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.
Chapter Four
Matt’s stomach lurched and tried to climb up through his esophagus. He fought it down, telling himself he wasn’t really falling, was just in free fall in a weightless void, but it was hard to believe, for all he could see was a flux and flow of colors all about him, colors that broke into tiny particles and intermingled, swirling together until they all seemed to be a sort of dirty white, making his stomach rebel against the lurch and swing and the primordial fear of the endless plunge.
Then hardness slammed against his side and arm, pain shot through him, and the stomach-sickness vanished into that pain as the colors fell into their places, coalescing into gray stone and the blue denim of Saul’s jeans as he dropped to his knees beside Matt. “Hey, man, are you all right?”
“Good… training,” Matt managed to gasp.
“Good training?” Saul stared, then grinned. “Yeah, you fell on your side, just the way I taught you. Welcome back!”
“Th-thanks,” Matt managed, then closed his eyes and started a prayer of thanks to St. Moncaire before he passed out.
He was almost feeling restored an hour later. Of course, that was probably due as much to his having changed back into doublet and hose as to the brew that Saul had prepared, standing by his elbow to be sipped every few seconds.