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

requirements are, first, that you provide yourself with some medieval costume, authentic in appearance. Secondly of course you are to give the best performance of which you both are capable, a point I am sure I need not emphasize. You are of course free to choose your own tricks, effects.” Gregory paused meaningfully. “You will of course cooperate in so far as you feel able, with any special requests that members of your small audience may have.”

   Simon shrugged. “Insofar as we feel able.”

   “Yes. And there is a fringe benefit that you may consider of some importance.”

   “Oh?”

   “Yes. Among the guests will be a few who are quite influential, I understand, in the world of entertainment. You say you are not now one of the big names of show business, but … I of course know nothing of magic myself. Would there be any special equipment, or prearrangements that you require?”

   Margie was about to speak, probably with questions to ask, but Simon had taken her hand and now squeezed it gently, signaling for silence. He said: “We can provide all the special equipment we’ll need. Where’s this house?”

   “In the far suburbs—rather far out even to be called suburbs, I’m afraid; about two hours’ drive. You’ll need rather detailed instructions on how to get there.” Again, the small superior smile. “When you see the

house, you’ll understand what I mean about the medieval theme being fitting.”

THREE

    Mrs. Hildegard Littlewood, nee Hildy Nordberg, was dressed for tennis, having just recently ascended from practice on her court. She was standing on the roof of her castle, leaning her forearms and elbows on what her bridegroom had recently told her ought to be called a merlon. It was the portion of a battlement that stuck up like a giant squared tooth. With fingers hooked over the rising edge of stone, Hildy could feel how her thick new golden wedding ring caught and grated on the edge. With her eyes closed in summer sunshine, she was trying to fight back a threatened bout of near-hysterical giggles. She had the feeling that if she once let the laughter get started it was going to get out of hand at once. Sometimes lately it had seemed to Hildy that if she could allow herself one good bout of hysteria she would get it out of her system and would then be able to settle down. But she wasn’t familiar enough with hysteria to know if it might be managed that way. In fact she had never had trouble with it before. And she wasn’t sure, either, how long she was going to be alone on the roof before someone came up looking for her.

   She told herself now for the thousandth time that she had no realistic cause for unhappiness. Quite the contrary. Absolutely the contrary. And in fact she wasn’t really unhappy. It was just that two months ago she had been a part-time student and part-time waitress, supporting herself after a fashion by dishing out pizza in a roadside place just outside Los Angeles. And today here she was just finished with a workout on her own tennis court in Illinois, with more money in more bank accounts than she knew what to do with, and standing on top of her own imported, reconstructed … no, it was just too ridiculous.

   Hildy pulled hard on the mortared stones. A sound between a laugh and a faint shriek escaped her lips. But then nothing more came. A genuinely relieving outburst was evidently not as near the surface as she had thought.

   She released her grip on the edge of the parapet and turned, opening her eyes to summer sunshine that warmed the stone-paved castle roof and the nearby treetops that screened away most of the outside world. If you could see me now … but what made her overload of success all the more traumatic was that there was practically no one to whom she could say that, even on the phone or in a letter.

   Hildy had moved around a lot in her young life. What little had been left of her family when she was growing up had been second and third generation Californians, with Okie restlessness intact. Continual moving continually made the latest crop of new friends drop away, and old friends were non-existent. And then her mother, the remaining family remnant, died. And there Hildy had been, waiting on tables, that day two months ago when Saul Littlewood had just happened to come in looking for some lunch.

   One of the less visible changes in her life since that day was that now her trains of thought tended to become easily derailed. Another recurrent thought came interrupting now: some of these treetops really ought to be trimmed, at least a little. And then, every night, one light ought to be left on in one window of the upper castle, probably right in that narrow window of the single tower that rose above the roof and battlements. That way they could have the place photographed for a paperback book cover … Hildy had tried this joke a couple of times on Saul, who each time had looked at her indulgently, smiled a little helplessly in his serious way, and hadn’t appeared to really get the joke at all…

   Whenever Hildy tried to tell someone, calmly and factually, what had happened between the two of them on that first day in the pizza parlor, she wound up having to say that she had simply let him pick her up. Which was undeniably true as far as it went. But putting it that way didn’t begin to tell the truth of what had happened between the two of them at first sight.

   All right, she advised herself now, run through it once more in your mind, and then stop dwelling on it, and then let’s concentrate on where life ought to go from here.

   Once more, now, she told