Dominion

TWENTY-ONE

Talisman paced in darkness.

The woods were thick, and muted sound to some extent, but half a mile or so ahead he could hear the undeniable sounds of an army breaking camp and setting out on a night march. In his breathing days, campaigning against the Turk, he had done it himself too often to be mistaken about it now.

He had come directly back here from his talk with Margie Hilbert, wondering what the sudden offensive move by Comorr and Falerin portended. He wondered also if his own presence and Margie’s, intruders from the future, was going to be allowed to alter the course of history. He thought that would not be allowed but he could not be sure. Anyway he was going to put it to the test tonight. The leaders of the invading army ahead were the allies in time of the evil folk in the twentieth century of the nosferatu—reason enough to attack them, but there was more. Talisman did not mean to spend any more time as an inhabitant of this antique century than he was forced to spend, and attempting a violent alteration of history here seemed to be a good way to bring matters to a head.

He was rapidly nearing the camp. There was a lonely outpost forty or so paces ahead, beside the forest path. A single sentry leaned against a tree. Start the attack here, then. When they came to call the man in, they’d find a corpse.

Talisman shifted to mistform when he was within a dozen paces of the sentry, and drifted closer. It was almost impossible that a mundane eye should see him in this mode, but being mist dulled his own senses inconveniently as well. When he was only an arm’s length from the soldier, he regained human form and simultaneously reached out—

The man’s head turned, an instant before Talisman could grasp his throat. The grinning face under the crude helm was unexpectedly familiar.

“Think I’d forgotten you, bloodsucker? This is the land of cold green gore, remember?”

It was certainly not the land Talisman had been inhabiting a few moments ago, that of Artos and Comorr. Even though Talisman had shifted his body out of mistform, yet the mists round him persisted. Night forest had been replaced by gray nothingness. And Talisman’s reaching fingers never did find the throat they sought, though he redoubled his efforts when he saw who now confronted him. In vain. This was the land of magic now, like that of dreams outside of normal time and space.

His foe vanished from his grasp, reappeared behind him. The old man chanted triumphantly, an incantation. Then he cried: “Go for a little spin, bloodsucker! Keep going until someone calls you back!” And with that a mighty force swirled Talisman away.

He traveled timelessly through a pyrotechnic world. The lack of physical orientation was sickening, even for him; one not immune to fear, he thought, might well have been driven mad. Is this then the end for me? he thought again. Where will my body—?

There was once more stable light, dependable substance. Talisman was standing upright, but on what? He discovered himself still—or again—in mistform, and he willed himself out of it, to manshape, to get a better look at his surroundings. Still there was some difficulty in doing that.

Sound clarified first: the voice of a man, chanting something in medieval French, a language that was almost as familiar to Talisman as his native tongue, though a long time had passed since he had heard it spoken. The teeth of the man who spoke it now were nigh-chattering with fear, his tongue was on the verge of stumbling with every consonant.

The words made sense, of a sort, though Talisman could not immediately see what they had to do with his present situation: “… bound to my will, Sathanas, by Apollonius, by Proteus, I adjure thee by Thutmose and Din that ye do us no harm but rather be constrained to serve us as we may command…”

Bemused, Talisman muttered: “At least I know now where I am—still in the land of magic.”

And now—some kind of smoke was swirling heavily about him, slowly dissipating—he began to get a look at his new physical surroundings. He was standing on cleared ground on the edge of a forest, beyond whose low trees a portion of a sizable castle was visible against a cloudy night sky. Lights as of torch or candle showed in a couple of the small windows. It was not the castle on the Sauk, nor, thought Talisman, was it any castle that he had ever seen before.

The dissipating smoke, or part of it at least, came from two bonfires, that were about equidistant from the spot where Talisman found himself standing. The chanting voice was that of a pudgy man in robes that fit very well the role of a medieval alchemist-sorceror; Talisman had known one or two such in his breathing years. This man was crouched in a would-be protective circle chalked or painted on the ground, with his arms outflung in what was evidently his idea of the way a wizard ought to gesture. Nothing, or almost nothing, of real power was emanating from him. A few feet from the wizard another man, dressed in the rich garb of the higher nobility, was standing on one foot as if he had almost decided to run but did not know which way to go. The faces of both men were turned toward Talisman, displaying a rich mixture of terror, triumph, greed, and sheer astonishment.

“Hah!” said Talisman, experiencing a powerful blend of feelings too; he understood suddenly that this pair must think him a demon that their spells had succeeded in calling up out of hell, doubtless in some desperate pursuit of wealth.

The wizard had not ceased to speak; “… I charge thee, make obeisance before us; submit thy fortunes and thy powers to our will…”

“Bah.” Talisman took a step toward the circle. “Whose castle is that yonder?”

“Mine,” said the nobleman. And now there was a scramble between the pair of them, the lord trying to push his way into the protective circle with his magician, a mutter of hissed argument and imprecations back and forth.

“… I told you you’d need a circle, told you it would work this time…”

“… never worked before! Move over…”

“Watch out! Sathanas, I adjure thee—damnation, quit shoving—I charge thee to reveal…”

Talisman gave them another moment or two to pull themselves together. Even a power as weak as this fool’s, caught by good fortune at the proper moment, must have been enough to rescue him from the timeless spaceless spin in which the old one calling himself Hawk had set him dancing. Very good luck for Talisman… or something more. In magical matters there was rarely such a thing as simple luck, good or bad.

“Gold,” said the nobleman at last, plainly and boldly. He evidently felt himself secure now, clinging to his wizard’s back and looking over his shoulder, with the white circle snug about them both. “That is what you are to bring to us.” He was addressing Talisman, in the imperious tones of one accustomed to obedience.

