The Gates of Sleep

by Mercedes Lackey

  She told herself to breathe deeply, and calm down. No one was expecting her to do anything—except herself. And anyway, it wasn’t her outlook to actually do anything about it either! Hadn’t Dr. Pike and Mr. Davies virtually volunteered to be the ones to track this thing down to its cause and eliminate it? She was only seventeen, after all, and no Master of her element! She wasn’t anywhere ready to go charging off, doing battle with vile magics!

  They simply can’t expect me to do anything about this! It would be like sending me out into the desert after the Mad Mullah, for heaven’s sake—with only my parasol and a stern lecture to deliver! At some point, Marina, she continued, lecturing herself in her thoughts, You simply have to let someone else do things and allow that you can’t.

  Well, there was one thing at least that she could do—and that was to let the proper people know about the—the vileness.

  And another—to keep that poison away from Oakhurst.

  She didn’t have any more time to think about it, though, for the train was pulling into the station, and Reggie was making all the motions of gathering up their things.

  Reggie opened the door and helped her out onto the platform. The carriage was waiting for them, the coachman already taking up the parcels from the shops and stowing them away as they approached; they were inside and on the way within minutes. The coach rattled over cobblestones, passing the lights of the town, then jolted onto a dirt road; a crack of the whip, and the horses moved out of a fast walk into a trot. The coachman seemed in a monstrous hurry, for some reason; perhaps he sensed yet another wretched March storm coming, for he kept the horses moving at such a brisk pace that Marina was jounced all over her seat, and even Reggie had to hang on like grim death.

  “I’ll be—having a word—with our driver—” he said between bounces. “Damn me! See if I—don’t!”

  But the moment he said that, the reason for the rush became apparent, as the skies opened up and poured down rain.

  This was a veritable Ark-floating torrent, and no wonder the coachman had wanted them to get out and on the road so quickly. It drummed on the coach roof and streamed past the windows, and Reggie let out a yelp and a curse as a lightning bolt sizzled down with a crash far too near the road for comfort. There was a sideways jolt as the horses shied, but the coachman held them firm and kept them under control.

  The coach slowed, of necessity—you couldn’t send horses headlong through this—but they were near home now. The lights of the village loomed up through the curtains of rain; not much of them, no streetlights at all, just the lights over the shops, and the houses on either side of the road all veiled by rain—a moment of transition from road to cobbles and back again, splashing through enormous puddles. Then they were past, the lights of the village behind them, and they were minutes from Oakhurst. Over two hills, across the bridge, climbing a third—

  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 calculati
ng 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 sa
nitarium just over the hill—call the doctor and send her there!”

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

  “Why not?” It had been a spur-of-the-moment notion, but the more she thought about it, the better she liked it. “Why not? It will show proper concern on our part—our poor little niece collapsed and we send our own carriage out into the storm to get help for her! The man isn’t local, no one will have told him anything about us, all he’ll be concerned about is his fee. He can’t keep her alive long, no matter how cleverly he force-feeds her, but the fact that we’re paying for him to try will show everyone that we’re doing our best for her.”

  “And if he brings her around somehow?” Reggie countered stubbornly.

  “How? With magic?” She laughed, a peal of laughter echoed by the thunder outside. “Oh, I think not! And just in case those meddlesome friends of Hugh’s manage to get wind of what we’ve done, the sanitarium is the safest place she could be! No old servants to slip them inside, and even if they manage to find where she is, hidden away amongst a den of lunatics—there are guards, no doubt, meant to keep as many folks out as in.” She shook her head with amazement at her own perspicacity. “Perfect. Perfect. Take care of it.”

  As he stared at her without comprehension, she repeated herself. “Take care of it, Reggie,” she said sharply. “Rouse the household! Get the carriage! I want that doctor here within the hour!”

  “And just what will you be doing, Mater?” he asked, with a particularly nasty sneer.

  “I,” she said with immense dignity, “will be having a truly operatic fit of the vapors. So if you don’t wish to have your eardrums shattered—I suggest you be on your way.”