"You mean it's harder for them to hold onto their faith, now that they don't actually need it."
"No, I mean that there is no faith for them to have! It is the king who sets the example, but he embraces no beliefs and preaches none—so his people have none, either!"
"And this pocket universe is the perfect example of what happens: when you have the chance to make your dreams come true, but no yardstick to measure which dreams are good for you and which are destructive, you get bogged down in your own neuroses."
The sorcerer grinned wickedly. "Odd terms, but an agony of heart quite clearly stated."
And it was, of course, what he was living day to day—unless he was one of the few who had control over his illusions, not letting his illusions control him. No wonder this was a prison fit only for sorcerers and wizards—for anyone else, it would begin as Paradise, then turn into a torture chamber of the subconscious, and finish by being a killing ground.
The sorcerer's eyes flashed. "Be sure that I can control my imaginings!"
"So the secular monarch needs to find some sort of values to replace religion." All Matt could think of was how the Soviets had made Communism assume many of the aspects of religion. It had indeed been a secular religion, in its own way.
All of a sudden he couldn't take this conversation any more. This sorcerer was too right about what was wrong. "Think I'll go looking and see if there's anybody else here who really knows about mind control," Matt said. "Thanks for the overview." He turned and started for the gate, then remembered and whirled around, his finger stabbing out—just in time for him to think up a lightning bolt that exploded the elephant-headed giant belly dancer with carnivore's fangs that was reaching for him with its trunk. It burst into a shower of sparks and was gone. "Don't try it," Matt told the sorcerer sternly, "because I'm making myself a little familiar, right now, to watch you closely and alert me if you come up with any other monstrosities for stabbing me in the back."
The sorcerer glared at him. "You remove all the fun of this world!"
Matt suddenly realized that, to the sorcerer, he had been put there only for the man to play with—that, like all other people, his sole reason for existence had been to amuse this monster of depravity.
Monster of depravity? Was that why all his creations were depraved monsters? "Just don't try it," Matt warned. "So far, I haven't tried to hurt you. Don't tempt me—I don't have much resistance."
"Oh, I think this realm will tempt you to your fullest," the sorcerer assured him.
Matt resolved, then and there, not to imagine up a single item for his own amusement or pleasure. Trouble was, he'd never been much good at keeping resolutions. But he did manage to walk out of the dank and fetid castle, his back prickling every inch of the way, expecting attack.
A dragonfly from the moat zoomed past him, hit the wall, and turned into a tarantula. It scuttled up the stonework, and Matt relaxed. Just to test it, he glanced through its eyes, and saw the sorcerer making a wolf with a head on each end. Matt produced a huge saw, cut it down the middle, and made them all disappear. He walked on out, listening to the cursing behind him with great satisfaction—but he didn't relax until he'd made it across the drawbridge and a hundred yards away. Then, with one final shudder, he loosed his binding spell, put the foul sorcerer from his mind, and set off to find out if there was anyone good in this befogged wasteland.
Actually, he was ready to settle for someone just a little bit good. He wasn't in any shape to be picky.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They watched the herald out of sight. Then Alisande turned to Sir Guy, resolutely banishing thoughts of a strange chill-white concoction in a clear glass standing cup, with some sort of dark brown sauce oozing over the top of it, and said, "How now, Sir Guy? How shall we save Matthew without bringing a war down upon our heads?"
"I would say," the knight said slowly, "that we must first discover how Matthew may be in dire danger, but not in Latruria."
"Is he gone from Latruria?" Stegoman rumbled.
"A good thought." Alisande turned to Ortho the Frank. "How say you, Wizard? Is your teacher in Latruria, or not?"
"He is not." Ortho's gaze still probed a distance only he could see. "Yet he is nonetheless in dire peril."
The ice of fear enveloped Alisande's heart. Ice! That was the stuff in the standing cup! But not really ice, either... "He... he is not in... a realm of the Afterlife?"
"No," Ortho said with complete certainty. "He is not in Hell, nor Purgatory, nor any of the realms of the dead. He is in a place that both is and is not..." He shrugged, his eyes coining back into focus. "I cannot explain it more clearly than that, your Majesty; we have not the words. It is a wizard's realm; let it rest at that."
