Spellsinger

by Alan Dean Foster

  They were rising and moving to flank the wolverine and gazing at Jon-Tom in a decidedly unfriendly manner. The wolverine himself had regained his composure and was sliding an ugly-looking mace from the loop on his own belt.

  "Steady on, mate," the otter urged his companion, sword out and committed now.

  The wolverine was bouncing the spiked iron head of the mace up and down in one palm, gripping the handle with the other. "Maybe I ban wrong about that harmony." He eyed the man's throat. "Maybe I ban eliminate that voice altogether, yah?" He started forward, encountered a waiter who started to curse him, then saw the mace and fled into the crowd.

  "Is too crowded in here though. I tink I meet you outside, hokay?"

  "Hokay," said Jon-Tom readily. He moved as if to leave, got his right hand under the edge of the table, and heaved. Table, drinks, remnants of their greasy meal and platterware showered down on the wolverine, his companions, and several unsuspecting occupants of other tables. The innocent bystanders took exception to the barrage. One of the wolverine's associates side-stepped the flying table and jabbed his sword at the otter's face. Mudge ducked under the marten's thrust and kept his sword ready to challenge the emerging armadillo while neatly kicking the bellicose marten in the nuts. The stricken animal grabbed himself and went to his knees.

  Among those who had received the dubious decorations preferred by Jon-Tom's action were a pair of female coatis whose delicacy of shape and flash of eye were matched by the outrage in their voices. They had drawn slim rapiers and were struggling to join the fray.

  Jon-Tom had moved backward and to his left, this being the only space still not filled with potential combatants, and was quickly joined by Mudge. They continued backing until they upset another table and its patrons. This instituted a chain reaction which led with astonishing rapidity to a general mayhem that threatened to involve every one in the establishment.

  Only the chefs and bartenders kept their calm. They remained invulnerable behind their protective circular counter, defending liquor and food as assiduously as they had the honor and person of their gleaming white star performer. Only when some stumbling battler intruded on their territorial circle did their heavy clubs come into play. Waiters and waitresses huddled behind this front line of defense, casually making book on the outcome of the fight or downing drinks intended for otherwise occupied patrons.

  The fight whirlpooled around this central bastion of calm as the room was filled with yelps and meows, squeaks and squeals and chirps of pain and outrage.

  It was an arboreal that almost got Jon-Tom. He was effectively if unartistically using his long staff to fend off the short sword thrusts of an outraged pika when Mudge yelled, "Jon-Tom... duck!"

  As it was, the bola-wielding mallard missed his neck but got his weapon entangled in the club end of Jon-Tom's staff. He shoved down hard on it. In order to remain airborne the fowl had to surrender his weapon, but not without dropping instead a stream of insults on the tall human. Jon-Tom had time to note the duck's kilt of orange and green. He wondered if the different kilt colors signified species or some sort of genus-spanning clan equivalent.

  There was little time for sociological contemplation. The marten had recovered from Mudge's low blow and was moving to put the sharp edge of his blade through Jon-Tom's midsection. Instinctively he tilted the staff crosswise. The club end came over and around. It missed the agile marten, but the entangled bird's bola caught around the weasel's neck.

  Dropping his sword, he pulled the device free of the staff and stumbled away, fighting to free his neck from the strangling cord. Jon-Tom, momentarily clear of attackers, hunted through the crowd for his companion.

  Mudge was close by, kicking furniture in the way of potential assailants, throwing mugs and other eating utensils at them whenever possible, avoiding hand-to-hand combat wherever he could.

  Jon-Tom took no pride, felt no pleasure in his newfound capacity for violent self-defense. If he could only get out of this dangerous madhouse and back home to the peace and quiet of his little apartment! But that distant, familiar haven had receded ever farther into memory, had reached the point where it existed only as misty history compared to the all too real blood and fury surrounding him.

  Thank God, he thought frantically, fending off another attacker, for Clothahump's ministrations. Even a well-bandaged wound would have broken open again by now, but he felt nothing in his formerly injured side. He was well and truly healed.

