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

confronted him. In vain. This was the land of magic now, like that of dreams outside of normal time and space.

   His foe vanished from his grasp, reappeared behind him. The old man chanted triumphantly, an incantation. Then he cried: “Go for a little spin, bloodsucker! Keep going until someone calls you back!” And with that a mighty force swirled Talisman away.

   He traveled timelessly through a pyrotechnic world. The lack of physical orientation was sickening, even for him; one not immune to fear, he thought, might well have been driven mad. Is this then the end for me? he thought again. Where will my body—?

* * *

   There was once more stable light, dependable substance. Talisman was standing upright, but on what?  He discovered himself still—or again—in mistform, and he willed himself out of it, to manshape, to get a better look at his surroundings. Still there was some difficulty in doing that.

   Sound clarified first: the voice of a man, chanting something in medieval French, a language that was almost as familiar to Talisman as his native tongue, though a long time had passed since he had heard it spoken. The teeth of the man who spoke it now were nigh-chattering with fear, his tongue was on the verge of stumbling with every consonant.

   The words made sense, of a sort, though Talisman could not immediately see what they had to do with his present situation: “…bound to my will, Sathanas, by Apollonius, by Proteus, I adjure thee by Thutmose and Din that ye do us no harm but rather be constrained to serve us as we may command…”

   Bemused, Talisman muttered: “At least I know now where I am—still in the land of magic.”

   And now—some kind of smoke was swirling heavily about him, slowly dissipating—he began to get a look at his new physical surroundings. He was standing on cleared ground on the edge of a forest, beyond whose low trees a portion of a sizable castle was visible against a cloudy night sky. Lights as of torch or candle showed in a couple of the small windows. It was not the castle on the Sauk, nor, thought Talisman, was it any castle that he had ever seen before.

   The dissipating smoke, or part of it at least, came from two bonfires, that were about equidistant from the spot where Talisman found himself standing. The chanting voice was that of a pudgy man in robes that fit very well the role of a medieval alchemist-sorceror; Talisman had known one or two such in his breathing years. This man was crouched in a would-be protective circle chalked or painted on the ground, with his arms outflung in what was evidently his idea of the way a wizard ought to gesture. Nothing, or almost nothing, of real power was emanating from him. A few feet from the wizard another man, dressed in the rich garb of the higher nobility, was standing on one foot as if he had almost decided to run but did not know which way to go. The faces of both men were turned toward Talisman, displaying a rich mixture of terror, triumph, greed, and sheer astonishment.

   “Hah!” said Talisman, experiencing a powerful blend of feelings too; he understood suddenly that this pair must think him a demon that their spells had succeeded in calling up out of hell, doubtless in some desperate pursuit of wealth.

   The wizard had not ceased to speak; “… I charge thee, make obeisance before us; submit thy fortunes and thy powers to our will…”

   “Bah.” Talisman took a step toward the circle. “Whose castle is that yonder?”

   “Mine,” said the nobleman. And now there was a scramble between the pair of them, the lord trying to push his way into the protective circle with his magician, a mutter of hissed argument and imprecations back and forth.

   “…I told you you’d need a circle, told you it would work this time…”

   “…never worked before! Move over…”

   “Watch out! Sathanas, I adjure thee—damnation, quit shoving—I charge thee to reveal…”

   Talisman gave them another moment or two to pull themselves together. Even a power as weak as this fool’s, caught by good fortune at the proper moment, must have been enough to rescue him from the timeless spaceless spin in which the old one calling himself Hawk had set him dancing. Very good luck for Talisman… or something more. In magical matters there was rarely such a thing as simple luck, good or bad.

   “Gold,” said the nobleman at last, plainly and boldly. He evidently felt himself secure now, clinging to his wizard’s back and looking over his shoulder, with the white circle snug about them both. “That is what you are to bring to us.” He was addressing Talisman, in the imperious tones of one accustomed to obedience.

   “Indeed? And what is the name of that river yonder, behind the trees?” In moments of relative quiet, between outbursts of the others’ babble, Talisman could hear far rapids murmuring. He wanted to know where he was, and he asked about the river first because rivers, unlike countries, duchies, domains of all human kind, rivers tended to retain their names throughout the centuries.

   “It is the Loire,” the wizard said. “Now you must bring us gold, or tell us how to find it or make it.”

   “Bah.” Talisman scowled at the magical gimcracks, debris of diabolism, items used in their wretched spells, that lay scattered in the firelight round about. There were bones. He wondered if they had been led to murder children to add power to their spells; such was not unheard of.  “And the Year of Our Lord is now—?”

   They looked at him with changing faces; plainly they were puzzled as to what kind of devil they had caught, who rolled the Lord’s name so trippingly off his tongue. “One thousand,” said the nobleman. “Four hundred, and twenty.”

   “Aha. And the nearest city?”

   Puzzlement grew, and a new