The Gates of Sleep Read online

  The Gates of Sleep

  Elemental Masters Book 3

  Mercedes Lackey

  Prologue

  ALANNA Roeswood entered the parlor with her baby Marina in her arms, and reflected contentedly that she loved this room better than any other chamber in Oakhurst Manor. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the bay windows, and a sultry breeze carried with it the scent of roses from the garden. The parlor glowed with warm colors; reds and rich browns, the gold of ripening wheat. There were six visitors, standing or sitting, talking quietly to one another, dressed for an afternoon tea; three in the flamboyant, medievally inspired garb that marked them as artists. These three were talking to her husband Hugh; they looked as if they properly belonged in a fantastic painting, not Alanna’s cozy parlor. The remaining three were outwardly ordinary; one lady was in an up-to-the-mode tea gown that proclaimed wealth and rank, one man (very much a countrified gentleman) wore a suit with a faintly old-fashioned air about it, and the last was a young woman with ancient eyes whose flowing emerald gown, trimmed in heavy Venice lace like the foam on a wave, was of no discernible mode. They smiled at Alanna as she passed them, and nodded greetings.

  Alanna placed her infant carefully in a hand-carved cradle, and seated herself in a chair beside it. One by one, the artists came to greet her, bent over the cradle, whispered something to the sleepy infant, touched her with a gentle finger, and withdrew to resume their conversations.

  The artists could have been from the same family. In fact, they were from two. Sebastian Tarrant, he of the leonine red-brown locks and generous moustache, was the husband of dark-haired sweet-faced Margherita; the clean-shaven, craggy fellow who looked to be her brother by his coloring was exactly that. All three were Hugh Roeswood’s childhood playmates, and Alanna’s as well. The rest were also bound to their hosts by ties of long standing. It was, to all outward appearances, just a gathering of a few very special friends, a private celebration of that happiest of events, a birth and christening.

  Alanna Roeswood wore a loose artistic tea gown of a delicate mauve, very like the one that enveloped Margherita in amber folds. It should have been, since Margherita’s own hands had made both. She sat near the hearth, a Madonna-like smile on her lips, brooding over the sensuously curved lines of newborn Marina’s hand-carved walnut cradle. The cradle was a gift from one of her godparents, and there wasn’t another like it in all of the world; it was, in fact, a masterpiece of decorative art. The frothy lace of Marina’s christening gown overflowed the side, a spill of winter white against the rich, satiny brown of the lovingly carved wood. Glancing over at Sebastian, the eldest of the artists, Alanna suppressed a larger smile; by the way he kept glancing at the baby, his fingers were itching to sketch the scene. She wondered just what medieval tale he was fitting the tableau into in his mind’s eye. The birth of Rhiannon of the Birds, perhaps. Sebastian Tarrant had been mining the Welsh and Irish mythos for subjects for some time now, with the usual artistic disregard for whether the actual people who had inspired the characters of those pre-Christian tales would have even remotely resembled his paintings. The romance and tragedy suited the sensibilities of those who had made the work of Dante Rossetti and the rest of the Pre-Raphaelites popular. Sebastian was not precisely one of that brotherhood, in no small part because he rarely came to London and rarely exhibited his work. Alanna wasn’t entirely clear just how he managed to sell his work; it might have been through a gallery, or more likely, by word of mouth. Certainly once anyone actually saw one of his paintings, it generally sold itself. Take the rich colors of a Rossetti, add the sinuosity of line of a Burne-Jones, and lay as a foundation beneath it all the lively spirit of a Millais, and you had Sebastian. Adaptor of many styles, imitator of none; that was Sebastian.

  His brother-in-law, mild-eyed Thomas Buford, was the carver of Marina’s cradle and a maker of every sort of furniture, following the Aesthetic edict that things of utility should also be beautiful. He had a modest clientele of his own, as did his sister, Margherita (Sebastian’s wife) who was as skilled with needle and tapestry-shuttle as her husband was with brush and pen. The three of them lived and worked together in an apparent harmony quite surprising to those who would have expected the usual tempestuous goings-on of the more famous (or infamous) Pre-Raphaelites of London. They lived in an enormous old vine-covered farmhouse—which Sebastian claimed had once been a medieval manor house that was home to one of King Arthur’s knights—just over the border in Cornwall.

