You are a liar.

You must not fight me. I am-the Wizard repeated.

And on and on, more intense, more savage with each exchange.

In time Blade sensed that his own thoughts were coming more slowly and knew he would have to find some new defense. So he shifted to problems in calculus. He'd always been competent rather than brilliant at mathematics. To do any problem in calculus in his head took total concentration. As the numbers began to dance across his mental vision. he felt the Wizard driven back-and also felt his growing anger.

In another moment, Blade could no longer read the thoughts the Wizard was using to try breaking through his own mental smokescreen of equations. Perhaps he was winning, or at least holding his own. He decided to test the idea. He thought of taking a step backward, then of raising both hands high over his head and lowering them. His muscles told him that his legs and his arms were obeying his mind. His mind and body were still his own, not the Wizard's.

The moment's break in Blade's mental defenses gave the Wizard his chance for a physical act. He took two swift steps forward, one arm shot out, and a heavy hand pressed itself against Blade's temple.

Blade jerked his mind back to the equations, but he felt the attack against him double its strength. He still read anger in that attack, but also curiosity. A mind as hard to penetrate and control as Blade's was clearly something new and mysterious for the Wizard.

That might be good news, if it kept the Wizard reluctant to kill him. It would also make the Wizard more determined than ever to break into his mind and find out what made it tick! This fight wasn't going to be over for a long time.

Suddenly the Wizard hurled his thoughts with total concentration and tremendous force at Blade. Blade's defenses started to collapse, slowly but inevitably, like a falling wall. He knew they were collapsing, knew that the Wizard was about to enter his mind. Images of London, of the computer room, of his apartment flashed across his mental vision instead of the equations.

This time it was Blade's chance to use his body. With all the willpower he had left, Blade forced his right arm into movement. His hand closed around the hilt of the Wizard's dagger and plucked it from the sash. He raised the sharp steel, holding it well out to one side so the Wizard could not grab it easily. Then he concentrated totally on an image of himself and the Wizard lying on the floor. The Wizard's throat gaped open, while Blade lay with the dagger buried up to the hilt in his chest. Both were as lifeless as the blood-drenched stone under them.

The Wizard jerked his hand away from Blade's temple as if it had suddenly turned red-hot and leaped backward. He made no effort to grab the dagger. Instead he dropped into a wrestler's crouch and raised one hand to send the Wolves into action.

The Wolves took two steps forward. Then Blade raised the dagger and held it with the point almost touching the bare skin of his chest. At the same time he formed in his mind another image-his dead body sprawled on the floor, with the Wizard and the Wolves standing around it, gaping helplessly.

The Wolves took another step forward. Blade gulped in air, realized that he'd bitten his lips hard enough to draw blood, and forced out words.

"No," he said. "No, Wizard. Stop them where they are, or you'll never get anything from me. I can be dead long before they reach me."

The Wizard stiffened for a moment, then nodded. The hand went up again and the Wolves stopped. The Wizard straightened, his eyes narrowed, and Blade knew he was gathering his thoughts for another mental attack.

"No," said Blade again. "Stay out of my mind, too. I don't like that, any more than I like the Wolves. Leave me unharmed and free, both in mind and body, or see me dead in front of you."

"You wouldn't dare," was the thought that came clearly from the Wizard.

Don't risk it, was Blade's reply. It seems that I have something you value. You will not get it or anything else if I die, and I will die if you touch either my body or my mind again. Do not doubt this for a moment.

Blade was not bluffing. Death might be worse than whatever the Wizard had in store for him, but he doubted it. In any case, he could do nothing to affect the Wizard's behavior once he lost control of his mind. He couldn't risk leaving himself at the man's mercy.

It was literally and brutally a case of liberty or death.

The two men stood glaring at each other for a minute that seemed like an hour. Neither moved an inch, or paid any attention to the five Wolves. The men were blinking and shuffling their steel-shod feet, certain that something was badly wrong, equally certain they didn't know what it was or what they should do.

Then the Wizard let his breath out in a long sigh and lowered his gaze to the floor. His hands dropped to his sides and Blade noticed that they were visibly shaking. His olive face had gone pale and sweaty, while his eyes blinked furiously.

At last he got control of himself and again met Blade's eyes.

"Who are you?" he rasped. "Who are you, Richard Blade? Where did you come from, and when did you come from?"

Blade found it hard not to gape stupidly at the Wizard. The questions made no sense at all. He wondered if the strain of the mental duel might not have temporarily muddled the Wizard's mind.

