My Son, the Wizard

Chapter Three

Matt ducked and came up with his fists triphammering. Three punches in the belly, one in the chin, and Liam fell back. Luco caught him, and Matt saw the other three toughs Liam and Luco had called in for backup. Matt only recognized Herm; he guessed the rest of the old neighborhood gang had grown up and moved away. These six were obviously still trying to be juvenile delinquents.

Then one of the strangers shot a flat-knuckled punch fast, too fast for Matt to duck. He tried to lean aside, but it caught him on the side of the head, a glancing blow, and he staggered backward, seeing stars, shaking his head to try to clear it, because he heard the roar of the mini-mob as they piled in. Matt felt something hard and rough behind his back… a tree trunk!… set himself against it, and called,

Choy, and one of the strangers, shouted as they tripped over something invisible. Matt heard something boom not far away, like a truck backfiring, and the tree branches suddenly dipped above him. He felt a slight vibration in his legs, and a dead branch came clattering out of the tree, but that was all. Well, he was surprised the verse had worked at all, here. Liam, Luco, and the other two strangers came at him, shouting.

Matt knew what to do when there were too many to fight. He turned and ran.

The boys yelled and came pelting after.

The sidewalk tilted crazily where tree roots had bulged it, but Matt knew every crack in the concrete… he ran as surely footed as a mountain goat. He glanced back and realized he was in better shape than the gang… they were far behind, though Liam was five yards out in front, yelling, red in the face. Matt swerved right down the Gussenhoven’s driveway and ducked between their garage and their house.

There he flattened himself against the wall, breathing deeply. He heard Liam yelling, pelting closer and closer…

Matt stuck out a foot. Liam tripped and went sprawling. He scrambled to his feet and turned on Matt, saying, “Bad idea, stupid “

Matt ducked as he swung, grunted as a fist struck his chest. He gripped and turned, then let go. Liam flew ten feet and landed hard, howling with the pain.

Baby. He’d landed on dirt, not concrete. But the gang was catching up, yelling and puffing. Matt took off again, past the garage and up old Mrs. Matelot’s driveway. He glanced back, saw Choy out in front, and took a chance. He whirled back just as Choy came up, ducked a high kick… Choy had been watching too many ninja movies and listening to too few senseis… caught the leg, and twisted. Choy yelped in pain and surprise as he spun to the ground.

Matt took off running again with the pack behind him, still yelling, still furious. He swung around the corner and sprinted. The others howled, angrier than ever as they realized Matt had only led them back to his father’s store.

He kept going till he was past the plate-glass windows and on the all-brick side of the store, then skidded to a halt, back to the tree again. The four remaining punks came huffing up and charged him, throwing punches. Matt ducked and shoved, caught a fist in the ribs and held his breath, kicked someone else’s feet out from under him, then turned to face the last two.

But Luco and Herm pulled switchblades, flicked them open, and stepped in, grinning.

Suddenly it wasn’t just bullying anymore. Matt stepped away from the tree and out into the street. His ears told him there were no cars to worry about, but he heard the bus coming. Hope quickened.

Luco thrust, cat-quick, but Matt was quicker. He caught the wrist and twisted as he turned, throwing

Luco against the wall of the store. Luco shouted with pain, but Herm lunged even as Matt turned back.

The knife ripped his shirt, but he stepped aside and kicked the kid’s feet out from under him, then saw the dead branch that had fallen with his minor earth tremor and snatched it up. He whirled it moulinet style, glaring at Choy and Liam as they came panting up. They drew back, hesitating as they saw the two switchblades on the ground. Matt could see them wondering what he could do with that stick…

A diesel horn brayed. Matt jumped back. The boys scattered away, and the bus pulled up, slowing for the corner. The door hissed open. Matt dropped the stick and jumped aboard.

Luco and his gang realized what was happening and shouted, running toward the bus, but the door closed as the driver started moving to turn the corner. A couple of thuds clattered on the side of the bus, and the three other passengers made disapproving noises. “Kids today!” one grandfather grunted. “Ought to take the strap to every one of them!”

“Thanks, Mr. Joe,” Matt panted.

“Hey, you ain’t been around in months, I got to give you a ride.”

“Really good to be on your bus again,” Matt said fervently. “Sorry about the excitement back there.”

“Them!” Joe said with scorn. “I won’t let them ride my bus no more. Last time I did, one of them lit up a joint, and I sat at the curb for fifteen minutes before he gave up and threw it away. I caught hell from the checker, too.”

