Gravelight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  So.

  He might owe this attempt to Truth, but Dylan owed it more to himself — to the memory of the brave and open-minded man he'd once thought he was.

  In the way of dreams, all this introspection had taken only a moment. The man still stood, facing Dylan in front of his of fee door. The figure didn't look like Miles now — like someone, but who?

  '7 don't have the courage," Dylan said. ''But I have the will. And I want the key."

  Now Dylan was standing alone in front of the open door to his office. Inside, on a desk that was simultaneously his own familiar desk and a black double cube, lay a bright copper key as long as his arm.

  Dylan stepped forward.

  He was moving. Wycherly lay, eyes closed, drifting at the behest of whatever power pulled him forward. Only the sudden tardy realization that the droning was a car engine — he was asleep at the wheel! — made him open his eyes.

  But he wasn't in the front seat — he was curled up sideways on the tiny back seat. It was night, and the headlights of oncoming cars turned the raindrops on the windshield to spangles of light.

  This was his car. It had been a birthday present and a bribe — he'd just completed six months of sobriety in the course of his third clinic in the last three years.

  He was nineteen.

  "No," Wycherly said, struggling to sit up in the Fiat's cramped confines. Had everything else been a dream?

  "You awake, Wych?" Camilla Redford said, turning around in the front passenger seat to look at him. Her voice was slurred — she'd been drinking, he'd been drinking, they'd all been drinking. There'd been a party at Randy Benson's house: Wycherly didn't remember all the details.

  Who was driving the car? Wycherly sat up, pushing Cafnilla down in her seat, painfully aware that the Fiat was going much too fast, starting to drift sideways. He caught a glimpse of a blond head — the driver behind the wheel — just as the car hit the edge of the embankment with a sharp shock and went careening down the side.

  There was a brief, breathless moment when it seemed that everything would be all right, before any of the passengers realized where they were. Then the car began to fill with water.

  Wycherly was terrified. This was the crash that had killed Cammie, and this

  time he was the one who was going to drown. Wycherly struggled to be somewhere, anywhere hut here — and suddenly it was as if he slid like smoke through the car's roof, hovering above the scene.

  The moon had been full that night. Now Wycherly's mind allowed him to place the scene properly in the past, and the moon illuminated the scene with a ghostly azure radiance, spectrally bright. It had rained earlier, a brief August shower, but the sky was clear now. Wycherly could see the white Fiat below, its roof just above the surface of the water. Soon it would slip sideways into deeper water, rolling onto its side.

  The driver's-side door thrust open, and Wycherly saw the blond who had been driving struggle out of the car, dragging the hack seat passenger with him as he struggled toward the shore. Dragging Wycherly.

  The shock of recognition jarred Wycherly loose from his peaceful vantage point, and all at once he was lying on gravel staring up at the stars. Randy Benson was standing over him, crying.

  "I can't be here. I can't. My dad has plans for me," Randy moaned.

  Randy and Wycherly hadn't seen much of each other before tonight, but Wycherly had heard about him — the golden boy: athlete, straight-A student, scion of a family that could number senators and signers of the Declaration of Independence among its ancestors. A son, Wycherly's father had told him, that any father would he proud to have. A son like Kenny Jr. should have been.

  hike Wycherly should have been.

  The Fiat slid further beneath the surface. Camilla was still inside. She'd stay there until the wrecker arrived and pulled the car out of the river.

  "She's dead. Oh, God — she's dead. I can't he here," Randy said again. Tears still ran down his face, but sheer terror had stopped his crying. "She's dead — hut you? You're a drunk, a loser. Nobody cares about you. And your dad can buy you off."

  Randy stepped back into the water — clever, clever, not to leave any tracks for the police in case Wycherly remembered something later. In a moment he was gone from sight, and Wycherly lay, looking up at the stars, waiting for the sirens to start.

  Randy was the driver. RANDY. Wycherly hadn't even been at the wheel.

