Dominion

EIGHTEEN

In the ears of Simon Hill that last scream of Hildy’s seemed to go on echoing endlessly. The echoes escaped the castle, they fled down corridors outside of time, passages that he had not known existed. The blast that provoked the scream drove Simon to his knees, his face averted from the small, broken little doorway that had once been secret, through which the sickly light now poured into the great hall. At last that pale glare abated. And at last the inward echoes of that scream faded to a tolerable level.

Then Simon could raise his eyes. When his gaze fell on the fireplace he saw again the faces in the flames. The faces were even more distorted now, as if they writhed in pain.

So for him there was to be no easy escape, no calm pretense that magic did not exist. He’d tried that for most of his life, and it wasn’t going to work. In a way, he was almost glad.

He made himself look back toward the doorway that had once led to a secret passage. The bizarre light that had come pouring out of it was fading steadily, was now almost gone. The wind that had seemed to blow through it from another world had dwindled to a faint draft, was hardly more than imaginary now.

Margie was in there, somewhere. At least she had been there. He, Simon, had got her into this, pretending to himself that no real danger existed here at the Castle. Feeling responsible, he rose unsteadily to his feet and moved toward the little doorway, a jagged opening now with stones and wood torn from its edge. He glanced in passing at the group still gathered round the dinner table, a few steps to his right. Some were still seated, looking stunned, some now stood beside their chairs. Voices rose in a moaning jumble. Someone was muttering something about lightning. And now Vivian’s voice was speaking, plainly, loudly, reasonably, enforcing calm. But a few moments ago she had been screaming too, Simon was sure or it. Just before Hildy’s outburst, Vivian had screamed in hopeless agony, something that might have been a name. A word that sounded like Falerin.

Simon faced forward again, toward the shattered wall. What was that howling that he could hear now, coming from outside the castle? Wolves, in the 1980s, in Illinois?

Reaching the blasted doorway, Simon supported himself in it numbly, with a hand on either side gripping the edges of the broken wooden screen. It sank in on him now that the door had been literally blown away, as if by a charge of high explosive. Traces of strange odors reached his nostrils. He put his head forward, into the passage.

When he looked down the narrow, stone-walled passage to his left, what little the darkness let him see appeared normal. But to his right, the darkness and the light were both different. There was brightness, somewhere in that direction, but the source of light, whatever it was, was far off now and still receding. A faint but savage howling persisted, as of a remote wind. Simon wondered, with a sudden chill, if it could be a man’s voice that made that noise, if a human voice could be distorted so by superhuman agony and hatred.

Even as Simon watched and listened, the light and the sound continued to recede. There was no clue in the passage of Margie, or indeed, except for the distant howling, of any living thing.

A hand fell on Simon’s shoulder, startling him. From the touch there flowed into his body a trickle of some force that felt like electricity. He turned, knowing he would see Vivian. Her eyes looked into his.

“The roof may have been struck by lightning,” she said quietly. Her tone shared with him the knowledge of how widely that statement missed being a real explanation. “So I’m going up to take a look. I wish you’d come along.”

“Sure,” said Simon automatically. He paused to look around the great hall, where the flames of torch and candle were once more burning peacefully upright. The vanished servants had not reappeared.

The Wallises, he standing behind his wife’s chair, were clutching at each other’s hands in shock. Emily Wallis’ face was white and she looked ill. Saul, his expression that of a man who has been through all this before, was also trying to comfort and calm his wife; Hildy was quiet now, but silent sobs still racked her sturdy body as she clung to her husband. Thin Sylvia stood alone, studying the others as if for some clue as to what her own behavior ought to be. Arnaud was nowhere to be seen, nor was the man who had been introduced as Reagan.

“This way.” Like a guide conducting a private tour of some disaster, Vivian led Simon diagonally across the great hall toward the elevator. He let himself be led. But he was gathering his determination.

“What happened?” Simon asked when they were alone in the elevator, going up, and Vivian had released his arm.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened, Simon. Instead I want you to tell me what you saw.”

“I saw…” He broke off, swallowing. “Vivian, wait.”

“Tell me what you saw.” Her voice had become a coaxing caress.

“Listen. I want you to tell me a few things first. I’m missing about three hours out of this afternoon. I want you to explain that. I feel sure you can. And then tell me what we’re going to do about Margie.”