Stegoman scowled. "A wizard's realm, and Matthew cannot break free of it?"
"Not by himself, no."
"And can you not aid him?" Sir Guy demanded.
"Alas, no," Ortho sighed. "I am a willing wizard, Sir Knight, but not a terribly powerful one."
"Then we must bring a terribly powerful one." Stegoman swung his head toward Sir Guy. "Is this not the emergency of which the Witch Doctor spoke?"
"It is," Sir Guy agreed, and turned back to Alisande. " 'A clear and present danger,' he said. This is a present danger, though its nature may not be clear."
"Yet it is clearly a danger." Alisande turned to Ortho. "Is it not?"
"Most clearly indeed, your Majesty, and if it is not present now, it will most quickly become so!"
"Then there is no more time to wait," Alisande said to the Black Knight. "Summon the Witch Doctor!"
Sir Guy loosened his gorget and drew a most unspectacular bauble out from the protection of his breastplate. "This is the amulet he gave me."
Alisande frowned at the ball on its length of dull iron chain. It was a globe of metal perhaps two inches across, perforated with dozens of tiny holes arranged in diagonal rows—serried ranks. " 'Tis most unprepossessing, Sir Guy."
"It is," the Black Knight agreed. "The Wizard Saul says appearances are of no importance—only function and substance do matter."
Alisande shuddered. "I pity his lady, Angelique!"
"Be assured, she has their cottage well in hand," Sir Guy told her, "and he rejoices in its appearance as he does in hers."
Alisande frowned. "Does he not see that his pleasure in her beauty, and the loveliness she creates about her, give the lie to his claims not to care about the outsides of things?"
"With respect, your Majesty," Ortho said, "Lord Matthew has told me that the wizard Saul has never been troubled by his contradicting of himself. What does the amulet do, Sir Guy?"
"It will take my words to him." Sir Guy pressed a little nubbin on the side of the cylinder that held the amulet. "There is a charm I must recite, to make it carry my voice... 'Breaker, breaker! Nine one one! Come in, Wizard Saul! Mayday! Mayday!' "
Alisande frowned. "But 'tis mid-June, Sir Guy, nigh to Midsummer's. 'Tis long past May Day."
Sir Guy shrugged. "Who can comprehend the ways of wizards, Majesty? He told me that it means 'help me' in a language called French—muh aid-ay—but that makes scarcely more sense, for I have never heard of such a tongue."
Alisande glanced quickly at Ortho, but he only shrugged, looking as baffled as she.
"Nine one one! Mayday, Wizard Saul!" Sir Guy said again, then, "Oh! I forgot! He said I must loose the nubbin when I am done speaking!" He lifted his thumb, and the button rose. Saul's voice crackled out of the amulet, surprising Sir Guy so much that he dropped it. Fortunately, it swung by its chain, reverberating with the little tinny voice that somehow they could recognize as Wizard Saul's. "You've gotta let up on the button, Sir Guy! I'm talking, but you can't hear me if you don't let go! Raise your thumb! Lift up your finger!" Then, oddly, the voice broke into song.
"I lift up my finger and I say,
'tweet, tweet, now, now, come, come,'
"Am I sounding as daffy as I think I am? Hey, wait a minute—how can
you answer if I'm still talking? Okay, Sir Guy, I'll give you a chance—I'll shut up for ten seconds. You press the little button again and tell me if you can hear me. Remember the incantation? It's, 'I read you loud and clear.' Got that? Okay, let's try it."
"He might give me a chance," Sir Guy said, annoyed, then pressed the button. "As it happens, I do remember that—I read you loud and clear, Wizard Saul! Though I do not read you, truly, only hear you, and why you think this spell will work when it has neither meter nor rhyme, I cannot think!"
He let up on the button just in time to hear Saul say, "Well, I knew that. Don't worry about the verse, I enchanted it when I built it, and it will keep working unless you break the indicted thing. Over."
"He says 'over' to signal that he is done talking," Sir Guy explained, and pressed the button. "Wizard Saul, we have just received word that Matthew is in danger. He seems to be imprisoned, but we cannot say where—it seems to be some sort of wizard's realm!"