  That would not save him if one of many sword or pike thrusts punctured him anew. The indiscriminate nature of the fighting was more frightening than anything else now. It was impossible to tell potential friend from foe.

  In vain he looked across the milling crest of the fight for the entrance. It was seemingly at least a mile away across an ocean of battling fur and steel. A desperate examination of the room seemed to show no other exit save via the central bastion of the bar and food counter, whose defenders were not admitting refugees. That left only the windows, an idea the panting Mudge quickly quashed.

  "Blimey, mate, you must be daft! That glass be 'alf an inch thick in places and thicker where 'tis beveled. I'd sooner take a sword thrust than slice meself t' bloody ribbons on that.

  "There be an alley out back. Let's make our way in that direction."

  "I don't see any doors there," said Jon-Tom, straining to see past the rear booths.

  "Surely there's a service entryway. I'll settle now meself for a garbage chute."

  Sure enough, they eventually discovered a single low doorway hidden by stacks of crates and piles of garbage. The close-packed mob made progress difficult, but they forced their way slowly toward the promise of freedom and safety. Only Jon-Tom's overbearing height enabled them to keep their goal in view. To the other brawlers he must have looked like an ambling lighthouse.

  Already his shining snakeskin cape was torn and bloodstained. Better it than me, he thought gratefully. It was not a pretty riot. The only rules were those of survival.

  He passed one squirrel prone on the floor, tail sodden and matted with blood. His left leg was missing below the knee. So much blood and spilled drink and food had accumulated on the floor, in fact, that one of the greatest dangers was losing one's footing on the increasingly treacherous planking.

  Jon-Tom watched as a cape-clad coyote picked over the unconscious form of a badly bleeding fox. While his attention was thus temporarily diverted, someone grabbed his left arm. He turned to swing the staff one-handed or jab as was required. So far he hadn't been forced to utilize the concealed spearpoint and hoped he'd never have to.

  The figure that had grabbed him was completely swathed in maroon and blue material. He could discern little of the figure save that the mostly hidden face seemed to be human. The short figure tugged hard and urged him back behind a temporary wall formed by a trio of fat porcupines, who, for self-evident reasons, were having little trouble fending off any combatant foolish enough to come close.

  He decided there was time later for questions, since the figure was pulling him toward the haven promised by the back door, and that was his intended destination anyway.

  "Hurry it up!" Though muffled by fabric the voice was definitely human. "The cops have been called and should be here any second." There was a decided undertone of real fear in that warning, the reason for which Jon-Tom was to discover soon enough.

  Visions of hundreds of furry poliee swarming through the crowd filled his thoughts. From the size and breadth of the conflict he guessed it would take at least that number several more hours to quell the fighting. He was reckoning without the ingenuity of Lynchbany law enforcement.

  Mudge, upon hearing of the incipient arrival of the gendarmes, acted genuinely terrified.

  "That's fair warnin', mate," he yelled above the din, "and we'd best get out or die trying." He redoubled his efforts to clear a path to the door.

  "Why? What will they do?" He swung his staff in a short arc, brought it up beneath the chin of a small but gamely
threatening muskrat who was swinging at Jon-Tom's ankles with a weapon like a scythe. Fortunately, he'd only nicked one trouser leg before Jon-Tom knocked him out. "Do they kill people here for fighting in public?"

  "Worse than that." Mudge was nearly at the back door, fighting to keep potential antagonists out of sword range and the invulnerable porcupines between himself and the rest of the mob. Then he shouted frantically.

  "Quickly--quick now, for your lives!" Jon-Tom thought it peculiar the otter had not sought the identity of their concealed compatriot. "They're here!"

  From his position head-and-shoulders high above the crowd Jon-Tom could see across to the now distant main entrance. He also noted with concern that the chefs and bartenders and waiters had vanished, abandoning their stock to the crowd.

