Dominion by Fred Saberhagen (best motivational novels txt) 📕

the damned tongue now, if it even had a name, but as soon as he heard it again the sound and meaning of it flowed smoothly once more in his antique brain cells.

   He spoke the tongue of Brittany, for the first time in a thousand years “I’m leaving. You need not worry about what you ought to call me.”

   “I should prefer to be able to use some name.” Nimue’s voice was smoothly unrevealing. “For reasons of courtesy.”

   “All right. Hawk is a good name.” Then, switching to modern English: “Mr. Hawk, to you.” And then, after a pause: “I don’t get it, what you’re trying to do here. I mean, why me? And tied down on a rack. I mean, what the bloody hell, woman? Did you just want to see the expression on my face when I woke up?”

   Nimue only smiled faintly, and shook her head. They both knew that she didn’t have to explain anything at all to him. Because… because… the reason escaped Hawk just now, but he knew it was a damned good one.

   “Just fate, I suppose,” he meditated aloud. “That’s why I’m here. Or somebody’s plan?”

   Still the enigmatic smile. Nimue raised an open hand, and made a small gesture with two fingers, and two of the things—in the old days he would probably have called them familiars—from two of the top corners of the room went flickering away upon some errand. They were pre-instructed, evidently, or maybe pre-programmed was the modern word.

   Nimue said: “No plan of mine, Mr. Hawk. You can leave here any time you want to, for all of me. All we wanted was some human who would not be missed, so it will be easy enough to obtain a replacement. The rack was just a handy place to keep you, nothing more. By the way, would you like a good bottle of wine to take along? I understand that wine had been your chief interest ever since we last spoke.”

   She couldn’t resist a chance for petty cruelty. Hawk shuddered. The emotion that made him do so was not quite recognizable. “Just ‘some human’, hey? And you got me. How about that man who picked me up on the street? Some private plan of his, maybe?”

   Nimue looked as if she would like to remind Mr. Hawk of his expressed wish to leave, but was at the same time afraid that any word from her might have an opposite effect. Was all this some subtle ploy intended to influence him to stay? Hawk didn’t think so.

   He could see that some enterprise of consequence was in the process of organization here.

   Besides the squat-toads, relatively easy to visualize when you knew how, a veritable crowd of other presences were waiting in the wings. The dim dungeon—as moderns would call this place, he’d rather simply call it a hole—crawled with powers, his own, Nimue’s, who-knew-whose. All these were edging each other ominously, maneuvering for position, elbowing like basketball players under some evil backboard. Were such as these in fact spirits? Were they alive at all, or like the winds only the artifacts of some invisible force? He still didn’t know, despite the long centuries of service he had received from some of them. The older he grew the less he knew with certainty. But when the ball flew at the backboard, things were going to happen. Of that he could be sure.

   Anyway something of his own willed purpose must have been worked out amid the jockeying. A recent unspoken, almost unconscious wish of his was granted: another look at the coffee-colored man who had picked up Feathers on the street, and drugged him, and then drove him all the way out here from Chicago.

   This abductor came through a door into the dungeon now. “What is it?” he demanded of Nimue, in the tone of one who has just heard his name called from an adjoining room. Then he looked in surprise at the old man’s gown, and then he was distracted seriously by trying to aim a hard stare into the old man’s eyes. Whatever the hard stare met there caused the kidnapper to back up a step, right into a corner where one of the demon-toads hung right above his head. Neither of Nimue’s agents appeared, for the moment, to be aware of the other one’s existence.

   Now that her human helper had been maneuvered into the room, Nimue would go along with his presence gracefully. “Carados,” she addressed him easily, “tell me why you picked out this particular old specimen? Out of all the wrecked men who must have been available on that street.” Her tone was mild, but the speech was a display of arrogance, giving away as it did the true name of one of her people, throwing caution aside, daring Hawk to make what use of it he liked. They both understood that she

could still dare him as she liked. Because…

   Carados shrugged. Insolently his eyes ransacked his mistress’ body, as if she had put that brief costume on to please him. She was not only in a swimsuit, Hawk noted, she was actually still wet. She must have been called from poolside for the emergency. And again he wondered just what the hell was going on.

   Carados said: “Why not? He was just about able to walk, so I didn’t have to carry him, but too far gone to put up any fuss. What’s wrong with him?”

   “Take a milder tone with me. Somehow you were led, influenced, to choose this particular man for the next sacrifice. I would like to know who influenced you, and how and why.”

   “He been feeding you some kind of line about me?” And Carados tried to look menacingly at Hawk, but somehow the intimidating stare became diverted. Carados stared up uneasily into one corner of the ceiling. Plainly he knew that something was there besides the stones, but he was having a