"We pray you come to his aid, and quickly!" Alisande called into the amulet, then added as an afterthought, "Over."
For a moment there was no sound. Sir Guy frowned, and was just about to press the button again when Saul's voice sounded from the bauble. "Yeah, I'd say that's a good reason for putting my experiment on ice. It will take a few minutes to shut down, then a few more to square things with Angelique, but give me, oh, half an hour, and I'll be with you."
"There is no need to be with us!" Alisande protested, and Sir Guy pressed the button in time for the amulet to catch her words. "Only find a way to be with him!"
"Over!" Sir Guy said, and let go of the button.
"Be with him. Gotcha," Saul's voice said. "I'll work on it. Any other instructions? Information, maybe?"
Alisande glanced questioningly at Ortho, who shook his head, and Sir Guy said, "You know all that we know now, Wizard Saul—except that word came from King Boncorro's chancellor, Lord Rebozo, saying that Matthew is no longer in Latruria. The knowledge that he is in danger came from Ortho, who has been Matthew's assistant for some years. Ortho also tells us that Matthew is in a strange sort of wizards' realm that is neither part of this world nor of any domain of the Afterlife—but cannot explain what he means. Over."
"Well, if anybody would be wise to him, it would be his research assistant," Saul's voice said, "at least, when it comes to magic. How did you know, Ortho? A dream? A waking vision? A hunch? Excuse me, I mean 'a feeling.' Over."
"A feeling," Ortho said, "but far more than that. There was, of a sudden, a sensation that I walked through mist, that the whole world had become insubstantial, and that I would never find my way out, for there were no landmarks. Over."
"Yeah, that sounds pretty convincing," said Saul's voice. "I'll start work on it and see if I can find anything—or anybody. Report back to you this evening. Over."
"Over and out," Sir Guy said, and let up on the button. "Well, your Majesty, we have done what we may."
She nodded. "It is in Wizard Saul's hands now."
"Shall we, indeed, press onward?" the dragon rumbled.
"We shall." Even though she was no longer in her own country, Alisande still knew instinctively what was best for Merovence; in this universe, the Divine Right of Kings was no empty theory. "We shall discover what we may, for I know in some manner that it shall be vital to us all that we be in Venarra when Saul finds Matthew. Forward!"
They marched, the army newly resolute, Ortho now with hope to balance his dread, and Alisande wondering whether the cold white substance in the clear dish could be snow, and if possibly they might have some in King Boncorro's kitchens.
Matt didn't really relax until the dark castle had disappeared into the mists behind him. Then he slowed down to a stroll and decided to admire the scenery. The only problem was that it was awfully hard to admire a continuous expanse of gray mist—so he started making his own.
He began small, with a miniature snow-globe scene, right after somebody had shaken the ball—and sure enough, there it was, ahead and off to his right. The little house looked charming, the snowman actually waved at him, and the flakes drifted gently down. Of course, being so small, it seemed to be far away—but what the hey, it was all illusion, anyway.
On an impulse, Matt left it standing for a while, thinking about something else—say, making a succulent fruit plate—until he was fifty feet past it. Then he looked back—and sure enough, it was still there, even though he hadn't been watching it, and had very deliberately not been thinking about it. The snowman hadn't turned to watch him go, but you wouldn't expect that a snowman would. So any illusion he conjured up would stay there until he deliberately wiped it out. Matt was tempted—after all, it was a harmless little scene—but the anti-litter habits of his own world took over, and he carefully thought of it disappearing as if erased with an art gum. No doubt he just imagined that the snowman looked a little bit panicked just before its head disappeared, but he felt a trifle guilty, anyway.
Then he turned around, pondering the possibility that illusions could gain even more of an independent existence here.
The bowl of fruit sat before him, looking every bit as delicious as he had imagined.
Matt stared—he hadn't even willed it into existence, just imagined making it, with lingering delight. In fact, he had worked up an appetite just thinking about it—so maybe that was why it had appeared.
