Gravelight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  And this time, as distinct from all the failures in his life, it worked.

  "Ever since I got here—to Morton's Fork—I've been feeling . . . watched," Sinah said. "I knew Wildwood was there; I'd been on the grounds, but I'd never gone up to the sanatorium until that day I found you. And while I was there ..."

  She stopped, obviously uncertain of how to go on.

  "You had a vision," Wycherly suggested. Beneath his calm, a new worry asserted itself. Did he have competition for whatever nebulous resource Wildwood Sanatorium represented?

  Sinah shrugged. "I know all the arguments—self-delusion—self-hypnosis—false memories are easy enough to create under stress—because I wanted to find my family, naturally this vision would concern them. Isn't that what a trained professional would say? But it wasn't my family I wanted to find as much as the reason I—the reason I'm the way I am. I didn't want to be the reincarnation of Bridie Murphy!"

  Wycherly had actually heard of the Bridie Murphy case, where a young woman had claimed to be the reincarnation of a murdered Irish maid from almost a hundred years before. Her testimony about her previous life was unshakable and contained things no one but the dead woman herself could possibly know. To this day the Bridie Murphy case was the one case that professional scoffers and debunkers could not find any way to dismiss.

  "And who is it you think you might be?" Wycherly asked. He relaxed. Sinah was obsessed with herself, with her own problems. She hadn't mentioned Quentin Blackburn. Maybe she hadn't seen him. But there was something else she was hiding—you didn't need to be able to read minds to hear that in the hesitations in her voice.

  Sinah sighed, and seemed to surrender all at once. "Marie Athanais Jo-casta de Courcy de Lyon, Lady Belchamber. That's who I—she—is."

  "Impressive name," Wycherly said blandly.

  Sinah looked at him, smiling crookedly. "Doesn't anything bother

  you?'

  "Are you holding a gun on me? Are you trying to get me into a strait-

  jacket? No? Then I'm not sure what I've got to be upset about." Wycherly studied her clinically. Her scarf had slipped off to form a bright collar around her throat, and the tortoiseshell-rimmed sunglasses were in her hands. She looked young, vulnerable, innocent—he had the sudden suspicion that he could hurt her quite badly if she came to trust him. The confusion the idea made him feel was disturbing.

  "I guess you're what they call the original cool customer," Sinah said, after the silence had stretched too long.

  A new awareness was added to the other—that he could have her, and that he wanted to have her.

  To do with as he would.

  "You've been touring in Guys and Dolls too long, Sinah. A simple sense of diminished affect is my only talent, so it would flatter me if you'd cherish it as it deserves," he answered.

  Sinah smiled at him and reached out to take his hand. Wycherly closed his own over it, wondering at how easy this was. A few kind words, some snappy comebacks, and she was willing to be more than kind. So she thought she was channeling a dead ancestress—so what? The locals thought he was Doctor Strange.

  "So tell me about Marie," Wycherly said.

  Sinah got up from her chair and came to stand behind him, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. He didn't mind her being out of sight— he was closer to the cabin door than she was, and the book was safely hidden. He could feel the heat of her body against his back, even through the heat of the day. Her hands were shaking.

  And Wycherly did not need a drink, did not want a drink, would not take one if it were offered. It was so easy. All you had to do was to want something else more.

  A lot more.

  "She thinks—she was called Athanais. She was involved in Monmouth's Rebellion and transported to the New World," Sinah said.

  "How do you know?" Wycherly asked with interest. His school days were far behind him, but he remembered enough to place Monmouth's Rebellion in the England of 1685.

  "I had a dream," Sinah said, and managed a shaky laugh. "Several, actually. She's like an unpleasant houseguest who just barges through the door and settles in. I know her . . . and I don't like her very much."

  "Well, that makes a change from all those airheads channelling Queen Comeasyouwere. But someone must have liked her—it looks like the name survived in the family. It was an Athanais who burned down the sanatorium."

