The Gates of Sleep Read online

  “Well, well,” Arachne said, a hint of mockery in her voice. “A pleasant child. But so fragile. Nothing like my boy…”

  As Alanna watched in horror, Arachne reached out with a single, extended finger, supple and white and tipped with a long fingernail painted with bloodred enamel. She reached for Marina’s forehead, as all of the godparents had. The darkness shivered, gathered itself around her, and crept down the extended arm. “You really should enjoy this pretty child—while you have her. You never know about children.” Her eyes glinted in the gloom, a hint of red flickering in the back of them. The ominous finger neared Marina’s forehead. “They can survive so many hazards, growing up. Then one day—say, on the eighteenth birthday—”

  The finger touched.

  “Death,” Arachne whispered.

  Like an animate oil slick, the shadow gathered itself, flowed down Arachne’s arm, and enveloped Marina in a shadow-shroud.

  Lightning struck the lawn outside the window, and thunder crashed like a thousand cannon. Alanna screamed; the baby woke, and wailed.

  With a peal of laughter, Arachne whirled away from the cradle. In a few strides she was out the door and gone, escaped before any could detain her.

  Now the paralysis holding all of them broke.

  Alanna snatched her child out of the cradle and held the howling infant to her chest, sobbing. As lightning crashed and thunder rolled, as the baby keened, all of her godparents descended on them both.

  “I don’t know how she did this,” Elizabeth said at last, frowning. “I’ve never seen magic like this. It doesn’t correspond to any Element—if I were superstitious—”

  Alanna pressed her lips tightly together, and fought down another sob. “If you were superstitious—what?” she demanded.

  Elizabeth sighed. “I’d say it was a curse. Meant to take effect between now and Marina’s eighteenth birthday. But I can’t tell how.”

  “Neither can I,” Roderick said grimly. “Though it’s a damned good job I gave her the Gift I did. She got some protection, anyway. This—well, call it a curse, my old granddad would have—with the help of the Sylphs, this curse is drained, countered for now—else it might have killed her in her cradle. But how someone with no magic of her own managed to do this—” He shrugged.

  “The curse is countered—” Alanna didn’t like the way he had phrased that. “It’s not gone?”

  Roderick looked helpless, and not comfortable with feeling that way. “Well—no.”

  Elizabeth stepped forward before the hysterical cry of anguish building in her heart burst out of Alanna’s throat. “Then it’s a good thing that I have not yet given my Gift.”

  She took the baby from Alanna’s arms; Alanna resisted for a moment, before reluctantly letting the baby go. She watched, tears welling in her eyes, hand pressed to her mouth, as Elizabeth studied the red, pinched, tear-streaked face of her baby.

  “This—abomination—is too deeply rooted. I cannot rid her of it,” Elizabeth said, and Alanna moaned, and started to turn away into her husband’s shoulder.

  “Wait!” Elizabeth said, forestalling her. “I said I couldn’t rid her of it. I didn’t say I couldn’t change it. Water—water can go everywhere. No magic wrought can keep me out.”

  Shaking with hope and fear, Alanna turned back. She watched, Hugh’s arms around her, as Elizabeth gathered her power around her like the skirts of her flowing gown. The green, living energy spun around her, sparkling with life; she murmured something under her breath.

  Then, exactly like water pouring into a cavity, the power spun down into the baby’s tiny body. Marina seemed too small to contain all of it, and yet it flowed into her until it had utterly vanished without a trace.

  The darkness that had overshadowed her face slowly lifted. The baby’s eyes opened; she heaved a sigh, and for the first time since Arachne had touched her, she smiled, tentatively. Alanna burst into tears and gathered her baby to her breast. Hugh’s arms surrounded her with comfort and warmth.

  Elizabeth spoke firmly, pitching her voice to carry over Alanna’s weeping.

  “I did not—I could not—remove this curse. What I have done is to change it. As it stood, it had no limit; it could have been invoked at any time. Now, if it does not fall upon her by her eighteenth birthday, it will rebound upon the caster.”

