Bradley Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 01 Page 2

  And where would you work then? Truth took a moment to work the kinks out of her neck and shoulders before proceeding to her mail.

  Most of what Meg had brought her was thick professional journals and catalogs. A book for review; another book, a publisher's blind solicitation of quotes; parapsychology textbooks mostly, but one on statistical analysis that looked interesting. A quire of letter-sized envelopes, embossed with return addresses she knew.

  And one she didn't. Rouncival Press.

  Frowning, she tore it open.

  And tore it. And tore it, until the envelope and three sheets of heavy paper were in postage-stamp-sized tatters on her desk. Her hands shook. How could they? How dare they?

  ". . . since you have also chosen a career in the occult. . . valuable service . . . intimate glimpses of a great pioneer of magic ..."

  They wanted her to write a biography of Thorne Blackburn.

  Her hands were still shaking as she scooped the pieces of paper into her wastebasket. She was a scientist—she had a master's in Mathematics! Write an eulogistic biography of Thorne Blackburn? She'd rather bury him with a stake through his heart—and he was already dead.

  And what was worse, he was her father.

  Truth stared unseeingly at a poster of the Olana Historical Site on her cubicle wall. Thirty years ago Thorne Blackburn had been at the forefront of the occult revival that went hand-in-hand with the free love and antiwar movements of the 1960s. As sexy as Morrison, as fiery as Jagger—and as crazy as Hendrix—Blackburn had claimed to be a hero in the Greek sense, a half-divine son of the Shining Ones, the Celtic Old Gods. Though such declarations later became commonplace, with people claiming to be the children of everything from space aliens to earth angels, Thorne Blackburn had been the first.

  He'd been the first to do a number of other things, too, from appearing on national television to conduct a ritual for his Old Gods to touring with rock bands as the opening act. Half heretic, half fraud, and all showman, Blackburn was one of the brightest lights of the occult revival during his brief, gaudy, public career.

  And he'd made it pay, Truth thought angrily. While publicly he claimed to be founding an order of heroes and working magick to bring the Ancient Gods of the West into the world again and inaugurate the "New Aeon," Blackburn had somehow managed to amass the cash to buy a Hudson River mansion where he and his special followers could practice the rites of his so-called Circle of Truth in an atmosphere of free love, free drugs, and wild excess.

  Among those followers had been Katherine Jourdemayne.

  Truth felt the faint stirrings of a headache as she contemplated the old, familiar betrayal. Her mother had been Blackburn's "mystical concubine." Katherine had died in 1969 in one of his rituals, and Blackburn hadn't had to pay for that, either.

  Because that same night—April 30, 1969—Thorne Blackburn had vanished from the face of the earth.

  Truth had been raised by Katherine Jourdemayne's twin sister, Caroline, and Truth felt she had inherited much of her emotional self-sufficiency from the taciturn woman who had weathered the horrible death of her twin sister so stoically. Aunt Caroline had told Truth who her father was when she was old enough to understand, but in the seventies and early eighties it didn't seem to matter much. When the first journalist contacted her, Truth had even been surprised to discover that anyone still remembered Thorne Blackburn; he seemed to belong to the past, like LSD, the moon landing, and the Beatles. She had been courteous, though brief, telling him she had nothing to say, because her father died when she was two.

  It was the last time she was ever that polite, because once the "gentlemen of the press" had found her, her life quickly became a nightmare of letters and telephone calls—and worse: visits from bizarre individuals who claimed they were followers, and in one horrible instance, the reincarnation—of Thorne Blackburn.

  And every Halloween since she was eighteen Truth had suffered through the various calls from a particular breed of grave-robbing yellow journalist who wanted an interview with the daughter of the notorious "Satanist" Thorne Blackburn to spice up a story.

  The requests from the literary lunatic fringe to write about Thorne Blackburn had fortunately diminished over the years, although they'd never quite stopped. She might even have been willing to write a book— publish or perish, after all, even for those who weren't academics on the tenure track—except that the publishers all made it very clear that they were not looking for accuracy, rather for a credulous panegyric they could pass off as gospel to their equally addled readers.

