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 Margie, 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 Margie had known as Talisman, standing tall in the mouth of the opened passage, gravely salute the old man with his blade. To Margie 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 one very well used to swords. When the executioner lunged at him with cleaver raised, the Sword flicked once only, with invisible speed. The cleaver clanged on the pavement, the mask of old Littlewood beside it, the creature who had borne them obliterated. There followed a mighty roaring from down the hidden passageway, and Talisman turned to look in that direction over his raised point.
Nimue screamed and screamed again, echoing the hoarse offstage voice of her Master. From their places at her side, Gregory and Arnaud both leaped at Talisman; he twisted round, thrust once, thrust once again. Nimue screamed; and the old man, a long wooden staff come from nowhere into his hands, strode toward her. “Your last command is spent,” he said.
The moonlight was clear, but Margie thought that lightning had shattered roof and sky together, to bring the castle down around her head.
It was one thing for men to yell at each other with determination that now they were going to break in. It was quite something else, Joe had been able to observe, when you got down to the nitty-gritty of dealing with inch-thick steel bars in a gate as high as the twelve-foot stone wall it pierced. Bold decision promptly degenerated into something like slow farce. With only one good arm Joe couldn’t be of much direct help. At last Charley Snider managed to climb over the gate, from a start on two bowed and burly backs. In the effort Charley burst seams in his coat, and one in his pants, but nobody was laughing. Once he was over and down, sure enough, there was a way for him to unbolt the great gate from inside. Cars started rolling in.
The screams had been terrible, but they had stopped while Charley was atop the gate. Now pocket lights were being flashed at the many doors of the closed garage, and around the darkened lawn and courtyard of the immense and silent main building. No light showed in any window.
“Watch out, swimming pool. Don’t step in that.”
Joe saw the bottom in a flashlight beam: weed [strewn], cracked, dry for what had probably been decades. On the other side of the pool, French doors led into the ground floor of the main building. The doors were closed, and, as it soon proved, locked.
“Go ahead.”
Glass tinkled, a single small pane. The doors were readily enough opened.
The voices of the men first to go in reported nothing but more emptiness, and long disuse.
Joe was still out in the courtyard when his eye was caught by a slight movement in a dark moon-shadow some yards away. He looked again, carefully, making sure.
“I’ll stand by out here,” he volunteered then. “Man the radios. My arm’s starting to give me hell.”
No one argued with this. They were all busy being active cops, getting into the building, searching aggressively for the screaming victim, or victims—there had seemed to be more than one voice in agony.
Joe, left alone, walked warily past the cars with their radios buzzing alertly. He moved close to the shadowed corner. Talisman was standing there, carrying some kind of bundle in his arms. When Joe got close enough he saw it was the limp body of a young woman.
“The searchers will not find much, Joseph. I wanted to reassure you that things have turned out—much better than they might have. The world is as safe as can be expected.” There was no hint of mockery in Talisman’s voice.
“If you say so. What about her?”
“She goes with me, for tonight. You have my word she will be safe. But I must strengthen the merciful forgetting she has been blessed with by one more powerful than I. One whose art makes a semblance of neglect and abandonment around us now. I have seen marvels tonight, Joseph—yet I myself have some little skill in helping people toward forgetfulness.”
He glanced down at the young woman, who stirred, looked up at him. Then like a child she closed her eyes again.
“Who is she?”
“Margie Hilbert. But you will probably never hear her name again. I have told you, Joe, she will be safe.”
“Where’s Falcon? I mean the man who—”
“I know who you mean, Joseph. You will not find him. He will soon sleep again, in some retreat of his own devising. Which I myself would not try to find, even if I thought I could succeed. He will sleep, I think, until the founts of magic are recharged. A new day of the earth had dawned. The Sword is with him.”
“Wait…”
But Talisman and the woman were gone.