  Alanna gulped down her sobs and looked up quickly at her friend. Elizabeth’s mouth was pursed in a sour smile. “Injudicious of Arachne to mention a date; curses are tricky things, and if you don’t hedge them in carefully, they find ways of breaking out—or leaving holes. And injudicious of her to come in person; now, if it is awakened at all, she will have to awaken it in person, and I have buried it deeply. It will not be easy, and will require a great deal of close contact.”

  “But—” Alanna felt her throat closing again, and Elizabeth held up her hand.

  “I have not finished. I further modified this curse; should Arachne manage to awaken it, Marina will not die.” Elizabeth sighed, wearily. “But there, my knowledge fails me. I told you that curses are difficult; this one took the power and twisted it away from me. I can only tell you that the curse will not kill outright. I cannot tell you what it will do…”

  Alanna watched a hundred dire thoughts pass behind Elizabeth’s eyes. There were so many things that were worse than death—and many that were only a little better. What if the curse struck Mari blind, or deaf, or mindless? What if it made a cripple of her?

  Then Elizabeth gathered herself and nodded briskly. “Never mind. We must see that it does not come to that. Alanna, we must hide her.”

  “Hide her?” Hugh said, from behind her. “By my faith, Elizabeth, that is no bad notion! Like—like the infant Arthur, we can send her away where Arachne can’t find her!”

  “Take her?” Alanna clutched the infant closer, her voice rising. “You’d take her away from me?”

  “Alanna, we can’t hide her if you go with her,” Hugh pointed out, his own arms tightening around her. “But where? That’s the question.”

  Hot tears spilled from Alanna’s eyes, as the others discussed her baby’s fate, heedless of her breaking heart. They were taking her away, her Marina, her little Mari—

  She heard them in a haze of grief, as if from a great distance, as her friends, her husband, decided among them to send Marina away, away, off with Sebastian and Thomas and Margherita, practically into the wilds of Cornwall. It was Hugh’s allusion to Arthur that had decided them. Arachne knew nothing of them; if she had known of Hugh’s childhood schoolmates, she hadn’t recognized the playfellows that had been in the artists of now.

  Elizabeth tried to comfort her. “It’s only until she’s of age, darling,” her friend said, patting her shoulders as the tears flowed and she shook with sobs. “When she’s eighteen, she’ll come back to you!”

  Eighteen years. An eternity. An age, in which she would never see Marina’s first step, hear her first word, see her grow…

  Alanna wept. Wept as they bundled Marina up in a baby-basket and carried her away, leaving behind the little dresses that Alanna had embroidered during the months of her confinement, the toys, even the cradle. She wept as her friends smuggled the child into their cart, as if she was nothing more than a few apples or a bottle of cider.

  She wept as they drove away, her husband’s arms around her, her best friend standing at her side. She wept and would not be consoled; for she had lost her heart, and something told her she would never see her child again.

  Chapter One

  BIRDS twittered in the rose bushes outside the old-fashioned diamond-paned windows. The windows, swung open on their ancient iron hinges, let in sunshine, a floating dandelion seed and a breath of mown grass, even if Marina wasn’t in position to see the view into the farmyard. The sunshine gilded an oblong on the worn wooden floor. Behind her, somewhere out in the yard, chickens clucked and muttered, and two of Aunt Margherita’s cats had a half-minute spat. Marina’s arm was starting to go numb.

&
nbsp; The unenlightened might think that posing as an artist’s model was easy, because “all” one had to do was sit, stand, or recline in one position. The unenlightened ought to try it some time, she thought. It took the same sort of simultaneous concentration and relaxation that magic did—concentration, to make sure that there wasn’t a bit of movement, and relaxation, to ensure that muscles didn’t lock up. If the pose was a standing one, then it wasn’t long before feet and legs were aching; if sitting or reclining, it was a certainty that some part of the body would fall asleep, with the resulting pins—and—needles agony when the model was allowed to move.

  Then there was the boredom—well, perhaps boredom wasn’t quite the right word. The model had to have something to occupy her mind while her body was frozen in one position; it was rare that Marina ever got to take a pose that allowed her to either read or nap. She generally used the time to go over the basic exercises of magic that Uncle Thomas taught her, or to go over some more mundane lesson or other.

  Oh, modeling was work, all right. She understood that artists who didn’t have complacent relatives paid well for models to pose, and in her opinion, every penny was earned.

