Chapter 13

The rival jumped back, but not far enough-a streak of crimson appeared across his belly. The girl screamed, though whether with horror, delight, or both, Matt couldn’t tell. The rival blanched and leaped farther back-into a wall of hands that shoved him forward to meet the blade of his foe. He howled with anger and slammed a fist into the other man’s jaw-a fist with a knife sticking up from the top. The jealous lover reeled back, blood welling from a gash on his cheek, then charged back with a roar. The rival lunged, but the jealous lover blocked the blade with a cloth-wrapped fist and struck for the chest. The rival blocked, but he had no wrapping, and the blade nicked his knuckles. Heshoved hard with a shout of rage, though, then sprang back to yank a shawl from a woman in the crowd, who shrieked protest-but he paid no attention, only began whipping his fist in circles to wrap the cloth around his forearm as a shield. The jealous lover struck before he could finish. The rival blocked and stabbed, but the jealous lover blocked, too, and they sprang apart. The crowd booed. They actually booed, incensed that nobody had been slashed. That did it. Matt decided he had to put a stop to this, somehow-especially since he was hearing angry shouts from two other places in the crowd, and quick glances showed a fistfight breaking out off to the left, and a couple of older men going after each other with cudgels, off on the right. Matt swung his lute into firing position, took aim, and struck a chord-not that anybody could hear it. They couldn’t hear his voice, either, amidst all the yelling, but he sang anyway: “Gonna lay down my sword and shield, Down by the riverside! Down by the riverside, down by the riverside! Gonna lay down my sword and shield, Down by the riverside, Ain’t gonna study war no more!”

Nobody could hear him, of course, but he went on singing doggedly away. It did cross his mind that a religious song might attract some very unwelcome attention in a country like this, but though the particular song on his lips might have been a spiritual, it didn’t actually mention the Deity or the Savior, or any other specifically religious words. Maybe it was those very associations that gave it the power to cut through the magical inertia of Latruria, for it did seem to be working-the duelists in front of him slowed, the anger fading, uncertainty replacing it until, finally, the jealous lover hurled down his knife with a snarl-right between the rival’s toes-then turned on his heel and stalked off. The onlookers crowded back out of his way, wary of his thunderous face. The rival watched him go, frowning, then sheathed his knife and turned away. The girl who had been the cause of it all ran to touch him on the arm, but he shook her off with a snarl and strode away into the crowd. Neither felt proud of himself, that was obvious. The girl glared after the rival in indignation, then pivoted to glare after the jealous lover in fury, then finally tossed her head, a dangerous light in her eyes, and stepped up to a good-looking youth who had been watching. “Would you forsake a damsel so easily as that, handsome lad?‘

The boy answered with a slow grin. “Nay, surely not! Not one so fair as yourself! Come, shall we dance?”

“Pay the piper first,” the girl said-and sure enough, now that the excitement was over, an older man was unlimbering a small set of bagpipes. Matt felt a bit indignant about the competition, but he couldn’t really claim that the man was horning in on a songster’s territory. The young fellow paid him, and the piper coaxed his instrument into a wheeze. Matt winced. No, he certainly didn’t have to worry about competition. The bag inflated, the pipes droned, and the chanter began a merry melody. The boy and girl began to dance. Others joined them, and soon a score of couples were prancing merrily over the turf while the sounds of the other two fights ceased. Matt glanced at the two areas uneasily, but all four men were still on their feet, though glaring blackly at one another, so Matt decided to take a little credit for it. Not aloud, of course-especially with that piper going. He was into full swing now, and if he wasn’t very good, he was certainly loud. Well, as long as the young folk were dancing, they couldn’t very well be fornicating-although, looking at some of their movements, Matt wasn’t all that sure. The postures and undulations became steadily more suggestive, and Matt turned away, suddenly realizing how very much he was missing Alisande. As long as he’d been staying busy, he hadn’t thought of her more than once every couple of hours, and that in a rather platonic way-but work had suddenly begun to remind him that he was male, and therefore to remind him of his chosen. What was it doing to Pascal? There he went, flying by in a stamping, hip-thrusting dance, movements that Matt was quite sure he had never known until now-but he was a fast learner, and the girl who was teaching him was very dedicated. Not very pretty, but dedicated-and with a figure well calculated to cheer a disappointed lover. Then they were gone, faces flushed with the dancing, but also with drinking. Matt looked about him and saw that they weren’t the only ones. Only an hour after sunset, and most of the young folk were staggering-and at least half of their elders, too, the ones who were still standing. Of the forms on the ground, some were madly coupling; the ones who weren’t, were passed out cold, reeking of ale. Most of the bushes were shaking their leaves and rustling, but the ones that weren’t emitted the sounds of abused stomachs rebelling. Come to think of it, the innkeepers may have been giving the ale away for free, but they weren’t exactly shabbily dressed. Matt tried to picture each of the three he’d seen, noticed that they were all wearing unpatched clothes of good cloth and that their wives wore jewelry. That might have come from selling food and renting rooms, but he had a notion a lot of it came from selling beer, too. By local standards, they were wealthy-butif they could afford to give the stuff away to buy off potential troublemakers, it wasn’t because they charged high prices. In fact, the first innkeeper’s prices weren’t bad at all. If he’d been doing well, it was only because his countrymen drank a great deal of beer. Everything considered, Matt decided, it was lucky that medieval Europe hadn’t had access to much in the way of narcotics. Pascal went whirling by in the round of dancing again, laughing too hard and eyeing his partner with desperate purpose. He had definitely thrown himself into it with a certain wildness, with the air of a man who is anxious to forget. “Dance with me, handsome minstrel!”

Matt turned in surprise. The woman was about thirty, still attractive, and her figure was generous. “Why thank you.” Matt forced a smile. “But if the minstrel dances, who will play the music?”

“Why, the piper.” She swayed closer, fluttering her eyelashes. Matt thought he must be a fool or a testosterone deprivation case, to feel only the slightest stirring of response. “The piper will tire.”

“But will the pipe?” she asked, and stretched up to plant her lips on his in a firm, demanding kiss. Her tongue teased his lips, and he was shocked to feel them part-by reflex? But her body was pressing against his, he could feel each curve all too warmly, and he realized it had been far too long since he had spent an evening alone with Alisande… The thought of his wife cooled his heating ardor, and he broke the kiss, gasping. “I… thank you, damsel, but-”

She broke into a peal of laughter. “Damsel? Why, thank you, gallant sir, but ‘tis ten years and more since I was wed!”

Matt knew better than to ask if she was a widow. He was dimly aware that the crowd had mostly swirled away, that they were standing at the fringes now. “It has only been a year for me, plus a few months. No, my wife and I are still very new to the business, and still very excited about it.”

“Give it a few years,” the veteran advised. “You will find it boring enough-and find that a kiss and caress on the side will rouse you to greater heights with your wife.” She demonstrated with another kiss. This time Matt was warned, and he kept his lips firmly closed-until he felt a hand smoothing over his buttock and sliding around toward the front. He gasped out of sheer surprise, and that maddening tongue deepened the kiss. She felt his response and moved back with a low, throaty chuckle. “So then, you are not so faithful as all that, are you? Come, sweet chuck!” And she kissed him again. This was definitely too much. Never mind that a healthy body will respond to any touch-Matt didn’t want to respond, damn it! He took the lady by the waist and pushed her firmly away-but she clung, her mouth a veritable suction cup… Pain rocketed through his head, a rocket that must have been heading for the stars, because they were there suddenly, and the world was tilting, more and more, until it jarred up behind him.

Dimly, he could hear the woman chuckle again, feel her hands, though they weren’t searching in any way amorous this time, they were searching for his purse, and there was another pair of hands busy, too, trying to wrench at his belt, his sword… Then his vision cleared just enough for him to see a huge blade sweeping down at him out of the darkness. Panic shot through him and he tried to roll, but his body wouldn’t respond… A roar filled his ears. Something slapped up under his shoulder and sent him spinning. Under the circumstances, he didn’t mind. The roar broke again, and there was a lot of screaming, some of it masculine. There was a pounding that faded. Finally, Matt managed to push himself up off the ground. The world tilted around him, then reversed direction. He caught his breath and swallowed his stomach back down to where it belonged, squeezed his eyes shut, waited for his inner tilting to stop, then tried looking again, and saw… A great tawny wall of fur. It looked vaguely familiar, so he tilted his glance upward, up and up and straight into a grin-two of them, and Manny’s eyes twinkling with amusement up on top. “You said I could not eat them, man,” the manticore said, “but you did not tell them that.”

“Th-Thanks, Manny.” Matt pulled himself up to a sitting position, amazed that he ever could have thought this beast was his enemy. “They… they got a lot closer that time… didn’t they?”

“It is easier to overcome a man,” Manny reflected, “if you do not give him a chance to fight.”

“There is that,” Matt agreed. “Get him busy with a willing wench, then sap him from behind.”

“It somewhat galled the wench,” Manny observed, “that you were not willing.”

Matt smiled ruefully. “Or at least, that she had to keep me rolling for a while before my engine would catch.”

The manticore frowned. “ ‘Engine’? What device did you use?”

“Only a lute,” Matt sighed, “but apparently that qualifies as a lethal weapon in this universe.” He looked around and saw his instrument, miraculously uncrushed. He took it into his lap, checking, but finding no more than a scratch. “Remind me to be very careful who’s around when I sing songs.”

“With all due respect, minstrel-knight,” Manny said, “I doubt that it was either your words or your songs that brought on this… encounter.”

“No.” Matt stared down at the lute, brooding. “It’s the same sorcerer who’s been trying to kill me all along, isn’t it? But why?”

“Why not?” Manny replied. “A manticore needs no more reason for killing than hunger. Perhaps your foe needs not even that.”

“Am I that big a threat? Just me alone?”

“It would seem so-and in the midst of this carnival, who would know you had been slain for any reason more than jealousy over a woman?”

“If anybody even bothered to look that far,” Matt muttered. “Yes. Perfect cover for a murder, wasn’t it?”

“Perhaps not perfect,” the manticore said judiciously. “If it had been I who did it, now-”

“Uh, yes, I’m sure you would have managed it much more efficiently.” For some odd reason, Matt wasn’t in the mood for hearing the gory details of the manticore’s no doubt fabulous plan. He climbed to his feet, trying to ignore the piercing pain in his head. “Let’s say it may not have been perfect, but it was certainly good enough.”

“Nay. Almost.”

“Right. Almost good enough.” Matt took an experimental step. “I’m still alive, aren’t I? Thanks to you, Manny.”

“It was nothing,” the manticore assured him. “Anything for a friend.”

“I’ll try to return the favor some day.” Matt looked around him at the merrymakers, most of whom were no longer standing. “It just makes you wonder why putative Christians are so busy breaking the Commandments.”

The manticore winced. “Please! If you must use strong language-”

“Uh, yes, sorry again,” Matt assured him. He’d forgotten that the creature had been so long a pawn of evil that words associated with virtue might be offensive to it. “And I suppose nobody can be openly a Chr-religious, even under the new regime. In fact, most of them probably aren’t at all.”

“Not so. King Boncorro has let it be known that he will not move against any who worship as they please.”

“And nobody believes him. They think it might be a ruse to bring all the believers out into the open, where he can cut them down. Having been persecuted for a hundred years might tend to make a person paranoid. Besides, there’s no assurance Boncorro won’t be bumped off, and his throne usurped by a sorcerer-and then where would they be, the people who had started going to church again? Still, you should be able to tell them by the way they live-by moral conduct.”

“Not under the old king,” Manny said. “Even if people lived morally in private, they did not necessarily want it known.”

“Morality became a matter of taste, eh? And Boncorro hasn’t seen any reason to change that.”

“Other than to let people who want to be moral, be so, no.”

Matt nodded. “Besides, the moral folk wouldn’t have left spouse and children to go trooping south to Venarra-and the kids might be in rebellion against moral parents as easily as they might be running away because they had no morals.”

“You might say it is unpopular,” Manny said thoughtfully. “Moral living is not considered to be in the best of taste. Your northern prudery never did have all that strong a hold here. The folk of ancient Reme lived lives quite scandalous by your standards. Their descendants have been somewhat tempered by the preachers, but not overly much.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about the Roman orgies,” Matt said, “but I thought they were only for the people who could afford them.”

“Smaller purses yielded smaller vices,” the manticore agreed. “But the city was Reme, mortal, not Rome.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot-the other brother won the fight here.”

“ ‘Other’

brother?“ Manny frowned down at him. ”Why should Remus have been the ‘other’ brother? Surely that would have been Romulus!“

Matt was about to protest that the whole story of Romulus and Remus had just been a myth, but was hit by a sudden stab of uncertainty. Sure, it had been a myth in his universe, but here it might have been documented fact. “They were orphans who were suckled by a she-wolf, right?”

“Nay. Their nurse was a wildcat.”

Matt let that sink in. If the whole story of the she-wolf were just a symbol to express the inner nature of the Romans, what did that make their analogs here? A lynx was just as much of a hunter as a wolf, but went after smaller prey, and wasn’t anywhere nearly as rapacious-except in self-defense, or defense of its young. What kind of people could have established an empire just because they were good at self-defense? Paranoids, probably. If they defended themselves all the way into North Africa, Spain, Asia Minor, and England just to make sure nobody would attack them… Or diplomats? That had a better sound to it. After all, in the myth of the founding of Rome, Romulus was the one who had started building the wall for a future city, and Remus was the one who had made fun of him and jumped over the wall to show how useless it would be. Then Romulus had killed him… But here, Romulus had lost-and his city had been founded by the descendants of the man who didn’t believe in walls. “So Reme has no wall to guard it.”

“Wall? Around Reme?” Manny stared at him as if he were insane. “Why would the citizens have done that? ‘Twas not Babylon or Ninevah, after all!”

“I thought we were discussing its morals. But if they didn’t have a wall, what happened when the Etruscans attacked?”

“ ‘Attacked’? Surely that is too strong a word for two bands of young bloods who steal a few maidens from one another!”

Matt stared. “But… but Lars Porsena… Horatio at the bridge…”

“Ah! I have heard of Horatio. He it was who persuaded Lars Porsena and the other Etruscan noblemen to come confer with the elders of the Latini, under a tent on the broad plain beyond the Tiber! He it was who quieted their acrimony, who showed the Latini how the raids and even the deaths wrought by the young men’s skirmishes appeared through Etruscan eyes-and Lars Porsena, not to be outdone, explained for his folk how the raids must have looked to Latini eyes. They built a bridge indeed, a bridge of understanding between people! Worse luck,” he said, in a sudden change of mood. “There are better pickings for manticores when war bellows loud about the land.” He licked his lips, remembering the taste of human blood. Matt had to get his mind off that subject. “So what did they do about the raiding?‘

“Why, each nation agreed to restrain and rebuke their young men, but to allow them to come courting properly, if they wished-and, to drain off their youthful urge for swordplay and glory, they established the Circus, where the young men could fight with blunted swords for fame-and even fortune, for both peoples paid into a fund to confer prizes upon the winners.”

“The gladiators were free men?” Matt stared. “Of course.” Manny scowled down at him. “What would you have had them be-slaves? How valiantly would they fight, who were forced to?”

It did make a lot more sense than the way Matt’s Romans had done things. “So the Remans didn’t defeat the Etruscans, they married them?”

“Aye, and out of their union grew the great empire of Latruria, whose soldiers marched out to protect all the civilized world from the howling hordes of barbarians.”

Well, Matt had heard that line before. “Sure-and they protected all the other nations so well that they wound up owning them.”

Manny shook his head. “ ‘Owned’ is too strong a term. They led, they showed the Greeks and the Egyptians the Latrurian way of fighting, and learned theirs; they learned from every nation they protected, and taught them the use of the legion. But ‘conquered’? No. Each nation in turn asked to join the Federation of Latinis and Etruscans, and Latruria was glad to embrace them, for the barbarians were growing in numbers and skill. It was too much to ask that each nation be accorded a syllable in the name of the empire, though, so Latruria it remained-not Latruri-greegyptolibiberi-”

“I get the point,” Matt said quickly. “So it was a friendly federation of states that just happened to be ruled from Reme, huh?‘

Manny shrugged. “It was Horatio who built the bridge of understanding; it was his countrymen who excelled as diplomats and teachers-aye, and in commerce, too. Of course the Senate met in Reme, and just as surely, every provincial nobleman longed to see Reme before he died.”

“And all voluntary and from enlightened self-interest,” Matt said, feeling numb. “How about Judea?”

“Those stiff-necked fanatics?” Manny said with a snort of disapproval. “They who would not ask Reme’s help, Reme wisely let be, but when the Medes-”

“Medes?” Matt frowned. “I thought the Eastern empire was Persian.”

“Nay. Alexander had sounded the death knell of the Persian empire long before. ‘Twas the Medes.”

Matt shrugged. “One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian. So what did they do to the Jews?”

“Why, conquered them, of course. They pounced upon the Jews and conquered them with the Latrurian way of waging war. Then Judeans wished then that, rather than be conquered by a member of the Federation, they had accepted the help Reme offered.”

“Sure-members of the Federation would have been barred from fighting one another.” Matt felt numbed. “I assume the Medes used Reme’s laws and penalties?”

“All did.” Manny pursed his lips, puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“Just making a guess as to what might have happened to a man convicted of blasphemy. Crucifixion was still the penalty, I guess-even though it wasn’t Romans who did it.”

“Remans!”

“Right,” Matt sighed. “Remans. What did they do about Carthage?”

Manny grinned. “Outbid them, of course, time and time again-and Carthage would not hear of a merger. After the defeat, it was the visionary statesman Hannibal who convinced his countrymen that if they could not beat the Remans, they should join them. Therefore did he send an embassy to Reme with rich gifts-”

“Including elephants?”

“Then you have heard the tale!”

“No, but something like it. So Carthage stayed Carthage, but joined the Federation?”

“It did indeed, and became a mighty power for welding the empire together with strands of gold and silver.”

“Commercial colonialism got an early start here,” Matt reflected wryly. “Hard to see how an empire like that could ever fall.”

Manny shrugged. “Did it fall? Or was it merely too successful? It civilized the barbarians all about it, after all-even the Huns, when they hacked and slew their way in; but the legions engulfed them, punished their leaders, and sent them home with rich gifts for their kings.”

Matt stared. “The Huns joined the empire?”

“No, but they learned from it, and ceased to roam the steppes with their herds. They became herders still, but within their own farms-if you can call it a farm, when it encompasses miles and has only grazing land and fields of oats…”

“I’d call it a ‘ranch,’ ” Matt said sourly. “If they managed that with the Huns, what happened to the Gauls and the Germans?”

“Oh, they became more Reman than the Remans! Even those silly folk on that northern island who painted themselves blue and stiffened their hair with chalk, even they began to build Reman houses and baths, and wear Reman clothes! But they began to think that they could fare better by themselves, and broke away from the Federation. Then older states followed their lead and one by one declared themselves independent. Reme looked up one day and discovered that it was alone, though it had many friends. But when those friends began to make war upon one another, it had no justification for seeking to stop them. Oh, they sent diplomats to plead and explain, but the Gauls and Germans and Goths, in their pride, would not listen. Then at last, the Vandals, in their arrogance, sacked Reme, and the day of empire was most definitely done. Hurt and angered and bitter, the men of the Tiber turned inward, rebuilding their city and swearing to care no more about the other nations, only to take care of their own.”

“So.” Matt glowered down at his lute. “They finally built Romulus’ wall for him, eh?”

Manny turned to him, startled. “An odd thought-but when I think of it that way, you are right. It is not a wall of bricks and stones, but of pride and bitterness-yet it is nonetheless a wall.”

Matt looked up. “Where did you learn all this? You don’t strike me as the bookish sort.”

“I have not struck you at all,” the manticore returned, “though I was tempted at first.”

“Evading the question, huh?‘

“Not at all.” Manny drew himself up. “How do I know all this? I and my forebears have long memories, man!”

Matt stared. “You saw?”

“Not I myself, but my great-grandsire. Well, he did not see Romulus and Remus,” the manticore admitted. “If you wish my opinion, I think they were naught but myths. But my great-grandsire came to life when the Latini were still rough tribesmen and the Etruscans already cultured gentlemen. He saw Horatio, but could not come near the tent to hear the great conference between Horatio, Lars Porsena, and their respective elders. He saw them come out of the tent in amity, though, and was severely disappointed.”