  This trio had been Alanna’s (and her husband Hugh’s) friends for most of their lives, from their first meeting as children in Hugh’s nursery, sharing his lessons with his tutors.

  The remaining three, however disparate their ages and social statures—well, it had only been natural for them all to become friends as adolescents and young adults first out in adult society.

  And that was because they were all part of something much larger than an artistic circle or social circle.

  They were all Elemental Masters; magicians by any other name. Each of them commanded, to a greater or lesser extent, the magic of a specific element: Earth, Air, Fire, or Water, and they practiced their Magics together and separately for the benefit and protection of their land and the people around them. There was a greater Circle of Masters based in London, but Hugh and Alanna had never taken part in any of its works. They met mostly with the double-handful of Masters who confined their workings to goals of smaller scope, here in the heart of Devon.

  Marina stirred in her nest of soft lace, but did not wake; Alanna gazed down at her with an upswelling of passionate adoration. She was a lovely baby, and that was not just the opinion of her doting parents.

  Hugh and Alanna were Earth Masters; their affinity with that Element was the reason why they seldom left their own land and property. Like most Earth Masters, they felt most comfortable when they were closest to a home deep in the countryside, far from the brick-and-stone of the great cities. Margherita was also an Earth Master; her brother Thomas shared her affinity, and this was why they had shared Hugh’s tutors.

  For the magic, in most cases, passed easily from parent to child in Hugh’s family, and there was a long tradition in the Roeswood history of beginning training in the exercise of power along with more common lessons. So tutors, and sometimes even a child’s first nurse, were also Mages.

  Hugh’s sister Arachne, already an adult, was long gone from the household, never seen, seldom heard from, by the time he was ready for formal schooling. Magic had skipped her, or so it appeared, and Hugh had once ventured the opinion that this seemed to have made her bitter and distant. She had married a tradesman, a manufacturer of pottery, and for some reason never imparted to Hugh, this had caused a rift in the already-strained relationship with her parents.

  Be that as it may, Hugh’s parents did not want him to spend a lonely childhood being schooled in isolation from other children his age—and lo! there were the Tarrants, the Bufords, and Alanna’s family, all friends of the Roeswoods, all Elemental Mages of their own circle, all living within a day’s ride of Oakhurst, and all with children near the same age. The addition of their friends’ children to the Roeswood household seemed only natural, especially since it was not wise to send a child with Elemental power to a normal public school—doubly so as a boarder. Such children saw things—the Elemental creatures of their affinities—and often forgot to keep a curb on their tongues. And such children attracted those Elemental creatures, which were, if not watched by an adult mage, inclined to play mischief in the material world. “Poltergeists” was the popular name for these creatures, and sometimes even the poor children who had attracted them in the first place had no idea what was going on about them. Worst of all, the child with Elemental
power could attract something other than benign or mischievous Elemental creatures. Terrible things had happened in the past, and the least of them was when the child in question had been attacked. Worse, far worse had come when the child had been lured, seduced, and turned to evil himself…

  So five children of rather disparate backgrounds came to live at Oakhurst Manor, to be schooled together. And they matched well together—four of the five had the same affinity. Only Sebastian differed, but Fire was by no means incompatible with Earth.

  Later, Sebastian’s father, educated at Oxford, had become Hugh’s official tutor—and the teacher of the other four, unofficially. It was an arrangement that suited all of them except Sebastian; perhaps that was why he had been so eager to throw himself into art!

  Hugh and Alanna had fallen in love as children and their love had only grown over the years. There had never been any doubt whom he would marry, and since both sets of parents were more than satisfied with the arrangement, everyone was happy. Hugh’s parents had not lived to see them married, but they had not been young when he was born, so it had come as no great surprise that he came into his inheritance before he left Oxford. The loss of Alanna’s mother and father in a typhoid epidemic after their marriage had been more of a shock. If Alanna had not had Hugh then—she did not think she could have borne the loss.

