Wizard Of Rentoro

Chapter 24

The next morning Blade kissed Lorya farewell, thanked her lover for his hospitality, and rode off to the south. With him as he rode was the knowledge that before dark tonight he might be confronting the Wizard.

In Peloff he saw again what might have happened to Lorya if she hadn't done so well making her own luck. There was no Peloff now, only ashes, charred timbers, and blackened stone, Bodies lay in the streets, most so badly charred that neither decay nor scavengers had touched them. Blade skirted the edge of the town and kept on to the south.

The village on the border of the Wizard's land still stood, but there was not a living human being in it, or a dead one either. Only flies on the garbage heaps and a scavenger dog or two moved among the houses and inns. The people might have evaporated, like dew at sunrise.

Blade climbed to the top of one of the inns and scanned the countryside to the south. He could see no one at work in the fields and no Wolves patrolling the roads, but neither surprised him. The Wolves and everyone else who could get clear of the Wizard's land must have long since done so.

If they could get clear. Everyone he'd met on the road spoke of something terrible and violent happening in the castle. Rumor and panic could exaggerate, but Blade wondered if they could make up such a tale out of thin air. He'd hoped he was through with mysteries in Rentoro, yet here he was, faced with one more!

Blade went downstairs and found dry bread and stale cheese. The water in the well was still clean. He drank and filled his water bottle. Then he mounted his heuda and rode south, past the white posts into the Wizard's empty lands.

In all the miles to the castle Blade did not meet a single living human being. The Wizard's lands seemed to have been depopulated as completely and as mysteriously as the village on the border. Blade began to hope for the sight of a burned house or a sprawled body, anything to tell of ordinary human violence. He had the feeling that he was riding down the road under the eyes of a thousand watchful ghosts.

Whatever had happened to the Wizard's people, it had happened some time ago. Kitchen gardens were rank with weeds. Livestock wandered aimlessly, browsing on the standing grain, while unmilked cows bellowed in agony.

Mile after mile without a sign of life, with all the defensible points abandoned. The bridges were intact, the fortified houses empty, not a single sentry visible anywhere. Now an army of ten thousand men could march up to the walls of the castle in a single day. Did the Wizard care?

By the time the castle loomed on the horizon ahead, Blade was almost certain his journey was in vain. The Wizard was dead. He had to be. He'd driven his people off, or perhaps killed them, and then ended his own life somehow. He was gone and all his secrets with him.

Yet Blade was not going to accept this idea until he'd explored the castle and seen the Wizard's body with his own eyes.

Blade rode up to the same gate he'd entered before and found it standing wide open. He rode straight in through the gateway and turned to the right. That led to the normal route into the castle. The booby traps and other devices along the route that had tested him and trained the Wolves might have broken down-and they might not have. Blade wasn't going to take any unnecessary chances, this close to his goal.

He found two half-decayed bodies on his way in. They lay on the path side by side, a Wolf and what must have once been a young woman. The Wolf's skeletal hand clutched the hilt of a sword driven through the woman's body. Apparently she'd been fleeing when the Wolf overtook her. Fleeing from what? And why was the Wolf dead beside her? There was no sign of violence on the body or on the rusty armor that still encased it.

Blade rode on, and shortly before dark tied his heuda to the knocker on the innermost gate. Then he tied his pouch with the sky-bridge crystals to his belt. He didn't want to leave anything as valuable on the heuda, just in case the castle was not as deserted as it looked.

The gate was closed but not locked. Blade pushed it open and slipped inside. A few feet beyond the gate he nearly stumbled over another body. This one was almost fresh, and wore the robe of one of the Wizard's assistants. A faint gleam of metal caught Blade's eye. He bent down and saw one of the Wizard's own jeweled daggers thrust up to the hilt in the young man's back. Blade pulled it out and added it to the pouch on his belt

A narrow dark passageway led to the courtyard in front of the Great Hall. Blade came to the end of the passageway and stopped abruptly. In the center of the courtyard the stones were cracked and blackened, in one spot melted into blackish glass. All around the blackened area lay bodies. A few were slightly burned, but most were intact and fairly fresh. Nearly all the bodies were naked, and some of the men and women lay locked together. A barrel of wine had split apart and dumped its contents across the stones, and drinking cups, robes, armor, and daggers lay scattered everywhere. It looked to Blade as if a sort of open-air orgy had been suddenly, gruesomely, and fatally interrupted.

