Marion Zimmer Bradley - Witchlight

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'~,Vitch liœh t

M A R I 0 N

Z I M M E R

B R A D L E Y

TO R r [

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work ()friction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

WITCHLIGHT

thereof, in any form.

This book is printed an acid-free paper.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

i75 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY I oo T o

Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

http://www, tor. com

Torr is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bradley, Marion Zimmer.

Witchlight / Marion Zimmer Bradley. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-312-86104-4 (acid-free paper)

I. Title

PS3552.R228W5 1996

813'.54~c20

96-207O3

CIP

First Edition: September ~996

Printed in the United States of America

o 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

Another kind of poltergeist activity may be the expression

of psychic J3rce in tension, not around a hysterical or mal-

adjusted child, but around a relatively well-adjusted

adult. When this occurs, there is some unresolved psychic

force in action; it could be said that the Unseen is coming

in search of the individual concerned, and this does not,

strictly speaking, come under the scope of this book.

In addition to the case histories in this book, consult

Carrington and Fodore, cited elsewhere, as well as the

monograph by Margrave and Anstey, in the Autumn,

1983, issue 0fThe Journal of Unexpected Phenom-

ena, reissued ,53, Silkie Press, San Francisco, as The

Natural History of the Poltergeist.

--The Inheritor

144'tchliœht

CHAPTER ONE

A WINTER'S TALE

A sad tale's best for winter.

I have one of sprites and goblins.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE HOUSE WAS CALLED GREYANGELS. IT HAD BEEN

built in the last years of the old colony and added to in the first years of

the new nation. Old orchards from its days as a farm still surrounded the

house; their hundred-year-old trees long past fruiting but still able to

bring forth a glory of apple blossoms each spring. But the house's days of

ruling over acres of corn and squash and rows of neatly barbered apple

trees were long past. Now, only the house remained. Its pegged, wide-

planked floors, its lath-and-horsehair plastered walls, its low ceilings

with their smoke-blackened beams, its tiny windows with their wavery,

hand-rolled glass, had dwindled from luxurious to old-fangled to quaint

to dowdy, before being forgotten entirely and abandoned to the mercy of

time and the seasons.

Years passed. The house was nearly dead when it came to the attention

of the living once more, to be gently renovated to suit the tastes of a gen-

eration raised with indoor plumbing and furnace heat, a generation

IO MARION Z I M M E R

BRADLEY

which summered outside the city. But tastes and fashions continued to

change, and soon New Yorkers had less desire for an old summer house

on the banks of the Hudson River.

The house passed from hand to hand to hand, drifting farther even

from the memory of its initial purpose, as cars got faster and roads im-

proved and the suburbs moved north and north again, until Dutchess

County was filled with New York commuters racing for their daily trains

and it seemed that Amsterdam County, too, would soon fall to tract

housing and the desire of the city's residents to reside in the peace of what

once had been country.

But for now the house was spared, sitting on its dozen acres between

the railroad and the Hudson, its nearest neighbor a private college with

a lurid reputation and an artists' colony that sought anonymity above all

things. For a while longer the old farmhouse still sat quietly in the quiet

countryside, and nothing disturbed its peace.

That must be why I came here, Winter Musgrave told herself, although to be

brutally accurate, she could not remember the precise details of her flight

here, and prudence---or fear--kept her from reaching too forcefully into

the ugly confusion where the memory might lie. There were things it was

better not to be sure of--including the frightening knowledge that her

memory had--sometime in the unrecorded past---ceased to be her willing

servant and had become instead a sadistic jailer waiting to spring new and

more horrible surprises on her. A day that did not bring some jarring

revelation, however small, was a day Winter had learned to treasure.

The quiet helped, and the slow pace of the countryside as it ripened

into spring. She had a vague understanding that she had not been here

long; old snow had still lingered in shadows and hollows when she had

driven her white BMW up the curving graveled driveway, and now only

the palest green of half-started leaves softened the outline of the sur-

rounding trees: birch, maple, dogwood--and the apple trees in gnarled

files marching down to the river.

Winter did not like the apple trees. They worried her and made her

feel vaguely ashamed, as if something had been done among the apple

trees that must never be remembered, never spoken of. The orchard

formed an effective barrier between Winter and the river that could be

glimpsed only from the second-floor bedroom.

~tinued to

her house

ther even

'oads im-

Dutchess

ly trains

to tract

of what

etween

~e with

<)ve all

ú , quiet

to be

flight

into

~. was

: her

ling

and

'ing

led

ere

WITCH LIG H T I!

But she could see the apple trees from there, too, and so Winter had

made her bedroom downstairs, in the tiny parlor-turned-spare-bedroom

off the kitchen, which was both warmer and hidden from the sight of the

flowering orchard.

So long as no one knew where she was, she was safe.

The notion was a familiar one by now; familiar enough that it might

even be safe to think about.

Why should no one know where I am?

Winter picked up a heavy carnival-glass paperweight from the Shaker

table and stared down at its oil-slick surface as if it were a witch's crystal

and she could find answers there. Wordless reluctance and fear surged

over her, making her hastily return the paperweight to the table and ner-

vously pace the room.

The front parlor of the farmhouse was sparsely furnished; there was

the Shaker table with a lamp on it, a Windsor rocker made of steam-bent

ash, and a long settle angled before the fieldstone hearth, A hand-braided

rag rug softened the time-worn oak-planked floor, and on one white-

washed wall hung a mirror, its thick glass green with age, set in a curv-

ing cherry frame.

Winter stopped automatically in front of the mirror and forced herself

to look. It could not hurt more than coming upon her reflection by sur-

prise, when the clash between what she saw and what she remembered

fashioned another of the small humiliations and terrors by which she

marked out her days.

Hair: not wavy and chestnut any longer, but fiat and lank and dark.

The skin too pale, its texture somehow fragile, flesh drawn tight over

prominent bones that said the border between slender and gaunt had

been crossed long ago. Hazel eyes, sunken and shadowed and dull; a con-

trast to the days when more than one admirer had sworn he could see

flecks of baltic amber in their sherry-colored depths. Her mouth, pinched

and pale and old. She couldn't remember the last time she'd worn lip-

stick, or what color it had been. Did she even have a lipstick here? She

couldn't remember--did it matter?

Of course it does--Jack always said I should wear as much war-paint as I

wanted; it made them nervous ....

The scrap of the past flashed to the surface like a bright fish and was

gone; pushed away; sacrificed to the need to hide.

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'~,VitchliœhtMARI0NZIMMERBRADLEYTORr[JATOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESBOOKNEWYORK_1Thisisawork()friction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictitiousorareusedfictitiously.WITCHLIGHTCopyrightci996byMarionZimmerBradleyAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbook,orportionsthereof,in...

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Marion Zimmer Bradley - Witchlight

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