Dominion

FOURTEEN

In Simon’s private bath electric light was his to command, and he was using it to get ready for dinner and then performance. If his appearance was good, reasonably convincing, in the modern mirror flanked by bright incandescents, then the soft candlelight below could only add romance and conviction.

The outfit he was putting on represented less his Chicago costumer’s idea of how a medieval enchanter ought to look than what the costumer had readily available. There was a bulky jacket of blue and gray, what the man had called a doublet, worn open in front over an inner garment not too different from a modern turtleneck. There were pointy shoes much like those Gregory was wearing, tight hose, and another garment like a pair of bulkily padded swimming trunks, with an anachronistic but invisible zippered fly. All in all, Simon found the outfit reasonably comfortable, and probably as impressive as it had to be. He’d had the doublet fitted with some special pockets, useful for the special purposes of the conjurer. As a final touch, he now looped over his head the thick, brassy chain of a costume-jewelry medallion on which a lion and sword were shown in gold-colored relief. He thought that to a non-expert it would look classy enough to be convincing.

And now, before taking a last look at his image in the mirror, he reached out and switched off the bathroom lights. With just the light coming in from the bedroom, he thought he might be able to get a good idea of how he was going to look in the dim, soft illumination that would obtain in the great hall below.

Good enough, he thought. Quite good, in fact. Authentic.

His appearance was satisfactory, and yet for a little while he remained before the mirror. His reflected image was half silhouette against the brighter reflection of the lighted room behind him, as if he were standing in a doorway that led to the outside. He didn’t know just what he’d expected to discover about himself, to prove to himself, when he’d started out on this day’s journey into his own past. But certainly the day so far had been even stranger than he’d expected. First the series of visions, half-visions, hallucinations, whatever you might want to call them. And then, a blank of some three hours, including his arrival at the castle. He must have looked bad when he arrived, really out of it, so that someone had suggested he go up to his room and take a nap. It was probably fortunate that he’d agreed.

The soreness was almost completely gone from his throat muscles now. So nearly gone that he might have been imagining that, too. Hell, he must have been imagining it.

Simon rather surprised himself by the calm way he was now, after all that, getting ready to go on with the show. It was as if he knew, deep inside, basically, secretly, that all this strangeness was really nothing to be alarmed about. As if he’d really been expecting something of the kind to happen all along…

But now was not the time for introspection. Now was the time to go and put on a performance. Margie was ready, and he was too. One more check of the arrangements in his secret pockets, and Simon switched off his bedroom’s lights and stepped out into the hall.

He had no more than closed the door behind him when another opened, two rooms down the hall, and Vivian looked out. She was wrapped now in a bulky beach robe of startling white, and her head was swathed in a towel with which she rubbed her hair.

“There you are, Simon.” Vivian’s voice was bright, energetic, still totally in control. “I was hoping to catch you before you went downstairs. That’s a very handsome costume you’ve got there.”

“Thanks.”

Vivian took a step closer, a vaguely conspiratorial movement. Her eyes were innocent and eager; he’d seen them like that before; it might have been a warning to him now, if he’d been in the mood for heeding warnings. She asked: “I wonder if you could possibly spare me a moment before dinner? My brother’s busy, as usual, and there’s a bit of business to be taken care of.”

“Sure.”

“Great. Also I must admit that I’ve been hoping to get a little time with you alone, to talk about magic. It intrigues me, it always has. But so far today has been just one interruption after another.”

“Of course. Any time.” Simon moved down the hall (lit only by torches now; daylight had altogether faded from the high, narrow windows) and followed Vivian into her room. Her suite, rather.

It was a bedroom-bathroom-dressing room that made Simon’s guest quarters look small, and in a movie would certainly have required at least one maid to go with it. Simon wasn’t sure how these matters were usually managed in reality, but at the moment at least no servant was in evidence.

“Drink? There’s a little bar there, fix yourself something if you like. And excuse me just one moment while I change. Things are running just a touch behind schedule.” Vivian, still toweling her dark curls, vanished into the adjoining room.

“I’ll take a rain check on the drink if I may,” Simon called after her. “Going on duty shortly, you know. Can I fix you anything?”

