Moment Of The Magician

by Alan Dean Foster

  “You called me.”

  ‘No.” He tried to raise a hand to his duar, but his fingers suddenly weighed a thousand pounds apiece. He tried the other one, straining with his whole being. It rose, slowly, but it rose. He moved it because he had to. He didn’t try to touch the duar this time. There was no point. Here was an opponent his spellsinging could not defeat.

  Fingers weak and trembling, he pointed through the cloud.

  “He called you.”

  “No,” came a quavering voice from far across the chamber. Markus cowered down on his throne, trying to hide. “No, it wasn’t me. I didn’t call you!”

  The eyes didn’t free Jon-Tom from their relentlessly peaceful gaze. Perhaps another pair appeared elsewhere within the cloud. There was a pause, a brief eternity while the room hung suspended in the void.

  Then Death whispered, “Markle Kratzmeier, age forty-eight, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. You fell into a dynamo. You were electrocuted instantly. You died.”

  “No!” Markus shook as he waved his wand errati cally toward the cloud. He was hysterical now, his eyes wide as the vapor moved to envelop him. “No, I didn’t die! I came here. I am here.”

  “You died,” Death insisted softly. “I came for you but you had gone. I couldn’t find you. I do not enjoy being cheated.”

  Then there was another sound in the room, a sound that chilled Jon-Tom more thoroughly than the touch of that annihilating fog. It was the sound of Death laughing.

  “And now you have called me back to you. And the living say that life is full of little ironies.”

  “NO!” Markus screamed. He fell to whimpering. “I didn’t call you, I didn’t. Go awaaay.” The wand twitched feebly in the air. “I send you back to where you come from. I command you.”

  The cloud was pulling away from the shivering Jon-Tom, dragging itself across the floor toward the throne. As it left him he found that he could move again. He started to head for the door, slowed thoughtfully. If Death wanted him, no door was going to stop it. Somehow he didn’t think that was going to happen. What had happened was that he had almost been the victim of a fatal case of mistaken identity.

  He turned. The fog had surrounded Markus completely. He could still hear the unfortunate magician. The shapes inside the cloud reached out to welcome him into their company. The torches winked out and there was only the green light left to see by.

  There were no dramatic shrieks or screams. The whimpering from the throne simply stopped. Then the cloud began to retreat, sucked back down into the hat from which it had been summoned forth. An innocent-looking black top hat that the late Markus the Ineluctable had probably paid no more than ten bucks for in some cheap magic shop in Jersey City.

  Then it was gone. Fresh air hesitantly wafted into the room. All that remained of Markus the Ineluctable, the All-Powerful, Ruler of Quasequa and the Lakes District, was a piece of white-tipped black plastic a foot long.

  Still shivering, Jon-Tom strode over to the throne and picked up the wand. He tapped it against the wood. It made a soft clicking noise. On the side was the legend Made in Hong Kong. Handling it gingerly, he descended to the floor and dropped it into the open hat. It vanished.

  Then he took a deep breath and did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He picked up the hat. Carrying it carefully in his right hand, he walked over to the window nearby and threw it as far as he could. It sailed out into the night and he watched it fall. When it hit the water it was too light to make an audible splash. Either it would sink or the current would carry it into the river that drained the Lake of Sorrowful Pearls, and the river would take it out to the Glittergeist Sea to sink in thousands of fathoms of sunless, specterless water.

  He found himself feeling sorry for Markle Kratzmeier. But not for Markus the Ineluctable.

  Something creaked behind him. He jumped.

  “You okay, mate?” inquired a hesitant voice. Mudge’s face peeped uncertainly around the rim of the door.

  Jon-Tom relaxed. “It’s all right, Mudge. It’s all over. You can come in now.” He swallowed. “Everyone can come in now.”

  “Right, mate.” But Mudge made a thorough survey of the empty throne room before he entered. Weapons drawn, the rest of the band rushed in around him.

  Memaw crossed her arms over her chest. “Brrr! Young man, it’s freezing in here. What happened?”

  “Markus unintentionally called up an old friend of his. They went away together.” Suddenly he was very tired, searched for something to sit on. The throne was out of the question, so he chose a pile of richly embroidered cushions stacked in a corner.

  Trendavi waddled over to him. “What of our city?”

