Dominion

by Fred Saberhagen

  It was all the vampire’s fault, the goddam bloodsucker, the—but later he’d worry about the vampire.

  He gazed into his thumbnail at the young girl’s face. “Thanks for giving me the nice robe, pretty one,” he breathed, wheezing. “Now I have a little something for you in return. Send you something that you’ll find useful, where you are. That’s about all I can do for the moment. Later maybe I can do more. Now here it comes.”

  Hawk spoke the words of sending, and watched with satisfaction. Then he turned from the past and looked into the future, just a little. He marveled. And felt a deep and fundamental chill. The laws of magic were inexorable. It wasn’t only the girl’s life that was in jeopardy. It was his own as well.

  SEVENTEEN

  On her first night in the past, Marge tossed and turned on her straw pallet, and had bad dreams. Simon was calling her, from some vast distance, and she had to go back to him at once, but her arms and legs were paralyzed and it was impossible to move.

  “Are you there, Marge? Marge, answer me clearly please.”

  She couldn’t see Simon but his voice was coming to her clearly, drifting from beyond massive dream-walls and squat towers of timber and earth and stone. And there were also tall stone castle walls, and wooden screens of maze-like fretwork.

  “Simon, I’m here, I’m here.” Now Marge was able to stand, but the ground was very slippery and slid out from under her feet whenever she tried to move, and if she fell it would mean her total and eternal ruin. She had never wanted anything more than she now wanted to get back to Simon, and yet she knew that was impossible.

  His voice still drifted to her over parapets, under a starless sky. “Marge, I want to know about the guest that our hostess is expecting here. Can you see him from where you are?”

  Marge was about to call back no, when in dream fashion the question arranged its own answer. “Yes, Simon, yes,” Marge called instead. A presence was standing near Marge now, a man. He was dressed somewhat in the manner of the man of the village who had taken her in, only his clothes were richer than any of theirs. He was at least a head taller than the short leader who had questioned Marge. She could not really see the tall man’s eyes. His lightly bearded face was very handsome, but Marge could feel a sickness radiating from it like a glow of ugly light. The man moved past her, starting up the same slippery slope on which she struggled for a foothold. His hands were raised before him, holding things that she knew were magically powerful, though she could not see them clearly. He totally ignored Marge as he passed her.

  Simon’s next question came distantly: “Is it a man or a woman?”

  Whether it was a man or a devil was the only real question. Sickness and hatred played from it like the beam of a dark searchlight. But Marge had no way to cry a warning. It was as if she and Simon were performing a version of their mentalist act, but one in which the warning codes had been proscribed. She had no power of speech except to answer questions truthfully. “It’s a man,” her voice said carefully.

  Simon’s voice drifted to her again, in tones of careless ignorance. “Is the guest going to be able to join us here tonight?”

  Marge uttered a silent, agonized prayer that he could not. And the handsome man, as if he were able to read thoughts—or hear prayers—turned his face to her and now she could see his eyes. They rested on her only for a moment, but inside her skull a silent scream went up. Her voice, independent of her control, called calmly back to Simon: “He will try.”

  “When will he be here, do you think?”

  The slippery slope was not high. But near the top, opposition waited for the would-be guest. Out of a small mound, made of something Marge could not see clearly, there rose the broad, straight blade of a shining sword, topped by a cross-like ornate hilt. Light pulsed from the sword, and the jewels of its handle winked like small glowing eyes. The radiance of it forced back the man who tried to climb.

  Marge answered Simon: “Either he’ll be at the castle very soon… I think he will… tonight or tomorrow… or… he may never get there.”

  “And are you going to join us too?” Simon sounded so cheerful, so totally ignorant, that Marge felt her heart was going to break. She had opened her mouth to try once more to scream a warning in anger and despair, when a great soundless explosion tore the world of the nightmare to bits. She knew that this time the radiance of the Sword had repelled the man who tried to climb the hill of time, and she awoke sobbing with the relief that knowledge brought.