“Not just now.” Vivian’s voice remained unmuffled by intervening doors. Simon looking into the adjoining room from where he was could just see one end of a folding oriental screen; presumably she was dressing behind that. Her offstage voice added, “You’ll find an envelope there on the table. I trust the contents are satisfactory?”

Propped against a black electric lamp with a white dragon shade that shed a glow almost as soft as candlelight, was a small white envelope. Simon took it up. The flap was folded in but not sealed. It was thickly packed with hundred-dollar bills; with a quick finger-riffle he counted fifteen of them.

He cleared his throat. “Miss Littlewood?”

“Call me Vivian, please.” From the other room came a prolonged rustling noise, as of some lengthy garment going on or coming off. “What is it?”

“Well. It’s just that there’s more money here than I was promised.”

“Pardon?” Now her voice was somewhat muffled. Women’s clothing and the rituals that went with it were still mystifying to Simon, despite the number of women with whom he’d been on dressing and undressing terms in the past fifteen years.

He moved a step closer to the doorway between rooms. From here he could see a mirror on the far wall of the inner room, a mirror so placed that if he were to advance one more step it might show him the area behind the screen. It required some effort to refrain from taking another step. He spoke a little louder: “I said, you’re giving me too much money.”

“Really?” Cloth-rustlings continued, but now Vivian’s voice was clear again. “That’s a complaint one seldom hears.”

Simon was staring at the envelope. “Gregory told me that the inclusive fee was to be one thousand.”

“Gregory is an old pinch-penny. That’s not exactly the instruction he had from us.” And now, in a swirl of red-gowned energy, Vivian emerged from behind her screen, to enter the room where Simon stood and pose before him curtseying, as if his approval might be all the mirror she needed.

He usually had no trouble finding compliments for lovely women. But right now he was speechless. There had been no time for her to give the black curls any treatment except to dry them, and yet the curls looked perfect. There was as usual no sign of makeup on Vivian’s face; it was hard to imagine any that could have effected an improvement. And as for her dress…

Unconsciously Simon had expected her to emerge in something very low cut, probably in flaming red. His imagination had been uncannily accurate about the color, but that was all. Vivian’s gown was cut very high and full, with long sleeves and a floor-length skirt. It was of some material of gossamer fineness, yet perfectly opaque, and almost perfectly concealing. Only with movement was there any hint of the shape of the body underneath, and then the hint was subtle. This dress was in one way the very opposite of the yellow bikini. And yet… it crossed Simon’s mind that an appeal to the imagination can sometimes be more powerful than blatant advertisement.

Vivian was smiling; his hearty if silent approval must have been obvious. She said: “There’s a thousand dollars in there for you personally, and five hundred for expenses. I wasn’t sure what helpers or equipment you might want to bring along, or what that kind of thing costs. And I was sure that you weren’t going to stint to bring us the best show possible.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t stint, as you say. But my expenses haven’t been anywhere near five hundred dollars.”

“But of course I insist on your keeping the whole amount anyway. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to even mention your expenses.” Vivian stood, as poised as a model, with tanned hands clasped delicately in front of her. “What I should be doing instead, shouldn’t I, is to prepare myself to undergo a convincing experience. Suspending my disbelief. Getting into the frame of mind that says the powers you are going to demonstrate for us tonight are perfectly genuine.”

Simon waved the envelope in the air once more, slapped it against his palm, and then slid it into one of the inner pockets of his doublet. He spread his hands. “As I will of course claim them to be, as part of my patter during the show. But… well, I hope I’m misinterpreting your tone of voice.”

“Why?”

“Because it sounds to me like you’re saying you actually believe I might have some genuine… psychic powers.”

Vivian remained standing very still. The smile with which she regarded Simon was one of solemn joy. “And that’s not an attitude you frequently encounter?”

“Fortunately, it isn’t. But, unfortunately, I do run into it sometimes. I wasn’t really expecting to encounter it tonight.”

“Why not?” Vivian was still cheerful.

It wasn’t smart to argue with the boss. Simon sighed. This was important. “I was assuming that tonight’s audience would all be educated people.”

