Dominion, Fred Saberhagen [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗

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