The Gates of Sleep (50 page)

Pure evil
The words hit him between the eyes and
he gaped at the stranger. “Pure evil? Pure
evil?” he
repeated, as all of the pieces fell together.

Ellen—Madam and her son—the curse—the
pottery in Exeter—curses, and black magic, in the traditional and
legended sense of the words.

And the stories, the accounts in those old traditions of
the Scottish Masters—the tales of Satanists.

And yesterday, Marina had
gone
to the pottery in
Exeter, looking for whatever had attached itself, lampreylike, to Ellen with
the purpose of draining her. What if she’d discovered black magic there,
the Left-Hand Path, which needed no inborn abilities to walk? What if Madam
realized that Marina was about to unmask that evil?

And if Madam and her son were Satanists, if they had set up
the pottery as a place where they could batten on the energies of the
marginally gifted as they were poisoned, physically and spiritually—that
could be the source of the power behind the curse. That would be why no one had
seen any signs of Power on or around them. They didn’t have any power
until they stole it, and once stolen, they had to discharge it immediately,
store it elsewhere, or lose it.

And that would be why Andrew could not unravel the dreadful
net that ensnared Marina. It was like no magic he or any Master he knew had
ever seen before. Certainly nothing that any Master still alive had seen
before. Ah—
still alive
—

As it happened sometimes when he was exhausted, the answer
came in a flash of clarity. Still alive; that was the key to this lock, the
sword to sever this Gordian Knot. Because there were Masters of the past who
had certainly seen, yes, and even worked to combat such evil.

And to a Master of Earth, the past was an open book.

“My God,” he breathed—a prayer, if ever
there was one. “Tarrant, I think I have an idea—”

“Well, I’ve got one, at least,” Sebastian
interrupted him. “Thomas and Margherita are Earth Masters
themselves—not strong ones by any means, but one thing they can do is,
keep Marina going. We’re fresh; you’re not. Do you want to get to
work on this idea of yours now, or get a spot of rest first?”

He wanted to work on it now, but what he was going to try
would need every bit of concentration he had. “I need to go look through
my magic books,” he decided aloud. “There’s one in particular
I need to find, what used to be called a grammar in Scotland and Northumberland
and—” he shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll find it,
make sure it’s the one I need, then I’ll drug myself. I’ll
need my wits, and you’re right, if I don’t get a couple of hours of
rest, I won’t have them about me.”

“Good man.” Tarrant nodded approval. “We’ll
make sure Marina’s all right, you can leave that to us. What about the
rest of your patients?”

“Eleanor can see to them—did you say your wife
is an Earth Master? Would she be willing to help?” he asked, desperate
for anything that might take the burden off his shoulders during this crisis.

“When Lady Elizabeth gets here, I’ll tell my
wife to have your nurse Eleanor show her what to do, and I’ll send someone
down to the village to telegraph for some more help,” Tarrant promised. “There’s
not a lot of us out here in the country, nor powerful, but we’re
Devonians, even those of us who weren’t born here. When need calls, we
answer.”

“But—the telegraph—?” he replied,
puzzled.

Tarrant fixed him with a minatory glance. “Why use
power we should save for helping
her
to do what a telegraph can do,
and just as quickly?”

Andrew winced; it was one of his own Master’s
constant admonitions.
Why use magic to do what anyone can do? Save it for
those things that hands cannot accomplish, ye gurtfool.

He closed his eyes as a moment of dizzy exhaustion overcame
him, then opened them. “Me for my old books, then—” he shoved
away from the table.

“If you’ve got any clues, Doctor, you’re
miles ahead of the rest of us,” Tarrant said, his jaw set. “And if
you’ve the will and the strength and the knowledge—then you let the
rest of us take your burdens off you so you can do what needs to be done. We’ll
be the squires to your knight if that suits you.”

He nodded, and headed for his own room at a run, his steps
echoing on the staircase as he made for the second floor. An apt comparison,
that. Perhaps more so than Sebastian Tarrant dreamed.