“Education is good armor against the supernatural.”

“It should be.”

“You would prefer your audiences very skeptical.”

Simon started to frame a serious answer, then gave up with a brief laugh. Vivian was in the mood for teasing, not serious discussion. “All right. Touche. Of course when I’m working I want people to believe—only what I tell them to believe. But not seriously. Not really to believe that what I’m doing is against the laws of nature. There’s no fun, there’s no art left in my profession if that happens. I’m just a—swindler.”

“Oh, Simon.” And now that he was trying to be light, Vivian suddenly was serious. Her voice was very soft, her eyes luminous and huge. ” ‘Fun’ doesn’t sound to me like the right word. Is there no such thing as joy in serious art?”

“I’m serious about what I do. But I’m an entertainer.”

“And a good one, too. Never mind.” Lightness prevailed again. “We’ll have plenty of time later to talk some more… may I ask you one question now about your act?”

“Shoot.”

“When I saw your performance at the dinner theater, you had a lovely young lady with you as assistant; I gather she was still with you when Gregory met you at the university. I hope he made it clear that both of you were welcome here as weekend guests.”

“He made it clear.” Simon considered. “The young lady’s name is Margie Hilbert. She hasn’t yet, ah, materialized, but I hope we’ll be seeing her later in the evening.”

“Ah, a touch of mystery! Excellent. I just hope the young lady doesn’t get stuck on one of our back country roads, if she’s planning a late arrival. They tend to flood, and some heavy thunderstorms have been predicted.”

Vivian’s eyes were very dark and very deep. Simon had drowned somewhere in the deepness of them, about fifteen years ago. The idea struck him as a fresh poetical discovery; that it was a cliche did not occur to him for several seconds, and even when it did occur it did not matter. The idea was too fitting, in this house of candlelight and centuries.

Vivian had taken his arm by now, and now, somehow, they were out in the torchlit hall again. “Shall we go down?” she asked him. Stringed music, on instruments that sounded as old as the walls, drifted up to greet them as arm on costumed arm they descended the broad stone stair. The past was far more than a feeling now.

As dinner began, the subject of time, in several of the word’s meanings, was much in Simon’s thoughts. He felt reasonably sure that the hour was a little after eight. But if for some reason he had wanted to make sure of this, he no longer had the means of doing so. His wrist watch was upstairs with his twentieth-century clothing. As far as he could tell, no one around him was wearing a watch either.

Saul took his place at the head of a great wooden table, a piece of furniture that Simon could believe was really centuries old. Eleven places were set, with earthenware dishes of a simple, handpainted design. The comparatively modern silver was anachronistic but not jarring. Saul sat alone at the head; the place to his right was empty, and Vivian sat to the right of that, with Simon next, between her and Emily Wallis. Round the corner from Mrs. Wallis at the table’s foot was fat Arnaud. There was a second empty setting at Arnaud’s right.

At Saul’s left sat Sylvia, wearing a low-cut Renaissance bodice, about the kind of thing that Simon had expected Vivian to wear. Jim Wallis was at Sylvia’s left, and at his left was Hildy. Seated next to Hildy was the one remaining guest that Simon had not yet met, a coffee-colored, youngish man introduced only as Mr. Reagan. “No relation, man,” he said, grinning, as they shook hands. Simon grinned back somewhat uncertainly. Reagan was dressed up as a cowled monk, and when he sat down with a swirl of robe and beads, Simon got the impression that something was wrong about the oversized crucifix hanging at the end of the belted rosary. Getting another look a little later he saw that the cross was fastened on upside down. An attempt at a joke, maybe, or possibly just an accident. Anyway Simon felt odder things about Reagan than just that. And about Arnaud too if he stopped to try feeling for them.

Enough of that. He was supposed to use the atmosphere to support the act, not be overcome by it himself.

“I’m expecting one more guest, a very important one,” Vivian told Simon quietly, as conversation got under way. “Besides your young lady, I mean. I’m not sure if my friend will be able to make it or not.” And her gaze turned for a moment to the empty setting and chair at her own left, between her and Saul. The quick turn was the closest thing to an involuntary movement that Simon had ever seen Vivian make, today or any other time, and it conveyed to him forcefully the idea of the guest’s great importance.

