabeth until they met, above, below, surrounding her in a sphere of perpetually moving force. Marina felt them brushing against the edge of her senses, tasted sweet spring water on the tip of her tongue, and breathed in the scent of more than the rain outside. From within the swirling sphere, Elizabeth summoned yet another upwelling of power, and built a second dancing sphere within the first. And a third within the second.

  Layer upon ever-changing layer, she built, and Marina waited for the energies to solidify into walls.

  Until suddenly it dawned on her that they weren’t going to solidify; that these were what the shields of a Water Master looked like. Not walls, but something the exact opposite of walls; something that did not absorb attacks, but deflected them, spinning them away—or yielded only to return, renewed.

  Perhaps eventually a shield would be ablated away, but that was why all shields were built in layers. Destroy one, and you were only confronted by another, still strong, still intact.

  But no wonder I couldn’t make the power do what I wanted it to do! Marina thought with elation. It couldn’t! You can’t make water into bricks, you can only make it do what is in its nature to do!

  She clasped her hands unconsciously under her chin, and her beaming smile must have told Elizabeth that she had seen and understood, because Elizabeth returned that smile, and with a gentle gesture of dismissal, allowed the energies to swirl back whence they had come. In mere moments, she stood unprotected again, her hands spread.

  “You see?” she asked. “I use a much simpler version most of the time, and obviously I don’t need to bother with shields at all when I’m within the protections of my house or this one.”

  “Oh yes, I do see!” Marina cried. “Please, may I try now?”

  “You may, but remember—just as with all else I have taught you, it will be much more difficult than it looked the first time—and indeed, for many of the subsequent trials,” Elizabeth cautioned. “Take your time, and don’t be discouraged.”

  “I won’t,” Marina promised, and took a deep breath, calmed her elation, and reached for the deep-flowing energies as Elizabeth had taught her.

  “You look exhausted, Mari,” her Uncle Sebastian observed, clearly startled, as she paused with one hand on the doorframe of his studio to steady herself.

  She smiled; it was a tired smile, but a real one, and he looked a little more reassured. “I am, Uncle—but I’m not at all unhappy about being exhausted.”

  “Elizabeth put you through a steeplechase, did she?” Her uncle grinned. “She told me she was going to give you shield-techniques today. And your progress?”

  Marina didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she took her place on the rumpled, unmade pallet on the posing-stand that stood in for the bed in young Werther’s garret room. With great care, she arranged herself half on, half off the bed, taking great care to put her head and outflung arms within the chalk marks on the floor. Even when her uncle set her the reclining pose she had not-so-jokingly requested, he couldn’t make it a simple one!

  Sebastian came over to her and tweaked and arranged the folds of her jacket and shirt to his liking, then checked the disordered bedclothes and put the empty “poison” bottle beside her outflung right hand.

  “I haven’t made much yet,” she admitted, as Sebastian picked up palette and brush and went to work. “But then, I don’t at first. I think that was why Elizabeth started me on other things first, instead of going from energies straight to shielding—so I’d know how difficult the specific Elemental magics are, and wouldn’t be disappointed when I didn’t master shields immediately.”

  “I think you’re probably right.” Sebastian sounded as if he wasn’t listening to her, but she knew from past experience that he heard every word and was paying close attention. It wasn’t his mind that was painting so feverishly, or so he often told her. His eye and his hand were practically connected when he worked, and the less interference from the thinking part of him that there was, the better and truer the painting.

  She hardly noticed the ubiquitous scent of linseed oil and paint in here anymore—except, as now, when a particularly strong waft of it drifted over to her and she had to fight to keep from wrinkling her nose in distaste.

  “At any rate,” she sighed, “I haven’t managed much, yet. But I will. It’s awfully tiring, though—I have to use everything I have to I control the energies I’m calling up. Should I have my eyes open, or closed?”

  “It will be less tiring with practice,” Sebastian promised. “Open eyes, please. You’re not supposed to be quite dead yet.”

