Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (2 page)

   When he opened them, the street was filled with bodies-the living kind, crawling with lice and festooned with rags. Every beggar in town must have been there all of a sudden-though Matt did wonder why there were so many Orientals in a medieval European burg. And weren't those Hindus, down on the right there?

   The beggars straightened up slowly, mouths gaping open, staring around, gawking at each other. Then the screaming started again. But it was all under a tidal wave of excited babbling.

   Matt came to his senses with a start. When you fill an inside straight, cash in. He leaped into the crowd, forcing his way through with elbows and boots. Hands groped at his belt every inch of the way, trying to find his purse. He thanked Heaven they didn't know about pockets and clapped a hand on his wallet as he twisted through the last rank into the clear. Then he took one deep breath and started off walking, fast.

   There was a sudden, ominous silence behind him.

   Matt kept on walking.

   Then someone yelled, "There goes the sorcerer! Don't let him get away!"

   The mob gave one huge, delighted howl, with the thunder of hundreds of running feet underneath it.

   Matt wasn't about to try the wizard act again until he'd learned who wrote the script. He ran. The beggars gave a lusty bellow and charged, delighted to be on the chasing end for a change. Matt reminded himself he'd been a track star in high school and leaned into it. But high school had been a long time ago.

   Matt didn't try to figure out where the beggars had come from; he was too busy panting. He dimly realized that he'd called for them-but just now they were calling for him, and he wasn't exactly eager to oblige them.

   Fortunately, the beggars weren't in any great shape, either. Matt had specified something of the sort. He had about a two block lead when he turned the corner-and ran smack into the gendarmes, mounted on war horses and wearing ring-on-leather iron mail.

   The grizzled man in front leaned down to snag an arm as Matt went by. He had a very snug grip; it swung Matt around to land smack against the flank of the horse. "Here now," the man growled, "where d'ye think you're running?"

   "That way!" Matt pointed the way he'd been going. "I'm trying to leave my past behind me!"

   The front wave of beggars came pouring around the corner, howling. They saw the soldiers and stopped on a shilling. Then they went sprawling as the second wave hit. Those saw the soldiers and stopped dead in their turn. Just then the third wave hit, with the fourth coming up.

   The sergeant, or whatever he was, just sat back in his saddle, watching and waiting, with the hint of a smile under his scowl. He kept a viselike hold on Matt's arm.

   When the whole mob had gotten the message and more or less stopped, the sergeant cut across the muttering with a bull roar.

   "Now, then! What happened here?" And to Matt he added, "Quite a past you have, fellow."

   The mob got quiet then. A throat toward the back cleared itself, and Puffyhat came elbowing his way importantly toward the front. "This man is a sorcerer!"

   "Is he, now?" the sergeant purred. "Well, that would explain his outlandish costume. What sorceries did he work?"

   Puffyhat launched into a tale that would have done credit to Walpole, in which Matt figured largely and luridly. It seemed Matt had brought down a thunderstorm just outside Puffyhat's shop, changed base metal into silver, made the earth slip beneath the feet of four good citizens and true, tarnished the honor of the nation by conjuring up a horde of unskilled workers-who would doubtless compete with the locals for jobs-and changed an honest and worthy baker into a toad.

   "That," Matt howled, "is slander! I never changed anyone into a toad!"

   "But you did the rest?" He was a quick one, that sergeant.

   What could Matt say? "Uh ... Well..."

   "So I thought." The sergeant nodded, satisfied. "Well, then,. Master Sorcerer

   "Wizard." Matt figured he'd better set the record as straight as possible. "Not sorcerer. No traffic with the devil. None. Wizard."

   The sergeant shrugged. "Wizard, then. Will ye now whisk yourself away from us in the blink of an eye? Or come with us to the guardhouse, that our captain may judge ye?"

   "Uh..." Matt glanced at the crowd. Ever since Puffyhat's crack about imported labor, they'd been looking uglier and uglier; there was a vicious muttering passing among the townsmen which seemed to imply that Matt would look great with an apple in his mouth.

   Matt made one of those impulse decisions. "Uh, I think I'll come along with you, Sergeant."

   He had a little time to think it over on the way to the guardhouse, and it all came down to one simple question: What had happened?

   Where was he? When was he? How did he get here? Where did all those beggars come from?

   And what were soldiers doing patrolling a town? Why were they taking him to a captain, rather than a magistrate?

   Martial law, obviously-which meant the town had been recently conquered. But by whom? The soldiers certainly spoke the same language as the civilians-with even the same accent, as far as Matt could tell. It must be civil war, then, which, in a medieval society, meant one of two things-a dynastic dispute, like the Wars of the Roses, or a usurpation.

   Why wasn't the sergeant scared of a self-confessed wizard, though? Possibly he was a skeptic and knew any kind of magic was just so much hogwash. But, considering that even most of the best-educated among the medieval set believed wholly in magic, that didn't seem too likely. Which left the probability that he wasn't afraid because he knew he was backed by a more powerful wizard or sorcerer.

   That shouldn't have bothered Matt at all, because magic was just so much hogwash.

   But where had all those beggars come from?

   The captain was the tall, dark, and handsome type, with some indefinable air of the aristocrat about him. Maybe it was the velvet robe over the gleaming chain mail.

   "There is something of the outlander about you," he informed Matt.

   Matt nodded. "I am an outlander."

   The captain lifted his eyebrows. "Are you indeed? From what country?"

   "Well, that all depends on where I am."

   The captain frowned. "How could that be?"

   "It's not easy, believe me. Where am I?"

   The captain turned his head a little to the side, eyeing Matt warily. "How could you come here and not know where you've come?"

