Dominion

by Fred Saberhagen

  “The magician.”

  “The… you are with him?” The man’s voice held urgency and disbelief.

  “Yes. Simon—Simon the Great. We’re supposed to be putting on a show here this evening. But then I saw…” It was hopeless, thought Marge. Where could she start?

  “Ah. A show.” Her questioner relaxed somewhat. Now he moved closer, until he loomed tall at her side. His eyes were dark, yet she could see them very plainly in the gathering night. She felt unable to do more than wait, in mental and physical exhaustion, for whatever might happen next.

  “Yes,” the tall man said at last. “I believe you. Stage magic.” His wound did not seem to be bothering him at all. In the darkness Marge couldn’t see whether it was still bleeding or not. “Stage magic,” he repeated. “And yet I sense great power near you, connected with you. It dwells in, flows from, one you have touched recently… this stage conjurer that you speak of. Is he up there now?” Talisman motioned with his unwounded arm toward the top of the bluff.

  The thought of Simon still up there in the castle, in danger from God knew what, was enough to restore some of Margie’s energy. “Yes, at least he was there a few minutes ago. I don’t know what’s going on, but— ” She paused for a deep breath. “You see, there’s a kind of a tunnel up there. A secret passage. And I was in it, looking around, and I found this old man trapped, tied up—”

  “An old man? Very old?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. He’s in a—well, it’s a dungeon. He was strapped down on this device. Then another man—” Marge paused, looking around her. “There was another man here, a black man. He chased me down here from the castle, along with the—the animal.”

  “We shall perhaps hear from the black man and the animal again. Or from their associates. But meanwhile I think we have a few minutes to ourselves; let us use them wisely. It is important that I see this old man you speak of. Is he truly in a dungeon?” It seemed that Talisman would be only mildly surprised if it were so.

  “He is. I saw him. But we have to go somewhere and get help.”

  Talisman looked around at the dark woods, the leaden, rolling sky, as if he were keenly interested in the weather, or listening carefully for some particular sound. “Getting help, Marge, at this stage, would be even more difficult than you imagine.”

  “At this stage? Stage of what?”

  “I shall explain when there is time. First lead me to the dungeon.” The words were delivered with a commanding gesture.

  Long ago Marge had learned, or decided, that there were some people who could be argued with and others who couldn’t. She realized already that this man was definitely in the second category. She could run away from him (or could she?) and spend the rest of the night probably stumbling exhaustedly around the countryside; she didn’t think she had the strength left to get herself across the river. And she didn’t want to waste what little she had left in argument.

  “Trust me, Margie Hilbert.”

  Somewhat to her own surprise, Marge found that she was inclined to do so. With a weary nod she turned and once more started slowly up the trail, this time not bothering to pretend a limp. The silence behind her remained absolute, and she had to turn her head to make sure that Talisman was following her. To her surprise he was only two steps back. Another lightning flash revealed a great bloodstain drying on his dark shirt, which was torn near neck and shoulder; otherwise there was no indication that he had been hurt at all. His steady, eerily silent movement gave an impression of great strength.

  “Go on.” Talisman’s eyes prodded her impatiently along.

  Marge turned and climbed. Gradually she moved faster, feeling a compulsion to get this—whatever “this” was, exactly—over with. The remainder of the ascent was silence, and mosquitoes, and an occasional spatter of rain.

  Not until they had reached the deserted grotto did she pause again. The barred door of rusted iron hung open as she, or perhaps her pursuers, had left it. She pointed to indicate the way.

  “I see,” said her companion. Then he stood back for a moment, looking over the situation, peering straight up the bluff and then to right and left as if he could see perfectly well in darkness. “Then it is not a true dwelling,” he said. “Not here, at least. Let me try whether I can enter here uninvited.”

  At least those were the words Marge thought she heard. By now she had about given up hope of anything this evening making sense.

  Talisman stood in front of the iron door and bent his head. And there, to Margie’s troubled vision, he seemed to disappear. A moment later she was aware of his figure standing just inside the cave. “Come,” he urged her softly.

