Chapter 10
Time seemed to have stood still on the terrace—or at least slowed to a sluggish trickle. Kurt was still staring at where his shadow should have been with shock. Raymond had gone back inside and now came out holding two glasses of a sparkling blond drink.
"Prosecco," he said, "you've had a shock."
Kurt started to say that he didn't drink, but then realized he was very thirsty and had no idea what the water was like in this city. Where he might be was one thing, but the time he was in was clearly not the twenty-first century and all the city's beauty could not disguise the bad smell coming off the canals.
He drank the prosecco. It was cold and a bit sharp and to Kurt's limited taste, quite wonderful. Giacomo, the man who had brought him from the cathedral, had followed Raymond out of the terrace, with the bottle in one hand and a tray in the other, laden with untidy ham sandwiches. Kurt discovered he was ravenous despite having eaten half a pizza all by himself back at home.
He ate three sandwiches and drank two glasses of the sparkling wine before he asked Raymond any of the questions crowding his mind. The silver-haired scientist, or magician, or whatever he was, sat in companionable silence while Kurt finished his meal, though he ate nothing himself.
"Feeling better?" He asked, noticing the empty tray.
"Yes, thanks." Kurt said.
He put his glass down on the small table beside him and stretched, taking conscious note of how each limb, each muscle felt. There was no tiredness, no weakness, no aches. It might have just been the wine, but he felt energy coursing through him even when he technically hadn't slept for two days straight.
Raymond was smiling. "Tell me about yourself and your life in the other world."
"You don't know then?" Kurt asked. He had assumed Raymond must be a powerful all-knowing sort of magician.
"Only where you must have come from and approximately when," Raymond answered, "nothing about you personally, Blaine hasn't exactly shared anything about you yet. He just gushes about your apparently incredible personality." He said, and Kurt blushed.
"I don't know what you want to know." He said.
"Everything!" Raymond exclaimed, with just a hint of a smile.
"Hmmm, well...in my real life, I'm very miserable. I have a lovely family and everything, but I'm very lonely and having a lot of problems at school. People seem to enjoy making fun of me all the time because well, I'm different." He said.
"Different, how?" Raymond asked confused.
"Well, I'm not a common guy, my appearance, my voice, my clothes, and mainly because I like boys the way I'm supposed to like girls." He said, knowing from his short experience in the city that apparently that was not an issue in this place.
"Oh, is that a problem in your world?" Ray asked stunned.
"Yeah, a big one, especially in the town where I live. They are very conservative so being hmmm...gay is considered a sin. And there's this one guy at school who's giving me a very hard time. He's always harassing me and last week, he even threatened to kill me." He confessed, and started to share all his life experiences with the gray-haired man.
Raymond was leaning forward, listening carefully to every word. He spent the next hour questioning Kurt about every detail of his ordinary life, even quite trivial things like what his family ate at mealtimes and where they did their shopping. His dark eyes glittered at Kurt's descriptions of quite mundane things like grocery stores, the choir room, football games. Even pizza, which Kurt assumed he would know all about, caused Raymond's brow to wrinkle in puzzlement.
"A round flat bread with cooked tomatoes and cheese on top?" He asked. "Are you sure?"
Kurt smiled. "Or pepperoni, ham, chicken, meat, or even beans, for all I know. Anything goes these days."
Raymond looked blank. "We do not have those things you mention in Bellezza. Are they good to eat?"
"Yes—some of them—but not necessarily on a pizza," Kurt said.
Raymond leaned back in his chair and stretched, cracking his knuckles.
"Now it's your turn." Kurt said. "Tell me about Bellezza, about the Kingdom, about the other ones, about Talia."
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything!" Kurt gestured around him. "I don't understand any of it. Blaine has explained a few things, but I want to know more. For example, why am I here and why don't I have a shadow, and why were you expecting someone like me? The guy who brought me here said I was in danger."
Raymond got up and walked over to the stone parapet. He looked out over the silver roof of the cathedral. Then he turned and gazed at Kurt.
"To answer your questions, I have to start further back. Some time ago, a traveler came from your world to mine. It was hundreds of years ago in your time, though not in mine. He was the first to discover the secret, the first member of the brotherhood I belong to. He was the first itinerante."
"What's that?" Kurt asked.
"A wanderer. For us, a wanderer between worlds. He was a powerful scientist from your world. You may have heard of him. His name is Edward Lombardi." Raymond paused and looked hopefully at Kurt, who just shook his head.
"Ever since Doctor Lombardi made that first journey," Raymond continued, "there have been itineranti working on the principles by which such journeys are made. It is a difficult work and sometimes dangerous. As time has gone by, we have discovered the risks of crossing from one side to the other."
"Like in this show that my brother likes, Star Trek," Kurt said, and noticed immediately that he was going to have to explain himself further. "It's a TV show about the future. They must never tamper with the time-space continuum or there are terrible consequences. And they must never interfere with alien cultures. That's the Prime Directive." He explained.