Matt nodded. “They’re not much to worry about, as gangs go.”

Actually, he was surprised to find that they weren’t. They had terrorized him through junior high and high school, but now he found out that they couldn’t really fight all that well. They hadn’t been trained, of course, but even as street fighters went, they weren’t much to worry about… clumsy and slow, and they didn’t know very many moves. What had he ever been afraid of?

Well, even the last time he’d been home, they’d been a lot better fighters than he had been, and there had never been fewer than three of them to his one. Now he’d had Sir Guy’s lessons, and Saul’s… and had the muscles Sayeesa had wished on him for her own purposes. And he’d been knighted. In Merovence, that carried a lot of benefits: authority, understanding of military strategy, fighting ability… and courage.

So that was why he hadn’t been swamped by the surge of boyhood fears! Apparently the enchantment of the knighting ceremony stayed with him, even in a nonmagical universe. It made sense… the knowledge and skills were in his brain, no matter how they’d come to be there.

Nonetheless, Matt reminded himself, he still wasn’t any world-class street fighter. It wasn’t just his own improvements that made the neighborhood gang look inept. They really were… and maybe it wasn’t just that he was better, maybe it was that they were worse. Six years of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco could do that. There were a lot worse than them around, and not all that far away, either.

“The neighborhood isn’t what it used to be, Joe,” he said.

“Used to look a lot better,” Joe agreed. “Used to be some nice kids in it, too. Not now, though. Drugs and TV, that’s what it is.”

So it wasn’t just the contrast of the cramped, working-class neighborhood with the fields of Merovence or the luxury of Alisande’s castle. The neighborhood really had gone downhill, and badly. Matt found himself wishing there were some way he could get his parents out of it.

Matt changed buses across from the supermarket. It was a shock to see it closed, but it was a bigger shock to see the chain-link fence around the whole property, even the parking lot. Of course, he hadn’t been down this way in a year or more… six, in his own time… since the last time he’d had to take the bus into Bloomfield, but it was still a shock.

“Six months closed, an’ no sign of anyone startin’ it up again,” said a woman waiting nearby. “Why’d they have to close it down, anyway?”

“Said there was too much shopliftin’,” the other woman answered. “Where they think us poor folks gonna go shoppin’ now?”

Come to think of it, Matt did remember a lot of signs warning people not to shoplift.

Matt caught the bus to Main Street, handed the driver his transfer, and watched the familiar neighborhoods roll by. It still looked awfully run-down compared to Merovence, but at least the urban-renewal project in the shopping district had been very successful. The plastic canopies all along the central blocks made it look much nicer, anyway.

He got off at the post office and enjoyed the feeling of stepping back into a more affluent era as he came into the lobby of the 1930s Federal-Classic building. The ceiling was high, the wainscoting was real wood, and so were the windows. Matt rented a post-office box, wrote the number down on a piece of scrap paper, then also wrote down the longitude and latitude… he still had them memorized from a grade-school assignment. It had been twenty years, but things drummed into young brains tend to stay there.

He bought a hundred stamps, then wrote down the exact wording above the slots for outgoing mail … “local” and “out of town.” After all, he wanted to be able to send Christmas cards, didn’t he? He picked up a couple of the “moving” booklets, with their forms for letting people know his new address, filled out two of them, mailing one to his parents and the other to Mrs. Vogel, the next-door neighbor who had been so kind to him when he was little. When he was a teenager, too, in fact. Then he went out for a stroll.

He went quite a bit faster than strolling, of course. Time was wasting… a week in Merovence for every half hour here.

Around behind the train station he went, through the bridge under the tracks to the far side. He glanced around before he entered… it was an ideal place for an ambush, but also for a tramp to hide out from the rain. It was empty at the moment, though, aside from some stale smells that he didn’t like to think about.

He took up a stance right in the middle, out of sight of anybody but some nosy kid who might happen to be wandering by, and began to recite the words of the parchment that had originally brought him to Merovence.

They were nonsense syllables.

Matt tried again, beginning to sweat. He’d been speaking this language for five years now! He should know it as thoroughly as he knew English! But the words remained stubbornly opaque, devoid of meaning. If they would just start making sense, his mind would be in tune with the universe in which the language was spoken; if he could let the beauty of the words sink in, begin to feel the body-rush that came with that beauty, he would find himself in Alisande’s castle.

He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it had taken two months and more of reciting those syllables, of digging into the origins of those words, before their meaning had come beating through.