  “It’s been restored to you. You got it back.” Trendavi accepted this information solemnly. Then he bowed before Jon-Tom, who was too exhausted to tell him not to, and went off to tell the other members of the Quorum.

  Oplode had paced the length of the room, sniffing at the chilled air. Now he peered down at the spellsinger out of wise, knowing eyes.

  “Death has been in this place. You called it forth?”

  “No, not me. Markus did it. I don’t think he knew what he was doing when he did it. See, he’d died in the other world. My world. He escaped by being thrown through to here. Death had been looking for him ever since.”

  “So in his anger and greed he called up his own fate,” Oplode murmured. “Justice.” He sniffed again. “There has been much magic worked here this night. Great magic.”

  “I don’t know how great it was”—Jon-Tom rubbed his face with both hands—”but I feel like I’ve just had the shit stomped out of me by an angry elephant.”

  Quorly put a comforting paw on his shoulder. “ ‘Tis done with, spellsinger. ‘Tis all over now.”

  A voice from across the room drew their eyes.

  “Hey, you lot, look at me!” Mudge was sitting on the throne, his short legs a foot above the floor, both arms resting on the carved armrests. “Oi, I’m Emperor o’ Quasequa, I am, and you louts can all pay me ‘omage.” He grinned down at Splitch. “Ladies first, o’ course.”

  Jon-Tom spoke casually. “That is precisely where Markus was sitting when Death itself took him.”

  Mudge’s legs abruptly stopped swinging. “You don’t say. If that’s supposed to scare me, why, it don’t.” He hopped down from the seat. “ ‘Tis a mite chilly up there, though. Not really to me taste.” He retreated in haste.

  “Then there’s nothing more for us to worry about,” said Memaw.

  “Well, there is one thing,” Jon-Tom mused. “You all seem to have forgotten that we have a revolution-minded dragon running loose in the Quorumate’s lower levels.”

  “Is that a problem?” Domurmur frowned. “If he is your friend, can’t you tell him to leave us in peace?”

  “He’ll leave you in pieces if he finds out what kind of government you’re running. You’re going to have to move to eliminate bribery and corruption, stamp out the blatant buying of public office.”

  Selryndi sputtered a reply. “But that’s impossible! How else do you govern?”

  Jon-Tom grinned up at him. “I should let Falameezar instruct you, but I’ll talk to him and see if we can’t work out some kind of compromise that will satisfy all the concerned parties.”

  “We thank you,” a relieved Trendavi said humbly.

  So Falameezar was permitted to run a political reeducation center on the shore of Isle Quase, and the citizens were taught not to run in fear from his presence. Before too much time went by he was no longer frightening them, only boring them to death with his droning recitations of Marxist ideology. Despite his threats they began to drift away, and even the city troops couldn’t force them to stay and listen.

  As Cherjal the innkeeper put it one day, “I’d rather bee fried than forced to leesten to that garbage anymore!”

  So Falameezar swam off one evening in search of more willing converts, bidding Jon-Tom and his friends adieu, singing the “Internationale” a
s he disappeared into a sunset which was, appropriately enough that evening, bright red.

  It was the following night that Jon-Tom was compelled to go with a group of grim-faced police to the end of an empty municipal pier. At the far end of the pier was a large pile of fur. The pile sported a bunch of eyes, many of which were closed or bloodshot, an indistinguishable clutch of arms and legs, and reeked of liquor.

  The sergeant of police was a three-foot-tall cavy, short and testy. He gestured at the pile. “These your friends?”

  “Uh, yes sir.”

  “Well, do something with them. We had to shovel them out of the Capering Gibbon tavern. They were being drunk and disorderly and obnoxious.”

  “Is that so bad? They did help save your city from the rule of Markus the Ineluctable, you know.”

  “Aw, that was weeks ago,” said the sergeant. “Since then they’ve busted up half of what they helped save, insulted most of the ladies and some of the males, partied until all hours in quiet zones, and generally made a spectacular nuisance of themselves.”

  One lump of fur wiggled out of the pile and focused rheumy eyes on the sergeant. “Who’re you callin’ a nuisance, you sorry-lookin’, worm-infested lump o’ snake crap?”

  “Mudge, watch your mouth!” The otter twisted ‘round to squint up at him.

