Wizard Of Rentoro

Chapter 13

For a moment Blade could not have said a single coherent word to save his life. He clamped his mouth firmly shut to keep it from hanging helplessly open. Then he found he had to close his eyes, shutting out the world and the man facing him so he could organize his thoughts.

This man says that he traveled across the Dimensions from Renaissance Italy.

That thought might have been written in giant fiery letters across Blade's mental vision. It was quickly followed by other thoughts, equally clear, equally insistent.

This is the most astonishing claim I have ever heard any human being make about himself. Do I believe it?

Why should he be lying? In fact, how could he lie? He has mentioned too many places, names, and dates not to have had some contact with Home Dimension. How do you explain it otherwise?

Don't try to explain it. Let the Wizard do the explaining.

How?

You know there is only one way.

Dangerous.

No matter how dangerous it is, you must use it. You cannot let this man slip away. Not if he can cross into Dimension X by the power of his mind alone.

«Too bloody right,» muttered Blade, his lips at last able to form words. He looked at the Wizard. «Bernardo Sembruzo» was staring at him, eyes narrowed, hands clasped behind his back. His dark face was twisted into a frown.

At last the Wizard took a deep breath and forced a thin smile on to his face. «I see that you do not believe I am telling the truth. No, no, I am not trying to enter your mind again. You have shown me that would not be wise and I have some pride in my wisdom. What you think of me is written large upon your face.»

Blade was able to return the smile. «I can say the same thing about you. It is very easy to hear in your words and see on your face that you want something from me.»

«Yes,» said the Wizard, irritably. «I have said it several times. I want to know when you came from Earth to Rentoro, and from where?»

«Yes, but you want to know these things because you want my help. In fact, you want my help desperately. You want to know if I can help you return home.»

The Wizard's face turned even paler than before and his lips tightened into an almost invisible line. Both hands rose, twisting into claws. Blade tightened his grip on the dagger, suspecting that the Wizard was about to leap at his throat, but almost certain his shot in the dark had gone home.

The moment passed. The Wizard's hands dropped back to his sides. He turned slowly to the five Wolves. «Leave, and do not return until I summon you. Chergin, give me your dagger.» One of the Wolves handed his dagger to his master, who stuck it in his sash. The five Wolves clanked out of the room and the door slammed shut behind them. The Wizard turned back to Blade.

«You have guessed wisely. Does that mean you believe my story?»

«It does not.»

«But-«

«My lord Wizard,» said Blade briskly. «How much more time are we going to waste arguing like a couple of pimps in a cheap whorehouse? You interest me, even if you are not telling the truth. And if you are-«

«I interest you?» exploded the Wizard, his pride as nobleman, ruler of Rentoro, and explorer of the unknown violently pricked. «You dare-«

«Yes, I do,» said Blade. «You seem to know that I have crossed the unknown, the way you say you have done. You should also know that a man who has done that will dare a great many things. I am no weakling.»

The Wizard seemed to find that last remark wildly amusing. He threw back his head and laughed until the room was echoing and tears streamed down his face. «No, no certainly you are no weakling,» he said at last. «What do you propose?»

Blade pointed to the floor. «Throw your dagger aside and lie on your back on the floor. I will kneel beside you. Raise your hand and place it on my head. Send your thoughts into my mind-thoughts of all you have seen and done, both in Italy and here in Rentoro. When I know you are telling the truth, I will think of what I have said and done, so that you may read my thoughts. That way I will know if you are lying. If you are-we shall see what happens. If not, you will have a chance to learn all you might wish to know about me.»

The Wizard frowned. «I do not like being so vulnerable. If you chose to stab me as I lay-«

«Why should I do that? You have the sense not to risk killing a man who has traveled from Earth to Rentoro. Why should you think I am less sensible? Neither of us can really wish to kill the other unless he is a fool, and we are neither of us fools. No, I keep the dagger in order to kill myself, if you seek to control my mind. I will never let my mind be under your control. Accept that now and do not forget it. Also,» Blade continued, «do not think you can simply turn your back on me and leave me here to starve for another week, until I am so feeble a child could overpower me. I will not permit that. If you leave this room without doing what I have proposed, I will be dead on the floor in the next moment-Is all of this clear? If it is, then why not act like the wise and brave man you are? You have much to gain if you go ahead, and much to lose if you do not.»

Blade hoped he'd convinced the Wizard. Otherwise his last moments might be at hand, because he was absolutely certain that death would be preferable to letting the Wizard control his mind. He also hoped that he wouldn't have to argue like this every time he and the Wizard didn't see eye to eye.

The silence continued, until at last the Wizard's shoulders sagged slightly. He forced a smile on to his face, but there was no pleasure in his voice when he spoke.

«Very well, I see that I can expect nothing better from you. Your skill in arraying your arguments is as great as the skill of Sir John Hawkwood in arraying his men.»