Yes, because peace meant leaner pickings. Matt hurried to change the topic. “How much of it did you personally see?”

“Only the breaking apart itself.” The manticore sighed. “I came to life about seven centuries ago. I thought then that it boded well for me and my kind, for state would war upon state-and I was right. Then the sorcerers came-”

“And they muzzled you?”

“Muzzled, aye, and harnessed,” Manny said with disgust. “I had begun to wonder why I bothered living, till you came to amuse me.”

“Nice to know I have a purpose in life.” So the empire had only been dead a couple of centuries before Hardishane came marching out of Gaul to reunite the whole of Europe and squash the sorcerers, or at least drive them back far enough so that they didn’t do much damage. Obviously, therefore, the sorcerers had proliferated during the breakup; Matt thought he saw their hand in the warring between Gaul and Germany and between Gaul and Iberia. He wondered about the full story of the behind-the-scenes power plays between Good and Evil. Well, maybe he’d have time to do the research someday. Of course, he didn’t have his Ph.D. yet, but it would make a great dissertation topic. Well, he’d worry about it in the morning-say a morning a few years away. For now, the talk had canned him; he was even beginning to feel a bit sleepy. He wasn’t the only one-all about him sodden snores drenched the night and lovers lay sleeping in one another’s arms. A few roisterers still teetered by the light of the moon, but from the way they swayed, they’d be down soon enough, too. “It’s looking almost safe,” Matt said. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into standing guard while I catch a little sleep?”

Manny shrugged “ ‘Tis the least I can do, considering the vast number of sheep and cattle you have bought me these last days. Not quite so tasty as-”

“Yes, well, if you’re hungry, I can always find a few more,” Matt said quickly. “Do not bother; I shall behave.” But Manny looked about him hungrily. “Sleep, and have no worries.” He turned his back, but not quite quickly enough; Matt heard him muttering about the atrocious waste. Well, if he couldn’t trust the manticore, he could at least trust Pascal’s grandfather’s spell. Matt turned over, cradled his head on his arm, and didn’t quite have time to be surprised at how quickly he fell asleep. He woke up. Under the circumstances, that rated as an accomplishment. He woke up and looked around carefully. The manticore was curled up cat style right next to him, the stinger on its scorpion tail sticking out of the ball of fur. Asleep or not, Manny was a guardian to give would-be assassins second thoughts. Matt started to sit up… The stinger whipped around and poised above him. Matt froze as Manny uncoiled enough to reveal wide-open eyes filmed with sleep. “Who stirs?”

Matt had moved barely eighteen inches, and that pretty slowly. “Light sleeper, are you?”

“Deep, but I waken quickly nonetheless. It is only you, then?”

“Just me.” Matt swallowed. “I was, uh, thinking about getting up.”

“Go, then. You can defend yourself when you are awake-if you do not let females of your kind hold your attention.”

“That wasn’t what you think.”

“No, it was-for I think she pursued, and you sought to retreat. I confess I cannot understand your species.”

“It’s called ‘morality.’ ”

“As I said,” the manticore growled, “I understand it not.”

And that, Matt mused as he plodded down toward the little stream, was the manticore in a nutshell. Not that he was all that different from any other member of the feline family-it was just that, having a human face, Matt had sort of expected some other human attributes, such as a conscience. He should have known better-the double set of teeth should have tipped him off. It seemed that the manticore wasn’t the only one lacking an understanding. Everywhere Matt went, he heard isolated sobbing. Some of the girls were curled up weeping quietly next to their snoring mates; others were sitting up alone. Not all of them, no-not even a quarter-but too many. His heart twisted with the urge to comfort, but he knew better than to intrude. He found a copse of trees for his morning ablutions, knelt by the stream to wash his hands and face and shave with his dagger, then turned back toward the camp just as the girl in the home-made noose jumped off the stump.

Chapter 14

Matt took in the rope snaking up from the noose to pass over the limb overhead and down again to where it was tied around a lower branch, but by that time he was already running, yanking his sword out, and he managed to slash through the rope just before the girl hit the top of her arc. She crashed to the ground with a cry of anger and despair, then rolled up to her knees, huddled and sobbing. Matt sheathed the sword and went to her slowly, wondering what to do, what to say. “Do” was obvious enough-comfort her-but what to say while he did it? The girl solved the problem for him. As he knelt down beside her, she moaned, “Go away! Is not my shame enough, but that you must see it, too? Gooooo!”

“I don’t see any shame,” Matt said firmly. “I only see a pretty girl, who could have a wonderful life, giving up when she doesn’t have to.”

“Does not have to!” The girl whipped about, glaring up at him. “What do you know about it? Losing your virginity is cause for a man to boast! For a woman, it is always cause for shame, even if she has gained a lover who will be true to her forever… And if he will not stay true…” Her face puckered, and she turned away as the tears flowed with renewed vigor. Matt held out his arms, but she ignored him, curled into a ball of misery. “Bess!” cried another girl’s voice, accompanied by a lot of thrashing and rustling of underbrush. “Bess! Where have you gone?” There was anxiety in the voice, even fear. “Here,” Matt called, then asked, “Is your name Bess?”

His only answer was a wail of grief. The thrashing stopped, and the other girl pushed the branches aside to stare in shock. “What have you done to her!”

“Only cut her down before she could stay up.” Matt climbed to his feet and went toward the new arrival. “She won’t take any comfort from me. See what you can do.”

The older girl stared at him as he went by. “You are too old for her!”

“I know,” Matt said over his shoulder, “but somebody else didn’t.” And he went on his way, resisting the temptation to look back, but hearing the soothing murmuring and the awful tearing cry as Bess threw herself into her friend’s arms. Matt hoped he would never learn the rest of the story. Had she only wakened to find her seducer gone? Or had he gone off after some other girl while Bess was still awake? Or something worse? No, all in all, Matt hoped he never found out-and if he met the man, he hoped he wouldn’t know it. As he went back toward Manny, he saw most of the people beginning to stir, sitting up with hands pressed to their heads and moaning, or crying as Bess had been crying. Here and there a couple sat up beaming into one another’s faces, but mere were definitely very few of them. “I have brought the magistrate! You will stand up and take your oath like a man, or you will go to the Devil!”

Matt turned, staring. Half a dozen hard-faced men were standing around a disheveled teenage couple with pitchforks poised to stab. “But I do not wish to marry!” the boy cried, and the girl’s head snapped up with a look of dismay that transformed into aching hurt. “You should have thought of that before you took her to bed,” a grizzled man said grimly. “But take her to bed you did, and you will marry her or die!”

“In front of a magistrate?” the boy wailed. A squire in a robe stepped up. “Aye, in front of me! I shall testify that it was justified! Up and swear, or die with my blessing!”

“You will marry, come back to the village, and settle down like the good husbandman you will become,” the grim old man snapped. “But I do not want to go home!” the girl wailed. “I want to go to Venarra!”

“The only way you will go there is if he goes ahead of you and finds work enough to support you both in decency! What, my lass, did you think there would be better than this for you in Venarra? You shall swear, too, or we’ll spit him like a pig!”

Alarm in her face, the girl scrambled to her feet. “Come, Williken! I would not see you dead!”

The boy climbed to his feet, face thunderous. Matt decided not to linger. As he went away, he heard the magistrate beginning to intone the ritual. He did notice that there was no mention of God-but at least there was no mention of the Devil, either. He looked about the field, noticing a few other groups of men carrying scythes and pitchforks. Some of them had found their quarry and were holding them while they waited for the magistrate; some of them were still hunting. Matt wondered what kind of a life two kids could have if it began like this. Well, at least it would be legal… But there were no priests on hand, and he saw at least two parties digging graves. Some of the fights over women had gotten out of hand. Matt shuddered as he realized he could very easily have been one of the bodies being lowered into the ground, in hasty, improvised graves with nothing to mark them. He turned away from the sight, to look down at the sound of sobbing coming from nearby… And almost tripped over Pascal. Pascal looked like the eked-out remains of a secondhand illness. His face was battered and bruised-either several small fights or one humdinger. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands trembled, and his face was the color of melted beeswax. He winced at the sound of Matt’s footsteps, and Matt could imagine the headache that produced such over-sensitivity. Pascal was hung over so far that he was about to fall in. His face was a container for misery, but even so, he sat with his arms about a young woman whose body was racked with sobs. His face was a study in consternation; he obviously didn’t have the faintest idea what to do, but felt the need to do something. “I know, Flaminia, I know,” he was murmuring. “It is the greatest of pains, to be scorned by one you love… Only two days ago-”

“Did she promise you marriage and bed you, then steal away when she thought you slept?” the young woman flared. “But no, if she had you would have rejoiced! It is different for men!”

“I would not,” Pascal said with full conviction. “But we did not share a bed, only a few minutes in a garden.”

“Ah, but if she had taken you to her bed, you would have found your ardor remarkably cooled in the morning!” At least the heat of the girl’s anger was drying her tears.

“I did not think so then,” Pascal said slowly, looking directly into her eyes. “No, I still think bedding her would not have changed me-but meeting you, hearing your voice, your mirth, your wit… It is strange, but Panegyra seems less than she did…”

Flaminia froze, staring at him. Then she recovered herself enough to snap, “So you would desert her!”

“I cannot,” Pascal said simply, “for she would not exchange promises with me, no matter how many I offered. No, she is to marry a man old enough to be her father, and has no interest in breaking off with him. She enjoyed flirting with me, aye…” His gaze strayed. “Yes, I see it now! She was toying with me, enjoying the game, tantalizing me! Why did I not see that before?”

“Why indeed?” the girl said, but her tone had lost its steel. “Do not be too hard on her-every woman enjoys that sort of play. But did she give you reason to think she might return your ardor some day?”

“Now that I think of it, Flaminia, no,” Pascal said slowly. “She told me that if I were a knight, and wealthy… Ah, friend Matthew,” he said, blushing. Flaminia looked up, horror-stricken. “Another who knows my shame,” the girl said bitterly, and scowled back down at the ground. “I could never go back to my village now, not in such disgrace.”

“None need know save yourself!” Pascal assured her. “Two boys in three days? Be sure that one of them will tell, if the other does not! Gossip will travel back to my village, Pascal, and if you know it not, you have never lived in so small a place. Of course you have not, squire’s son,” she said with even more bitterness, “and you cannot know the petty cruelties of peasant women! But believe me, I do, and I shall not open myself to them! No, I cannot go home. I must go on to Venarra-but Heaven knows what the men there will make of me!” The tears overflowed again. Pascal reached out again to gather her in. She resisted for a second, then tumbled into his arms. “There, there, sweet chuck,” he soothed. “You may yet marry.”

“Marry!” she wailed. “What tailor would buy soiled goods? What groom would be wanting a wanton?”

“You are only a wanton if you choose to be,” Pascal said slowly. “There are men who can understand that a woman has made a mistake, has let herself believe gilded lies, but will never do so again.”

“I will not, be sure of it! Lies have been my undoing-I shall never heed them again!” She pushed him away, tears still streaming down her face. “So do not tell me any more of them! Where is the man who would wed a lass who is no virgin? Where could I find such a fool?‘

“I cannot be sure,” Pascal said, looking straight into her eyes, “but I might be such a fool-if I were in love with the woman.”

Flaminia froze, staring at him. “ ‘Wise fool, brave fool,’ ” Matt quoted softly. “May be,” Flaminia said in a flat tone. “May.” Pascal nodded. “I have only known you one evening, Flaminia, and an hour this morning. But if I were to come to know such a woman as yourself, I might findmyself in love, and-”

“To wed a wanton would be foolishness indeed!”

“ ‘Motley’s the only color,’ ” Matt quoted, “for fools wear motley, and I realized long ago that every man is a fool in some way. The only choice any of us poor males really has is to choose which kind of fool we’ll be.”

Flaminia looked up at him, as if startled to realize he was still there. “Do not bear word of my folly, I beg you!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Matt assured her, “and word just might not spread, because there’s so much of this sort of thing going on. You’re not exactly going to stand out in this crowd.”

Flaminia lowered her eyes. “I am scarcely one to speak about foolishness, am I?”

“You are,” Matt contradicted, “and so am I. Only those of us who have really been guilty of folly can know what we’re talking about when we say the word.”

Flaminia caught the trace of humor in his words and looked up with the ghost of a smile-sardonic, but a smile. “Then you, too, have been a fool?”

“Many times,” Matt assured her, “and worse, I was foolish enough to keep taking one more chance on being a fool again.”

He studied her face, wondering what Pascal saw in her. The nose was a little too thin, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes a little too closely set-but they were huge, those eyes, and the lashes swept across them like curtains! She certainly was not a beautiful woman, not even pretty. Handsome, maybe. It must have been her mind, her wit, and the fact that Pascal’s wizard grandfather still moved in his veins enough to make him appreciate words and honor the one who could craft them into sharpness. “Have you ever been a fool for a woman?” she went on. “Many times,” Matt assured her. “That was the chance I kept taking. The last chance was the biggest folly ever, for I fell in love with a woman far too good for me.”

Flaminia stiffened. “What did she do to you?”

“Married me,” Matt said, “finally-and that was her greatest folly. But maybe it will turn out to be as wise for her as mine was for me.”

She smiled, thawing a bit. “If you are wed, what are you doing so far from her?”

‘Trying to find her something she asked for,“ Matt told her. ”Foolish of me, isn’t it?“

“Perhaps,” Flaminia said, with a smile that held back amusement. “But there is a point at which foolishness becomes wisdom.” She turned to Pascal. “Your friend has wit.”

The look Pascal returned was so blank that she laughed and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek-and Matt noticed once again that her figure was nothing short of spectacular. Certainly enough to cloud a young man’s judgment-or attract the wrong sort. “I think you’d better come along and take care of him, damsel. Pascal, you do need taking care of, don’t you?”

“Oh, without doubt!” For once, Pascal picked up a cue. “If no one watches over me, I am apt to do very foolish things indeed!”

“Why, so am I.” Flaminia climbed to her feet, pulling him up with her. “So perhaps you should stay near me and guard me from my own foolishness, too. Do you think I should let you?”

“Without question!”

“No, not without question,” she said with a roguish smile. “I am apt to ask you very many questions indeed, for I have an enormous curiosity about the world around me, most especially the things I have never seen-and woe to you if you answer me falsely!”

“I shall be careful to be honest,” Pascal assured her, “and if my honesty is not always truthful, it shall be no fault of mine.”

Flaminia frowned at him, then glanced at Matt. “Can you tell me what he means? How can honesty not be truthful?”

“Why,” Matt said, “because he’ll honestly tell you everything he knows and believes, but he might be wrong. After all, if you ask him about the queen’s capital of Bordestang, I’m sure he’ll tell you every rumor he has heard about it-but he hasn’t seen it himself, so some of the rumors may be false.”

Flaminia laughed-a sound with the beauty of song-and pressed Pascal’s arm close. “I think you may have some ghost of wit yourself, friend Pascal! Come, let us put this tiresome crowd behind us and find the road to the south by ourselves!”

“They shall catch up with us,” Pascal warned, falling into step beside her. “Perhaps,” Flaminia said, “but I think they will be better company by that time. We can wait for them in the shade when the sun grows hot.”

“Better listen to her,” Matt advised. “She’s no fool.”

But as they started to pick their way through the litter of unconscious bodies, a beefy young man came reeling up with a lopsided grin. “Ah, there you are, my betrothed! Come, kiss me good morning, then!”

He was nicely calculated to inspire ardor in the most finicky of women-muscles like melons, guileless blue eyes in a handsome ruddy face, blond hair, and a devil-may-care jauntiness. Unfortunately, those blue eyes were bloodshot, and he was also unshaven, smelled like a brewery that had been converted into a cockroach-haven hotel, and was weaving and stumbling in what he no doubt thought was a straight line. Flaminia froze, the color draining from her face. Pascal stared in alarm as the big young man reached out for her, chuckling. She slapped his hand aside, her color returning and flaming high. “Nay, Volio! Do you think you can seduce me, then leave me to bed one doxie after another and come back to take me again?”

“Aye.” The grin turned nasty. “For you are mine, are you not? We are betrothed!”

“No longer! Oh, if only you had given me a ring, so that I might throw it back in your face!” Flaminia blazed. “I shall not be your doxie, neither wed nor unwed!”

“But you must.” The nasty grin widened to gloating, and he reached out again. “For if you do not wed me, then you shall be a slut. Come, chick.”

“Go!” she cried. “Go, and never come near me again! For I had rather be a fallen woman than a betrayed wife!”

“Why, then, a fallen woman you are,” he said, “and shall fall to me again.”

Flaminia caught the reaching hand, twisted it sharply, and bit. Volio howled, eyes staring in shock. Flaminia leaped back with a cry of triumph, letting go of the hand. “You shall not touch me again!”

“Oh, but I shall!” Volio shouted, and the bleeding hand slapped the side of her head, hard. Flaminia fell back with a cry of pain; Matt just barely caught her. But Pascal howled with outrage and leaped in, slamming a fist into Volio’s face. Volio fell back, staring in utter stupefaction, pressing his hand to the fresh new pain. Then he brought his hand away, saw the blood on it that streamed from his nose, and came for Pascal with a snarl, swinging a haymaker. Pascal blocked with his left as if he were parrying a rapier cut and slammed a hard right into Volio’s belly. The big young man staggered back with a grunt of surprise, and Pascal followed it up, whirling his right fist like a rapier, then slamming it into the side of Volio’s head. But Volio blocked, as if he was catching a sword blow on a buckler, then riposted with his right and caught Pascal a blow that sent him reeling back a few paces. Volio followed hard, but Pascal ducked just in time, his shoulder slamming into Volio’s belly. Pascal straightened up, staggered, but held Volio on his shoulder just long enough to dump him in a heap from five feet up. Then he stepped back, shaking his head to clear it as Volio caught his breath then scrambled up, snarling, “None of your peasant’s wrestling tricks!”

“Peasant!” Pascal cried, affronted, and feinted twice to draw Volio’s left, then stepped in to crack a blow across his cheek. “No!” Flaminia cried, surging up out of Matt’s arms toward the fighters-but Matt held her back. “No, damsel! You’ll just get them hurt more! Don’t worry, if it gets too bad, I’ll break it up.”

“Then why not break it up now!” she demanded. “They need it,” Matt said simply, though he meant it differently for each man. They had obviously both been trained-but as swordsmen, not as boxers. Right fists whirled high in figure eights as if they were wrapped around hilts, lefts blocked and counterpunched, and most of the blows were aimed at the chest. Every now and then one of the boys slipped and caught the other on the cheek or chin, but it was definitely by accident. Matt began to think he was going to have to break it up, after all-they were causing each other a lot of pain, but no damage, nothing even remotely decisive. Flaminia wept, crying Pascal’s name, and kept trying to struggle free to help him, but Matt held on tightly. “Don’t worry-pretty soon they’ll both drop from sheer exhaustion. Neither of them is in the greatest shape this morning.”

Just then Pascal leaped in past Volio’s guard, threw his arms around his chest, lifted and whirled, throwing Volio to the ground. The young man surged back up to his feet with a bellow. “Villain! Would you use a peasant’s wrestling tricks with me again? Have at you!” And he charged with a roundhouse swing. Pascal ducked under it, seized Volio’s knee and straightened up, heaving. Volio squalled and went flying backward, arms windmilling. He landed with a heavy, meaty sound, and lay struggling, gasping for breath again. Pascal stood over him, eyes alight with victory, fists clenched, waiting. “Oh!” Flaminia gasped, hand coming to her mouth. Matt kept his hold tight. Volio floundered to his feet, growling, “Would you fight for her honor when she has lost it?”

“Foul blot!” Pascal shouted, and swung an uppercut at Volio’s jaw. Unfortunately, Volio straightened up just then, and a little too fast; Pascal’s fist caught him right in the solar plexus. His eyes bulged and he stiffened, gasping for air like a fish. Pascal stared, frightened by what he had done. “He can’t breathe!” Matt shouted. “Put him out of his misery until his lungs start working again!”

