“You will restore the lady to her health and reason,” said Vicente grimly, “or you will go to the Saletta dei Tre Inquisitori. And when the inquisition and torture are finished, you will slowly and oh, so very painfully, die by my own hand.” His dark eyes bored into Noel’s. They held no mercy, no indecision.
Noel believed him. He swallowed hard but kept his mouth shut. There was, after all, nothing further to say.
Vicente lowered his dagger and shoved Noel forward. “Take him!”
Chapter 2
Venice, la Serenissima, a city of art, architecture, and legend. Artisans and historians throughout time had been fascinated with it. Unique, built upon a string of tiny islands linked by canals, it had ruled others, had been invaded and conquered, nearly destroyed by war, neglect, and flood, and restored once in the twentieth century and again in the twenty-first. Venice…a city long since crumbled to a watery grave by Noel’s own time. He had seen tapes of it. He had submarined through the ruins beneath the Adriatic. But now here he was, in Venice at the zenith of her glory, a strong republic with a ruthless grip on the spice and silk trade between Europe and the Orient, a rich city of breathtaking beauty and wonders at every turn.
Shivering in his damp clothes, Noel was bound and shoved into a gondola. His guards kept grim silence. At least two daggers were held constantly against his side. If he’d tried to jump over the side, he would have been a dead man before he hit the water.
Water chuckled under the bows of the craft as it passed swiftly along the canal. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of gondolas coming and going. By the uncertain light of the lanterns, Noel glimpsed passengers in jewels and velvets, cloaked and masked for the revelry, some sitting sedately in plain sight, others grappling merrily behind fringed curtains. Stately palazzos rose above the canal in rows. Their small windows blazed with candlelight, and servants in livery stood on the landings, holding welcoming baskets of gilded fruit for the guests who came and went. Swirls of music came from every side. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the festival immensely, except for the grim men surrounding Noel. In his gondola no one spoke at all, and the silence was unnerving.
The gondolier swept them into a smaller, less traveled canal almost entirely shrouded in darkness. An involuntary shiver passed over Noel. He squinted through the shadows and glimpsed an ornate bridge spanning the water ahead.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“The Bridge of Sighs,” Vicente’s deep voice replied from behind him. “It is where prisoners cross from the dungeons to stand before the judges and hear their sentences. Mark it well, sorcerer, for soon you shall cross it yourself.”
Noel turned his head sharply. “I’m not condemned yet.”
“Your attack was witnessed by everyone in the sala,” Vicente said sharply. “Then as you turned to flee you vanished from sight. Only Aldo was able to pursue you, and we kept to his trail. Denial is useless.”
Great, thought Noel wearily. In the past Leon had kept his devilry out of sight, but if he’d tried to use his telepathic skills to make a puppet of this woman in front of everyone, then he must be completely out of control. It seemed that in each travel, Leon lost another fragment of decency and character. He’d always been rotten, but until recently his crimes had centered primarily around theft, seduction, and extortion. He’d focused his murderous attacks only on Noel. Then in their last travel to revolutionary Pennsylvania, Leon had murdered a man and mutilated the corpse. It was as though his encounter with the Qwip creature had altered Leon somehow, and it wasn’t for the better. Noel worried that Leon might have snapped completely, gone totally mad. It was always possible. Sometimes he felt that his own hold on sanity wasn’t too secure.
Stealthily in the darkness of the gondola, he tested the tightness of his bonds. His fingers explored his wrist and felt the hard outline of his Light Operated Computer beneath his sleeve. The temptation to activate it was hard to resist. He could send his captors running with a display of technological razzle-dazzle. But no matter what else had happened, his ethical training remained intact. Survival had to always be balanced against not contaminating an older culture.
Without the LOC as an option he needed to think of something else and soon.
Cope with it, he told himself savagely. This was no time to fall apart. If he didn’t pull himself together and start thinking, the rest of his life was going to be fairly short.
The prow of the gondola bumped into something solid. With a start, Noel looked up and saw that they had arrived. The gondolier tied his craft to a striped mooring pole, and Noel was prodded off the boat onto the stone landing.
