Pog appeared with an armful of old weapons. “Got ’em since ya left,” he told the curious Jon-Tom. “Boss thought it’d be a good idea t’have a few lizard-stickers around in case his magic really got rusty.”
Flores Quintera immediately knelt over the pile of destruction and began sorting through it with something other than doll-like enthusiasm. “Hoy, but I’m looking forward to this.”
“It could be very dangerous.” Jon-Tom had moved to stand protectively close to her.
“Well, of course it could, from what Clothaheemp … Clothahump tells me … watch your foot there, that ax is sharp.” He took a couple of steps backward. “It wouldn’t be any fun if it didn’t have any danger,” she informed him, as though addressing a complete fool.
“Oh, this looks nice,” she said brightly, hefting a saw-edged short sword. “Can I have this one?” It was designed for someone Mudge’s size. In her lithe hands it looked like a long, thick dagger.
She moved as if to put it in her belt, became aware she wasn’t wearing one.
“I can’t go marching around in this,” she muttered.
“Oh God!” Mudge threw up his paws and spun away. “Not again. Please, I can’t go back to Lynchbany and go through this again.”
“Never mind.” Talea was studying the towering female form. “If the wizard can conjure up some material, I think the two of us can make you something, Flores.”
“Call me Flor, please.”
“I don’t know about conjuring,” said Clothahump carefully, “but there are stores in the back rooms of the Tree. Pog will show you where.”
“O’ course he will,” snorted the bat under his breath. “Don’t he always?”
The two young women vanished with the bat into yet another section of the seemingly endless interior of the tree.
“I ’ave to ’and it t’ you, mate.” Mudge smacked Jon-Tom’s back with a friendly whack from one furry paw and leered up at him. “First you make friends with Talea and now you materialize this black-maned gable o’ gorgeousness. Would that I were up t’ such, wot?”
“I’d rather have switched places with an engineer,” Jon-Tom mumbled.
He considered Flor Quintera. Her personality somehow did not seem to match his imagining of same. “This new lady, Flor. I’ve seen her a lot, Mudge, but I’d always imagined her to be somewhat more, well, vulnerable.”
“’Er? Vulnerable? Kiss me bum, mate, but she seems as vulnerable as an ocelot with six arms.”
“I know,” said Jon-Tom sadly.
Mudge was looking at the doorway through which the women had disappeared. “’Crikey but I won’t mind un-vulnerablin’ ’er. It’d be like climbin’ a bloomin’ mountain. I always did ’ave a ’ankerin’ t’ go explorin’ through the peaks and valleys of a challengin’ range, wot.” He moved away from the distraught Jon-Tom, chuckling lasciviously.
Jon-Tom shuffled across to the workbench. Clothahump sat there, inspecting his shattered apparatus and trying to locate intact bits and pieces with which to work.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” he said a little dazedly. “I tried my best.”
“I know you did, boy. It is not your fault.” Clothahump patted Jon-Tom’s leg reassuringly. “Rare is the man, wizard, warrior, or worker, who can always think with his brains instead of his balls. Not to worry. What is done is done, and we must make the best of it. At least we have added another dedicated fighter and believer to our ranks. And we still have you and your unpredictable but undeniably powerful spellsinger’s abilities, and something more.”
“I don’t suppose we could try again.”
The wizard shook his head. “Impossible. Even if I thought I could survive and control another such conjuration, the last of the necessary powders and material have been used. It would take months simply to find enough ytterbium to constitute the necessary pinch the formula requires.”
“I hope you’re right about my abilities,” Jon-Tom mumbled. “I don’t seem to be much good at anything here lately. I hope I can think of the right song when the time comes.” He frowned abruptly. “You said we have my abilities and ‘something more’?”
The wizard nodded, looked pleased with himself. “Sometimes a good shock is more valuable than any amount of concentration. When I was thrown against the Tree wall by the force of the transdimension dissipation, I had a brief but ice-clear image. I now know who is behind the growing evil.” He gazed meaningfully up at the staring Jon-Tom.