  Fatalistically she followed orders. Otherwise she’d have to turn away to run and stumble through woods and mosquitoes again, listening for pursuing feet; she still wasn’t ready to try that again. So she moved forward, groping after Talisman, one hand on his back for guidance. He moved through the tunnel at a good pace, as if he now knew just where he was going. The only sounds that Marge could hear were those of her own soft-soled shoes, and her own faint breathing.

  Before Marge had quite realized how quickly they were progressing, they were at the branching passage and turning down it. From here on guidance was provided by faint, flickering torchlight and continued groans. Now Marge could see that the door to the dungeon room stood wide open.

  The room was as she had first seen it, occupied only by the old man still on the rack. His left arm, the one that she had freed, now moved with little brushing motions across his chest, as if conscious, he were trying to reach his other bonds.

  Talisman took two paces into the dungeon and stopped momentarily. Muttered speech, full of outrage, burst from him in some foreign tongue. Marge paused, watching warily, as Talisman stepped quickly forward again. The three remaining straps opened their stubborn buckles to three quick flicks of his fingers. The old victim’s limbs, freed, contracted.

  And now the eyes of the victim opened at last. Hooded still by age-carved lids, their cloudy gray-blue was the color of sky between storms. Still half dazed and on the brink of terror, the old man uttered guttural sounds. He raised himself on his elbows and looked around him in bewilderment.

  Talisman moved a long pace back from the rack, to stand beside Marge. Then, even as the freed man on the rack edged himself on his elbows farther from his deliverers, half-snarling at them in fear, Marge was astounded to see her tall companion go down on one knee, facing the old one.

  “Maistre,” murmured Talisman softly. At least it sounded like that to Marge: one foreign word, of French or Latin probably.

  The old man wheezed in chest and throat. He hawked up phlegm, and spat it toward a corner, all without taking his eyes from Talisman. He said at last: “Don’t gimme any of that crap.” The words came out in a weak gargle, and yet the dominant impression that they conveyed was of force.

  Each breath in the old man’s throat was a wheezing rasp, evidently accelerated by fear. His eyes remained fixed on Talisman—they had identified importance. The old man’s arms and legs, now that they were freed, looked as much muscular as they were fat. And now that he had turned on his side, his belly bulged paunchily, matted like his chest with gray-brown hair. Ample maleness, half hidden in the heaviest fur, had something about it that struck Marge as somehow peculiar—the old man was uncircumcised, she realized. And she almost blushed, to have taken notice of such a thing at a time of death and danger. She felt as if some mischievous power had forced her to do so.

  Talisman had risen to his feet and was waiting silently. At last the old man spoke to him again. “Who the hell are you? I thought you was some butcher, when you come after me on the street.”

  In the guttering torchlight, the dried blood on Talisman’s shirt might have been no more than shadows. His voice now sounded proud, offended, and yet constrained to remain respectful. “You must realize now that when I sought you on the street I meant no harm. I sensed that a worthy master, a man of great stature, was nearb
y and needed help. In honor I could do no less than try to find you. I would have offered service, but I was prevented from recognizing you there. Your own powers prevented—”

  “Service, shit!” The words came in a double snort, of what sounded like contempt and wonder mingled.

  Talisman’s voice rose briefly louder, to override an objection that was in itself too contemptible to deserve a more direct reply. “I would not offer unsought help to many now alive. Understand that. I have been prince, in my own land. And I am now—what I am. If your powers could hide you from me on the city streets, then of the strength of your powers I am sure. As I am sure that once you had nobility. And that you are now the prisoner of the scum who hold this house above us.”

  “Sonovabitch,” the old one said. He spoke in a milder voice, as if he were impressed despite himself by Talisman’s ringing speech. “Look,” he began a reasonable tone. Then he paused to consider his own nakedness, to look at Margie, and at the room around him. He seemed to come fully awake now for the first time. “ ’Scuse my foul mouth, little one. What’ve they done with me? But I’m still alive. Still alive.”