Blade remembered that Sir John Hawkwood had been an English soldier of fortune, the first of the great condottieri and the chief general of the city of Florence against the Visconti. He was being praised very highly indeed.

«Thank you, my lord count,» said Blade, with a slight nod.

The sour mood seemed to leave the Wizard and his smile broadened. «Come, come. I think we need not waste more time in courtly exchanges. This is not the Palazzo Ducale in Milan.» He drew his dagger, holding it by the point, and threw it to the far corner of the room. Then he lay down on the floor on his back. Blade knelt beside him.

«Are you ready, Blade?»

«I am.»

The Wizard frowned in concentration, then raised his hand-and pressed it against Blade's forehead. Blade held the dagger in both hands, the point an inch from his chest, ready to drive it in by pure reflex the moment he felt the Wizard seeking control of his mind. Their eyes met once again, briefly-then the room around them vanished in the sequence of images the Wizard was pouring into Blade's mind.

— A young knight, clearly the Wizard at nineteen or twenty, riding up and down the tilting yard, practicing with lance, sword, and shield.

— The same man, riding across green fields of waving grass, picking off birds with a small crossbow, his servants riding behind to pick them up.

— Grimmer scenes, many of them in rapid succession, of the wars in which the Visconti of Milan sought to weld northern Italy into a single kingdom under their rule. Pitched battles in the open field, ambushes by night, a tent where wounded men lay moaning in fever or screaming with pain as the surgeon set smashed bones and probed for arrowheads, the walls of Florence with their flaunted banners looming above the battlements. Finally the deathbed of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and the collapse of all the Visconti hopes to be kings in Italy.

— A small but strong castle, perched on a rocky spur, with vineyards, olive orchards, and fields of grain spreading around it.

— A chamber, high in the tower of the castle, where the Wizard, now a man with his face lined and gray showing at his temples, read scrolls, mixed fuming chemicals, sat in meditation or trances, slowly grew thin and hollow-eyed with the strain of his explorations of the unknown.

— A nightmare of swirling, dancing colors and images, as the Wizard's mind twisted itself, creating a whole new set of senses, so that Home Dimension slipped away.

— The Wizard awakening in a field in Rentoro, within sight of a hill Blade recognized as the one where the castle now stood. The Wizard was unarmed, but he was fully clothed.

The people drifting out from the nearest town to start work on the great castle. Some came with smiling or at least curious faces. Others came with the slow tread and the blank faces of zombies.

On and on, image after image, each image confirming both the Wizard's own tales and everything Blade had heard from Lorya. Blade saw the training of the Wolves, the burning of rebellious towns, the hanging of rebels, the last great battle outside the walls of Morina. He saw a courtyard and a line of Wolves galloping across it, to pass between two glowing objects lying on the ground and vanish into thin air.

He saw a room in the castle, with row after row of great glass bowls on carved wooden shelves. He saw the Wizard take down one of the glass bowls, place it on the floor in front of him, then contemplate it. An image sprang into life inside the bowl-and Blade recognized the walls of Dodini.

He saw another room, where the Wizard sprawled on a silk-draped couch, wearing only red silk trousers and a dagger, waited on hand and foot by lovely young women who wore nothing at all.

He saw what seemed to be the shaft of a mine, where gaunt men with tangled hair and beards slaved to move great chunks of some crystalline substance onto hoists or into carts. Other men with wolf badges watched over the miners, urging them on with long iron-tipped whips.

At last the Wizard stopped sending images, and Blade saw no more. He stood up and stepped back on legs that shook slightly. He was breathing hard and sweating, as if he'd just run several miles with man-eating tigers at his heels.

Bernardo Sembruzo, Conde di Pietroverde, the Wizard of Rentoro, was everything his own words and the legends of Rentoro said he was. He was a telepath who could reach, read, and control other minds. He was a scientist who'd discovered some form of matter transmission. He was the discoverer of a method of traveling into Dimension X by the unaided power of the human mind.

He was, in short, the single most important human being alive in any Dimension Blade knew.

He was also an Italian Renaissance nobleman, who was using all these vast gifts to rule Rentoro like an Italian Renaissance tyrant. This did not diminish his gifts. It did greatly increase the danger of dealing with him.

Blade shook his head furiously, like a man surrounded by a swarm of buzzing, whining insects. Here in the Wizard's castle he'd discovered mysteries not only far beyond what he'd expected, but far beyond what he would have believed possible. Hunger, fatigue, and astonishment slowed his thoughts, but he forced them into motion. What next? Find out exactly what the Wizard must know from you, came the answer.

Blade licked dry lips. «I believe you now, I have learned enough from you. What do you want to know from me?»

The Wizard shrugged. «The same as I have been asking. Where do you come from, when did you leave it for Rentoro, and how did you get here?»