  Marge did not wake in her own bed, or even in her own world, but for the moment even being in an alien world did not matter. The part of the world she found herself in was bearable and livable; it was not yet a part of his domain.

  She was still in the building that housed the white-gowned women. On the second pallet in her small chamber her companion was still sound asleep. The nightworld around them was one of utter peace. Through the single window, too narrow for a man to enter, the moon looked in, nearly full and pale as cream. The small slice of the night sky that Marge could see was alive with stars.

  But she had only the briefest glance to spare for them. On the moonlit grass a few paces outside the window, a man was standing silently. Marge recognized Talisman with relief. What she had seen of him before suggested strange things indeed, but he still represented a link to her own world.

  Somewhere nearby a dog wined in its sleep, dreaming its own terrors. And Talisman, looking up and in at Marge, conveyed with an imperious motion of his hand that he wanted to be invited in.

  Marge glanced at her roommate, who was snoring faintly, then leaned forward close to the unglazed window. “Come in, if you can,” she whispered cautiously out into the moonlight. “But this window’s too small and I don’t see—”

  The figure standing on the grass vanished before her eyes. She had the sensation of a trailing garment brushing lightly across her eyes and forehead. As she turned her head in reaction to this she muffled a little cry. Talisman was standing in the middle of the small room, between the two straw beds.

  He bent down at once, to touch with two gentle fingers the forehead of the sleeper at Marge’s side. To Marge he said quietly: “She will not awaken now, if we are reasonably careful. What have you discovered?”

  “Discovered?”

  Talisman hissed impatiently. “I am making allowances for the shock you have experienced. But it would not do for you to abandon your brain to permanent paralysis. Our situation requires that we cooperate, whenever we are able. I have made an enemy of a deranged wizard of immense power. And your circumstance while not exactly similar, is near enough. On top of that, our real enemies will sooner or later notice us; or at least begin to take us seriously.”

  “Our real enemies?” Talisman sounded as if he were reasoning sanely, at least if you didn’t pay too much attention to what he was actually saying. And it gave Marge’s sanity a welcome boost, just to hear another human being calmly addressing her in English. Talisman intended to cooperate with her, and whatever else he might be, he was powerful. She was no longer alone.

  He nodded. “I have stood before them, within the hour, not many miles from this village. Comorr the Cursed, Medraut—and the wizard Falerin, the one most dangerous to us. I was able to speak a few words that they could understand, and I understood more than I allowed to show of what they said among themselves.” His eyes were fixed on Marge. “There is a woman there who… well, that is important, but no need to go into it now. I have come here to tell you that these evil folk are planning a military attack on this village. They hope to catch a certain leader here, away from the bulk of his army; with him out of their way, their conquest of the whole island will be easy, or so they think.”

  “The island?” Now stop echoing, Marge told herself fiercely; it sounds so dumb.

  Talisman informed her softly. “We are in what is called, in our own time, Britain. I thought you had grasped that much at least.”

  “I knew I’d landed in… someplace different. I can�
��t understand the language of these people at all, and they don’t speak mine, so we just haven’t been able to communicate. Look, we’re a long time in the past, aren’t we? From where we ought to be?

  Talisman nodded gravely.

  “I thought so.” Marge quickly outlined what had happened to her since her arrival, then added her speculations on the white-garbed women, and on the building they were in. “So what do we do now? I have no intention of spending the rest of my life here.”

  “My own sentiments exactly; I rejoice that we are in agreement. Our situation as I see it is dangerous indeed, but far from hopeless. These matters of magic have their own logic, you understand, even as dreams do. When we have grasped the logic of the situation, we ought to be able to do something to help ourselves.”

  “Great.”

  He nodded briskly. “You cried out in your sleep just now, before you woke. You were dreaming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe your dream, please. It could be of great importance.”

