Dominion

TWENTY-EIGHT

Hildy Littlewood was running for her life, fleeing from her husband, from the man with whom she’d once sworn love, undying love. On flying feet she sped through darkened stone passageways, past midnight vaults. The lights in the castle were few, and seemed to be going out one by one. Once she stopped running in a place where she was sure there was a light switch, and ran her hands over the wall for what seemed like hours, whimpering all the while, until she found it. She flicked the switch up and down a score of times but nothing happened. Somehow the electricity must have been turned off. Maybe the lightning…

Now she could hear Saul’s pacing feet, not running after her, pursuing patiently instead. His voice, a room away, called: “Hil?”

She fled again, gasping with the effort, knowing this was all a dream, taking comfort in the fact that before much longer she would simply have to wake up. To find herself where, and doing what? Hildy came to a door that she knew had to lead to the outside. She threw herself at it, wrenching and pushing at the latch and knob. They would not turn or move, they would not even rattle. As if the whole door and wall had been carved in one piece from wood, or built in one piece of reinforced concrete. Hildy almost collapsed, sobbing.

Here came Saul’s patient feet again, pacing and pausing, once more a room away. Saul probably feared that if he came into the same room with her she’d had another hysterical screaming fit.

His voice was still patient too. “Hil, in a little while they’ll all be back, Vivian and all her helpers. Then there won’t be even this pretense of hiding, of getting away. So you’d better stop pretending now. You’d better be sensible. If Vivian finds out that you’ve been trying to cut and run…” There was a faint quaver in the unfinished sentence. Hildy knew Saul well enough to realize that he was now really, badly, frightened. It made her own terror all the worse.

Hildy ran once more. She couldn’t have stopped running if she’d tried. This time her sprint brought her to a door she’d never opened, as far as she could remember; she was in one of the parts of the castle that she had never had the time to explore fully. The door opened for her, and she went through in a burst of desperate hope. To stop almost at once. She was on a balcony, halfway up the wall of a circular room, very high, maybe thirty feet across. Below her on a stone table, dark puddles were half-congealed in the light of a ring of torches. The bodies of the Wallises lay there, naked, broken, stabbed with a hundred wounds and drained of blood. Blade still in hand, wearing the face of Grandfather Littlewood, the executioner looked up at Hildy and smiled. She screamed and screamed and screamed and then someone or something had seized her from behind.

The moment Talisman’s body vanished, Simon tried to take advantage of the confusion that suddenly appeared among his enemies. He turned, and leaped past Vivian, over the edge of the bluff, ready to die in a rolling, bouncing fall rather than stay where he was. No one, nothing stopped him, and it seemed for a long moment that he had got away. His leap turned into a fall into mist and darkness, and the fall went on and on, long past the moment when he should have struck some portion of the hillside. He felt no fear, only relief that he was going to be killed, and would not have to exist any longer as a pawn in Vivian’s service. And just then he landed with a thump, arms and legs collapsing under him so that his face was pressed into sodden leaves. Their wetness had a [lint], familiar smell, and Simon knew that he was once more somewhere near the castle on the Sauk.

He got to his hands and knees and looked around. Again it was near sunset on a cloudy, warm day; it seemed to him that it was always near sunset in this place. The sky was ominous, but only a little rain was falling at the moment. Only another leap away was the edge of the bluff, and below that would be the river, the way out to sanity. Simon sprang erect, ready to leap again.

A shadowy figure, almost invisible, moved at the corner of his eye. As if it had been waiting for him here, it seized his elbows from behind, and marched him back toward the castle. He did not try to turn his head to see what it looked like.

In the grotto, a ring of torches was flaring in the twilight, supported in ancient-looking wrought-iron stands that Simon had never seen before. The familiar statues looked on uncaring. There were other figures about besides the statues, creatures in and of the twilight, that Simon could not fully see. He made no effort to see them better. A hand unlocked the barred cave-door and Simon was thrust inside, and the door closed and chained tightly again after him.

Looking out across the grotto, he could now see no one, no presence, nothing moving but the wavering torchflames that ringed the waiting, empty stone. Drops of rain hissed sullenly in the torches. Was this to be yet another test? He could see without turning that the secret tunnel was no way out this time. It was forbidden, pre-empted, occupied by something, some process, so hideous—

There was the tiniest sound behind Simon, and he spun round. In a small natural alcove, on the opposite side of the cave from the mouth of the descending tunnel, the twins from the antique shop, still dressed as medieval servants, sat huddled together like small children in a corner.

Simon stared at them. They returned the stare, but he could not tell if it was with hope or fear.

“What are you doing here?” he asked at last.

They looked at each other. Neither wanted to answer him.

“You’ve got to tell me what you know about this. If there’s going to be anything we can do, we have to—”

“Sacrifices,” said the boy at last. It was a small child’s voice. “She’s going to kill us. You too. You’re in here.”