"Do you know who you are?" said the Wizard. "Do you remember, or have you forgotten?" He was impatient, but there was also a pleading note in his voice. Blade could no longer doubt that this was a desperate man in front of him-but desperate about what? The man's questions still made no sense.

"Who are you?" he shot back. "Tell me, and then I will know if it is safe to tell you who I am." The Wizard's face twisted, but Blade raised the dagger again. The Wizard swallowed, then took a deep breath.

"I am Bernardo Sembruzo, Conde di Pietroverde," he said. "I was a n.o.bleman of Milan and a captain in the service of the Visconti. I fought against Florence. After the death of the great Gian Galeazzo, I retired to my estates. There I explored the secrets of the world around us and also of the world within our minds. I explored too deeply, and one day I pa.s.sed from my castle to-here, Rentoro."

The Wizard said all this without stopping for breath. Now he gulped in air and repeated, "Where did you come from, Richard Blade, and when did you come from there? I came from my castle, north of Milan, in the Christian year 1410. When did you leave Earth, Blade, and come to Rentoro?"

Chapter 13.

For a moment Blade could not have said a single coherent word to save his life. He clamped his mouth firmly shut to keep it from hanging helplessly open. Then he found he had to close his eyes, shutting out the world and the man facing him so he could organize his thoughts.

This man says that he traveled across the Dimensions from Renaissance Italy.

That thought might have been written in giant fiery letters across Blade's mental vision. It was quickly followed by other thoughts, equally clear, equally insistent.

This is the most astonishing claim I have ever heard any human being make about himself. Do I believe it?

Why should he be lying? In fact, how could he lie? He has mentioned too many places, names, and dates not to have had some contact with Home Dimension. How do you explain it otherwise?

Don't try to explain it. Let the Wizard do the explaining.

How?

You know there is only one way.

Dangerous.

No matter how dangerous it is, you must use it. You cannot let this man slip away. Not if he can cross into Dimension X by the power of his mind alone.

"Too b.l.o.o.d.y right," muttered Blade, his lips at last able to form words. He looked at the Wizard. "Bernardo Sembruzo" was staring at him, eyes narrowed, hands clasped behind his back. His dark face was twisted into a frown.

At last the Wizard took a deep breath and forced a thin smile on to his face. "I see that you do not believe I am telling the truth. No, no, I am not trying to enter your mind again. You have shown me that would not be wise and I have some pride in my wisdom. What you think of me is written large upon your face."

Blade was able to return the smile. "I can say the same thing about you. It is very easy to hear in your words and see on your face that you want something from me."

"Yes," said the Wizard, irritably. "I have said it several times. I want to know when you came from Earth to Rentoro, and from where?"

"Yes, but you want to know these things because you want my help. In fact, you want my help desperately. You want to know if I can help you return home."

The Wizard's face turned even paler than before and his lips tightened into an almost invisible line. Both hands rose, twisting into claws. Blade tightened his grip on the dagger, suspecting that the Wizard was about to leap at his throat, but almost certain his shot in the dark had gone home.

The moment pa.s.sed. The Wizard's hands dropped back to his sides. He turned slowly to the five Wolves. "Leave, and do not return until I summon you. Chergin, give me your dagger." One of the Wolves handed his dagger to his master, who stuck it in his sash. The five Wolves clanked out of the room and the door slammed shut behind them. The Wizard turned back to Blade.

"You have guessed wisely. Does that mean you believe my story?"

"It does not."

"But-"

"My lord Wizard," said Blade briskly. "How much more time are we going to waste arguing like a couple of pimps in a cheap wh.o.r.ehouse? You interest me, even if you are not telling the truth. And if you are-"

"I interest you?" exploded the Wizard, his pride as n.o.bleman, ruler of Rentoro, and explorer of the unknown violently p.r.i.c.ked. "You dare-"

"Yes, I do," said Blade. "You seem to know that I have crossed the unknown, the way you say you have done. You should also know that a man who has done that will dare a great many things. I am no weakling."

The Wizard seemed to find that last remark wildly amusing. He threw back his head and laughed until the room was echoing and tears streamed down his face. "No, no certainly you are no weakling," he said at last. "What do you propose?"