Pascal came unfrozen, slamming the uppercut at Volio’s jaw again. This time he connected, and the beefy young man’s eyes glazed. He slumped and landed with a very solid thud. Flaminia tore loose from Matt’s hold with a cry of distress and ran to Pascal. “Oh! Are you hurt? Surely you must have suffered sorely!”

“Nay, not I.” Pascal grinned, enjoying the touch of her hands on his bruises. “Look to your fiancé, if you must aid one who suffers.”

“Him?” Flaminia turned and kicked the inert fighter, hard. “He is no fiancé of mine, and I have told him that! How I hope he does suffer, for he has deserved every blow you gave him, and ten more for each!”

“Oh, I think he’ll be aching aplenty when he comes to.” Matt knelt beside Volio and checked his pulse, just to make sure. “No permanent harm done.” Of course not-neither of them knew thefirst thing about unarmed combat. There might have been accidents, sure, but barring that, there had been no danger. “Count yourself revenged, damsel-as much as a woman can be.” Matt looked up. “But he might have friends. I suggest that when he does come to, the two of you might be smart to be a mile or so away?”

“Yes!” Flaminia whirled to Pascal, eyes wide with fright. “You did not know! He is the son of a knight, one who lives not ten miles from here! When that one discovers how his son has been hurt, he is sure to send his men after you!”

Pascal registered alarm, but said gallantly, “I shall not go unless I guard you as I do.”

Matt was nodding. “The son of a knight and the son of a squire? No wonder you were both fighting the same way-you were both trained in swordplay!”

“Of course,” Pascal said, surprised. “But this time, the squire’s son won out, because he hadn’t been worried about lowering himself to learn wrestling from the peasants. I guess you had a good education after all, Pascal.”

“You must flee!” Flaminia cried. “If they catch you, they will flog you within an inch of your life-or beyond!”

Pascal seemed shaken by that, but he still spoke gallantly. “If die I must, then die I will, so long as it saves you from that lecher’s paws!”

Flaminia almost melted-right into Pascal’s arms. For a moment their bodies were twined tightly together as she reached up to give him a long, steadily deepening kiss. Pascal’s hands stuck out behind her back, taken by surprise, as if they didn’t know what to do-but they learned quickly, cradling Flaminia’s waist and shoulders, then tightening and beginning to caress. Matt looked away, whistling cheerfully. Finally, Flaminia broke the kiss, breathing, “Oh, you are the bravest and most noble of squires! But you must not risk yourself for me!” Pascal started to object, but she laid a finger across his lips. “Fear not-I shall not turn back to that oaf Volio. I shall run away to the greenwood instead, and join a band of outlaws!”

“That doesn’t exactly sound like all that safe an alternative,” Matt warned. “Not unless I run away with her,” Pascal said stoutly. “Come, Flaminia! Shall we turn outlaw together?”

Flaminia hesitated, torn between a gush of gratitude and a draught of fear for him. ‘Take him up on it,“ Matt advised. ”You can change your minds about your destination once you’re on the road-but for now, you would definitely both find it healthier someplace else.“

“I shall not go if you do not,” Pascal warned. “No woman is safe without an escort in this land.”

Flaminia gave him a slow and sultry smile as she swayed back into his arms again. “Why, then, I shall go with you, or you with me-but I enjoin you to tell me if you tire of my company, and tell me straightaway, not by little hints and slights! Promise me that!”

“Why, then, I promise,” Pascal said slowly, “but how if I do not tire of you?”

“Why, then, do not tell me,” she said merrily, and gave him a quick but very sound kiss, then pirouetted out of his arms, though still holding onto one hand. She looked back over her shoulder at Matt. “Will you wander with us, minstrel?”

“Yes, I think I will,” Matt said slowly. “After all, I’m traveling your way.”

But they hadn’t even heard the end of his sentence-they were both gazing into each other’s eyes, laughing, a little breathlessly, as they set out toward the road. On the road, they passed small groups of young folk, with one or two of their elders, heading back north, looking wan and washed-out, or grim and morose. For them, at least, the party had come to an end before they reached Venarra. Matt wondered if they might not turn out to be the lucky ones-especially when they passed by an acre or so of chewed-up ground that had obviously been the camping place of a group that had gone before them. Off at the side, near the trees, were five rectangular mounds of earth with small pieces of board at one end of each. No crosses, not in a country that was only just beginning to think about bringing religion out into the open again-just pieces of board. Matt took a quick detour from Pascal and Flaminia to see if there were any words carved on the improvised headstones. There were-all variations on, “Here lies the body of a youth who left home to seek fame and fortune in the king’s town.” Just that-no injunction to pray for the soul, of course, and, thank Heaven, no stern moral lesson about their fates. But no names, either. These kids-and maybe some midlife-crisis cases, too-had been buried by the local villagers, the few who had stayed at home. Their road companions hadn’t even cared enough to stay around to give them a funeral. Matt was very glad to catch up with Pascal and Flaminia again. With the resiliency of youth, the two were laughing at one another’s jokes as they argued with mock earnestness over the comparative merits of line dances and circle dances. Within minutes the topic had changed to the color of the stream they were passing over-whether it was grayish-blue or bluish-gray. They debated the case with great seriousness, each one coming up with a reason that was more ludicrous than the other’s for about three rounds, before Flaminia began to break up into giggles and Pascal burst into laughter. Matt followed along behind, letting the smile grow, and letting their humor and camaraderie warm the chilly spot within him.

Chapter 15

The sun peeked over the horizon, the huge gates opened, and the crowd of runaways poured through into Venarra with a delighted shriek. It was echoed by a collective hum from the crowd waiting inside the gates; it sounded suspiciously like “Yum!”

Each of the mature men was instantly visited by a prosperous-looking, if flashy, city man or woman; each mature woman was accosted, too. If couples tried to stay together, the city folk wheeled and cajoled and showered them with flattery that gradually pulled them apart. That happened with the young folk, too, though much more quickly. Girls with shining eyes were listening, entranced, to the blandishments of older, motherly looking women-and if the paint on their faces was a little too thick or too flashy, well, wasn’t that the way all city women looked? Matt picked up a few odd sentences as he hustled his two charges through the ring of human sharks, firmly keeping them in hand. “Yes, dear, a place to stay till you’ve learned your way around Venarra,” one grandmotherly sort was saying. “Clean sheets, and a way to earn some money-sisters to show you how things are done-and ever such handsome gentlemen to come calling!”

“But why are you willing to help us so?” a starry-eyed girl was asking another woman decked in costume jewelry. “Why, bless you, child, welcoming newcomers is my pastime,” the woman gushed. “It is my charity!”

The clamor of promises of glamorous living even caught Flaminia’s ear. She twisted about to try to watch the beldame who was professing altruism. “Why, how good of them! Why do I not go to her house, friend Matthew?”

“Because once you’re in, she’ll never let you out until you’re well and truly corrupted,” Matt said grimly. “The charity she has in mind is for you to give her every penny the handsome men give to you in return for your sexual favors-and most of them won’t be terribly handsome, or very young, either. It’s a business doing pleasure with her.”

Flaminia paled, but wasn’t willing to admit her mistake so readily. “What are they telling the boys, then?”

“The same thing, for some of them-and their customers won’t all be rich old women. For others-”

“It’s an easy job, mate!” A flashy juvenile crowded up to Pascal. “All you have to do is take this bundle across town to a house on Fleet Street!”

Pascal looked tempted, lifting a hand, but Matt said, “And you’ll be just fine, as long as nobody catches you-but if the Watch should happen to look in that bag, you’ll spend the next couple of years in prison, and you won’t even be able to tell them who hired you.”

“What business is it of yours, mate?” the youth asked, turning savagely on Matt. “My friends are always my business,” Matt said, “sometimes even my enemies are.” He let his anger out in a wolfish grin. “Want to be my enemy, bucko?”

The youth stepped back, trepidation in his eyes. “Yuh. I do,” growled a basso behind Matt’s shoulder. Matt turned and found himself facing an expanse of bulging, hairy chest with a row of buttons on one side and buttonholes on the other. He followed the breastbone up to an unshaven chin, a cauliflower nose, and two gleaming piggy eyes over a gap-toothed grin. Matt felt his stomach hit bottom and bounce back up, but he scowled his fiercest and said, “You know what you’re getting into?”

“Yuh,” the big beefy man said, and a huge fist came out of nowhere and struck sparks inside Matt’s head just before a wall came up and slammed into his back. He straightened his legs, pushing back against the wall to hold him up while the ringing in his ears faded to the point where he could hear the big man’s guttural laughter while he held a furious, flailing Pascal six inches off the ground. Flaminia’s mouth was wide open, but Matt couldn’t hear anything over the big guy’s hooting. Except, maybe, the ringing of his lute strings when the instrument bumped into his side as he stepped away from the wall. He caught it and held it up-miraculously, it was undamaged. It must have swung wide about him as he shot backward, and thus slapped into his stomach instead of the wall. Matt staggered up to the giant, slipping the strap off his shoulder and reminding himself that he was a belted knight. That meant, among other things, that in this universe he could hit a lot harder than anyone his size ought to be able to. He staggered up to the thug, holding out the lute. “Here-hold this.”

The man blinked with surprise, dropped Pascal-Flaminia cried out and ran to pick him up-and took the lute. Matt nodded and slammed a right into his jaw. The big man dropped the lute-fortunately, it landed on Pascal-and staggered back. His buddies shouted in anger and charged in. Matt ducked the first punch, kicked the legs out from under the other punk, then straightened up just in time for the first guy’s left to smack into his chest. Of course, the hoodlum had been aiming for his face, but the blow still knocked Matt back, staggering-and the big guy bellowed and waded in, slab fist winding up for a very final punch. Matt knew when he was outnumbered. Knight or not, up against three seasoned street fighters he didn’t stand a chance, unless he pulled his sword and started slicing-and he was reluctant to kill these guys without knowing why they deserved it. Also, there was the little problem of the local constabulary, who might take a very dim view of a tourist killing off three of the locals, even if they weren’t paying taxes. That meant that there was no way out but magic. If it worked here. But if he was going to run a spell, he had to do it fast-he ducked, and the big guy’s first haymaker whizzed by overhead, but the next one would probably bit. Matt stepped inside and cracked another uppercut into his opponent’s jaw. That would slow him down, but not for long-and Matt caught a jab in the short ribs on the way out Wheezing, he nonetheless managed to chant, “ ‘Neath my clenched-up fist, like diorite, he fell, And I left my views on Art hammered hard upon the heart Of this mammoth thug, whose friends all ran pell-mell.”

The big guy snarled and came at him again. Matt gulped, hoping the spell would work right, feinted with his left and, as the big guy lifted his right to block, bopped him soundly. The big guy stared at him for a second before he toppled.

The other two punks stared in surprise, too, at their buddy’s inert body. “So much for the main course.” Matt pushed up his sleeves and started for the pair. “Now, about dessert…”

They didn’t, even stay to curse him-they just ran. Matt watched them go, almost trembling with relief. Either his magic had worked ever so slightly, or he really had managed to fake out the big guy, and seeing him beat the unbeatable had scared his sidekicks-all thanks to Matt being a knight. Presumably having been knighted by a legendary emperor overcame even the antimagic field of Latruria. But then, that was the way his magic had been working here-if it had been. There was every possibility that reciting verses was merely giving him an extra edge of self-confidence, by his believing he was working magic. If so, he intended to do nothing to puncture that illusion. He turned back to his two young charges. Pascal was holding Flaminia, Flaminia was holding the lute, and they were both staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. “You are a more powerful fighter than I took you for, friend Matthew,” Pascal said, but Flaminia blurted, “How did you manage that?”

“Not as well as I could have,” Matt said grimly, “or I wouldn’t have had to start fighting. Come on, let’s get away from here. The Watch will be swooping down any second now.”

“But why?” Pascal protested. “The fight is over!”

“Safest time for them,” Matt assured him. Besides, he knew that if any sorcerer had been paying attention, they would have picked up the traces from the spell he had just worked and know there was a rival magic worker in town. He was very sure that King Boncorro maintained a twenty-four-hour magic sentry-he must, since he was still alive and on his throne. Not that it really mattered, of course. Boncorro, or one of his advisers, seemed to have known where Matt was every step of the way. In fact, it was a good possibility that the trio Matt had just chased off was one more group sent out to kill him. He didn’t really think so, though. They hadn’t come close enough to success. No, this was just the same kind of reception that greeted any new arrival in Venarra. As they entered one of the streets that led away from the plaza around the gate, they passed one of the more mature couples who had been with them. The woman, with her hands on her hips, was accusing, “You said you had gold in your purse!”

“I did.” The man held up the ragged stumps of two thongs tied to his belt. “The louse cut them through, and I never even knew!”

“A fine guardian you are,” the woman said with withering sarcasm. Flaminia plucked Matt’s sleeve and pointed. “Yonder goes one of the beldames who greeted us, with three of the girls in our party in tow! Let us follow them-mayhap she will give us lodging for the night!”

So she didn’t share Matt’s skepticism. He waged a brief struggle within himself, then decided that she couldn’t come to too much harm with himself and Pascal near. “Okay. Let’s go look.”

They followed the quartet down a broad concourse, keeping their distance. The madame was pointing out the sights. “Yonder coach, with the team and the footmen, is that of the Contessa of Mopona-see you her crest on the door? And yonder is the Theater of the Comedia.”

But the girls were still watching the coach with great, huge eyes, waiting for a peek at the grand lady within. They went on down the boulevard until the girls were dizzy with the sights-then the older lady led them into a side street that very quickly turned into a maze of lanes. “This city is grown much less grand of a sudden,” Flaminia said, staring about them. Laundry was pegged to ropes that ran across the street. Peddlers hawked their wares, and grimy children played on the cobbles. The procuress wound her way adroitly between them. Matt slowed the pace, keeping the party just barely in sight. “We will lose them!” Flaminia said impatiently. “No,” Matt said, “but we don’t want them to know we’re following.”

They passed another mature couple they knew from the road, being guided by an enthusiastic young city man. “Only a little farther, and you shall see the bridge for yourself!”

“Then we can truly buy it, and charge toll to everyone who would pass?” The man fairly licked his chops at the prospect of riches. “Indeed you can! I shall give you a lawyer’s deed to it!”

“But it must cost a fortune,” the woman said anxiously. “Not a bit! It will cost you only… How much did you say you had in your purse?”

Matt hurried his charges ahead. “Can they truly buy a bridge?” Pascal asked, eyes round.

“No,” Matt said, “but they can lose every penny they have, trying.”

“We must stop them!” Flaminia protested. “If we do, we’ll lose the madame and her flock of gullible little geese,” Matt told her, “and I think they’re about to lose something more than cash.”

Flaminia blanched and hurried on. They turned three more comers, then came out into a narrow street of tottering houses. It was dusk, and lean, wasted-looking men were coming out to hang red lanterns over every other doorway. “Here is my house!” The beldame waved at a doorway-and waved harder. The ferret-faced man in the doorway whisked his lantern behind his back, then pasted on a smile and bowed. “Welcome, mistress! And have you brought us guests, then?”

“Aye, Smirkin-three lonely girls, fresh from the country!”

“Fresh meat for the grinder, you mean.” Matt came up right behind her. “Away, rogue!” The woman turned on him sharply. “Get you hence, or I’ll call the Watch!”

“Why, ‘tis the minstrel!” one of the girls said in surprise. “Ask her what she sells in there,” Matt told them. “I sell nothing!” The woman drew herself up indignantly. “Don’t you really?” Matt climbed the steps. “That’s funny. Half the houses on this street have red lanterns, and…” Suddenly, he yanked Smirkin through the doorway. The man squalled, bringing up his hands to ward off a blow-and one of them held a red lantern. Unlit, but his other hand held a tinderbox. “She’s in the same business everyone else is here,” Matt told the girls. “The red lantern is the sign of a brothel. She’s right about one thing-she doesn’t sell anything, only rents them by the hour.”

“What is that?” one girl said, eyes wide. “Women,” Matt said, “for men to do whatever they want with, short of killing.” He turned to the proprietress. “Or do you allow that, too?”

“You lie, sir!” she said indignantly. “No, but all the girls you bring home do lie-lie down, that is, or suffer until they’re willing to.” He turned back to the country girls. “Let’s go. There’s someplace better for you than this.”

“Do not believe him!” the madame cried. “He seeks to use you for his own purposes!”

The girls hesitated, uncertain. The door of the house across the way burst open and a half-undressed man shot out, with a huge burly brute behind him. “Be off with you! If you’ve no cash to pay, you can’t have her!”

“But I had money!” the man bleated. “Gold! She took it while I was undressing!”

“The more fool you, for letting her know where it was,” the bouncer said contemptuously. “Go on, get your clothes on and get out of here!”

The girls turned pale. “Yes, that is my business, too!” Suddenly, the nice old granny had turned into a sneering harridan. “But you’ll come to it sooner or later, my chicks, so why not sooner?”

“Never!” the tallest girl cried indignantly. “No? Is there a one of you that’s still virgin, after that carnival trek you’ve taken? Where do you think you’ll find husbands? What work do you think you can find in a town overflowing with girls new from the country?” She shook her head. “Oh, no, sweetings-this is the only bed you’ll find, and the only bread you’ll eat. You can starve until you’re willing to take it, until you throw yourselves into the trade with no training or bracing-or you can come in now, and learn the business properly and at a decent pace.”

The girls shrank back, looking very frightened. ‘There are other choices,“ Matt told them. ”Let’s go.“ He strode down the steps and away. They followed him with relief. ”Go men, fools!“ the harridan screeched at them. ”But remember where this house is, for you’ll need it within the week!“ And to Matt, ”A pox on you, minstrel! A pox that you will give to them! Did you think him a rescuer, girls? No! He’s just a pimp, come to steal you from a procuress!“

“No, I’m not,” Matt told the girls. “I’m not going to keep you, just find you a safe haven for a couple of days.”

The girls still looked uncertain, but followed him, shuddering at the harridan’s screeches behind them. As they came back into the high street, a sergeant came strutting along. “Hup! Hup! That’s right, lads, at the barracks they’ll give you fine clothes like mine, and each of you a bright new florin! Then dinner, and bed with a score of brothers!”

Eager young men trooped after him.

“Why, there is Berto!” one girl cried. “And Samolo, and Gian! Are they going to be soldiers, then?”

“Looks like it,” Matt said, “and the sergeant will become a lot less friendly as soon as they’re safely in his barracks. Even so, they’ve got a better choice than you girls have-at least they’ll have room, board, and safety.”

“And all for nothing but the risk of their lives,” Flaminia said darkly. “I think I would prefer that,” said the thinnest girl, with a trembling voice. “Where will you take us, minstrel?” one girl asked. “To the…” Matt’s voice trailed off. He had been about to say “the church,” that always being a safe place for girls needing sanctuary and advice-but in Latruria the churches were boarded up, and the few priests still ministering to the faithful weren’t about to go public just yet. “We’ll find you jobs,” Matt told them. “You can clean house, make beds, cook meals, that sort of thing.”

“But that is what we fled our village to escape!” one girl protested. “Where is the wealth of Venarra, the continual parties and fine clothes and dancing?” asked another. “In the palace,” Matt said, “and the mansions of the wealthy. Rumor lied to you, damsels.”

The youngest girl began to weep. ‘To come so far… to have lost… have lost…“

“Your home is still there,” Matt told her, ignoring what else she might have been saying. “If worse comes to worst, you can join one of the bands of people going north.”

“Not the wasted, haunted ones!” the tallest girl cried, looking up in horror. “Better to join them before you’re washed out, too,” Matt said, “but in the meantime, if you want to be able to earn the money to enjoy the life of Venarra, we’d better find you some honest work.”

They trooped along behind him in silence for a few minutes. Then the oldest girl said bitterly, “We shall have to get it ourselves, shall we not? No one will get it for us!”

“No.” Matt shook his head sadly. “No one will. You have to pay for what you get, one way or another-and if anybody tells you he can get it for you without any cost to you, he lies. He may not know it, but he lies.”

Matt may have known the ways of cities better than the girls did, but that didn’t mean he knew the ways of this city. He took them into a tavern, to ask a few discreet questions and learn the lay of the land-but the questions must not have been discreet enough, for the jolly-looking man he was asking only laughed and said, “New come to Venarra, are you?”