Guards wearing armor beneath their cloaks waited with wicked-looking halberds that gleamed silver in the torchlight. A crowd of onlookers filled the shadowy expanse of a spacious plaza and jostled each other behind the row of guards. Noel was hurried along by his captors. The darkness, ruddy torchlight, and staring faces melded into a jumble. On the far side of the plaza he could see the immense form of a church. The Ducal Palace itself was ablaze with light. To Noel, the building looked upside down, for its square solid walls were balanced on oddly delicate columns and intricate Gothic tracery carved from stone.
Right now, however, Noel was far from interested in architecture. He kept turning his head from side to side, watching for any opportunity no matter how meager. The crowd was close to being a mob. Angry shouts were hurled at him from all sides. Now and then a stone or piece of dung was flung at him. Scattered among the populace lurked sinister, aloof figures wearing blue and red robes. They were observers, not participants—spies for the republic, perhaps.
Noel was pushed into a long passageway that emerged into a private courtyard within the palace walls. Disturbed pigeons cooed and fluttered on their roosts. From somewhere came an appalling stench of death. Glancing up at the intricate walls and balconies looming over him, Noel thought he saw decaying heads impaled up there. He swallowed hard. A guard shoved him, and he shuffled slowly up a broad and very ornate staircase.
The steps were flanked at the top by two gigantic statues of nude men in the ancient classical style. Seeing them startled Noel. He recognized them as Mars and Neptune, sculpted to represent Venice’s power on land and sea. They had been excavated and now stood inside the library at the Time Institute. If he closed his eyes he could see them clearly, the huge faces almost grotesque at close quarters, the marble cheeks scarred and pitted from pollution, the ankle of Mars kept sleek and polished by the casual touch of countless hands as library patrons stepped around the corner into the Renaissance history section. But tonight, here in the gloom of another century and halfway around the world from a Chicago that did not as yet exist, the two statues looked sleek and brand-new, untouched by the corrosion of time. Noel supposed they had not been completed very long ago.
For a few moments he felt disoriented and dizzy. The statues did not belong here. They were a piece of home. They…
A touch on his shoulder pulled him out of it. He glanced up to see Vicente’s aquiline face close to his. The man was frowning.
“This is no time to faint,” he said harshly. “Face your actions like a man. Hurry! The Doge awaits you.”
And Noel was hustled through an archway beneath a winged lion into the glittering and sumptuous chambers beyond.
After the gloom outside, the indoor light was so bright it dazzled him. He squinted and blinked, gasping at the smoky, hot air. It was ripe with too many odors of incense, perfumes, and unwashed clothing. Fat candles of different heights burned everywhere; their flickering light reflected off the gold that seemed to gild almost every object. Glancing up, Noel was staggered by the richness of the paintings that adorned the ceilings. One corner looked incomplete, the vibrant colors fading into pencil sketches. Crude wooden scaffolding and a painter’s dropcloth showed a project still in progress.
“Stay here,” Vicente murmured to his men. Gripping Noel’s arm with fingers like steel, Vicente strode forward through the knots of cou
rtiers who all glared at Noel. In the light Vicente’s hair was more gray than black. There were deep lines carved on either side of his mouth, and more lines radiated from the corners of his flashing dark eyes. The hand that gripped Noel’s sleeve was adorned with heavy ruby and sapphire rings, their red and blue colors glittering as though with life of their own. Noel flexed his own muscles experimentally against Vicente’s hold, and Vicente’s gaze swept his with a reprimand as stinging as a whip flick.
At the far end of the chamber stood two empty thrones. A heavyset man in fur robes paced back and forth, pulling at his fleshy lips. He looked both worried and furious.
Noel stared at him. “The Doge?”
“Fool,” Vicente murmured with contempt. “He is merely the grand chancellor.”
Vicente came to an abrupt halt and bowed slightly without loosening his grip on Noel’s sleeve. “Domino,” he said with courtesy.