Blade pointed to the floor. "Throw your dagger aside and lie on your back on the floor. I will kneel beside you. Raise your hand and place it on my head. Send your thoughts into my mind-thoughts of all you have seen and done, both in Italy and here in Rentoro. When I know you are telling the truth, I will think of what I have said and done, so that you may read my thoughts. That way I will know if you are lying. If you are-we shall see what happens. If not, you will have a chance to learn all you might wish to know about me."

The Wizard frowned. "I do not like being so vulnerable. If you chose to stab me as I lay-"

"Why should I do that? You have the sense not to risk killing a man who has traveled from Earth to Rentoro. Why should you think I am less sensible? Neither of us can really wish to kill the other unless he is a fool, and we are neither of us fools. No, I keep the dagger in order to kill myself, if you seek to control my mind. I will never let my mind be under your control. Accept that now and do not forget it. Also," Blade continued, "do not think you can simply turn your back on me and leave me here to starve for another week, until I am so feeble a child could overpower me. I will not permit that. If you leave this room without doing what I have proposed, I will be dead on the floor in the next moment-Is all of this clear? If it is, then why not act like the wise and brave man you are? You have much to gain if you go ahead, and much to lose if you do not."

Blade hoped he'd convinced the Wizard. Otherwise his last moments might be at hand, because he was absolutely certain that death would be preferable to letting the Wizard control his mind. He also hoped that he wouldn't have to argue like this every time he and the Wizard didn't see eye to eye.

The silence continued, until at last the Wizard's shoulders sagged slightly. He forced a smile on to his face, but there was no pleasure in his voice when he spoke.

"Very well, I see that I can expect nothing better from you. Your skill in arraying your arguments is as great as the skill of Sir John Hawkwood in arraying his men."

Blade remembered that Sir John Hawkwood had been an English soldier of fortune, the first of the great condottieri and the chief general of the city of Florence against the Visconti. He was being praised very highly indeed.

"Thank you, my lord count," said Blade, with a slight nod.

The sour mood seemed to leave the Wizard and his smile broadened. "Come, come. I think we need not waste more time in courtly exchanges. This is not the Palazzo Ducale in Milan." He drew his dagger, holding it by the point, and threw it to the far corner of the room. Then he lay down on the floor on his back. Blade knelt beside him.

"Are you ready, Blade?"

"I am."

The Wizard frowned in concentration, then raised his hand-and pressed it against Blade's forehead. Blade held the dagger in both hands, the point an inch from his chest, ready to drive it in by pure reflex the moment he felt the Wizard seeking control of his mind. Their eyes met once again, briefly-then the room around them vanished in the sequence of images the Wizard was pouring into Blade's mind.

-A young knight, clearly the Wizard at nineteen or twenty, riding up and down the tilting yard, practicing with lance, sword, and shield.

-The same man, riding across green fields of waving gra.s.s, picking off birds with a small crossbow, his servants riding behind to pick them up.

-Grimmer scenes, many of them in rapid succession, of the wars in which the Visconti of Milan sought to weld northern Italy into a single kingdom under their rule. Pitched battles in the open field, ambushes by night, a tent where wounded men lay moaning in fever or screaming with pain as the surgeon set smashed bones and probed for arrowheads, the walls of Florence with their flaunted banners looming above the battlements. Finally the deathbed of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and the collapse of all the Visconti hopes to be kings in Italy.

-A small but strong castle, perched on a rocky spur, with vineyards, olive orchards, and fields of grain spreading around it.

-A chamber, high in the tower of the castle, where the Wizard, now a man with his face lined and gray showing at his temples, read scrolls, mixed fuming chemicals, sat in meditation or trances, slowly grew thin and hollow-eyed with the strain of his explorations of the unknown.

-A nightmare of swirling, dancing colors and images, as the Wizard's mind twisted itself, creating a whole new set of senses, so that Home Dimension slipped away.

-The Wizard awakening in a field in Rentoro, within sight of a hill Blade recognized as the one where the castle now stood. The Wizard was unarmed, but he was fully clothed.

The people drifting out from the nearest town to start work on the great castle. Some came with smiling or at least curious faces. Others came with the slow tread and the blank faces of zombies.

On and on, image after image, each image confirming both the Wizard's own tales and everything Blade had heard from Lorya. Blade saw the training of the Wolves, the burning of rebellious towns, the hanging of rebels, the last great battle outside the walls of Morina. He saw a courtyard and a line of Wolves galloping across it, to pa.s.s between two glowing objects lying on the ground and vanish into thin air.

