"So you see, Athanais, I have won at last. "
She turned, and almost sobbed with relief. No monster this, but a man in long clerical robes. He held out a hand to help her to her feet.
"Quentin.''
The bloodline knew what this place was. This was the blasphemous Church Quentin Blackburn had sworn he would build in her sacred place, trapping the Wellspring beneath his cursed altar and making her power his own.
"You have not won,'' she said, scrabbling back from him and pulling herself upright along a tombstone. Its surface crumbled away beneath her hands as if it were ancient bone.
His smile widened, impossibly wide, and now Melusine saw that Quentin Blackburn had only looked human in contrast to the thing that awaited within the ruined church.
"Have I not? I am the Gateway to your precious Wellspring, now, Athanais."
Her mental image of the man she had loved and killed so long ago wavered and vanished. All that was left was this monster with its mindless hunger for power and revenge.
"And what has all your power gotten you?" she said sadly. "Oh, Quentin — can't you see that you've gained nothing — not in this world or the next? Let me help you; together we can — "
"I gave you your chance to join me. Now join my master "
She had thought she was safely removed from Quentin, but time and distance meant nothing in this place. His hand closed upon her wrist, and Sinah found herself on the threshold of the cathedral, being pulled inside. On the altar, the thing waited for her, a hideous mockery of the god of lust and fear that the bloodline had paid homage to on soft summer nights.
If Quentin got his way here, she would die the death from which there was no redemption, and the Wellspring would be unprotected forever. She struggled against him with a strength that transcended reason or understanding, the ultimate effort that the human spirit can only muster in the face of something more terrible than death.
And in the distance, she heard a howling.
At first she thought it came from more of Quentin's servants, but the frenzy with which he redoubled his efforts to drag her to the Black Altar told her it did not. Struggling toward the graveyard, her face turned away from his, it was Sinah who saw the great grey brute appear out of the mist. It gathered itself and lunged at Quentin Blackburn, snapping and snarling. He put up both hands to defend himself, and Sinah was free.
''SiNAHf"
She ran toward the cry. Truth was seated upon the back of a white horse — it danced and skittered, as if it did not want its feet to touch the ground — holding a hand out to her.
''Hurry —/ can't — '' Truth gasped.
The grey wolf flashed by them, fleeing, and Sinah grabbed Truth's wrist with all her strength. Truth did not even wait for her to mount, but urged the mare into flight, her hand clasped on Sinah's arm in a punishing grip. Sinah ran beside her, willing to be dragged, anything, to escape this terrible place.
Exhaustion made her blind; an eternity later. Truth stopped long enough to pull Sinah up behind her, and then the mare ran on, on and on and on. . . .
"Sinah."
No. She was cold, frozen to the bone. Someone shook her, and she reluctantly opened her eyes.
She'd been so certain, somehow, that she was indoors, perhaps in a hospital, that the open air of the hidden temple came as a jarring shock. She was lying on smooth cold stone; sound and sensation came back to her along with sight. She pushed Truth away and sat up.
"Are you all right?" Truth's voice was insistent.
"I'm . . . Sinah." That was the most important thing. She shook her head, trying to clear it. She was Sinah—but for how long?
"What happened?"
Sinah saw Truth flinch in irritation at Dylan's question, but the dark-haired woman said nothing.
"It's Quentin Blackburn. He wants to kill me," Sinah said.
Somehow it didn't seem enough.
"It's only fair," she amplified, still feeling dazed. "After all, I've already killed him."
They got back to the car—Dylan drove—and soon Sinah and Truth were sitting in the breakfast nook once more while Dylan puttered around in the kitchen. In a few moments he came out with two steaming mugs.
"Mulled wine," he said, setting one cup down in front of each of the women. "I know it's out of season, but Truth will tell you it's the best thing in situations like this."
Truth sipped at her mug. "At least it tastes better than the stuff I buy," she commented. "How are you feeling, Sinah?"
"I don't know," Sinah said. "Tired, I guess."
Both of the others looked at her as if she'd said something peculiar.