“Then I hope he does make it. Or she,” said Simon, wondering. Then he was suddenly sure, without quite knowing why, that the expected one was a man. He now observed belatedly that there were on Vivian’s hands no rings that might indicate marriage or engagement. So far at the party she’d had no obvious companion except himself. He supposed she was between lovers and/or husbands at the moment. That she might really be without some male attachment for any length of time had not really occurred to Simon as a possibility, though so far he had not the least evidence that any such attachment existed.

He added: “Will your important guest be here before I start the show? I mean, do you want me to wait for him, or—”

“Oh no.” Vivian was quite positive, and for some reason lightly amused at the thought. “No, you must assume that your audience is now complete.”

“Okay,” said Simon, and turned to answer Emily Wallis, who had just spoken to him from his other side. Old Emily looked a little lost, he thought; she probably hadn’t found much in common with Arnaud, who sat at her right hand.

And where, mused Simon in the next interval without chat, where is the promised show business connection? Not that he had all that much hope for it, but he was curious. Could Reagan, if that was really the man’s name, be in the business, some kind of an oddball performer? The more Simon thought about that name, the more he became convinced that it was false, only an evening’s joke. What about Arnaud?

He looked more closely at the fat man, who, garbed elaborately enough to be a king, sat at the foot of the table beside the empty place reserved for Margie. Margie would be glad that dinner was over when she popped out. Arnaud’s costume covered his neck where it was presumably still bandaged; he looked steadier and stronger now than he had a little while ago. His face was still somehow as familiar as it had seemed when Simon first saw it at poolside.

And in a moment Simon had it. Arnaud’s face was that of the news photographs of Prince Something-or-other, the renegade from the royal family of the tiny middle eastern country. The exile, the one who had been called the latter-day Farouk. A year or so ago he’d been a star of the jet set and the sensational press, trailing denunciations and photographers behind him around the world. In this case Simon had no trouble understanding the use of an assumed name. If this was supposed to be his contact with the big time, forget it.

On the other side of the table Saul’s bride Hildy was chatting comfortably with old Jim Wallis. Saul, meanwhile, did not give the impression of presiding at the head of the table, so much as sitting where he had been told good form required him to sit. He continued to look much as he had looked at poolside: mildly bothered, mildly bored. As if he’d really rather be off in his study or his office and taking care of business. Several times his sister caught his eye with what must have been a meaningful look, for each time Saul roused himself and with an evident effort brought himself back to the job of playing host.

The second time this happened, Saul revealed a hitherto hidden talent for entertaining discourse, by turning the conversation to medieval things and customs. He apparently knew much more on the subject than Simon would have thought. For example, how, if an effort had been made for real authenticity at the dinner table tonight, there would have been no forks, and each pair of people would have shared a plate and bowl between them.

Just as this juncture, Simon felt Vivian’s hand touch his, as if she were demonstrating privately to him certain advantages of a shared dish. And for a simultaneous moment her knee brushed his thigh under the table. The lower contact had the subjective effect of a spark of electricity.

It wasn’t the first time their legs had touched… but he wasn’t going to think about that now. He was here on business. There was a performance to give in a few minutes.

Courses came and went. The service was extremely skillful, in what appeared to be a practiced compromise between antique ways and modern. The skillful servants came and went on swift and silent feet. None of the servants’ faces that he saw now were familiar.

Had he ever paid the kid who’d rowed him twice across the river? He must have. But the trip back, like the paying, was still lost in utter blankness.

The medieval music, played offstage somewhere, had stopped about the time dinner began. Were these people now waiting on table the musicians also? There was a strangeness about them, as about so much else that Simon had seen today. They were all physically small, to begin with, which was a bit odd. And all costumed for the occasion, of course, but it was more than that. Simon thought they all looked… well, servile-looking, as perhaps real medieval servants ought to look. And it wasn’t acting. Or, if it was, they were all wasting great and subtle talents on menial jobs.