“Does it show so badly as that?” Matt asked, deflated. “I’d know you in a minute, and I’ve only been here a year and some months myself!”

“Then there are jobs!”

“Yes, if the Burglars Guild lets you learn the trade.”

Matt stared. “Burglars Guild?”

“Yes. We keep needing new members-so many of them go to the king’s gaol, and half of those to the noose. No, there’s always room for a newcomer who’s willing to learn to steal. You and I, now, minstrel, might do great business together-you holding the attention of a crowd while I slip into their homes…”

“Well, maybe some other time,” Matt said, abashed. “How about girls’ jobs? Is there a Housemaids Guild?”

The burglar gave him a tolerant smile. “There is, if you’re looking for that line of work-though I’d scarcely call it a guild, more of a gossip club.”

“Better than nothing,” Matt sighed. “Where do I find them?”

“In the Street of Rough Hands. Can’t miss them-there are always young women standing about the door, waiting to be sent out.”

“And older women, trying to recruit them into a different sort of housework?”

The burglar grinned broadly. “No, the Housemaids Guild keeps a couple of bruisers about to scare off the jackals. Your young charges will be as safe there as anywhere. The young man, now, might do well to join my guild.”

Pascal glanced about nervously. “Thanks,” Matt said, “but he’s not limber enough for second-story work.”

Pascal looked up indignantly. “Anyone can learn to cut a purse,” the man offered. “Yes, but I’m afraid that if he starts cutting leather, he’ll get carried away and start cutting skin.”

“Ah.” The burglar nodded. “No, that kind of thing is out of our purview. He might try the Murderers Guild.”

“Yes, of course.” Matt was feeling increasingly nervous. “Say, do you folks take care of armed robbery, too?‘

“No, that’s the Thieves Guild.”

Matt could imagine what the jurisdictional disputes must have been like. “You can only take things when people aren’t around, huh?”

“Not around, or sleeping. We can steal, but cannot rob.”

“I don’t suppose you set fires, either-or steal people?”

“The Arsonists Guild and the Kidnappers Guild?” The burglar scowled. “You are not really looking for that sort of work, are you?”

“No, but I’d like to know what to steer clear of. Any kind of crime that isn’t organized in this city?”

“None that I know of, no,” the burglar admitted. “Still, there is always someone about who will dream up something new.”

Matt shuddered at the notion and decided to get out of town before someone invented racketeering. “Well, thanks for all the info.” He turned away, then stopped and turned back. “I don’t suppose the heads of all these guilds have the same last name do they?”

“Only the Thieves Guild, the Burglars Guild, and the Murderers Guild,” the burglar said. “They’re Squelfs. The Gamblers Guild, now, with the Pimps Guild and the Peddlers guild, they’re Skibbelines. All the rest are DiGorbias.”

The girls shivered, wide-eyed, and Pascal swallowed heavily. Matt didn’t blame them-he was feeling the same sort of chill inside that they must have felt-but his curiosity was piqued one more time. “The Peddlers Guild? Peddlers are criminals here?”

“Only the ones who sell you what you can’t get in the shops.”

“Oh.” Matt couldn’t help himself. “Uh, what do they sell?”

The burglar’s grin widened even more. “Anything you want.”

“Right.” Matt turned away, “Thanks, friend! Come on, folks, let’s go.”

They found the Street of Rough Hands just as the sun was setting. The bouncer snarled at them, but when Matt explained that he had brought some young women who were looking for honest work, the bruiser sent one of the loitering girls in to call the boss. She came bustling out, a matronly sort in a blue dress and white apron, saw the new arrivals, said “Ah!” with a nod, and came down to look them over from head to toe. “Well, you’ll need a bath and a chance to wash your clothes, at the least. Go to the house next door, where the house warden will give you supper and a bed until you can find your own quarters. We’ll take it from your first week’s wages, of course, and we take one part in ten from all your wages after that-one part in five for as long as you live with us. Anyone hires you, they pay us, not you, and we pay you your share. If we catch you setting up work on your own, you’re still in the guild, but out of our services. Any questions? No? Off with you, then!”

Bemused, the girls turned away. The boss woman turned to Flaminia with a scowl. “You don’t wish to go with them?”

“Not yet,” Flaminia hedged. “The minstrel needs our help with other business first, I think.”

“Well, you look honorable enough.” The matron gave Matt a quick inspection. “You brought these poor deluded lambs to our doorstep, anyway. We can’t take them all, mind you, but we do what we can.”

That explained why they hadn’t had a recruiter just inside the gate. “I understand. Not all that much call for housemaids, is there?”

“Oh, there is work aplenty!” the woman said. “The town has swollen enormously since good King Boncorro came to the throne! The nobility have come flocking in-bored to death in the country, and eager for the delights of the city, now that there’s no chance the king will demand their wives in his bed, or themselves for his arena. So they have left their lands in the care of stewards and come to Venarra for excitement-and they all need food, and furniture, and new houses, and clothing, and all manner of silliness.”

“So there’s a sudden increase in the number of tradesmen and merchants?”

“Yes, and they are all growing rich off the trade-so their wives are wanting to spend more time in the shops and less at the housekeeping. No, there are jobs aplenty for girls who can clean and mend-but there are far more girls coming in. The peasant folk wish the exciting life, too, and far too many of them find it, but on the wrong end.”

“Yes,” Matt said grimly. “The noblemen want to be entertained, don’t they? And there aren’t enough clean and open amusements.”

“There are diversions aplenty, young man!” the matron said indignantly. “You’ll find you have far too much competition here-there is a minstrel on every street corner! Aye, and a theater in every boulevard, though their plays are very bad, and more what you would expect to see in a brothel than on a stage.”

“Yes,” Matt said grimly, “the pimps always learn early on that the theater is a great place to advertise, on stage or off. Isn’t anybody trying to keep them out?”

‘Trying, aye.“ The matron gave him a hard smile. ”Has anyone ever succeeded?“

“Well, they have in my country-but it took a hundred years or so. How about music-concerts of a dozen musicians together? That’s harder to corrupt.”

“Oh, there are whole bands of musicians playing in great halls every night, and livery stables, fencing masters, taverns for the lowborn and parties in palaces for the highborn.”

“But you don’t recommend the new arrivals try to find jobs in them?”

The matron made a face. “Certainly not for the girls! You have heard what I think of the theaters, and the troupes of dancers are every bit as much apt to abuse as to foster! Music’s another thing, I suppose, but it means learning to play or sing really well, and that’s no quick undertaking, as I am sure you know.”

“Yes, it did take me a few years to learn to play the lute.” Matt had needed something to fill the spare time while he waited for Alisande to set the date. “The dancers and players are poorly paid,” the woman said, “but a living is a living, I suppose.”

“Yes, if that’s all they’re after.” Matt frowned. “But if the plays and dances are really bad, they must be pretty unhappy about doing them.”

“Bitter, I would say-quite bitter.” The matron shook her head, looking angry, almost frightened. “At least, the few who have come to me for employment have complained of it They tell me there are a few of the players who will never leave the theater, they are so ardent about it-but my ex-player women think those ardent ones to be mad, or nearly so. Certainly they will rage and rant, at a moment’s notice, about the paucity of mind in the folk who come to see them, and the poverty they must endure-and what they call the hollowness of the soul.”

“Yes, I’ve run into artists like that,” Matt said, “though most of the ones I’ve talked to have been painters and poets.” He didn’t mention that he had once thought of himself as being one of them. “They start feeling that there is no substance in their culture for them to draw on.”

The matron frowned up at him. “Oddly put-but it has the sound of sense, even though I think I do not understand all of what you mean. I only wish that I could provide a living for all these poor souls who feel themselves stretched so on the rack of fashion.”

“But you can’t,” Matt said sympathetically. “Too many girls and not enough work, and you’d stop making profit.”

“Profit? What is that?” the woman said impatiently. “We make a living, and so do they.”

Matt’s opinion of her went up. “Are you open to donations?”

“Donations?” The woman stared. “You mean gifts of money? Whatever for?”

‘To help protect more of them.“ Matt fished a gold piece out of his purse and pressed it into her hand. She stared at it, then looked up at him, her composure shaken. ”Thank you, young man-but I’ll hold this a week before I spend any of it, so you can come back for it if you find you have need.“

Matt nodded. “Very prudent. But I’m sure I won’t need it back.”

“I’ll wait all the same,” she said doggedly. “Keep it or not, I thank you-your heart’s in the right place.”

“Thanks.” Matt gave her a sardonic smile. “Like you, I just wish I could do more.” He turned back to Pascal and Flaminia. “Time to start pub-crawling, folks.”

“What is a ‘pub’?” Flaminia asked. “Anyplace where they serve beer and wine to people with more money than sense.” He turned back to the matron. “Thanks ma’am-and good night.”

She watched them go, brow puckered with worry, shaking her head. Pascal and Flaminia seemed rattled. “There is far more wickedness in this city than I had thought,” the young man said. Matt shrugged. “What would you expect, when it was the capital of evil for so long? Interesting to hear her call Boncorro ‘good’-but even if he were, he couldn’t reform his town completely in just a few years.”

“And from what I have heard,” Flaminia said, “he is not dedicated to Goodness-it is simply that he is not dedicated to Wickedness, either.”

“But his reign has produced more!” Pascal burst out. “Or as much, but of a different sort! It has brought the noblemen flocking into town to prey upon the innocent, and the country folk in to be their meat!”

“That’s one side of it, yes,” Matt said, frowning, “and as far as that goes, Boncorro’s try at a worldly culture without any teaching of values has produced a great deal of emotional suffering and exploitation of the weak-but on the other hand, nobody’s starving or homeless, or at least very few.”

“I have seen many beggars,” Pascal objected. “But they have been far from starvation,” Flaminia pointed out. Matt nodded. “Plus, I haven’t seen any dead bodies in the streets, though maybe that only means that it’s the wrong time of day. No, I think I’ll have to meet this king and talk with him a bit before I make up my mind about him.”

“Meet the king?” Flaminia looked up, frightened. “Surely you are jesting!”

“He must be,” Pascal agreed. “Why, to meet the king might be as dangerous as it would be exciting!”

“No, I really do want to,” Matt said. “I do not,” Flaminia said certainly. “But you shall,” said a voice behind Matt’s ear, and he was just beginning to turn when the pain burst on top of his head and spread through it. He fought to stay conscious even as he felt himself falling, but all the good it did was to give him a quick glimpse of Pascal struggling in the hands of one bruiser while another swung a truncheon, and to let him hear Flaminia’s screams as two more men closed in on her. He was just realizing that they wore livery when the darkness closed in.

Chapter 16

Matt’s first blurred impression was of a lot of cobblestones. After a minute he realized from the discomfort that he was lying on more than cobbles. Then he realized that there wasn’t anyone anywhere near, though there did seem to be a goodly number off in the distance, there-lined up, pointing, gesticulating. Then the headache hit. Actually, it had been there all the time-it just required a certain level of consciousness to feel it. His vision stayed blurred, and he gasped with the agony of it. He begged his pulse not to beat, because every throb made his head split all over again. Fortunately, he didn’t beg in rhyme. Through the blinding pain one thought bored: he couldn’t possibly function with his head splitting, and there was only one way to make it stop. What the hell? Whoever the chief sorcerer was around here, he knew where he was, anyway. “When headache’s pounding till you’re done, Get ibuprofen on the run! Instant-acting, long and wide, Analgesic, be inside!”

The improvement startled him. Suddenly, the headache was only a dull, persistent pain at the back of his head-not as successful a spell as it would have been if he had tried the same verse outside Latruria, but good enough. He raised a hand to touch the spot the pain radiated from, then thought better of it-he didn’t need to start another explosion. In what was left of his mind, he made a note to check himself for concussion when he had time to find a mirror-or conjure one up, more likely. With the pain reduced to a bearable level, he could take stock of his circumstances. Now that he thought of it, he remembered being hit on the head, remembered… Flaminia’s abduction! In a panic, he looked around for Pascal, and saw… A wall of tawny fur. He stared at it for a second, realizing why the onlookers were staying so far back. Then he looked up slowly to the double grin above. “Hi, Manny.”

“It is good to see you alive again, mortal.”

Matt pushed himself up to a sitting position, very carefully. “Somebody tried to kill me again, huh?”

“Yes-one of the soldiers in wine-red tunics. He changed his mind when I dropped down beside you.”

“Dropped down? How’d you get into the city, anyway?”

“Why, I leaped atop the wall, then sprang to the nearest house-top and prowled across the roofs.”

“Like any cat.” Matt nodded. “I kept you in sight all the afternoon, disappointed that there was no need of me.”

“Bet you were real happy to see them jump us, huh?”

“Yes. I could not prevent them from striking, but when the wench was secured and the leader turned back to you with a lifted knife, I knew my moment had come and dropped beside you with a hiss of joy. He was somewhat startled to see me.”

“I’ll bet. How was he?”

‘Too quick to catch, alas.“

‘Too quick for you?“ Matt stared. ”Yes. He shouted a few words I recognized from long ago, and disappeared, along with his soldiers and that scrumptious tidbit of a young woman.“

Matt thought that Pascal would probably agree with him on that last, and that reminded him. “Seen Pascal?”

“Yes. He is on my other side-” Manny glanced away, then back. “-only just now waking.”

“Safe, then-sort of. You say you recognized the soldier’s words?”

“Aye. They were in a language from the East.”

“How far east?”

“From Persia, I believe he called it-the magus who had come to Reme to teach the priests new ways to read the auspices and haruspices.”

“Auspicious indeed.” So the language had been Persian, or maybe older. Chaldean? Sumerian? “What did the leader say?”

“Only, ‘Return whence we came!’ ” The manticore frowned. “Few words indeed, to accomplish so much!”

“Not really, if he had left a spell hanging in the air and only needed a few final words to put it into action. What did he look like?”

“Difficult to say. He was masked, you see-but he had gray hair and beard, was tall and lean, and wore a robe of flaming orange.”

“Just your standard sorcerer, except for the color of the robe.” Matt frowned. “Could have been any senior magus. Any distinguishing features?”

“Only his knowledge of an old and arcane tongue, and the fact that he did attempt to enslave me with a spell of obedience in that tongue.”

Matt looked up, startled “And it didn’t work?”

“Of course not,” the manticore said with disdain. “I already walk under the old geas laid upon me by the ancestor of your mend Pascal, and renewed by that young man himself. They enjoined me by the power of Goodness, which is greater than the evil source of that sorcerer’s power. He would have had to remove Pascal’s spell before he could lay a new compulsion upon me.”

“So you were protected by loyalty.”

“Protected in more ways than one.” The manticore shuddered. “It is highly unpleasant to labor in a sorcerer’s command! Some tasty meals, aye, but they do not compensate for being restrained and constrained when I wish to ramble. Would that I could take revenge!”

“But they’re too powerful for you, huh?”

“Or too quick. I almost caught this graybeard on the tips of my daws, but he disappeared a half second too soon.”

“Too bad about that” Matt suspected he had just personally encountered the sorcerer who had been trying to have him assassinated all along. Apparently he had become fed up with his klutzy hirelings and decided that if he wanted the job done right, he’d have to do it himself. But why kidnap Flaminia? Just in case the sorcerer failed to kill Matt, of course. This way, Matt would have to come after the sorcerer. Or was Flaminia herself important in some way Matt didn’t know about? Or maybe Pascal? It seemed unlikely, but you never knew. “How’s your liberator doing?”

The manticore glanced down on his other side. “He rises.”

Pascal’s head appeared above the manticore’s back. He looked like yesterday’s hashed browns unsuccessfully warmed over, but all he could say was, “Flaminia!”

“Stolen away,” Matt relayed. “We have to go get her back.” It didn’t even occur to him that there might be another option. “Of course, we have to figure out where she is.” He pushed himself to his feet and went over to the spectators. They gave way before him, and some turned to run. “I’m not going to hurt you!” The way Matt felt, he couldn’t have damaged a plate of spaghetti. “I just want to know whose soldiers those were.”

They didn’t even try to deny having been mere when the soldiers jumped Matt and his party; they just looked at one another with wide, frightened, but incredulous eyes. “He is a foreigner, after all,” one of them said. “Aye,” said his friend. “You can tell that by his accent.”

Matt frowned. “What difference does that make?”

“It is why you did not recognize their livery,” the man explained. “Meaning their boss is so big and important that anybody here would know him just by his colors?” Matt didn’t like the way this was going. “Okay-who is he?” But the creeping dread in his belly told him that he already knew-he was just hoping he was wrong. “They are the royal colors,” the citizen said. “Those were King Boncorro’s men.”

Matt just stared at him for a moment. Then he gave a short nod. “Thanks. Any idea why they would want to kidnap our young woman?”

Again, the passersby exchanged glances, and a woman said, “Why would any young man abduct a young woman?”

Matt stood frozen. “King Boncorro is a young man, after all,” one of the men said defiantly. “He is a good king, but he has a healthy young man’s appetites-and he will not touch the daughters of the noblemen, as his grandfather did.”

“That is why the noblemen have come flocking back to Venarra,” another man said stoutly, “with all their money-because he treats them with respect, they and theirs.”

“So he makes it up by snagging any of the peasant girls who catch his eye, huh?”

“His eye, or his soldiers’ eyes,” the woman said darkly. “Still, the king may not find her to be of interest,” the first man said in an effort at consolation. “Be of good cheer, friend-if the king does not fancy her, she will be brought back here unharmed. None dare touch her, unless the king gives his leave.”

“And he never has,” another woman pointed out. “How about if one of the lords takes a fancy to her?”

The woman shrugged eloquently. “A nobleman, desire a girl that the king finds unattractive? He would not dare be so far off she fashion!” She said it with a certain smugness-as well she might, since it was probably one of her own defenses. Matt wondered how the king’s taste ran. “Well, thanks, folks. I’ll take my manticore and go now.”

They looked relieved, and certainly no one moved to stop him. As he came back up to Pascal, Matt said, “Bad news. Those were the king’s men who snatched her.”

Pascal blanched-not that he had much color left to begin with. “But why?”

“Because she’s a reasonably attractive young woman,” Matt sighed, “and apparently, he has his share of vices.”

Pascal began to tremble-whether with fear or anger or both, Matt didn’t want to know. “We must free her! But how?”

“I was just saying I wanted to meet the king, wasn’t I?” Matt sighed. “I won’t say this gives us a good opportunity-but it certainly gives us a good reason.”

Privately, though, he knew this had to be one of the dumbest things he had ever done. If that sorcerer really was the one who lad been trying to bump him off all along, he would sure as Hell know Matt was coming-straight into his jaws. If the sorcerer worked for the king, the chances were this kidnapping, and the attempt to assassinate Matt, had all been ordered by Boncorro himself. Matt knew he would just have to go in with all enchantments up and ready. He thought of trying a disguise spell, but suspected it would be useless, since the sorcerer had already penetrated his cover once. There was one shred of hope: maybe Boncorro had not ordered this abduction. The townspeople seemed to be familiar with peasant girls being kidnapped on spec-on the chance that the king might desire them. Maybe the sorcerer had just been out shopping for his master-and if it had been his own idea to kidnap Flaminia, maybe it had been his own idea to assassinate Matt. Maybe. But Matt wasn’t putting any money on it. “But how are we to find a way into the king’s castle?” Pascal wailed. “One does not simply walk up to him and demand to speak!”

“No,” Matt said. “One walks up to the nearest nobleman. Come on, let’s go find one.”

He turned away. Pascal glanced at the manticore, startled, but the monster only shrugged and jerked his head toward Matt. Pascal swallowed and followed the wizard. When they looked back, the manticore had disappeared. In this town it was always a short walk to the nearest boulevard. The districts changed from grungy to grand in two blocks. Matt took up station on a street corner and began to play. Pascal, with conditioned reflexes, threw down his hat. A passerby stopped to listen, then threw in a copper when the song ended. Another passerby joined him. Soon the hat was half full, and Matt had a crowd. Then he saw the nobleman’s retinue coming. Matt timed it so the nobleman would just be passing as he sang: “Oh, a private buffoon is a lighthearted loon, And you’ll listen to all of his rumor. From the morn to the night he’s so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humor. He’s so quaint and so terse, Both in prose and in verse, So all people forgive him transgression. My lord, bend the rule, and take up this fool To the king, for he loves his profession.”