"What?" Sinah asked.
Dylan looked toward Truth, acknowledging her right to lead the questioning.
"I'll want you to tell me in detail what you experienced up there at the sanatorium, Sinah, so we can compare notes, but first—Dylan, what did you see?"
Dylan frowned, concentrating scrupulously.
"The event took about five minutes. When I arrived on the ground level, you and Sinah were already standing in front of the altar-like stone, holding hands. You seemed to be in an altered state, so I didn't disturb you. I'd just seen that it was an altar, with carving along the side facing me, and was moving over toward it to get a closer look, when the temperature seemed to drop abruptly, and I felt ... a chill would be the best way to describe it. Sort of apprehensive, the way you do when you've wandered into a not-very-good neighborhood." Dylan paused. His voice was neutral, carefully distancing himself from the phenomena he was reporting, as a good researcher must.
It was that objectivity that Truth had lost. Her path might lie balanced between White and Black, but her judgment could not lie balanced between belief and skepticism. Truth believed.
Dylan glanced at her—questioningly—and went on. "At the same time I became aware of the sound of running water—not loud, but seemingly coming from all directions—and Sinah fell to her knees. You released her hands and started trying to rouse her. I checked my watch, then moved to help you. When I next noticed it, the temperature had to normal, and I didn't seem to hear the sound of the water."
Truth considered.
"And you, Sinah?" Truth asked.
"You're going to think this is crazy," Sinah began hesitantly, but soon was telling them the whole story of the grey place, the graveyard, the Black Altar and its monstrous god—
"—and it was so real—like virtual reality, except I could feel, and touch, and smell. It seemed to go on for hours—I'd swear it wasn't just five minutes." She shuddered, reaching for her mug again and draining it. "I don't ever want to have another nightmare that real! And he—
Quentin—was dragging me inside, when you showed up, Truth. On a white horse, just like a cowboy hero." She laughed, shakily.
"And I had a hard time doing it," Truth said. "I'll get to my part of the story in a moment, but—you said Quentin Blackburn was trying to kill you? And that you've already killed him?"
"In 1917," Sinah said. "He died in the fire that I—that my great-great-grandmother Athanais set. She—I—she—oh, it's so confused! I don't believe in reincarnation—I don't!" Sinah wailed in protest.
"That doesn't matter, if reincarnation believes in you," Dylan joked. Then, seeing how distressed Sinah was, said, "You don't have to believe in a full-fledged transmigration of souls to believe that some people are capable of remembering things that happened before they were born— sometimes in great detail. The capacities and capabilities of the human brain are vast, and scientists now believe that there is more natural inter-connectedness between human minds than was ever before thought possible. Possibly memory is even programmed into the mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mother to daughter across the generations."
"Maybe," Sinah said, sounding relieved to have a scientific-sounding explanation. "You know what they say: 'Dammit, Jim, I'm a telepath, not a trance medium.'" She smiled at her own feeble joke.
"But tell us about Quentin Blackburn," Trut
h urged.
Sinah frowned, running a hand through her hair. "I sure fancied him," she said, her voice slowing and deepening and taking on a pronounced mountain accent. "He come up here with some cityfolk paper saying as he had fair title to everything from Mauch Chunk Trace to Watchman's Gap—Ari'd done sold it off for two thousand paper dollars and a bottle of store-bought whiskey.
"I tried not to mind Quentin none—wasn't nothing I could do about him, but I figured if he took up with me I'd get the land back somehow, even if he had to die sudden. But he built his hospital right over my Wellspring, and then he started doing . . . things."
Sinah stared right at Truth, but it was no longer Sinah who looked out of her eyes. It was Athanais Dellon, the last true guardian of the Wildwood Gate, who had died in 1917 protecting her charge the only way she could.
