Mercedes Lackey - The Gates Of Sleep

VIP免费
2024-12-22 0 0 815.58KB 208 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
MERCEDES LACKEY
THE GATES OF SLEEP
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 pre-
cisely 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.
"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.
1
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.
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
摘要：

MERCEDESLACKEYTHEGATESOFSLEEPPROLOGUEALANNARoeswoodenteredtheparlorwithherbabyMarinainherarms,andreflectedcontentedlythatshelovedthisroombetterthananyotherchamberinOakhurstManor.Afternoonsunlightstreamedinthroughthebaywindows,andasultrybreezecarriedwithitthescentofrosesfromthegarden.Theparlorglowedw...

展开>> 收起<<
Mercedes Lackey - The Gates Of Sleep.pdf

共208页,预览42页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：208 页 大小：815.58KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 208
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注