«You will not need to enter my mind for any of this?»

«Not if you tell me freely.»

That was reasonable enough, so Blade told the Wizard of his own Home Dimension, of Lord Leighton and J, of the computer and his journey to Rentoro. As he spoke, he thought he saw the Wizard's face set into a hard mask and his shoulders sag again.

When Blade was finished, the Wizard sighed. «So I thought it was with you,» he said. «I entered your mind briefly, while you lay asleep with the woman. I saw pictures of much of what you have just described, but they were confused, as is often the case in the mind of a sleeping man. I could not understand, but I would not risk waking you and warning you. I learned your name, I learned that you had come to Rentoro from some other world, and that you would seek me out. That was enough, for the moment.»

«I see,» said Blade. That explained the strange dreams, the night after he'd rescued Lorya and fled with her from Dodini.

«Now I learn that you have come to me from England, but an England more than five hundred years in the future of my Milan. You have come not by the powers of your own mind, although those powers are great, but by a vast mechanical device I do not understand. What I do understand, though, is that you seem to offer me no way home. You could perhaps help me cross the Dimensions to your time and home, but not to cross time to my castle and my own people.» The Wizard's voice was level and expressionless. Only the hands, clenched until the knuckles stood out white, revealed his anguish.

Blade knew that he had to say something encouraging, that would convince the Wizard of his value. He also knew that he had to choose his words very carefully. In disappointment or in anger, the Wizard could have him killed with no more trouble than swatting a fly.

«We do not know that we cannot travel in time,» he said slowly. «In fact, we have never tried. We have sought to cross the Dimensions, not to explore our own past. If you were to return with me to the England of my time, perhaps you will be able to return from there to your own time and place. Certainly you will have a better chance of doing so than if you stay here in Rentoro, where you have no chance at all.»

«That is true enough,» said the Wizard. «I have sought the way back many times, but I have yet to find it.»

It occurred to Blade that his next question might anger the Wizard. Still, he had to know just how valuable he might be to the Wizard, and therefore how much bargaining power he had. How badly did the Wizard want to go home? This could be a matter of life or death.

«Why do you want to go home at all?» Blade asked quietly. «It seems to me that you have everything here any man could want or hope to gain. The Visconti did not become kings, but you certainly have.»

«One could perhaps say that,» said the Wizard, even more quietly. «Indeed, I am a king. I am also alone. Have you ever been alone, Richard Blade, so alone that you can understand what I am trying to say?»

Blade did not hesitate before replying. He could not mistake the sincerity-and the utter loneliness-in the Wizard's voice. It would be safe to risk anything, even his life, on the Wizard's need for his help. He nodded.

«I understand-friend Bernardo.»

«That is good-friend Richard.»

They shook hands. Then the Wizard opened the door and shouted into the hall outside, «Ho! Bring food and clothing for Richard Blade. At once!»

The Wizard stood by the door until his servants appeared with a chamber robe and a meal of bread, cheese, hot soup, and wine for Blade. Blade ate and drank cautiously, to avoid straining his stomach after the long fast. At last the meal was over and the Wizard silently followed his servants out of the room, leaving Blade alone.

Blade leaned back against the heaped pillows on the bed and ran the scene just finished through his mind again. Now he had a better idea of what he faced and the prospect would have appalled him if it hadn't been so enormously exciting.

Leighton and J would be more than happy to send the Wizard back to Renaissance Italy, if they could. But first they would insist on his revealing all the secrets of his paranormal powers. Examined by competent scientists, the Wizard might reveal the secret of traveling between the Dimensions by sheer mental power.

Then Dimension X would lie open to Britain, and all at once the Project would have justified itself ten times over. Lord Leighton might grumble about his magnificent computer being made obsolete, but he was too good a scientist to protest seriously.

There was going to be much more talking with the Wizard before anything happened, though. The man had raised almost as many questions as he'd answered. One in particular stood out.

In all his words and thoughts, the Wizard had shown only one man, himself, doing everything that must have been done by several generations of Wizards. He seemed to think he was the same man who'd served in the armies of the Visconti, still alive and ruling in Rentoro after more than a century.

Was the Wizard simply mad-at least on that one point?

Had his ancestors passed on their memories to him by telepathy, so that he knew everything they'd seen and done as if he'd done it himself? Perhaps there had been four or five Wizards, but only one mind and only one set of memories, now in its fourth or fifth body?

Or could it be that the Wizard was just one man? In that case he would be well into his second century, although he looked no more than thirty-five. Did the powers of his mind extend to retarding the aging process? This seemed the most fantastic notion of all, but was it much less fantastic than the existence of the Wizard in the first place?

Blade laughed. His exploration of the mysteries of the Wizard of Rentoro was not over. In fact, it had just begun.