GRAVELIGHT lOI
as Athanais got her to her feet and led her toward the rude bed tucked into a corner of the room. In a few moments more Jane Darrow was sleeping soundly, and Athanais began to strip her of her clothes.
Shoes and stockings, sturdy plain gown and country cap — in a few minutes the sleeping girl was bare to her shift, and then Athanais began to dress her again in the gown the girl had helped remove, a bright thing of satin and velvet and lace that would immediately identify its wearer as Lady Belchamber. Then she painted the girl's face with care, and placed a few of her jewels upon her
Last of all, Athanais gave Jane Darrow quite as much gold as she had promised. . . only Athanais doubted that it would do either Jane or the Charlie she sighed for much good at all.
Once Jane was arranged to her satisfaction, Athanais flung the blanket over the girl — as a further aid to concealment rather than out of any desire to make her more comfortable — and turned to her own preparations.
The great ladies of the court painted their faces, but the common folk did not; Athanais, shivering for real now in the cell's chill, carefully washed every last trace of paint and perfume from her body with water from the bucket and a scrap of scavenged cloth. With the knife that usually reposed in a sheath in her bodice, she cut the fine point-lace from the cuffs and hem of her shift, then donned Jane Harrow's unfashionable plain gown and flannel petticoats over it. The coarse material chafed her skin through the fine muslin, but hangman's hemp would be harsher. In Jane's clothes, with Jane's shawl about her head, Athanais could pass unnoticed among the others when the ship for America was loaded, and afterward it would be too late for the captain to return. She would be on her way — to her destiny.
Athanais swept the room with a glance, allowing herself one last pang of regret for the luxury she was leaving behind — most of all for the unavoidable loss of her casket of irreplaceable poisons and drugs. The items in it had gained her a high place in Monmouth's service, but all her venoms had not gained either of them the prize. In the end, her Jamie had failed her
But she would not be defeated. Her capture had been a setback, nothing more. Lifting the inset trays out of the casket, Athanais tripped the latch of the secret compartment, and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of vellum. She would have to abandon all the rest of her clothes and most of her jewels, but she would not leave this.
It was a large sheet, carefully scraped and bleached, of the sort astrologers liked best for drawing horoscopes. Part of it was Athanais' own natal chart — she had cast it herself — and she saw among the tangled aspects her rise — and, now, her
fall. The rest of the page contained a map overlain with the planetary aspects to which they corresponded. There, somewhere in the West, was the place where her stars and the very land itself conspired. There was her power, ripe for the claiming.
Her power — and her revenge. Athanais tucked the paper carefully away in a pouch beneath her skirts along with the tiny store of valuables that would be her stake in the savage land of her exile.
Everything was ready. Athanais quenched the candles and stood by the door, waiting for the moment when the others in the chamber outside would be asleep. Then she would add herself to their number and await the morning tide.
She did not spare a moment's thought for Jane D arrow's fate.
Cold stone beneath her fingers; the stifling air of the jailhouse; and somewhere like a ghost of future memory the surging deck of a ship and the sharp bite of salt air. . . .
Sinah flung herself up out of sweat-soaked sheets and stared around her, gasping wildly. The room that should have been so familiar looked alien, bizarre.
She could not remember who she was.
"My name is ... " But even her voice was wrong, flat and countrified where it should have been . . . what?
"Dellon." The name came at last, dragged up out of some black pit, bringing a faint flicker of sanity with it. "Sinah. Melusine Dellon."
The name was a touchstone that helped her grope back to herself. At last the room looked familiar enough that Sinah could find the light switch and turn on the bedside lamp, and the illumination restored more of her sense of self.
She was in her loft bedroom, in the king-sized cherry sleigh-bed she'd chosen so happily six months before. Over the side of the railing she could see the faint glitter of her stained-glass windows, their surface rendered opaque by darkness. Everything was quiet.
And beneath the surface of her mind, Athanais de Lyon lurked like a malignant cancer, carrying with her the sensations and imperatives of a time centuries before Sinah had been born.