“He’s started coming through the tunnel now, to our world,” said the girl. “The Master is. I did what Vivian wanted, I did, but it won’t be needed now.”

“What? What won’t be needed?”

“The baby. The Master is coming now. Vivian won’t need any more help.”

“What baby?”

“Mine.” The girl looked steadily up at Simon. “Yours.”

Hints and fragments of explanation, each more dreadfully suggestive than the last, struggled to take form in Simon’s brain. “You mean you’re pregnant—from me. That time I thought that you and I—I wasn’t dreaming—you were in bed with me—”

The girl was nodding. She sat there clasping her knees, looking ugly. “It’s how we all live here. It’s how we do things. Vivian breeds people. People with powers, the powers she needs to help bring the Master. But now he’s coming at last. Now she needs the sacrifices more, that’s what she said. Needs us to be killed. Needs our blood. Help me!” The girl seized Simon by one leg, clung to his knee with a burst of weeping. Suddenly she looked up at him again and said in a clear voice: “You’re my father.”

“Mine too,” the boy said next to her.

For a moment Simon truly did not understand.

“And Lissa and I bred a baby once for Vivian,” the boy added, looking at his sister. “It didn’t turn out good. Vivian already used it up. Now she’s going to use us up.”

Simon backed away from them, one step. It was as far as he could move. Father. Daughter. Baby. To himself he mumbled words that he was unable to understand.

His body pressed against steel, and he turned. Outside the jailbars of the cave, in the light of the ringed torches hissing in the rain, a guardian power stalked, a jailor with a crooked walk. Simon could recognize old Grandfather Littlewood, from the portrait—no, it was only something in old Littlewood’s shape. At close range he could see how the thing was wearing old Littlewood’s human likeness like a mask. He could see everything, and it did him no good at all. On its shoulder the creature bore what appeared to be a giant cleaver, stained with blood.

“Prepare,” ordered a disembodied voice, Vivian’s voice, out of the nearby air. And the Littlewood-figure came to the jail door and somehow pulled it open. It seized Simon by one arm when he tried to run, and held him paralyzed.

Somewhere in the distance, down inside the secret tunnel, an awesome procession was approaching. There were sounds, a muttering of many voices that were not all human. There was reflected light, beginning to be faintly visible to the physical eye. The colors of it were sickly. Falerin the Master was approaching. Evil wafted ahead of him, like the stench of his wagonloads of corpses.

And now, along the path that led through woods to the grotto, came Vivian and her supporting crew. There came Gregory, right after her, and there was Arnaud. Around them, a score or more of wraith-figures slouched or capered. Two at least dragged captives with them. Simon didn’t want to look.

Abruptly there was a sound of purely human movement inside the secret passage. Saul climbed up out of it, carrying his wife Hildy in his arms. She was alive, and her eyes were open, but they no longer saw, or perhaps no longer wished to see. Behind them the inhuman muttering grew a little louder, became distinguishable as some kind of a chant.

“Quickly!” ordered Vivian, stopping her own advance near the altar.

Hildy was borne there by her husband, and put down, as he might have carried her and given her to a doctor for an X-ray examination. Relieved of the weight, Saul stood back and rubbed his eyes. Somehow, Simon realized irrelevantly, he tended to think of Saul as wearing glasses.

Thoughts about Saul vanished. Vivian was looking straight at Simon himself. “Find the Sword for me,” she commanded him. “I won’t.” Whether it was a benefit of actual physical imprisonment, or something else, Simon found himself at least momentarily free of fear. He could at least try to defy her now.

Vivian nodded to the executioner.

“Slow bleeding, Lady?” the thing that wore old Littlewood’s shape inquired of her from over the sightless staring Hildy.

“Quick death. We have no time tonight for squeezing the fine essences, or playing tricks with what’s left afterwards.”

Simon beheld the cleaver rise; he heard but did not watch it fall.

Now Vivian was looking at Saul. “Now you are not needed any longer. But we require your blood and death.”

Saul looked about him, in his usual abstracted, business-like way. “I thought it might have worked out differently,” he said to no one in particular. He rubbed his eyes, and again Simon had the impression of an accountant’s or bookkeeper’s eyeglasses being handled. “I thought—”

One of the wraith-figures pushed Saul violently from behind. He went face down on the stone altar. The cleaver swung, and this time Simon was not quick enough looking away. He saw the flying blood.

With each violent death, the presence of Falerin came closer through the tunnel, his music a notch louder, even the sickening smell became a little harder to deny.

Suddenly Simon noticed Margie, in the background behind Vivian, being brought closer to the altar by the figure that held her. Her eyes were on Simon, but not as if she expected anything from him or even saw him. Beside Margie, another creature was holding Sylvia, who appeared to be in no better shape.