  Talisman answered him. “What has been done to you, maistre, I can only conjecture. But truly the powers that did it must have been formidable.”

  “Whatinell you mean?”

  “I mean that I cannot accept your rejection of my service. Not until I know that you make it knowingly, and free of all enchantment.”

  That last word seemed to Marge to hang echoing in the dim dungeon air. Antment antment antment. She no longer felt able to pass any judgement on what made sense and what did not. She waited for what might happen next.

  The old man was looking at first one of them and then the other, meanwhile muttering as if in calculation. Then he shook his head, as a man might who was indeed trying to clear it of some spell.

  “Dunno what you mean.” His voice rose. “Where’s my friggin’ clothes?” And now his eyes were fixed on Marge, as if perhaps she ought to be in charge of wardrobe. The old man’s whiskers were pure vaudeville decoration, sticking out in all directions. His whiskers and his hairy paunch almost succeeded in making him a complete joke, a comic satyr strayed from some ancient Roman stage. Almost, not quite, because there were his eyes. Blue-gray eyes, hard-looking inside their baggy lids. They had not blinked often, those eyes, even when the aged body had cringed in fear, and they contained something frightening.

  For a moment Marge could only stare back in fascination. Talisman meanwhile spread his hands, a weary, exasperated gesture, and turned to look into the corners of the room, where almost perfect darkness reigned. And where there seemed to be no clothes to be discovered.

  Marge felt a sudden urge to do something, anything, to solve the problem. “Wait,” she said, and turned and hurried out of the chamber and into the narrow ascending tunnel. As she ran she pulled out her little flashlight from her ruined costume’s pocket. In a moment its beam had found her shoulder bag, waiting on the floor just where she’d left it. Looping the strap over her shoulder she hurried back to the dungeon, meanwhile rummaging in the bag. As she rejoined the men, she was pulling from the bag a garment of thin but closely woven brown cloth. Marge had got this from her costumer, whose idea it was of what a medieval jongleur ought to wear. She had brought it along as an alternate costume for herself, in case the gauzy materialization outfit—what a total loss that was now—should at the last moment prove unworkable or inappropriate.

  When she extended the robe to the old man, he at once hopped down from his awkward wooden couch, demonstrating in the process that he was very little taller than she. He grabbed the offered garment from Marge’s hands and pulled it on over his head. Somehow she had assumed that the effect was going to be bizarre, a hairy old man in a dress, and somehow it was not. The bright, meaningless symbols that decorated the cloth suddenly seemed to acquire a potential significance. The ancient knotted the robe’s simple tie at his waist, and stood before them in new dignity.

  To Marge he absently muttered something foreign, that she supposed might have been a thank you. When he spoke to Talisman it was no longer as a cowering derelict, though fear was still audible in his voice. “Whadda you think they want with me? The ones who brought me here?”

  “To the best of my belief,” Talisman told him calmly, “they intend to use you as the next in a series of human sacrifices.”

  Unconsciously Marge had retreated from both men. Her back was now against the stones of the dungeon wall. And a part of her mind, having now recovered somewhat from the terror of the beast, was trying to tell her that she ought to believe none of this. That this talk of powers and enchantment and sacrifice had to be part of the biggest show, the biggest act, the biggest scam… She knew that nothing she had seen or heard here had been part of any act.

  Talisman was speaking to the old man, as if in explanation, again speaking what might have been French or Latin. Whatever it was, the old man understood it, and nodded slowly; his suspicions, or some of them, were being confirmed.

  “And I have fought the loup garou,” Talisman added. He was still inexorably calm. “Within the hour. And only a few paces from these walls.”

  The old man nodded again, in fear.

  Talisman went on “Some dark dominion has its center in this house above our heads. Among its evil powers there may be—nay, must be—some greater even than the werewolf. But you know this. You must.”