  “Am I going to get better?” she teased, staring up at the beams and boards of the ceiling. It felt very good to be lying down, even if it was in this odd position. Uncle Sebastian had found a small, flattish cushion that didn’t show under her hair for her to rest her head on, and for once, this was a position where nothing had gone numb—or at least, it hadn’t the last time she’d taken this pose.

  “No, as you know very well, minx, since you translated Werther’s story for me. But I want the lady who buys this painting to fantasize that she might save him,” Sebastian replied, and that was the last she got out of him, as the rain finally cleared off and the clouds thinned. In fact, he didn’t say a word until the light of the setting sun pierced the many leaded panes of the studio window, and he sighed and stuck his brush behind his ear.

  “All right, my wench—that’s enough for today. You can get up now.”

  She did so—slowly. Nothing was numb, but after three hours of posing, broken only briefly by two breaks to get up and walk around, she was stiff. At least the posing-platform was wood rather than the flagstones of the floor, and Werther’s clothing, a shabby boy’s suit, was comfortably warm.

  “Don’t be discouraged in these shielding lessons of yours, even though it’s likely to take longer than you think, poppet,” Sebastian said, taking up the conversation where it had left off—a disconcerting habit of his, but one that Marina was used to. “Where’s my brush?”

  “In your hair,” she answered promptly. “How long do you think it’s going to take?”

  “Ah—” he reached up and retrieved the brush, and began to clean it carefully. “I suspect you won’t have mastered shields before Elizabeth has to go home for the Christmas holidays with her family.”

  She couldn’t help it; her dismay must have shown on her face, as he shrugged sympathetically and pulled the brush from behind his ear. “It took me at least that long,” he admitted. “And I was reckoned to be quick at learning magic.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment, but she decided she might as well put a brave face on it. “I had no idea,” she admitted, squaring her shoulders and trying to look as if she was prepared for that much work.

  “Proper shielding is hard, poppet.” He grimaced, and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving a set of ocher streaks to go with the vermilion ones already there. “Really, it uses everything you’ve ever learned about magic. Once you learn personal shields, then you have to learn how to expand them to fit your work space or your home, how to make them permanent, and how to disguise them inside the common shields you already know. Then you have to learn how to make them seem to disappear altogether, so that you look perfectly ordinary to anyone who might look at you with the Sight.”

  She’d had no idea, and for a moment, the mere thought of all the work that still lay ahe
ad of her made her heart quail with dismay.

  Her uncle seemed to sense that, and put a supporting arm around her shoulders. “You can do it, Mari. If I could, you certainly can.”

  She leaned her head against him for a moment of comfort, then managed a laugh. “Oh, Uncle Sebastian, you just said you were quick at learning magic!”

  “I was. I was also lazy.” He gave her a quick squeeze and let her go. “Why don’t you hop upstairs and change for supper? You’re probably hungry as well as tired, and you’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

  “You’re probably right,” she agreed, and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “I love you, Uncle Sebastian.”

  “I love you too, poppet,” he said, as she left him among his paints and canvases. “Never forget that.”

  As if I ever would!

  The rains of October had given way to the cold of November, and then to the deeps of December. It didn’t rain nearly as often, but the skies still remained gray and overcast most of the time. Every morning the ground was coated with a thick cover of hoarfrost, and the windows bore delicate, fernlike traceries of frost on the inside.

  Marina had finally progressed to the point where she could bring up and maintain a single shield, and was just able to bring up a second one inside the first, though she could not yet manage to juggle the complicated structures for very long.

  It was far easier to build the common shields and disguise her special shield within them—and for some reason she had mastered the ability to camouflage the common shields as the random and chaotic patterns of a perfectly normal person almost immediately. Why that should be, she couldn’t begin to imagine, but it seemed to make her guardians happy.

  In spite of the fact that she no longer had formal schooling, she was working harder, and she had less leisure, than ever before. During the best hours of daylight, she posed for Sebastian; the morning and late afternoon and sometimes even the evening belonged to Elizabeth Hastings. There were no rest days for her, and she found herself almost looking forward to the second week of December, when Elizabeth would leave them for Christmas, and not return until after Boxing Day. Almost, but she enjoyed Elizabeth’s company so much…