"I do not understand most of that," Raymond said, slowly, "but the spirit sounds right. Every journey between your world and ours is fraught with hazards and is not to be undertaken lightly. It can be done only by those who have studied the science of the itineranzza and have familiarized themselves with its pitfalls and restraints."
"Hang on," Kurt said, "I haven't done any of that. I just held the notebook one day and fell asleep thinking about the city. Only the first time it wasn't Bellezza. I was thinking about Venice, which I think is like Bellezza in my world."
"Ve-nice," Raymond repeated, thoughtfully. "It doesn't sound like a Bellezzan or even a Talian word, but I have heard it before. It was what Doctor Lombardi called our city."
"Anyway, I haven't done any of that training you said."
"And yet you are a itinerante," Raymond stated, "and that puts you in great danger here."
"Why?" Kurt asked, a little disappointed. He thought this place was his safe haven, but apparently he was in danger in both worlds. "You haven't really explained me why I'm here at all."
"It is very hard for you to understand," Raymond said, pacing the terrace, "I don't claim to understand it all myself and yet, I have been studying this science for years. You say you 'held the book'. May I see it?"
A little reluctantly, Kurt drew the book from the pocket of his real clothes, which he still wore under his Bellezzan clothes, and handed it to Raymond.
The man held it reverently, like a Bible, turning it in his hands. "Do you know where this came from?" He asked.
"My dad found it in some antique store in Columbus, La Sorte or something like that." Kurt explained.
"No. Whatever that means, it did not come from there. It was made in the workshop of my brother Rodolfo, here in Bellezza."
"Then how did it get to Lima, to my world?"
"I took it there myself."
Kurt gasped. "You've been to my world?"
"Of course," Raymond replied, "did I not tell you that I'm a itinerante too?"
The thought of Raymond striding around Kurt's world in his black velvet clothes made him smile. But he'd probably just be put down as an aging hippy and not raise an eyebrow; people would assume he'd wandered over from some mental hospital, not another dimension.
Raymond handed the notebook back to Kurt. "Look after it. Don't show it to anyone else. There are those who would take it from you."
"But why?" Kurt asked. "What good would it do them?"
"It might help them to discover the secret to travel to your world. More importantly, if you lost it, you wouldn't be able to get back." Raymond said, gravely.
"Who do you mean?" Kurt inquired. "Other itinerantes?"
"Itineranti," Raymond corrected him, "when you're talking about more than one itinerante it's itineranti. And, no. Even if someone else's talisman fell into its hand a true member of the brotherhood would not take such a shortcut. But we have enemies. People who would like to plunder your world and bring its magic here."
"Magic?" Kurt asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice. "There's no magic in my world. It's completely ordinary."
"And yet you can move large numbers of people in metal boxes under the ground and on the ground and even above the ground!" Raymond said with awe. "You have machines you can talk into to order your dinner and other machines to bring it to you. You have many ways of communicating with people miles away from you and reading books in libraries in other countries. Is not all of that magic?"
"No," Kurt replied, "I understand why it seems that way to you because you haven't got things like airplanes and the Internet and phones. But they're not magic—they're inventions. You know, technology—science."
Raymond seemed unconvinced. "What I do in my laboratory is science," he said, "but we'll let that pass. It is your kind of science, which I would call magic, that the Smythes are after."
"The Smythes," Kurt repeated, "are they your enemies?"
Raymond nodded. "Our enemies." He corrected. "They are one of the oldest families in the Kingdoms of Talia besides the Andersons. A big family, always marrying and breeding. Five city-states in this Kingdom are ruled by them as dukedoms or principalities. And they won't rest until they rule them all and steal the crown from the Andersons. Even the Pope is one of them."
"The Pope? You have a Pope?" Kurt asked, surprised.
"Of course," Raymond exclaimed, "every Kingdom had its Pope. Don't you have one? Ours rules, technically, in Remora. But his older brother, Rinaldo Smythe, is really in charge."
"What would they do if they got into my world?"
"If they got not only into your world but into your time," Raymond explained, "they would bring back all kinds of magic—cures for illnesses, spells to make inanimate objects move, mystical weapons which can kill and aim from long distances away...Do I have to go on?"
"And the itineranti?" Kurt asked. "What do they do? They don't take any of those things, do they?"
"No, they—or I might say 'we,' since you are now one of us, whether you like it or not—do not bring anything from your world to ours except what ensures a safe return. We have become guardians of the secret of this kind of travel. Ever since Doctor Lombardi made that first journey by accident, it has needed someone to watch over any comings or goings between worlds."
Kurt frowned. "Hang on. There's something I don't follow. I mean all of it, really, but didn't you say this doctor was from hundreds of years ago in my world?"
"Yes, the sixteenth century. He came from London, from the time of the Queen Elizabeth."