The more Simon looked at the people serving dinner, the more he thought that all of them were quietly, desperately, and deeply frightened.

“I see you are observing the staff.”

Simon almost jumped. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course you did. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. They’re quite well trained, wouldn’t you say? I’ve borrowed most of them for the occasion. Try a glass of this wine.”

The staff was well-trained indeed, for the glass had appeared on the smooth wood of the table, right at Vivian’s fingertips, without Simon being aware of any servant bringing it. He wished his own sleight-of-hand could match that.

“I think I’ve had enough,” he objected uncertainly.

“But not of wine like this. This isn’t going to hurt your concentration. If anything it’ll enhance it. In fact, it’s just what you need before a performance, to give you the clearest possible vision.” Was Vivian laughing at him? No, she was happy but deadly serious. “If this wine should prove too much for you, if it doesn’t actually help, or harms, the fault will be all mine.”

The wine was ruby red in a small crystal glass. Simon picked up the glass and sipped. This, then, was the kind of thing the very rich could afford to enjoy. Simon, no expert, couldn’t place the wine as to type, but it was quite simply the best he’d ever tasted.

The dinner went on, with conversation flourishing cheerfully around the table. Everyone had his or her own little wineglass, though the colors of the contents differed. Simon sipped his own glass again. He certainly wasn’t taking enough to get drunk on, but all the same he was beginning to feel a little odd. Not drunk, no, not at all. His mind was very clear.

He leaned back in his chair and briefly closed his eyes, while behind his lids a parade of the day’s strange visions came and went. Yes, anyone who saw the things that he had seen today really ought to seek help, medical assistance. The thought came, but there was no urgency in it, and very little worry. Actually, if he’d been having strange visions off and on for most of his life, they couldn’t very well indicate a brain tumor or anything of that sort, now could they?

Oh yeah, he’d been bothered by visions for a long time, all right. At least since adolescence. Sometimes he’d had them right on stage. It was just that he’d taught himself to recognize them as outside of ordinary reality, and to ignore them once he knew what they were. So the reason he wasn’t worried now about going for a medical exam was that he knew he really wasn’t going to have one. He’d considered having checkups before, at various points in his life, for similar reasons, and in the end he’d never had them. Because he knew they were unnecessary.

Ruby wine before him. Even with eyes closed he could see the glass, how much was left in it, its exact position. The clearest possible vision: maybe Vivian for once had told the truth.

A couple of hours ago Margie had signaled him that all was well. And Margie was probably watching him right now from her vantage point behind the wall, ready to do the act. Was it really credible that Vivian didn’t know about the passage? Anyway she was pretending she didn’t know. Too late to worry about all that now. Now it was almost show time.

Eyes still closed, Simon reached for his wine again. His fingers, with perfect sureness of the position of the glass, closed on it gently. He drank all that was left.

Surrounding the great house were all the sounds of summer night in rural northern Illinois, sounds well-remembered by Simon from the visits that he’d made to the country in his childhood. He’d dwelt then not in the castle but in one of those huts… little houses… over there across the river. Those little dwellings were, if you could discount the water, almost at the castle’s foot. Like the huts of peasants. Land-bound creatures who were once owned, body and soul, as part of some great lord’s dominion. Maybe that was why, when Simon was growing up, he’d never thought of the castle in romantic or adventurous terms. It wasn’t his castle, and he knew it. It sat on him.

Clear seeing indeed came from this wine. The others round the table were sipping their own assigned vintages. The talk was lively but not noisy; through it Simon could hear, barely audible, the hiss of a torch burning in a wall sconce. From outside there drifted in the sounds of low, distant thunder, the night-noises of insects and an occasional bird. A very occasional something else, perhaps. All this was not particularly reassuring, even though it was familiar. Even as a child Simon had spent most of his life in the city, and the country had never quite lost its strangeness to him, though he’d come to know his way around it well enough…

A great howl, somewhere outside, made him open his eyes. Had that really come from a dog? But no one else appeared to have noticed it at all.

“A small coin for your thoughts,” said Vivian beside him. She appeared totally relaxed now, the model of a relaxed and confident hostess, with nothing on her mind, for the moment, but chatting with one of her guests.

