Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

“Butter is good,” the faun said meditatively. “And cheese. I think remembrance will run long, if you come every two days.”

Fortunately, there was a bit left in the original cask of vin ordinaire, and no one at the sanitarium drank wine.

Isn’t that a line out of Bram Stoker’s novel? “I never drink… wine. …”

Odd thought, that. But it was the truth at Briareley. The staff was Devon born and bred, except for Eleanor, and your true Devonian wouldn’t look at wine when there was cider about. Old fashioned fermented cider, that is, the stuff that had a kick like a mule, and was stronger than anyone outside the county usually suspected.

He didn’t drink wine, either, as a rule. A glass of whisky by preference, if he felt the taste for spirits coming on—that was where Scotland had rubbed off on him. Otherwise, tea was his drink. And he’d never seen Eleanor touch a drop of spirit even when offered it; tea for her as well. So the fauns could have the wine and welcome to it.

“Vine and harvest, bee-sup and butter and cheese, all to come if wearing word. We will remember, Earth Master,” the faun said, with a stamp of his hoof to seal the bargain.

Then Andrew was once again alone in the clearing, with only the knowing eyes of Pan upon him, the faint purple stain and the bit of bread still on the plinth. The fauns would not take that bit of an offering to their god; a bird or a mouse might steal it, but that was Pan’s will.

He saluted the god with no sense of irony, and turned to push his way back out of the grove and into the workaday world again.

Marina sat at a desk in one of the inner offices and trembled. She had never been so glad of anything in her life as she was glad of the fact that Reggie had left the tour of the pottery to one of his underlings—and that business conferences with his managers had kept him pent up in his office all afternoon. Because it took her all afternoon to recover from what she found in the painting-room.

It had been bad enough to discover that the pottery was a blight, a cancer, a malignant spring spewing poison into the land, the water, the very air. Everyone and everything around here was poisoned, more or less—the clay-lees choked the Exe where the runoff entered it, and no living thing could survive the murky water, not fish nor plant. Clay clogged the gills and smothered the fish, coated the leaves of water-plants and choked them. The clay choked the soil as well—and the lead from the glazes killed what the clay didn’t choke. Even the air, loaded with lead vapor and smoke from the kilns, was a hazard to everything that came in contact with it. But those were the least of the poisons here.

The rather dull young clerk who took her around didn’t even notice when the blood drained out of her face and she grew faint on the first probing touch of the paintresses and their special environs. The girls themselves were too busy to pay attention to her—she was only a female, after all. There weren’t any of their gentleman friends there at the time, but Marina had the idea that they’d been chivvied out long enough for her to take her look around, and would pop out of hiding as soon as she was gone. So there was no one to notice that she clutched at the doorpost and chattered ridiculous questions for a good fifteen minutes before she felt ready to move on.

Thank heavens that was the end of the tour, she thought, shuddering. The clerk had tucked her up in one of the managers’ offices with apologies that he couldn’t put her in Madam Chamberten’s office, because it was Madam Chamberten’s orders that it was locked up unless she was expected. She waved him away and asked for a pot of tea, then changed her mind and left it untouched when she realized how much lead must be in the water. She didn’t want to go into Madam Chamberten’s office. Not when—that sinkhole of evil lay so close to it.

So instead, she propped her forehead on her hand and pretended to read her poetry book, strengthening her shields from her inner reserves, and trying to make them as invisible as all her skill could. One touch, one single touch had told her all she needed to know.

Ellen was by no means the first, nor the only girl with untapped magic-potential that had been drained. Every girl in that painting-room was being drained, and more than being drained, was being corrupted. Oh, it was insidious enough; and really, Marina could not imagine how Ellen had escaped permanent harm. It began with being brought into the painting-room, with flattery as the poison worked its fatal changes and made the girls beautiful, with pretty dresses made available to them, and cosmetics in the form of the glaze-powders. Then the temptations began in the form of the men who visited, and their presents, invitations, the stories of good times and pleasure from girls who had been here a while. There were two of those girls whose sexuality was so robust and honest that they actually got no spiritual harm from yielding to that temptation. They enjoyed themselves to the hilt, taking what was offered and laughingly thrust away anything that was perverse, that was the wonder of it. But the rest were tempted to do things they felt in their hearts were wrong, saw themselves as fallen—because they saw themselves as fallen, they became fallen, grew hard, and then—

And then realized with horror that they were dancing with death, as the first signs of trouble came on them. Understood that they were doomed, and saw themselves as damned by their own actions, and despaired.

And that cesspit, that sinkhole hidden beneath the floor of the painting room, drank it all in and stored it up, aged and refined it, then distilled it in a dark flame of pure evil.

And then what?

She didn’t know. Something came and tapped off the unwholesome vintage, more poisonous than the lead dust that floated in the air of that place. It was power, that wine of iniquity; power stolen from the girls, from their magic, from their guilt, from their despair. Three separate vintages blended into a deadly draught that something or someone drank to the dregs.

And she had a horrible feeling that she knew who that someone was.

The office door opened, and she looked up. “Ready to go?” asked Reggie, with obscene cheer. “We have a train to catch!”

She set her mouth in a false smile, and got up. “Of course,” she replied, and managed to step quite calmly into the coat he held out for her.

He caught up her hand and all but propelled her out of the offices and down to the street to the inevitable cab. A glance at the station-clock as they arrived showed the reason for his haste; they were cutting it fine, indeed, and she broke into an undignified run beside him as they dashed for the train.

It was only as the train pulled out of the station and she settled into their compartment and caught her breath—taking care that she put her face in shadow, where her expression would be more difficult to read—that Reggie finally spoke to her again.

“Well, cuz, did you learn all you wanted to?” he asked genially.

And she was very, very glad for her caution, because she was certain that her eyes, at least, would have betrayed her, as she answered him.

“Oh yes, Reggie,” she said, exerting every bit of control she had to keep her voice even. “I certainly did. More than I ever dreamed.”

Chapter Nineteen

MARINA had never been so sure of anything in her life as she was that Reggie and his mother were behind the dreadful evil beneath their pottery.

And yet within the hour, Marina was sitting across from Reggie in the dining car, a sumptuous tea laid out on the table between them, listening to him chatter with bewilderment.

“Good for me to show the face every so often there,” he said, after she had sat across from him, numb and sick, trying to get as far from him as she could and still be unobtrusive. “Never on a schedule, of course. Unexpected; that way they can’t play any jiggery-pokery. Mater gives me a pretty free hand there—well, except for that emergency, I don’t think she’s set foot in the place for a year. So the running of the place is my doing.”