The scene reeled about him-dog, knight, and fertility symbol, clothed now in a high, pointed cap with a gossamer veil hanging down to the back of her velvet gown.
The sword! Matt tried to twist away, but the knife-points held him in place. His mouth stretched wide in a burbling shriek as he watched the guillotine-edge swooping down, biting into his neck. Pain shot through him; the scene jolted, then reeled crazily about him. He felt his head turning and falling. Then he bounced, rolled, and looked up at his own headless body, held up by the shield, neck fountaining blood.
The knight leaned into his field of view, sword, dropping from his fingers, steel gauntlet reaching down at Matt's head. He felt himself lifted, saw the steel helmet zooming up as the left hand let go of the shield, letting the body crumple, to swing the visor up. "Look now at the truth of a soul that seeks to hide from all others," the voice boomed. And Matt felt himself jerked up to look down into the helmet. It was empty-hollow to the depths.
Matt's lips writhed back in a shriek, but no sound came.
How could a man of reason face the knowledge that all was illusion-and the corollary that reason forced upon him: that he, himself, did not exist?
Then a thought wafted through his mind like a life preserver. There was an answer that had saved the sanity of countless others. And the answer was - faith!
At the thought, a pencil-thin ray of light lanced down through the void, striking his ear and filling his head with a pure, bell-like tone that became words: Thou wast stolen here before thy true tame was come. Hell cannot hold thee, if thou dost call upon God.
"Cut off his lips!" the girl screamed as the beam of light winked out. The knight dropped his visor to catch up his sword.
But Matt's lips twitched into old Latin words:
And breath came where there were no lungs, hissing the words. Hell had bound the name of God from his tongue, but it had not locked out the word "Lord". His voice croaked and swelled:
The woman screamed, and the knight howled; then their voices faded into distance, their owners sinking into vastness, receding, shrinking down to pinpoints ...
And they were gone.
Matt was whole again, his head on his shoulders, skin intact and unblemished; but he shook, his whole body trembling. He shivered in the cold of the void. He stood, frozen and paralyzed. The hymn had banished illusions, but left him frozen forever in a lightless block, bereft of words.
But emotion was left; and his whole being surged up into one burning, silent, wordless plea, a pathetic, despairing cry for help. In the moment of extinction, the spirit wailed for its God.
And a pinpoint of infrared answered, a pinpoint growing into a dim, ruby glow of blessed light! Other small glows appeared near it. Their glowing grew, seeming too illuminate all of the darkness, to show him... Ashes, charred stick ends, and the embers of a campfire.
Feeble, pale light breathed a cold benediction throughout the dome overhead. Looking up, Matt saw stars and realized he lay on his back.
Lowering his eyes slowly, he made out dim shapes in the darkness. A cloaked mound with a sword lying near a steel hand was Sir Guy. Beyond it, in a shroud of brown riding-cloak, lay Alisande. Stegoman's huge bulk blotted out stars across the fire from Matt. And the still, homespun mound at the left was Sayeesa, her sobs quieted now.
A howl of rage came from the ground, muted by miles of earth, screeching, fading - so faint that it might have been a tag end of dream. Fading. Gone.
He was home.
Matt breathed a long, trembling breath, and his whole body went limp as his soul surged up in an instant, huge blast of thanksgiving.
Then he stiffened, eyes opened wide. For a second, he could have sworn he'd felt an answer, like a benign, gentle hand cupping his soul for an instant, then gone.
He sat up, shaking his head, frowning. Illusion! It had to be.
No, it didn't. Not here.
But it could have been, all of it. It could all have been a nightmare. Did it matter?
He pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around his shins and resting his chin on his kneecaps. No, it didn't really matter; because, even if it had been a nightmare, it had shown him what he really believed, at the bottom of his soul. Call it conditioning or brainwashing, if you wanted; it still came down to the same thing - in the depths of his being, he believed in sin and Hell.
And if he believed in sin and Hell, then he believed in virtue and Heaven, too.
Here, anyway. He wasn't quite willing to accept the jurisdiction of medieval Christianity over his rational home universe - but here, the theories of the medieval theologians took on weight and substance and became facts. He was in Sir Guy's world now and he had to live by the rules of chivalry.
He felt a sudden ache for someone to talk to and looked about him. He rose carefully, picking his way quietly around the campfire and over to Stegoman. He sat down by the huge head, frowning, wondering; then he shrugged and reached out to tweak the giant nose.
The great head snapped up with a snort; claws scrabbled at the ground.
"No, no, it's only me," Matt murmured.
The head swung around toward him, eyes dulled with a film of sleep. They cleared, and the dragon scowled down at him. "There is a burden on thy soul."
Matt looked at the ground, tugging at his ear. "I'm sorry to wake you, but-"
"Nay." The low, quiet voice cut him off. "Thou hast need. Speak."
Matt looked up at the great head, trying to marshal his thoughts. "It's all real here, isn't it?"
Stegoman frowned. Then his face relaxed, and he nodded. "Aye, all - you, I, the knight, the witch, and the princess."
"And Hell," Matt said softly.
Again Stegoman nodded.
"Yes." Matt nodded, too. "I had a dream tonight. It makes me think I have a moral responsibility I wouldn't acknowledge before." He looked up. "Do you understand that?"
"Better than thou doss think." There was a slight smile on the yard of lips. " 'Moral' is, a word that deals with more than vice and actions."
"Yeah. Sort of the condition of one's soul, I guess. If you don't accept your own morals, you're trying to split yourself in half, each half living by a different set of rules. So you're not whole, not integral. You've lost your integrity."
"Strange word for it," the dragon rumbled. "I would have said that a man who is not true to himself is not wholly himself. Right is good and Wrong is evil. He who seeks to straddle the two betrays Right and chooses Wrong."
"Umm. And here, it seems, Right and Wrong are real."
"Never doubt it," Stegoman assured him.
Matt thought that over for a minute. Then he sighed. "Another thing - in my dream, everybody wore clothes from this universe, not from my own world. My subconscious peopled my dream with medieval illusions. That seems to show that I want to be in this universe. I guess my secret self always wanted to be a wizard in a medieval world. And if this is the world I chose, then somehow it makes me responsible for what goes on in it."