  The realization worked slowly through him like the dose of a drug. Wycherly hadn't been driving that night. It had been Randy, not Wycherly, who had killed Camilla Redford.

  He was innocent. He'd always been innocent.

  "Do you want the key, Wycherly?" his father said.

  Wycherly sat up. It was cold here on the gravel and he shivered. Kenneth Mus-grave, Sr was standing beside him, gazing down at Wycherly with his usual expression of impatience and distaste — as though Wycherly wasn't good enough.

  But he never would he, would he? Nothing Wycherly could do would he enough for his father. And the golden god that had heen held up to him as the measure of perfection was just as far from perfection as Wycherly himself—flawed, falli-hle. . . murderer.

  ''You want the key," his father said. "Have you the courage to step through the door and take it?"

  The key. He'd heen searching for the key all his life.

  Kenneth Musgrave pointed out over the water.

  Wycherly looked. He'd thought it had already sunk, hut he'd heen wrong. The Fiat was still riding fairly high. Cammie's head must still he ahove water. And on the driver's seat somehow he could see the gleam of a gold key as long as his arm.

  Wycherly hesitated, pure panic gripping him. He could save her He could get the key. But to do it meant going out into the water where the monsters were. As he faltered, he saw a thick ripple in the surface of the river.

  There was something out there.

  It didn't work. Sinah had heen whipsawed hy too many strong emotions in the last twenty-four hours to feel anything more than weariness. She got stiffly to her feet, wincing as cramped muscles protested. She'd almost thought the elaborate theatrics Truth had gone through this time had a chance of working, hut here they were: same damp cave, same running water, same flickering candlelight.

  "Ah. And do you find our crihhage to your liking, pretty maid?" a voice said.

  Sinah spun around — and stared into the eyes of Athanais de Lyon.

  She was standing in a cell. There were wisps of straw on the floor. Sinah drew a panicked hreath, and almost choked on the smells of rot and sewage. She prayed to wake up, knowing as she did that this could not he a dream. Surely — if this were a dream — surely she would not he ahle to smell things?

  "Do you seek the key?" Athanais asked. She threw hack her head and laughed.

  This is too real, Sinah thought, clawing desperately for her sanity. Athanais was wearing a seventeenth-century gown that looked like something out of Richard Lester's Three Musketeers. The dress was made of bright yellow satin, and when it had been clean and new it must have accented Athanais' red-haired, green-eyed beauty to perfection.

  But now the gown was tattered and soiled, its hem black and draggled. Rats scuttled in the corners of the cell; a stinking tallow candle dripped fatly down into the receiver of a battered pewter candlestick. There was a rhythmic thudding going on outside the cell, and against her will and her better judgment, Sinah went toward the window.

  " 'Tis the gallows they build, madame— a fit end for those who have not the courage to seek the key!'' Athanais cawed.

  It was true. Sinah stood on a chair and looked through the small barred window. In the square below, their work lit by torches, men worked to build a gibbet large enough to hang half a dozen people at once.

  A fit end to a witch — and wasn't that what Sinah was? A woman who used her special powers to her own advantage, living in a world of privilege while those around her struggled through obstacles and imperfection? Who rejoiced in others' failures, knowing that she'd had a
hand in them, standing aloof while others floundered.

  "What. . . key?" Sinah said slowly, stepping down from the chair She was trapped in this Nightmare on Elm Street dream sequence, and she couldn't see any way out. If she died here, did she die in reality?

  Athanais was standing beside the door to the cell.

  "You seek the key," she said. "Have you the courage to step through the door and take it?"

  Through the grille set into the door's upper portion, Sinah could see the key, hanging on the wall beyond. It was iron and as long as her arm. She could already feel it in her hands — cold, and heavy, and her passport out of here.

  "Yes," Sinah said, but she wondered if that was true. What if there was a whole world out there that went with the cell? A world in which she would be a hunted alien, never really belonging, forced to survive by her wits and what powers she could summon?