  "Was supposed to have burned it down," Sinah corrected absently. She bent, and leaned her cheek against the top of Wycherly's head in a quick caress. "What am I going to do?" she added plaintively.

  "Threaten her, make her go away, the usual things. If she's a ghost, get an exorcist," Wycherly said offhandedly.

  "Yes," Sinah began, on a note of relief.

  She was unprepared for the toxic bolt of fury that seemed to swarm up out of her very bones, raging through her like a whipcrack of fury and loathing. The mind of Athanais, an English countess adopted into a Tutelo tribe and forced by their customs to take the place—live the life — of a dead woman.

  Never surrender! Never surrender! Hate, and hate, and hate. . . .

  "Just stay there. Don't try to move," she heard a voice say. Her body revolted and Sinah rolled onto her stomach, bringing up the contents of her stomach in a convulsive heave and then continuing to gag, to choke, as if she were futilely attempting to purge her system of a mortal poison.

  As she lay on the ground outside the cabin, too weak to move, she felt Wycherly's arm under her ribs, pulling her to her knees. With the brisk impersonal efficiency of a nurse, he swabbed her face with a wet rag and then pulled her back into a sitting position.

  "I'm all right now," Sinah said unconvincingly. Her body ached with the violence of her sickness.

  "Sure you are," Wycherly's tone was faintly derisive. "There's beer and there's lemonade. Which one does it for you?"

  "I . . . beg your pardon?" She found the scarf around her throat and unknotted it. Miraculously, it was still clean, and she wiped her damp and sweating face. If she'd come down here to impress and beguile Wycherly Musgrave, she'd done a spectacularly poor job of it so far.

  No. Not beguile. That was one of Athanais' words, the words of a woman who had sought to prevail through cleverness and trickery . . . and discovered that blind brute force would always win out in the end.

  She'd ended her days as a Tutelo Indian captive, stitching her European jewels into tribal ornaments and bearing the sachem's daughters.

  "I have lost my mind," Sinah said flatly.

  "You need to get something down you to settle your stomach," Wycherly responded, as if he were answering her. "So would you rather be tipsy or jittering off on a sugar jag? Lemonade or beer?"

  "Tea," Sinah said faintly, and Wycherly went inside.

  Sinah got shakily to her feet, moving as far away as possible from the disgusting puddle she'd left. What must he think of her now?

  What had he thought of her before? an unhelpful inner voice responded. She was Sinah Dellon, after all—the telepath, the girl who knew exactly what everyone else was thinking so well she didn't even have a life to call her own. The girl who'd never had a lasting relationship because she knew how they'd end before they started. Eavesdropper. Outsider.

  Fariah.

  But now that was changing, because Sinah had found the one permanent role-ot-a-lifetime to play out till the end of her days.

  Only it wasn't her.

  Sinah gazed blearily out at the trees. Memories seeped up through the bedrock of her mind like toxic waste. Athanais de Lyon's memories—the memories of a woman who became, almost three centuries later, Athanais Dellon.

  Her mother.

  Sinah pulled the straight chair over closer to the door and sat down in it. The same woman? No. Just the same name, carried down through his-tory

  Different women, different lives, but always the taint, the legacy of evil that made her neighbors shun her and her descendants to the last drop of blood.

  There was no hope for Sinah here in
Morton's Fork, and no answers. She knew that now. She was the last of her line.

  "Here you are. Tea and biscuits. Very civilized."

  Wycherly came out, carrying a box of Lorna Doones and a steaming mug from which a tag fluttered. He held them out to Sinah.

  "Fortunately Luned thinks I need one of everything the general store sells, or you'd be drinking bad coffee instead. You look like hell, you know," he added conversationally. "Drink your tea."

  "Don't bully me." She took a careful sip and made a face. "Yuck. It's way too sweet."

  "You need the sugar. You're too thin, anyway. You look like a boy."

  Sinah took another sip. "The camera adds weight," she protested feebly.

  "Oh come on, you don't really think you're going back to that?" Wycherly said.

