He made himself look back toward the doorway that had once led to a secret passage. The bizarre light that had come pouring out of it was fading steadily, was now almost gone. The wind that had seemed to blow through it from another world had dwindled to a faint draft, was hardly more than imaginary now.
Margie was in there, somewhere. At least she had been there. He, Simon, had got her into this, pretending to himself that no real danger existed here at the Castle. Feeling responsible, he rose unsteadily to his feet and moved toward the little doorway, a jagged opening now with stones and wood torn from its edge. He glanced in passing at the group still gathered round the dinner table, a few steps to his right. Some were still seated, looking stunned, some now stood beside their chairs. Voices rose in a moaning jumble. Someone was muttering something about lightning. And now Vivian’s voice was speaking, plainly, loudly, reasonably, enforcing calm. But a few moments ago she had been screaming too, Simon was sure or it. Just before Hildy’s outburst, Vivian had screamed in hopeless agony, something that might have been a name. A word that sounded like Falerin.
Simon faced forward again, toward the shattered wall. What was that howling that he could hear now, coming from outside the castle? Wolves, in the 1980s, in Illinois?
Reaching the blasted doorway, Simon supported himself in it numbly, with a hand on either side gripping the edges of the broken wooden screen. It sank in on him now that the door had been literally blown away, as if by a charge of high explosive. Traces of strange odors reached his nostrils. He put his head forward, into the passage.
When he looked down the narrow, stone-walled passage to his left, what little the darkness let him see appeared normal. But to his right, the darkness and the light were both different. There was brightness, somewhere in that direction, but the source of light, whatever it was, was far off now and still receding. A faint but savage howling persisted, as of a remote wind. Simon wondered, with a sudden chill, if it could be a man’s voice that made that noise, if a human voice could be distorted so by superhuman agony and hatred.
Even as Simon watched and listened, the light and the sound continued to recede. There was no clue in the passage of Margie, or indeed, except for the distant howling, of any living thing.
A hand fell on Simon’s shoulder, startling him. From the touch there flowed into his body a trickle of some force that felt like electricity. He turned, knowing he would see Vivian. Her eyes looked into his.
“The roof may have been struck by lightning,” she said quietly. Her tone shared with him the knowledge of how widely that statement missed being a real explanation. “So I’m going up to take a look. I wish you’d come along.”
“Sure,” said Simon automatically. He paused to look around the great hall, where the flames of torch and candle were once more burning peacefully upright. The vanished servants had not reappeared.
The Wallises, he standing behind his wife’s chair, were clutching at each other’s hands in shock. Emily Wallis’ face was white and she looked ill. Saul, his expression that of a man who has been through all this before, was also trying to comfort and calm his wife; Hildy was quiet now, but silent sobs still racked her sturdy body as she clung to her husband. Thin Sylvia stood alone, studying the others as if for some clue as to what her own behavior ought to be. Arnaud was nowhere to be seen, nor was the man who had been introduced as Reagan.
“This way.” Like a guide conducting a private tour of some disaster, Vivian led Simon diagonally across the great hall toward the elevator. He let himself be led. But he was gathering his determination.
“What happened?” Simon asked when they were alone in the elevator, going up, and Vivian had released his arm.
“I don’t want to tell you what happened, Simon. Instead I want you to tell me what you saw.”
“I saw…” He broke off, swallowing. “Vivian, wait.”
“Tell me what you saw.” Her voice had become a coaxing caress.
“Listen. I want you to tell me a few things first. I’m missing about three hours out of this afternoon. I want you to explain that. I feel sure you can. And then tell me what we’re going to do about Margie.”
Vivian seemed to find it hard to believe that he could be so difficult and argumentative. “All right, Simon. We had to help you to your room this afternoon and put you to bed. You arrived here in a confused state. It’s not the first time in your life, I’m sure, that your special powers have given you a hard time. But now you are with those who want to help you.”
“Special powers?”