At the mouth of the cave, the boy-twin was being pried from his sister’s almost catatonic grip. He was dragged helplessly out and thrown upon the altar.

“Flesh of your flesh, Simon.” Vivian’s voice bored at him relentlessly. “Now will you find the Sword for me? Then we’ll need no more sacrifices. Or, a few more deaths, a bit more blood, and my powers will be strong enough to force the passage despite the Sword. Which way is it to be?”

Simon saw that the hope Vivian offered him was a lie, as was her confidence of being able to overcome the hidden Sword. And he saw much more than that.

He spoke his discovery aloud. “I see now where it is… no, where it was for a long time. It’s not there any longer.” Before Vivian could interrupt, he raised an arm, pointing uphill to where the towering keep was shrouded in night and mist. “In the great hall. There’s an oak beam right above the fireplace. Open it.”

There was a swirl of rapid movement among Vivian’s inhuman followers. Only seconds later, muffled crashing noises sounded from inside the castle. And very quickly after that, two of the powers were back, bearing ten feet of torn-out beam between them.

At once Vivian commanded: “Break it!”

In the grip of those hands it crumbled as if it were termite-eaten. Amid a cloud of dust there came to light a carven, sword-shaped nest. One creature pulled from the debris a brittle relic, powdered with ancient wood, that might once have been an ornate scabbard. Of a blade there was no sign.

Vivian snarled, and signaled; the boy died on the stone, the ominous presence in the tunnel once more advanced. “Bring the girl here!” she cried. Then she looked at Simon. “Where is it now?”

“I’ll not say.” As the cleaver fell once more, Simon looked at Vivian, looked deeply and freely; now he had little to lose. He saw that she was his mother, and beyond that horror he could see nothing at all, and never would.

Margie, from her position as sacrifice-to-be, watched Simon go into shock, his body contracting on the ground into a fetal curl. Beside her, Sylvia had lost consciousness, and Margie envied her.

Gregory prodded Simon’s inert body with a foot, then bent and with his hand tried some other brisk revival method. The he looked at Vivian. “What shall we do, mistress, to bring him back?”

“Never mind, we do not need him now.” Vivian’s anger was spent, vanished, as if evaporated in the glow of a coming triumph. She paused, smiling. “Here’s one who’ll tell us all we need to know.”

Gregory hoisted Simon’s body and threw it onto the altar. The cleaver fell, and Margie saw Simon’s head roll free. She was unable to look away, but in her terror of being next, even Simon’s death meant little in itself.

Now what? What was everyone waiting for? Gradually she realized that all action was suspended. Everyone was waiting for something. Slowly Margie turned her head toward the woodland path, following the common gaze.

The figure shuffling along the path toward the paved court looked ordinary enough, what she could see of it in the moonlight and the light of torches. It was only the figure of a man. A gray old man, not very big, his dress modern, drab blue and humble, almost a slave’s or servant’s uniform. Two huge powers guarding the start of the path looked down on him like contemptuous sphinxes as he passed between them. But they let him pass. The impression of meek humility was damaged when the old man stumbled briefly at the very edge of the paving, and told the world about it in foul language, as boldly as if there had been no one else within a mile.

But he understood perfectly that a sizable assembly was waiting for him, and he must have understood its nature pretty well. For he showed no surprise when he stopped to look them all over. Nodding to himself, he calmly took in the gory and fantastic scene. Nimue’s bodyguards sidled a little closer to her.

When the old man spoke, his words struck Margie, even in her present state, as a ridiculous anticlimax. He said only: “The police are out there, at your gate.”

Nimue made a sound of astonishment, a faint purring whine, and shook her head as if she marveled at him. “But they won’t be able to come in, my dear old man. Lucky for them.”

“I think they may. They represent the law.” He said this very soberly and seriously, but at the same time he spoke as if he were announcing something new, or something that his hearers perhaps had never heard before. “There’s laws for all of us. Even you. Even that… foulness that you serve.”

“Where is the Sword, old fool? I have brought you here to tell me of the Sword.”

“Fool?” The old man sounded surprised and angered by that, and there was a pause. He actually scratched his head. Then at last he had to agree. “Yeah… yeah, I was. Enchanted too, of course. But enchantment comes half from the inside. Yeah, I was a fool from the very start. Fool all the way.” He paused again, and went on in a gentler voice. “You were very young then, really young, and beautiful. There’s… something about beauty. Beauty and wine beat me, a long time ago. Power and gold could never do it.”

He looked contemptuously past Nimue, to the cave and the tunnel mouth, where a pale glow was growing brighter, throbbing faintly with the chant of whatever creatures and powers might be advancing through the tunnel. “He’s not gonna make it here, you know. He’ll have to stay in his own land, his own time, with his own limited power there, and let his own people eventually burn him at the stake the way they do. As the book says, it is written. Maybe you meant to bring me here this time to help you, but this time I came willingly. Not even your enchantments last forever.”

