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

than trailing rags. She and the man were both still gasping from the downhill run. Meanwhile the impossible beast—Marge couldn’t convince herself it was only a dog—sat on its haunches staring at her. Its black fur was long and so was its lolling pink tongue. There was something thickly, horribly human about that tongue. In its sitting position the beast was almost tall enough to look Margie in the eye.

   “Now don’t run,” the man advised her, getting his breathing under control.  “Don’t do anything now but what I say. Just walk back up the path. That way you stay alive.”

   Surely, thought Marge, before she had climbed as far as the castle again, she could somehow manage to wake up. No nightmare went on indefinitely. And at the same time she knew better. Across the river, its sound carrying freely over the broad water, a diesel semi was taking the narrow highway at high speed. Its headlights might as well have been shining somewhere on Mars.

   “Get moving.”

   Slowly, wordlessly, Marge turned and started up the path. At least her ankle wasn’t really twisted. But she kept to a slow limp.

   The man, climbing only a pace behind her, spoke in a low voice almost in her ear. “Tell me, how many of you were in that tunnel altogether? Who else is there?” And another few steps behind them both, the breast paced slowly. From its throat now came a straining growl, as if only with the greatest effort could it keep itself from seizing Margie in its jaws.

   Marge would have been quite willing to answer the man’s question, if she could have understood it. To ask how many were in the tunnel seemed to mean—

   This time the four-footed run approaching down the path was almost silent; for all its size the pale bulk that hurtled leaping in the night was almost on top of Marge, before she was aware of it. She made a small sound and tried to throw herself aside. A furred shape as heavy as that of the first beast brushed her in its passage, knocking her aside. This time Marge fell softly. On the slope below there sounded impact, as if a rolling boulder had collided with a tree. Marge slid into tangling bushes on the steep slope. Nearby was thrashing confusion, savage noise as of great beasts in combat. When Marge freed herself from the bushes she slipped and again rolled over on the slope. Her mind spun dizzily.

   Half stunned, she raised her head. The black man was nowhere to be seen. The beast that had threatened her, the dark-furred one, was down on the ground while the pale newcomer crouched over it, attacking, driving for the throat. The position held for only a moment. Then the dark beast with a great yowl of agony fought to its feet. Another cry, and it had torn free of its attacker and burst into flight. It hurtled past Marge, ignoring her, its eyes glaring redly. Its next howl, receding, seemed to reach her ears from a long distance away.

   The merciless clarity of a lightning flash showed Marge the second beast turning her way. Its own glowing eyes were now fixed on her, and dark stains were already matting dry on its pale fur.

   Marge rolled away. With horrible ineffective slowness she got herself up on all fours. She knew even as she moved that before she could even begin to run again the great pale beast was going to land on her back…

   Lightning flashed again.

   “Wait,” said a man’s voice, close behind Margie, just as she crouched to run. It was a deep, compelling voice, one that she had not heard before.

   Poised for hopeless flight, she turned her head. The pale-furred animal had vanished. Where it had been, a tall, lean man now stood, dressed in black trousers and a black turtleneck shirt. His eyes did not glow, but they were fixed on Marge just as the eyes of the pale wolf had been. The man appeared to be bleeding heavily from his left shoulder, up near his throat, but still he stood erect.

   Marge whimpered.

   “Softly,” the deep voice commanded. “Calm yourself; for the moment you are safe. Tell me who you are. My name is Talisman.”

NINE

   Thunder was grumbling in the distance as Simon walked out through the French doors into the courtyard that held the pool. This was a stone-paved expanse, containing an island or two of tended grass and nascent flowerbeds, and surrounded on three sides by the sprawling bulk of the castle. On the fourth side there was more lawn, then a tennis court, and beyond that a tall, thick hedge. Through the hedge a driveway came curving into the grounds, from a public road that could not be seen from here. And through it, also, an even more private and unmarked path led down to riverbank and grotto.

   With the flow of clouds above, sunlight came and went across the water of the pool, which was near the doors through which Simon had emerged into the courtyard. From its irregular shape it was clear that the original plan had been to suggest a moat. The last time that Simon could remember standing on this spot, fifteen years ago, the pool had been drained and dry, the bottom littered with dust and dead leaves, the dry sides marked with broken and discolored tiles. The stone gargoyles round the rim, that now pumped circulating water into the blue depths from their stone throats had been gaping, dry-throated monsters, eerily discolored too. But recently the pool, like almost everything else about the castle, had been almost perfectly refurbished. A dozen deck chairs had been arranged round it in the shade of modern patio umbrellas. At a white painted table of wrought iron on the far side of the pool there sat a gray, elderly couple wearing conservative swimsuits and dark glasses. They looked rather,