“Let’s not go on pretending. Yes, special powers.”
He sighed. “All right. No more pretending. But about Margie, my helper. The girl you saw working with me at the dinner theater. She was here, hidden in that passageway. She was going to pop out; that was the big effect I had planned, why I was going through all that mumbo-jumbo with the fireplace. I think you knew all along that she was in there. Where is she now? What’s happened to her?”
“Yes, Simon dear, I knew.” Vivian took him by a hand, which suddenly lacked strength to pull away. “Not quite soon enough, unfortunately. So there’s been some trouble. But we’ll do what we can to get Margie out of it. Just as soon as you’ve finished helping me in what I want.”
“Margie…”
“As soon as you’ve finished helping me.” Vivian patted his hand firmly.
Simon had made his effort. There was only so much of an effort that he could make. Now he obediently forgot—whatever it was that Vivian wanted him to forget. He went back to the moments in which his act had started to go wild, and told Vivian what he had seen and experienced then. She listened, hanging on his words as if she thought them of great importance.
The telling was finished before the elevator reached its highest level and eased to a stop. They got out of it and Vivian guided Simon along a short, stone-vaulted corridor and through a door. He realized that they were entering the tower; what must be its highest flight of stairs curved up before them. A wavering, eerie glow from somewhere above let Simon see the stairs clearly as they climbed.
The highest round of the stair was thickly littered with loose stones, fragments of mortar, singed bits of wood, unidentifiable debris. Cool night air, carrying misty rain along with a whiff of acrid smoke, was blowing in through a jagged hole in the tower wall. Up here the walls were much thinner than those of the lower levels of the castle, and the hole was big enough for a man to climb through. Above it, the normal door at the head of the stairs was closed.
When Simon reached the hole, he found himself looking out with his eyes at the level of the flat roof. Solid, physical forms were moving on the roof, people were at work in the near-darkness of the eerie outdoor light. There was the shift and thud of heavy weights being moved.
Vivian gestured, and Simon climbed out ahead of her, bracing a foot on an ancient, newly-exposed timber that hissed and smoldered in the light rain. The smell of bitter smoke was stronger now, mingled with the dankness of old wood and old stonework freshly wet. Gregory, hatless, but still in his medieval servant’s garb, was working in the rain, heaving chunks of stone away from the place where the new hole went down into the interior of the building. Working with Gregory at his command were the twins from the antique shop. The girl looked at Simon helplessly when he caught her eye—it was the same look he’d seen on her face in that bedroom scene that he’d thought was a dream. In a moment she had moved away. She and her brother were scrambling about, taking Gregory’s orders, helping him shift debris, as if in a panic of fear. Illuminating the scene was an unearthly glow clinging to the top of the tower. St. Elmo’s fire, thought Simon, he’d heard of it; it sometimes accompanied lightning, but he’d never seen it before.
Climbing up after Simon through the blasted hole, Vivian took Gregory by the arm; now for a moment it was Gregory who looked frightened. “Have you seen Carados?” she demanded of her servant, while Simon, not knowing the name, looked puzzled. Then Vivian added another question in another language. Simon thought that it was French or Latin, but he could extract no meaning though he had a smattering of both.
Gregory shook his head, and in the same tongue began what might have been an explanation. Meanwhile the two young people continued to work as if the penalty for slacking might be death, turning back torn edges of roof, lifting stones away, exposing more of the smoldering fire to the rain that would not let it grow.
“Simon.” Vivian had him by the arm again. “An enemy of ours has been here. He may still be here, nearby, on the castle grounds somewhere. He is a very unusual man, and he is calling himself Talisman. I met him once, a very long time ago… I should have remembered. I shudder to think of what might happen to Margie if he should find her. He likes to drink girls’ blood.”
“Talisman. I don’t know that name.”
“Rather tall, on the thin side… Dark. Age uncertain. If you can see him anywhere, anywhere at all, it’s
