Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

Reggie stepped out of the shadows and stared at the crumpled form of Marina on the hearthrug. “By Jove, Mater!” he gasped. “You did it! You managed to call up the curse again!”

Arachne smiled with the deepest satisfaction, and prodded at the girl’s outstretched hand with one elegantly clad toe. “I told you that I would, if I could only find the right combination,” she said. “And the right way to get past those shields she had all over her. Not a sign of them from the outside, but layers of them, there were. No wonder she didn’t show any evidence of magic about her.”

“So you knew about those, did you?” Reggie asked, inadvertently betraying that he had known about the shields—and had not told his mother. Arachne hadn’t known, she had intuited their presence, but she hadn’t known. She’d simply decided that they must be there, and had worked to solve the problem of their existence.

So how had he known about them, when nothing she had done had revealed their presence?

“Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it?” she prevaricated. “I decided to take a gamble. It occurred to me that shields would only be against magic, not something physical—and that no one would think to shield her beneath the surface of her skin.”

She watched him with hooded eyes. He frowned, then nodded, understanding dawning in his face. “Of course—the physical vehicle—the exposed nail—delivering the curse past the shield in a way that no one would think of in advance. Brilliant! Just brilliant!”

She made a little sour moue with her lips. “It won’t do for you to forget that, Reggie dear,” she said acidly. “I am far more experienced than you. And very creative.”

Would he take that as the warning it was meant to be?

He stiffened, then took her hand and bowed over it. “Far be it from me to do so,” he replied. But his face was hidden, and she couldn’t see the expression it wore.

Resentment, probably. Perhaps defeat. Temporary defeat, though—

“But surely that wasn’t all,” he continued, rising, showing her only an expression as bland and smooth as Devon cream. “If that was all, why all the rigmarole with the cradle?”

“Because the vehicle had to be something that was within the influence of the curse when I first set it, of course,” she said, with a tone of as you should have figured out for yourself covering every word. “That was why the cradle—and why I had that little octopus-ornament removed. I wanted metal as the vehicle by preference, and the nail holding the octopus in place was perfect. At that point, it was easy to have it reversed and driven up and out to become the vehicle.”

“Brilliant,” Reggie repeated, then frowned, and bent over Marina’s form. “She’s breathing.”

Arachne sighed. “She’s not dead, sadly,” she admitted, meditatively. “The curse was warped, somehow; it sent her into a trance. I did think of that—I have her spirit trapped in a sort of limbo, but that was the best I could do. But she will be dead, soon enough. She can’t eat or drink in that state.”

The solution was simple enough; call the servants, have her taken to her room, allow her to waste away. How long would it take? No more than a few weeks, surely—less than that, perhaps. Reggie’s jaw tightened. “Mater, we have a problem—” he began.

“Nonsense,” she snapped. “What problem could there be?”

“That someone is likely to think that we poisoned her—”

“Then we call a doctor in the morning,” she said dismissively.

“And if we let her waste away, that people will say that we did so deliberately!” he countered angrily. “There will be enquiries—police—even an inquest—”

She felt anger rising in her. “Then get a doctor for her now!” she responded, throttling down the urge to slap him. Here she had done everything, and he had the cheek to criticize her! Why shouldn’t he stir himself to deal with these trivial problems? “Use some initiative! Must I do everything? For heaven’s sake, there’s a sanitarium just over the hill—call the doctor and send her there!”

“What, now?” he replied, looking utterly stunned.

“Why not?” It had been a spur-of-the-moment notion, but the more she thought about it, the better she liked it. “Why not? It will show proper concern on our part—our poor little niece collapsed and we send our own carriage out into the storm to get help for her! The man isn’t local, no one will have told him anything about us, all he’ll be concerned about is his fee. He can’t keep her alive long, no matter how cleverly he force-feeds her, but the fact that we’re paying for him to try will show everyone that we’re doing our best for her.”

“And if he brings her around somehow?” Reggie countered stubbornly.

“How? With magic?” She laughed, a peal of laughter echoed by the thunder outside. “Oh, I think not! And just in case those meddlesome friends of Hugh’s manage to get wind of what we’ve done, the sanitarium is the safest place she could be! No old servants to slip them inside, and even if they manage to find where she is, hidden away amongst a den of lunatics—there are guards, no doubt, meant to keep as many folks out as in.” She shook her head with amazement at her own perspicacity. “Perfect. Perfect. Take care of it.”

As he stared at her without comprehension, she repeated herself. “Take care of it, Reggie,” she said sharply. “Rouse the household! Get the carriage! I want that doctor here within the hour!”

“And just what will you be doing, Mater?” he asked, with a particularly nasty sneer.

“I,” she said with immense dignity, “will be having a truly operatic fit of the vapors. So if you don’t wish to have your eardrums shattered—I suggest you be on your way.”

And feeling particularly sadistic, she did not even give him enough time to leave the room before filling her lungs and producing the shrillest and most ear-piercing shriek she had ever coaxed out of her throat in her entire life.

She needn’t have told him to summon the household after all—she was doing that quite well on her own.

Not that it was going to help Marina. Nothing was going to help her now.

Chapter Twenty

ANDREW Pike had thought to spend his evening in his study, the room of burled walnut walls and warm, amber leather furniture that stood triple duty as his library and office as well, but found he couldn’t settle to anything. Neither book nor paper nor journal could hold his interest for long, and he found himself staring alternately into the fire, and out into the gloom, as the sun set somewhere behind the thick clouds. He felt both depressed and agitated, and had ever since early afternoon. He had been a Master long enough to know that, though he had no particular prescient abilities, he was sensitive enough to the ebbs and flows of power to intuit that there was trouble in the air. And the longer he watched and waited, the more sure of that trouble he became.

He’d done what he could to cushion his patients from whatever it was, and had strengthened the shields about the place, layering walls built as solid as those of the Cotswold limestone, the red-baked brick, the cob and wattle. Now all he could do was sit and wait, and hope that the trouble would pass him and anyone else he knew by.

Moments like these were hard on the nerves of those who had no ability to see into the future. The Earth Masters were particularly lacking in that talent; their minds tended to be slow and favor the past and the present, not the future. The past in particular; Earth Masters could take up a thing and read its history as easily as scanning a book, but the volume of the future might as well be in hieroglyphs for it was just that closed to them. Water Masters were the best at future-gazing when they had that particular gift, and even those poorest in the skill could still scry in a bowl of water and be certain of getting some clue to what lay ahead. Air Masters, known best for crystal-gazing, and Fire, who favored black mirrors, were twice as likely at their worst as an Earth Master at his best to have the ability to part the veils and glimpse what was to come. So with no more help in divining what was troubling him than any other mortal might have, all Andrew could do was wait for whatever it was to finally descend on them.