  Four or five figures of indeterminate furry cast stood inside the entryway now. They wore leathern bonnets decorated with flashing ovals of metal. Emblems on shoulder vests glinted in the light from the remaining intact lamps and the windows. There was a crash, and he saw that unmindful of the danger Mudge had outlined, the appearance of the police had actually frightened one of the fighters into following a chair out through a thick window pane. Jon-Tom wondered what horrible fate was in store for the rest of the still battling mob.

  Then he was following the strange figure and Mudge out through the door. As they turned to slam and bar it with barrels behind them he had a last glimpse across the room as the police took action against the combatants within. This was accompanied by a whiff of something awful beyond imagining and concentrated beyond the power of man or beast to endure.

  It weakened him so badly that he barely had strength enough to heave his not-yet-digested dinner all over the far wall. It helped his pride if not his stomach to see that the momentary smell had produced the same effect on Mudge and the maroon-clad stranger. As he knelt in the alley and emptied his nausea-squeezed guts, the pattern he'd glimpsed on the arriving police came back to him.

  Then they were all up and stumbling, running down the cobble-stoned alley, the mist still dense around them and the siriell of garbage like perfume compared to that which was fading with merciful speed behind them.

  "Very... efficient, though I'm not so sure I'd call it humane, even if no one is killed." He clung tightly to his staff, using it for support as they slowed a little.

  "Aye, mate." Mudge jogged steadily alongside him, behind the long-legged stranger. Occasionally he gave a worried, disgusted glance back over a shoulder to check for possible pursuit. None materialized.

  "Indecent it is. You only wish you were dead. It be that way in every town, though. Tis clean and there's no after caterwaulerin' about accidental death or police brutalness and such. There's worse things than takin' an occasional sword in the side, though. Like puking to death.

  "Makes it a good thing for the skunks, though. I've never seen a one of those black and white offal that lacked a good job in any township. 'Tis a brother and sisterhood sort of comradeship they 'ave, which is well for 'em, since none o' the common folk care for their companionship. They keep the peace, I suppose, and keep t' themselves." He shuddered. "And keep in mind, mate, that we were clean across the room from 'em. Those by the front will likely not touch food for days." Several small lizards left their claimed bit of rotting meat, skittered into a hole in the wall while the refugees hurried past, then returned to their scavenging.

  "Never could stand 'em myself, either. I don't like cops and I cannot abide anyone who fights with 'is rear end."

  Noises reached them from the far end of the alley and vestiges of that ghastly odor materialized to stab at Jon-Tom's nostrils and stomach.

  "They're followin'," said a worried Mudge. "Save us from that. I'd far rather be cut."

  "This way!" urged the cloaked figure. They turned up a branch of the alleyway. Mist covered everything, slickened walls and cobblestones and trash underfoot. They plunged onward, heedless of falling.

  Gradually the smell began to recede once more. Jon-Tom was grateful for the time he'd spent on the basketball court, and for the unusual stride that enabled him to keep up with the hyperactive Mudge and their racing and still identityless savior.

  "They took the main passage," said that voice. "This should be safe enough."

  They had emerged on a small side street. Dim will-o'-the-wisp glows came from the warm globes of the street lamps overhead. It was quite dark otherwise, and though the mist curtained the sky Jon-Tom was certain that sunset had come and gone while they'd been dining in the restaurant.

  The stranger unwrapped the muffler covering face and neck and let it hang across shoulders and back. Cloak, shirt, and pants were made of the same maroon material touched with silver thread. The material was neither leather nor cotton but some mysterious organic hybrid. Pants, boots, and blouse had further delicate designs of copper thread worked through them, as did the high, almost Napoleonic collar.

  A slim blade, half foil, half saber, was slung neatly from the waist. She stood nearly as tall as Mudge's five foot six, which Jon-Tom had been given to understand was tall for a human woman hereabouts. She turned, still panting from the run, to study them. He was glad of the opportunity to reciprocate.

  The maroon clothing fit snugly without binding and the face above it, though expectedly petite, was hard and sharp-featured. The green eyes were more like Mudge's than his own. They moved with almost equal rapidity over street and alleyway, never ceasing. Her shoulder-length curls were flame-red. Not the red-orange of most redheads but a fiery, flashing crimson that looked in the lamplight like kinky blood.

