Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page B

set with long narrow windows rose up from the edges of the rambling structure, and off to one side Truth could see the geometric shape of a glass house, or conservatory, jutting outward as if it wanted nothing to do with the stone walls that supported it. The five acres or so immediately around the house were immaculately tended; across the sweep of green lawn she could see a lacy white gazebo, and high box hedges that might be a maze. Beyond those artifacts of civilization the autumn forest took possession of the landscape once more. The Shadow’s Gate estate was a parcel of slightly over 100 acres.
    The hundred-acre wood. Just like in Winnie-the-Pooh.
    Seeing Shadow’s Gate was like seeing a scene she’d thought safely buried in a children’s book brought to jarring life. Truth had always been certain that she retained no memories from her early childhood, as was perfectly typical—after all, most people report having no childhood memories dating earlier than their seventh or eighth year—but it seemed, now, that she was wrong.
    She knew this place. To enter its doors was to promise to keep an appointment she was more than twenty years late for.
    Truth’s heart slammed against her ribs at a speed suggesting panic. For only an instant the world—the car,
the friendly autumn forest—was gone, and she stood naked in a place where torches made a pillared cathedral of light. She was come to judgment, but those who called her little knew what they had called to face them—
    Truth shook her head, puzzled. The memory, fantasy, whatever it had been, slipped away like a dream, leaving behind it only the sense of a challenge that must be met.
    â€œCreepy.” She spoke aloud, and the last of the dream-sense vanished. The house ahead was nothing more than a stately Victorian mansion, freshly tenanted after a span of years.
    â€œ Déjà vu , that’s what they call it,” Truth told herself, slipping the car into Drive once more. Déjà vu , the sense of having been somewhere before. Often cited by psychics as proof of their powers, but rarely that. A complex trick of the mind, nothing more.
    Nothing more.
    Â 
    When she pulled up in front of the house, there was a man waiting for her on the front steps.
    Gareth must have phoned up from the gatehouse , Truth realized. She got out of her car reluctantly, slinging her purse up over her shoulder. The man came down the steps, moving around the car to greet her.
    â€œHello,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Julian Pilgrim. Welcome to Shadow’s Gate, Ms. Jourdemayne.”
    Truth did not miss his quick assessment of her, and was suddenly glad she’d taken the trouble to dig out—and wear—one of the outfits she usually saved for professional conferences: a skirt and matching jacket in olive wild silk worn with an ivory peau de soie shell. The low-heeled coffee-colored pumps and matching oversized Coach bag completed the picture of an efficient, official, and normal person.
    In the moment Julian Pilgrim took to appraise her, Truth conducted an evaluation of her own. She saw a man a few years older than she, with thick silky black
hair and eyes the startling topaz blue of a Siamese cat’s. His face had all the patrician arrogance of that noble breed, and his body a positively feline suppleness. He was dressed as if attending the same imaginary conference that Truth was; a jacket of subtle expensive tweed, dark slacks, a shirt with the dense, close-woven whiteness of linen open to expose his strong, brown throat. His hands were innocent of rings, and the Rolex on his left wrist was a thin, gold whisper of privilege. Looking at his hands made a faint shudder run through her body; before she could stop herself, she wondered what they would feel like touching her bare skin.
    The only jarring note in this perfection was the bangle Julian Pilgrim wore upon his right wrist.
    One would expect any jewelry