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.
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.”