The carriage stopped and the aristocrat peered out through the door, no doubt wondering what there was about this minstrel that was so compelling-he didn’t sound all that funny. Matt went on: “I’ve jibe and joke, and quip and prank, For lowly folk, and men of rank! I cry my craft, and know no fear, But aim my shaft at prince or peer. ”I’ve wisdom from the East and from the West That is subject to no academic rule. You may find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distill it from the folly of a fool! If it’s offered to the king in any guise, The sponsor, he will favor with a will. Oh! He who’d rise in courtier’s circles high Should take the king a jester, and his shill!“

The nobleman laughed, and his lady joined in. He wiped his eyes and said, “Well-spoken, minstrel! In fact, hilariously spoken! Climb up behind, for you must come with me to the king!”

Some show of reluctance was in order. “But your Lordship-”

“Get up behind, I said!” The nobleman frowned. “Are you under the illusion that you have a choice?”

“No, my lord! Right away, my lord!” Matt slung his lute across has back and leaped up to the perch on the back of the coach, calling, “Come on, Pascal!” Then, to the footman who had already moved over to make room for him, “He’s part of the act.”

“Part or not, there is no more room!” the man protested. “There is scarcely enough for three, let alone four!”

“Number four,” Matt said, standing up and grabbing a footman’s handle, “you’ll have to sit between my feet and hold onto my ankles.”

“Stand fast,” Pascal begged as he hiked himself up onto the moving seat, and off they went, with the disappointed commoners protesting loudly, and Pascal trying to count his hat with one hand, the other elbow hooked around Matt’s shin. Off they went, with Matt reflecting that either the mangled version of Gilbert’s verse had been funnier than he knew or his magic was getting stronger. Maybe it was just a matter of getting adjusted to the Latrurian environment. Matt just hoped he wasn’t adjusting too far. The sentries didn’t even bat an eye as their party drove over the drawbridge and into the courtyard. The coach drew to a halt and the footmen hopped down to open the doors. Matt and Pascal hopped down, too, and started to follow the nobleman and his wife, but a footman caught Matt by the elbow. ‘Through the kitchens, you! You’re no better than the rest of us!“ And he led Matt off firmly, while his mate took Pascal in tow. Definitely, he had not worked this spell just to meet the royal cook. ”But your master wants us to sing for the king!“

“He will send for you when it is time.” The footman clearly didn’t think much of this way of hiring new staff. “You’ll stay in the servants’ hall, or whatever sleeping chamber they afford you, until then.”

The “sleeping chamber” turned out to be a ten-by-six-foot space with a four-foot-high ceiling that sloped rapidly down to six inches-they were under the eaves. Matt warily eyed a dark spot in the overhead boards and decided not to rest his lute underneath. The loft was hot and stifling. He could hardly wait for dusk. “Everything considered, Pascal, let’s hang out in the servants’

hall.“

“ ‘Hang out’?” Pascal gave him a blank look. “Loiter. Idle. While away time when we don’t have anything to do. Pester the servants and find out about the king.” Pascal’s eyes lit. “Come on.” Matt headed for the curtained hole that served as a door. He tried out the strength of his new spell by singing it to the off-duty servants, then following it up with some popular songs from his own world and time that he had found singularly disagreeable. The servants gathered around with wide eyes and tapping toes, hanging on his every phrase. Grins broke out and people began dancing. Matt decided that the spell worked like a charm. Come to think of it, in this universe, it was a charm. Either that or rock music had a more universal appeal than he was willing to admit, even when it was played on a lute by a third-rate amateur… “Ho, minstrel!” It was the lord’s footman at the door again, the one with his face in a permanent sneer. “Your master summons you!”

“Why, then, I shall obey with alacrity!” Matt struck a final chord and nodded to Pascal. “Let’s go.”

The servants grumbled in disappointment as Pascal followed Matt toward the door. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back,” Matt assured them, then wished he hadn’t. Sometimes he had trouble keeping his promises. They wound a tortuous way through halls that had been accumulating sudden turns for centuries, then came up to a stout oaken door banded with brass and flanked by two guards. The footman announced, “The minstrel Matthew and his assistant Alacrity, responding to the summons of Conte Paleschino.” Matt turned to him, puzzled. “My assistant… ? Oh, right.”

The left-hand guard scowled. “We have permission for a minstrel to enter with you, but none other.”

The footman frowned, but Matt said quickly, “Don’t worry about it. Pascal can hobnob with the off-duty servants while he waits for me. In fact, I thought you had struck up an acquaintance with a young lady there, hadn’t you, Pascal?”

“Aye,” the young man said, giving Matt a very direct look in the eye. “There is a young lady there who is quite fascinating. She dwells with the women who wait upon the king, and seems to partake of their beauty.”

The footman frowned, incensed, but the guard gave Pascal a sly grin. “Aye, lad, back to the servants’ hall with you, to deepen your acquaintance. Can you find your way?”

“Oh, I shall ask if I have need.” Pascal turned away. “I shall see you when you have finished, friend Matthew. I trust you shall be well-received and shall play long for them.”

“Thanks.” Matt could take a hint. Pascal was trusting him to keep the king and his men occupied for a long time. Well, he would do his best to play along-a very long. He turned back to the guard. “Okay. Do I get to see the king now?”

“No. You see his Lordship.” The guard nodded to his mate, who swung the little door open. The footman pushed in front of Matt, snapping, “This way!” Matt let him go first, and followed him in. The huge room they entered was lit only by candles around the walls, and a row of small, narrow windows high above. Matt glanced up, just to check, and sure enough, there were guards stationed next to the windows, on a catwalk that went completely around the huge room. Those weren’t windows, they were arrow slits. Each embrasure was filled with tinted glass-tinted not by intention, Matt supposed, but by imperfect glass-making. Still, the muted background light that it gave the throne room was really very pleasing, especially when it was highlighted by the two ten-branch candelabra at either side of the steps that led up to the throne. The dais wasn’t really very high-only three feet or so-but it was enough to make the king decidedly the center of the room. Matt took a quick glance-all he could manage, as he followed fie footman who was weaving through the crowd. But he retained the image of the king and studied it until he could look again. He didn’t have time, though. The footman was standing by the nobleman from the coach, who didn’t seem to be anywhere nearly as tall now that he was standing on the floor. In fact, he was shorter than Matt, if you didn’t count all the hair piled up on top of his head. “Milord.” The footman bowed. “The minstrel is here.”

“Very good, very good.” The count shot Matt a keen glance. “You had best be as amusing for the king as you were for me, fellow.”

“I shall do my best, my lord.” Matt bowed, managing to keep a straight face-if the count knew that Matt technically ranked him, he would have had to push his jaw shut. Of course, if the count knew that this minstrel had been born at a station lower than his own, he would have had apoplexy. Matt entertained a brief vision of the count having apoplexy with an open jaw, then put it resolutely behind him as his new “master” brought him up to stand before the dais. The count bowed, and Matt followed suit. “Your Majesty!” the count cried. “May I present the minstrel of whom I spoke!”

A ripple of interest passed through the ranks of the crowd of courtiers-anything to break the boredom, Matt decided. If he was amusing, all well and good. If he wasn’t, they’d have fun watching him be flogged. But when he looked up at King Boncorro, he had difficulty believing this handsome young man would flog a minstrel just for poor singing. The bilious, scrawny old man standing behind him-well, he looked ready to flog Matt right now-but the king himself was in his mid-twenties, about ten years younger than Matt himself. His face was open and seemed guileless, his blue eyes frank and honest, his nose straight and his chin firm without being too large. He looked like a real nice guy, all-American and addicted to Mom’s apple pie. Of course, Matt reminded himself, these people didn’t know about America-for all he knew, it might not be there; he hadn’t gotten around to looking yet-and probably didn’t know about apple pie, either. If Boncorro was really skilled at deception, one of the first things he would have learned was to look honest and guileless. Matt decided to withhold judgment, but couldn’t help liking the kid anyway-which, no doubt, was just what Boncorro intended. “A minstrel, are you?” the young king asked. “Can you sing?”

“No, Majesty,” Matt said honestly, “but my lute can, and my mouth says the words.”

The crowd emitted a noise that sounded as if they weren’t sure whether or not to laugh. Boncorro decided the issue for them by giving a chuckle. “Not only a minstrel, but a jester, too! What songs can you sing, then?”

‘I can sing you of my trade, Majesty.“

“To sing of singing?” Boncorro’s smile firmed with amusement. “Well, then, let us hear it!”

Matt sang “I’ve Jibe and Joke” again. The crowd went silent at first line and stayed that way so thoroughly that Matt knew were charmed-literally. Boncorro listened closely, too, with agreeable smile, but with a guarded look that told Matt that the king knew well and truly that he was being subjected to a spell, that it didn’t bother him. He was that sure of his own power dispel the charm, if he thought it necessary. Matt’s blood ran cold at the thought of that kind of power in one so young. Of course, Boncorro could have been wrong-he might not have proven as powerful as he thought… Then again, he might. When he finished, the crowd applauded, and Boncorro nodded approval. “Not bad, not bad at all-and your voice is far better than you led me to believe.”

“Well, yes,” Matt conceded. “I’m just not too good at hitting the right pitch, your Majesty, that’s all.”

The king smiled. “Well, your words were so fascinating that we did not concern ourselves with it. What is this ‘wisdom of the East’ of which you speak?”

Matt was curious. “Is your Majesty not more concerned with what thoughts a minstrel would consider to be the wisdom of the West?”

“No,” the king said, with absolute conviction. “I know what we of the Western world consider to be wisdom-it is religion, and I’ll have none of it, or the magic of Evil, and I’ll have none of that, either.”

The old man standing behind the throne looked very upset at that. Somehow, Matt didn’t think he was the religious type. “Why, just as your Majesty says.” Matt was taken aback by the young man’s intensity-but then, he had known other people who had rejected religion with an almost religious fervor. “Maybe you would prefer the wisdom of the East.”

“What is it, then?”

The old geezer behind the throne was watching Matt very narrowly. Matt mustered his wits, trying to oversimplify drastically-not too hard, considering how little he knew. “Broadly speaking, there are three kinds-but the one of them is so like that of the West that I think you would find it of little interest; it has to deal with who should take orders from whom, and how to keep things orderly in a kingdom.”

“You are right,” the king said impatiently, “I know enough of that already. And the other two?”

“The one teaches that all life is more suffering than joy, and that the main goal in living is to be able to escape life.”

Boncorro frowned. “Why, a naked blade can accomplish that soon enough!”

“Only if death lets you stop existing,” Matt pointed out, “without going to Hell.”

Boncorro became totally still. “I think I do wish to learn this wisdom. How can one cease to exist when one is dead?”

“Only with great difficulty,” Matt said, “for this wisdom teaches that unless you have lived the life of a saint, you will be reborn in another life, and have to live it over again, and the next, and the next, until you do manage to live a life of perfect purity.”

Boncorro relaxed, disappointed. “There is no profit for me in that. I am a king, and cannot live a life of purity, for we who rule must ever make the hard choice between the lesser of two evils. Besides, I wish to make my life one of pleasure and joy, not one of suffering.”

“And your people’s lives, too?” Matt watched him keenly. Boncorro shrugged. “If their happiness will make my life more pleasurable, yes-and I think it will. The more they prosper, the more tax they can pay, and the more wealthy I will become. The more content they are, the less likely they are to rebel, and the less difficulty I will have keeping this crown on my head.”

So. A materialist, and one devoted to the good of his people, even if his reasons were less than noble. On the other hand, Matt wasn’t all that sure he believed the king was really so self-centered. “What of this third form of Eastern wisdom?” Boncorro demanded. “Alas, Sire! I fear it will interest you even less, for it teaches that everything that exists is only a small part of a greater, single whole-that all the universe is one unified entity, and that human happiness can be gained by working to live in harmony with all the rest of the world about you.”

Boncorro smiled sourly. “If that is so, then even the wolves and lions do not know of that harmony, for they slay and feed on other animals.”

That is a problem,“ Matt admitted, ”though I’m sure the Taoists have an answer for it. Unfortunately, their idea of living in harmony with the rest of the universe involves learning how to eat as little as possible and do without anything but the absolutely essential belongings-even clothes.“

Boncorro gave him a cynical smile. “No, I do not think that wisdom will make my people happy, and will certainly not make me so-unless it teaches how a king may cease to exist when he dies.”

The old guy behind him looked very worried. No, your Majesty,“ Matt admitted. ”Just the other way around-they try to find eternal life, by living lives of virtue.“

“Which doubtless entails poverty.” Boncorro gave him a sour smile. “What use eternal life, if there is so little of pleasure in it?”

There is spiritual rapture,“ Matt clarified. ”But only for the virtuous? Nay, I think competent kings could not gain that inner pleasure.“

“So do they, your Majesty. In fact, one sage actually came right out and said that governing a kingdom would make it impossible for him to live a virtuous life.”

“Perhaps he did have some wisdom, after all.” Boncorro gave an approving nod. ‘Tell me of him.“

“A king sent his men to invite the sage to come advise him on the best way to govern his kingdom. They found the wise man in the wilderness, wearing worn, rough clothing. He refused the king’s invitation. They asked him why, and the sage said, ‘What would you expect a turtle to say, if you invited him to dinner-when the dinner was going to be turtle soup, made out of himself? Would you expect him to be delighted to come to the palace, or to prefer to continue to draggle his tail in the mud?’

‘Why,’ said the messenger, ‘he would refuse.’

“And so do I,‘ said the sage. ’Be off with you, then, and leave me to draggle my tail in the mud.‘ ”

The king stared in surprise, then threw back his head and laughed. “A point most apt, and a sage indeed! But it is an insight that is of no use to me. So much for the wisdom of the East.”

“But there is another Western wisdom that you might find more useful,” Matt said, desperate to keep him interested. “There is also the learning of the ancient Greeks, who had begun to search for knowledge that came from neither Faith nor Wickedness.”

“Yes, I have heard of that.” Boncorro sat forward, his attention suddenly focused. Matt was surprised at the force of the young man’s gaze. “They say that scholars have unearthed scrolls that were moldering in libraries, or even dug them from the earth sealed in jars, and that, slowly and with great pain, they have begun to translate them. I have even read a few of their ancient tales of their gods and heroes. But how is it that you, a mere minstrel, know of this?”

“Ah, your Majesty! A minstrel’s stock-in-trade is news, and the discovery of things long past is just such news as I thought to have in store, for a king’s court.”

“Why, what foresight you had.” Boncorro grinned. “Have you read these scrolls, then?”

“Alas! I am fortunate to be able to read the language of Latruria itself, let alone that of the ancient empire or its elder neighbor! But I have heard that scholars have uncovered the thoughts of a man named Socrates.”

The old geezer behind the throne gave a start of alarm. Matt gave him a closer glance-he had a long white beard and a perpetually worried expression. His eyes narrowed as he met Matt’s gaze, and Matt suddenly felt a very definite dislike for the man. Heaven only knew why-he looked nice enough, if rather dyspeptic. Then he remembered that Heaven might very well know why, indeed. “Majesty.” The old geezer took a step closer to the throne. “Surely such talk of long-dead Greeks is a waste of your most precious time!”

“It beguiles me, my Lord Chancellor,” the king said. “But it is surely of no-”

“I said it beguiles me, Rebozo.” There was sudden iron in the king’s tone, and the old man took a quick step backward. “Now, minstrel, tell me of this Greek of whom you have heard. What manner of man was this Socrates?”

“Why, what men term a ‘philosopher,’ your Majesty.”

“ ‘Philosopher’?” Boncorro frowned. “Let us work that out from the roots… It means, ‘lover of wisdom,’ does it not?”

“It does, your Majesty, though I personally think the term may have been misused,” Matt said, with a hard smile. “Socrates claimed to love truth and to be preoccupied with searching for it, but from what I’ve heard of the man, his searching discussions with his students really seemed to be more a very subtle way of persuading them to agree with his ideas.”

Boncorro smiled with slow amusement, and Matt tried to ignore the restless shuffling and coughing from the spectators who, having the traditional courtier’s attention span-i.e., that of a gnat-were beginning to become bored. But the king seemed almost excited. “And how does a man go about searching for truth?”

The old geezer’s alarm turned into five fire trucks and a hook-and-ladder. “Alas!” Matt said “I know so little of this Socrates! But it seemed he thought all knowledge could be gained by reasoning, through a system called ‘logic’ ”

The geezer relaxed a little. “I have heard of this logic.” Boncorro frowned. “Wherein do you find it lacking?”

“It is more a question of how one finds it lacking, not where,” Matt said sourly. “The only way is to test its findings by observation of the real world, then perhaps even to attempt to put those findings into practice on a small scale; they call that ‘experiment.’ ”

The geezer’s alarm was back, and had added a paramedic van. Boncorro smiled slowly. “And how shall one test the conclusions of logic against reality, when they concern the human soul?”

“That, no one can do,” Matt affirmed. “That is why such mat”rs should be the only true domain of philosophy.“

Boncorro threw back his head and laughed. All the courtiers looked startled, especially the old geezer-but he sent the paramedics home and began to relax. “I think that I will keep this minstrel about awhile, to play the fool for me,” Boncorro said to Conte Paleschino. “I thank your Lordship for bringing him to me, but I shall relieve you of his upkeep for the time being. I must find a way to reward you for this, my lord.”

The count fairly beamed. “No reward is necessary, your Majftssy. Your good regard is enough.”

It sure was, Matt thought sourly-especially since the king’s good will would sooner or later be transformed into hard cash, by grants of land or monopolies. Well, Conte Paleschino had won some royal favor, the king had won a new and rather odd jester-minstrel, and Matt had won access to the king-so everybody had gotten what they wanted out of this transaction. Except, maybe, the old geezer behind the throne.

Chapter 17

Matt found his way back to his garret, and found it stifling hot. It seemed that all the heat of the whole castle had risen to this one little space under the eaves. The tiny window was open, with Pascal sitting by it stripped to the waist and sweating buckets. He was staring out at the sunset with so dejected a look that it could have set an example for all bloodhounds. Matt closed the door gently, then sat down across from him and a little way back. After a while Pascal said, “You need not be silent, friend Matthew. This is not a funeral.”

Isn’t it? Matt wondered. “You were in time, then?”

“In time for what?” Pascal said impatiently. “In time to meet Flaminia? Yes, for the servant girl contrived to bring her down to the hall, with two of the other… handmaidens to accompany her. They were most beautiful,” he added as an afterthought. But not beautiful enough to distract him from Flaminia, or ease his current depression? Matt frowned, puzzled. “You spoke with her? She hasn’t been… harmed?”

“Nor bedded by the king? No, though he may choose to sample her delights this very night.” Pascal shuddered. “So we’re in time to save her from a fate worse than death?”

“Yes,” Pascal said, “if she wants to be saved.”

Matt stared. “You don’t mean she likes the idea of becoming one of the king’s concubines?”

“No, she assured me of that.”

Matt waited. When nothing else was forthcoming, he prodded. “You didn’t believe her?”

“Well, let us say that she spoke with no great amount of conviction.”

Matt frowned. “She doesn’t figure it’s her duty to her country or anything like that, does she?”

“No, but she was fairly bursting with excitement about all the delights of the women’s quarter. She has taken a perfumed bath and is now clothed in silks. She is learning to paint her face, and finds the company of the other women… congenial.”

“Dazzled,” Matt interpreted. “The other girls don’t see her as competition?”

“They have at the least been most friendly, and are all beautiful” Pascal caught his breath, then said, “Very beautiful.”

“So she’s flattered just to be in there with them.” Matt found himself wondering why Flaminia was there-she wasn’t exactly a raving beauty herself. It must have been her figure, and the way she moved, and the air of sensuality she exuded… Yes, come to think of it, he could understand why the sorcerer had picked her to take home for Boncorro. He wondered if the king would. “The other women are happy about this, too?”

Most happy, as I have seen myself. They are peasant girls who have never have known such luxury as this, and might well have been compelled to wed men they did not love, by circumstance or by their fathers. This way, at least, their lover is handsome.“ He said, with sarcasm, ”It would seem that none of them needs to be coerced to share a bed with our glorious lord and master the king!“

Matt couldn’t blame him for a bit of jealousy. “But aren’t they worried about what will happen to them when his Majesty tires of them at all, since it has already happened to a dozen of their fellows?”