  And Katherine Jourdemayne's daughter was damned if she was going to gild the reputation of a fake, a fraud, an Aquarian Age snake-oil salesman. Why couldn't all those people see what a huckster Blackburn had really been?

  It was, Truth supposed, part of the reason she'd gone into parapsychology: find a way to debunk the frauds before they could hurt anyone. But sometimes she was so ashamed.

  Why couldn't I be the daughter of Elvis instead? Truth thought forlornly. Life would be easier.

  She ran a hand through her hair, still trembling with repressed emotion. Why couldn't they all realize that the only thing she wanted was never to have to think about Thorne Blackburn ever again? He haunted her life like the ghost at the feast, poised to drag her into his lunatic world of unreason.

  "Hello? Anyone home? Ah, my esteemed colleague, Miss Jourde-mayne." Without giving her a chance to pretend she wasn't there at all, Dylan Palmer slid in to Truth's office and closed the door.

  Dylan Palmer—Dr. Palmer—was a tenure-track academic, a member of the teaching faculty at Taghkanic as well as a fellow of the Institute. He was a professor in the Indiana Jones mold, being tall, blond, handsome, easygoing, and occasionally heroic. Dylan's particular parapsychological interest was personality transfers and survivals—in more mundane parlance, hauntings.

  "How's my favorite number-cruncher today?" he asked cheerfully.

  Dylan leaned over her desk, looking more like one of the students than one of the teachers in his flannel shirt and baggy jeans. The small gold ring in his ear winked in the light.

  "How was your summer project?" Truth asked.

  She could feel herself withdrawing, and knew that Dylan could see it too, but Truth found his zest for life as daunting as it was exhilarating.

  "Wonderful!" If Dylan was hurt by her coolness he didn't show it. "Twelve weeks in the draftiest Irish castle you ever saw—just me, three grad students, and seventy-five thousand dollars of cameras, microphones, and sensors. Oh, and the IRA."

  "What?"

  "Just kidding. I think that's who the locals thought we were, though— they did everything but cross themselves when we'd come into town to buy supplies." He straightened up, looking pleased with himself.

  "That's just the sort of thing you'd think was funny," Truth said. "This isn't a game, Dylan—psychic investigation is a serious business, even if you treat it lightly." She heard the condescension in her voice and winced inwardly, hoping Dylan would go away before she embarrassed herself further.

  "Ah, Halloween coming early this year?" Dylan asked lightly.

  Truth stared at him blank-faced.

  "I couldn't help but notice," Dylan said, looking downward ostentatiously. "Thorne Blackburn time again, is it?"

  Truth followed the direction of his gaze, and saw a small snowstorm of torn paper around her feet. Dylan bent down gracefully and retrieved a scrap. Truth snatched at it, but to no avail. Dylan brandished it theatrically and began to declaim.

  "When the frost is on the pumpkin, and Blackburn time is near/Then the ghoulies and the goblins, do jump about in fear/For Truth—"

  "It isn't funny!" Truth cried furiously. She jumped to her feet and snatched the scrap of Rouncival's letter out of Dylan's hand. "Do you think I enjoy being reminded that Thorne Blackburn is my father? Do you think it makes me happy?"

  "Well it could be worse; he could still be among us. As it is, he's strictly my department. Lighten up, Truth—
it isn't like Thome's Jack the Ripper or anything. Professor MacLaren thinks he's a pretty interesting figure, actually, worth studying. Maybe you ought to consider—"

  Truth felt unreasonably betrayed. Although most of the people at the Institute knew she was Thorne Blackburn's daughter—his bastard daughter, in fact—anyone she knew at all well knew better than to bring it up. Certainly Dylan did. Or should.

  "Well, I don't have your sainted Professor MacLaren's tolerance for cheats and monsters!" she interrupted hotly. "Maybe you ought to consider people's feelings before marching in with your fund of good advice!"

  Dylan's easy smile faded as he studied her face. "I didn't mean . . ." he began.