He saw a room in the castle, with row after row of great gla.s.s bowls on carved wooden shelves. He saw the Wizard take down one of the gla.s.s bowls, place it on the floor in front of him, then contemplate it. An image sprang into life inside the bowl-and Blade recognized the walls of Dodini.

He saw another room, where the Wizard sprawled on a silk-draped couch, wearing only red silk trousers and a dagger, waited on hand and foot by lovely young women who wore nothing at all.

He saw what seemed to be the shaft of a mine, where gaunt men with tangled hair and beards slaved to move great chunks of some crystalline substance onto hoists or into carts. Other men with wolf badges watched over the miners, urging them on with long iron-tipped whips.

At last the Wizard stopped sending images, and Blade saw no more. He stood up and stepped back on legs that shook slightly. He was breathing hard and sweating, as if he'd just run several miles with man-eating tigers at his heels.

Bernardo Sembruzo, Conde di Pietroverde, the Wizard of Rentoro, was everything his own words and the legends of Rentoro said he was. He was a telepath who could reach, read, and control other minds. He was a scientist who'd discovered some form of matter transmission. He was the discoverer of a method of traveling into Dimension X by the unaided power of the human mind.

He was, in short, the single most important human being alive in any Dimension Blade knew.

He was also an Italian Renaissance n.o.bleman, who was using all these vast gifts to rule Rentoro like an Italian Renaissance tyrant. This did not diminish his gifts. It did greatly increase the danger of dealing with him.

Blade shook his head furiously, like a man surrounded by a swarm of buzzing, whining insects. Here in the Wizard's castle he'd discovered mysteries not only far beyond what he'd expected, but far beyond what he would have believed possible. Hunger, fatigue, and astonishment slowed his thoughts, but he forced them into motion. What next? Find out exactly what the Wizard must know from you, came the answer.

Blade licked dry lips. "I believe you now, I have learned enough from you. What do you want to know from me?"

The Wizard shrugged. "The same as I have been asking. Where do you come from, when did you leave it for Rentoro, and how did you get here?"

"You will not need to enter my mind for any of this?"

"Not if you tell me freely."

That was reasonable enough, so Blade told the Wizard of his own Home Dimension, of Lord Leighton and J, of the computer and his journey to Rentoro. As he spoke, he thought he saw the Wizard's face set into a hard mask and his shoulders sag again.

When Blade was finished, the Wizard sighed. "So I thought it was with you," he said. "I entered your mind briefly, while you lay asleep with the woman. I saw pictures of much of what you have just described, but they were confused, as is often the case in the mind of a sleeping man. I could not understand, but I would not risk waking you and warning you. I learned your name, I learned that you had come to Rentoro from some other world, and that you would seek me out. That was enough, for the moment."

"I see," said Blade. That explained the strange dreams, the night after he'd rescued Lorya and fled with her from Dodini.

"Now I learn that you have come to me from England, but an England more than five hundred years in the future of my Milan. You have come not by the powers of your own mind, although those powers are great, but by a vast mechanical device I do not understand. What I do understand, though, is that you seem to offer me no way home. You could perhaps help me cross the Dimensions to your time and home, but not to cross time to my castle and my own people." The Wizard's voice was level and expressionless. Only the hands, clenched until the knuckles stood out white, revealed his anguish.

Blade knew that he had to say something encouraging, that would convince the Wizard of his value. He also knew that he had to choose his words very carefully. In disappointment or in anger, the Wizard could have him killed with no more trouble than swatting a fly.

"We do not know that we cannot travel in time," he said slowly. "In fact, we have never tried. We have sought to cross the Dimensions, not to explore our own past. If you were to return with me to the England of my time, perhaps you will be able to return from there to your own time and place. Certainly you will have a better chance of doing so than if you stay here in Rentoro, where you have no chance at all."

"That is true enough," said the Wizard. "I have sought the way back many times, but I have yet to find it."

It occurred to Blade that his next question might anger the Wizard. Still, he had to know just how valuable he might be to the Wizard, and therefore how much bargaining power he had. How badly did the Wizard want to go home? This could be a matter of life or death.

"Why do you want to go home at all?" Blade asked quietly. "It seems to me that you have everything here any man could want or hope to gain. The Visconti did not become kings, but you certainly have."

"One could perhaps say that," said the Wizard, even more quietly. "Indeed, I am a king. I am also alone. Have you ever been alone, Richard Blade, so alone that you can understand what I am trying to say?"