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

grotto looking out with a certain amazement at the paved court. Its stones were in shade now though the sun was still not really down. On the central stone table Vivian, now wearing her bikini, was stretched out napping with the red jacket folded under her head for a pillow.

   The door of iron grillwork was secured with a chain and padlock. But there was enough play in the chain so that Simon was able to open the door just enough to slide through. It cost him a painful moment, but he made it.

   He walked over to stand beside Vivian, looking down at her.

   He thought that he had made no noise at all approaching, but still she awoke. It was a graceful, not at all startled, stirring.  “I see you found me,” Vivian said, smiling faintly. “You should be very glad.”

   “Yeah,” said Simon. His throat wasn’t working too well. Sweats of lust, exhaustion, terror, had dried on him in layers, mixed with a little river mud, powdered with the dust of long-forgotten passageways. He knew that he must stink. But that was no longer relevant. Emotionally he was too mangled to worry about or plan for anything.

   Vivian moved, stretched, got up. Her motions were luxurious, catlike. When she turned for a moment to again study the picture on the easel, her bikini bottom was pulled low in back, showing the top of the cleft between her buttocks. Simon stared at it, just stared, not aware of feeling anything. Whatever happened next would happen, that was all.

   Meanwhile Vivian was considering her work with evident dissatisfaction.  “Maybe I should give up. It’s hard to paint from a statue. I don’t suppose you’ve ever tried.”

   “No.”

   “And to do a face from memory. Never mind.” And Vivian undid her bra and pulled it off. “Someday you’ll do much greater things than paint.” The panties fell, and Vivian held out her arms. “Now. Don’t you want your reward for finding me?”

* * *

   And yet she made him wait a moment while she arranged the red jacket into a pad on the stone table, to ease her back when Simon’s frantic weight descended on her. She held him tightly and competently, and if she was uncomfortable, as she seemed to be, she certainly didn’t have to hold him very long. As he grasped her, Simon became aware that Saul was watching them from behind some bushes. But even being watched could not distract him now. Frenzy dissolved in joyless spasms. What pumped from him into Vivian burned heavily, bringing a mental image of molten lead. The convulsions of his body went on and on, draining him completely. They emptied the last reservoir, then died away, mechanical as functions in a plumbing system.

   Exhausted, void, he rolled free of Vivian’s body to lie stickily on stone. The stone was chill beneath its surface warmed by the day’s sun. Simon thought to look toward the bushes, but Saul wasn’t there any more. If he ever had been.

   Simon had trouble thinking. Or feeling. He couldn’t find anything inside himself now but emptiness.

   Vivian lay on her back almost primly, knees raised together, as if after all she might have enjoyed it, and her body was seeking to absorb what his had given. She raised an eyebrow at him now. “Simon?”

   “What?”

   “I thought I heard a car drive up. My folks will be here, and Gregory, and you look awfully guilty. Suspicious. I think you’d better be moving on.”

TWENTY-ONE

   Talisman paced in darkness.

   The woods were thick, and muted sound to some extent, but half a mile or so ahead he could hear the undeniable sounds of an army breaking camp and setting out on a night march. In his breathing days, campaigning against the Turk, he had done it himself too often to be mistaken about it now.

   He had come directly back here from his talk with Marge Hilbert, wondering what the sudden offensive move by Comorr and Falerin portended. He wondered also if his own presence and Marge’s, intruders from the future, was going to be allowed to alter the course of history. He thought that would not be allowed but he could not be sure. Anyway he was going to put it to the test tonight. The leaders of the invading army ahead were the allies in time of the evil folk in the twentieth century of the nosferatu —reason enough to attack them, but there was more. Talisman did not mean to spend any more time as an inhabitant of this antique century than he was forced to spend, and attempting a violent alteration of history here seemed to be a good way to bring matters to a head.

   He was rapidly nearing the camp. There was a lonely outpost forty or so paces ahead, beside the forest path. A single sentry leaned against a tree. Start the attack here, then. When they came to call the man in, they’d find a corpse.

   Talisman shifted to mist-form when he was within a dozen paces of the sentry, and drifted closer. It was almost impossible that a mundane eye should see him in this mode, but being mist dulled his own senses inconveniently as well. When he was only an arm’s length from the soldier, he regained human form and simultaneously reached out—

   The man’s head turned, an instant before Talisman could grasp his throat. The grinning face under the crude helm was unexpectedly familiar.

   “Think I’d forgotten you, bloodsucker? This is the land of cold green gore, remember?”

   It was certainly not the land Talisman had been inhabiting a few moments ago, that of Artos and Comorr. Even though Talisman had shifted his body out of mist-form, yet the mists round him persisted. Night forest had been replaced by gray nothingness. And Talisman’s reaching fingers never did find the throat they sought, though he redoubled his efforts when he saw who now