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

debated with herself about how much to wear underneath it, and was glad now that she’d decided a full leotard wasn’t too much. She had the leotard on now under her shirt and jeans, and a good thing too, if that fat man she’d just been spying on upstairs was going to be in the audience, as he undoubtedly was. Something about him made Marge shudder inwardly, and she hadn’t even seen his face.

   She exchanged her white gym shoes for black ballet slippers for the performance; not that it was unlikely that anyone would be studying her feet very closely.

   She had just finished changing, except for her shoes, and had got the street clothing crammed into the handbag, when new distraction came, in the form of what sounded like a groan. It was a faint sound, yet gave the impression of coming from somewhere uncomfortably close. There couldn’t, thought Marge, there absolutely couldn’t be anyone else in this unknown passage with her. And yet it certainly sounded like it.

   Another faint groan wavered in the air, again too close for comfort, too close to be ignored. Was Margie herself now to be the target for some kind of trick?

   That was one of the first thoughts that leapt into her mind. She had to know. Penlight in hand, Marge prowled the tunnel. Not that way, this way. The moaning sound obligingly repeated at irregular short intervals. She was led to the branch passage going down, but paused at its top step. She had assumed, when Simon ignored the branch, that he knew where it led and that it could be disregarded.

   Now that she looked carefully, she could see one set of footprints in the dust of the stairs before her. It was hard to tell if the faint prints were going up or down.

   She sat her shoulder bag down carefully on the floor, leaving herself freer for quick action, and tiptoed down the stairs, stepping in the tracks. She came to a thick wooden door, standing slightly open. The groans emanating from its other side. When she snapped off her tiny flashlight she could see faint torchlight flickering through the opening around the door.

   Marge stood still, thinking. She didn’t need to think for very long. Groans and an open door, whatever else they might mean, indicated that other people besides herself and Simon had to be aware of the supposedly secret passage. They meant, at the very least, that the whole elaborately planned trick had to be considered blown. They meant—

   She had to find out what they meant. It was impossible to do anything else until she knew.

   The door swung back easily, with only the faintest squeaking of its antique-looking hinges. What lay beyond it resolved no questions for Marge, but only raised them to a new level.

   In her short life she had seen a lot of acts, good ones and bad ones, from inside and out. She could tell at first glance that the semiconscious old man bound to the torture rack was no willing participant of any act. His arms and legs were almost plump, his ribs scrawny. His head, shaggy with gray hair and beard, rolled slowly from side to side. His eyes were closed. His mouth, open to reveal bad teeth, drooled a little from one corner.

   Marge approached. She prodded the old man gently with a finger in the ribs. The only response was another groan. Then she reached to loosen the leather strap binding the old man’s left wrist; it looked so tight that she was sure it must be hurting him. The buckle, of an odd design, and very stiff, resisted her first efforts. Margie’s fingernails were of a practical short length, but she was afraid for a moment that she’d broken one, maybe because all of a sudden her hands had started to shake. The strap came loose at last. The old man’s pinched wrist was relieved, but his arm stayed where it was; he wasn’t going to wake up.

   That’s it, then,” said Marge to herself, aloud and decisively. At that moment she completely abandoned all thoughts of being able to go on with the performance as planned. This old man was real, and really hurting. She had to reveal her presence and get help.

   As Marge turned away from the rack, the idea had just begun to form in her mind that Simon might be in some kind of serious trouble too, and for that matter herself as well. If the people in charge of this castle were people who did things like this—

   The thought had no time to develop. A muscular young black man wearing a dark shirt was standing in a second doorway to the room, looking at Marge. It was a recessed doorway that she had not noticed until this moment. The man’s skin was the color of creamed coffee, and his face was handsome in a way that struck Marge at first glance as somehow, indefinably, flawed. And he was looking every bit as surprised as Margie felt. It wasn’t the old man tied on the rack that had surprised him, though. It was Marge.

   “How in hell many of you are there?” he murmured in a soft voice. The question seemed not to need an answer; in the next moment he took a step toward her.

   Marge, who had just begun a protest speech, cut it off and instinctively stepped back. Whatever it was about the man facing her, posture, movement, look, she was warned. On nimble feet she got the only large obstacle in the room, the rack with its still-groaning occupant, between herself and the advancing man.

   With the rack between them, she gazed at the black man, and he at her. The dim light in the room flickered, the torch guttering on the wall.

   “I’m asking you, who else is in here, woman?” The man had paused in his advance. He swung a