“Sorry. You’d never guess. I was trying to remember my grandmother.” And it became true as he said it; that would have been the next turn his thoughts had taken. Today was for, among other things, probing his own past. His parents had died before he could start remembering them at all. That happened to a fair number of kids, sure, but… the more he looked back on his childhood, the more he realized its strangeness.

“You’re right,” said Vivian calmly. “I mightn’t have guessed that. Was your grandmother fond of parties like this one?”

The question struck Simon as supremely irrelevant. The odd thing about this party, as it had turned out, was that all the disparate guests appeared to be enjoying each other’s company more and more.

Simon sighed, really trying to remember Grandmother now. A firm, sallow face. Nondescript gray hair, small frame. She’d died when Simon was away at his one year of college. He couldn’t remember having any important feelings when he heard the news. He chuckled. “I don’t know what Grandma thought about parties. I don’t know that the subject ever came up.”

“Maybe she gave you birthday parties when you were little?” Vivian was probing, as if she were interested.

“I guess. I guess they were routine, as those things go.” And now Simon noticed, without any particular surprise or concern, that Margie was not going to be the only exotically costumed entertainer of the evening. There were more acts than he’d been told about. Someone in an excellent, highly realistic toad costume was squatting in a corner, amid thick shadows at the far end of the great hall. Probably getting ready to do some kind of jester’s number as soon as he was noticed. Well, Simon wasn’t going to be the one to point him out to the other guests.

“I don’t remember my parents at all, you see,” he explained to Vivian. “And I don’t know much about my aunt and uncle either, come to think of it, though I lived with them for a time.” Now stop it, he warned himself, you’re going to give your identity away.

But Vivian only said: “Oh?” politely, and turned to speak to someone across the table.

Now, how could she fail to identify him sooner or later as her own second cousin, or whatever the hell the exact relationship was supposed to be? The boy from across the river, the one she’d once let… but maybe she had as little inclination as he did to keep up with relatives—and old lovers. He hadn’t been the first for her, that in hindsight was obvious enough.

Simon had never made any effort to keep up with relatives, or childhood friends. And now, whenever he tried to visualize any of the people he’d grown up among, their images came to the eye of memory with an odd, faded quality, like old photographs.

Except, of course, for the image of Vivian herself.

Now, on the other side of the table, the smooth rounds of Sylvia’s inflated breasts were more than half exposed to candlelight. Yet Simon had scarcely noticed, because Vivian sat beside him.

The night-sounds of the surrounding countryside besieged the castle, came in through the narrow windows piercing the enormous thickness of the walls. The dinner went on. Thunder grumbled louder. If rain now drummed on the roof that was so far above, in here no one could hear it.

Someone had just spoken to Simon, and he opened his eyes (when had he closed them again?) to see Vivian regarding him. The expression on her face was one of utter, almost worshipful intentness; and one of her little hands was raised in the shadow of a gesture, that must have been meant to warn some third person against interfering.

Simon began to speak, in a loud, clear voice: “If we must find something, an obstacle to be removed, then the place to look for it is—” And having got that far he stopped, listening to himself in utter amazement, with no idea at all of what he had started to talk about.

Vivian was leaning forward, concentrating so intensely on Simon that for the moment she seemed to have stopped breathing. The flicker of a reflected candle was the only motion in her eye. The folds of the shapeless kirtle did not stir across her breast.

“Yes,” she urged Simon when he paused. “Where is it?” Her voice was quietly solemn.

“I don’t know yet.” The answer felt like something forced from him. He had the feeling that it was true. Then he blinked and with an effort recovered something like normal control over his speech. “Sorry, what are we talking about?”

Vivian sank back a little in her chair. Disappointment had struck her but she was very brave and still hopeful. “We’re having a party, Simon. We can just relax and talk as our thoughts lead us.”

Thunder crashed again, this time even closer than before. A puff of wind somehow got into the great hall, to make the flames of torch and candle flicker. The dinner was almost completely cleared away by now.