Surely he couldn’t expect the magic to work on the first try!

Could he?

He tried again. Better this time… he began to feel magical force gather around him, but only its fringes.

It didn’t build. He tried a third time, felt the magic field gather again, felt it starting to build…

Abruptly, it was gone, like an electrical motor starting up then jerking to a halt as a fuse blew. Matt stood, devastated and aghast, feeling as though a rug had been yanked out from under him and the floor with it, leaving him trying to stand on thin air. Such a complete and sudden cancellation of the magic field had nothing to do with how many times Matt recited the verse, nothing to do with the nonmagical nature of his home universe. If the magic had worked at all, it would have continued to build, stronger and stronger with each time he recited the verse, finally transferring him, exhausted but whole, to Merovence. But it had cut off as though someone had thrown a switch… and Matt was sure that someone somehow had. Some enemy had canceled his magic account and left him stranded at home.

He sat down on his heels, rested his back against the wall, put his head in his hands, and thought. Now that he remembered it, he’d been surprised how easy it was to come back to this universe. Could that have been because he’d been born here, and was part of its physical structure? He shuddered at the thought that he might belong here, where he’d always been a loser.

No, he corrected himself… felt like a loser. But the boyhood “winners” had been Liam, Luco, Choy, and Herm, who’d let themselves get addicted to drugs and were now eking out livings with minimum-wage jobs and mugging. They would die in the same part of town they’d been born in, or one very much like it … except that the neighborhood would get worse as they grew older. Matt, whom they had kicked around and bullied and insulted, had graduated from high school, then college, and had finished the coursework for his doctorate. Even if he’d stayed in this universe, he would have had a better life than the neighborhood toughs, who saw themselves as winners.

Or did they? Was that just his teenage perceptions talking? Sure, the neighborhood girls had scorned him and cooed over Liam and Luco… but whom would they gravitate toward now?

Not that it mattered. Matt was married, and to a woman finer by far than any of them… a real princess who had become a real queen, in a universe in which his talents and knowledge made him a winner.

He had to get back to it.

His head snapped up; he looked around, suddenly aware that he was very vulnerable… but the tunnel was still empty with no one in sight, though he did hear footsteps back toward the station. He lowered his head again, but didn’t let his mind wander as it just had. He’d been so deeply sunk in the trance of thought that he wouldn’t have heard any muggers coming up on him. Shame to have to think that way, but there it was.

“Is something wrong, young man?”

Matt looked up. A middle-aged man stood by him, dapper in a gray pin-striped three-piece suit and silk tie. He was lean, with kindly eyes, a straight nose, mustache and goatee. He gazed down at Matt with concern.

Matt pushed himself to his feet, forcing a smile. “Nothing, really. Just kinda tired.”

“No, I can see something is troubling you,” the stranger said, frowning. “Surely there is some way in which I can help.”

Matt shrugged, feeling awkward. He knew the older man meant well, but was really butting in. Still, he was only trying to help, so Matt forced himself to be civil. “I’m just having trouble figuring out how to get home, that’s all.”

“Oh!” The stranger’s face relaxed, even smiling a little as he reached inside his suit coat. “Well, if that’s all… “

“No, no, I’m afraid money won’t help!” Matt held up a palm to keep him from pulling out his wallet. “I can’t get home with a train ticket.”

“Not by train? But… ” The stranger glanced back at the station.

“Why am I under the tracks?” Matt forced a smile. “Good place to be alone to think.”

“Sometimes thinking is more easily done by talking.” The old gent looked sympathetic again. “How can you get home?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Matt searched for a generality that would satisfy the old busybody.

“I’m from far away, you see, and it’s a matter of working the system.”

“Oh, bureaucracy!” The stranger smiled. “I’m expert in that. Nirobus, at your service.” He held out a gloved hand.

“Matt Mantrell.” Matt shook the hand, warming to the old chap in spite of himself.

“What is your situation, Mr. Mantrell? A lost passport?”

“More like a refused visa,” Matt said slowly.

Nirobus frowned. “Can you be more specific?”

“Only hypothetically.” Matt felt drawn to the old guy, drawn to talk. “You’re right, maybe talking it out would help. But I’d have to try to explain it to you by metaphor… the real situation is just too hard to believe.”

“Try me.” Nirobus smiled, gesturing back toward the station. “But why don’t we sit down while we chat? This tunnel is certainly not conducive to thought.”