  "You never mean anything!" Truth shot back viciously, conscious only of a desire to strike back at someone, anyone. "You're just some kind of freelance superhero, playing ghost-breaker and not caring what you do so long as it gives you a dramatic exit line and a cheap laugh. Well, I'm not laughing." She closed her hands into painful fists, willing herself not to cry.

  "You're going to get awfully lonely up there on your pedestal," Dylan said softly. Before she could think of another thing to say he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him.

  He killed my mother, be killed my mother, he killed my mother—

  Truth sat at her desk, her eyes tightly shut against the tears she would not permit—because they were useless, because they were childish, because they would change nothing at all. Why didn't anyone understand what Thorne had done to her? He'd taken everything, everything. . . .

  She hadn't expected Dylan of all people to take Thorne's part. She should have, Truth told herself. He was obviously another Thorne fan— and why not? They were two of a kind.

  But even as upset as she was, Truth knew that wasn't fair. Dylan was just . . . too happy, Truth finished lamely. Dylan Palmer did not seem to ever have internalized the knowledge that life was a horrible business filled with nasty surprises, in which the best you could hope for was not to be hurt too badly.

  But how could he possibly take Throne Blackburn at face value? The man—Thorne—was a self-confessed fraud!

  Truth managed a grimace of wry humor; honestly, sometimes psychic researchers were the most gullible people on earth. Every event was genuine until proven otherwise; from crop circles to Uri Geller, people like Dylan approached them with boundless credulity.

  She drew a quavering breath, slowly regaining her self-control. It was just as well they did, she supposed, or else the disenchantment of discovering only fakes and coincidences year after year might be too hard to bear. She shook her head. Dylan had been a little out of line, but his bad manners hadn't warranted the response he'd gotten from her. She'd have to apologize.

  / need a vacation. As her mind formed the words, Truth realized how tired she was. She'd spent the summer shepherding her project through to completion on top of her regular workload—why shouldn't she get away from Taghkanic while the first rush of fall term was going on? She could come back when it was quiet—well, as quiet as it ever got, anyway.

  The phone rang.

  Truth stared at it with guilty fascination. It was probably Dylan, phoning from his office to finish telling her off. But when she looked down at the phone, she realized that it was one of the outside lines that was ringing. She picked up the phone.

  "Hello?"

  "Truth?"

  "Aunt Caroline?"

  Truth felt a sluggish pulse of alarm. Caroline Jourdemayne was a very self-contained person, and the two of them weren't really close. What could have happened that made Aunt Caroline feel she needed to call? "Is there anything wrong?" Truth asked.

  "You might say that," the familiar, dryly unemotional voice said. "I'm sorry to bother you at work, Truth, but you're going to have to come home as soon as possible."

  Home was the small house situated in the wilds of northern Amsterdam County over seventy miles away, where Truth's childhood had been spent and where her memories really began.

  "Come home?" Truth echoed, baffled.

  Aunt Caroline was not an outgoing woman; since Truth had gotten her apartment here on the Taghkanic campus, visits to Aunt Caroline had been infrequent—usually occurring around Thanksgiving, since in December the roads near the cottage were treacherous except for vehicles equipped with four-wheel-drive.

  "I trust you still remember where it is?" Aunt Caroline said.

  "Oh, yes, of course. But—"

  "How soon can you come?" Aunt Caroline asked.

  Truth frowned, juggling schedules in her mind. Fortunately she didn't have any teaching commitments to consider. She was supposed to spend a certain amount of time in the lab assisting the teaching researchers with their projects, but this early in the academic year there wasn't much of that; she could easily find someone to cover for her.

  "Tomorrow," Truth said. "I'll be there tomorrow. Aunt Caroline, can't you tell me what this is about?" She could think of no secret so lurid that it could not be mentioned over the phone, and the Jourdemaynes were not a family for lurid secrets—at least, not what was left of the Jourdemaynes.