// was not a dream. The fearful conviction stayed with her. She got out of bed, groping for her robe and pulling it tightly around her, only then realizing how badly she was trembling. It had been so cold in that cell. . . .
A chill that had nothing to do with the body struck through her. The cell and its occupant were a dream, nothing more. Sinah's gift was a thing of the living world. It always had been.
Until she'd come back here.
Just a nightmare. That's all it is. A had one, hut just a nightmare. Please. She hugged herself miserably, trying to feel safe and failing. Despite the air-conditioning her nightgown was plastered to her body with the rank sweat of fear.
Sinah crossed the loft and descended to the ground floor. The resonant ghost of Wycherly's presence in her mind made her head first for the liquor cabinet in the corner of the great room. There was a row of name-brand bottles and a set of slightly dusty Waterford tumblers beneath its lid; Sinah hastily wiped one of them clean on her robe, poured it half-full of Scotch, and drank.
She gagged as she felt the burning passage of the Scotch down her throat; the vile smoky taste of the liquor—kept only for Justin, in the event he ever visited—set up a reassuring disassociation in her mind between herself and Wycherly. He liked the taste of Scotch: She didn't. Therefore, she was not Wycherly.
Nor was she that other—the cold, reptilian intelligence from centuries past.
Sinah clung to that thought like a lifeline and looked around the room, trying to take comfort from the familiar things she had gathered all around her. Only they weren't familiar, not any more. She saw them through the sensibilities of a Jacobean harlot.
The worst of it was, it was hard to decide whether she was more upset by the danger Athanais had been in ... or by Athanais herself.
7 am me —7 am me! Sinah told herself desperately, but she realized with a frenzied despair that it wasn't really true. This was not like the temporary lives her gift brought her. Even though often she could not separate herself from her borrowed lives, she always knew that the situation was a temporary thing. But Athanais had come from nowhere . . . and she was still here. Just as Sinah's body might at any moment be invaded by some virus, so her mind and heart now hosted this unwelcome guest who brought a cold, malicious insight that destroyed any comfort Sinah might have found in once-familiar things.
She shook her head, bewildered, reaching out to pick up her half-finished Scotch and stopping at the last minute. 7 don't need another drink, I
need a cup of tea. Feeling oddly unsteady on her feet, Sinah headed toward the kitchen.
The kitchen lights glinted off copper and enamel, dazzling her eyes and giving her a headache. Sinah filled the kettle and set it to boil, her mind still churning.
A dream. She called herself Athanais — that proves it. Your mother's name — you saw it on your birth certificate. It's just old data — part from you, part from Wycherly's mind. It will all blow over by tomorrow.
But it had been so vivid ... as vivid as the impressions she picked up with her gift.
But how could you have touched a mind centuries dead?
And in Maryland, Sinah reminded herself with a touch of gallows humor. Don't forget that your ghost was being sent to Maryland, not West Virginia. She's hardly likely to turn up here.
The kettle boiled; Sinah made herself a strong pot of peppermi
nt tea, willing herself to relax as she waited for it to steep. The unremitting hostility she'd experienced ever since she'd come to Morton's Fork would have been enough to overset a steadier mind than hers had ever been. What she'd experienced was only a nightmare, a nerve-storm. Everyone had them. Making it into anything more than that was to court madness in truth.
She added honey to her tea, staring broodingly into it as she stirred. A pretty enough color, and a flavor strong enough to hide hemlock or larkspur; give a man this to drink and he'd sleep never to wake, and no magistrate the wiser. . . .
Sinah recoiled from the direction of her own thoughts, sending the cup to spin crashing to the floor. The honeyed tea made a sticky puddle on the brick floor, one that spread like blood.
I'm losing my mind. I know I am. What am I becoming?
Sinah choked back a sob. In her heart she already knew the answer to that. What was she becoming? Something crazy, something mad.
Something evil.