“You’ve got a point,” Matt admitted, and fell in beside him, going back to the station. “I don’t want you to miss your train, though.”

“Plenty of time… I came early. Proceed with your metaphor, young man. Was it as difficult for you to come here as it is to go home?”

“No, it was very easy.” Matt halted, frowning. “Maybe too easy.”

“Indeed!” Nirobus sat on a bench, gesturing to the place beside him. “It would seem that you had no reason to expect difficulty.”

Matt sat, gazing out unseeing over the tracks and the weathered concrete bridge. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, just that it was a sort of inertia.”

“Inertia?” Nirobus frowned.

“Yes, inertia.” Matt took a deep breath. “Okay, here comes the metaphor… magic. Let’s say I’m transported to a foreign country by a spell.”

“Magical transportation?” Nirobus smiled. “How convenient! No passports, no customs… yes, I think the idea could catch on. I rather like your metaphor, young man.”

Matt grinned at the old guy, feeling a chime of rapport. If Nirobus could let his imagination wander, he was a kindred spirit. “All right, so some enchanter waves a magic wand and transports me to France in the blink of an eye… but he has to expend a lot of magical energy to do it, because I’m part of America and belong here.”

“So you have magical inertia!” Nirobus clapped his gloved hands in delight. “A tendency to stay in the universe in which you were born! Magical physics… what a fascinating notion! So when you came back, it didn’t surprise you that it required very little effort… inertia was helping to pull you.”

“Like a rubber band, sort of.” Matt grinned.

“But now you think your return was too easy,” Nirobus remembered. “What do you suspect… an enemy sorcerer, not magical inertia?”

Matt felt a chill inside. “That’s the obvious guess, yes.”

“But couldn’t this enemy sorcerer have used your inertia against you?”

Matt lifted his head, eyes widening. “Yes, he could! Our hypothetical sorcerer could just increase my magical inertia, and the spell that transported me to Merovence before, wouldn’t be strong enough now!”

“Merovence?” Nirobus frowned.

“France,” Matt amended.

“By any other name.” Nirobus smiled. “Yes, I see… a contraction of ‘Merovingian province.’ But why inertia? Why not simply imagine that your enemy magus has erected some sort of magical barrier to keep you from going back to, ah, Merovence?”

Panic started at the thought… what was this nameless evil sorcerer doing to his Alisande and her kingdom? Matt fought down the idea and concentrated fiercely on not looking like a madman. “That’s an even simpler way to look at it, yes. So I have to figure out how to defeat that magical barrier.”

“Or to overcome that magical inertia, if you wish to look at it the first way,” Nirobus agreed. “There ought to be some way to do it, no matter which it is. Can you apply physics again?”

“Only what I learned in high school,” Matt admitted, shamefaced. He remembered a diagram of opposed forces. “It should just be a matter of energy. Whether it’s a wall, inertia, or an actual force pushing me away from Merovence, I only need to summon enough force to counter it… and something to push against.”

“A lever long enough to move you between worlds, to paraphrase Archimedes, and a fulcrum upon which to rest it?”

“Yeah.” For an instant, despair almost overwhelmed Matt. “But what kind of fulcrum? What kind of backstop? To push against something, say a piano you’re trying to roll onto a truck, you need to brace your feet against the ground… but how do you brace yourself when you’re trying to use magical force?”

“Perhaps you have the wrong analogy,” Nirobus suggested. “Perhaps you need an anchor, not a backstop.”

“Yes!” Matt lifted his head, hope rising again. “If I can throw the magical equivalent of a cable to someone in Merovence, he could pull me in… or at least anchor me so that my own efforts won’t push me away.”

“An excellent thought!” Nirobus nodded. “But your ‘anchor’ would have to be a magician himself. Who do you know who could do it?”

“Oh, that’s no problem… Saul! The Witch Doctor! He’s common to both universes… born in this one, same as I was, but happier in Merovence because he’s better suited to it!”

“Again, the same as you are,” Nirobus murmured.

“Yes!…What?”

“This is a very interesting metaphor you’ve constructed,” the older man said, amused. He waved a hand in a rolling motion. “Please go on. I take it you must establish some sort of contact with this witch doctor?”

“Yes! If he knows what’s going on, he can be my anchor.” Matt frowned. “If it’s just a matter of my trying to push against magical inertia, or break through an enchanted wall.”

“What else could it be?”

“Now that I think of it,” Matt said slowly, “I remember the magical force gathering around me, then abruptly disappearing, as though it had been deliberately canceled.”