  Save for her coloring and the absence of fur and whiskers she displayed all the qualities of an active otter. Only the pale green eyes softened the savage image she presented, standing there nervously by the side of a building that seemed to swoop winglike above them in the mist.

  As for the rest of her, he had the damndest feeling he was seeing a cylindrical candy bar well packed with peanuts. Her voice was full of hints of clove and pepper, as active as her eyes and her body.

  "Thought I'd never get you out of there." She was talking to Mudge. "I tried to get you separated but," she glanced curiously up at Jon-Tom, "this great gangling boy was always between us."

  "I'd appreciate it," said Jon-Tom politely, "if you wouldn't refer to me as a 'boy'." He stared unblinkingly at her. "You don't look any older than me."

  "I'll change my tune," she shot back, "when you've demonstrated the difference to my satisfaction, though I hope more time isn't required. Still, I have to admit that you handled yourself well enough inside the Possum. Clumsy, but efficient. Size can make up for a helluva lot."

  Clove and pepper, he thought. Each word was snapped off sharply in the air like a string of firecrackers.

  She turned distastefully away from his indelicate stare and asked Mudge wth disarming candor, "How soon can we be rid of it?" She jerked a thumb in Jon-Tom's bemused direction.

  "I'm afraid we can't, m'love. Clothahump 'imself 'as entrusted 'im t' me tender care."

  "Clothahump, the wizard of the Tree?" Again she looked curiously at Jon-Tom.

  "Aye. It seems 'e was castin' about for an otherworldly wizard type and 'e came up with this chap Jon-Tom instead. As I said, because I 'appened t' be unlucky enough to stumble into this manifestation, I've been ordered t' take care of 'im. At least until 'e can take better care of 'imself." Mudge raised a paw.

  "On penalty o' curses too 'orrible t' explain, luv. But it 'ain't been too bad. 'E's a good enough lad, if a trifle naive."

  Jon-Tom was beginning to feel a resurgence of the volatility that had set off the riot in the Pearl Possum. "Hey now, people, I'm getting a little tired of everyone continually running off my list of disabilities."

  "Shut up and do as you're told," said the woman.

  "Fuck you, sister," he spat back angrily. "How'd you like your backside the same color as your hair?"

  Her right hand suddenly sported a sixth finger. The knife gleamed in the dim
light. It was no longer than her middle finger but twice as broad and displayed an unusual double blade.

  "And how'd you like to sing about three octaves higher?"

  "Please now, Talea." Mudge hurriedly interposed himself between them. "Think of me, if naught else. 'E's me responsibility. If any 'arm comes to 'im while 'e's in my care, Clothahump'll 'ave me 'ide. As to 'is singin' I've 'ad more than enough for one night. That's wot started the trouble in the Possum in the first place."

  "More's the pity for you then, Mudge." But the blade disappeared with a twist of the wrist, vanishing back inside her right sleeve. "I'll truce on it for you... for now."

  "I'm not taking any orders from her," Jon-Tom said belligerently.

  "Now, now, mate." Mudge made placating gestures. "No one's said that you must. But you're willin' to accept advice, ain't you? That's what I'm 'ere for, after all."

  "That's true," Jon-Tom admitted. But he couldn't keep his eyes off the lethal little lady Mudge had called Talea. Her temper had considerably mitigated his first feelings toward her. She was no less beautiful for their argument, but it had become the beauty of a rose sealed in glass. Delicacy and attractiveness were still there, but there was no fragrance, and both were untouchable.

  "That's the second time tonight you've shown concern for me, luv." Mudge looked at her uncertainly. "First by 'elpin' us flee that unfortunate altercation back in the Pearl Possum and now again by respectin' me wishes and makin' peace with the lad. I've never known you t' be so solicitous o' my 'ealth or anyone else's exceptin' your precious own. So wot's behind the sudden nursemaidin'?"

  "You're right about the first, Mudge. Most of the time you can find your own way to hell for all I care." Her voice finally mellowed, and for the first time she sounded vulnerable and human.