Wallis down the table imitated thunder, with a laugh. The imitation was not too well done, but everyone, except for the silent, frightened servitors, seemed to enjoy the effort, and some applauded. “Good night for some ghost stories,” Willis told the table in a loud voice.

It’s showtime, folks, thought Simon. Vivian was now looking at him keenly, as if to make sure that he recognized his cue. As he could hardly fail to do.

Simon drew a deep breath, and tried to will himself back toward an ordinariness of mind and of perception. It was not to be, not now. But still he felt that he was ready to perform, more than merely ready. His vision was very clear, his hands supremely steady.

He got to his feet smiling, silently running through the last items on his mental preperformance checklist. He noted that the toad-costume was no longer to be seen. Good, no immediate competition. Establishing the proper atmosphere for magic? In tonight’s special setting that wasn’t going to be a problem; quite the opposite, in fact. He was going to have to be careful to keep it light.

Servants, presumably at someone’s signal, had already ceased activities, and most of them were out of sight. All eyes were on Simon as he stood up.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, looking up and down the table. “Our charming hostess tells me that she’s expecting one more guest—” Vivian was nodding, smiling tightly. “—and as on many occasions of this kind, when one more guest arrives, the hostess is somewhat upset to find that the balance of male and female guests has been upset.” Simon was ready here, should Vivian show the slightest sign of social distress, for the quick switch: But this is not one such occasion. There was no distress signal from her, and Simon moved smoothly on: “So I’m going to find out first what sex our impending visitor is. Vivian hasn’t told me. Am I right?”

She nodded encouragingly. “Right.”

“So my intention now is to summon up one of the fay, the fairies of the old world, to help us find out some more about this potential visitor. Maybe even to help him—or her—to find the way to get here.”

Vivian, enthralled, was nodding with great intentness. This wasn’t at all the way that Simon had planned to open, but once he stood up the stunt had just seemed to suggest itself. He could see, as in a flash of inspiration, how it was going to work. If the visitor then failed to arrive, Simon would have a way out; if he did arrive, so much the better. Margie was quick-witted, she’d pick up quickly on what he had in mind, and work along. “Would you all join hands, please?” Simon asked. “It’ll help the vibrations.”

With merriment, and a minimum of delay, the folk at the table all brought themselves into a hand-joined circle. “Now I need just a little more room,” said Simon, backing away a few steps from the table. He was standing now, as he had planned, with his back only a few feet from the fireplace, to which another log had recently been added. The blaze was up moderately, and he could feel the warmth of it, welcome in the damp coolness of the castle’s interior night. He had another reason to be glad for having his back to the fire now; when he’d first stood up he’d started seeing faces, real faces, in the flames. He could do without that kind of a distraction just now.

Simon’s audience would be seeing him backlighted now, but the firelight gave him a good look at their faces, and he noted with professional joy that they were receptive to whatever he was going to do. They watched him happily. They were already a little high on the wine, or whatever had been added to the wine. They were calmly certain that he was going to show them wonders. And indeed he was.

The object that he meant soon to throw secretly into the fire was already concealed in Simon’s palm. Ten seconds, approximately, after he threw it in, the fire would flare up dramatically and in exotic colors. In that moment when everyone but Simon himself was looking at the fire, Margie would be able to slip through the dark hidden panel in the dim far wall of the great hall, and close the panel after her. She would have appeared in what looked like a doorless and windowless corner, inaccessible except by passing within a very few feet of the dinner table itself. Simon expected that the effect would be tremendous.

But before he threw anything into the fire, he would puzzle the audience first with Margie’s voice, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

He made wild passes with hands and arms, he rumbled his made-up words of magic, “Sprite of the woods and waters, princess of the summer night! I summon thee to questioning!”

There was a quavery moan, from… somewhere. Oh, beautiful, Margie. Simon called out peremptorily: “Are you there? Answer me clearly, please!”

“Simon… I’m here.” It was a very eerie voice, from very far away, from everywhere and nowhere. For a moment it even raised the hair on the back of Simon’s own neck.

Vivian watched, calm but utterly intent. The rest of the people at the table marveled, more or less quietly.

