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

had been just a little more moderate, someone would probably have made a pasture out of it. Simon’s knees were trembling. He gave a grunt of near-exhaustion, as if Vivian had really made him reenact that whole day of fifteen years ago, and sat down on the darkened stump where someone had long ago cut down a tree.

   And almost jumped up again, when he thought he heard a broken cry, in a child’s voice, or a woman’s. It told of terror, but it was gone again in a moment, leaving no sense of the direction or distance that it had come from. And now, for just a moment as he peered through the fog, Simon thought he caught a glimpse of a ruined tower, broken and jumbled masonry, set a little back from the edge of the bluff not far ahead of him. Simultaneously he was aware of silent horror and pain, human anguish preserved as if by some arcane method of recording. Could the building have something to do with the old artists’ colony? It had seemed too large for that. In the next moment Simon was unsure that the tower had been there physically at all. The sense of recorded suffering persisted, though.

   Now for the first time he saw the rays of the morning sun, only momentarily visible through clouds. And when they were gone the figure of a lean man dressed in black was moving slowly toward him along the edge of the bluff, through wreaths of morning mist.

   Simon stood up. But he could sense nothing about the approaching figure that demanded flight or a defensive confrontation. There was potential danger, but it was not overriding. There was potential benefit as well; and there was strangeness.

   The man, as he approached, looked at least equally puzzled as to what he should make of Simon. He offered a deep-voiced greeting in French. Simon was surprised but managed to reply in the same language. The man gave a little shake of his head and switched to modern English. “I think you are a sojourner here, even as I am.”

   “Here?” Simon didn’t know at first how to interpret that. “On the south bank of the Sauk, you mean?”

   The man’s dark eyes gazed at him with interest. “Is that where you think you are?”

   “I’ve been—wandering.”

   “Indeed.” The other smiled faintly; he had an engaging way about him. “I also. I have been touring castles. My name is Talisman, by the way. And I think you must be Simon Hill, professional conjurer. Sent here by the woman you know as Vivian Littlewood.”

   “Are you working for her? What name do you know her by?”

“I certainly am not. Another name for her, a much older one, is Nimue.”

   Simon had the impression of hearing that name before somewhere. Now, somewhere in the fogbound middle distance, a man’s voice had started singing. The language again was French, to Simon’s ears oddly accented. The melody had to be nothing other than some simple old folk song; but Simon felt a chill.

   He asked: “If I’m not on the Sauk, where am I?”

   Talisman was watching him closely. “At the moment, on the border of Brittany.”

   Many places, many times. “And… that river down there?” The more the mist cleared and the light grew, the stranger the world looked. For example, there was a structure in the distance— farther than the broken tower he’d glimpsed earlier—that looked very much like an old factory chimney.

   “The river is the Sèvre,” said Talisman, in the tones of one cautiously giving guidance. He turned his head and nodded in the other direction, away from the edge of the bluff.  “And if we were to walk a few paces that way, we will find ourselves standing on the bank of a moat.”

   “A moat.”

   “I told you that I have been touring castles. Not of my own volition, unfortunately. I have even revisited, briefly, my own former residence.” Talisman sighed. “And, before that, the house of evil that is now reconstructed on the Sauk. I saw it in its original location, where the earliest stones were set in place by men named Comorr and Falerin—ah, you have heard of those names, at least. From Nimue, I take it.”

   “I’ve heard of them.” Simon moistened his lips. “I don’t want anything to do with them, or Nimue either. What now?”

   Talisman gestured in the direction of the ruined tower, now once more partially visible through mists. “Now this. This was once part of a great domain—the Chateau Tiffauges. Does that name convey anything to you?”

   “The name? No.” But ancient horror, preserved in time, still drifted with the mist.

   “It should, perhaps.” Behind Talisman, as the morning fog dissipated further, the broken tower was once more to be seen. It was immense, like the stump of some bombed office building. “But we are obviously too late to see this establishment at the peak of its fame—if fame is the proper word. I deduce, from various considerations, that we are now standing sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century.”

   Simon didn’t doubt it. Many place, many times. Looking away from the river now, he could see the regular depression in the land that Talisman had called a moat; it was deeper and wider than Simon had imagined moats to be. Great trees growing on the bottom of it had their crowns at his eye level. Beyond it he could just make out the vague shape of the keep, more than half ruined, not quite deserted. In one exposed interior corner a thatched hut had been built, and the voice of the singing peasant seemed to come from there.

   A picture of something silvery, utterly beautiful, came and went in Simon’s mind. Almost he managed to grasp where it was. But before he could quite do that it was gone again. He turned toward the ruined chateau, stretching out one hand and letting it fall. “The