  The ancient one regarded Talisman hopelessly, then closed his eyes, as if he could bear to hear no more. “We must be a hundred friggin’ miles from the city,” he muttered hopelessly.

  “At least that far.” Talisman paused. “That you should have been plucked from the streets at random seems impossible. They chose you deliberately. Or they were led to choose you. Who, what, might have led them?”

  The old man had no answer.

  “There are powers at work here, honored one, that are beyond my experience and comprehension. Tell me, what is it that you so greatly fear?”

  The ancient was rubbing at his forehead. “I wonder what the bastard put in that wine… you figure it out, why they picked me. I don’t give a damn, I’m leaving, whatever I have to do. If I can remember how.”

  Talisman was quietly upset by this announcement. “The place for one of your stature to be is here, in confrontation with your enemies who kidnapped you and brought you here. Honor and wisdom alike forbid that you should simply leave.”

  “Screw honor and wisdom. Whadda you know about wisdom?”

  “Do you not see…?”

  But plainly the old man was not listening. Having glared once more at both his listeners, as if they were the ones guilty of kidnapping, he had closed his eyes again and was now muttering systematically. His toneless voice fell into the rhythm of a chant.

  “Master,” said Talisman. To judge from his tone he was now closer to offering violence than service. “I do not insist on courtesy from you; it is not my place to do that. But more than courtesy is at stake. I ask you to behave with common sense. For your own good, as well as for the sake of the innocent folk of this time and place.”

  “Shuddup, will ya? How in hell’s a man supposed to think? To remember?” The blue-gray eyes closed yet again, the mumbled words came louder, faster than before.

  Talisman uttered a sound that was not quite a sigh, and took one step forward. His right arm flicked out like a lash. Marge winced at the sound his hand made, hitting the old one on the temple. The old man’s eyes stayed closed, and his jaw sagged open in mid-chant, displaying snaggled teeth. Talisman caught the body gently, just as it began to fall. He lifted it easily, to put it back unbound upon the handy rack.

  And at that point a soundless explosion overcame the world.

  For a moment Marge actually thought that a bomb might have been detonated, so powerful was the sense of almost instantaneous change. But what happened was silent, and did not blast or burn, and was just a beat too slow to have been the effect of chemical exp
losives.

  Marge saw herself surrounded by gray, glowing haze. Talisman had disappeared, but she caught just a glimpse of the great pale wolf-beast bounding away in flight. Raging men and women who she had never seen before surrounded her, their hands outstretched to clutch. Angry creatures she had never imagined bared fangs larger than the dark wolf’s had been.

  A hideous paw that was not quite a hand slid past her face and down. A woman’s face, all malign beauty under dark curly hair, snarled in surprise and fury, then was shocked into pale marble when the woman’s eyes fell on the supine figure of the old man.

  Still dressed in Marge’s surplus robe the old man lay on the rack, unconscious but unbound. She had the impression that reality was swirling like fog round his unmoving head.

  Marge could take no more. She went down, huddling with hands over eyes, until the madness should end somehow.

  She landed, sitting, on something at once springy and soft, finely divided, and softly irregular. It wasn’t a stone floor.

  No touch came from the clutching hands, no pain from snapping jaws. Everything was quiet.

  Inside the protective cage of her hands she unclenched her eyelids just a trifle, until she saw bright light nudging through. It turned the flesh of her caging fingers incandescent pink.

  Not until a breeze caressed her face did Marge realize that she was sitting on long green grass in bright sunshine.

  ELEVEN

  When the world blew up around Feathers with a great shock, it left him drifting like a shed plume amid the smoky wreckage of what had been the local atmosphere. The shock didn’t stun him, though. In fact it partially cleared his mind, at least enough for him to understand that it wasn’t really the atmosphere that had been wrecked and stirred and scrambled, but something more fundamental. And also that now he wasn’t Feathers any more.

  Shit, he never had been, really, not with any sense of identification with the name. And with one false name out of the way, he was able to understand, willing to remember, more.