  She’d been here all morning posing, because Uncle had got a mania about the early light; enough was enough. She was hungry, it was time for luncheon, and it wasn’t fair to make her work from dawn to dark. How could anyone waste such a beautiful autumn day inside the stone walls of this farmhouse? “Uncle Sebastian,” she called. “The model’s arm is falling off.”

  A whiff of oil paints came to her as Sebastian looked up from his canvas. “It isn’t, I assure you,” he retorted.

  She didn’t pout; it wasn’t in her nature to pout. But she did protest. “Well, feels as though it’s falling off!”

  Sebastian heaved a theatrical sigh. “The modern generation has no stamina,” he complained, disordering his graying chestnut locks with the same hand that held his brush, and leaving streaks of gold all through it. “Why, when your aunt was your age, she could hold a pose for six and seven hours at a time, and never a complaint out of her.”

  Taking that as permission to break her pose, Marina leaned the oriflamme, the battle banner of medieval France, against the wall, and put her sword down on the floor. “When my aunt was my age, you posed her as a reclining odalisque, or fainting on the couch, or leaning languidly in a window,” she retorted. “You never once posed her as Joan of Arc. Or Britannia, in a heavy helmet and breastplate. Or Morgan Le Fay, with a snake and a dagger.”

  “Trivial details,” Sebastian said with a dismissive gesture. “Inconsequential.”

  “Not to my arm.” Marina shook both of her arms vigorously, grateful that Sebastian had not inflicted the heavy breastplate and helmet on her. Of course, that would have made the current painting look rather more like that one of Britannia that he had recently finished than Sebastian would have preferred.

  And since the Britannia painting was owned by a business rival of the gentleman who had commissioned this one, it wouldn’t do to make one a copy of the other.

  This one, which was to be significantly larger than “Britannia Awakes” as well as significantly different, was going to be very profitable for Uncle Sebastian. And since the rival who had commissioned “Saint Jeanne” was a profound Francophobe…

  Men, Marina had long since concluded, could be remarkably silly. On the other hand, when the first man caught wind of this there might be another commission for a new painting, perhaps a companion to “Britannia Awakes,” which would be very nice for the household indeed. And then—another commission from the second gentleman? This could be amusing as well as profitable!

  The second gentleman, however, had made some interesting assumptions, perhaps based upon the considerable amount of arm and shoulder, ankle and calf that Britannia had displayed. He had made it quite clear to Uncle Sebastian that he wanted the same model for his painting, but he had also thrown out plenty of hints that he wanted the model as well, perhaps presuming that his rival had also included that as part of the commission.

  Marina wasn’t supposed to know that. Uncle Sebastian hadn’t known she was anywhere near the house when the client came to call. In fact, she’d been gathering eggs and had heard voices in Uncle Sebastian’s studio, and the Sylphs had told her that one was a stranger. It had been quite funny—she was listening from outside the window—until Uncle Sebastian, with a cold remark that the gentleman couldn’t possibly be referring to his dear niece, had interrupted the train of increasingly less subtle hints about Sebastian’s “lovely model.” Fortunately, Sebastian hadn’t lost his temper. Uncle Sebastian in a temper was apt to damage things.

  Marina reached for the ribbon holding her hair in a tail behind her back and pulled it loose, shaking out her heavy sable mane. Saint Joan was not noted for her luxuriant locks, so Uncle had scraped all of her hair back tightly so that he could see the shape of her skull. Tightly enough that the roots of her hair hurt, in fact, though she wasn’t apt to complain. When he got to the hair for the painting, he’d construct a boyish bob over the skull shape. In that respect, the pose for Britannia had been a little more comfortable; at least she hadn’t had to pull her hair back so tightly that her scalp ached. “When are you going to get a commission that doesn’t involve me holding something out at the end of my arm?” she asked.

  Her uncle busied himself with cleaning his palette, scraping it bare, wiping it with linseed oil. Clearly, he had been quite ready to stop as well, but he would never admit that. “Would you rather another painting of dancing Muses?” he asked.