“Tell me, then. Who and what are—”
But the turtle raised a restraining hand. “Best to wait until everyone has returned. There is ample threat to all in this, and I shall not begin to play favorites now.”
So they waited while Jon-Tom watched the wizard. Clothahump sat quietly, contemplating something beyond the ken of the others.
The women returned with Pog muttering irritably behind them. Jon-Tom was a little shocked at the transformation that had come over the delicate flower of his postadolescent fantasies.
In place of the familiar cheerleader’s sweater and skirt Flor Quintera was clad in pants and vest of white leatherlike material. The sharply cut vest left her arms and shoulders bare, and her dark skin stood out startlingly against the pale cream-colored clothing. A fringed black cape hung from her neck and matched fringe-topped black boots. The long dagger (or short sword) hung from a black metal belt and a double-headed mace hung from her right hand.
“What do you think?” She twirled the mace gracefully and thus indicated to Jon-Tom why she’d selected it. It was not dissimilar to the baton she was so accustomed to. The major difference was the pair of spiked steel balls at one end, lethal rather than entertaining.
“Don’t you think,” he said uneasily, “it’s a mite extreme?”
“Look who’s talking. What’s the matter, not what you’d like to see?” She turned on her toes and did a mock curtsey. “Is that more ladylike?”
“Yes. No. I mean …”
She turned and walked over to him, laughing, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. It burned him right through his indigo shirt and iridescent green cape.
“Relax, Jon. Or Jon-Tom, as they call you.” She smiled, and his initial irritation at her appearance melted away. “I’m still the same person. You forget that you really don’t know anything about me. Oh, don’t feel bad… few people ever really do. I’m the same person I ever was, and now I’ve been given the chance to enjoy one of my own fantasies. I’m sorry if I don’t fulfill yours.”
“But the disorientation,” he sputtered. “When I first arrived here I was so confused, so puzzled I could hardly think.”
“Well,” she said, “I guess I’ve read a little more of the impossible than you, or dreamed a little deeper. I feel very much at home, compadre mio.” She clipped the double mace to her link belt, pushed back her cape, and sat down on the floor. Even that simple motion seemed supernaturally graceful.
“I was explaining to Jon-Tom,” Clothahump began, “that the shock or the combination of the shock of the explosion and the magic we were working finally showed me the source of the evil that threatens to overwhelm this world. Perhaps yours as well, young lady,” he said to Flor, “if it is not stopped here.”
Talea and Mudge listened respectfully, Jon-Tom uncertainly, and Flor anxiously. Jon-Tom divided his attention between the wizard’s words and the girl of his dreams.
At least, she had been the girl of his dreams. Her instant adaptation to this strange existence made her seem a different person. Moreover, she seemed to welcome their incredible situation. It left him feeling very inadequate. How many days had it taken him to arrive at a mature acceptance of his fate?
The insecurity passed, to be replaced by a burst of anger at the unfairness of it all, and finally by resignation. Actually, as Mudge had indicated, his situation could have been much worse. If Flor was (as yet, he thought yearningly) no more than a friend, she was a damnsight more interesting to have around than a fifty-year-old male engineer. A
nd he’d made a friend of Talea as well.
Decidedly, life could be worse. There was ample time for events to progress in a pleasant and satisfying fashion. He allowed himself a slight inward smile.
After all, Flor’s enthusiastic acceptance of the status quo might be momentary posturing on her part. If what Clothahump believed turned out to be true things were going to become much worse. They would all have to depend on each other. He would be around when it was Flor’s turn to do some depending. He accepted her as she was and turned his full attention to Clothahump.
“It is the Plated Folk,” the wizard was telling them as he paced slowly back and forth before a tall rack of containers that had not been shattered. “They are gathering in all their thousands, in their tens of thousands, for a great invasion of the warmlands. Legions of them swarm through the Greendowns.
