The Gates of Sleep Read Free Page 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