  Sinah cast an anguished look toward Athanais: the ghost beneath the skin, the thing she'd always feared most — insanity and death. She could despise Athanais de Lyon all she wished, but how much real difference was there between Athanais de Lyon and Sinah Del Ion? Sinah had been willing to condemn Wycherly to death for her own convenience — had accepted the bloodline's imperatives without really trying to fight back — had nearly poisoned a woman who had only been trying to help her.

  The temptation to stay where she was — to refuse to try for the key and thus ensure she'd never taste the bitter failure that had brought Athanais to this cell — was a sweet lure. Maybe she should just take the time to think the whole thing over carefully, maybe take a nap here on this bunk.

  No. You've got to escape. You've got to get back to the others. Truth's right; if I can't make up for the past I can at least take responsibility for the future — good or bad!

  Sinah gritted her teeth, squared her shoulders against everything she'd ever feared, and stepped forward.

  She passed through the door.

  This was real.

  Dylan stood in the doorway of his office, seeing the copper key gleaming on the desk/double cube only a few feet away. He could already sense how it would feel in his hands, chill and smooth and heavy.

  This was no dream, no reverie, no stress-triggered hallucination. This was reality — Truth's reality.

  This was what she'd been trying to tell him. She did not live by fantasy or acts of faith; she saw reality —her reality — and acted accordingly.

  For a moment Dylan wavered. He could close his eyes, turn back, slam the door. Not come down four-square on the side of — of sorcery, for God's sake; not an allegory, not a metaphor — real magick. Something far removed from religion or even prayer; a willful reaching into some invisible realm to . . .

  To make a laughingstock of yourself insisting that things exist which aren't even important to most people.

  But the key was here. And if it was real, so was all the rest. If he had the courage to believe in it.

  "Observer-created reality." A catchphrase the boys in the physics department liked to bandy about flitted through Dylan's head. So be it. This was the reality he created, and God have mercy on his soul.

  "In the beginning. . . . "

  Dylan reached for the key.

  Wycherly stood on the edge of the river for one agonizing moment. He knew that in one sense this was not real — that no matter what he did in the next few moments, Camilla would still be dead a dozen years ago.

  He looked back at his father — at the image of his father. It was not really Kenneth Sr. — even if Wycherly threw himself into the river now, he would not change his father's opinion of him. Even if he went home, confronted the Honorable Randolph J. Benson with the truth, got him to confess that he'd been the one driving that night — it would not matter. In his father's eyes — in the world's eyes — Wycherly would always be a failure.

  It was easier to be a failure.

  It was safe.

  There was something out there in that river —// not Cammie, then the ghosts of everyone else he'd hurt or betrayed throughout his life. They were waiting for him, waiting to drag Wycherly down to lingering, agonizing death. He could see the white gleam of their serpent-bodies beneath the black glass of the water. They were out there. They were as real as the car, the key, Camilla. . . .

  With a sob, Wycherly stumbled into the water, shambling clumsily out until it was deep enough to swim.

  The water was icy, numbing his body until he could not tell whether serpent hands caressed him or not. He reached the Fiat, clinging to the door to keep from being swept away by the current while he worked to open it. When it finally yielded, the shock made the car slip beneath the surface.

  Only seconds.

  Wycherly reached for Camilla, and felt the clasp of ophidian fingers, burning and implacable, closing about his ankle. Tears of terror ran down his face as he ignored them, dragging Camilla out of the car, up to the surface. He felt her body shudder as she dragged life-giving air into her lungs, and knew that this moment was the end of every certainty in his life.

  He reached past her for the gleam of gold still inside the car.

  "Go through that door," the bright presence said. "Or. . . stay here with us."

  Truth looked around herself, and all of a sudden her perspective shifted. This was the Bright Realm. She had already passed through the Gate. Beyond the door lay only the Otherworld that led to human realms.

  She could stay here and leave the confusion of soft emotions behind, flee a world that thought of her as a cross between a sideshow and an outpatient. Return to a world that was Truth's own far more than Earth could ever be. Dylan didn't want her — he didn't believe in her; he'd never be her proper mate.

