Dominion

by Fred Saberhagen

  “I have to do this,” Vivian told him in a whisper, and her voice was altered, diffident, almost apologetic. She lay down in the bottom of the boat, which was now conveniently furnished with a mattress and white sheets. Then, “Take off your trunks,” in the same odd pleading whisper, at the same time whisking off her own bikini top. The breasts revealed were all wrong, were large and pale and soft, but Simon obeyed, and thrust his body toward her. He had no choice now, if he had ever had.

  The frightened face below his was not Vivian’s, but that of the girl from the antique shop, and they were in a bedroom, on a bed. Simon saw this but nothing he saw affected what he had to do. He crouched atop the female and entered her, just as the bed that was once more a boat began to sink in a vast pool of blood, red rivulets running in from every side across the stark white sheets.

  Now they were struggling on the flat stone altar in the court before the grotto. Seed pumped from him in dull mechanical spasms. When he was empty he rolled from the female onto the altar’s flat, cold stone, sticky where small pools and maculations of blood were drying. The stone squeaked like bedsprings. Simon knew that now the blood was on him too, and for the first time he grew aware of a ring of watchers, of evil beings who now had him firmly in their power…

  …and the door to the grotto was a prison door in truth, with a host of victims caged behind it. One by one, they were being led forth by strange beings, led to the stone altar and a death of horror. They were young and old, male and female, some in rags, some richly dressed, some in the clothing of centuries long past. Some were innocent, some deep in blood as were the sacrificers themselves.

  A young man with a face of perfect beauty and evil watched from a central throne nearby, and Vivian stood by his side. She was arrayed now in the costume of a queen, and her face wore a queen’s haughtiness. Saul, at the age of twelve, in jester’s cap and bells, sat cross-legged at Vivian’s feet, a wooden sword in his hand, staring solemnly at Simon. Old Gregory, in medieval costume, led a young girl victim forth and bit her in the neck. Another old man, horrible of countenance, stood beside the smoking altar which was empty now, and waited for the next victim to be brought. All round the altar blood-drained corpses lay.

  The sword in the executioner’s hand was smoking, dripping, reeking…

  The sword…

  Swords, for there were more than one…

  Came interruption. A resonance of light, a calling back and forth between the blades of light and darkness, like trumpets of opposing armies. The calling altered everything, unseated evil that had held the world in undisputed bondage. The evil young king rose up roaring, and Vivian had to shield her eyes. The watchers broke their circle, scattering. The victims who could still move fled, some hobbling on mutilated limbs. Only Simon, who drifted disembodied now, was able to see perfectly, not dazzled by the sword of light or blinded by the blade of evil darkness. I can always see , he thought,better than anyone else. It seemed a profound truth.

  * * *

  And then, for a time, he was nonexistent in pure nothingness again.

  * * *

  He was lying flat on his back, in what felt like a bed. He could tell from the feeling of air passing gently over his body that he was completely naked; but thank God, thank God, there was no stickiness of blood. Or of sex either, for that matter.

  A dream. Of course. Only a dream.

  I can always see better than anyone else. He had to hang on to that much of it at least.

  There came faintly, from somewhere in the distance, the notes of some stringed instrument, one by one, as if being plucked out by a beginning player. The halting melody had a medieval sound to Simon.

  Where the hell was he?

  Simon opened his eyes. Then he lay for a moment without moving, staring at his surroundings in blank puzzlement. He was alone in the bedroom he had dreamed about, or a room that much resembled it. Stone walls were only partially concealed by paintings and rich tapestries. The single tall, narrow window pierced an outer wall at least four feet thick, the high ceiling was of vaulted stone. Simon recognized at once that he was in one of the many bedrooms of the castle; he was not sure if he had ever been in this particular room before, nor had he the faintest memory of how he had got here now.

  Or why… but no, of course, he and Marge had come here to give a performance. Hadn’t they?

