Dominion

TWENTY-SIX

“Gilles de Rais,” Simon echoed aloud the last words that Talisman had spoken. “Bluebeard. The one who murdered hundreds of children…” His voice trailed off. The echoes of old horror that hung in the air here were explained.

Talisman nodded. “He also performed many experiments in alchemy and magic, trying to recoup his squandered fortunes. If he had the Sword here, it would have been an irresistible temptation to profane it by trying its power in some such attempt. After that it was somehow hidden again. Perhaps here, perhaps elsewhere.”

“Not here,” said Simon, conscious of a sudden inward revelation.

Talisman stared at him, then startled Simon by spinning and moving two steps with utterly inhuman speed. The effort stopped there, as abruptly as it had started; whatever Talisman had had in mind, it was too late. Now Simon could see the ring of half-wraiths, demihuman shapes, surrounding the two of them at the distance of a pebble’s toss.

There might have been thirty or forty of them in all, and they were the color of the dissipating fog where they were not as thin as glass, and their faces were the faces of beings who had been for a long time in hell. Among their number were things like beasts, and other things more like men or women. Some crouched, some stood, and some held weapons. Some were clothed, some not, and the naked among them were not always those who looked the most like beasts.

The ring they formed was not quite closed, and the open side of it was along the rim of the bluff. Talisman turned to face in that direction, and in a moment Simon saw why. Directly below them, three figures were climbing the steep hillside. They were ascending straight toward Simon at a steady trudging pace. The central figure was a woman’s, and he saw as they came into clearer light that it was Nimue—the woman he had known as Vivian. She was still dressed in her red party gown. A couple of paces behind her, at her right, climbed Gregory, while Arnaud limped along in a similar position on her left.

Simon blinked, taking a closer look at Arnaud. The man had recently been hurt again, had suffered what seemed to be a minor bullet-wound in one leg. But Simon now could perceive a much more fundamental wrongness in him. One symbol of it was the brownish fur-stubble that had begun to sprout across his cheeks; it superficially resembled an ordinary beard, even as Arnaud had a surface resemblance to a human being. Under the surface there was a different kind of nature to be seen. Repelled and frightened, Simon looked away.

His eye fell on Gregory, who he saw was truly human. But his human nature had been altered drastically. And he had incorporated in his very self things that Simon could not name, but that stunned him with the feeling of evil that they projected. The base of true humanity only made the horror the greater.

With some half-formed idea of appealing for help or understanding, Simon turned to Talisman. He was surprised to observe in the man at his side something akin to Gregory’s altered nature, though with deep differences.

Simon had only an instant for each of these discoveries. The woman he had known as Vivian had almost finished her climb, and she was still climbing straight toward him. The long red dress molded to her thighs, as with perfect balance she stepped across a fallen log. When Simon looked deeply at her now, he saw… no, there was more than he could dare to see. He held his vision on the surface. Nimue’s expression was grave, and once her eyes had caught his they held them in a commanding stare.

She stopped a pace in front of Simon, on the very lip of the bluff. “Find it for me,” she ordered urgently, without preamble.

This woman was someone he’d never known before. He said: “It isn’t here.”

Nimue glared at Simon as if he’d dared to threaten her with a blow. She declared: “You saw it here. I can tell, now, what you see and what you don’t. You can’t imagine what it’s cost me to come here myself. Find it!” Her voice vibrated, almost growling, and she gestured imperiously toward the nearby ruins.

“I can’t,” said Simon, and expected to be struck down on the spot. “I thought for a moment that it was here, yes. But it’s not.” Under Nimue’s gaze he could not lie, could not even try to hold back knowledge. “It’s not. I was fooled, by the way it’s been concealed.” Simon shook his head a little, awed. “The magic.”

“Where is it, then?”

“In our own time. My own time. That’s where we can reach it. It’s somewhere, as you thought, in—or near—the castle.”

“Then we will go to where it is. At once—”

At that moment Talisman struck. He lunged straight at the woman, from his position eight feet to Simon’s left. But Gregory and Arnaud had alertly positioned themselves close to her as bodyguards. They intercepted Talisman’s rush, caught him between them. Fast and powerful as he was, he could not break through. Wraith-figures closed in from the circle.

The sound of the struggle was unearthly. At the moment of greatest violence and noise, Nimue’s eyes let Simon go, and he was able to turn and run. But he had not gone half a dozen steps before another of the figures from the circle was in his path, confronting him. Then it vanished, but at once he felt its hands clamping his elbows from the rear, pulling his arms behind him, bringing him to a stop. The thing laughed with a high shrieking sound, and Simon saw other figures of the circle close before him, jeering at him. The pressure of the grip on his elbows increased until he screamed with pain. If his arms were pulled a centimeter closer together, the bones around his spine would certainly crack.

“Gently,” said Nimue’s controlled voice, somewhere behind him. “Simon is still my friend. We still must treat him gently.”

The pressure did not vanish, but it eased out of the region of pain, and Simon could see clearly again. When the grip on his arms turned him back toward Nimue, he beheld Talisman now stretched out unconscious on the ground, his two chief opponents standing over him. One of them, Gregory, kicked the fallen man savagely. The jarred body on the ground looked less human than before, more like a puppet or a statue; for a moment Simon thought that Talisman was dead, but inward vision showed otherwise.

Gregory had put on his foolish-looking hat now and was squinting into the east. “Shall we just leave this one here, mistress, for the morning sun to find?”

There was a little silence while Nimue considered; the peasant’s cheerful singing had stopped some time ago. “No,” she decreed at last. “Too uncertain, for one of his power. But daylight has him frozen in man-form. Finish him now, with wood.”

Arnaud growled in his throat. It was a low, regular sound, of which he appeared to be no more conscious than of his breathing. He looked round him, then seized a green tree-limb, thick as a man’s arm. In a moment he had plucked it, like a flower. As Gregory stepped out of the way, Arnaud raised this weapon in both hands and brought it down like a spear at Talisman, splintery end first.

The stroke dug deep into leaves and earth, the end of the branch going two feet deep in solid ground. Talisman’s body had disappeared.