Vivian seemed to find it hard to believe that he could be so difficult and argumentative. “All right, Simon. We had to help you to your room this afternoon and put you to bed. You arrived here in a confused state. It’s not the first time in your life, I’m sure, that your special powers have given you a hard time. But now you are with those who want to help you.”

“Special powers?”

“Let’s not go on pretending. Yes, special powers.”

He sighed. “All right. No more pretending. But about Margie, my helper. The girl you saw working with me at the dinner theater. She was here, hidden in that passageway. She was going to pop out; that was the big effect I had planned, why I was going through all that mumbo-jumbo with the fireplace. I think you knew all along that she was in there. Where is she now? What’s happened to her?”

“Yes, Simon dear, I knew.” Vivian took him by a hand, which suddenly lacked strength to pull away. “Not quite soon enough, unfortunately. So there’s been some trouble. But we’ll do what we can to get Margie out of it. Just as soon as you’ve finished helping me in what I want.”

“Margie…”

“As soon as you’ve finished helping me.” Vivian patted his hand firmly.

Simon had made his effort. There was only so much of an effort that he could make. Now he obediently forgot—whatever it was that Vivian wanted him to forget. He went back to the moments in which his act had started to go wild, and told Vivian what he had seen and experienced then. She listened, hanging on his words as if she thought them of great importance.

The telling was finished before the elevator reached its highest level and eased to a stop. They got out of it and Vivian guided Simon along a short, stone-vaulted corridor and through a door. He realized that they were entering the tower; what must be its highest flight of stairs curved up before them. A wavering, eerie glow from somewhere above let Simon see the stairs clearly as they climbed.

The highest round of the stair was thickly littered with loose stones, fragments of mortar, singed bits of wood, unidentifiable debris. Cool night air, carrying misty rain along with a whiff of acrid smoke, was blowing in through a jagged hole in the tower wall. Up here the walls were much thinner than those of the lower levels of the castle, and the hole was big enough for a man to climb through. Above it, the normal door at the head of the stairs was closed.

When Simon reached the hole, he found himself looking out with his eyes at the level of the flat roof. Solid, physical forms were moving on the roof, people were at work in the near-darkness of the eerie outdoor light. There was the shift and thud of heavy weights being moved.

Vivian gestured, and Simon climbed out ahead of her, bracing a foot on an ancient, newly-exposed timber that hissed and smoldered in the light rain. The smell of bitter smoke was stronger now, mingled with the dankness of old wood and old stonework freshly wet. Gregory, hatless, but still in his medieval servant’s garb, was working in the rain, heaving chunks of stone away from the place where the new hole went down into the interior of the building. Working with Gregory at his command were the twins from the antique shop. The girl looked at Simon helplessly when he caught her eye—it was the same look he’d seen on her face in that bedroom scene that he’d thought was a dream. In a moment she had moved away. She and her brother were scrambling about, taking Gregory’s orders, helping him shift debris, as if in a panic of fear. Illuminating the scene was an unearthly glow clinging to the top of the tower. St. Elmo’s fire, thought Simon, he’d heard of it; it sometimes accompanied lightning, but he’d never seen it before.

Climbing up after Simon through the blasted hole, Vivian took Gregory by the arm; now for a moment it was Gregory who looked frightened. “Have you seen Carados?” she demanded of her servant, while Simon, not knowing the name, looked puzzled. Then Vivian added another question in another language. Simon thought that it was French or Latin, but he could extract no meaning though he had a smattering of both.

Gregory shook his head, and in the same tongue began what might have been an explanation. Meanwhile the two young people continued to work as if the penalty for slacking might be death, turning back torn edges of roof, lifting stones away, exposing more of the smoldering fire to the rain that would not let it grow.

“Simon.” Vivian had him by the arm again. “An enemy of ours has been here. He may still be here, nearby, on the castle grounds somewhere. He is a very unusual man, and he is calling himself Talisman. I met him once, a very long time ago… I should have remembered. I shudder to think of what might happen to Margie if he should find her. He likes to drink girls’ blood.”

“Talisman. I don’t know that name.”

“Rather tall, on the thin side… Dark. Age uncertain. If you can see him anywhere, anywhere at all, it’s important that you tell me.”

