here.”
“He’s started coming through the tunnel now, to our world,” said the girl. “The Master is. I did what Vivian wanted, I did, but it won’t be needed now.”
“What? What won’t be needed?”
“The baby. The Master is coming now. Vivian won’t need any more help.”
“What baby?”
“Mine.” The girl looked steadily up at Simon. “Yours.”
Hints and fragments of explanation, each more dreadfully suggestive than the last, struggled to take form in Simon’s brain. “You mean you’re pregnant—from me. That time I thought that you and I—I wasn’t dreaming—you were in bed with me—”
The girl was nodding. She sat there clasping her knees, looking ugly. “It’s how we all live here. It’s how we do things. Vivian breeds people. People with powers, the powers she needs to help bring the Master. But now he’s coming at last. Now she needs the sacrifices more, that’s what she said. Needs us to be killed. Needs our blood. Help me!” The girl seized Simon by one leg, clung to his knee with a burst of weeping. Suddenly she looked up at him again and said in a clear voice: “You’re my father.”
“Mine too,” the boy said next to her.
For a moment Simon truly did not understand.
“And Lissa and I bred a baby once for Vivian,” the boy added, looking at his sister. “It didn’t turn out good. Vivian already used it up. Now she’s going to use us up.”
Simon backed away from them, one step. It was as far as he could move. Father. Daughter. Baby. To himself he mumbled words that he was unable to understand.
His body pressed against steel, and he turned. Outside the jailbars of the cave, in the light of the ringed torches hissing in the rain, a guardian power stalked, a jailor with a crooked walk. Simon could recognize old Grandfather Littlewood, from the portrait—no, it was only something in old Littlewood’s shape. At close range he could see how the thing was wearing old Littlewood’s human likeness like a mask. He could see everything, and it did him no good at all. On its shoulder the creature bore what appeared to be a giant cleaver, stained with blood.
“Prepare,” ordered a disembodied voice, Vivian’s voice, out of the nearby air. And the Littlewood-figure came to the jail door and somehow pulled it open. It seized Simon by one arm when he tried to run, and held him paralyzed.
Somewhere in the distance, down inside the secret tunnel, an awesome procession was approaching. There were sounds, a muttering of many voices that were not all human. There was reflected light, beginning to be faintly visible to the physical eye. The colors of it were sickly. Falerin the Master was approaching. Evil wafted ahead of him, like the stench of his wagonloads of corpses.
And now, along the path that led through woods to the grotto, came Vivian and her supporting crew. There came Gregory, right after her, and there was Arnaud. Around them, a score or more of wraith-figures slouched or capered. Two at least dragged captives with them. Simon didn’t want to look.
Abruptly there was a sound of purely human movement inside the secret passage. Saul climbed up out of it, carrying his wife Hildy in his arms. She was alive, and her eyes were open, but they no longer saw, or perhaps no longer wished to see. Behind them the inhuman muttering grew a little louder, became distinguishable as some kind of a chant.
“Quickly!” ordered Vivian, stopping her own advance near the altar.
Hildy was borne there by her husband, and put down, as he might have carried her and given her to a doctor for an X-ray examination. Relieved of the weight, Saul stood back and rubbed his eyes. Somehow, Simon realized irrelevantly, he tended to think of Saul as wearing glasses.
Thoughts about Saul vanished. Vivian was looking straight at Simon himself. “Find the Sword for me,” she commanded him. “I won’t.” Whether it was a benefit of actual physical imprisonment, or something else, Simon found himself at least momentarily free of fear. He could at least try to defy her now.
Vivian nodded to the executioner.
“Slow bleeding, Lady?” the thing that wore old Littlewood’s shape inquired of her from over the sightless staring Hildy.
“Quick death. We have no time tonight for squeezing the fine essences, or playing tricks with what’s left afterwards.”
Simon beheld the cleaver rise; he heard but did not watch it fall.
Now Vivian was looking at Saul. “Now you are not needed any longer. But we require your blood and death.”
Saul looked about him, in his usual abstracted, business-like way. “I thought it might have worked out differently,” he said to no one in particular. He rubbed his eyes, and again Simon had the impression of an accountant’s or bookkeeper’s eyeglasses being handled. “I thought—”
One of the wraith-figures pushed Saul violently from behind. He went face down on the stone altar. The cleaver swung, and this time Simon was not quick enough looking away. He saw the flying blood.
With each violent death, the presence of Falerin came closer through the tunnel, his music a notch louder, even the sickening smell became a little harder to deny.
Suddenly Simon noticed Margie, in the background behind Vivian, being brought closer to the altar by the figure that held her. Her eyes were on Simon, but not as if she expected anything from him or even saw him. Beside Margie, another creature was holding Sylvia, who appeared to be in no better shape.
At the mouth of the cave, the boy-twin was being pried from his sister’s almost catatonic grip. He was dragged helplessly out and thrown upon the altar.
“Flesh of your flesh, Simon.” Vivian’s voice bored at him relentlessly. “Now will you find the Sword for me? Then we’ll need no more sacrifices. Or, a few more deaths, a bit more blood, and my powers will be strong enough to force the passage despite the Sword. Which way is it to be?”
Simon saw that the hope Vivian offered him was a lie, as was her confidence of being able to overcome the hidden Sword. And he saw much more than that.
He spoke his discovery aloud. “I see now where it is… no, where it was for a long time. It’s not there any longer.” Before Vivian could interrupt, he raised an arm, pointing uphill to where the towering keep was shrouded in night and mist. “In the great hall. There’s an oak beam right above the fireplace. Open it.”
There was a swirl of rapid movement among Vivian’s inhuman followers. Only seconds later, muffled crashing noises sounded from inside the castle. And very quickly after that, two of the powers were back, bearing ten feet of torn-out beam between them.
At once Vivian commanded: “Break it!”
In the grip of those hands it crumbled as if it were termite-eaten. Amid a cloud of dust there came to light a carven, sword-shaped nest. One creature 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.
Margie, 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 Margie 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 Margie 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 Margie turned her head toward the woodland path, following the common gaze.