Blade finished examining the courtyard, then raised his eyes to the window of the Great Hall. Half of it was gone, blown out by whatever had interrupted the orgy and fallen in pieces on the stone below. The pale glow of a lantern was visible at the bottom of the window, and Blade thought he saw a human head silhouetted against the glow. Slowly he stepped out into the open courtyard, and as he did the head turned and Blade heard a familiar voice call out:

«Ho, Blade! Come up. I have much to say to you.»

It was the Wizard.

The man sounded perfectly normal, not even angry, but Blade still preferred to be careful. The normal route to the Great Hall would give anyone waiting for him a dozen opportunities to lay ambushes in the darkness. So Blade scrambled up the wall beneath the window, using his rock-climbing skills on the carved cornices and gargoyles. He found an entire section of window knocked cleanly out and swung himself in through it, dropping into combat stance the moment his feet hit the floor.

The Wizard showed no surprise at seeing Blade come in through the window instead of the door. He was sitting at a table under the window, with a view-ball in front of him. It was activated-Blade caught a glimpse of blue sky and stark, snow-crested mountains. Beside the view-ball lay a yard-long wooden stick with a silver ball on one end.

The Wizard rose and came forward to greet Blade. There was new gray hair at his temples and his eyes were red, but otherwise he seemed as vigorous and well-groomed as ever. Blade took three backward steps and drew his sword. «If you don't mind, I'd rather you didn't come any closer.»

The Wizard stopped and laughed softly. «So we are back to the first moves of our game, are we?»

«Yes, until I know what the game is.»

«Ah, it will not take long to tell you.» The Wizard's voice was low, his words were clear, and Blade could detect no sign of strain, tension, or loss of control in the man. He would almost have felt better if the Wizard had been raving and drooling. Under the circumstances, the man's calm was unnatural, even frightening.

«You surprised me when you and Serana fled that night,» said the Wizard. «It was not a pleasant surprise, either. But when I thought over all you had done and said, I saw the truth clearly for the first time. Your destiny would not be linked to mine, at least not in Rentoro. So it was time to change my plans. My power would pass from Rentoro when I did, so what further use were my people?»

«You mean the Wolves?»

«Yes, and all the others as well. They had no further purpose. So the Wolves went against Morina, and did as well as they could without my aid. I would have been happier if Morina had perished along with the Wolves, but much was accomplished in spite of this failure.»

«Not all the Wolves are dead,» said Blade. «Some are finding places as leaders of Rentoro's new armies.» Perhaps it was not wise to say this, and certainly he didn't like the Wolves any better than before. Nonetheless he was disgusted by the Wizard's sending out his faithful Wolves to be slaughtered simply because he could not stand the idea of his people living on after him.

«Ah,» the Wizard said. «I would deal with them if I could, but the time for that is past. I have no one left to help me, unless you-no, I see that you would not care to, as much as you seem to have hated the Wolves.»

«You are quite right,» said Blade. «But where are the rest of your people? The castle seems to be deserted, except for a few bodies. Did they flee, or-«

«They did not flee,» said the Wizard quietly. He rested a hand on the view-ball and concentrated all his attention on the image. It dissolved, the view-ball seemed to become filled with boiling milk, then a new image started to form.

Blade was strongly tempted to take advantage of the Wizard's concentration and knock him unconscious. He did not like what the Wizard's story implied about the man's state of mind. A feeling was growing in him that the Wizard should not be taken back to Home Dimension, even if it turned out to be possible. Was the Wizard still capable of revealing his secrets and teaching his skills? Perhaps. But wasn't he even more likely to prove murderously dangerous? Sooner or later he would be stopped, but at what cost to the Project? What cost in lives? The more Blade thought about it, the idea of bringing the Wizard home seemed like bringing a man-eating tiger to a cocktail party.

Then the new image was formed in the view-ball, and the Wizard raised his hand to give Blade a clear look at it. Blade stared-and although he'd thought he was past being surprised or shocked by anything in Rentoro, his jaw dropped.

He saw the rugged, snow-covered surface of what seemed to be an endless glacier. Far off on the horizon jagged mountain peaks thrust up against a gray sky. The snow flew up in clouds, lashed by an icy wind.

The surface of the glacier was covered with frozen contorted bodies, both men and women. Blade recognized the clothes of castle servants and farm laborers, the armor of household guards and Wolves. Among the bodies a few living people crawled on all fours, like animals. With knives and bare hands they tore at the corpses all around them and crammed the frozen flesh into their mouths.

Blade forced his eyes away from the view-ball, but he could not quite make himself look at the Wizard. «You sent them all to the north?» he said, in a distant voice.