Somewhere out there a presence moved. In the rainy woods around the castle, pitch-black now except for passing smears of lightning? No, farther away, much farther. Simon wasn’t going to try to determine where. To be able to withhold the sight of it from Vivian was a small victory.

He said: “Your house seems to be on fire.”

“The fire itself is nothing. Gregory will manage it. But come, we should reassure the others.” Then she guided Simon back over wreckage into the tower again, as if he might be incapable of making his own way. The power of her touch burned at him, sapping his will. Her own physical movements were as certain as her will, her plans. “Now you’ve seen where the lightning struck, Simon. Now tell me, where is the thing that drew it down?”

He could have protested that there was no way for him to have that knowledge; but somehow he knew that Vivian knew better than that. There was an answer to her question; he didn’t want to look for it.

“It’s very important, Simon. More important even than Talisman. Never mind if you can’t find it for me just yet. I’ll have a way soon to make it easier.” Vivian was smiling at him, talking to him in the tones of love. Her small hand, irresistible, drew him back down the littered stair, along the passage to the waiting elevator. “But right now you can tell me this much at least: you saw him?”

He couldn’t pretend not to know who she was talking about. Not Talisman. “Yes. He tried to get in, through the passage. But he couldn’t.”

There was a soft intensity now in Vivian’s voice that Simon had never been able to imagine there, not even in daydreams when he’d made her image speak to him. She said now: “His name is Falerin. His real name, just as your real name is Simon Colline… oh, I know, of course I know that too. He is a real magician, more than you are, more even than I am. I learned from him, you know. He is going to come to our world, and he will be the king of the world someday. Oh yes, oh yes, with his power, and the power that we can develop for him here. The science we can add now. One day the whole earth will be his domain, and mine. And yours too, Simon, if you help us… of course you’ll help us.” Simon had never seen Vivian so happy. She went on: “That’s what this is all about. He couldn’t live through all the centuries between his time and now. But I have, for this one purpose, to bring him here. He was about to come through, but the Sword blocked him and he had to retreat. It’s hidden here in the castle somewhere, or nearby. And you are going to find it for me, Simon. Then he’ll be back, he’ll come again.”

Downstairs in the great hall, Hildy’s husband was calmly refilling his wife’s little crystal cup with wine. She picked up the cup, and drained it, and put it down again, and sat there looking steadily at Saul. In keeping with the other strange things of this strange night, the wine, which was like no wine that Hildy had ever tasted before, had the effect of making her thoughts clearer instead of clouding them. Problems to be solved were not blurred but sharply delineated. Hildy was no longer hysterical. She was not even much afraid now, in any physical, immediate sense. And now while she was alone with her husband she meant to get some explanations from him.

Emily Wallis had had to be helped away, her husband going with her. No one else was left at table. The dinner had never been cleared away; the remaining servants, so efficient earlier, had obviously been ordered to tasks judged more important.

Saul was smiling faintly at his wife. But then, as if bothered by her close, silent scrutiny, he turned away from the table and moved a few steps to stand near the fireplace. The flames, though unattended for some time now, were prospering cheerfully.

“Where are all the servants, Saul?”

He turned from gazing at the fire to regard her mildly. “I don’t really know, m’dear.”

“The truth is that they’re not really our servants at all, are they? They don’t really work for us.”

“Afraid I don’t quite…”

“I mean they belong to Vivian. Don’t they?” Hildy paused. Her husband was waiting. She pressed on: “Like everything else here, no matter what it says on the legal papers about who owns this place.”

Saul considered that in his calm way. “Vivian is the leader of the family, yes.”

“Why does that have to be? You’re older than she is.”

Saul was going to answer, then decided against it. He waited calmly.

“Saul, you’ve been lying to me about a lot of things, right from the start. Haven’t you?”

He turned away again, picking up a long poker, stabbing experimentally with it at one of the burning logs. “I’m sorry you look at it in that way, Hil. I’ve been meaning to sit down with you sometime, and try to explain it all.”

What was really chilling was that he wasn’t even trying to deny her accusation. Hildy discovered that perhaps her hysteria wasn’t as thoroughly exorcised as she had thought. She definitely wanted to scream again. But she was still able to hold her voice calm. “I’d like to hear the explanation now.”

