“A feeling,” Ortho said, “but far more than that. There was, of a sudden, a sensation that I walked through mist, that the whole world had become insubstantial, and that I would never find my way out, for there were no landmarks. Over.”
“Yeah, that sounds pretty convincing,” said Saul’s voice. “I’ll start work on it and see if I can find anything-or anybody. Report back to you this evening. Over.”
“Over and out,” Sir Guy said, and let up on the button. “Well, your Majesty, we have done what we may.”
She nodded “it is in Wizard Saul’s hands now.”
“Shall we, indeed, press onward?” the dragon rumbled. “We shall.” Even though she was no longer in her own country, Alisande still knew instinctively what was best for Merovence; in this universe, the Divine Right of Kings was no empty theory. “We shall discover what we may, for I know in some manner that it shall be vital to us all that we be in Venarra when Saul finds Matthew. Forward!”
They marched, the army newly resolute, Ortho now with hope to balance his dread, and Alisande wondering whether the cold white substance in the clear dish could be snow, and if possibly they might have some in King Boncorro’s kitchens.
Matt didn’t really relax until the dark castle had disappeared into the mists behind him. Then he slowed down to a stroll and decided to admire the scenery. The only problem was that it was awfully hard to admire a continuous expanse of gray mist-so he started making his own.
He began small, with a miniature snow-globe scene, right after somebody had shaken the ball-and sure enough, there it was, ahead and off to his right. The little house looked charming, the snowman actually waved at him, and the flakes drifted gently down. Of course, being so small, it seemed to be far away-but what the hey, it was all illusion, anyway.
On an impulse, Matt left it standing for a while, thinking about something else-say, making a succulent fruit plate-until he was fifty feet past it. Then he looked back-and sure enough, it was still there, even though he hadn’t been watching it, and had very deliberately not been thinking about it. The snowman hadn’t turned to watch him go, but you wouldn’t expect that a snowman would. So any illusion he conjured up would stay there until he deliberately wiped it out. Matt was tempted-after all, it was a harmless little scene-but the antilitter habits of his own world took over, and he carefully thought of it disappearing as if erased with an art gum.
No doubt he just imagined that the snowman looked a little bit panicked just before its head disappeared, but he felt a trifle guilty, anyway. Then he turned around, pondering the possibility that illusions could gain even more of an independent existence here. The bowl of fruit sat before him, looking every bit as delicious as he had imagined. Matt stared-he hadn’t even willed it into existence, just imagined making it, with lingering delight. In fact, he had worked up an appetite just thinking about it-so maybe that was why it had appeared. Gingerly, he reached out, selected a slice of melon, and bit It was definitely the best melon he had ever tasted-exactly as he had imagined it should be, succulent and flavorful and moist.
The moistness helped a lot, since he hadn’t found a drinking fountain yet. He finished the melon, ate a few more pieces of the fruit, then imagined the whole plate fading into nothingness. Condensed mist wasn’t very satisfying; the fruit was, and the comfortable feeling in his stomach stayed. Why not? It was just as easy to create the illusion that he was well-fed as it was to create the illusion of a fruit plate. He strolled along, fabricating butterflies and songbirds as he went. They fluttered and flew about him, then went winging off to spread glad sounds everywhere else in this pocket universe. With all that depressing gray stuff, they were needed.
Matt came to a halt with a sudden thought. If he could leave illusions lying around the landscape, couldn’t other people? And if his could make noise and taste good and fill the stomach, maybe somebody else’s could draw blood with sharp teeth, or inject agony with a very big stinger. He decided to proceed a bit more cautiously. It also raised the question of what happened to the odd imprisoned magician who died here. Could his soul escape to the Afterlife, or did it have to hang around this vale of mist? Admittedly, sorcerers would probably prefer to hang around-paybacks are hell, literally in this case, and Hell wasn’t apt to be cheated, especially by a pocket universe created by a man who wasn’t even trying to be saintly.
So the odds were that Hell would have no trouble reaching in to yank one of its debtors out. But the ghost of a wizard might be another matter, though why it should want to linger around here when it had Heaven waiting, Matt couldn’t think. Of course, if it was expecting a long session in Purgatory, that might be another matter-so Matt decided to be wary of wandering ghosts. After starting with alarm at three different wraiths that turned out to be just thicker-than-average swirls of mist, he decided that, no matter what, he needed sunshine. The idea of creating the sun itself was so audacious that he had to think twice about it, but he reminded himself that it was only an illusion, not a real sun.
In fact, just to keep himself from getting confused and also possibly suffering radiation sickness, he imagined it as a ball of pure light, not flaming at all, and only a hundred feet overhead. Sure enough, it appeared-or its light did, filtered through the mist. As he walked, he imagined the mist melting away under the sun’s heat-and there it was, his own portable sun, sitting up there at the zenith… But he had imagined it as having just risen. And, come to think of it, he had imagined its light as being golden, not white, not yet.
What was going on here? Especially what was going on as the lifting mists disclosed a beautiful park, lush lawns bordered with flower beds in a dozen colors and textures, trees whose leafy boughs were so regular that they might have been sculpted, hedges and bushes that definitely had been, and here and there among them all, pools of water with stunning miniature scenes and fountains, and elegant, almost Classical, statues. Matt went up to one of the statues, wondering, and decided that it really was Classical, at least in style.
Someone had studied the Greeks and Romans thoroughly, and done a painstakingly accurate job of mimicking their style. The feminine form was tantalizingly real, its posture inviting and graceful, but its face a study in the calm, cool self-possession that he had seen in so many pictures of Greek statues. He went a little farther, wondering, looking all about him. There wasn’t a single religious statue among the lot-or at least, nothing that was Christian or Hindu or Buddhist; these figures might have come from the Greek and Roman pantheons, but if so, they were only idealized versions of the human.
Human! That was it! Someone had rediscovered the value and potential of the human body and, presumably, of the human mind! These weren’t Classical statues, they were Renaissance! But this was the Middle Ages; this universe hadn’t rediscovered the Classics and begun the rebirth of knowledge yet.
Wait a minute-when he had mentioned old Greek tales, Boncorro had said that he had heard of such discoveries, had even read a few. The Renaissance had started in Italy when the English knights were still slugging it out with broadswords, and Latruria was Italy by any other name. Had he arrived just in time for the beginning of the Rebirth of Art and Learning? Matt wondered. Or was it going to be stillborn? Was King Boncorro going to keep it locked up here, instead of letting it loose? Anger surged, but faded into puzzlement.
King Boncorro was far too interested in learning, and in finding alternatives to religion, for him to have deliberately banished a scholar. Was there some Latrurian equivalent of Petrarch or Abelard imprisoned here? And if so-why? The park opened out to reveal a manor house of alabaster, gleaming in the noon glare-and now Matt recognized that sun! It was the magical, clear light of Italy and Greece that he had read about. Whoever lived in that house really knew his subject. As he came closer, Matt saw that the building wasn’t really all that imposing. Oh, it was no cottage-but it wasn’t a palace, either. In fact, unless he missed his guess, it was a Roman villa, but scaled down to be comfortable for one man. His respect for the owner went up-he had some humility and wasn’t greedy.