  “Hiya, mate! Say, where was you the other night? You missed a hell of a party,”

  The cavy looked up at the much taller Jon-Tom, its nose twitching in distaste. “This party has been going on for a month now, and the patience of the Quorum is at its end. So in gratitude for what you have done for the city of Quasequa, it was decided to send you safely on your way.” He gestured at the pile of otters. “We dumped them here, more or less intact. See that they don’t come back.”

  “I’m sorry if they’ve caused you any trouble,” Jon-Tom told him apologetically. The cavy threw him a sideways glance.

  “Trouble? Oh, no trouble, no trouble at all. At least three dozen of my best people are stuck in infirmaries all around the city because of run-ins with your friends here.” He jerked a tiny thumb toward the pile. “You sort ‘em out any way you want to. Just keep ‘em out of my jurisdiction, okay?”

  Jon-Tom waited until the police had left the pier. Then he gazed down at the pile of fuzz. “Aren’t you all ashamed of yourselves? Aren’t you disgusted? You win the gratitude of an entire population, and then you throw it back in their faces.”

  Sasswise appeared, waving her sword dangerously about. “Nobody better not throw nothin’ at me!”

  “Ow!” Drortch emerged, flaring at her cousin. “You stick me with that again, you sodden slut, and I’ll pull your tail out by its roots!”

  “You and wot army, bitch?”

  The two of them went at it enthusiastically, biting and kicking and pulling fur. The distraction was energetic enough to bestir their companions to action. The hill unpiled. Knorckle crawled weakly to the edge of the pier and proceeded to vomit violently into the Lake of Sorrowful Pearls.

  Jon-Tom stood and watched, shaking his head in despair. Then he said something he regretted more than anything else he’d said since he’d left the relative sanity of Clothahump’s tree.

  “What am I going to do with you?”

  A drunken Memaw gazed up at him. “Now, don’t you worry, young fan . . . man, because we’ve taken a vote on thish, and we decided that we couldn’t possibly think of letting you make that nasty old trip all the way back up to these Bellwoodsies you come from all by yourselves.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Jon-Tom said quickly. “I mean, I appreciate the offer, but Mudge and I managed to make it down here by ourselves, and we can make it home the same way.” He looked around wildly for support.

  A head appeared. “More company the better, mate,” declared a thoroughly sozzled Mudge.

  Weaving, drunken otters gathered around the distraught spellsinger, cheering and waving their swords about with complete disregard for the bodily integrity of their neighbors.

  “Aye, mate. . .We’re with you all the bay way!. . . Glad to come along!. . . Three cheers for the spullspung-er. . .!”

  Jon-Tom dodged a sword stroke that came perilously near taking a chunk out of his thigh. He found himself being backed toward the otters’ boat, which the police had thoughtfully tied up at the end of the pier.

  Mudge lurched along in front, one arm around Quorly, the other around Sasswise. “It’ll be fun, mate, to ‘ave a little good company goin’ ‘ome. Besides, I’d like for me friends ‘ere to meet Clothagrump.” He leaned over to whisper to Quorly. “This ‘ere wizbiz ‘as got ‘imself an apprentice name o’ Sorbl who can conjure up the best damn batch o” ‘omemade ‘ootch you never tasted, luv. Burn the linin” right out o’ your bloomin’ throat.”

  Quorly pressed tight against him. “Sounds wonderful, Mudgey.”

  “No, no,” Jon-Tom told them, pleading desperately, “you don’t understand. Clothahump is a very serious, sober-minded sorcerer. It’s important that he see me in the same light or he won’t send me home someday.”

  “Then we’ll get along fine, Jon-Tome. . . Tom,” said Wupp happily, “because we’re damn sure serious about not stayin’ sober.”

  Paws reached forward and lifted the protesting spellsinger, carried him down into the boat. Hands bent to oars, and after some initial confusion, the boat began to slide out onto the Lake of Sorrowful Pearls. Drortch launched into a spirited if slightly sloppy rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat!” The melody was quickly taken up by her companions and the boat was soon producing enough noise to attract every water-going predator between Quasequa and the river Tailaroam.

  Jon-Tom lay in the bottom of the boat and wondered if maybe Markus the Ineluctable hadn’t been the lucky one.