“He sent them away with gold and jewels worth a small duchy. For peasants, they are wealthy. They had no trouble at all finding husbands, for they are beautiful, after all-and now had excellent dowries. In fact, the other girls say they lord it over their husbands, who dare not treat them harshly, for fear of the king.”

“You’re afraid for her, aren’t you?”

Pascal gave a short nod. “For her, and afraid of losing her.” He gave Matt a bleak smile. “Is that not amusing? I cannot properly say that I have her-yet I am nonetheless afraid of losing her! We have given one another no promises, we have not shared a bed-I have but dried her tears, and laughed and jested with her! Is it not amusing that I should be so smitten so quickly?”

“Yes, I’m just quaking with laughter,” Matt said dryly, “but that’s the way it happens sometimes. She isn’t definitely lost to you though.”

“No,” Pascal agreed, “but I fear that she will be, between the prattling of her newfound friends and the dazzle of finery. I fear that present luxury and future riches may gloss over and make her forget that there is yet something to be said for virtue, and for true love.”

Matt sat very still, waiting, not looking directly at Pascal. “Oh, yes, I told her that I love her, friend Matthew,” the young man said bitterly, “and her smile glowed, she clasped my hand more tightly for a moment, and assured me that she loved me in return.”

Matt watched him carefully. “That sounds like cause for rejoicing.”

“It might have been-indeed, my heart did leap with gladness-had she not begun to seem distracted within a few minutes. I spoke to her of escape, and she said that it was useless to try, for their quarter is heavily guarded and she did not wish to risk my going to prison, or worse.”

“You don’t believe that she was really concerned for you?”

“Oh, I suppose I do,” Pascal sighed, “but if she was truly unhappy where she was, or truly frightened at the thought of the king’s attentions, she would have been glad of my help and willing to risk all to escape.”

Matt tried to see it from Flaminia’s viewpoint for a minute. It wasn’t as if she would be losing her virginity, after all, and Boncorro was vastly more attractive than the young man who had seduced her first. In fact, the young king really was very handsome and exciting… But Matt was a man and never had been very good at understanding the feminine point of view. He was sure he did Flaminia an injustice. That she intended to enjoy the advantages of the king’s harem for a little while, he didn’t doubt-but actually having to go to bed with the king was another matter. Still, he knew just how difficult it could be to resist temptation… “I take it she has become an ardent fan of King Boncorro’s?”

“Aye,” Pascal said grimly. “I told her that risks mattered not when it was a question of her safety, but she told me that she was frightened for me and was sure that the king would not hurt her. I demanded to know what sort of paragon of virtue he was, and she proceeded to tell me.”

Matt squeezed his eyes shut in sympathetic pain. Nothing like singing the praises of the Other Man to the one who has just told you he’s in love with you. “She told you how handsome he is?”

“Not in detail, no-only that he is, and that all the other girls are besotted with him-there are one or two who even dare dream of becoming his queen-and that she felt quite sorry for them, for she knew they were doomed to heartbreak.”

Trying to remind herself, no doubt-but Matt knew a chance to gain information when he heard one. “How about whether or not he’s a good king? Or a good human being? Did she mention that?”

Pascal shrugged, exasperated. “How should she know?”

“Just gossip,” Matt said, “but gossip can tell you a lot, and she seems to have been hearing plenty of it. He sounds as if he’s charming, at least to his wench corps.” Of course, just having concubines was definitely wicked-but he did seem to treat them humanely, even with care and consideration. Matt knew, from his own brief encounter, that the man was charming and did seem to be trying to do right by his people, whatever his motives. But was he effective? “If he gives orders, are they obeyed?”

“Why, I should think we can say yes to that, simply from the changes we have seen ourselves, as we came through Latruria,” Pascal said, surprised. “Whether those changes are good or not is another matter.”

“So is their real source. I’ve heard of many kings who have really been just false fronts; it was their advisers who actually ran the country. But the only adviser I’ve seen so far is Chancellor Rebozo, although he doesn’t seem terribly evil, or terribly powerful. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be able to do much-he’s scared of the king.”

“It would seem that everyone is,” Pascal said slowly. “Flaminia did indeed say that King Boncorro does not issue edicts very often. but that when he does, no one dares disobey him.”

“Oh?” Matt sensed pay dirt. “I take it some of his concubines have tried?”

“No, but one or two have incurred his anger. Flaminia told me, as a jest, of one girl who tried to work magic upon the king, to warp him into being obsessed with her and with her alone-”

“Love philter.” Matt nodded. “Even a minstrel hears about that-constantly. I take it she didn’t succeed?”

Nay. The king knew in a moment what she was doing. Sharp pains racked her body; it was her screams that brought the other girls to see. But the torture lasted only a minute, perhaps less; then the king commanded her to drink the philter. She did, and dotes upon him still, so devotedly that she will do anything he says-even to escorting other women to his bedchamber.“

“You mean he humiliates her like that?” Matt said indignantly.

“No, but when another wench taxed her with it in jest, she said in all sincerity that she would do it”

“Okay, so he dominates his harem,” Matt said, numb. “How about his kingdom?”

Pascal shrugged. “The wenches have heard his chancellor arguing with him-for it is Rebozo who recruits virgins for him. The king did not argue, but only told the chancellor again and again what to do, and would not yield.”

“Odd to discuss affairs of state in the harem-or women’s quarters, I think you said they call it.”

“Perhaps not; the issue was the future of the first woman King Boncorro discarded. He instructed the chancellor to see to it that she was laden with gold and gems, then escorted in state to her home. Rebozo argued furiously, claiming that having been favored with the king’s attentions should be reward enough for any woman-but Boncorro was adamant.”

“So she was taken home in triumph?”

“Well, not at first. Rebozo sought to bundle her quietly out of the castle with nothing but the clothes on her back-but a spasm of agony seized him, and he ordered his men to fetch her gold and gems, and a palanquin. Then the pains stopped.”

Apparently, Flaminia had been a regular font of information. Matt could picture her, bubbling over to Pascal about this masculine paragon, her eyes alight with excitement-and he felt another stab of sympathetic pain. He tried to move the subject a little further from home. “Well, I gathered from my brief chat with him, that he’s been steadily putting economic reforms through, and apparently no one has successfully defied him. He does seem to be effective-especially if he can detect a love potion and induce pains in a seasoned sorcerer.”

Pascal stared. “The doxie who sought to entrap him was a sorcerer?”

“No, just a girl who knew a few simple spells,” Matt said impatiently, “or who had bought a potion from a village witch. I was talking about the chancellor.”

“He is a sorcerer?”

“I assume so, until I’m proved wrong. He’s old enough to be left over from King Maledicto’s administration, which would mean he would have had to be a sorcerer. It’s probably still a qualification for office.”

“Perhaps not. Flaminia says the king himself wields magic like a sword, but is no sorcerer.”

“He’s not?” Matt stared. “How would she know?”

“Gossip, again,” Pascal sighed. “The… experienced concubines say that a man will speak more than he intends when his head is on the pillow… afterward. The women may feel compelled to hold their tongues when speaking to those not of their number, but certainly feel no such reservations among themselves.”

“Well, this must be one thing the king doesn’t mind slipping out.” In fact, Matt found himself wondering if the king might be using his concubines as a way to plant rumors-surely an unworthy thought. But he remembered Boncorro’s insistence on not accepting either religion or wickedness, and decided the notion fit. “Where does he get his magical power, then?”

Pascal shrugged. “I suspect that only he knows. All he has told his doxies is that he does not truly comprehend the magic that he uses, but has only memorized words and gestures, then repeats them at need-but surely that is false.”

Matt could believe it, though, and the mere thought was enough to make his hair snap to attention. All Boncorro would have had to do was to watch sorcerers at work, then mimic what they had done-and remember which spell went with which effect. Could he have done that with good wizards, too? But where would he have seen any? Worse, if he didn’t really understand what he was doing, he could very easily make a mistake that could spell disaster. Matt shuddered and hoped the king had been lying to his concubine, as well as with her. “One way or another, he certainly seems to make sure people do what he wants-and if Rebozo really is as high-powered a sorcerer as I think he is, Boncorro must be a magical giant!” Either that, or Hell had its own reasons for keeping him on the throne. Hell, or Rebozo? “I think we’d better get you out of here,” Matt said. “Not without Flaminia!”

“Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”

Pascal stared. “How will you manage that?”

“By taking a risk,” Matt said. “A risk for me, that is-shouldn’t be much hazard for the two of you.” After all, his hit-song spell had worked inside the castle, even though it was presumably saturated with sorcery. Either Boncorro or his chancellor knew him for what he was, or at least knew him for a wizard, so they wouldn’t be surprised if he worked magic within the castle. That might mean they were watching him, ready to pounce, but Pascal and Flaminia couldn’t be faulted for that. Of course, the sorcerer who had been trying to stop him from coming into Latruria, and trying to kill him once he was in, might not have been either king or chancellor, but someone else-say, the constable or lord marshal or such. Matt knew he had to keep an open mind about that, or he wouldn’t be suspecting everyone he met, which could be fatal in enemy territory. “It will make it easier if the two of you are together,” Matt said. “I’d rather make one rescue attempt than two. Can you get to Flaminia?”

“Aye; she and her fellows are to go into the town this afternoon, to procure more finery to bedeck them for the king.”

“A shopping trip?” Matt stared. “Isn’t the king worried that some of them might sneak off to meet lovers?”

Pascal shrugged. “I do not think he cares. Flaminia had heard that several of the wenches have lovers among the guards, and several more have lovers in the town. The king cares not who else enjoys their company, so long as they are there when he wants them.”

A most enlightened monarch-or one who was honest enough to admit he was running a brothel. Matt wondered if his spells included prophylactic incantations, to protect him from venereal diseases. “Makes it easier for him to dump them when he gets tired of them, huh?”

“Aye.” Pascal’s smile was sardonic. “They already have husbands waiting, in a way.”

Well, European peasant men had lived with the droit du seigneur for centuries, and had married anyway-not that they’d had much choice. “So we can just stroll out across the drawbridge and meet her in the garment district?”

Pascal nodded. “As simply as that.”

“How will you know where to find her?”

“I think that I can send word through my new friends in the servants’ hall,” Pascal said slowly. “There should be little hazard to them-though I should think they will expect my thanks to take a rather substantial form.”

Matt reached into his purse and handed him some substance. They were loitering, definitely with intent-just standing on the corner, waiting for the girls to go by-when a passing soldier noticed them and glared suspiciously. “He is glaring suspiciously,” Pascal said nervously. “He’s right, too,” Matt agreed, “but let’s try not to let him know that.” He slipped his lute around to the front and began to pluck the strings. “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” sounded a little odd without a banjo, but it did draw a crowd. Mollified, the soldier gave them one last glower, then went on his way. Pascal, never one to waste an opportunity, threw down his cap. Matt struck a final chord, and pennies spattered into the hat. Matt glanced around, didn’t see anything resembling a retinue, and sailed in on “Darling Corey.” The audience didn’t seem to know what “mash liquor” was, but they certainly seemed to catch the drift of the rest. But as he hit the last chorus, one of the listeners glanced up, then let out a whoop. “The king’s doxies!”

“Profit!” cried several voices, and the crowd suddenly diminished by half as shopkeepers ran to trot out their finest finery. Matt looked up and caught his breath. That definitely had to be the largest concentration of feminine pulchritude he had ever seen in one place at one time, even counting the beauty pageants on TV. There were at least twenty girls, all of them in their twenties, every single one of them stunningly beautiful. These doxies may not have been without smocksies, but they certainly gave the impression that they were. There wasn’t all that much naked skin showing, really-only a plunging neckline here and a bare midriff there-but the cut of the clothes, and the way the girls moved in them, certainly gave the impression that you were seeing every iota of the woman’s charms, at the same time as it made you frantic to see the rest. Matt decided the garments must have been enchanted. They swept by in a cloud of perfume that dazzled the senses, and left Matt throbbing with desire. It must have been laden with pheromones-or charmed to charm. Of course, the two possibilities were entirely compatible-sorcerers and wizards only specified end results, not ways and means. A vagrant touch of sanity managed to push through Matt’s miasma of hormonal vapors-these girls might have been enchanting, but they also might have been enchanted. The king’s concubines swept by, chattering and laughing-but they left a bit of jetsam behind, a new face in the crowd, but one they knew well-Flaminia, eyes shining with the excitement of forbidden adventure. “Play for me, minstrel!”

Matt stared. If he looked at her coldly and objectively, he would still have to say she was no raving beauty-but looking at her coldly and objectively was something he could no longer do. Whatever spell the sorcerers laid on the royal consorts, it was working overtime on Flaminia. Her eyes seemed to beckon, no, to pull; her smile made her lips seem more than enticing-compelling. Compelling all too well-Pascal was moving toward her with a fixed gaze and robotic step. Matt managed to catch him and steer him back toward guarding the hat, then struck the strings and began to sing. “Soldier, seek not, do not find! Soldier, ask not-do not mind If she is lost or she is fled. Forget her, let her go to wed!”

He managed another verse, enjoining the crowd to forget they had ever seen Flaminia. Since they had to forget her, they drifted away, looking bored-which was just fine with Matt. Of course, that could have just been the effect of his singing, and the songs definitely lacked both character and action. The guards might just not have noticed she was missing yet. Matt wished he could be sure whether his magic was working or he was just having good luck. As the last listener turned his back, Matt slung his lute and grabbed Pascal before he could quite manage to catch Flaminia in an embrace that would have shamed a sumo wrestler. “Come on, let’s go!”

Flaminia looked definitely disappointed for the half second before Matt caught her wrist and yanked her along. He dragged the reluctant couple down the street and into the arcade he had checked out earlier. Keeping the two of them moving was a major task, since all they seemed to want to do was to stop in the middle of the street and grapple, and never mind who saw. But Matt did mind, and kept them in motion, even though he was right between them and they kept trying to reach around him to get at each other. In fact, they were growing frantic, and beginning to get angry, when Matt finally slung them into a shadowed alcove, panting. “Now! Go to it!”

They did, falling into one another’s arms with a fervor that made Matt long for Alisande, and the way they were groping each other with their mouths glued together certainly didn’t help his concentration. Even so, Matt raised his hands and chanted, “In the wood, where, if they wish to, he and she Upon faint primrose beds may choose to be, Or on the fruited plain away to steal, Through magic that doth lovers’ flights conceal, Thence from Venarra turn away their eyes, To seek new friends and truer companies!”

The combined form of the entwined lovers began to fade, then grew more vivid again. It began to fade again, but came back again-again and again, pulsing. No surprise. Matt could feel the Latrurian environment fighting his magic. In desperation, he sang the first thing that came to mind for young people: “Gaudeamus igitur, juvenestum sumus! Gaudeamus igitur, juvenestum sumus! Post jocundum juventutem, Post molestam senectutem, Nos habebit sumus, nos habebit sumus!”

It must have been the Latin that did it, for the resistance let go with a shock. There they were-and there they weren’t! Not quite instantaneously-they sort of did a fast fade, so there was no gun-shot crack of air rushing in to fill a sudden vacuum. Matt lowered his hands, relaxing-at least they shouldn’t have attracted any undue attention. Which made it all the more puzzling when the finger tapped his shoulder and a voice right behind him said, “Most neatly done. I could not have been more adroit myself.”

Matt froze. He knew that voice. Then, very slowly, he turned around. “Good afternoon, your Majesty.”

Chapter 18

“I trust it is a good afternoon indeed,” the king replied. “Let us go out from this arcade into the sunshine, so that you may look your last upon it.”

Matt stared at him while he waited for his stomach to hit bottom. He saw Rebozo and the ranks of soldiers behind the king, and the unremitting hostility in the chancellor’s gaze, and felt his stomach take another plunge. Nonetheless, he managed to say, “Can’t have been all that neat, if I attracted your attention. You were just waiting for me to try this, weren’t you?”

“It was a trap most neatly laid,” Boncorro confirmed. He turned to the chancellor. “I must congratulate you, Rebozo, on so adroit a piece of maneuvering. You chose exactly the right damsel to abduct.”

The chancellor smiled and bowed. “It was nothing, Majesty. This foolish do-gooder is so lacking in suspicion!”

Why was it that paranoids created more paranoids? “I take it your Majesty is sore about losing a very promising concubine.”

“What, that?” King Boncorro tossed his head in dismissal. “She matters nothing, nor does her swain. Indeed, I hope they will be happy together.”

But Rebozo’s eyes flashed with malice, and Matt realized that he was apt to track down Pascal and Flaminia out of pure spite. “You, on the other hand, matter a great deal,” the king said. “It is customary for a man of power to announce himself when he enters another country-surely when he comes to the court of its king.”

“Who, me? I’m nothing!”

“I think you mean that, in some strange way.” Boncorro regarded him narrowly. “I can only say that your humility is excessive. Any wizard who can overcome the spells of allure laid about my women’s quarters is no mean wizard indeed.”

“Well, it was nice to know Flaminia hadn’t really been all that fickle.”

“You are a wizard, of course,” Boncorro said. Well, that put it to the test. Matt wished Christianity let you deny it to save your life once or twice-but he had to declare his loyalty. “I am, your Majesty-but you are, too.”

“I suppose I must be, since I am not a sorcerer.” Boncorro sighed. “But I will not take power from either Heaven or Hell, as you no doubt know.”

The chancellor flashed him a glare of annoyance, very quickly masked. Matt had guessed rightly-he was a sorcerer. “I had gathered that, yes. But how, then, do you work magic?”

“By virtue of a prodigious memory.” Revenge could always be postponed in favor of a good chance at shop talk. “You might say I grew up with it-I watched my grandfather work his spells, as I was compelled to do along with half the court, that we might tremble at the mere thought of disobeying him. He never thought that I would remember every word, every gesture, since they were meaningless to me. In like fashion, I saw my father work spells that, he claimed, drew on the power of God or His Saints-in fact, he taught them to me, most earnestly.”

Matt had caught the word “claimed.”

“But you don’t believe his power really came from God?” He loved watching Rebozo wince every time he said the word. “No, no more man I believe that sorcery truly draws on the power of Satan,” Boncorro said with a cynical smile. “I do not believe in either one, nor in Heaven or Hell.”

“Is that why you’re so interested in trying to find a spell that will make your soul cease to exist when you die?” Matt asked slowly. “Be still!” Boncorro’s eyes flashed with anger. With an effort, he controlled himself and forced another smile. “Let us say, at least, that I deny that the sources of magic may be either Good or Evil.”

“Then where does the power come from?”

“It is all around us. To ask where it comes from is useless.”

Matt remembered going through that stage. “So you just go through rituals you’ve seen and memorized, and don’t worry about why they work?”

“That is the case. What matters ‘why’? All that matters is that they do most surely function!”

“Well, it helps to be able to figure out new ones,” Matt said slowly, “or to understand why they sometimes don’t work out quite the way you expect.”

Boncorro gave him another narrow glance. “You speak as one who knows-and only the mightiest of wizards would think so precisely about the origins of his power.”

“I have told you!” Rebozo snapped. “He is the Lord Wizard of Merovence!”

Matt stood very still, giving Rebozo a promissory glare. “Is this true?” Boncorro demanded. “Are you her Majesty’s wizard?”

Again that confounded Christian insistence on honesty! If it just hadn’t been a direct question… “Yes, your Majesty. I am Matthew Mantrell, wizard to Queen Alisande.”

“And her husband!” Rebozo’s eyes glittered with satisfaction. “We have caught ourselves a most valuable hostage, your Majesty!”

“Yes, if we can hold him.” But Boncorro’s sudden enthusiasm seemed to be of another sort entirely. “What would you say is the source of my power, Lord Wizard?”

“The power of kingship itself, your Majesty,” Matt answered. “A rightful king gains great power from his land and his people, for he is their head and representative. But his power is even greater if he is properly anointed.”

“Be still!” Rebozo’s hand cracked across his mouth. Matt’s head rocked; then he glared at the old man. ‘Try that again, and I promise you can keep the wrist.“

“Treat our guest with courtesy, Lord Chancellor!” King Boncorro rebuked. He turned back to Matt. “Though you have been somewhat lacking in courtesy yourself, coming into our kingdom as a spy.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that,” Matt said, chagrined. “One thing just led to another, you know. I was planning on an official visit later on…”

“If you thought I was not an evil man.” Boncorro smiled, without rancor. “Well, what is your judgment?”