  Sinah stared at him in surprise. He was standing next to her, and she could feel anger and something like fear coming from him—but she could not read the internal monologue that would have explained his feelings.

  Crippled. Her power lost just when she needed it most.

  "Look. You just finished a big movie, and are you in La La Land doing yourself any good? No. You've run away to hide. Fine. Maybe your career arc can support an early infusion of Garbo. But in the past few days I've seen you have any number of fits, you've come down here to tell me you're possessed by your umpty-great grandmother, and while you're doing that you fall down and give a pretty good impression of somebody having a seizure. Now you tell me if that adds up to a picture of anyone who's going to be going back to work any time soon?" Wycherly asked.

  "No." Sinah took a large gulp of the vile tea and forced herself to swallow.

  The heat, the caffeine, and the sugar were starting to have some effect; she felt steadier, more in control. But not in control enough to try to deny the truth of Wycherly's words. She couldn't even think about working in her current condition.

  How much money did she have in the bank? She'd spent most of what she had on the house, but she'd been serenely certain she could always get work, even if she had to stage a tactical retreat to New York.

  Should she call her agent? She knew the answer to that, but she dreaded what she'd hear when she did. You were only as good as your next deal, and she hadn't made one.

  Slowly she began to realize the scope of the trouble she was in. Her mind was going, her career was probably in ruins, and her only ally was a self-destructive alcoholic.

  "Anybody home?" Wycherly said, and Sinah blinked slowly, focusing on him. The sun had sunk farther into the west and was shining right into her eyes.

  "I was just thinking I probably don't have any money," she said.

  "You'll survive," Wycherly said briefly. "Now, since we were wonder-

  ing about which asylum to check you into, why don't you tell me what just happened?"

  As she finished her tea Sinah told him the details of the vision—or memory. Wycherly didn't seem to take it seriously, but at least he was willing to talk about it.

  "So instead of finding the Holy Grail she ended up a captive of these Indians who adopted her—"

  "Tutelo."

  "—and in a generation or two her mixed-blood Tutelo descendants married back into the European population and here you are," Wycherly finished.

  "I guess so. There must be something written about them somewhere. If they're real, it would be some kind o^proof^ don't you see?" Sinah said hopefully.

  "What does proof matter? Knowing whether it's objective fact or your personal fantasy isn't going to affect what's going on inside your head," Wycherly answered bluntly.

  Except to tell her whether it was real or not—and she already knew it was.

  "I want her to leave me alone," Sinah whispered.

  "Then find out what she wants, and give it to her. Ghost, delusion, or old girlfriend, it always works," Wycherly said with cynical assurance.

  But she wants my life. And she doesn't want to go away at all. And Quentin Blackburn wants . . .

  Vivid as a resurfacing memory, the image of Quentin Blackburn that she'd had in the ruined sanatorium hung before her eyes. He'd wanted her to join him or die, she remembered that much—but what, exactly, did that involve?

  "Look, Sinah, you really do look wasted. Maybe you ought to get inside where it's cool," Wycherly said.

  Sinah cast a doubtful glance toward the cabin's open door. Wycherly grinned.

  "I was thinking more of your place. Central air? Indoor plumbing? Remember?"

  Sinah closed her eyes wearily. Her pretty refuge—it seemed like an isolation tank now. A straitjacket—or a prison. "I don't want to be there alone."

  "Then I'll go up with you. Just let me close up the place, God knows why."

  He took the mug but pointedly left her the box of cookies. A few moments later he was back, his shoulder bag slung over one shoulder and the walking stick in his other hand.

  "Time for a nice walk in the fresh country air—since I don't see your Jeep," he said.

  "But your ankle," Sinah protested, belatedly remembering.

  "It's fine. Everything's fine," Wycherly said.

  It was much later than she thought it ought to be. The sky was dark with only the last vestiges of light, and there was a wet electric feel to the air that meant there was a storm brewing.