  Recalling the painting that her uncle had done for an exhibition last spring that involved nine contorted poses for her, and had driven them both to quarrels and tantrums, she shook her head. “Not unless someone offers you ten thousand pounds for it—in advance.” She turned pleading eyes on him. “But don’t you think that just once you might manage a painting of—oh—Juliet in the tomb of the Capulets? Surely that’s fashionably morbid enough for you!”

  He snatched up a cushion and flung it at her; she caught it deftly, laughing at him.

  “Minx!” he said, mockingly. “Lazy, too! Very well, failing any other commissions, the next painting will be Shakespearian, and I’ll have you as Kate the Shrew!”

  “So long as it’s Kate the Shrew sitting down and reading, I’ve no objection,” she retorted, dropped the cushion on the window seat, and skipped out the door. This was an old-fashioned place where, at least on the ground floor, one room led into the next; she passed through her aunt’s workroom, then the room that held Margherita’s tapestry loom, then the library, then the dining room, before reaching the stairs.

  Her own room was at the top of the farmhouse, above the kitchen and under the attics, with a splendid view of the apple orchard beyond the farmyard wall. There was a handsome little rooster atop the wall—an English bantam; Aunt Margherita was very fond of bantams and thought highly of their intelligence. They didn’t actually have a farm as such, for the land belonging to the house was farmed by a neighbor. When they’d taken the place, Uncle had pointed out that as artists they made very poor farmers; it would be better for them to do what they were good at and let the owner rent the land to someone else. But they did have the pond, the barn, a little pasturage, the orchard and some farm animals—bantam chickens, some geese and ducks, a couple of sheep to keep the grass around the farmhouse tidy. They had two ponies and two carts, because Uncle Sebastian was always taking one off on a painting expedition just when Aunt Margherita wanted it for shopping, or Uncle Thomas for his business. They also had an old, old horse, a once-famous jumper who probably didn’t have many more years in him, that they kept in gentle retirement for the local master of the hunt. Marina rode him now and again, but never at more than an amble. He would look at fences with a peculiar and penetrating gaze, as if meditating on the follies of his youth—then snort, and amble further along in search of a gate that Marina could open for him.

  There were wild swans
on the pond as well, who would claim their share of bread and grain with the usual imperiousness of such creatures. And Uncle Thomas raised doves; he had done so since he was a boy. They weren’t the brightest of birds, but they were beautiful creatures, sweet and gentle fantails that came to anyone’s hands, tame and placid, for feeding. The same couldn’t be said of the swans, which regarded Aunt Margherita as a king would regard the lowliest serf, and the grain and bread she scattered for them as no less than their just tribute. Only for Marina did they unbend, their natures partaking of equal parts of air and water and so amenable to her touch, if not to that of an Earth Master.

  She changed out of her fustian tunic with the painted fleur-de-lis and knitted coif, the heavy knitted jumper whose drape was meant to suggest chain mail for Uncle Sebastian’s benefit. Off came the knitted hose and the suede boots. She pulled on a petticoat and a loose gown of Aunt Margherita’s design and make, shoved her feet into her old slippers, and ran back down the tiny staircase, which ended at the entryway dividing the kitchen from the dining room and parlor. The door into the yard stood invitingly open, a single hen peering inside with interest, and she gave the sundrenched expanse outside a long look of regret before joining her aunt in the kitchen.

  Floored with slate, with white plastered walls and black beams, the kitchen was the most modern room of the house. The huge fireplace remained largely unused, except on winter nights when the family gathered here instead of in the parlor. Iron pot-hooks and a Tudor spit were entirely ornamental now, but Aunt Margherita would not have them taken out; she said they were part of the soul of the house.

  The huge, modern iron range that Margherita had insisted on having—much admired by all the local farmers’ wives—didn’t even use the old chimney. It stood in splendid isolation on the external wall opposite the hearth, which made the kitchen wonderfully warm on those cold days when there was a fire in both. Beneath the window that overlooked the yard was Margherita’s other improvement, a fine sink with its own well and pump, so that no one had to go out into the yard to bring in water. For the rest, a huge table dominated the room, with a couple of tall stools and two long benches beneath it. Three comfortable chairs stood beside the cold hearth, a dresser that was surely Georgian displayed copper pots and china, and various cupboards and other kitchen furniture were ranged along the walls.