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

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