“Indeed? And what is the name of that river yonder, behind the trees?” In moments of relative quiet, between outbursts of the others’ babble, Talisman could hear far rapids murmuring. He wanted to know where he was, and he asked about the river first because rivers, unlike countries, duchies, domains of all human kind, rivers tended to retain their names throughout the centuries.

“It is the Loire,” the wizard said. “Now you must bring us gold, or tell us how to find it or make it.”

“Bah.” Talisman scowled at the magical gimcracks, debris of diabolism, items used in their wretched spells, that lay scattered in the firelight round about. There were bones. He wondered if they had been led to murder children to add power to their spells; such was not unheard of. “And the Year of Our Lord is now—?”

They looked at him with changing faces; plainly they were puzzled as to what kind of devil they had caught, who rolled the Lord’s name so trippingly off his tongue. “One thousand,” said the nobleman. “Four hundred, and twenty.”

“Aha. And the nearest city?”

Puzzlement grew, and a new wariness. “Enough,” ordered the magician, emboldened by success and continued survival. “We are not here to answer your questions, but you ours. How are we to obtain wealth?”

Talisman strode closer to them, while they shrank down within their circle. He extended one foot, still shod in a dark twentieth-century shoe, and deliberately scuffed a generous arc of the white circle into oblivion.

“Those who lust for wealth as you do,” he said softly, glaring at them both with intent to frighten, “will no doubt eventually obtain more than your just share of it—provided only that you live long enough. How long do you intend to live?”

“Th-th-th-the nearest city is Orleans,” the lord of the castle got out. His voice was somewhat muffled in his robes, as he was now down on all fours, head below rump, definitely in a state of collapse. That he could achieve this posture without getting any part of himself out of what was left of the circle struck Talisman as remarkable.

“Orleans!” Talisman mused aloud. “In fourteen-twenty. The Sword… I might have guessed. The Sword acts through the centuries. If I could find it here… which way to town?”

At last the wizard, still more or less upright though speechless, pointed with a shaking arm. Talisman without another word turned his back on the pair and strode off into the night. Once away from the fires he paused, sniffing, listening, then shifted into wolf-form for quick, keen-scented travel.

He had not gone far in this mode before he gained two new perceptions: the Sword was somewhere near, as he had thought, though magically protected. And the old man was somewhere nearby too, not far ahead of him.

The sight of a wolf entering a medieval city would not be all that much of a surprise to the human inhabitants, but it would certainly draw unwelcome attention from them. Walking in as a man in twentieth-century clothing might create something of a stir also. It would be mistform or batform then. The latter would provide keener senses, and be virtually no more noticeable.

Talisman thought it would be pointless for him to search directly for the Sword, protected as it was. So, knowing what he knew, and guessing what he had guessed, he sought confrontation with the old man by seeking taverns. It took little effort to discover three of them, not much more than spitting distance from the brooding cathedral of Saint-Croix. Halfway between two of these establishments, on a guttered but unpaved street, his perception of his foe’s presence grew very strong.

Talisman came down out of the night on small bat’s wings, then extended human legs to find a footing in the mud, and bear a man’s full weight. He was sure of the identity of the sodden figure collapsed at streetside even before he turned it over on its back. When he saw the old man’s face, stupefied and ugly, he felt his own fingers talon and go reaching for the throat; but with an effort of will Talisman mastered the impulse to kill. No doubt the powers guarding this fifteenth-century version of the old man’s self were dormant, but they would still be very powerful and capable of being roused by real peril. Instead, Talisman spoke a soft, compelling order to awake.

The man who would one day call himself Hawk stirred, sat up at last, then tugged drunkenly to free himself when Talisman would have pulled him to his feet.

Grimly, Talisman heaved him erect anyway. The old man staggered, wiped his face with a sleeve of filthy medieval rags, then leaned for support against a wattle-and-daub house wall.

“What are you? Don’ tell me you’re a man.” The old man’s French was perhaps even a little better than Talisman’s.

Talisman, wondering how best to proceed, almost despairing, growled at him.

“Speak up. You know, when I wake up tomorrow, I’m not gonna remember any of this. Are you perchance acquainted with the Lady?”

“Lady?…”

“The Lady of the Lake. Didja know she was my lover, once? Well almos’. These fingers right here…” The old man held up a gnarled claw. “I once almos’ got these very fingers right on ‘er little…” The alcoholic bass voice dissolved in a chuckle, half agony, half gross obscenity.

“I know about that, old man. Or I have guessed. But right now something else is more important. I am looking for a Sword.”

“But whooinell are you, anyway? Tell me, are you from my past? Or my future? I have days, guess this is one, when the creatures of either may come ‘round to ‘flict me.”

Talisman clenched his hands, to keep them from reaching out again. “You have made me a creature, as you put it, of both, you son of the devil and a whore. Now where is the Sword? It’s near here somewhere, else why are you here now, and why am I here to meet you? Yours is the magic that concealed it, am I not right?”

“Dunno any sword.”

“You lie. This is Orleans. Will not the Maid herself have the Sword in hand, nine years from now, when she comes here to lift the British siege?”

“The Maid? Who—?” The old man, appearing honestly puzzled, shuddered. “No, I’m not looking ahead tonight. Jus’ gimme another drink, that’s all I want. Safer that way. Wish I could still feel good when I wake up again, but I can’t. Can’t even remember feelin’ good.”

“Then it will be hidden again. As it was hidden before. But you can tell me where it is now. And you shall.”

“Tell you nothin’. What are you, anyway?”

“Tell me, you ancient madman, tell me—” Talisman’s taloned hands reached out.

Effortlessly the old wizard’s defensive powers struck out at him. Talisman was swept back into the pyrotechnic swirl, outside of space and time.