“Do you really!”

Matt eyed the stranger warily. “You wouldn’t be a psychiatrist, would you?”

Nirobus held up both gloved hands, as though reaching for the sky. “Innocent.”

“Well, somebody isn’t. Whatever sorcerer is trying to strand me here is keeping a magical eye on me, just waiting for me to try to get home, then countering my spells, presumably with his own.”

Nirobus shook his head sadly. “If I were a psychiatrist… “

“Don’t worry, it’s all hypothetical.”

“Very reassuring. But, young man, do you really think your hypothetical sorcerer could spare all his time for surveillance of you?”

Matt caught the unspoken question: Do you really think you’re that important? Well, he knew he was, in Merovence, but had to admit to himself that there was a snag in the idea. “Good point. If he wants me out of the way, it’s because I’d be an obstacle to some major project he’s got going.”

“Could he assign a minion to surveillance of you?”

“Maybe,” Matt said slowly, “but why would the minion let me build up some power before he stopped me? Wouldn’t he have cut me off at the first sign of trying to return?”

“Slammed the door in your face?” Nirobus frowned. “Perhaps he didn’t have the power himself, but had to call his master.”

“Could be.” Matt nodded. “Or the minion might not have been human.”

Nirobus stared, appalled. “You aren’t thinking of some sort of monster, I hope!”

“No, I was shifting metaphors even worse… so far I was grinding the gears, in fact. Think about it in terms of computer programming for a minute. If our hypothetical sorcerer left the magical equivalent of a subroutine, a sort of watchdog spell, to monitor my magical efforts and automatically counter them, that could explain why the power was able to begin to build up a little before the ‘watchdog’ canceled it.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Nirobus said slowly, “but would your hypothetical sorcerer know about computer programming?”

“Why not?” Matt said airily. “After all, he’s my hypothesis… I can make him think any way I want.”

Nirobus stared at him in surprise, then laughed with delight.

Matt grinned, liking the man more and more. “So the question is… am I facing a man or an enchantment?”

“Which do you prefer?”

“I’d rather have the enchantment,” Matt said slowly. “A resident spell should be easier to overcome than an actual, thinking sorcerer who could switch spells if I overcame his first one.”

“While he was sending for his master, to hit you with really impressive power.” Nirobus nodded. “Either way, though, you would need enough force to roll over the blocking spell or the magical inertia.”

“Yes, I would.” Matt smiled.

Nirobus smiled quizzically. “That doesn’t seem to concern you overly much.”

“Not really.” Matt grinned. “I know just the source for all the power I need.”

“Do you really!” Nirobus stared.

“Yes: the patron saint of Merovence, provided he wants me back there… and I think he does.”

“I see.” A shadow crossed Nirobus’ face, then he forced a smile.

Now it was Matt’s turn to be amused. “Don’t believe in saints? Don’t worry… this is all metaphorical, anyway.”

“And hypothetical.” The idea seemed to cheer Nirobus considerably. “So, then! You seem to have worked out your transportation problem admirably.”

Matt stared, then gazed off into space, adding up all the factors they’d just talked about. “I have, haven’t I?”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Nirobus stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “And I’m very glad to see you so cheered.”

“Thanks.” Matt gave him a grateful smile, wondering how he was going to get rid of the nice old guy so he could try the spell again.

Nirobus glanced at his watch. “I still have fifteen minutes before my train. If you’ll excuse me, I think I had better take precautions against the ride into the city.”

“Precautions?” Matt frowned, then remembered that there weren’t any bathrooms on the commuter trains. “Oh. Right. You might not have much time changing to the PATH train.”

“Quite so.” Nirobus gave him a warm smile. “You’re quite understanding, for a man so young. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll see you again in ten minutes or so.” He started to turn away, then turned back with a twinkle in his eye. “Or perhaps I won’t.”

Matt grinned. “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“Or unless you’re swallowed by an allegory.” Nirobus shook his hand. “Good luck, young man… or should I say, bon voyage?”

“Thanks, either way.” Matt returned the handshake, then watched the older man pace swiftly around the side of the train station, off toward the nearest coffee shop. Too bad the station itself wasn’t open between rush hours; Nirobus was in a rush, indeed.

Then Matt looked around him and was appalled to see how much more mellow the light had become.

How many weeks had passed in Merovence while he’d been talking the problem through with Nirobus?

Not that there had been much choice, but it still dismayed him.