  Marge told him of the slippery hill, and of the voice of Simon that had drifted to her from somewhere beyond it. She described as well as she could the evil man, and his losing conflict with the Sword.

  Talisman listened carefully, nodding. “The hill is of course, among other things, an obvious pun on your friend’s name. But the evil young man, as you call him—I wish you could show me a photograph. Never mind, I think I know him anyway. The Sword thwarts him, do you see. Perhaps the Sword is also the key to our passage home.”

  “God, if you can think of some way to get us home…” Marge leaned forward, putting her hand on Talisman’s arm; beneath his sleeve it felt as hard as wood. “Speaking of swords, yesterday the men here were forging something. At least there was a lot of hammering on metal, just after I arrived.”

  “Ah.” Talisman’s eyes were fixed on her in speculation, and what she hoped was new hope. “If the Sword itself were forged here yesterday, that would provide the connection, the logic of magic that we need to find. If—” He broke off suddenly, with his head cocked listening. His raised hand held Marge silent.

  She listened as hard as she could. In a few seconds the still night air brought her the sound of hurried hoofbeats, as of a single animal running at a fast pace.

  The sound grew closer rapidly. There was a new uproar among the village dogs. Presently an exhausted horse with a youth riding bareback came cantering up to halt among the buildings.

  “Hello the village! Men of Artos!” the youth cried out. In Marge’s state of mixed excitement and weariness it took her a few seconds to realize, with mixed feelings, that she could understand him perfectly, though he was speaking in the same tongue that she had listened to uncomprehendingly for hours before she fell asleep.

  Armed men were running out of huts and houses to confront the messenger, demanding to know his name. Talisman, frowning, started to say something, but it was now Marge’s turn to gesture him to silence. “Wait,” she ordered. “Let me listen. I can understand them now.”

  For the first time she saw Talisman truly surprised. “You can? What do they say?”

  “The messenger says there is an enemy army advancing—he gives names, the same ones you mentioned, Comorr, Falerin, Medraut the Traitor. Everyone here in the village is going to have to pack up and run right now, without waiting for morning. To something called the Strong Fort, wherever that is.”

  EIGHTEEN

  In the ears of Simon Hill that last scream of Hildy’s seemed to go on echoing endlessly. The echoes escaped the castle, they fled down corridors outside of time, passages that he had not known existed. The blast that provoked the scream drove Simon to his knees, his face averted from the small, broken little doorway that had once been secret, through which the sickly light now poured into the great hall. At last that pale glare abated. And at last the inward echoes of that scream faded to a tolerable level.

  Then Simon could raise his eyes. When his gaze fell on the fireplace he saw again the faces in the flames. The faces were even more distorted now, as if they writhed in pain.

  So for him there was to be no easy escape, no calm pretense that magic did not exist. He’d tried that for most of his life, and it wasn’t going to work. In a way, he was almost glad.

  He made himself look back toward the doorway that had once led to a secret passage. The bizarre light that had come pouring out of it was fading steadily, was now almost gone. The wind that had seemed to blow through it from another world had dwindled to a faint draft, was hardly more than imaginary now.

  Marge was in there, somewhere. At least she had been there. He, Simon, had got her into this, pretending to himself that no real danger existed here at the Castle. Feeling responsible, he rose unsteadily to his feet and moved toward the little doorway, a jagged opening now with stones and wood torn from its edge. He glanced in passing at the group still gathered round the dinner table, a few steps to his right. Some were still seated, looking stunned, some now stood beside their chairs. Voices rose in a moaning jumble. Someone was muttering something about lightning. And now Vivian’s voice was speaking, plainly, loudly, reasonably, enforcing calm. But a few moments ago she had been screaming too, Simon was sure or it. Just before Hildy’s outburst, Vivian had screamed in hopeless agony, something that might have been a name. A word that sounded like Falerin.

  Simon faced forward again, toward the shattered wall. What was that howling that he could hear now, coming from outside the castle? Wolves, in the 1980s, in Illinois?