“I saw in an instant great battle-practice fields being constructed on the plains outside Cugluch. Burrows for an endless horde are being dug in anticipation of the arrival and massing of still more troops. I saw thousands of the soulless, mindless workers putting down their work tools and taking up their arms. They are preparing such an onslaught as the warmlands have never seen. I saw—”
“I saw a double-jointed margay once, in a bar in Oglagia Towne,” broke in Mudge with astonishing lack of tact. For several minutes he’d been growing more and more restless. Now his frustration burst out spontaneously. “No disrespect t’ these ominous foretellin’s, Your Omnipotentness, but the Plated Folk ’ave attacked our lands too many times t’ count. ’Tis expected that they’re t’ try again, but wot’s the fear of it?” Talea’s expression indicated that she agreed with him. “They’ve always been stopped in the Troom Pass behind the Jo-Troom Gate. Always they ’ave the kind o’ impressive numbers you be recitin’ t’ us, but their strategy sucks, and what bravery they ’ave is the bravery o’ the stupid. All they ever ’ave ended up doin’ is fertilizin’ the plants that grow in the Pass.”
“That’s true enough,” said Talea. “I don’t see that we have anything unusual to fear, so I don’t understand your worry.”
The wizard stared patiently at her. “Have you ever fought the Plated Folk? Do you know the cruelties and abominations of which they are capable?”
Talea leaned back in the chair fashioned from the horns of some unknpwn creature and waved the question away with one tiny hand.
“Of course I’ve never fought ’em. Their last attack was sixty-seven years ago.”
“The forty-eighth interregnum,” said Clothahump. “I remember it.”
“And what were the results?” she asked pointedly.
“After considerable fighting and a great loss of life to both sides, the Plated Folk armies were driven back into the Greendowns. They have not been heard from since. Until now.”
“Meaning we kicked the shit out of ’em,” Mudge paraphrased with satisfaction.
“You have the usual confidence of the untested,” Clothahump muttered.
“What about the previous battle, and the one before that, and the thirty-fifth interregnum, which the histories say was such a Plated fiasco, and all the battles and fighting back to the beginning of the Gate’s foundations?”
“All true,” Clothahump admitted. “In all that time they have not so much as topped the Gate. But I fear this time will be far different. Different from anything a warmlander can imagine.”
Talea leaned forward in the chair. “Why?”
“Because a new element has been introduced into the equation, my dear ignorant youngling. A profound stress presses dangerously on the fabric of fate. The balance between the Plated Folk and the warmlander has been seriously altered. I have sensed this, have felt it, for many months now, though I could not connect my unease directly to the Plated Ones. Now I have done that, and the nature of the threat at once becomes clear and thrice magnified.
“Hence my desperate casting for one who could divine and perhaps affect this alteration. You, Jon-Tom, and now you, my dear,” and he nodded toward a watchful Flores Quintera.
She shook black strands from her face, clasped both arms around her knees as she stared raptly at him.
“Ahhh, I can’t believe it, guv’nor,” Mudge said with a disdainful sniff. “The Plated Folk ’ave never made it t’ the top o’ the Gate as you say. If they did, why, we’d annihilate ’em there at our leisure.”
“The assurance of the young,” murmured Clothahump, but he let the otter have his say.
“’Tis only because the warmlander fighters o’ the past wanted some decent competition that they sallied out from behind the Gate t’ meet the Plated Folk in the Pass, or there’d o’ been even more unequal combat than history tells us of. I’m surprised they keep a-tryin’.”
“Oh, they will keep ’a-tryin’, my fuzzy friend, until they are completely obliterated, or we are.”
“And you’re so sure this great unknown whateveritis that you know nothin’ about ’as given those smelly monstrosities an edge they’ve never ’ad before?”
“I am afraid that is so,” said the wizard solemnly. “Yet I am admittedly no more clear as to the nature of that fresh evil now than I was before. I know only that it exists, and that it must be prepared for if not destroyed.” He shook a warning finger at Talea.
“And that, my dear, raises the other important advantage the Plated Folk have, one which must immediately be countered. We of the warmlands are divided and independent, while the Plated Folk possess a unity of purpose under their ultimate leader. They have the strength of central organization, which is not magical in nature but deadly dangerous nonetheless.”
