Nine Gates by Jane Lindskold Page A

help her.
    “How many do you expect to attend the meeting?” she asked.
    “At least a dozen,” Billi said, “but not more than two dozen. However, I always try and arrange for both more chairs and more refreshments than we will need. As you probably already know, this can be a touchy lot. There are always one or two eager to imagine a slight.”
    Pearl did not disagree, although after her experiences with Hollywood egos, those of the adepts of the magical community were hardly a challenge.
    As Billi had predicted, the others began trickling in soon thereafter. Pearl had counted nineteen and no more had followed for some five minutes when a sixtyish man clad in ironed blue jeans and a red sports shirt rose to his feet. His most distinctive features were his neatly cut black hair, worn quite a bit longer than was usual for a man of his age, and a short curling black beard, both lightly touched with silver.
    “Judd Madden,” Shen said softly, speaking underneath the man’s opening comment. “He’s this year’s chair. Modern Kabbalist tradition.”
    Pearl nodded. For all the Thirteen tended to refer to the “indigenous” as if they were one group, there were many magical forms and traditions still active in this world. Some traditions were the last remnants of cultures long vanished. Magic had proven to have a peculiar resilience that resisted time.
    Judd Madden was finishing his opening comments, light words thanking those who had organized the earlier entertainment. He ended by thanking Billi and someone called Hadley for arranging the refreshments for both that meeting and this one.
    The routine comments created a veneer of normalcy, but Pearl was not in the least fooled. Tension emanated from the nineteen men and women arrayed on the folding chairs, each a coiled vine from which sprung leaves and branches, a jungle of human emotion and reaction through which the Tiger must find her way.
    “Today we have a visitor from California,” Judd Madden went on, “as well as the pleasure of the company of a local who does not join us as often as we might wish. They are both here in response to rather special—almost unique, one might say—circumstances that arose a few weeks ago.
    “These circumstances were brought to our attention by Harriet LaTour on behalf of the Rosicrucians,” Judd Madden inclined his head in a gesture of thanks to a sixtyish woman clad in austere white who sat on the right-hand horn of the crescent, “and were discussed in some detail at our last meeting. In response to those discussions, Shen Kung agreed to come to this meeting, and also agreed to ask one of those more closely involved in those events to attend as well. We are pleased and honored to welcome Pearl Bright of the Thirteen Orphans.”
    Pearl half expected a patter of applause, for in tone and meter Judd’s introduction was very like those she had heard hundreds of times before. This time the conclusion of his speech was met only with silence and a growing sense of expectancy.
    This was broken at last by a large black woman wearing a full-length dashiki printed with elaborate patterns in red and bronze over khaki trousers. During the public meeting of the Rock Dove Society her close-cropped head had been bare, but now her wooly curls were covered by an elaborately folded kerchief cut from the same red and bronze fabric.
    “I am Renata,” she said, rising to her feet and turning to face Shen and Pearl. “I represent the West African into modern American traditions. According to what we learned at our last meeting, you folks have brought some trouble onto us… Or something like that, anyhow. You want to explain it yourself?”
    Renata’s tone was friendly enough, but there was a challenging note beneath. Pearl rose to her feet and, without being invited, crossed from the back row where she and Shen had seated themselves up to the front. She’d learned longago about commanding an audience’s attention, and knew you couldn’t