  Reaching the blasted doorway, Simon supported himself in it numbly, with a hand on either side gripping the edges of the broken wooden screen. It sank in on him now that the door had been literally blown away, as if by a charge of high explosive. Traces of strange odors reached his nostrils. He put his head forward, into the passage.

  When he looked down the narrow, stone-walled passage to his left, what little the darkness let him see appeared normal. But to his right, the darkness and the light were both different. There was brightness, somewhere in that direction, but the source of light, whatever it was, was far off now and still receding. A faint but savage howling persisted, as of a remote wind. Simon wondered, with a sudden chill, if it could be a man’s voice that made that noise, if a human voice could be distorted so by superhuman agony and hatred.

  Even as Simon watched and listened, the light and the sound continued to recede. There was no clue in the passage of Marge, or indeed, except for the distant howling, of any living thing.

  A hand fell on Simon’s shoulder, startling him. From the touch there flowed into his body a trickle of some force that felt like electricity. He turned, knowing he would see Vivian. Her eyes looked into his.

  “The roof may have been struck by lightning,” she said quietly. Her tone shared with him the knowledge of how widely that statement missed being a real explanation. “So I’m going up to take a look. I wish you’d come along.”

  “Sure,” said Simon automatically. He paused to look around the great hall, where the flames of torch and candle were once more burning peacefully upright. The vanished servants had not reappeared.

  The Wallises, he standing behind his wife’s chair, were clutching at each other’s hands in shock. Emily Wallis’ face was white and she looked ill. Saul, his expression that of a man who has been through all this before, was also trying to comfort and calm his wife; Hildy was quiet now, but silent sobs still racked her sturdy body as she clung to her husband. Thin Sylvia stood alone, studying the others as if for some clue as to what her own behavior ought to be. Arnaud was nowhere to be seen, nor was the man who had been introduced as Reagan.

  “This way.” Like a guide conducting a private tour of some disaster, Vivian led Simon diagonally across the great hall toward the elevator. He let himself be led. But he was gathering his determination.

  “What happened?” Simon asked when they were alone in the elevator, going up, and Vivian had released his arm.

  “I don’t want to te
ll you what happened, Simon. Instead I want you to tell me what you saw.”

  “I saw…” He broke off, swallowing. “Vivian, wait.”

  “Tell me what you saw.” Her voice had become a coaxing caress.

  “Listen. I want you to tell me a few things first. I’m missing about three hours out of this afternoon. I want you to explain that. I feel sure you can. And then tell me what we’re going to do about Margie.”

  Vivian seemed to find it hard to believe that he could be so difficult and argumentative. “All right, Simon. We had to help you to your room this afternoon and put you to bed. You arrived here in a confused state. It’s not the first time in your life, I’m sure, that your special powers have given you a hard time. But now you are with those who want to help you.”

  “Special powers?”

  “Let’s not go on pretending. Yes, special powers.”

  He sighed. “All right. No more pretending. But about Marge, my helper. The girl you saw working with me at the dinner theater. She was here, hidden in that passageway. She was going to pop out; that was the big effect I had planned, why I was going through all that mumbo-jumbo with the fireplace. I think you knew all along that she was in there. Where is she now? What’s happened to her?”

  “Yes, Simon dear, I knew.” Vivian took him by a hand, which suddenly lacked strength to pull away. “Not quite soon enough, unfortunately. So there’s been some trouble. But we’ll do what we can to get Marge out of it. Just as soon as you’ve finished helping me in what I want.”

  “Marge…”

  “As soon as you’ve finished helping me.” Vivian patted his hand firmly.

  Simon had made his effort. There was only so much of an effort that he could make. Now he obediently forgot—whatever it was that Vivian wanted him to forget. He went back to the moments in which his act had started to go wild, and told Vivian what he had seen and experienced then. She listened, hanging on his words as if she thought them of great importance.