The Moment of the Magician: A Spellsinger Adventure (Book Four) Read online

  “Then we would rule without bloodshed. Except for the inferior races, of course, who would have to be disposed of.”

  Jon-Tom felt a chill but continued politely. “Who would rule?”

  “We would, the raptors would. Under Gyrnaught’s enlightened leadership, of course.”

  “I see.” Jon-Tom shifted on the straw. “Suppose all this comes to pass, suppose you conquer the whole world under Gyrnaught’s direction. Then what happens?”

  “Well…” Hensor hesitated. Evidently Gyrnaught’s orations hadn’t sought that far into the future. “We wouldn’t have to work. Others would do our fishing and hunting and gathering for us.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “Why, we will rule, naturally.”

  “But you already have everything you require.”

  “Then we’ll get more.”

  “More what? How much food can you eat? How much wood do you need for a house or traditional nest?”

  “I … I don’t know.” The falcon shook his head, rubbed at his eyes with the flexible tip of one red-feathered wing. “Your questions hurt my thoughts.”

  “I know what you’ll do, and I’ll tell you.” Jon-Tom peered quickly outside. Gyrnaught wasn’t around. Probably off drilling troops somewhere. “You’ll get bored, that’s what you’ll do. You’ll sit around doing nothing until your feathers fall out and you can’t fly anymore. You’ll look like a bunch of chickens.”

  “Take care,” Hensor warned him. “Some of my best friends are chickens.”

  “Well, you know what I mean. Laziness will result in flightlessness.”

  Hensor’s confidence returned. “No it won’t. Gyrnaught’s drills will keep us strong.”

  “Strong so you can do what? No, once you’ve conquered everyone else, you’ll get bored and soft because you won’t have anything else to fight for, and defeated people will see to all your needs. Raptors are born to hunt. Without any need to do that, you’ll all get flabby and flightless.”

  “You confuse me.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean to do that,” Jon-Tom assured him immediately. “Heavens no. I’m just concerned, that’s all. You’re all such strong fliers now, I’d hate to see you waste away.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Jon-Tom moved close, spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “There’ll be one of you who’ll never get fat and lazy because he’ll be too busy making sure the rest of you stay in line. Those that don’t, of course, are liable to end up on his dinner table.”

  Hensor looked shocked. “No, that would never happen! Gyrnaught would never do that.”

  Jon-Tom shrugged. “He’d only be following his own philosophy. The strong rule, the weak perish.” He hoped he was having some impact on Hensor because the convoluted reasoning was beginning to make him a little dizzy himself. “There is a solution to the problem, though.”

  “What?” asked Hensor eagerly.

  “It’s simple. Everyone must be equal. None of the master race must be any less the master than his neighbor. That’s only fair, isn’t it? That way everyone will have to maintain himself in optimum condition for fighting.”

  Hensor’s expression showed that this notion of all chiefs no Indians was new to him. “Gyrnaught wouldn’t like it,” he replied slowly.

  “Why not? If you’re all members of the master race, shouldn’t you all have an equal part in ruling the lesser races? He’d still be the prime leader, but you’d all be leaders together. Isn’t that how it’s always been among the raptors?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Hensor agreed excitedly. “We could all be leaders. We are all leaders.” He turned and spread his bright red wings. “I must tell the others!”

  Jon-Tom retreated to the depths of his alcove and went through the motions of rearranging his few belongings. Before too much time had passed his attention was drawn outside by a rising din. He smiled to himself as he turned to peek out of the cave.

  Something a mite stronger than an animated discussion was taking place among the soldiers of the master race, high up in the air of the central shaft. It appeared to involve a majority of them, in fact. In the midst of the discussion was a large gray shape, dipping and swinging its wingtips in what looked very much like fury.

