Dominion

by Fred Saberhagen

  Clear seeing indeed came from this wine. The others round the table were sipping their own assigned vintages. The talk was lively but not noisy; through it Simon could hear, barely audible, the hiss or a torch burning in a wall sconce. From outside there drifted in the sounds of low, distant thunder, the night-noises of insects and an occasional bird. A very occasional something else, perhaps. All this was not particularly reassuring, even though it was familiar. Even as a child Simon had spent most of his life in the city, and the country had never quite lost its strangeness to him, though he’d come to know his way around it well enough…

  A great howl, somewhere outside, made him open his eyes. Had that really come from a dog? But no one else appeared to have noticed it at all.

  “A small coin for your thoughts,” said Vivian beside him. She appeared totally relaxed now, the model of a relaxed and confident hostess, with nothing on her mind, for the moment, but chatting with one of her guests.

  “Sorry. You’d never guess. I was trying to remember my grandmother.” And it became true as he said it; that would have been the next turn his thoughts had taken. Today was for, among other things, probing his own past. His parents had died before he could start remembering them at all. That happened to a fair number of kids, sure, but… the more he looked back on his childhood, the more he realized its strangeness.

  “You’re right,” said Vivian calmly. “I mightn’t have guessed that. Was your grandmother fond of parties like this one?”

  The question struck Simon as supremely irrelevant. The odd thing about this party, as it had turned out, was that all the disparate guests appeared to be enjoying each other’s company more and more.

  Simon sighed, really trying to remember Grandmother now. A firm, sallow face. Nondescript gray hair, small frame. She’d died when Simon was away at his one year of college. He couldn’t remember having any important feelings when he heard the news. He chuckled. “I don’t know what Grandma thought about parties. I don’t know that the subject ever came up”

  Maybe she gave you birthday parties when you were little?” Vivian was probing, as if she were interested.

  “I guess. I guess they were routine, as those things go.” And now Simon noticed, without any particular surprise or concern, that Marge was not going to be the only exotically costumed entertainer of the evening. There were more acts than he’d been told about. Someone in an excellent, highly realistic toad costume was squatting in a corner, amid thick shadows at the far end of the great hall. Probably getting ready to do some kind of jester’s number as soon as he was noticed. Well, Simon wasn’t going to be the one to point him out to the other guests.

  “I don’t remember my parents at all, you see,” he explained to Vivian. “And I don’t know much about my aunt and uncle either, come to think of it, though I lived with them for a time.” Now stop it, he warned himself, you’re going to give your identity away.

  But Vivian only said: “Oh?” politely, and turned to speak to someone across the table.

  Now, how could she fail to identify him sooner or later as her own second cousin, or whatever the hell the exact relationship was supposed to be? The boy from across the river, the one she’d once let… but maybe she had as little inclination as he did to keep up with relatives—and old lovers. He hadn’t been the first for her, that in hindsight was obvious enough.

  Simon had never made any effort to keep up with relatives, or childhood friends. And now, whenever he tried to visualize any of the people he’d grown up among, their images came to the eye of memory with an odd, faded quality, like old photographs.

  Except, of course, for the image of Vivian herself.

  Now, on the other side of the table, the smooth rounds of Sylvia’s inflated breasts were more than half exposed to candlelight. Yet Simon had scarcely noticed, because Vivian sat beside him.

  The night-sounds of the surrounding countryside besieged the castle, came in through the narrow windows piercing the enormous thickness of the walls. The dinner went on. Thunder grumbled louder. If rain now drummed on the roof that was so far above, in here no one could hear it.

  Someone had just spoken to Simon, and he opened his eyes (when had he closed them again?) to see Vivian regarding him. The expression on her face was one of utter, almost worshipful intentness; and one of her little hands was raised in the shadow of a gesture, that must have been meant to warn some third person against interfering.

  Simon began to speak, in a loud, clear voice: “If we must find something, an obstacle to be removed, then the place to look for it is—” And having got that far he stopped, listening to himself in utter amazement, with no idea at all of what he had started to talk about.

  Vivian was leaning forward, concentrating so intensely on Simon that for the moment she seemed to have stopped breathing. The flicker of a reflected candle was the only motion in her eye. The folds of the shapeless kirtle did not stir across her breast.

  “Yes,” she urged Simon when he paused. “Where is it?” Her voice was quietly solemn.

  “I don’t know yet.” The answer felt like something forced from him. He had the feeling that it was true. Then he blinked and with an effort recovered something like normal control over his speech. “Sorry, what are we talking about?”

  Vivian sank back a little in her chair. Disappointment had struck her but she was very brave and still hopeful. “We’re having a party, Simon. We can just relax and talk as our thoughts lead us.”

  Thunder crashed again, this time even closer than before. A puff of wind somehow got into the great hall, to make the flames of torch and candle flicker. The dinner was almost completely cleared away by now.

  Wallis down the table imitated thunder, with a laugh. The imitation was not too well done, but everyone, except for the silent, frightened servitors, seemed to enjoy the effort, and some applauded. “Good night for some ghost stories,” Wallis told the table in a loud voice.