"I couldn't stop him. Miss Truth. He was riling up what isn't good for man nor woman to meddle with; I go my ways. Lord knows, but this was hurtful when it didn't need to be, and, well, it drove off the hunting and blighted the forest. It wasn't natural. I told him and told him I couldn't
let him be; that it wasn't right for him to meddle like he was. But he just put his nose deeper into that book of his and went on about how they understood this sort of thing over in Europe. I loved him more'n I ever did any natural man, but he studied to shut me out, Miss Truth, and I couldn't let him do that. I warned him, I did. ..." Tears slid unnoticed down Sinah's cheeks.
"Sinah?" Truth said.
"Yes, I . . . well, that's how it was," Sinah finished lamely, obviously not quite sure of what she'd been saying.
"Quentin Blackburn was a member of The Church of the Antique Rite," Dylan summarized, "who came to Morton's Fork wanting to tap the power of the psychic locus—the Gate—here, just as his great-nephew would years later at Shadow's Gate."
"But Thorne Blackburn wasn't evil," Truth objected.
"Granted," Dylan said, "Thorne was a cockeyed idealist, but his great-uncle seems to have been in it for temporal power, just as some of the European magickal orders were at the same period. So his lover, Athanais Dellon, burned the sanatorium down with Quentin inside, killing both of them and destroying his access to the Gate."
"But not very well," Truth pointed out dryly. "Because Quentin's still here."
She stood and stretched, turning away from the table and looking out across the living room. The sun was high and the stained-glass windows were brilliantly lit, throwing their multicolored shadows of light across the pale walls and furniture. It should have been a beautiful and peaceful place.
"I've seen him before," Truth began, slowly, "both times I've visited the Wellspring on the Astral. Whether it's him—a discarnate spirit retaining ties to the Earth plane—or just some sort of psychic echo, it means his Church managed to taint access to Sinah's Wellspring pretty thoroughly. Today, the harder I tried to reach the Gate, the more I got bogged down, in, well, nothing."
Truth paused, searching for words that both Dylan and Sinah would understand. "Travel to what we call the Astral, the Otherworld—where you were, Sinah—is a subjective experience, different each time. The Otherworld is usually defined by the expectations of the beholder, unless someone else's expectations override his. I'll be the first to admit it's a very strange place, but it's a natural one. Except this time. I felt as if I
were on the wrong frequency. I couldn't get out, I couldn't go on . . . but it was, oh, like I was trying to run a Mac program on an IBM computer; just a mess. I knew you must be there somewhere, Sinah, so I kept trying to reach you, but it was—it was like moving through phantom oatmeal."
"I'll have to remember that description for my next lecture," Dylan said, but his tone was sympathetic. "As for Quentin Blackburn . . . I'm sorry darling. I didn't take you seriously, but you were right—even if he isn't there, his threat has to be taken seriously. You provided concrete proof of that—I should have believed you and investigated for myself immediately."
"Proof?" Truth said blankly. Dylan's handsome apology seemed somehow inadequate; a formality instead of a true healing. She felt untouched by it inside, as if there were still arguments between them to resolve.
"Nobody who wasn't dabbling in very nasty things indeed would have anything like that altar," Dylan explained. "The fire may have destroyed everything else, but the altar's chiseled right out of the bedrock. It's carved with symbols from the Antique Rite, and it's obviously part of the sanatorium construction. As for the rest. ..."
"We still need to seal that Gate," Truth said, over Sinah's automatic wince of protest. "But it looks like we need to get Quentin Blackburn out of there first, and that's something I can't do."
There was nothing more that any of them could do that day, and anyway, before proceeding. Truth wanted more information on what they faced. Dylan left very soon; he had his own work to do, besides rejoining the search for the still-missing Starking girl. Truth stayed with Sinah, who seemed to welcome her company.
When Dylan was gone. Truth reheated the rest of the mulled wine and got Sinah to drink it. Under the influence of the alcohol and sugar, Sinah agreed to lie down and get some rest—so long as Truth promised to stay with her, and wake her if she started to dream.
"You'll stay, won't you? You won't leave me."
"Of course I won't leave you." Truth smoothed Sinah's hair back, and the younger woman relaxed again on the freshly made bed. Truth felt a sudden flash of tenderness—though she'd known Sinah only a day, the woman was already closer to her than a sister. Than her own sister.