   "The same way you don't know where you've come to when you're going to the place you're coming to, but you don't know how you're going or where you're coming to till you've come to the place you were going to, so by the time that you get there, you don't know whether you're coming or going."

   The captain shook his head. "I don't."

   "Neither do I. So where am I?"

   "But..." The captain knit his brow, trying to figure it out. Then he sighed and gave up. "Very well. You're in the town Bordestang, capital of Merovence. Now, where do you come from?"

   "I don't know."

   "What?" The captain leaned forward over the rough planks of the table. "After all that? How could you not know where you've come from?"

   "Well, I'd know where it was if I were in the right place, but I'm in the wrong place, so I don't know where it is. Or rather, I know where it is, but I don't know what it's called here. That is, if it's there."

   The captain squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a quick shake. "A moment, now. You mean to say you do not know our name for your homeland?"

   "Well, I suppose you could say that."

   "Easily answered." The captain sat back, looking relieved. Matt looked over his shoulder at the semicircle of soldiers surrounding him. The sergeant was watching him narrowly. Matt tried to hide a shiver as he turned back to the captain.

   "Tell us where your homeland is," the captain urged, "and I'll tell you our name for it."

   "Well, I suppose that's a fair deal." Matt nodded judiciously. "Only one trouble-I left my map at home. So I can't tell you which way my homeland is, till I know a little better where this country is."

   The captain threw up his hands. "What must I do? Describe the whole of the continent to you?"

   "Well, that would help, yes."

   For a moment, Matt thought he'd pushed it too far; the captain's face turned awfully red. His brows came down, and his temples whitened. But he managed to absorb it; his face slowly eased back to its normal color, and he exhaled, long and slowly. Then he stood up and went to a set of shelves over against the undressed planks of the left-hand wall. The shelves were made of undressed planking, too; so was the whole place, for that matter. It had a very improvised air about it. Yes, definitely the war hadn't been overlong.

   "Here." The captain took down a huge parchment volume and came back to the table, leafing through the book. He laid it down open, turning it to face Matt. Matt stepped forward to look-and gulped.

   He was staring at a map of Europe-with a few modifications. It looked like Napoleon's and Hitler's dream world-the English Channel was gone. There was a narrow neck of solid land between Calais and Dover. Denmark was joined to Sweden, and the pebble of Sicily was clinging to Italy's toe.

   Something was definitely wrong here. Matt wondered how Australia and New Zealand were doing, or the Isthmus of Panama.

   He looked up at a sudden thought. "What's the climate like, there` ?" He laid a finger on London. "Warmish in winter? Lots of rain? Heavy fogs?"

   The captain gave him an extremely strange look. "Nay, certainly not. 'Tis a frozen waste in winter, and the snows pile up half again the height of a man."

   That settled it. "Are there, uh, ice fields that never melt anywhere there?"

   The captain perked up. "Aye, so they say-in the mountains of the north. Then you've been there?"

   Glaciers in the Highlands! "No, but I've seen some pictures." No question about it, there was an Ice Age going on. Whether it was nature's clock that was off or history's didn't really matter; it still added up to just one thing.

   Matt wasn't in his own universe.

   The wind off those Scottish glaciers blew through Matt's soul, chilling him to the id. For a moment, he was very much lost and very, very alone, and the warmly lighted windows of a summer campus dusk were very far away.

   "We are here." The captain laid a fingertip on a spot about a hundred miles east of the Pyrenees and fifty miles north of the Mediterranean. "Do you know where you are now?"

   Matt shook off the mood. "No. I mean-for all intents and purposes. I think so."

   "Ah, good." The captain nodded, satisfied. "Then where is your homeland?"

   "Oh, somewhere along about-here." Matt-stabbed a forefinger down, about two feet to the left of the map.

   The captain stared, and his face darkened. "I have tried to aid you in every way I can, sirrah, and this is how you repay my courtesy!"

   "No, no, I'm serious! There really is a land out there, about three thousand miles to the west! I was born there. Although," Matt added as an afterthought, "I expect it's changed a good deal since I've-been gone. In fact, I think I'd scarcely recognize it."

   "There have been rumors," the sergeant said darkly.

   "Aye, of an ever-warm land where the wild grape grows, ruled by a saintly wizard and filled with fabulous monsters!" the captain snapped. "A land seen by dreamers, grown out of the dregs in their wine cups! Surely your are not foolish enough to believe in such!"

   "Oh, the tale could stand to go on a diet, I'm sure." Matt smiled slightly, suddenly very calm. "But, even with the climate the way it is, they should still have warm winters in Louisiana; and wild Concord grapes are a bit tart, but really very good. They do grow wizards there, or they did, when I left. We didn't call them that, of course-but you would."

   The room was suddenly very quiet, and Matt was sure that he had their fullest attention.

   The captain licked his lips and swallowed. "And you are such a one."

   "Who, me?" Matt looked up, startled. "Lord, no! I scarcely know what an atom is, let alone how to split one!"

   The captain nodded. "Atoms I have heard of-'tis a sorcery of an ancient Greek alchemist."

   Matt couldn't quite keep his lip from curling. "Democritus was scarcely an alchemist."

   "He knows of such matters," the sergeant breathed.

   "Knows them by name," the captain agreed.

   Matt stared, aghast. "Hey, now! You can't think that I-"

   "Do you know how to change lead into gold?" the captain rapped.

   "Well, not really. Just the broad outline. It takes a cyclotron, you see, and..." Matt's voice trailed off as he looked around at all the flinty stares. He never had learned when to lie ...

   The captain turned away in a whirl of velvet. "Enough! We know he's a sorcerer; we need know no more!"

   "Wizard!" Matt squawked. "Not a sorcerer!"