  She glanced idly up at the clock on the wall as Aunt Caroline began to explain the reason for the call, and as the distant voice continued Truth's gaze became fixed and staring, and eventually the shocked irrelevant tears began to spill down her face as Aunt Caroline continued to speak.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER

  This is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  IN CONTRAST TO THE BRIGHT CLEAR PROMISE OF MONDAY, TUES-day was dark and unseasonably humid. Early that morning Truth was on the Thruway heading north to Stormlakken. There was no direct route to the town; it was a several hour drive, even under optimal conditions. She should get there a little after noon.

  It was only after she was already on the road that Truth realized she hadn't smoothed over the scene she'd had with Dylan the day before. She'd been too busy arranging for her absence, and then she'd felt obligated to do some work on the project, and had let the soothing ranks of statistics drive everything else out of her mind. She knew that the longer it was before she made her apology the harder it would be, but after Aunt Caroline's news she had not wanted to risk another encounter that might open her emotional floodgates. She would not use Aunt Caroline as an excuse when she finally spoke to him, though. She would simply apologize. The Jourdemaynes were a private people, not given to explanation. Or displays of emotion.

  Why don't I feel anything?

  The almost commonplace beauty of the Hudson River Valley—dramatic vistas that had inspired Frederick Church and a whole school of American landscape painters—rolled by outside the car's windows, unappreciated. Dylan was fond of quoting some bit of Coleridge about a savage place, holy and enchanted. Truth had always thought that was overdramatic and fanciful—like Dylan?—but the fact was that the terrain was spectacular enough to have coaxed poetry from the souls of its phlegmatic Dutch inhabitants when they had first settled here over 300 years before. This was Sleepy Hollow Country, home and birthplace to tales of Headless Horsemen and Rip Van Winkles, bowling giants and fiddling gnomes and ghostly galleons roving the Hudson.

  Truth surprised herself in the midst of this prosaic revery and found her mind engaged as if she were composing a lecture for some unknown audience, marshaling her facts. Facts had always been her way of keeping the painful world at bay. Keeping her feelings at bay.

  But I don't feel anything. And I should.

  Caroline Jourdemayne had been Truth's entire family from the time Truth was orphaned at the age of two. Aunt Caroline had come to Blackburn's sordid commune and taken her sister's child away, caring for Truth without a word of reproach or complaint at what must have been the fearful disarrangement of an ordered spinster life. But despite the fact that Caroline and Katherine had been identical twins, Truth had never felt the warmth for her Aunt Caroline that she assumed
she would have felt for her own mother.

  There was no enmity between Truth and Aunt Caroline, of course, only a rather distant and dutiful affection on Truth's part, and a scrupulous courtesy on Aunt Caroline's. If either woman thought the relationship odd, it was not something they discussed—and as Truth had grown up and away and heard the tales of her classmates' and roommates' families, she became more grateful for the careful remoteness that Aunt Caroline had preserved. If Aunt Caroline had shared her grief about her sister's murder Truth did not think she could have borne it.

  But she must have felt something. Twins, especially identical twins, are supposed to be very close; the Linebaugh-Hay telepathy experiments prove— Truth broke off her train of thought, a little surprised at the clinical direction it had taken. Of course Aunt Caroline missed her sister, Katherine, just as Truth missed her mother. But there had been no one left to blame once Thorne Blackburn had vanished.

  Blackburn. It always came back to him—Fortune's golden child, a man of mysterious origins who made his mark as a mountebank of mountebanks, who told everybody outrageous stories and then told them he was lying to them, a man who urged belief on his acolytes while professing no beliefs himself. A man who made promises that no man could possibly keep—but then Thorne Blackburn had never meant to keep any of his promises.

  Thorne Blackburn was a spiritual con man who stole belief instead of money, and then stole the money too.

  Truth jammed on her brakes, glancing guiltily into the rearview mirror at the same moment she yanked the wheel to the right. Fortunately there was no one behind her; she'd nearly missed her exit. She turned off the Thruway, and onto the patched and rutted secondary road that led toward Stormlakken. Only a little farther now.