Simon called softly: “The guest that our hostess is expecting. Can you see him or her from where you are?”

And the disembodied voice: “Yes, Simon. Yes.”

“A man or a woman?”

“A man.” Margie from her secret observation place had perhaps learned something; otherwise there would have been no need for her to be so positive.

“Is he going to be able to join us here tonight?”

“He will try.”

Vivian did not take her eyes from Simon. The rest of the audience looked everywhere, under the table, up among the distant rafters, for the source of the voice. Simon heard someone mutter about ventriloquism.

“Will he be here soon, do you think?”

“Either he’ll be at the castle very soon… I think he will… tonight or tomorrow… or… if not soon, then never…”

“And are you going to join us too?”

“I’ll try… Simon.” There followed a soft, heartrending cry, from what sounded like an enormous distance. Oh beautiful, Margie! Beautiful!

Simon faced the table. “Our sprite is going to try to join us. It will help if we all concentrate intensely. All of us, even the old gentleman up there on the wall. I’ve been watching him. Now if I were to tell you that I’ve seen the eyes of that portrait move, you’d tell me that I’ve been seeing too many horror movies.”

And in beautiful obedience to suggestion, all eyes, even Vivian’s, swung together to regard the portrait high on the dim wall above Margie’s secret door. And in the second of time he had thus obtained for invisible action, Simon’s wrist flicked gently, tossing the object already in his hand behind him at the fire.

He and Margie now had about ten seconds to wait, if all went well. If it didn’t, if his toss had missed the actual flames, then he’d have to distract the audience once more, and try again. But so far tonight everything was going so smoothly and so well that Simon was absolutely sure he hadn’t missed.

And now while the count (five) was going on in his head (four), he kept the patter going (three): “To bring our guest among us, we call upon the powers ruling space and time, the strength of Astarte and Apollo, the oaths of Falerin—”

Where had that last name come from? There was no time to wonder now, for behind Simon the fire whooshed up most satisfactorily, smothering his words. The faces round the table all swiveled right to left, tennis-watchers startled bright green in the eerie new glow of a conjurer’s chemistry set. Saul, under the surface of his mild surprise, still looked bored and worried; the man who called himself Reagan looked almost childlike in the openness of his wonder. Only Vivian’s gaze did not turn all the way to the fire, but came to rest again on Simon himself.

This was the second of time in which Margie should be halfway through the panel. Simon of course was not looking toward the panel now, but it should be now, this very second—

It struck like some monstrous aftershock from the puny stage-explosion in the fireplace. Ten thousand times as loud, it came with a deep crack sounding through the timbers overhead, and a simultaneous flat concussion of the stone floor, as if the castle’s foundation of bedrock had been struck by some earthgod’s hammer from below. All Simon’s sureness of body and mind was in an instant brushed away. From a corner of his eye he saw one, two, three of the fear-struck dinner servants vanish, go out like blasted candle-flames. Simon staggered on the vibrating floor and almost fell. Voices round the table, Vivian’s among them, were raised in fear and incomprehension. And now a brightness, a fishbelly glare the equal of midday, struck in upon them all from the place where the secret panel had been sealed into the wall.

In the first instant of shock, that secret door had been burst from its hidden hinges. It spun now toward Simon as if hurled from some giant’s hand, and he watched it coming with the sense that everything in the world around him had been shifted to slow motion. There was a blast of wind, bearing a strange smell. Trying to dodge the flying door, his own body seemed capable only of very slow movement, feet stepping awkwardly and off balance.

The door missed him, somehow. It missed everyone, to crash with splintering force against a distant wall.

Vivian, breaking the handheld circle, was on her feet, her arms spread wide, her head thrown back in what appeared to be a paroxysm of triumph. She looked past Simon, into the cold furnace of light beyond the once-secret doorway. Then she screamed a name.

And now, from that glaring, howling world beyond the blown-in door, someone was trying to enter the great hall, someone very different indeed from Margie Hilbert. It was a man, tall and powerful, handsome and richly robed. The young and evil king of Simon’s afternoon dream. He was about to burst in and claim them all.

And Hildy was screaming, on and on, in utter terror.