Gingerly, he reached out, selected a slice of melon, and bit. It was definitely the best melon he had ever tasted—exactly as he had imagined it should be, succulent and flavorful and moist. The moistness helped a lot, since he hadn't found a drinking fountain yet. He finished the melon, ate a few more pieces of the fruit, then imagined the whole plate fading into nothingness. Condensed mist wasn't very satisfying; the fruit was, and the comfortable feeling in his stomach stayed. Why not? It was just as easy to create the illusion that he was well-fed as it was to create the illusion of a fruit plate.
He strolled along, fabricating butterflies and songbirds as he went. They fluttered and flew about him, then went winging off to spread glad sounds everywhere else in this pocket universe. With all that depressing gray stuff, they were needed.
Matt came to a halt with a sudden thought. If he could leave illusions lying around the landscape, couldn't other people? And if his could make noise and taste good and fill the stomach, maybe somebody else's could draw blood with sharp teeth, or inject agony with a very big stinger. He decided to proceed a bit more cautiously.
It also raised the question of what happened to the odd imprisoned magician who died here. Could his soul escape to the Afterlife, or did it have to hang around this vale of mist? Admittedly, sorcerers would probably prefer to hang around—paybacks are hell, literally in this case, and Hell wasn't apt to be cheated, especially by a pocket universe created by a man who wasn't even trying to be saintly. So the odds were that Hell would have no trouble reaching in to yank one of its debtors out. But the ghost of a wizard might be another matter, though why it should want to linger around here when it had Heaven waiting, Matt couldn't think. Of course, if it was expecting a long session in Purgatory, that might be another matter—so Matt decided to be wary of wandering ghosts.
After starting with alarm at three different wraiths that turned out to be just thicker-than-average swirls of mist, he decided that, no matter what, he needed sunshine. The idea of creating the sun itself was so audacious that he had to think twice about it, but he reminded himself that it was only an illusion, not a real sun. In fact, just to keep himself from getting confused and also possibly suffering radiation sickness, he imagined it as a ball of pure light, not flaming at all, and only a hundred feet overhead. Sure enough, it appeared—or its light did, filtered through the mist. As he walked, he imagined the mist melting away under the sun's heat—and there it was, his own portable sun, sitting up there at the zenith...
But he had imagined it as having just risen. And, come to think of it, he had imagined its light as being golden, not white, not yet.
What was going on here?
Especially what was going on as the lifting mists disclosed a beautiful park, lush lawns bordered with flower beds in a dozen colors and textures, trees whose leafy boughs were so regular that they might have been sculpted, hedges and bushes that definitely had been, and here and there among them all, pools of water with stunning miniature scenes and fountains, and elegant, almost Classical, statues.
Matt went up to one of the statues, wondering, and decided that it really was Classical, at least in style. Someone had studied the Greeks and Romans thoroughly, and done a painstakingly accurate job of mimicking their style. The feminine form was tantalizingly real, its posture inviting and graceful, but its face a study in the calm, cool self-possession that he had seen in so many pictures of Greek statues.
He went a little farther, wondering, looking all about him. There wasn't a single religious statue among the lot—or at least, nothing that was Christian or Hindu or Buddhist; these figures might have come from the Greek and Roman pantheons, but if so, they were only idealized versions of the human.
Human! That was it! Someone had rediscovered the value and potential of the human body and, presumably, of the human mind! These weren't Classical statues, they were Renaissance! But this was the Middle Ages; this universe hadn't rediscovered the Classics and begun the rebirth of knowledge yet.
Wait a minute—when he had mentioned old Greek tales, Boncorro had said that he had heard of such discoveries, had even read a few. The Renaissance had started in Italy when the English knights were still slugging it out with broadswords, and Latruria was Italy by any other name. Had he arrived just in time for the beginning of the Rebirth of Art and Learning? Matt wondered.
Or was it going to be stillborn? Was King Boncorro going to keep it locked up here, instead of letting it loose?
Anger surged, but faded into puzzlement. King Boncorro was far too interested in learning, and in finding alternatives to religion, for him to have deliberately banished a scholar. Was there some Latrurian equivalent of Petrarch or Abelard imprisoned here? And if so—why?
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