The chancellor turned. “Ah, at last. We received word of the sorcerer’s capture and have been waiting most anxiously for your return, Lord Contarini. This impetuous dash of pursuit was perhaps a trifle hasty? After all, surely in these dangerous situations it would be more fitting to dispatch the secret police?”
Vicente bowed again in silence.
The chancellor eyed Noel nervously, avoiding his gaze. “The, er, the sorcerer is contained, I trust? He can do no further harm?”
Vicente whipped out a dagger, stiletto thin and long enough to thrust completely through Noel’s body. The hilt was set with a cross of rubies. “He no longer wishes to cast his spells, Domino.”
“Ah, good. That is good.” The chancellor drew up his corpulent body and glared at Noel. “You have unleashed evil in this house tonight, sorcerer, but God is more powerful than you. You will recant the spell and you will repent of your wrongs.”
Noel just looked at him, figuring this pompous speech was more for the benefit of the courtiers watching than for him.
“He has a sour, wicked eye,” said the chancellor, his nervousness returning.
“With your permission I shall take him to the Doge’s apartments,” said Vicente smoothly. The corner of his mouth, however, was clamped too tight and betrayed his impatience. “Every delay only makes the spell harder to break.”
“Yes? Ah, yes, yes, of course. With care, signore. With care, eh?”
Vicente walked on, his stride lengthening with every step. Noel kept pace easily, but all the while he was beating his brain, trying to come up with some means of salvation. He’d tried convincing his captor that he was the wrong man. No luck there. That left him with the victim. Sometimes Leon merely tampered a little with people’s minds, leaving them muddled and confused for a while. They could be shaken out of it. But other times Leon did serious harm. Noel would never forget the vibrant Greek bandit girl, Elena, who had been reduced to someone trapped in vague uncertainty, her mind permanently damaged by what Leon had done to her. The memory still angered Noel. There was much Leon had done that was unforgivable. Conscienceless, Leon understood no reprimand, no punishment except death. Created through some malfunction in the time stream, Leon was forever linked to Noel like a ball and chain he was doomed to drag through eternity.
Walking down the corridor that was furnished like a museum of fine art, Titians and Tintorettos adorning the walls, polished terrazzo and marble for the floors, heavy gilded mirrors of famed Venetian glass above the carved doors, Noel sighed. “I’m in hell,” he said aloud.
“This is no time for jokes,” Vicente replied. “You are a heartbeat from death this night. Do not forget what you are here to do.”
“How can I forget?” Noel said bitterly. “You’ve got the wrong man, and I can’t help the lady.”
Vicente stopped abruptly just short of a guarded door. His dark eyes shone like liquid fire. “I am a just man,” he said in a very low, very deadly voice. “I am a fair man. In my heart I am always seeking justice. Though my eyes see a thing, I make sure my heart and my mind see it also before I judge. I have heard your cowardly denials. I have seen you looking for escape. Now you make a joke of an offense so grave I wonder how God Himself does not strike you down. Let me tell you this, agent of my enemies, for it is remotely possible that you do not know…the Lady Francesca is promised to me in marriage.”
Noel blinked. He drew in his breath sharply, but held his tongue.
Vicente’s fingers dug in tighter. “Your actions stopped our prenuptial festivities. This was an indirect attack on me. You think you have served your employers well, and so you make these jokes. But I warn you that I am more powerful than Gabriella Virenza, for all her intrigues and meddling. You chose poorly when you allied yourself to her, sorcerer. Now you will cure my beloved, or you will suffer torture so horrible the mind cannot imagine it. Is that clear?”
Feeling numbed by the rage that had finally burst from this man, Noel nodded.
Vicente swung around and said imperiously to the guards, “Let us enter.”
They uncrossed their halberds and pushed open the heavy door. Noel swallowed hard. He had bluffed and brazened his way out of countless tight spots before. He kept telling himself that he could come up with something now. But even if he managed to trip Vicente, twisted the dagger from the man’s hand, broke free, and ran like a maniac, he did not think he would escape this palace alive.