Truth sat beside Sinah until she saw that the woman had entered the
gates of sleep and was resting quietly, and then went back downstairs to the phone. She was just as glad to have privacy for what she was going to do next.
"Hi, Truth!" Grey's voice carried sunnily through the connection, and despite her worries. Truth smiled.
Hunter Greyson was a practitioner of the Blackburn Work, though he had come to it from the Right-Hand Path whose precepts he had followed in more lifetimes than this. He was more advanced in the Work than Truth herself, since she had only recently returned to the Path after a long absence.
"Of course you know that I'm not calling just to chat, but—how is Winter?" she asked, thinking of Wycherly and cradling the phone against her ear. The afternoon sun slanting through the stained-glass windows made the room a kaleidoscope, staining everything it touched with its random hues.
"Doing fine. She's gotten a job at the Arts Council, helping them with grants and fund-raising, and she's started painting again. She says she'll scale back her activities once the baby comes, but I don't know." Grey's voice was fond. "You'll have to find time to come out and see us again, Truth."
"I will," Truth promised, hoping it was one she could keep. She thought of mentioning that Wycherly was here in Morton's Fork, but something made her hesitate. Winter and Wycherly had not parted on good terms, though Truth knew that Winter, at least, would welcome a reconciliation.
But if Wycherly were turning to the Left-Hand Path?
"But the reason I called is—Grey, what do you know about The Church of the Antique Rite?" Truth said quickly.
There was a moment of silence. "You haven't run into anyone saying he's a member, have you?" Grey asked warily.
"No, but I think I've found one of their old temples." Truth paused, not certain of how to explain what had happened today. She didn't want to tell Grey about the Wildwood Gate—though, like all Blackburn Initiates, he knew about the Gates in theory.
But theory isn't practice — I'm living proof of that.
"Did you try to banish it?" Grey asked, skipping over several intermediate steps in the conversation. Anyone coming across such a tainted
site—except, possibly, another disciple of the Left-Hand Path—would certainly try to cleanse the negative energies that would inevitably linger in the area.
"I did my best, but my best doesn't seem to be much good," Truth admitted. "It's, um . . . determin
ed," was the word she finally settled for, knowing that Grey would be able to decode what she really meant.
It was good to be able to talk to one of her own kind, even though Hunter Greyson was not quite what she was. His power was the result of years of study, not inherited psychic gifts or sidhe bloodline. Hunter Greyson was human.
Grey chuckled, in acknowledgement of the effort Truth must have made and the resigned frustration in her voice. "You'll need a specialist, then. Do you or Dylan know any White Magicians?"
Grey was not referring to race, but to belief—White Magicians were members of the White Lodges, followers of the Right-Hand Path. In its simplest form, Christianity was White Magick, as opposed to Truth's own path as its profane mirror-image, Black Magick, was.
Michael Archangel. Truth thought of the man her sister, Light, had chosen—the warrior of the Light who felt that Truth's own path was a grievous error that would lead only to sorrow and pain. Michael Archangel was a White Magician.
"Yes. I think I know someone I can call." She hesitated again about mentioning Wycherly and once more decided against it. "Keep well, Grey."
"And you, too, Truth. Go with the Wheel," Grey said, bidding her farewell.
When Truth hung up the phone, it was a long time before she could bring herself to make the next call.
She'd invited Sinah to come and join Dylan and the others for dinner; Truth hoped to persuade the others into a jaunt into Pharaoh as a break from the tensions of the day.
Sinah had simply laughed at the invitation, though she'd been anxious enough for Truth to come back to spend the night that Truth was fairly sure it was the prospect of going to Pharaoh and not a desire to be alone that had prompted Sinah's refusal.
One more mystery to solve when she had the time.
But it was probably just as well that Sinah had refused, since that left
Truth free to stop at Wycherly's cabin on her way down the mountain several hours later. But Wycherly was not there, and only the faintest trace of magick remained, cold and neutral as an unused hearth.
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