Read Online Gravelight by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Free Book Online

to get away from this place—go to Pharaoh for supplies, that was it. Get out among people, where every casual closeness—sitting on a bus, standing in an elevator—brought her their life histories and secret desires, their angers and their griefs. But it was better than staying here to let her empty mind collapse inward upon itself. Down in Pharaoh, they’d never heard of Athanais Dellon or her daughter, and furthermore, they didn’t care. She could shop, maybe even have dinner in the Pharaoh diner.
    With brisk determination, Sinah changed her flour-spattered jeans and T-shirt for a sundress and denim jacket more suitable for a grocery shopping expedition. Even the mutter of the storm approaching through Watchman’s Gap
wasn’t enough to deter her—she could wait it out in town and come back afterward.
    She opened the door and stepped out, mildly surprised to see that the evening was clear. The storm must still be on the other side of the Gap, then; well, it could stay there for all she cared. Holding her keys in her hand, she stepped toward her Jeep Cherokee, her lifeline to the outside world, her means of escape.
    That was when she smelled the smoke.
    Something was burning.
    She looked wildly in all directions, but there was nothing in sight. Only the soft summer twilight slanting through the white stands of birch trees, and the purling of a creek somewhere in the middle distance.
    And the smell of smoke.
    Why couldn’t she see anything? The smell of smoke was so strong, the fire must be close by. The dappled sunlight burned on her skin like falling embers; the sky was darkening fast and suddenly she couldn’t breathe … .
    The smoke was choking her. Sinah stared in horror. Fire made bright walls around her; the heat of it tightened her skin. She stared into the flames, unconsciously searching for the gas jets that would tell her this was all a fake, a movie set.
    But this was no set, no stage. There were no cameras, no audience. This was real.
    Sinah stood in the middle of a burning room, one that she’d never seen before, not even in pictures. There were brightly colored banners edged in fire, and tall candlesticks whose melting candle wax trickled down like water. Around her she could hear screaming, as though a hundred people suffered here just beyond her sight.
    â€œHello!” Sinah cried, and almost immediately began to choke on the acrid smoke.
    Fire climbed the walls. Now the bright silk banners were all aflame. Soon the flames would reach her. Choking on
her own panic, Sinah took a tentative step backward, away from the worst of the fire.
    There was a door beneath her hands, its handle already blisteringly hot. With a sense of trapped unreasoning horror she flung it open—there was darkness on the other side, and blessed quiet. Sinah rushed through the door and slammed it. She held it closed for several seconds before she dared look around.
    She’d thought this place was dark. And it was, but somehow she could see her surroundings, as if she knew them so well that her memory was something she could trust. Stairs. Old and worn and shallow, leading down into the body of the earth, to where the crushing weight of rock became a separate living intelligence, waiting to crush her. Sinah put her foot forward and felt the edge of the first step.
    The wood of the door behind her grew warm against her back, reminding her that there was no retreat. She must go forward, down into where something waited—waited for her specifically, for Sinah Dellon. This was the past she’d so recklessly conjured; this was her heritage.
    It was waiting for her.
    This is a dream! Sinah thought wildly. She was—
    She could not remember where she’d been a moment before. All she could remember was the fire. Fear, and grief—and a wild sense of failure and despair.
    She had failed—herself, and the Line. And that which she had failed was here, waiting for her. In