Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (17 page)

   "Alone," the devil mocked him. "That, at the bottom, is the nature of Hell. Farewell, penultimate skeptic! Farewe-e-e-e-e-lll!"

   Its voice faded as it shrank down to a dot, receding, going, going...

   Gone.

   Matt was surrounded by darkness, total, impenetrable, without a single iota of light. Not even the pinpoints of distant, other hells were visible any longer. Despair plunged down on him, flattening the soul. He looked about frantically for a dagger, a razor, anything to end life!

   Then he remembered-life was ended.

   And the loneliness bit in through the despair, till Matt could have sworn there was nothing left of him but a consciousness that felt its isolation as a burning pain, worse than fire in each cubic millimeter. His whole being pleaded for madness.

   A low growling sounded, swelling to fill the void.

   Matt whirled about, panic clutching his throat.

   It shot toward him-black, with curly fur and a blunted muzzle that opened to show long, pointed teeth, sharper than any dog ever had.

   "No!" Matt shrieked, dropping into a crouch, arms up to hide his face. "No! I loved you! You were my friend!"

   But the dog came on, its growl rising to rage, eyes reddening.

   It was the pet dog from his boyhood, the dog who had died while he was at summer camp.

   The growling modulated into words. "I died without you:"

   "It wasn't my fault, Malemute! I was a kid, I couldn't get back! They didn't tell me!" And his brain knew the truth of the words, but his subconscious didn't believe it.

   So neither did Malemute. Knife-teeth flashed down. Matt screamed as they ripped furrows in his leg. He jackknifed over, clawing at the muzzle, trying to pry the jaws apart. But the dog bit down harder; teeth crunched on Matt's bone, and he shrieked. The dog chewed, ripping the leg into shreds.

   "Give him to me!"

   Jaws snapped open; the dog's head jerked up, looking back over its shoulder.

   Long, golden hair, round face, huge, long-lashed eyes, impossibly full, ruby lips, long, tapering legs, swelling hips, and huge pillow-breasts-she advanced, smiling lazily.

   But Matt didn't feel the slightest bit of sexual interest; he felt terror. He knew her; she'd filled his dreams, day and night, in earliest puberty. In his daydreams, she'd been very willing, extremely cooperative-after all, there hadn't teen that much asked. But at night ...

   He plastered himself back against the yielding wall, sweat starting from his brow.

   "Yes," she murmured sleepily, "this is a woman. Touching you here ...touching you here..."

   Matt's scream turned into a shuddering gasp. Her touch was like pliers drawing hot wire, drawing it out of the depths of his body. Fire lanced him from knees up to chest.

   "The pain is the preacher's," she breathed, "but -the lust is yours." Her face slipped up, and huge breasts descended, covering, enfolding his face, pressing down, cutting off sight and sound, isolating him, smothering. He fought for air, gasping, struggling; but nothing could move that huge, sodden weight ...

   "Stand aside! Let me through!"

   Bolster-weight rolled off him. Matt jerked up, gasping for breath...

   A knight in full armor advanced, broadsword in hand. He glanced at the fertility symbol, then averted his eyes. "Clothe yourself! Do you not know the law?"

   "Law!" Matt grasped at the straw. "Here? What law?"

   "The law of your mind," the knight intoned sternly. "The law buried there, in the depths, the prudish ethic-that nothing unclothed can be good."

   A friend, Matt thought, with a surge of hope. "Yes! Show me some clothes!"

   "I am they." The knight clanked up closer, three feet away. Matt realized, with a shock, that the slits in the visor showed blackness only. "I am clothes, or what you saw clothing to be, only armor, only a shield. You ever went clothed, for you feared other people."

   Matt realized that the voice was echoing hollowly, and the fear of the nameless surged though him as the broadsword lifted. "Defense mechanism," the knight boomed. "So you thought clothes to be, thought them armor; but you forgot what accompanies armor and shields." His own shield swept up. Five razor-edged knife blades were welded to it, pointing at Matt. "Your defense gave offense. Those who sought to touch you, befriend you, you pushed away with your shield-and, in pushing, gave wounds." The shield slammed out, stabbing through Matt's chest and stomach in five places. He tried to scream, but only burbling came through the blood in his throat.

   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:

   De profundis clamo ad Te, Domine! Domine! Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord!

   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:

   "Audi vocem meam, Fiant aures Tuae intentae Ad vacem obse creationis meae ..."

   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."

   "Thou hast said it," the dragon agreed. "Tell me, dost thou still think to return to thine other world?"

   Matt's lips tightened. "The idea has never been far from. my mind."

   "Let it be," Stegoman advised him. "Abandon all homeward thoughts, Matthew Mantrell."

   "Yes," Matt agreed, so softly he could hardly hear himself. One last surge of homesickness ached within him. His apartment, his friends, the life he had led ... Then it faded to a dull ache. It would always be there; but most of the time, he'd be too busy to notice.

   He shrugged it off and began describing his dream in rough outline to the dragon. "I never had a dream like that on my own, Stegoman. I could have sworn it was real. And I couldn't wake myself up-it never even occurred to me to try." He shook his head thoughtfully. "I think I had a little help on that dream."

   "That most powerful wizard thou didst mention aforetime?"

   "Yes. I think he sent me that dream to convince me that Evil really existed here."

   "How couldst thou doubt it?" the dragon growled.

   "Not hard. Not hard at all-at least, in my world."