  As Truth attempted to unbend her cramped fingers from around the rim of the scrying mirror, she realized she had been gone from her body much too long—dangerously long. Every muscle protested with cold, cramp, and hunger; she felt lightheaded and shocky and hadn't had the forethought to bring so much as a candy bar with her.

  By the time she managed to pack the mirror safely away into her bag, the light was nearly gone. Truth didn't relish the long walk back to the center of Morton's Fork in the dark, and among the things she'd forgotten to bring with her when she'd started out this morning was a flashlight. By the time she managed to make it back, Dylan would have—justifiably—worried himself sick.

  Let him worry, a cold inhuman part of her urged. Let him see how desperately he wants to keep you safe. It will render him much more docile afterward.

  Truth shook her head, denying that part of herself. Her right hand closed over her left, turning her pearl-and-emerald engagement ring around on her finger. She didn't want to do something like that to Dylan.

  But didn't she? After what he'd said to her last night? Didn't he deserve a little payback?

  Maybe so, Truth thought, but vanishing for the whole day and half the night wouldn't get her anything she wanted. It would just reinforce Dylan's notion that she was . . . unstable.

  Unstable? Truth regarded her own word choice with horror. Was that what Dylan really thought? Was that what she was?

  No. The reassuring faith in her own perceptions steadied Truth. She'd been right, hadn't she? There was a Gate here.

  Note all I have to do to close it is find someone in the direct line and teach them how to close it. How hard can that be, really? Since there hasn't been much emigration from Morton's Fork, it should be fairly easy to find someone in the bloodline to get the Gate closed down, even if just by checking the land poll deeds to find out who owned this land before Quentin Blackburn built his sanatorium on it.

  Her mental voice rambled on, soothing her with the sheer quantity of its words. All those things would be easier with Dylan's cooperation—or even his active help—and she wouldn't get them by sitting here. Telling him the truth wasn't going to be fun—but she was damned if she was going to behave like the idiot heroine in a Gothic novel and not tell him what had happened up here today.

  Truth shook her head ruefully, and groaned as she got to her feet. At least it shouldn't be impossible to prove to Dylan that she was right; an uncontrolled Gate—as Truth knew from experience—acted like an enormous generator on every psychic within its range, wakening the gifts in those who had never shown them before and increasing the power of those who had them.

  Truth felt a sudden, guilty, selfish thrill. Didn't that mean
that Rowan and Ninian should both test significantly higher while they were here? She ought to be able to test that.

  First things first, she reminded herself with a sigh. Go and face the music, then carry on from there.

  Half an hour later, Truth would have been happy to exchange her present situation for Dylan at his most disapproving.

  She was lost.

  This isn't possible. All 1 had to do was follow the drive back to the gate and then go down the road back to the general store. Even in the dark, all I have to do is put one foot in front of the other.

  But that wasn't what had happened.

  The night had gotten progressively darker. It was the blanketing darkness of the country, without even a firefly to break the monotony. Crickets and frogs, made restless by the oncoming storm, called with shrill rhythm, making a cushion of insulating sound.

  The first time she'd realized she was going the wrong way, she'd simply turned around and retraced her tracks. She'd passed the white marble

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  bench on which she'd spent so many hours earlier today, its whiteness reduced to a dim grey smudge in the darkness. The bench was on the left side of the road.

  Then, about ten minutes later, when she thought the gates should be appearing any moment now, she'd passed the bench again.

  On the right.

  Truth stopped dead, staring at it. She was certain it was the same bench—and more to the point, she'd sat down on the first bench she saw. There should be no other benches between her and the road.

  How had she gotten turned around?

  She'd tried again, placing the bench on her left hand and heading down the drive. She held her mental wards firmly against outside influence; there was a name for what was happening to her— pook-ledden —and if she could only hold her Will strong she ought to be able to keep from walking in circles.

  But she'd passed the bench again—on the right—and that was when Truth had decided to leave the road and try to reach Morton's Fork going cross-country.

  But that didn't seem to be working either. Truth was lost. And no matter how she twisted and turned, she suspected she was being drawn closer and closer to the sanatorium ruins.