“To begin with, you’re quite right, of course. We’re not an ordinary family.”

“Is that how you describe this… what’s going on? Are you trying to be funny?”

“I’m sorry. No, I’m not trying to be funny at all.” Saul put down the poker, but continued to stare into the flames. Hildy rose from her seat at the table and gradually moved toward him, as he went on: “Let me try again. To begin with, as you’ve noticed by now, I’m sure, there are a number of interrelated families living here in the area of Frenchman’s Bend. There are other members of those families living in other places around the country, around the world, but this locale is a sort of—focal point. The Littlewoods, of course. The Wedderburns, Collines, Picards. They have a continuous connection that not only extends back over generations, but maintains and renews itself.”

“Go on.”

“There’s a certain—well, purpose, that unites these families, as well as ties of blood and marriage. There are connections that don’t appear on the surface. That go much deeper than outsiders realize.”

Hildy was standing close beside her husband now, looking up at him, confronting him. “All right. Go on. Tell me all about it.”

“Well, I will.” The look Saul gave her was judicial, but there was something else in it too, something that Hildy could still hope was love. “I just can’t explain the whole thing all at once.”

“Then you should have started explaining it before now. Long before. You would have, if you really loved me.”

Saul’s eyes were wistful. Was there anything left of him now, Hildy wondered, but this sad observer, who puttered around keeping himself occupied with his airplane and with business that didn’t really matter? It struck Hildy that the man she’d married had been going downhill pretty steadily ever since that first wonderful day when she had met him. Very slowly, but steadily. It wasn’t something that she wanted to let herself realize, but she no longer had any choice.

Saul said: “I do love you, Hil. At least as I understand the term. I love you the only way I can. The word means different things to different people, you know.”

“It means a lot to me.”

“And I can’t always be eloquent, or whatever, as I was on that first day. I’d like to be that way always, for you, Hildy. But I can’t.”

She could feel how close she was to breaking down again. “I understand.”

“No, I don’t think you do understand. Not yet. You can’t. But you will in time. I want to tell you everything as gently as I can, so you’ll see it isn’t so bad.”

“Tell me what, Saul? What isn’t so bad?”

“I’ve grown up with this. But when people marry into it, as you have—well, it’s just not something that you’re able to grasp fully all at once.”

Hildy couldn’t speak. She was afraid that if she tried, nothing but screams would come from her throat, ever again.

Saul went on: “I do love you, Hil, as I’ve said so often. But the truth is that our marriage was in part arranged.”

“Arranged? How? What does that mean?”

“Vivian always has an interest in bringing new people into the family. Selected people, with something to contribute, like special abilities. It generally works to the person’s advantage, of course, very much to their advantage in fact. But it’s not something that can be explained to them ahead of time.”

Hildy was shaking her head, unable to find words. A horrible truth was right in front of her but she couldn’t see its whole shape yet. Dimly she was aware that on the other side of the great hall the elevator was returning from upstairs, its door was opening. She looked that way as Simon the Great emerged from the elevator. He appeared to be in a daze, a trance. Vivian had him by the arm, she was guiding him, manipulating him. Another slave, another toy for Vivian.

Hildy said: “Saul, at least tell me one thing right now.”

“If I can. What is it?”

“Just now, right after everything seemed to blow up, I saw this young man. I don’t mean the magician, someone else. That wall blew open and there was a doorway, an opening, with light streaming out… and he was there, and he was very handsome, and at the same time his face was the—the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I don’t know why—”

“Shh!” Saul hissed it fiercely, at the same time darting a glance toward Vivian. But Vivian was fully occupied with whatever she was doing with Simon, leading him toward the door of the once-secret passage, and whispering in his ear meanwhile.

Hildy would not be put off. “I want an answer, Saul. Who was he? He was trying to come through that doorway, and then something stopped him. It was an object like a cross, I couldn’t see how it was being held. Except that it wasn’t a regular cross, it was more like the hilt of a sword. Who was he, Saul?”

“Hildy, I said there was a purpose uniting the family, remember? I’m afraid he’s what this is all about.”

Her lips soundlessly formed questioning words.

With gentle seriousness her husband said: “He’s Vivian’s lover. He has been, for more than a thousand years.”