  And then he’d found an old man, bound naked and unconscious on a medieval torture-rack…

  Simon sat bolt upright in the antique-looking bed, the motion making the bedsprings squeak. Where had reality stopped, where had dreams begun? He was awake now. If he couldn’t feel sure of that, he might as well give up on everything. Yes, he was awake.

  He thought that the last episode of reality before this had been himself struggling in the grip of some skillful, powerful attacker, an arm at his throat choking off his wind. The fantastic sight of the old man bound, then the attack, and then…

  Simon looked about him. He was sitting on a bed, with covers turned neatly down, in a well-appointed bedroom. All the furniture he thought was modern, though in an expensive style suggesting the antique. Faintly, from somewhere in the distance, the notes of the stringed instrument still sounded.

  On a chair beside the bed his clothing was disposed, half-carelessly, just as he would have left it before stretching out for a nap—except he would ordinarily have retained his undershorts. On the cool stone floor beside the chair sat his overnight bag, the one he remembered leaving in his car parked on the other side of the river.

  Simon raised exploring fingers to his neck. He could swallow and breathe without pain or difficulty. He could feel a slight soreness in his neck muscles when he pressed them. It seemed a very inadequate proof of having been choked into unconsciousness.

  There was a mirror on the dresser and Simon got off the bed and went to it and examined the image of his muscular body. There were no bruises or scratches evident, no sign that he had ever been attacked.

  Simon didn’t usually take his wristwatch off if he was just stretching out for a rest, but now it was lying on the dresser. It said six forty-seven. The last time he could remember looking at it, it had read a little after three, three twenty, maybe. That had been just before he’d left Margie in the secret passage.

  “My God, Marge,” Simon breathed aloud. He quickly looked about him, at the walls. This was not one of the rooms into which the secret passage opened. He really had left Margie in the tunnel, hadn’t he? He could remember doing so—just as clearly as he remembered, for example, an old man strapped on a rack.

  He turned back to the chair where his clothes were and began mechanically to dress. Think, try to think. He’d left Margie in the passage, according to plan. Then he’d passed through the dark tunnel again, turned aside at the descending branch limned with faint torchlight. And then that crazy scene in the—the dungeon, including the attack. Then the dream. Then this. Leaving the dream aside, no part of it seemed any more or less real than any other part.

  Six forty-eight. Outside the window it was still broad, warm daylight on a long June afternoon, or evening.

  Somehow, someone must have admitted him to this house, conducted him in some manner to this room.

  Still, in his memory, only the strange dream, more than half forgotten now, intervened between the attack on him in the dungeon, and this room. He had dreamed of embracing Vivian, and she had turned into the young girl from the antique shop.

  Simon was zipping up his pants when someone tapped at his room’s door. Feeling half alarmed and half relieved, he went to open the door a cautious crack, having to unlatch it first from the inside.

  Gregory was standing outside, in the stone-vaulted hallway that Simon’s memory told him he had last seen fifteen years ago. The dignified-looking man was dressed, or costumed, in a loose brown tunic, long hose to match, and vaguely pointed shoes or slippers that looked as if they might be made of felt.

  “Did you have a good rest, sir? Most of the other guests
are here now. Miss Littlewood sent me to tell you that you’ll just about have time for a swim before cocktails, if you wish.”

  “Er—thank you.” As far as Simon could judge, who was no expert, Gregory’s costume looked authentic. He’d brought his own, of course, packed in his bag. “Gregory, did you happen to notice what time it was

  when I arrived?”

  Gregory blinked. “Why, no sir, I really didn’t. I suppose it must have been about two hours ago.”

  “I suppose… oh, and Gregory?”

  The man had been in the act of turning away. “Sir?”

  “Any word from my assistant?” Simon congratulated himself on having phrased that rather cleverly.

  “Not to my knowledge, sir.” And for just a moment Simon had the impression that Gregory might be offering himself the same kind of congratulation.