AS Andrew sat on the edge of his bed and depressed the
plunger on a syringe containing a very carefully minimized dose of morphine, he
reflected that somewhere in Scotland, his old Master was rotating in his grave
like a water-powered lathe. The old man wouldn’t even take a drop of
whisky for a cold; he was a strict Covenanter, and how he could reconcile that
with talking to fauns and consorting with brownies was something Andrew had
never quite managed to get him to explain.

Well, the old boy had a phobia about needles as well; he
couldn’t stomach the sight of anyone being injected, much less someone
injecting him, and still less the thought of what Andrew was doing, injecting
himself. Andrew pulled the needle out of his arm, and the tourniquet off, and
felt the rush of immediate dizziness as the drug hit his brain. He didn’t
like doing this—he was nearly as against it as his old Master!—but
it was the only way he was going to get any sleep.

Which I really should do now
—he thought
dimly, lying down.

Five hours later—long enough for the morphia to have
worn off—Eleanor shook him awake. He had the luck to be one of those who
came awake all at once, rather than muzzily clambering up out of sleep. “There’s
no change, Doctor,” she said sadly as he sat up, pushing the blanket
aside that someone had laid over him. He hadn’t expected there to be any
change—but if only—

“But Miss Roeswood’s guardians have been
wonderful,” Eleanor continued. “Mrs. Tarrant is so good with the
children, and Mr. Buford has charmed the lady guests—and gammoned them
into thinking he’s a specialist-doctor you brought in especially to see
that they were all right.” She brightened a little at that, for the “lady
guests” were especially trying to her. And, truth to tell, to Andrew to a
certain extent. There was always the worry of keeping what the real patients
were up to away from them, and the fuss they tended to cause as they recovered
from their exhaustion, becoming bored but not quite ready to leave. “Oh,
and Lady Elizabeth Hastings is here as well. She kept the telegraph office busy
for a solid hour, I think.”

He nodded; that was a plus. Say what you would about the
old aristocracy, but they were used to organizing things and pushing them
through, used to taking charge and giving orders. That was one area, at least,
that he would not have to worry about. Lady Hastings had obviously got the more
mundane aspects of the situation well in hand.

And right now, he wanted to concentrate solely on the
grammary
he’d extracted from the old trunk he’d brought with him from
Scotland. He’d even put it under his pillow for safekeeping before
letting the drugs have their way with him. Now he drew it out, a dark,
leather-bound volume of rough-cut parchment; it dated back to before the first
James—probably to the time of the Scots queen, Mary. There were no actual
dates in it, but Mary had brought courtiers with her from France and had been
raised and educated there—and at that time, there was something of a fad
for Satanism in the French Court. Some of the Masters of the time blamed it on
the Medici influence, but Andrew was inclined to think it went back further
than that. There had been enough suspicious deaths and illnesses in the French
Court for centuries to make him think that there had been a dark influence
there from almost the time of Charlemagne.

He pulled the book out and held it; bound in a soft leather
that had darkened to a mottled brown the color of stout, it was entirely
handwritten, part journal and part spell-book. Sebastian had taken one look at
it and pronounced it a
grimoire,
rather than a
grammary,
which at least meant that the artist recognized it for what it was. Andrew
could never think of the book without thinking of the old ballad of “The
Lady Gay”:

There was a lady, and a lady gay, of children she had
three. She sent them away to the North Country, to learn their grammary.

Most, if not all, scholars thought the song meant that the
children were being sent to learn reading and writing. Little did they know the
song spoke of the long tradition of wizards and witches of the North Country,
who fostered the children of Masters and taught them the Elemental Magics that
their parents could not… a tradition which Andrew himself had unwittingly
replicated, though he’d gone up to Scotland rather than the North of
England.

He shook himself out of his reverie. He was going to need a
protector while he worked his magics, and for that, he thought, Sebastian
Tarrant would be the best suited. Despite not being of the same Element as
Andrew, Tarrant had more of the warrior in him than either his wife or
brother-in-law. If
they
could strengthen Marina and pick up his
duties—

He pulled on a clean shirt and went to find the
newcomers—and predictably, two of the four were with Marina. As Eleanor
had said, Margherita and Thomas were—God bless them!—tending his
patients. Sebastian and Lady Elizabeth were at Marina’s side, and both
stood when he entered.

