The Gates of Sleep
by Mercedes Lackey
For as long as she could remember, Marina Roeswood had lived in an old,
rambling farmhouse in rural Cornwall in the care of close friends of
her wealthy, aristocratic parents. In the seventeen years that she has
been fostered by Sebastian and Margherita Tarrant, and Margherita's
brother, Thomas Buford, she had lived an almost idyllic existence. As
the ward of three bohemian artists in turn-of-the-century England, she had
grown to be a free thinker in an environment of fertile creativity and
cultural sophistication. Under their loving private tutelage, Marina
had learned to read and translate five languages, and was as literate
as any well-bred woman of her era.
But the real core of her education was far outside societal norms.
For she and her foster parents were Elemental Masters of magic, and
learning to control her growing powers was Marina's primary focus. Each
of them commanded the magic of a specific element. Margherita and her
brother Thomas were Earth Masters, Sebastian was a Fire Master, and
Marina herself was a fledgling Water Master of enormous potential,
with a lesser affinity for the element of Air. Marina loved nothing
more than to sit by a stream or small waterfall, watching or
communing with the lesser Water Elementals, Undines, and Naiads. When
she played her lute, harp, or flute, she was sometimes even graced
by the presence of Air Elementals, the Sylphs and Zephyrs whom Sebastian
had said were her allies, though why she might need allies, Marina
had no clue.
Actually, there were quite a few mysteries about her life that Marina
wasn't able to solve. Why, for example, had she never seen her parents,
or been to Oakhurst, her family's ancestral manor in Devon? Her mother
and father assured her fervently, in every letter, that they loved her
and longed for her presence, yet if her parents loved her so much,
why had they never once visited her? And why hadn't her real parents,
who were also Earth Masters, trained her themselves? Why did neither
her foster parents nor her real parents ever attend the Great Circle
of Elemental Masters in London? That there was a secret about all this
she had known from the time she had begun to question the world around
her. Yet try as she might, she could get no clues out of her guardians
and instinct told her that a confrontation would cause gat pain to
her birth mother.
But Marina would have answers to her questions all too soon.
For with the sudden death of her birth parents while on holiday
in Italy, Marina's life was transformed beyond all recognition. Taken
from the only home and 'parents' she had ever known and brought to the
cold and lofty halls of Oakhurst Manor, she met her new guardian --
her closest surviving blood relative -- her father's eldest sister
Arachne. Cold, aristocratic, and superior, Aunt Arachne was an
industrialist. Her pottery factories brought her a great deal of
wealth and power, but Marina sensed that Arachne's real power came
from something far different from commerce. For Arachne exuded a dark
magical aura unlike anything Marina had encountered, a stifling
evil that seemed to threaten Marina's very spirit. Slowly Marina realized
that her aunt was the very embodiement of the danger her parents had
been hiding her from in the backwoods of Cornwall. But could Marina
unravel the secrets of her life in time to save her from the evil
which had been seeking her for nearly eighteen years?
Sleeping Beauty
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