  “Thank you. Tell Miss Littlewood I’ll be right down for a swim.”

  Simon closed the door, and turned round once more to face the enigmatic room. There was his bag, there were the clothes he had been wearing. He crossed the room, and looked out and down from the window as well as he was able; the view was restricted by the narrowness of the window embrasure and the thickness of the wall it pierced. The remodeling installation had provided the window with a wooden sash and glass panes, the wood painted gray to almost match the stonework of the wall. The window was open about a foot to the warm weather, and Simon lifted it higher, putting out his head and shoulders; there was no screen.

  Probably screens against insects hadn’t been considered necessary this high above the ground. He was at about the ordinary fifth-floor level, he guessed now, looking down. His restricted view was of the paved area just in front of the garage; the garage of course had been built of the same stone as the rest of the castle, but still looked awkwardly anachronistic.

  Among the three or four automobiles that were parked in his field of view, he recognized his own.

  His car keys were in the pocket of his pants.

  He shrugged, took off the pants again, and left them on the chair. Then he stripped completely and got the swim trunks out of his bag and put them on, noting in passing, as if the fact were of some significance, that they were not green. From the private bath attached to his guest room Simon grabbed one of the huge, plentifully supplied towels. At the door to the hallway he paused; he didn’t have a key to this room, and he hesitated just briefly at the idea of leaving his things in it unlocked. Then he smiled at what, in the circumstances, struck him as a ridiculous concern.

  He had to make contact, as soon as possible, with Margie. If she was still in the secret passage, and all was well, then he was going to have to make a medical appointment for himself next week, and talk to someone about hallucinations. If, on the other hand, she wasn’t…

  The hallway outside Simon’s room was medieval in most of its materials, but not at all in its plan, if Simon’s hazy ideas about real castles were at all accurate. On one side of the hall, a row of doors led probably to rooms much like the one in which he had awakened. On the other side, a balcony railing of wood and stone guarded a drop of forty feet or so to the stone paving of the main entry room on the ground floor; this was not the room that Simon thought of as the great hall, but one almost as large. It was dim down there, from lack of windows, and flames glowed on candle and on torch. He still had not the faintest memory of coming up this way today.

  Now he had to locate one of the connections to the secret passage, and try to signal Marge. Here was a door that puzzled him at first, until he realized it must be that of an elevator, discreetly almost hidden. He thought that some of the other rooms that he was passing on his way to the descending stair must connect to the secret passage. But most of their doors were closed, and the one that was ajar showed someone’s luggage on a bed. He wasn’t going to chance entering any of them right now.

  A young man Simon didn’t recognize, dressed just about as Gregory had been, in what was evidently servant’s garb, passed Simon in the hallway. Simon nodded and smiled, getting only the faintest of responses. It struck him that if everyone were really dressed in the style of six hundred years ago there might be problems in distinguishing fellow guest from worker. And he wasn’t really accustomed to dealing with servants anyway, he hadn’t had that many invitations to the homes of the really rich.

  Anyway, outfit of towel and swimsuit would presumably signal guest. Arrayed in his own leisure-class uniform, Simon reached the broad curving stairs, and padded down them. The feel of their stones under his bare feet evoked memories again. But he’d had all he wanted of memories for now. But in a moment he was probably going to see Vivian…

  The stair passed an intermediate floor, whose rooms Simon recalled only hazily, and of which he could see almost nothing now. The ground floor rose to him round the next curve of stair, the natural persistent coolness of its great rooms grateful today. Here were the candles he had seen from above, set about on tables and sideboards, in rooms so vast that almost any furniture would have left them feeling empty. Flame flickered also in the fireplace of the great hall, which he now entered. The roasting that he and Margie had observed from inside the secret passage had evidently been completed, though the rich odor of it still hung in the air, assuring him that he had not imagined everything. The motor-driven pit had been dismantled and except for a few tiny flames the logs had burned down to a bed of glowing charcoal.