Nimue made a gesture, as of producing something hidden, small, and vitally important. “I have kept one command, one order that I may yet bind you to. That is what is really written.”

The old man bowed, an almost courtly motion. “So you have, I see. I must submit to it. Much good may it do you.”

“The command is this: Tell me where the Sword is now.” Behind her the glow in the cave mouth had brightened again, and in the very heart of it, the doorway where the barred door stood open, a dark slender column of something had begun to waver in the air.

The old man answered: “Gladly. For a long time it was where none could see it. I’ve moved it, though. The Prince of Wallachia, standing there behind you, has it in his hand.”

Nimue turned, to see the man Margie had known as Talisman, standing tall in the mouth of the opened passage, gravely salute the old man with his blade. To Margie the Sword looked much like common iron; nothing out of the ordinary at all. If there had been a jewel or two in its hilt when Artos wore it, they had been dulled or stolen by now. But Talisman held it like one very well used to swords. When the executioner lunged at him with cleaver raised, the Sword flicked once only, with invisible speed. The cleaver clanged on the pavement, the mask of old Littlewood beside it, the creature who had borne them obliterated. There followed a mighty roaring from down the hidden passageway, and Talisman turned to look in that direction over his raised point.

Nimue screamed and screamed again, echoing the hoarse offstage voice of her Master. From their places at her side, Gregory and Arnaud both leaped at Talisman; he twisted round, thrust once, thrust once again. Nimue screamed; and the old man, a long wooden staff come from nowhere into his hands, strode toward her. “Your last command is spent,” he said.

The moonlight was clear, but Margie thought that lightning had shattered roof and sky together, to bring the castle down around her head.

It was one thing for men to yell at each other with determination that now they were going to break in. It was quite something else, Joe had been able to observe, when you got down to the nitty-gritty of dealing with inch-thick steel bars in a gate as high as the twelve-foot stone wall it pierced. Bold decision promptly degenerated into something like slow farce. With only one good arm Joe couldn’t be of much direct help. At last Charley Snider managed to climb over the gate, from a start on two bowed and burly backs. In the effort Charley burst seams in his coat, and one in his pants, but nobody was laughing. Once he was over and down, sure enough, there was a way for him to unbolt the great gate from inside. Cars started rolling in.

The screams had been terrible, but they had stopped while Charley was atop the gate. Now pocket lights were being flashed at the many doors of the closed garage, and around the darkened lawn and courtyard of the immense and silent main building. No light showed in any window.

“Watch out, swimming pool. Don’t step in that.”

Joe saw the bottom in a flashlight beam: weed [strewn], cracked, dry for what had probably been decades. On the other side of the pool, French doors led into the ground floor of the main building. The doors were closed, and, as it soon proved, locked.

“Go ahead.”

Glass tinkled, a single small pane. The doors were readily enough opened.

The voices of the men first to go in reported nothing but more emptiness, and long disuse.

Joe was still out in the courtyard when his eye was caught by a slight movement in a dark moon-shadow some yards away. He looked again, carefully, making sure.

“I’ll stand by out here,” he volunteered then. “Man the radios. My arm’s starting to give me hell.”

No one argued with this. They were all busy being active cops, getting into the building, searching aggressively for the screaming victim, or victims—there had seemed to be more than one voice in agony.

Joe, left alone, walked warily past the cars with their radios buzzing alertly. He moved close to the shadowed corner. Talisman was standing there, carrying some kind of bundle in his arms. When Joe got close enough he saw it was the limp body of a young woman.

“The searchers will not find much, Joseph. I wanted to reassure you that things have turned out—much better than they might have. The world is as safe as can be expected.” There was no hint of mockery in Talisman’s voice.

“If you say so. What about her?”

“She goes with me, for tonight. You have my word she will be safe. But I must strengthen the merciful forgetting she has been blessed with by one more powerful than I. One whose art makes a semblance of neglect and abandonment around us now. I have seen marvels tonight, Joseph—yet I myself have some little skill in helping people toward forgetfulness.”

He glanced down at the young woman, who stirred, looked up at him. Then like a child she closed her eyes again.

“Who is she?”

“Margie Hilbert. But you will probably never hear her name again. I have told you, Joe, she will be safe.”

“Where’s Falcon? I mean the man who—”

“I know who you mean, Joseph. You will not find him. He will soon sleep again, in some retreat of his own devising. Which I myself would not try to find, even if I thought I could succeed. He will sleep, I think, until the founts of magic are recharged. A new day of the earth had dawned. The Sword is with him.”

“Wait…”

But Talisman and the woman were gone.