  At least he and Alanna had the satisfaction of knowing that their parents blessed their union with all their hearts.

  Sebastian had taken longer to recognize Margherita as his soul mate. Fate had other ideas, Thomas claimed later; Sebastian could be as obnoxious to his schoolmate as any other grubby boy, but overnight, it seemed, Margherita turned from a scrawny, gangly brat to a slender nymph, and the teasing and mock-tormenting had turned to something else entirely.

  Such was the magic of the heart.

  Insofar as that magic that Alanna and Hugh both carried in their veins, there was no doubt that their firstborn daughter had inherited it. One day little Marina would wield the forces of Elemental Magic as well, but her affinity, beautifully portrayed in the curves and waves of her cradle, the tiny mermaids sporting amid the carved foam, was for Water. Not the usual affinity in the Roeswood family, but not unknown, either.

  Though they had not been part of that intimate circle of schoolfellows, the others here to bestow magical blessings on the infant were also Elemental Mages, and were part of their Working Circle. Two wielded Air magic, and one other, like Marina, that of Water. That third had left an infant of her own behind, in the care of a nurse; Elizabeth Hastings was Alanna’s first friend outside of her schoolmates, and one of the wisest people Alanna knew. She would have to be; she had kept her utterly ordinary husband completely in the dark about her magical powers, and it was unlikely that he would ever have the least inkling of the fact that his lovely, fragile-looking wife could probably command the ocean to wipe a good-sized fishing village from the face of the earth if she was minded to.

  Not that gentle Elizabeth would ever so much as consider doing such a thing.

  This, the afternoon of the ceremony at the village church, was a very different sort of christening for Marina. Each of these friends was also a godparent; each had carefully considered the sort of arcane gift he or she would bestow on the tiny child. In the ancient days, these would have been gifts of defense and offense: protections for a helpless infant against potential enemies of her parents. In these softer times, they would be gifts of grace and beauty, meant to enrich her life rather than defend it.

  There was no set ceremony for this party; a godparent simply moved to Alanna’s side, whispered his or her gift to the sleeping baby, and lightly touched her silken hair with a gentle finger. Already four of the six had bestowed their blessings—from Margherita, skillful hands and deft fingers. From Sebastian, blithe spirits and a cheerful heart. Thomas’ choice was the gift of music; whether Marina was a performer herself, or only one who loved music, would depend on her own talents, but no matter what, she would have the ear and mind to extract the most enjoyment from it. A fourth friend, a contemporary of their parents, Lady Helene Overton (whose power was Air), she of the handsome tea gown and silver-white hair, had added physical grace to that. Now the local farmer in his outmoded suit—a yeoman farmer, whose family had held their lands in their own right for centuries (and another Air Master)—glided over to Alanna’s side. Like most of his Affinity, in England at least, he was lean, his eyes blue, his hair pale. The more powerful a Master was, the more like his Elementals he became, and Roderick Bacon was very powerful. He smiled at Alanna, and bent over the cradle.

  “Alliance,” he whispered, and touched his forefinger to the baby’s soft, dark hair.

  Alanna blinked with surprise. This was a gift more akin to those given in the ancient days! Roderick had just granted Marina the ability to speak with and beg aid from, if not command, the Elemental creatures of the Air! He had allied his power with hers, which had to be done with the consent of his Elementals. She stared at Roderick, dumbfounded.

  He shrugged, and smiled sheepishly. “Belike she’ll only care to have the friendship of the birds,” he replied to her questioning look. “But ‘tis my line’s traditional Gift, and I’m a man for tradition.”

  Alanna returned his smile, and nodded her thanks. Who was she to flout tradition? Roderick’s Mage-Line went back further than their status as landholders; they had become landholders because of Magical aid to their liege lord in the time of King Stephen and Queen Maud.