Evan had said that they could park the camper in the field just past Bartholomew Asking's gas station, and all of them were anxious to get settled before true night fell. Dylan drove cautiously past the welter of
junked cars clustered around the front of the service station. The other three walked ahead in the twilight with flashlights to spy out potholes.
"Hey, look at that!" Ninian said, pointing off to the right with his flashlight.
The light illuminated a spot of blinding, lipstick-red paint, as out of place here as roses in a toxic waste dump. They all turned toward it.
"Anything wrong?" Dylan stopped the camper, leaning over to call out the passenger-side window.
"No . . ." Ninian didn't sound sure. "It's just a wreck. But what's a Ferrari doing here?"
Even Truth—who didn't have the easy facility with automobile brand names that seemed almost to be a genetic feature of masculinity—could see that the red wreck dumped casually down between two rusting hulks had once been a fancy little sports car. Now it looked like a giant had taken a sledgehammer to the hood, and the windshield frame was twisted completely out of shape.
/ hope no one was killed, Truth thought automatically. But there didn't seem to be anything they could do about the car except exercise their imaginations, so Truth turned her flashlight back to the road. She'd be just as glad to be able to stop moving, all things considered.
When they reached the place Evan had indicated, the ground was clear, level, and only sparsely covered with grass. It looked as if it had once been a gravel-covered lot of some kind. Dylan stopped, turned off the ignition, and went into the back of the camper.
A few moments later the entire field was lit with hissing, blue-white light from half a dozen propane lanterns set out around the area, and Rowan and Ninian—who either had unbounded reserves of energy or were trying to impress their advisor, were unpacking chairs, tents, tables, and even a stove from the camper.
Truth, shamelessly, had commandeered one of the first chairs to be set out and a can of diet iced tea from the Winnebago's refrigerator. Now she sat and inspected E. A. Ringrose's history by lantern light as the students set up the camp and Dylan began preparing dinner.
The book was apparently an updated and expanded version of Mr. Ringrose's original 1950 work, and bore the imprint of the Lyonesse County Historical Society. Dylan ought to be interested in this. I wonder if he's seen it?
Reading, Truth learned that Lyonesse County had been founded in 1726 (though parts of the original grant were partitioned off and added to Randolph and Pocahontas Counties in 1793), ^^at much of Lyonesse County now lay within the modern-day Monongahela National Forest, and that part of the county bordered on the Laurel Fork Wilderness Area.
Ought to make for a quiet life, Truth thought, absently watching Dylan across the field. / wonder what we're all doing here, if the place is this quiet? She turned back to her find. Lyonesse and Commerce^ the section heading read, and Truth learned that though the county's principal river, the As-tolat, was once used to ferry coal and timber to eastern markets, settlement of Lyonesse County seemed to drop off almost before it began. The opening of the mines (she read) had brought a renaissance of a sort, but Ringrose's book ended with a mournful coda—written in 1950—that mourned the flight to the cities and the increasing industrialization of America, and looked to a time when there would be nothing in Lyonesse County except ghost towns and fully-mechanized mines.
Too bad things hadn't worked out that way. Like that T-shirt she'd seen one of the students wearing: LET THE MEEK INHERIT THE EARTH — THE REST OF US WILL GO TO THE STARS, those who could had gone to the cities, and left their less-fortunate kindred behind in places like Morton's Fork. In the rush to separate the worthy and the unworthy, everyone always assumed the line would be drawn to include them among the elect. The real truth was that nobody could go to the stars if everyone couldn't—anything else created a haves versus have-nots culture that only led, inevitably, to bloodbath.
What morbid thoughts! Do you think the glorious revolution is going to start here in Morton's Fork? Truth jeered at herself.
No, she replied to that inner audience. But it could. And the people who were so casually ready to leave half the human race behind in search of their own comfort were the ones who'd cause it.
"I think dinner had better show up soon," Truth muttered aloud.
She'd thought the balance of the book would be bibliography and sources, but in fact it was an essay written for the 1993 edition of the book, covering the changes in the county since the early fifties, and ending on a rather surprising note.