It must be getting into rush hour now. The commuter trains would be coming in, and people would be streaming through that tunnel. Maybe he’d better find another hiding place.

But there wasn’t time. Matt hurried along, hoping he could get back to Merovence before the 4:15 came roaring in to disrupt his concentration. He ducked in under the bridge, stood in the center where he should be between the sets of tracks so there was no Cold Iron right above him, and visualized Saul’s face as he chanted softly,

Even as doggerel, it was pretty bad, but it contained the call phrases Saul had given Sir Guy to use in an emergency, and if this wasn’t an emergency, Matt didn’t know what was. But he felt the force of magic beginning to gather about him again, though faintly, so faintly! He held his breath, listening with more than his ears, hoping.

All he heard was the breeze that blew through the tunnel, and the distant noise of traffic on Main Street.

In desperation, he cupped his hands around his ears, trying to shut out even that slight sound so that he could concentrate on ones that would come from his mind, but they only concentrated the sound as a seashell does, making the white-noise hiss that children thought of as “hearing the ocean.” Matt listened to it with fierce determination, trying to listen through it, to hear Saul’s voice.

Then a freight train came rumbling through.

Matt groaned aloud, not that he could hear himself. If Saul did send words, he wouldn’t hear them through the roar.

Then he realized that the rumbling overhead had modulated, was forming into words. The more he concentrated, the clearer they became: “… the hell have you been? She’s worried as fury!”

Matt could imagine his sweet wife in a worry-induced rage all too easily. “Bushwhacked!” he said, as loudly as he dared. “Anchor me! Hold me in mind!”

There was a second’s silence, and Matt’s heart dropped, afraid that Saul was gone. But the Witch Doctor’s voice came again with determination firmed by anger. “Right. Holding. Go!”

“Thanks,” Matt called. He hoped he could go. He took a deep breath, hoping the freight would keep going long enough to hide his words from anybody who might happen by. He muttered,

He felt the magic field strengthen, and for a moment his hopes soared. Then the counterforce hit like a hammer blow, scattering the magic field like water exploding out of a shattered bottle. Matt stood, stunned, pain pounding through his head, the world blurring around him. He sagged against the concrete wall, and couldn’t tell if the roaring in his ears was the freight train or the effect of an inner concussion.

It faded, and Matt heard the traffic whirring on Main Street. He took a deep breath, shaken, and wondered what had happened. It was almost as though the enemy sorcerer had been watching Matt in person, had known he was about to try another spell, had stood waiting, ready to hit with everything he had. But how? How could he have known?

Nirobus.

Matt stared. That kindly, dapper, sophisticated old gent? The very picture of a twentieth-century urbanite? How could he be an agent for a medieval sorcerer? It had to be Matt’s imagination!

But he had been in an awful hurry to get away. Had he been looking for a rest room, or a chance to report back to Merovence? Certainly he hadn’t seemed terribly surprised by Matt’s “metaphor.” Matt had thought he was very understanding… but why hadn’t he thought Matt was crazy?

Maybe because he knew Merovence was real!

Matt gave himself a shake. He was really getting paranoid, blaming a nice old guy like that for his own failures. He sagged against the wall again, thinking wildly, searching for a way around the magical wall…

A way around.

Matt straightened, fired with hope. A bypass! If he could open up a channel that went around whatever magical sentry had been trained on him, he could get all the power he needed to fight back. He might even be able to return to Merovence through that channel, a sort of magical detour! And he had one available, of course… the Spider King, who had lived in both universes and a great many others besides.

With that bypass, he didn’t need all that much power, certainly no more than St. Moncaire could lend across the interuniversal Void. He thought of Saul and felt an answering rapport. He was still anchored, St. Moncaire was still listening… he was almost home.

He glanced around for a spiderweb, and wasn’t surprised to find one… no one exactly came through this tunnel with a dust rag. A broom, maybe, but he or she didn’t look up all that often.

Matt did, though. He stared up at the small black dot in the center of the web and chanted,

Suddenly there was tension in the air, like the feeling of stress that comes as a thunderstorm is building.

Something was working somewhere. Matt took a deep breath and began to recite again,

His heart soared as the syllables began to make sense again:

Now he felt the magical force build around him as the saint of another universe laid pull upon pull, tugging at the soul and the body that came with it. Outside that, though, Matt could feel great forces piling up, resisting… but he could sense some sort of wall pushing against them, straining, straining, as the world began to spin, and dizziness seized him.