"There's a new one now," Kurt said, he knew a lot about royalty from his world, "Queen Elizabeth the Second. So if he came from that time and you all wear these old-fashioned clothes, is this the sixteenth century?"
Raymond nodded sighing. "It is, and that is exactly why the Smythes are so eager to get their hands on your twentieth-century magic."
"Twenty-first now," Kurt corrected him absentmindedly. His thoughts were racing. He was beginning to grasp something of the situation, even though there were huge gaps in what he understood. "You mean the Smythes don't want to wait till all those things are invented here. They want to sort of speed up civilization?"
Raymond looked at him sadly. "If it is civilization to kill vast numbers of people at a stroke, then yes, that is what they want."
"But it's not all like that," Kurt protested, "you said so yourself, there'd be cures for illnesses, things like that."
"Are they harmless? Would the Smythes know how to use the magic that is supposed to be making you better?"
Kurt thought about it for a minute. He had a vision of some sort of crazy villain in a velvet cloak trying to inject chemicals into a Bellezzan who might or might not have some mortal illness. "No. You'd have to be a trained twenty-first-century doctor, I suppose."
"And if they did have these cures and the skills to apply them," Raymond persisted, "do you think they would be made available to all? No. The Smythes want to help only the Smythes. They would steal whatever made them strong, made them livelong, made their women have easy childbirth and healthy babies. And the devil could take everyone else."
Raymond was striding up and down the terrace now, angry and rather frightening. For all that Kurt was still grasping the rules of the game he was caught up in, he was glad he was playing on the same side as Raymond. The itinerante would make a terrifying enemy.
Suddenly, Raymond stopped, as Giacomo came struggling through the door.
"Master," he panted, "the Reman Ambassador is downstairs. He wants an audience with you."
Swiftly, as he spoke, the servant pressed two fingers of his right hand together and touched his brow twice to later kiss them. Kurt frowned confused at the gesture, but tried not to laugh. He had seen Jeff and Trent made the same gesture when Blaine had mentioned that Kurt came from Amerighi.
"Tell him I am not here." He informed his servant.
"I tried that, Master, but one of the other servants had previously informed him that you were here," the man said, "and he says that 'his man' hasn't seen you go out today."
"His man?" Raymond said outraged. "So, they are setting spies on me now, do they?" He turned quickly to Kurt. "See? We just met and they are already behind our backs. Quick into my laboratory! If their spy has been watching the palace, he might have seen you come in. But there is more than one way of leaving. We must get you away."
Kurt followed Raymond to the laboratory, but he was confused. How was he to get away? And what was the Reman Ambassador to him? Raymond strode over to the wall and grasped a candle-holder in the shape of a peacock with its tail at full spread. It was the most beautiful piece of workmanship, and Kurt wondered why he hadn't noticed it when he first entered. It was made of silver, with every color of every feather picked out in bright enamels. The blue of the peacock's breast and the greens and purples of its tail shone in the darkness of the room like a beacon signaling a safe harbor.
Raymond wrenched the peacock's head around and the wall behind it swung back. Kurt couldn't believe his eyes. It was a new secret passage. "Wow." He murmured. But Raymond was already hurrying him into the passage and grasping the peacock's head again. Kurt could already hear footsteps outside the laboratory door.
"Just follow the passage," he said to Kurt, "it will bring you to Blaine's chambers. Push lightly on the door when you come to the other end and you will find yourself in his private chambers."
Kurt stopped on the threshold trying to assimilate this new information. It's not like he didn't want to see Blaine, but the thought of being alone with him in his private room was something that made his cheeks blush in the reddest red of all reds in the world.
"Is that correct? I mean, it's his private room and besides, who's this man? Why do I have to run away from him?"
Raymond leaned close; his large dark eyes were fixed on Kurt's like a hypnotist. "Because the person coming up the stairs is Rinaldo Smythe," he said softly, "and if he ever finds you, he will happily kill you for that notebook. Now go and I will follow as soon as I can. Take this fire-stone to light you on your way." He searched inside his robes and thrust something into Kurt's hand about the size and shape of a large egg.
"Tell Blaine everything, don't hold back anything, but make sure you two are alone first, okay?"
"But-"
But Kurt didn't have time to finish his sentence, because the man pushed him inside the passage and the wall closed-up behind him. Kurt stood inside the secret passage, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. It was pitch black inside.
Then, he held up the 'egg' and watched, fascinated, as it started to glow. Soon it was warm to the touch and glowing red. It gave out a soft light but enough for him to see that he was in a narrow stone corridor with an uneven floor. It smelled musty but not damp. After listening for a while at the door behind the peacock sconce and finding he could hear nothing through its thickness, he shrugged and headed down the passage, the fire-stone making weird patterns on the walls as he went. Again he noticed that he cast no shadow.
Shrugging, he kept walking. "Gosh, in what mess did I get myself into?" He muttered.