Lyonesse County owes most of its modern fame to the groundbreaking work of Nicholas Taverner, a turn-of-the-century folk-
lorist and preservationist who saw the country ways he had grown up with vanishing almost overnight with the increasing industrialization of the United States. The gasoline engine was beginning to replace the horse as the motive force on farms and in towns, and in the headlong rush to progress, both the country ways of doing things and the stories a dying generation had to tell were being lost.
Taverner, like many of his post-World War I generation, had an abiding interest in Spiritualism, and collected many more stories of magic and the supernatural than did his contemporaries. Despite its thinly-settled nature, a disproportionately large number of the folktales of ghosts, hauntings, and wandering spirits have their location in the hills of Lyonesse County, and eventually, the mass of material he had collected on his travels led him to publish Ha'ants, Spooks, andFetchmen, where he noted the peculiarly fey nature of the area and mentioned in passing that one town—named Morton's Fork—seemed to be populated by whole families of poltergeists.
Truth checked for the name of the author of the Afterword, and found it to be the rather unlikely one of Pennyfeather Farthing. Well, Mr. Farthing, we know in what direction YOUR interests lie, she thought with a smile. Mr. Farthing seemed to share Dylan's interests, and might be able to give them an idea of where to start. She wondered if Evan Starking knew where the man was now.
The savory scent of roasting burgers began to waft skyward. The bubble tents that would hold Ninian, Rowan, and much of their gear were up, and now Rowan was setting the table for dinner; cups, plates, cold salads they'd bought in Pharaoh, brownies they'd brought from Bread Alone in Glastonbury. They could have been any group of friends on a social outing. The fact that tomorrow Dylan and his students would begin looking for the ghosts or other supernatural events that haunted Morton's Fork and trying to confirm each event symbolized by a colored pushpin on Dylan's map only added an air of surreality to the evening.
Oddly, the fact that the Unseen World was such a natural, accepted part of Truth's life didn't mean she was any more willing to see it as a normal part of others'.
When ifs only me I don't have to think about it. I only need to react to what I see and feel. It's almost as if I can't trust other people to have similar perceptions.
And why should she? She could blame
her gift on the sidhe legacy from her father, the nonhuman heritage that forever separated her from the human race.
That's my excuse. Whafs theirs P
Truth was abstracted all evening, though the others, excited by the morrow's prospects, hardly noticed. After dinner and clean up—involving a sparing use of the RV's water supply—the party separated for the night. Truth helped shift the two polybarometers around inside the Winnebago to make room for the transformation of the dinette into a double bed, and then stood in the doorway looking out at the night. She'd loaned Ninian the book on Lyonesse County, and his bubble tent glowed like a bright orange night-light from the illumination of the battery-powered lamp inside.
"It doesn't work." Rowan's voice was raised in indignant disgust. Truth saw the door flap of the blue tent unzip, and Rowan scrambled out. She came toward the Winnebago, a small portable TV/VCR in hand. "It's broken," she said to Truth in an aggrieved voice.
"Did you test it before we left? You know there's no radio or television reception here," Truth reminded her.
"It worked fine then—now it won't even play tapes," Rowan said more quietly. "Anyway, could you take it inside there with you, Truth? If it isn't going to work, I'm not going to give it tent-room."
"That should teach it a lesson," Truth said gravely, opening the screen door and taking the portable television set. It was only a little larger than a shoebox—and Rowan was right, it had worktd just fine in Glastonbury. She stared at the TV, as though she could force it to explain itself.
"Well . . . goodnight," Rowan said, half waving. She walked back to her own tent, and a few moments later Truth could see her silhouette moving around inside the blue nylon dome again. Truth set the TV/VCR on the counter and closed the Winnebago's door.
"Trouble?" Dylan said, settling the last of the blankets into place on their bed.
"Her VCR didn't work." Truth attempted to deliver the information with the seriousness that Rowan obviously felt it deserved. She didn't quite manage.
"The batteries are probably dead. I'll plug it in here tomorrow when
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