“That you are fundamentally decent,” Matt said slowly. “In fact, that you are basically a good man, and a good king. That means you are also drawing on the powers of God and His Goodness.”

Rebozo let out a keening of pain, but Boncorro shook his head with dogged insistence. “No! I am a man of vice, and have had to work evil to hold my throne, to keep my kingdom orderly and my people prosperous! I have executed murderers and rapists; I have banished priests who preached against me; I have enslaved thieves and pimps for tens of years’ hard labor! I am no saint. Lord Wizard.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Matt answered. “But you have had the good of the country at heart.”

“Only so that it may increase my wealth and security!”

“If you say so,” Matt sighed. “But I gather you have a very deliberate program of reform, to improve life for everybody. Mind telling me the overall plan?”

Boncorro frowned. “Surely you have seen it for yourself!”

“Yes, I think I’ve figured out what you’re doing and why,” Matt said, “but I’d like to find out whether or not I’ve guessed right. Mind telling it to me clearly and simply?”

Boncorro shrugged. “It is clear and simple indeed, though it took me long enough to reason it out.” His smile became quite charming. “I had time enough to devote to it, however, while I waited for my grandfather to die.”

The chancellor looked up, startled. Apparently, he hadn’t heard this part before. “I saw the poverty and squalor of the peasants for myself,” Boncorro went on, “and heard Baron Garchi, the country lord who fostered me, grumbling often about the grinding burden of the king’s taxes and how we should have to manage with less in order to pay them. I could not believe anything but that my grandfather himself must be badly in debt, though his debtors dared not seek payment-and I discovered I was right, when I came to the throne; the treasury was empty, and a host of moneylenders respectfully paid me visits.”

“Fortunately, you had figured out what to do about it.”

“I had, between lessons and… sports. I reasoned that the king’s poverty must have come from the peasants’ poverty, for if they had no more to give, he would have no more to take.”

Matt nodded. “That makes sense. So you figured Item One was to find ways for the peasants to raise more grain.”

“No, to keep more of what they already raised-and Item Two was to make certain their lords would not steal it from them. So I lowered taxes and appointed reeves to see that the lords collected no more than was their due.”

The chancellor scowled fiercely. Boncorro noticed and gave him a smile. “You did not approve of my reforms, did you, Rebozo?”

“Nay, Majesty, and still do not! Disaster shall yet come from these newfangled notions!”

“Not so quickly as it would have come from maintaining the old ones,” the king returned. Well. So Boncorro could enforce his will, even on his inherited Lord Chancellor. Matt decided he must be stronger than he looked-although he had to admit the young man was looking stronger every minute. “What was Item Three?”

Boncorro turned back to him. “Encouragement of trade-for no matter how much wealth my people produce for me, I shall be richer yet if they bring in gold from other lands. I could go on at length, Lord Wizard, but the long and the short of it is this: the king must plan the flow of money as a farmer must plan the ditches he digs to bring water to his crops-and manure them well, as assurance against starvation. The chance of profit encourages the peasants, tradesmen, and merchants to produce more.” He gave Matt the winning smile again. “Thus far, it has seemed to work.”

Matt nodded. “A planned economy combined with private enterprise-good recipe. You’re way ahead of your time, King Boncorro.”

“Aye.” Rebozo flashed Matt a venomed glance. “But what shall he do when his time catches up with him, eh?”

Boncorro laughed, richly amused. “I shall never fear rashness, Rebozo, for I shall always have you beside me to croak of doom!”

The last thing Rebozo needed was to have somebody encourage the king-so Matt did. “When your time catches up with you, O King, it shall give you the wealth of Midas.”

“Yes, it will.” Boncorro gave him a keen glance. “Money makes more money, as seeds make more grain-but I see that you know of this, Lord Wizard”

“I know about capital and investment, yes.”

“I shall remember that spell.” Boncorro’s gaze was suddenly intent, totally concentrated as he sucked up Matt’s words to engrave them into his memory. “Is there more to it?”

“Yes, but it takes a long time to tell, and I know only a little of it. You seem to be ahead of me, anyway.”

“Perhaps,” Boncorro said guardedly. “My ideas have yet to prove themselves in fullness.”

“Especially since you have more changes to make,” Matt inferred. Rebozo stared in alarm. Boncorro’s lips pursed in amusement. “You are quite percepjve. Lord Wizard. I can see that you would be a dangerous enemy indeed.”

“Yes,” Matt said, choosing his words carefully, “but I could also be a doughty friend.”

“Aye, if we both served the same Power-but since I serve only my own interests, I doubt that we shall.”

Rebozo almost collapsed from sheer relief. Matt realized that the chancellor had been afraid he would try to convert Boncorro. It wasn’t just your father and grandfather you copied spells from, was it? You had other wizards show up to try to persuade you to serve God.“

Rebozo winced and glared hatred at him. “Yes, I did,” Boncorro said slowly, “though how you could have guessed that is beyond me. Still, a worthy effort deserves a worthy reward, Lord Wizard, so I shall tell you of it. I could scarcely go for a walk in Baron Garchi’s woods without a holy hermit popping out of the underbrush to show me wondrous spells as evidence of the power of God. I took their spells, but left their Faith.”

“It made sense, while you were still an impressionable young boy,” Matt said judiciously. ‘There was a chance they might have been able to convert you, and through you, when you came to power, the whole kingdom.“

“They were fools!” Boncorro’s eyes flashed. “They succeeded with my father, and what happened to him? A dagger in the back, an early death! Satan’s minions have too firm a hold on this land; they would never have permitted a saintly prince to become king!”

Rebozo relaxed and gave Matt a vindictive glare. “So,” Matt said slowly, “your grandfather was a Satanist who devoted himself to every sin he could think of, and made as many people miserable as he possibly could. That disgusted your father, so he rebelled by becoming holy and devout, dedicating himself to doing good works-and he tried to protect himself by learning as many Good-based spells as he could.”

“The more fool he! What profit did it give him?”

“Probably a lot, but not where you can see it.” Matt ignored Rebozo’s murderous glare and went on. “Be honest. You admired him, didn’t you? Even loved him, maybe-and decided you were going to be just like him.”

For a moment he thought he had gone too far, for the murderous rage in Rebozo’s eyes was echoed in Boncorro’s. Matt hastened to add, “But what does a little kid know, huh?‘

Boncorro must have missed the sarcasm, because he relaxed, and the mayhem faded from his face. “Even as you say-it was foolishness. I learned that from the point of the assassin’s knife that slew my father.”

“So you grew up rebelling against both Good and Evil-but you were smart enough not to let it show until Grandpa was dead Didn’t his death make you wonder about the power of Evil?‘

“No, but I think that my grandfather began to have second thoughts when Father was slain. Surely he must have realized that his wickedness had not brought him happiness!”

“No, Sire!” Rebozo protested in alarm. “What could make you think that?”

“Why, your own reports, Rebozo.” The king turned to his chancellor. “You told me that he was sunk in gloom for the last ten years of his life.”

“Nay, Majesty! The revels began again only a few weeks after Prince Casudo’s death, and were wilder and more intense than ever!”

“Almost desperate, you might say?” Boncorro smiled thinly. “As if he was striving mightily to gain pleasure, but found he could not, no matter how depraved his sporting?”

“I said no such thing!”

“You did not have to,” Boncorro said with a hard smile. “So the missionaries haven’t given up on you yet,” Matt said slowly. The chancellor’s head snapped up so sharply that Matt had a wild hope his neck might break. It held, worse luck, but he stared at Boncorro in total and absolute panic. “You see far more than most men, with very little evidence.” Boncorro frowned. “Still, it is even as you have guessed-ever and anon, as I am going through town or forest, an innocent-seeming beggar will pop up to trumpet the virtues of Faith to me. Will they never learn?‘

“Probably not, when your reign is such a huge improvement over your grandfather’s-though I do wonder if maybe your reforms haven’t produced just as many Hell-bound souls as his cruelty did.”

Boncorro looked very interested. “Why, how is that?‘

“I’ve seen it on my way south,” Matt said slowly. “The extra money and leisure have made people start itching to have Heaven on Earth. They’ve heard rumors of the high life here, and are flocking in to get their share of excitement. They’re holding a continual party on their way south, with drinking binges and free sex all around. Husbands are leaving their wives, wives are leaving their husbands, and young people are leaving their villages.”

“Why, herein is pleasure,” Boncorro said, “not misery!”

“Yes, but they’re sinning hand over foot-and ending up in misery when they get here. It’s almost as if they’re using up a lifetime’s worth of pleasure in a few months. They come into Venarra broke and exhausted, and find out that the king isn’t giving everybody a fortune on a silver platter, and that there aren’t even enough honest jobs to go around. They stagger back home to their villages drained and pale, or die on the way.”

“He lies, Sire!” Rebozo cried. “They parade in by the score, yes, but many of them stay in Venarra!”

“Yes-in the brothels and the jails. The girls get recruited by the pimps and procuresses, the boys get taken on as apprentice thieves. They make life more dangerous for your average citizens and steal wealth instead of making it.”

“They are not forced to it,” Boncorro countered, “though I see I must set up some sort of scheme to keep them from having to sell themselves or die.”

Rebozo gave Matt a glare that could have blistered his skin, if he had only been able to say aloud the spell that went with it. He couldn’t, of course-not with his king listening. “Perhaps work for the men, building more barracks to hold a larger army,” Boncorro mused, “or repairing all the bridges and halls and monuments that my grandfather let fall to ruin-”

“Nonsense,” Rebozo scoffed. “Where would we get the money?”

‘True.“ Boncorro nodded. ”We must find them work that will bring in its own revenue-that, in addition to public works.“

Matt interrupted before the man reinvented the whole New Deal. “How about the women?‘

“The very thing!” Boncorro snapped his fingers, turning to Matt. “Set them to weaving! Train them to the finest in needlework-most of them excel in it already, if Baron Garchi’s peasants are any guide. We would export carpets, tapestries, the finest in craftmanship!”

“But it is men who are weavers!” Rebozo was beginning to sweat.

“Not in their own homes,” Boncorro countered, “and not in other countries. No, let us build a new industry with some of these truant country lasses.”

“The crown cannot risk so much!”

“The crown is the only one who can.” There was steel under Boncorro’s tone now. “Naetheless, I would not have the crown own everything-”

Rebozo let out a bleat of agony. “Of course the crown owns everything! Your Majesty, if you must persist in this folly, at least ensure that all the revenues come to yourself!”

“No, I must manure my fields.” Boncorro looked off into space, a certain whimsical light coming into his eye. “We shall find some enterprising young merchant who wishes to work twenty hours a day for the next six years or so, and lend him the money to begin such an industry-no, five young merchants! Then, as they pay us back, we shall find other young merchants to begin similar works! What a marvelous idea!”

“Socialistic capitalism.” Matt was keenly interested in watching a power play in action-not that there seemed to be much Rebozo could do to stop the king. Either he wasn’t really a very powerful sorcerer, or the king was. Of course, Rebozo might have been playing a more subtle game than either of them realized… “What was it you said?” The king’s attention returned to Matt. “I would say your Majesty is a materialist,” Matt said carefully. “Somewhat idealistic perhaps, but a materialist nonetheless.”

“Not if materialism is a religion.” Boncorro regarded him narrowly again. “Well, it seems to be, to some people-but rest assured, it isn’t to you. You seem to have introduced something entirely new to medieval society.”

“Have I indeed! And what is that?”

“Secularism,” Matt said. “Worldliness that is neither wicked nor virtuous in itself.”

“Why, then, a secular king I shall be! For I have most thoroughly rejected both Good and Evil, Lord Wizard, of that you may be sure!”

“No wonder, having seen your grandfather killed by the one, and your father killed in spite of his devotion to the other. But as I understand this universe we live in, your Majesty, you don’t have that kind of option-you have to be one or the other. Even if you manage to balance the two during your lifetime, you can’t escape the consequences after your death.”

“Be still!” The king scowled. “Bid me not think of mine end when I am still young!”

“Memento mori.” Matt wondered if Latin here was close enough to the Roman language of his own world for the king to understand it Apparently so; Rebozo’s stare verged on panic. But Boncorro’s education was apparently lacking, for he only frowned and said, “I will not think of the afterlife, not until I have found some mystic charm that will make my soul cease to exist completely when my body dies! I may not receive the rewards of virtue, but I will at least cheat Satan of the punishments of wickedness.”

And to think most people wanted immortality! “How would you feel if I started a speech to you by saying, ‘O King, live forever!’?‘

“An intriguing notion! Do you know how it may be achieved?”

“Afraid not,” Matt admitted. “Still, it is a worthy line of inquiry,” Boncorro said judiciously. “I shall have to find a sorcerer of an inquisitive turn of mind and set him to the investigation of it.”

The chancellor stared in surprise, then developed a very thoughtful look. That was one train of thought Matt figured he’d better derail. “Your people say you are a good king, your Majesty-even a great one.” After all, a little flattery never hurt. Boncorro grinned, lapping it up. “I would never deny it.” But there was a guarded look in his eyes; he knew flattery when he heard it, and suspected the motives. “Your magic, now, Lord Wizard-do you draw on the power of Goodness?”

“Oh, yes,” Matt said, “though it’s sometimes accidental.”

Rebozo looked at him as if he were primed to explode, but Boncorro only frowned. “By accident? How can one be good by accident?”

“You should know,” Matt said, amused. “However, in my case, it’s because I’m preoccupied. You see, I’m usually more concerned with the power of poetry than with its source.”

“Why, what a fascinating notion!” Boncorro cried. “I have always loved verse! In fact, I intend to install a Poet Laureate when my treasuries are restored to their proper level!”

“Even kings have to stop and think about what they can afford,” Matt sighed, “in this case, a venture that definitely won’t produce a profit.”

“Yes, but perhaps you have found a way to do so!”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Matt said. “Even here, poetry doesn’t exactly make gold.”

“By reputation, though, it has made you powerful!”

Matt shrugged uncomfortably. “The pen is mightier than the sword, your Majesty.”

“Is it indeed?” A slow smile curved Boncorro’s lips. “Let us experiment, Lord Wizard!”

A chill fanned out over Matt’s back. “Oh. You’ve decided to test how strong I am, huh?”

“You could call it that.” Rebozo gave him a nasty grin that revealed some gaping holes in medieval dentistry. “Yes, let us look at it as a test of your powers!” Boncorro urged. “For I would hate to be thought lacking in hospitality, even if the guest is uninvited! We shall accord you accommodations, Lord Wizard!”

Matt frowned. “Let me get this straight. You’re going to give me a place to stay, and that’s going to test how strong a wizard I am?”

“It is a matter of the sort of accommodations,” the chancellor said, his eyes glittering. “Oh,” Matt sighed. He settled his lute more firmly on his back. “You mean I get to spend the night in the dungeon.”

“The night,” Rebozo agreed, “or much longer.”

“So the test of my powers is finding out if I can escape from your dungeon?”

“If you are so mighty a wizard as to warrant my listening to your advice,” the king said, “you will no doubt be able to escape my prison with ease.”

Matt shook his head sadly. “Really, your Majesty! I had expected better of you!”

“Oh?” Boncorro said in surprise. “Surely you realize that I cannot have you wandering at liberty about my kingdom, Lord Wizard! Are you so certain of your ability to escape, then?”

Matt shrugged. “I’ve escaped from a few jails before this, and I’ll be surprised if yours is much of an improvement.” He looked up at the guards, who were shuffling their feet nervously. “Well, let’s go to it, boys!”

“You do not object?” Rebozo asked, amazed. “Object? Of course I object! But I don’t mind. I always meet the most fascinating people in dungeons.” As long as Flaminia and Pascal were safe out in the countryside, a night on moldering straw might even be restful. The chancellor gave Matt a whetted glance. “His Majesty has a special dungeon for competing magi! If you can escape this prison, Lord Wizard, you must be doughty indeed!”

For the first time Matt began to feel a stab of doubt-doubt that built quickly into apprehension as Boncorro spread his hands and began to chant in a language Matt didn’t even remotely begin to recognize. He had always mistrusted foreign languages, ever since he pulled that D in Freshman German. Besides, how could you counter a poem if you didn’t know what it meant? Not that that had stopped the postmoderns… Boncorro spun his fists together as if tying a knot-and disappeared. Disappearing, Matt was used to-he’d come up against half a dozen wizards and sorcerers who could disappear. But he’d never before run into one who could take everybody else with him-as well as all the buildings in the vicinity, and the cobblestones of the street, and, now that you mentioned it, even the sky and the sun. He hadn’t taken the light, though. At least Matt could see everything that was left, even if the light was gray and wan and formless. It was the epitome of indirect lighting-it didn’t even cast his shadow. Of course, that could have been because there was no surface for the light to cast his shadow onto-and it might have been pale because it was filtered through all that fog. All fog-everything was fog. Matt looked about him-it was like being inside a cloud, only this time there was no jet plane around him. Just to check, he looked underneath him, but all he could see was more of the same gray mist. He stared about him wild-eyed, trying to stifle the panic that was climbing up his throat. He told himself that he should take a bold step forward to break out of this prison-but found that he was afraid to. Okay, there seemed to be something solid beneath his feet just now-but was it the only spot of substance in this pocket universe? He stood, tense and stiffened, afraid to take a single step, to move so much as an inch for fear of a neverending fall. He had to give it to Boncorro-as a dungeon for sorcerers, this was a beauty!

Well, at least the king had been right about one thing-if he could get out of this one, he would definitely be somebody worth listening to-that is, if he could still talk.

Chapter 19

Ortho the Frank stopped abruptly, holding up a hand. The horseman behind narrowly managed to avoid a collision, and that only by swerving his cantering steed to the side, which made the rider next to Ortho sheer off, and the man behind him rein in with an oath, while the man to the side of the man to the side had to pull over, but not quite as much. A knot in the traffic flow developed, and the army ground to a halt. Fortunately, Queen Alisande had been on Ortho’s other side-in fact, that was why the rider behind had swerved wide though the huge presence of Stegoman the dragon might have had something to do with that, too. But she was nonetheless peeved at having her cantering army coming to a stop. Still, she knew better than to tax a wizard while he was doing his job. After he was done with his job, maybe… She wrenched her mind away from a sudden craving for oatmeal with sauerkraut sauce and asked, ‘What moves, Ortho?“

“Your husband.” Ortho’s voice seemed distant, reverberating from a long journey bouncing off cavern walls. “He is in great trouble, very profound.”

The thrill of fear banished all thoughts of oatmeal, even if that sauerkraut sauce would be delicious right now. “Is he in peril of his life?”

“Nay. There is no danger of death.”

Alisande relaxed a little and couldn’t help thinking that sauerkraut was vastly underrated. She put the notion aside with resolute insistence and focused her attention on the problem. “What danger can he be in, then?”

“Danger that he may be doomed to dwell in a dungeon cell,” the wizard breathed, “that he may never win free again, never return.”

Panic gripped Alisande all over again. To be bereft of her husband, and especially at a time like this… ! She turned in her saddle, waving a clenched fist aloft. “Onward, men of mine! To Venarra! We must pry open the king’s castle as if it were a nutshell!”

A shout of approval answered her, but as it died, a different kind of shout went up from the vanguard. Alisande turned, wondering what it might be. “A courier comes,” said Sir Guy, and beside him the dragon Stegoman lowered his great scaly head to say, “He wears King Boncorro’s colors.”

Alisande turned to the messenger with a glare that could have melted a glacier. “What does your master wish, sirrah!”

The courier pulled in his horse, amazed and frightened by the total absence of protocol. “Your Majesty!” he stammered, and dismounted to kneel. “I bear greetings from King Boncorro, through the mouth of his chancellor, Lord Rebozo!”

Which meant that the king might not know of this errand-but if he did, the words had better be to Alisande’s liking. “What says the Lord Chancellor?”

“He bids you welcome to Latruria, Majesty, and asks if you have come seeking Lord Matthew Mantrell.”