  The sound of the stringed instrument that he had heard upstairs was plainer now, coming from some room not far away. The effect was somehow distractingly beautiful.

  Modernity intruded again, this time in the form of splashing sounds, from outside but not far away; the pool was in use as announced. Simon had just turned toward the wooden screenwork covering one end of the great hall, behind which the secret passage burrowed, and Margie presumably waited silently, when he was stopped by the sight of a painted portrait. The picture was mounted on the screen itself, and so of course had been invisible earlier when he had looked out from behind the screen. It showed a middle-aged, powerfully glaring man; and Simon was sure it hadn’t been there fifteen years ago, the last time he remembered entering this room.

  It stopped him for a moment, but the need to contact Margie dominated. Still facing the screen, as if he were studying the portrait, he raised one hand, brushing momentarily at the hair behind his right ear—and saw at once the answering wink of Margie’s penlight through the screen.

  Relief was intense. Being still alone in the room, Simon could allow himself a great unburdening sigh of it. Amnesia and hallucinations were bad, but not as bad as the fear that reality had turned treacherous on him. He allowed himself also a smile and wink toward Margie.

  As he turned away, his eye was caught once more by the portrait. Its glaring subject was dressed stylishly in the fashion of the late nineteenth century. Simon had last seen him holding a dark sword in his hand, as he stood beside a bloody altar.

  EIGHT

  As soon as Simon had left her alone in the secret passage, a little after three o’clock, Margie put her shoulder bag down on the dusty floor, with the silent hope that nothing was going to crawl into it. Actually the risk didn’t seem great. The passage was basically free of vermin, as far as she had been able to see, except for those few spider webs near the entrance. It wasn’t really dirty except for the inevitable layer of floor dust. This dust was thin in most places, and had been untrodden everywhere until she and Simon had left their tracks in it.

  A faint, unidentifiable sound was coming from somewhere now, doubtless from deep in the house. Marge reacted by looking through a spyhole again, into the nearest bedroom. The room was well furnished in a sort of pseudo-antique style, and there was no sign that anyone was currently using it. She guessed that a door in one wall, standing ajar, led to a private bath. It would be great to be able to nip in through the secret panel and use the can, but there was no evidence that the bedroom was going to remain unoccupied for the next two minutes. Things wer
en’t desperate yet.

  Marge sighed, and removed her eye from the peephole, and looked up and down the dark passage as well as she could without using the flash. She wished for a chair. Somehow she felt reluctant to sit, even in her utilitarian jeans, on the old dust of this floor. She supposed that in a few hours she’d change her mind and stop being so finicky.

  She wished she knew how she was going to spend the next four or five hours or more, until performance time. She wished there were a ladies’ room available.

  Well, she might be able to do something about that difficulty, if she were to scout around a little. When people designed elaborate secret passages, it seemed possible that they might design some kind of secret comfort facilities in. If not she could always come back here and risk the secret panel. Marge really didn’t want to do that, though. She could imagine herself pushing the panel open, while unseeable against its inner surface there stood a little table holding a priceless something-or-other. Probably a vase. Crash, and then an interesting social situation. No, she would explore some other possibilities first.

  In a moment Marge had shouldered her bag again, and was creeping as silently as possible back along the passage in the direction from which she and Simon had ascended. Simon had said there were panels opening into two of these bedrooms, and the others were open to hidden observation. She wondered if she and Si were going to be put up in any of these rooms. Yep, the old guy who had imported and rebuilt this place had been a little kinky, all right. At best, he’d nourished a fondness for a kind of humor Margie didn’t appreciate. She wondered how the heirs, when they learned about the secret passage, would take the revelation of the sort of guy Grandpa had been. Or, could she and Simon do the act so well that the existence of the passage still wouldn’t be suspected? That would be a real achievement. Possibly they could. They were good, as good as anyone, Marge thought, when things were going right.