«Yes,» said the Wizard. «Many years ago I went into the frozen mountains beyond the crystal mines and placed skybridge crystals there. I thought I might someday need a road of escape. Every year I went back there and saw that the crystals were still sound.

«Then the end did come. You brought it. Those who had served me could not be permitted to live, yet I could not kill them all myself. So I opened the sky-bridge into the north. I told all my people they would pass across it to safety, in a land where no one would know them. They obeyed-«

«Not all of them.»

«No. There were some who rebelled, because they did not trust me. They had to be slain here in the castle. But most went across the sky-bridge, and now they are all dead or dying. Those who still live eat the flesh of the dead, Not even the bodies will be found, for they will vanish into the glacier and the glacier into the sea. To Rentoro, it will be as if all those who served in my castle and on my lands vanished into the sky. I did not leave Morina as a monument to my power, but I will leave this memory.» The Wizard's voice was beginning to rise. Blade found it hard to keep his hands steady. They were shaking with his efforts to keep them from closing around the Wizard's throat and squeezing.

«Then I destroyed the sky-bridge, and by the power of my mind alone slew all those who had remained behind to guard it. You saw their bodies in the courtyard. Now only you and I remain alive in all the castle, and soon we also shall be gone. You will return to your England, and I will return with you. You have not served me here in Rentoro, but you will in England, and you will be the first of many to serve me there.»

With those last words, the Wizard snatched up the stick from the table and smashed it across Blade's sword arm. Blade felt the bone go and saw the sword fly across the room. He started to draw his dagger with his left hand, then suddenly the Wizard was assaulting his mind more strongly than ever before.

Without the moment's warning given by the Wizard's physical attack, Blade's mind would have been in the other man's grip in seconds. He staggered back, both hands dropping limply, unable to even think about drawing his dagger. He took two more backward steps, then the Wizard's mental commands forced him to stop. He began to concentrate all his attention on simply keeping his mind out of the Wizard's grip, letting his body take care of itself.

The Wizard had gained in mental power since Blade left the castle. This was clear within moments. Blade ran through his mind mathematical formulas, images of London, images of his travels and battles in Rentoro and elsewhere. The Wizard matched every formula and image with one of his own that quickly dominated Blade's. Blade felt like a small radio station jammed by a more powerful one. He was grimly aware that he had no more than a few minutes of mental freedom left. The Wizard was going to beat him down, and then-

Then he would do his best to return to Home Dimension with Blade, and he might succeed. He might arrive there with Blade firmly under his control and unable to warn anyone. Then the tiger would be loose in the cocktail party. The Wizard's dreams of ruling England were the ravings of a madman. But how many people would die before the Wizard was stopped, and what would happen to Project Dimension X?

Blade knew he had to kill himself, or at least knock himself unconscious. He might end up staying here in Rentoro, the mind-slave of the Wizard until the man was killed, but that would be better than loosing the Wizard on an unsuspecting Home Dimension.

He forced himself to take a step toward the window. The Wizard increased his attacks. Blade tried to take another step and found his legs giving under him. He fell to his hands and knees, gasping, his head beginning to throb painfully with the effort of fighting the Wizard.

Then the throbbing in his head became the familiar pain that told of Lord Leighton's computer reaching out to grip his brain. It was agony, but at this moment it was also the most glorious sensation Blade could remember feeling. He would go Home, alive, his mind free, and be damned to the Wizard and his secrets!

Then the Wizard staggered and clapped both hands to his temples, crying out, «Blade! My head!» The room began to swirl around Blade, and only the Wizard remained clear, fighting to stay on his feet, eyes shut and face contorted.

The mental link between them meant the computer was gripping the Wizard's brain too! He was going to come back to Home Dimension with Blade, unless Blade could break the link. He tried to turn around, found his feet rooted to the floor, managed to draw his dagger, raised it, took a step forward-

— and then everything dissolved into thundering black swirling chaos, with red and gold flaming through it. Blade fell through the chaos, the Wizard fell beside him, and suddenly there was a hard floor under Blade. He heard his dagger clatter on stone, saw the chair in the glass booth looming over him, and heard Leighton's voice.

«He's back-and there's someone with him!»

Blade saw the Wizard sprawled unconscious on the other side of the chair and knew he had to speak. He raised his head and croaked, «Dangerous-telepath-mad-killed all-«

Then he felt as if he'd been hit on the back of the head with a club. He slumped forward, and a complete blackness that wasn't chaotic at all but very soothing swallowed him up.