Alisande stiffened. “I have indeed!”i “Then he bids you be easy in your heart as regards the Lord Wizard’s welcome here, your Majesty, for Lord Matthew is no longer in Latruria!”

Alisande stared, feeling the frisson of danger, very sinister danger, spreading icy needle jabs all over her skin. “Is he not, then?”

“Nay, Majesty, though, says the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Wizard was severely lacking in courtesy not to announce himself openly, but to come in secret, like a spy.”

All expression left Alisande’s face; the criticism felt like a slap. “You may tell the Lord Chancellor that my husband has ever had a taste for going in disguise among the common folk, that he may have a truer sense of their needs-and that I am sure it was concern for the relatives of Merovence’s folk that led him across your borders. But where has my Lord Matthew gone?”

“Why… the Lord Chancellor did not say!” the courier stammered. “I would be surprised if he did know, Majesty!”

“He speaks the truth,” Ortho muttered, his gaze still halfway in some other world. The truth as he knew it, Alisande amended. She, however, was quite sure that Chancellor Rebozo did indeed know where Matt had gone, and suspected that what Rebozo knew, his master knew. “You may give the Lord Chancellor my greetings and tell him that I am pleased to learn of the hospitality he has offered my husband. Tell him that I shall find a way to return the favor in equal measure.” There, she thought, let him hear that and tremble. “But tell his Majesty that, since I have come this far, I shall press on to Venarra and make a visit of state. I have not, after all, had the opportunity to congratulate him on his coronation.”

The courier paled, catching the implied rebuke-which, of course, he was very right to do; Alisande was still smarting at not having been invited, though she knew well that inviting the ruler of a kingdom dedicated to the Rule of Right to the coronation of a king dedicated to the Rule of Might was like inviting a dozen wildcats to a dogs’ party. The courier ducked his head in a bow, leaped up and scrambled back onto his horse. If anything, his face was paler than before. He turned his mount… And found himself hemmed in by a sea of hostile faces. “Conduct our guest to the edge of our army,” Alisande purred, “and see him on his way with every courtesy. We would not, after all wish our message to go astray.”

“It has already been heard,” Ortho breathed, like a breeze in leafy branches. Alisande didn’t doubt it for a second; she had dealt with sorcerers before. She had noticed a beetle clinging to the courier’s shoulder and had thought that it might indeed be enchanted to send the sound and sight of this meeting to Chancellor Rebozo, or or least to allow him to focus on the scene in his crystal ball, or a bowl of ink. “Send him forth with all ceremony! For surely, it is ceremony that is our concern now!”

The courier glanced at her with apprehension. She noted with approval that the man must know the ways of the court well, to catch the implication that she knew that King Boncorro knew that she was thinking that he was thinking, so that all that was left to do was to go through the motions. She watched the man ode away, reflecting that he was wise to be apprehensive. Only the motions, yes, but those motions might be the handshake of peace or the blows of war. Her attention turned inward for the moment; reflexively, she pressed her hand to her abdomen, hoping for the first time in her Me that it would not be war, not now. Yes, she hoped indeed that King Boncorro would receive them with outward hospitality, would go through motions that at least said they were not enemies, though also not friends. She found herself hoping that his kitchen stocked sauerkraut. Bad enough that everything was misty-now it was getting dark, too! Matt had finally summoned the willpower to risk a very tentative step, and when the yielding surface had held up as he gradually transferred his weight from one foot to the other, he had risked a second step, then a third. There was a floor there, all right, and occasionally he actually saw wisps of dry grass poking through the mist around his ankles, so he assumed it must be ground. Besides, it was very uneven, and he stumbled a lot. After a while dim shapes seemed to be hulking in the mist, darker gray amidst lighter gray, but when he moved toward them, they faded. Were they really mirages, or was he somehow going astray when he thought he was going right at them? At least he wasn’t going to die of thirst-all he had to do was open his mouth, and in a minute enough moisture condensed to calm his needs. He was definitely getting hungry, though, and very tired. Then the light began to go. The only thing worse than twilight in a strange place is darkness when everything has been twilight already. It did occur to him that he might have been in London on a bad day, but it didn’t seem very likely-unless the whole city had gone on vacation at the same time. Besides, they would have had streetlights, and here he couldn’t see any light at all. So, everything considered, he was overwhelmingly relieved when one of the shadow shapes lasted long enough for him to come up to it, though it filled his whole field of view-even if it was the darkest, gloomiest, most forbidding castle he had ever set eyes on, made of black granite and dripping with rivulets of moisture. As he came up to it, the fog seemed to lift, becoming a lowering sky instead of an environment in its own right. Off to his left he saw a brackish, turgid lake that extended a pseudopod to feed the castle’s moat. Looking down, Matt saw dark water with a greenish tinge-the first color he had seen in this alien environment. Now that he thought of it, he glanced down at his own parti-colored clothing, but instead of brilliant red and blue and yellow, it all seemed to be just different shades of gray, with only a hint of hue. Anxiety touched him-this dampness had to be bad for his lute! He had to get it indoors, preferably near a roaring fire-if this strange pocket universe had fire… He looked down at the moat again and thought he saw lumps in it. If he did, they were moving. He looked away with a shudder, thinking that he would have preferred to see teeth and glowing eyes. But the drawbridge was down, the portcullis drawn up, and never mind if its spikes did look like fangs, if the doorway itself reminded him of a hungry mouth, he took a step onto the tongue-no, that was a drawbridge-and another step, and another, until he was nearly at the doorway. A scrabbling and a thump, and a troll popped up from beneath the drawbridge, fangs guttering in its watermelon-slice mouth. Fingers with talons of steel reached for Matt. He backed up, but heard a splashing behind him, with a thrashing and thumping as something aquatic was climbing up onto the bridge, while two more trolls climbed up behind the first one, gibbering with insane glee, and two sea serpents reared their heads up from either side of the drawbridge, mouths yawning wide as they came toward him. All he could think was that whoever owned the castle had really overdone it. The fear was remote, not even pressing-this couldn’t be real, it was just too much. “Fooood,” said the smallest troll, the one only seven feet tall. ‘Toll!“ the foremost troll demanded. ”One arm!“

‘Toll!“ the second echoed. ”One leg!“

Matt cried, “Be that toll our sign of parting, troll! All trolls and monsters without thanks! Keep thy teeth from off my arm, And get thy forms off of these planks!”

The trolls howled in surprise and anger, and the sea serpents hooted in rage-but they disappeared, fading into the mists, and whatever was behind Matt gave a honk like an eighteen-wheeler in dire distress, but it only managed two more approaching thumps before its voice seemed to dwindle like a spray of mist. Matt turned quickly, but was only in time to get a vague impression of a bloated, elongated shape with lots of teeth in its tail-as well as all the hundred or so in front-before it, too, was gone. Matt just stood there blinking for a minute. He had expected the spell to do some good, but not this much! Maybe to knock the monsters back for a minute or two, to give him time to figure out a plan of action-or even to have sent them all running away. But to just fade? As if they’d been made out of the mist itself? Illusions. They had to have been illusions, mere illusions and nothing more. No wonder he’d felt that the lord of the castle had been overdoing it! He strode into the castle a bit more confidently-if all he had to worry about were illusions, he was perfectly safe. On the other hand, he’d been trying to banish his own illusions for a dozen years now and hadn’t had too much success. Of course, these were somebody else’s illusions… He stepped in under the portcullis, but it didn’t crash down on him at the last second, and no giggling microcephalic giant tried to bisect him with an axe. There wasn’t even a huge and horrible black hound from Hell pouncing on him with a howl. It made him very nervous. He ran through the entrance tunnel, then, very cautiously, he stepped through the archway at the end. Still no terrors attacked him. He looked about him and found he wasn’t in a courtyard, as he had expected, but actually inside the castle proper-the great hall, in fact. There weren’t any windows, but there were torches in sconces along the walls, sending up trails of greasy smoke-and, at the far end, a dais with a canopy. But it looked old, almost rotted; if it hadn’t been for the torches, Matt would have thought he was in an abandoned ruin. Suddenly, twinkling lights glimmered on the dais and in the center of the room. Matt braced himself as the light turned into a coruscation, clouds of sparks that pulled together and settled and became… Gorgons. Matt didn’t turn to stone, but he almost wished he had-they had snakes for hair, and their mouths opened into grins with fangs. Lamias joined them, and harpies, and something rustled and chirruped above his head. It was almost as if he had confronted the male monsters outside and the female monsters inside-except for the half-dozen old men with yellowed beards and obscenely carved staffs, who cackled and discussed him with gloating grins, then pointed at him all together and shouted, “Destroy him!”

With a shout of delight, the lamias and the gorgons charged, and whatever it was that was chirruping swooped. Matt dodged, just in time for a huge black widow spider to swing through the space where he’d just been and slam into the charging mob of monsters. They screeched, and the giant spider emitted a shrill blast of sound that sent the gorgons’ snakes stiff and made them clap their hands to their ears. It gave Matt time enough to sort them out. “Uncommon kinds of monsters! Whose breath I hate As reek o‘ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air-I banish you!”

The monsters all screamed, the spider loudest of all. Matt clapped his hands over his ears as he repeated the verse again, and louder, just for good measure. The monsters blew apart in showers of sparks, showers that faded, except for all the scrawny old men. They turned to Matt, pointing at him and shouting something in that blasted archaic language that he didn’t understand. He suddenly found himself sinking; the floor had become quicksand and was sucking him down-or was that himself melting from the feet up? He looked down, decided he was melting, and sang, “Solidity, it’s creeping up on me! My thighs are like granite, My knees, they began it. Solidity, it’s creeping down o’er me! My shins strong and steady, My ankles quite ready. My feet stout for kicks, My toes like small bricks! Solidity! I’m all at one for me!”

The pack of wizened men flung up their arms and started chanting, but Matt beat them to the punch line. “All your likenesses must go And banished be, to leave you so Alone, original, unfeigned, And only your own substance gained.”

He just hoped none of the men were having an identity crisis. Of course, they were probably all just illusions, too… All the ugly men gave a chorused single squawk of outrage that diminished rapidly as they faded, shredded, blew away.

Except for one. Matt frowned at him. “Scat! Scoot! Go on! Get away!” He underscored it with shooing motions. “Get away yourself,” rasped the survivor. ‘This is my castle!“

Matt stared. “Oh! Sorry.” He tried to recover his aplomb and not stare-but really, the little old man looked as imaginary as any of the other monsters-scrawny, yellow-eyed, his beard grungy from lack of washing… Matt frowned and looked more closely. He wasn’t really that old, actually-more like middle-aged. He just looked old, because of the white beard, and the white hair flowing down around his shoulders-only it wasn’t yellowed from lack of washing. That was its natural color. And he wasn’t really short or little or stooped with age-his shoulders were hunched up defensively, his head pulled down to glare. Sure, he was holding his staff in both hands, but he wasn’t really leaning on it-he was ready to wave it like a magic wand, which it probably was. He had to have done all that deliberately, to look like less of a menace than he really was. Didn’t he? But those yellow eyes were huge, with the whites showing all around them, and glittering with malice. His garments were soiled and faded, but they were sumptuous, or had been once-brocade and velvet. Matt couldn’t help thinking that they were just the right thing for the climate; the only thing that would have been even better was a raincoat. The owner jabbed a finger at him and shouted something unintelligible, and Matt suddenly felt an irresistible interior urge, one that would ordinarily have sent him on a frantic search for the garderobe, only he was sure he didn’t have time, and besides, it was all just an illusion anyway, so he called out, “The cheese stands alone, In my blood and bone, All throughout my viscera, The cheese brings me home!”

The urge went away, but the yellow eyes sparked with anger, and the staff snapped out as its owner spat another indecipherable verse. Sparks glittered all over the floor and turned into cockroaches, scurrying toward Matt; he could almost hear them thinking, Yum! He wondered what they thought he was-but while he was wondering, he was chanting. “Hey! Where y‘ going, y’

crawling ferlie? Not to me-too big and burly! Run to him, who seems decayed! His scent is yours, so make a raid!“

For a moment he blushed with shame-how could he be so gauche as to mention Raid around a cockroach? But if the insects had noticed, they gave no sign-only turned and ran toward the lord of the castle. The old man cursed, then spent a few minutes in an anticockroach spell of his own. Matt used the time to think up an all-purpose antidisgustant verse-but when the bugs had coruscated and effervesced into nothingness, the yellow eyes turned back to Matt with undisguised loathing and said, “I shall not be rid of you so easily, shall I?”

“I don’t think you’ll be rid of me at all,” Matt said, “except maybe by asking me nicely to leave.”

“Will you not leave?”

Matt sighed. “Well, that’s not quite what I meant by ‘nicely,’ but I guess it will have to do. Okay, I’ll walk out-but I would appreciate answers to a few questions first.”

“I give nothing to any man!” The grubby one raised his staff as if to strike and began to recite something in that confounded antiquated tongue again. Matt got his counter in fast and first. “His heart is turned to stone; He strikes it, and it hurts his hand. His hand therefore, is stone, And all his body banned From flesh and bone. All is rock! His head alone Is live!”

The owner’s voice ran down into a croak and stopped. He stood poised, staff raised to strike, but unable to as his body turned grayish. “Well, now, that’s a bit better attitude!” Matt strolled up to go slowly around the man, inspecting him from every angle. “Actually, that posture isn’t really the best attitude in the world, but it could be worse.”

“You could not!” The man’s voice had an undertone of gravel. “Loose me, Wizard, or it shall be the worse for you!”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Matt said casually. “You’re a wand slinger, see, so I doubt any verse you come up with will have much effect without that stick to direct it-and what little power your spells might have, I’m sure I can counter.”

The yellow eyes gleamed with fury, and the sorcerer began to recite again. “Everything considered,” Matt said quickly, “it would be a lot easier for you just to answer a few questions for me. Then I could unfreeze you and go away.”

The sorcerer paused in mid-syllable. “Of course, if you do manage to do something lethal to me,” Matt pointed out, “I won’t be here to unfreeze you.”

“I can deal with that myself!”

“Sure. You could unfreeze somebody you had turned to stone,” Matt said, “but could you counter a spell of mine?”

The sorcerer just gave him a very black look. “Let’s start with: how did you get here?” Matt asked. “The king sent you, for openers.”

“Openers indeed! I was the first-but only the first of a dozen! And there shall be more!”

Matt nodded. “Makes sense. However, what the king didn’t explain to me, before he blasted me here, was why he didn’t just execute anybody who wouldn’t come to heel. You know, off with their heads, then burn the body just to make sure. Why not?‘

“He did that with the worst of them,” the sorcerer grated, “they who sought to overthrow him.”

“But you were no threat to him personally? You just didn’t want to stop torturing your peasants?”

“Something of the sort,” the sorcerer admitted. “I had no designs upon the throne.”

“Yes, I noticed it wasn’t terribly ornate. I thought Boncorro was tolerant, though. All you had to do was live by his laws.”

“And cease to slay priests?” the sorcerer demanded. “Cease to despoil nuns? Cease to seek to bring about the misery of every soul near me, that I might send them to Hell? What use would there be in living, then?”

“So. You were incorrigible and unreformable.” That put in a thought. “Did the king even try to reform you?”

“Oh, aye. He bade me mend my ways three times. At the last, his fool of a reeve shrank quaking from my sight, so I knew ‘twas not he who told the king how I had amused myself withthe peasant lass-so I know that King Boncorro must have had other spies within my castle, perhaps even the cat I had bought to attend to his other spies.”

Matt decided he did not like this man. “He appeared in my hall with the sound of thunder and with fires gushing away from him-the showy fool! ‘What?’ I said. ‘Will you send me to a monastery?’ ‘Nay, nor even presume to tell you to renounce your pact with Satan,’ said he, ‘for your soul is your own affair, and no reform will affect your Afterlife save that which you work yourself.’ ”

Matt listened closely. This didn’t sound like the atheist the king professed to be. “Sounds like common sense.”

“The more fool he, to presume to find laws that govern the consequences of the soul’s deeds! He commanded me to forgo my pleasures, though, ‘For what you do to my subjects,’ he said, ”is my concern.‘ The conceited prat! I spat in his face. It was for that he sent me here.“

“Three strikes and you’re out of his kingdom.” Matt nodded. “In fact, out of his whole world. Interesting that he still honors the number three.”

“There is nothing mystical in that!”

“That’s what they tell me. And you just happened to find this castle sitting here?”

The sorcerer stared. Then he laughed, a nasty, mocking sound. “Why, you understand nothing of the nature of this realm, do you?”

“Oh. So you built it yourself?”

“Aye, with my own two hands,” the sorcerer said, sneering. “There is a quarry not far from here, and I am stronger than I seem.”

“Yes, that’s why I don’t want to get too close. Did you make the quarry, too?”

The sorcerer eyed him narrowly, finally beginning to realize who was mocking whom. “What a fool’s remark is that! How can one make a quarry?”

“I thought that here you could make anything-like that.” Man pointed at a wall, imagined a pickaxe, and willed it to appear. Sure enough, it did, swinging at the granite. “No!” the sorcerer cried in alarm, and a huge hand appeared, seizing the pickaxe and throwing it at Matt. Quickly, he willed it to disappear, and it faded into thin air. Then he imagined an even bigger hand holding a ruler, willed it to appear, and made it strike the sorcerer’s construct on the knuckles. “Well enough, then,” the sorcerer said with disgust. “I will banish mine if you will banish yours.”

Matt nodded. “On the count of three.”

“Nay-five!”

“Okay, five,” Matt sighed. He considered telling the man that five was a holy number in some religions, then thought better of it-apparently it didn’t matter, as long as the religion wasn’t Christianity. After all, this part of this world ran on Christian concepts, or against them. “One… two… three…”

“Four-five!” the other sorcerer counted, and Matt’s hand disappeared. The sorcerer laughed as his giant hand rushed at Matt’s head. Matt did some quick imagining, and a huge chain appeared fastened to a ring in the wall. The other end was fastened to a chain in the hand. It slammed down onto the floor and scrabbled its fingers furiously, trying to reach him. Matt’s hand appeared over it with the ruler again. “As you will,” the sorcerer sighed, and his hand disappeared. Matt nodded and banished his. The sorcerer growled, “If you know that all here is illusion, why did you ask?”

“I come from a school that likes to have its guesses confirmed,” Matt explained. “So this whole realm is a pocket universe so thoroughly saturated with magic that I can dream up anything I want?”

“Even so,” his enemy grunted. “This whole castle is the product of my imagination.”

Matt decided that this boy really needed a psychiatrist. “In this realm-between-worlds to which King Boncorro has banished us,” the sorcerer explained, “anything imagined can appear to be real.”

Matt shuddered. “The ideal place for people who want to delude themselves!”

“Oh, they need not come here,” the sorcerer said with a curl of the lip. “They who wish to find their Paradise on Earth are doing exactly that. Now that there is money enough, they are looking away from the Afterlife and toward the here and now, forgoing their families to seek only pleasure.”

Matt remembered the roisterers he’d met on the road south, and shuddered. The sorcerer gave him a toothy grin. “That pleasure is fleeting, of course-and only builds up a debt that must be paid. After summer’s plenty comes winter’s famine, and fools follow the search for pleasure into ways that lead them here-or to death and damnation. What an idiot is King Boncorro! For in seeking to make his folk happier, he has only given them the means of their own destruction!”

“He claims he doesn’t care, as long as it means more money for him.” But Matt frowned. “Are you trying to tell me that the king’s new order has actually produced more Hell-bound souls than King Maledicto’s reign?”

“Aye, for in place of the fear of old Maledicto and his devilish masters, Boncorro has given them-nothing. He does not punish the priests, but he has not brought them back, either.” The sorcerer grinned, savoring the idea. “The people have no guide in the use of their newfound prosperity, nothing by which to decide what to do and what to avoid.”

“You mean that because the people have lost any sense of religion, they can’t have faith in anything?”

The sorcerer winced. “Spare the words that burn, Wizard! You have almost the sense of it-it is not that they cannot have faith in anything, but that King Boncorro has given them nothing to have faith in! In place of the fear of Hell, he has given them no hope of anything beyond this world-so they pursue only worldly joys and pleasures. Not knowing what to do with the sudden leisure that has befallen them, they have themselves fallen prey to the temptation that comes their way.”

“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,” he 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.