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

pulled from the debris a brittle relic, powdered with ancient wood, that might once have been an ornate scabbard. Of a blade there was no sign.

   Vivian snarled, and signaled; the boy died on the stone, the ominous presence in the tunnel once more advanced. “Bring the girl here!” she cried. Then she looked at Simon. “Where is it now?”

   “I’ll not say.” As the cleaver fell once more, Simon looked at Vivian, looked deeply and freely; now he had little to lose. He saw that she was his mother, and beyond that horror he could see nothing at all, and never would.

   Marge, from her position as sacrifice-to-be, watched Simon go into shock, his body contracting on the ground into a fetal curl. Beside her, Sylvia had lost consciousness, and Marge envied her.

   Gregory prodded Simon’s inert body with a foot, then bent and with his hand tried some other brisk revival method. The he looked at Vivian. “What shall we do, mistress, to bring him back?”

   “Never mind, we do not need him now.” Vivian’s anger was spent, vanished, as if evaporated in the glow of a coming triumph. She paused, smiling. “Here’s one who’ll tell us all we need to know.”

   Gregory hoisted Simon’s body and threw it onto the altar. The cleaver fell, and Marge saw Simon’s head roll free. She was unable to look away, but in her terror of being next, even Simon’s death meant little in itself.

   Now what? What was everyone waiting for? Gradually she realized that all action was suspended. Everyone was waiting for something. Slowly Marge turned her head toward the woodland path, following the common gaze.

   The figure shuffling along the path toward the paved court looked ordinary enough, what she could see of it in the moonlight and the light of torches. It was only the figure of a man. A gray old man, not very big, his dress modern, drab blue and humble, almost a slave’s or servant’s uniform. Two huge powers guarding the start of the path looked down on him like contemptuous sphinxes as he passed between them. But they let him pass. The impression of meek humility was damaged when the old man stumbled briefly at the very edge of the paving, and told the world about it in foul language, as boldly as if there had been no one else within a mile.

   But he understood perfectly that a sizable assembly was waiting for him, and he must have understood its nature pretty well. For he showed no surprise when he stopped to look them all over. Nodding to himself, he calmly took in the gory and fantastic scene. Nimue’s bodyguards sidled a little closer to her.

   When the old man spoke, his words struck Marge, even in her present state, as a ridiculous anticlimax. He said only: “The police are out there, at your gate.”

   Nimue made a sound of astonishment, a faint purring whine, and shook her head as if she marveled at him. “But they won’t be able to come in, my dear old man. Lucky for them.”

   “I think they may. They represent the law.” He said this very soberly and seriously, but at the same time he spoke as if he were announcing something new, or something that his hearers perhaps had never heard before. “There’s laws for all of us. Even you. Even that… foulness that you serve.”

   “Where is the Sword, old fool? I have brought you here to tell me of the Sword.”

   “Fool?” The old man sounded surprised and angered by that, and there was a pause. He actually scratched his head. Then at last he had to agree. “Yeah… yeah, I was. Enchanted too, of course. But enchantment comes half from the inside. Yeah, I was a fool from the very start. Fool all the way.” He paused again, and went on in a gentler voice. “You were very young then, really young, and beautiful. There’s… something about beauty. Beauty and wine beat me, a long time ago. Power and gold could never do it.”

   He looked contemptuously past Nimue, to the cave and the tunnel mouth, where a pale glow was growing brighter, throbbing faintly with the chant of whatever creatures and powers might be advancing through the tunnel. “He’s not gonna make it here, you know. He’ll have to stay in his own land, his own time, with his own limited power there, and let his own people eventually burn him at the stake the way they do. As the book says, it is written. Maybe you meant to bring me here this time to help you, but this time I came willingly. Not even your enchantments last forever.”

   Nimue made a gesture, as of producing something hidden, small, and vitally important. “I have kept one command, one order that I may yet bind you to. That is what is really written.”

   The old man bowed, an almost courtly motion. “So you have, I see. I must submit to it. Much good may it do you.”

   “The command is this: Tell me where the Sword is now.” Behind her the glow in the cave mouth had brightened again, and in the very heart of it, the doorway where the barred door stood open, a dark slender column of something had begun to waver in the air.

   The old man answered: “Gladly. For a long time it was where none could see it. I’ve moved it, though. The Prince of Wallachia, standing there behind you, has it in his hand.”

   Nimue turned, to see the man Marge had known as Talisman, standing tall in the mouth of the opened passage, gravely salute the old man with his blade. To Marge the Sword looked much like common iron; nothing out of the ordinary at all. If there had been a jewel or two in its hilt when Artos wore it, they had been dulled or stolen by now. But Talisman held it like