  She could stay here. She could even close the door from this side, a parting gift to the foolish Earth-children who'd presumed to treat her as an equal. This would be the only chance she would ever get. Stay.

  And be as much an outsider here?

  Truth looked at the shining being. Cold, perfect, pure . . .

  And heartless. Stay, and the part of herself that loved would have no place.

  "No," Truth said sadly, and stepped through the door

  She reached for the silver key. It was cold and smooth and heavy in her hands.

  "I am the key for every lock. . . ."

  * * *

  No one was perfect. No one person could be enough. But this time it was human weakness, not human strength, that the spell was woven of, the lacks in mind and heart and hand and will that all of them fought and lived with every day — those everyday battles became the substance of the battle they fought now.

  A nd Sinah chose good —

  And Dylan chose freedom —

  And Wycherly chose love —

  And Truth chose service — .

  Not aiming for miracles, not aiming for perfection, but trusting that human strength and human goodwill would be enough.

  And in the end it was. The fourfold being took the key forged from all of them, courage and honesty and persistence and patience, and set it into the lock.

  As if the will and the gesture had been enough, the Gate swung shut, pulling the key from their hands, and then the key, the lock, the Gate, the hill — all were gone.

  Truth opened her eyes.

  The hazard flare still burned.

  "When do we . . . oh," Sinah said, meeting Truth's eyes with sudden comprehension.

  "'Oh,' indeed," Dylan said, opening his eyes. He took a deep breath. "Darling, I think it's time for a long talk—a real one, this time." He smiled.

  "It worked," Truth said, shutting her eyes tightly against the stinging of sudden tears. Never to go home, never, never, never ... a part of her mourned. But she'd made her choice.

  They all had.

  Wycherly groaned, opening his eyes and reaching out groggily. His bandaged hand brushed Sinah's knee and he recoiled with a mew of pain.

  "Oh . . . God," Wycherly moaned faintly, lying back against Sinah and closing his eyes in exhaustion.r />
  Truth scurried to rescue her working tools, looking to Dylan before she snuffed the candle. She packed them away carefully.

  "Wycherly—no!" Sinah cried in protest.

  The bandage had darkened where Wycherly had bumped it; Sinah had unwrapped it, thinking of bleeding and burst stitches, but what she found instead caused her to cry out in dismay. If there had ever been stitches they'd been torn out long since by the swelling, and the raw, blood-red edges of the cut gaped wide.

  The foul smell of infection rose from the wound. A jellylike, greenish-white pus oozed from pockets on the palm and the wrist, and the skin around the incision was the deep purple-black of emperor grapes. Angry red lines ran up his arm, as bright as if they were painted on. Gangrene.

  "This doesn't look good," Dylan said, shining the torch down at Wycherly's hand. The white light made all the colors more vivid, brilliantly ugly.

  "We've got to get him to a doctor—him and Luned both," Truth said. "Dylan, can you spare a T-shirt to get that wrapped up again?"

  "No. Let me," Sinah said suddenly.

  She lay Wycherly down on the scuffed chalk sigil. His eyes glittered feverishly with the pain, fixed on her face as if the sight of her could save him.

  So each of them had looked who had come to her for healing.

  The bloodline's knowledge was fading from Sinah's mind—the knowledge, the power, her own fey gifts, all fading away now that the Wellspring was sealed. But for a few minutes more some scrap of power remained.

  She knelt beside Wycherly, and clasped his swollen, seeping hand between both of her own, summoning the spirit of the Athanais Dellon who had been the bloodline's greatest healer.

  There were two patterns here—the thing as it was, and the thing as it ought to be, whole and healed. Slowly Sinah/Athanais erased the discrepancies between them, and as she did, she felt the power that she wove with slip away, fading as a stove's heat does once the cooking is done.

  Until at last the power was gone, the last echoes of it stilled.

  And the hand between her own bled freely—clean, honest blood with no taint of rot in it.