Dominion by Fred Saberhagen (spiritual books to read TXT) 📗

   Courses came and went. The service was extremely skillful, in what appeared to be a practiced compromise between antique ways and modern. The skillful servants came and went on swift and silent feet. None of the servants’ faces that he saw now were familiar.

   Had he ever paid the kid who’d rowed him twice across the river? He must have. But the trip back, like the paying, was still lost in utter blankness.

   The medieval music, played offstage somewhere, had stopped about the time dinner began. Were these people now waiting on table the musicians also? There was a strangeness about them, as about so much else that Simon had seen today. They were all physically small, to begin with, which was a bit odd. And all costumed for the occasion, of course, but it was more than that. Simon thought they all looked… well, servile-looking, as perhaps real medieval servants ought to look. And it wasn’t acting. Or, if it was, they were all wasting great and subtle talents on menial jobs.

   The more Simon looked at the people serving dinner, the more he thought that all of them were quietly, desperately, and deeply frightened.

   “I see you are observing the staff.”

   Simon almost jumped.  “I didn’t mean to.”

   “Of course you did. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. They’re quite well trained, wouldn’t you say? I’ve borrowed most of them for the occasion. Try a glass of this wine.”

   The staff was well-trained indeed, for the glass had appeared on the smooth wood of the table, right at Vivian’s fingertips, without Simon being aware of any servant bringing it. He wished his own sleight-of-hand could match that.

   “I think I’ve had enough,” he objected uncertainly.

   “But not of wine like this. This isn’t going to hurt your concentration. If anything it’ll enhance it. In fact, it’s just what you need before a performance, to give you the clearest possible vision.” Was Vivian laughing at him? No, she was happy but deadly serious. “If this wine should prove too much for you, if it doesn’t actually help, or harms, the fault will be all mine.”

   The wine was ruby red in a small crystal glass. Simon picked up the glass and sipped. This, then, was the kind of thing the very rich could afford to enjoy. Simon, no expert, couldn’t place the wine as to type, but it was quite simply the best he’d ever tasted.

   The dinner went on, with conversation flourishing cheerfully around the table. Everyone had his or her own little wineglass, though the colors of the contents differed. Simon sipped his own glass again. He certainly wasn’t taking enough to get drunk on, but all the same he was beginning to feel a little odd. Not drunk, no, not at all. His mind was very clear.

   He leaned back in his chair and briefly closed his eyes, while behind his lids a parade of the day’s strange visions came and went. Yes, anyone who saw the things that he had seen today really ought to seek help, medical assistance. The thought came, but there was no urgency in it, and very little worry. Actually, if he’d been having strange visions off and on for most of his life, they couldn’t very well indicate a brain tumor or anything of that sort, now could they?

   Oh yeah, he’d been bothered by visions for a long time, all right. At least since adolescence. Sometimes he’d had them right on stage. It was just that he’d taught himself to recognize them as outside of ordinary reality, and to ignore them once he knew what they were. So the reason he wasn’t worried now about going for a medical exam was that he knew he really wasn’t going to have one. He’d considered having checkups before, at various points in his life, for similar reasons, and in the end he’d never had them. Because he knew they were unnecessary.

   Ruby wine before him. Even with eyes closed he could see the glass, how much was left in it, its exact position. The clearest possible vision: maybe Vivian for once had told the truth.

   A couple of hours ago Marge had signaled him that all was well. And Marge was probably watching him right now from her vantage point behind the wall, ready to do the act. Was it really credible that Vivian didn’t know about the passage? Anyway she was pretending she didn’t know. Too late to worry about all that now. Now it was almost show time.

   Eyes still closed, Simon reached for his wine again. His fingers, with perfect sureness of the position of the glass, closed on it gently. He drank all that was left.

   Surrounding the great house were all the sounds of summer night in rural northern Illinois, sounds well-remembered by Simon from the visits that he’d made to the country in his childhood. He’d dwelt then not in the castle but in one of those huts… little houses… over there across the river. Those little dwellings were, if you could discount the water, almost at the castle’s foot. Like the huts of peasants. Land-bound creatures who were once owned, body and soul, as part of some great lord’s dominion. Maybe that was why, when Simon was growing up, he’d never thought of the castle in romantic or adventurous terms. It wasn’t his castle, and he knew it. It sat on him.

   Clear seeing indeed came from this wine. The others round the table were sipping their own assigned vintages. The talk was lively but not noisy; through it Simon could hear, barely audible, the hiss or a torch burning in a wall sconce. From outside there drifted in the sounds of low, distant thunder, the night-noises of insects and an occasional bird. A very occasional something else, perhaps. All this was not