Wait for a chance, he kept telling himself, but chances seemed about as scarce as the level of mercy in Vicente Contarini as he pushed Noel through the doorway into the room beyond.
Noel had no immediate impression of the size of the room for it was shrouded in an ominous gloom that seemed even darker after the brightness of the previous chambers. The air was very hot. A creature hooded in a long black robe glided up to them and turned wordlessly to lead them into another chamber beyond, which was even hotter.
Incense reeked over the smell of smoke and burning candles. Fires burned in freestanding braziers placed at the four corners of an immense bed of carved walnut, canopied and hung with curtains of dark emerald velvet. A tiny lapdog huddled in its basket at the foot of the bed, trembling, its eyes glistening with fear. A tall, thin man slumped in a chair, his long fingers draped over his eyes in despair. Aldo, young and furious, paced up and down like a caged tiger. A priest was chanting prayers over the incense pot. Several ladies-in-waiting knelt on small velvet pillows, praying with him. Doctors in black clustered about the bed, murmuring and pulling their beards.
It was Aldo who noticed them first. He jerked to a halt and the crazed grief in his face changed to a mixture of hope and fury. Noel tensed himself involuntarily, braced for Aldo to spring at his throat.
“You!” said Aldo in a voice that rang across the prayers and doctoral arguments. Everyone turned to look. “You dare bring this stregone back to her?”
“It is her only chance,” Vicente said, his deep voice calm in contrast to Aldo’s frenzied one. “Unless—” His gaze strayed to the bed. “There has been some change?”
“No change,” whispered the man in the chair. He came to his feet painfully. Neat and patrician, he wore a short gray beard precisely trimmed. His blue eyes were reddened with grief, but he remained master of himself. “No change at all. I have forbidden the doctors to administer to her until they can agree on the method they will use.” His voice, dry and whispery, hardened with scorn.
“Then we are in time,” Vicente said. “The sorcerer will undo this spell and release her.”
Noel tried again to protest. “I—”
The tip of Vicente’s dagger in his side made him swallow the rest of his sentence.
His mouth went dry and he seemed unable to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Coughing, he said, “I need privacy to make this work.”
That stirred them up.
Aldo sprang forward. “More lies!” he cried. “I saw him pass his hand across her face, transforming her in an instant from a laughing, merry creature to this state that is neither death nor life. There was no privacy then. Why
give him the opportunity now to finish his dastardly work? He has returned to kill her!”
“Aldo, be quiet,” said the Doge wearily, and the boy turned aside with a sob. The Doge approached Vicente and Noel warily, stopping out of Noel’s reach. Unlike the chancellor, he did not seem afraid to meet Noel’s gaze. His blue eyes held pain and sorrow, but beneath those emotions ran anger.
Another dangerous man, Noel realized.
“What will you do?” asked the Doge.
A prod of Vicente’s dagger forced Noel to answer. “Uh, I must examine her first,” he said. “To—to see how well the spell is working. When, uh, it is done quickly it isn’t always as strong as it could be. Then I will need some time and intense concentration to break it. Breaking a spell is never as easy as casting one.”
He was sweating, and it wasn’t just from the heat in the room. He knew it was obvious he was talking through his hat, but to his astonishment several of the doctors nodded their heads in agreement.
“This is so, Domino,” said their spokesman, stepping away from the bed. Noel glimpsed a still white figure there before the others shifted position, blocking his view again. “I have made it a small hobby to observe the workings of magic and alchemy—in order to better denounce it, of course,” he added hastily with a glance at the priest.
“Of course,” the Doge said tonelessly.
“In all interrogations of these creatures, they consistently agree that the undoing is much harder.”
“It can sometimes skew the spell and create untoward effects,” added another doctor in a nervous, piping voice. He was plump and short and fidgety. “This is a dangerous course.”
“And what would you do,” Vicente’s voice shot like an arrow, “feed her treacle? Let her lie there day after day, month after month, year after year, until her hair grows to the floor and she is withered with age? Can I wed a living corpse? Per Dio, let us not—”
Termination Page 2