Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

“I didn’t even know there was an attic,” Marina ventured, wondering if she dared mention her splitting head to Mary Anne. She decided in favor of it. “Now I wish I hadn’t asked Reggie to take me to that pottery—I’ve such a headache—”

Mary Anne tugged her rustling silk trumpet skirt over her head with an exclamation of distaste. “I shouldn’t be surprised!” she replied. “Nasty, noisy, filthy places, factories. I’ll find a dose for you, then you’re to go straight to Madam. She’s in the sitting-room.”

The dose was laudanum, and if it dulled the pain, it also made her feel as if there was a disconnection between her and her thoughts, and her wits moved sluggishly. It occurred to her belatedly that perhaps she shouldn’t have taken it so eagerly.

Well, it was too late now. When she stepped out of the door of her room, she moved carefully, slowly, more so than even Madam would have asked, because her feet didn’t feel quite steady beneath her. She was handicapped now.

But I must look at her—really look at her, she reminded herself. I must know for certain if she has anything to do with that vileness. It seemed days, and not hours ago, since this morning, weeks since her encounter with what lay under the pottery, months since she had vowed to investigate. She had gone from utter certainty that Madam was behind it to complete uncertainty. She kept one hand pressed to her throat, trying to center herself.

As she passed darkened rooms, lightning flashed beyond the windows; the panes shook and rattled with rain driven against them and drafts skittered through the halls, sending icy tendrils up beneath her skirt to wrap around her ankles and make her shiver. The coachman had been right to gallop; it was a tempest out there. It was a good thing that it had been too cold for buds to form; they’d have been stripped from the boughs. The thin silk of her shirtwaist did nothing to keep the drafts from her arms; she had been warm when she left her room, and she hadn’t gone more than halfway down the corridor before she was cold all over again.

The sitting room had a blazing great fire in it, and by now Marina was so chilled that she had eyes only for that warmth, and never noticed Madam standing half in shadow on the far side of the room. She went straight for the flames like a moth entranced, and only Madam’s chuckle as she spread her icy hands to the promised warmth reminded her of why she was here.

“A pity the horses were slow,” Madam said, as Marina turned to face her. “Reggie has been complaining mightily and swearing I should replace them.”

“I don’t think any horses could have gone faster in the dark, no matter how well they knew the road, Madam,” she protested. “Before the rain started, Reggie was angry that he was going so fast, actually. And the coachman could hardly have made the train arrive any sooner,” she added, in sudden inspiration.

“True enough.” Madam’s lips moved into something like a smile, or as near as she ever got to one. “True, and reasonable as well. So, my dear, you have begun to think like a grown woman, and not like an impulsive child.”

Marina dropped her eyes—and took that moment to concentrate, as well as she could through the fog of the drug, to search her guardian for any taint of that terrible evil.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Magic might never exist at all for all of the signs of it that Madam showed. Never a hint; marble, ice showed more sign of magic than she.

Not possible then —She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or glad. “Mary Anne said you had found something you wished me to see, Madam?” she said instead.

“Not I—although I guessed that it might exist, given who and what the people your parents had sent you to stay with were.” The words were simple enough—but the tone made Marina look up, suspecting—something. What, she didn’t know, but—something. There was something hidden there, under that calculating tone.

But as usual, Madam’s face was quite without any expression other than the faintest of amusement.

“So,” she continued, looking straight into Marina’s eyes, “I asked of some of the older servants, and sent someone who remembered up to the attic to find what I was looking for. And here it is—”

She stepped aside and behind her was something large concealed beneath a dust-sheet. The firelight made moving shadows on the folds, and they seemed to move.

Madam seized a corner of the dust cover and whisked it off in a single motion.

The fire flared up at that moment, fully revealing what had been beneath that dust-sheet. Carved wood—sinuous curves—a shape that at first she did not recognize.

“Oh—” Of all of the things that she might have guessed had she been better able to think, this was not one of them. “A cradle?”

“Your cradle, or so I presume,” Madam said silkily. “Given your name and the undeniable marine themes of the carving. Not to mention that it is clearly of—rather unique design. An odd choice for a cradle, but there is no doubt of the skill of the carver.”

Marina stepped forward, drawn to the bit of furniture by more than mere curiosity. Carved with garlands of seaweed and frolicking mermaids, with little fish and naiads peeking from behind undulating waves, there was only one hand that could have produced this cradle.

Uncle Thomas.

She had seen these very carvings, even to the funny little octopus with wide and melting eyes—here meant to hold a gauzy canopy to shield the occupant of the cradle from stray insects—repeated a hundred times in the furnishings in her room in Blackbird Cottage. All of her homesickness, all of her loneliness, overcame her in a rush of longing that excluded everything else. And she wanted nothing more at this moment than to touch them, to feel the silken wood under her hand. With a catch at her throat and an aching heart to match her aching head, she wanted to feel those familiar curves and take comfort from them.

Madam stepped lightly aside as her hand reached for the little octopus, moving as if it had a life of its own.

A lightning bolt struck just outside the sitting-room windows; she was too enthralled even to wince.

Something bright glinted among the octopus’s tentacles. Something metallic, a spark of wicked blue-white.

She hesitated.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Madam crooned, suddenly looming behind her. “The wood is just like silk. Here—” she seized Marina’s wrist in an iron grip. “Just feel it.”

Marina didn’t resist; it was as if she had surrendered her will to her longing for this bit of home and everything else was of no importance at all. She watched her hand as if it belonged to someone else, watched as Madam guided it towards the carving, felt the fingers caress the smooth wood.

Felt something stab through the pad of her index finger when it touched that place where something had gleamed in the lightning-flash.

Madam released her wrist, and stepped swiftly back. Marina staggered back a pace.

She cried out—not loudly, for it had been little more than a pinprick. She took another step backward, as Madam moved out of her way.

But then, as she turned her hand to see where she had been hurt, the finger suddenly began to burn—burn with pain, and burn to her innermost eye, burn with that same, poisonous, black-green light as the evil pit beneath Madam’s office!

She tried to scream, but nothing would come out but a strangled whimper—stared at her hand as the stuff spread like oil poured on water, as the burning spread through her veins like the poison it was—stared—as Madam began to laugh.

Burning black, flickering yellow-green, spread over her, under her shields, eating into her, permeating her, as Madam’s triumphant laughter rang in her ears and peals of thunder answered the laughter. She staggered back one step at a time until she stood swaying on the hearthrug, screams stillborn, trapped in her throat, which could only produce a moan. Until a black-green curtain fell between her and the world, and she felt her knees giving way beneath her, and then—nothing.