  It’s showtime, folks, thought Simon. Vivian was now looking at him keenly, as if to make sure that he recognized his cue. As he could hardly fail to do.

  Simon drew a deep breath, and tried to will himself back toward an ordinariness of mind and of perception. It was not to be, not now. But still he felt that he was ready to perform, more than merely ready. His vision was very clear, his hands supremely steady.

  He got to his feet smiling, silently running through the last items on his mental pre-performance checklist. He noted that the toad-costume was no longer to be seen. Good, no immediate competition. Establishing the proper atmosphere for magic? In tonight’s special setting that wasn’t going to be a problem; quite the opposite, in fact. He was going to have to be careful to keep it light.

  The servants, presumably at someone’s signal, had already ceased activities, and most of them were out of sight. All eyes were on Simon as he stood up.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, looking up and down the table. “Our charming hostess tells me that she’s expecting one more guest—” Vivian was nodding, smiling Tightly. “—and as on many occasions of this kind, when one more guest arrives, the hostess is somewhat upset to find that the balance of male and female guests has been upset.” Simon was ready here, should Vivian show the slightest sign of social distress, for the quick switch: But this is not one such occasion. There was no distress signal from her, and Simon moved smoothly on: “So I’m going to find out first what sex our impending visitor is. Vivian hasn’t told me. Am I right?”

  She nodded encouragingly. “Right.”

  “So my intention now is to summon up one of the fay, the fairies of the old world, to help us find out some more about this potential visitor. Maybe even to help him—or her—to find the way to get here.”

  Vivian, enthralled, was nodding with great intentness. This wasn’t at all the way that Simon had planned to open, but once he stood up the stunt had just seemed to suggest itself. He could see, as in a flash of inspiration, how it was going to work. If the visitor then failed to arrive,
Simon would have a way out; if he did arrive, so much the better. Marge was quick-witted, she’d pick up quickly on what he had in mind, and work along. “Would you all join hands, please?” Simon asked. “It’ll help the vibrations.”

  With merriment, and a minimum of delay, the folk at the table all brought themselves into a hand-joined circle. “Now I need just a little more room,” said Simon, backing away a few steps from the table. He was standing now, as he had planned, with his back only a few feet from the fireplace, to which another log had recently been added. The blaze was up moderately, and he could feel the warmth of it, welcome in the damp coolness of the castle’s interior night. He had another reason to be glad for having his back to the fire now; when he first stood up he’d started seeing faces, real faces, in the flames. He could do without that kind of a distraction just now.

  Simon’s audience would be seeing him backlighted now, but the firelight gave him a good look at their faces, and he noted with professional joy that they were receptive to whatever he was going to do. They watched him happily. They were already a little high on the wine, or whatever had been added to the wine. They were calmly certain that he was going to show them wonders. And indeed he was.

  The object that he meant soon to throw secretly into the fire was already concealed in Simon’s palm. Ten seconds, approximately, after he threw it in, the fire would flare up dramatically and in exotic colors. In that moment when everyone but Simon himself was looking at the fire, Marge would be able to slip through the dark hidden panel in the dim far wall of the great hall, and close the panel after her. She would have appeared in what looked like a doorless and windowless corner, inaccessible except by passing within a very few feet of the dinner table itself. Simon expected that the effect would be tremendous.

  But before he threw anything into the fire, he would puzzle the audience first with Margie’s voice, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

  He made wild passes with hands and arms, he rumbled his made-up words of magic, “Sprite of the woods and waters, princess of the summer night! I summon thee to questioning!”

  There was a quavery moan, from… somewhere. Oh, beautiful, Marge. Simon called out peremptorily: “Are you there? Answer me clearly, please!”

  “Simon… I’m here.” It was a very eerie voice, from very far away, from everywhere and nowhere. For a moment it even raised the hair on the back of Simon’s own neck.

  Vivian watched, calm but utterly intent. The rest of the people at the table marveled, more or less quietly.

  Simon called softly: “The guest that our hostess is expecting. Can you see him or her from where you are?”

  And the disembodied voice: “Yes, Simon. Yes.”

  “A man or a woman?”

  “A man.” Margie from her secret observation place had perhaps learned something; otherwise there would have been no need for her to be so positive.

  “Is he going to be able to join us here tonight?”

  “He will try.”

  Vivian did not take her eyes from Simon. The rest of the audience looked everywhere, under the table, up among the distant rafters, for the source of the voice. Simon heard someone mutter about ventriloquism.

  “Will he be here soon, do you think?”

  “Either he’ll be at the castle very soon… I think he will… tonight or tomorrow… or… if not soon, then never…”

  “And are you going to join us too?”

  “I’ll try… Simon.” There followed a soft, heartrending cry, from what sounded like an enormous distance. Oh beautiful, Marge! Beautiful!

  Simon faced the table. “Our sprite is going to try to join us. It will help if we all concentrate intensely. All of us, even the old gentleman up there on the wall. I’ve been watching him. Now if I were to tell you that

  I’ve seen the eyes of that portrait move, you’d tell me that I’ve been seeing too many horror movies.”