  She was grateful for the kinds of Gifts that had been given; her friends were practical as well as thoughtful. They had not bestowed great beauty on the child, for instance; great beauty could be as much of a curse as a blessing. They hadn’t given her specific talents, just the deftness and skill that would enable her to make the best use of whatever talents she had been born with. Even Roderick’s Gift was mutable; it would serve as Marina decided it would serve. While she was a child, the Elementals of the Air would watch over her, as those of her own Element would guard her—no wind would harm her, for instance, nor was it possible for her to drown. Once she became an adult and knew what the Gift meant, she could make use of it—or not—as she chose.

  Only Elizabeth was left to bestow her gift. Alanna smiled up into her friend’s eyes—but as she took her first step toward the baby, the windows rattled, a chill wind bellied the curtains, and the room darkened, as if a terrible storm cloud had boiled up in an instant.

  The guests started back from the windows; Margherita clung to Sebastian. A wave of inexplicable and paralyzing fear rose up and overwhelmed Alanna, pinning her in her chair like a frightened rabbit.

  A woman swept in through the parlor door.

  She was dressed in the height of fashion, in a gown of black satin trimmed with silk fringe in the deepest maroon. Her skin was pale as porcelain, her hair as black as the fabric of her gown. She raked the room and its occupants with an imperious gaze, as Hugh gasped.

  “Arachne!” he exclaimed, and hurried forward. “Why, sister! We didn’t expect you!”

  The woman’s red lips curved in a chill parody of a smile. “Of course you didn’t,” she purred, her eyes glinting dangerously. “You didn’t invite me, brother. I can only wonder why.”

  Hugh paled, but stood his ground. “I had no reason to think you would want to attend the christening, Arachne. You never invited me to Reginald’s christening—”

  Arachne advanced into the room, and Hugh perforce gave way before her. Alanna sat frozen in her chair, sensing the woman’s menace, still overwhelmed with fear, but unable to understand why she was so afraid. Hugh had told her next to nothing about this older sister of his—only that she was the only child of his father’s first marriage, and that she had quarreled with her father over his marriage to Hugh’s mother, and made a runaway marriage with her wealthy tradesman.

  “You should have invited me, little brother,” Arachne continued with a throaty laugh, as she continued to glide forward, and Hugh backed up a
step at a time. “Why not? Didn’t you think I’d appreciate the sight of the heir’s heiress?” Another pace, A toothy smile. “I can’t imagine why you would think that. Here I am, the child’s only aunt. Why shouldn’t I wish to see her?”

  “Because you’ve never shown any interest in our family before, Arachne.” Hugh was as white as marble, and it seemed to Alanna that he was being forced back as Arachne advanced. “You didn’t come to father’s funeral—”

  “I sent a wreath. Surely that was enough, considering that father detested my husband and made no secret of it.”

  “—and you didn’t even send a wreath to mother’s—”

  “She could have opposed him, and chose not to.” A shrug, and an insincere smile. “You didn’t trouble to let me know of your wedding to this charming child, so I could hardly have attended that. I only found out about it from the society pages in the Times. That was hardly kind.” A theatrical sigh. “But how could I have expected anything else? After Father and Mother determined to estrange me from our family circle, I wasn’t surprised that you would follow suit.”

  Alanna strained, with eyes and Sight, to make sense of the woman who called herself Hugh’s sister. There was a darkness about her, like a storm cloud: a sense of lightnings and an ominous power. Was it magic? If so, was it her own? It was possible for a mage to bestow specific magic upon someone who wasn’t able to command any of the powers. But it was also possible for one of the many sorts of Elementals to attach itself to a non-mage as well.

  As thunder growled and distant lightning licked the clouds outside, Alanna looked up and met Arachne’s eyes—and found herself unable to move. The rest of their guests stood like pillars, staring, as if they, too, were struck with paralysis.

  Hugh clearly tried to interpose himself between Arachne and the cradle, but he moved sluggishly, as if pushing his way through thick muck, and his sister darted around him. She bent over the cradle. Alanna tried to reach out and snatch her baby away, but she could no more have moved than have flown.