And the moment he laid eyes on Lady Elizabeth, he knew that
she would be better suited to guard his back as he scryed into the past than Sebastian.

In fact, he had to restrain himself from bowing so deeply
over her hand that he looked like a fop. He did take her extended hand, and he
shook it carefully. “You must be Lady Hastings,” he began. “I’m
Andrew Pike—”

“We haven’t time for formalities, Doctor,”
she said crisply, before he had done more than introduce himself. “What
is it you wish us to do?”

He nodded gratitude, and hoped she saw it as he released
her hand. “I’m going to use this to scry into the past, Lady
Hastings,” he said, holding up the book that was tucked under his other
arm.

“Elizabeth,” she interrupted him. “Why?”

That was when he sat down and explained exactly what he
thought had been going on in Madam’s household for all these years. More
than once, Sebastian and Elizabeth sucked in a surprised breath. More than
once, he suspected, they cursed themselves for not seeing it themselves.

But why should they? Most of those who considered
themselves to be black magicians and Satanists were pathetic creatures, more
interested in debauchery than discipline, in the interplay of status than power
itself. They had neither the learning nor the understanding to make use of any
magic that they acquired, either by accident or on purpose. And even if they’d
had the knowledge, they simply weren’t interested in anything past the
moment. The few times to Sebastian’s knowledge that self-styled Satanists
had warranted attention, it was the police that were needed, not the Masters or
some other occultists. In fact, to everyone except the dour lot up in Scotland,
Satanic worship was more of a joke than a threat. And perhaps, that was what
had been the protection for the few real Satanic cults in the modern world;
that no one believed in them.

It’s our protection, too, after all. When
something becomes a fairy tale, the ordinary sort of fellow can look right
at it
and not believe in it.

“So, you’re going to go look back in time to
when this book was being written and try to see what lay behind those journal
entries,” Elizabeth stated, summing up his intentions nicely. “Can
you do the work here?”

“It’s the best-shielded room in the place at
this point,” he replied. “What I’ll need from you is
guarding.” He frowned. “I hope that I don’t sound
superstitious to you, but—” He was reluctant even to voice his
suspicions, but if he didn’t and something happened—”Look, I
know that the idea of demons is something less than fashionable among Masters
at the moment, but, well, the only way I can think of for Madam to have done
some of what she’s done is to have a servant or a slave that is sensitive
to magic power. And as a Satanist—well—I
suppose
she could
have attracted some of the nastier Elementals, but how would she have seen
them? So what does that leave but the Satanist’s traditional servant?”

Tarrant made a sour face. “I have to admit that a
demon, a Mephistopheles to Arachne’s Faustus, is the most logical answer.
I don’t like it. I might as well believe in vampires, next—”

“Or brownies?” Elizabeth said suggestively, and
Sebastian flushed. “I agree with you, Doctor. And that is yet another
good reason for us to do as little as possible magically, and make most of that
passive. I had a feeling I ought to use the telegraph rather than occult means
of calling the other Masters, and now I’m glad I did. I wish I knew if
holy symbols really worked against demons, though.” She bit her lip. “The
wearing of my grandmother’s crucifix is very, very tempting right now.”

“I suspect that depends entirely on the depth of
belief of the one using them,” Tarrant replied, regaining his
equilibrium. “And I will make no judgment on the state of your belief,
Elizabeth. As for myself—” he hesitated. “I suspect for me,
that any holy symbol would be as efficacious, or not, as any other. Doctor, if
you are ready, so are we.”

With the room already shielded, all he needed to do,
really, was to set up the other object he had brought with him besides the
book. This was an amber sphere about the size of a goose egg with no
inclusions, amber being about the only material suitable for an Earth Master to
use for scrying. Then he placed the book in front of it, and sat facing the
sphere at the tiny table below the window, both hands atop the book, which was
open to the relevant passage.