  And in beautiful obedience to suggestion, all eyes, even Vivian’s, swung together to regard the portrait high on the dim wall above Margie’s secret door. And in the second of time he had thus obtained for invisible action, Simon’s wrist flicked gently, tossing the object already in his hand behind him at the fire.

  He and Marge now had about ten seconds to wait, if all went well. If it didn’t, if his toss had missed the actual flames, then he’d have to distract the audience once more, and try again. But so far tonight everything was going so smoothly and so well that Simon was absolutely sure he hadn’t missed.

  And now while the count (five) was going on in his head (four), he kept the patter going (three): “To bring our guest among us, we call upon the powers ruling space and time, the strength of Astarte and Apollo, the oaths of Falerin—”

  Where had that last name come from? There was no time to wonder now, for behind Simon the fire whooshed up most satisfactorily, smothering his words. The faces round the table all swiveled right to left, tennis-watchers startled bright green in the eerie new glow of a conjurer’s chemistry set. Saul, under the surface of his mild surprise, still looked bored and worried; the man who called himself Reagan looked almost childlike in the openness of his wonder. Only Vivian’s gaze did not turn all the way to the fire, but came to rest again on Simon himself.

  This was the second of time in which Marge should be halfway through the panel. Simon of course was not looking toward the panel now, but it should be now, this very second—

  It struck like some monstrous aftershock from the puny stage-explosion in the fireplace. Ten thousand times as loud, it came with a deep crack sounding through the timbers overhead, and a simultaneous flat concussion of the stone floor, as if the castle’s foundation of bedrock had been struck by some earthgod’s hammer from below. All Simon’s sureness of body and mind was in an instant brushed away. From a corner of his eye he saw one, two, three of the fear-struck dinner servants vanish, go out like blasted candle-flames. Simon staggered on the vibrating floor and almost fell. Voices round the table, Vivian’s among them, were raised in fear and incomprehension. And now a brightness, a fishbelly glare the equal of midday, struck in upon them all from the place where the secret panel had been sealed into the wall.

  In the first instant of shock, that secret door had been burst from its hidden hinges. It spun now toward Simon as if hurled from some giant’s hand, and he watched it coming with the sense that everything in the world around him had been shifted to slow motion. There was a blast of wind, bearing a strange smell. Trying to dodge the flying door, his own body seemed capable only of very slow movement, feet stepping awkwardly and off balance.

  The door missed him, somehow. It missed everyone, to crash with splintering force against a distant wall.

  Vivian, breaking the hand-held circle, was on her feet, her arms spread wide, her head thrown back in what appeared to be a paroxysm of triumph. She looked past Simon, into the cold furnace of light beyond the once-secret doorway. Then she screamed a name.

  And now, from that glaring, howling world beyond the blown-in door, someone was trying to enter the great hall, someone very different indeed from Marge Hilbert. It was a man, tall and powerful, handsome and richly robed. The young and evil king of Simon’s afternoon dream. He was about to burst in and claim them all.

  And Hildy was screaming, on and on, in utter terror.

  FIFTEEN

  When the soldiers who held Talisman in charge at last received the necessary signal from inside the building, and motioned for him to go in alone, he found only four people waiting for him inside. The building was a great hall, built of timber and thatch, and no bigger than some of the bedroom suites would doubtless be in the reconstructed castle on the Sauk. Behind a long trestle table, three men and a woman sat perched upon tall stools, the nearest thing to thrones, probably, that could be found in the whole island. By now it was deep night. A fire in the clay hearth smoked the air, and there were a pair of torches. Stray gleams of light caught on the slender gold or silver circlets worn on the heads of all the four.r />
  No one spoke immediately. From the invading army camped about this building on all sides there drifted in some sentry’s call.

  Comorr the King—a king, rather, within a hundred miles of here you might find a dozen men calling themselves king of this or that—Comorr, Breton invader of what would one day be England, Comorr, mass murderer, bluebeard, sat watery-eyed and ineffectual-looking upon the highest stool, his by reason of claimed royal rank. He held a piece of fruit, on which he chewed with difficulty, as if his teeth were bad.

  At the right hand of Comorr there perched in fine robes the foul magician Falerin. In his countenance he was as handsome as a god, and there hung about him the sense of devilish evil. At the left of Comorr there sat Medraut, the bastard son of Artos. Medraut was short and burly, wearing fine chain mail, and though he was very young his eyes were a haggard pale blue, a traitor’s haunted eyes.

  At the other end of the row, at the right hand of the handsome magician Falerin, there perched the woman who was his aide in magic.

  As soon as talk began, it was apparent that there would be a language difficulty. The conversation proceeded only slowly back and forth, with many repetitions and rephrasings on both sides. Comorr for the most part only waited, listening, watching with watery eyes, gumming the fruit, content to let those who could apply a touch of magic to the translation do the talking. Medraut for the most part waited too, more dully.

  Talisman began by bowing to them all. “My Lords Comorr, Falerin, Medraut. My Lady—?”