“That still hasn’t kept them from a thousand years of getting the shit kicked out of their common unity,” she replied, unperturbed.
“True enough, but this time … this time I fear a terrible disaster. A disaster made worse by the centuries of complacency you have just demonstrated, my dear. A disaster that threatens to break the boundaries of time and space and spread to all continuui.
“I fear if this threat is not contained, we face not a losing fight, my friends. We face Armageddon.”
XII
IT WAS SILENT WITHIN the Tree for a while. Finally Talea asked, “What word then has come out of the Greendowns to you, honorable magician?” Clothahump’s warning had quieted even her usually irrepressible bravado.
“From what I have sensed,” he began solemnly, “Skrritch the Eighteenth, Supreme Ruler of Cugluch, Cokmetch, Cot-a-Kruln, and of all the far reaches and lands of the Greendowns, Commander of all Plated Folk and heir to their allegiance, has called upon that allegiance. They have been building their armies for years. That and this new evil magic they have acquired has convinced them that this time they cannot fail to conquer. That self-confidence, that terrible feeling of surety, is what came through to my mind more powerfully than anything else.”
“And you learned nothing more about this new magic,” said Jon-Tom.
“Only one thing, my boy. That Eejakrat, master sorcerer among the Plated Ones, is behind it. That is something we could have naturally guessed, for he has been behind most of the exceptional awfulness that rumor occasionally carries to us from out of the Greendowns.
“Do not underestimate these opponents set before us, Jon-Tom.” He gestured at the indifferent Talea and Mudge. “Your friends talk like cubs, through no fault of their own.” He moved closer to the two tall humans.
“Let me tell you, the Plated Folk are not like us. They would as soon cut up one of us to see what’s inside as we would a tree. No, I modify that. We would have more concern and respect for the tree.”
“You don’t have to go into details,” Jon-Tom told him. “I believe you. But what can we do from here?” He flicked casual fingers across the duar. “This magic that seems to be in my music is new to me, and I can’t control it very well. I don’t know what my limits may be. If you can’t do anything, I don’t see how an ignorant novice like myself could.”
“Tut, my bo
y, your approach is different from mine, the magic words you employ are new and unique. You may be of some use when least you expect it. Both you and your companion,” he indicated the attentive Flor, “are impressive specimens. There will be times when I may be required to impress the reluctant or the doubtful.”
“We can fight, too,” she said readily, eyes sparkling with uncharacteristic bloodthirstiness in that sensual but childlike face.
“Restrain yourself, my dear,” the wizard advised her with a fatherly smile. “There will likely be ample opportunity for slaughter. But first … you are quite right, Jon-Tom, in saying that there is little we can do here. We must begin to mobilize the warmlanders, to assuage their doubts and disbelief. They must prepare for the coming attack. A letter or two will not convince. Therefore we must carry the alarm in person.”
“The ’ell you say,” Mudge sputtered. “I’m not trippin’ off t’ the ends o’ the earth on some ’alf-cocked crusade.”
“Nor am I.” Talea rose and let her left hand drop casually to the dagger at her hip. “We’ve our own personal business to attend to and care for.”
“Children,” Clothahump half whispered. Then, more audibly, “What business might that be? The business of being chased and hunted by the police of the Twelve Morgray Counties? The business of thievery and petty con schemes? I offer you instead the chance to embark upon a far grander and nobler business. One that is vital to the future of not one but two worlds. One in which all who participate will assuredly go down in the memories of all those who sing songs, for twice ten thousand years of legend!”
“Sorry,” said Talea. “Not interested.”
“Nor me, guv’nor,” Mudge added.
“Also,” said Clothahump with a tired sigh, “I will make it worth your while.”
“Cor, now that be more like it, Your Imponderableness.” Mudge’s attitude changed radically. “Exactly ’ow worth our whiles did you ’ave in mind?”
“Sufficiently,” said the wizard. “You have my word on it.”
Spellsinger: A Spellsinger Adventure (Book One) Page 18