  Soon it was raining feathers. They were of many sizes and colors, and Jon-Tom amused himself by gathering a few and stuffing them into the lining of his cape. As the screeching and angry squawking continued, he casually picked up his duar and strolled toward the path leading to the tunnel. No one paid him the slightest attention, since everyone was fully involved in determining who was qualified to be a leader and who was not.

  Apparently Gyrnaught was having some difficulty sorting out this business of multiple leadership, and the offer to make him prime leader wasn’t sufficient to satisfy his ego. There was only one leader here, one master! His heretofore obedient soldiery was vigorously disputing this position.

  Jon-Tom reached the lip of the tunnel, spared a last backward glance for the argument which had freed him, and then hurried into the passageway. He was almost to the exit when a very large hawk swooped down from a hidden perch near the ceiling to challenge him.

  Jon-Tom hadn’t expected a guard. This one had an eight-foot wingspan and gripped a long pole tipped with four sharp points in both flexible wingtips. Jon-Tom was more fearful of its natural weapons. Beak and talons could tear him apart.

  “Where are you going, musician?”

  “Just getting a little air,” Jon-Tom told the guard, smiling thinly. He glanced over his shoulder, eyed the hawk significantly. “Aren’t you going to join the discussion and put your application in?”

  “What discussion?” The hawk’s bright eyes never left him.

  “The one where everybody’s going to determine who’s a proper member of the master race and who isn’t.”

  “I am the sentry,” the hawk told him. “That is enough for me to be.”

  “But everyone else is—” The hawk cut him off by taking a step forward and jamming the sharp spikes against Jon-Tom’s belly. Jon-Tom retreated. The hawk followed, prodding him backward.

  “Haven’t you heard about the discussion?” Jon-Tom asked lamely.

  “I’ll find out later.”

  “But everyone’s a master now, everyone’s a leader.”

  “I’m only a sentry. I think maybe we’d better talk to Gyrnaught about this. I don’t think you’re allowed out to ‘get a little air.’ There’s plenty of air in the lair.” Again the spikes pricked Jon-Tom’s gut, forcing him back another couple of steps.

  He was on the verge of panic. Unarmed, there wasn’t a chance he could overpower this determined guard. In a little while Gyrnaught might whip his fracturing reich back into shape. When he did, Jon-Tom had a hunch the eagle would do some interrogating. Then he’d come looking for his pet musician, whose clever songs wouldn’t save his skin from being slowly peeled from his clever body.

  “Can’t we talk this over?” he pleaded.

  “Nonsense. I can’t discuss things with a member of an inferior race because it would—” The hawk stopped in mid-sentence. He pivoted slowly, and as he did so, Jon-Tom saw something like a quill protruding from the back of his skull. It wasn’t a quill and it had feathers of its own. An arrow.

  The guard fell on his face, a heap of dead feathers.

  “Are you goin’ to stand there gawkin’ all day,” snapped Mudge as he notched another arrow into his longbow and tried to see down the tunnel, “or do you think it’d be too much of me to ask that you move your bloody aggravatin’ arse?”

  VIII

  “MUDGE!”

  “Oi, I know me name and you know yours.” The otter was starting to back toward the exit. “Now, if your legs are still connected to your feeble brain, I’d appreciate it if you’d get the latter t’ movin’ the former.”

  Mudge led him outside, then down the tree-choked slope to the water’s edge, where their raft was beached. Jon-Tom had been disappointed when
he’d called it up, but now it was as beautiful as a forty-foot motor yacht. They pushed off and began rowing furiously with the paddles.

  From time to time Jon-Tom could see several shapes rise from the hollow interior of the island only to dive back inside.

  “Beginnin’ to think I’d never run you down, mate,” Mudge was saying.

  “Why’d you bother, after what you were saying the last time we talked? There were plenty of good reasons for you to forget about me, and none for coming after me.”

  “Well, let’s call it curiosity and leave it at that, mate. If I think on it much I’m liable to get sick. Maybe I was just interested in seein’ if you’d ended up as bird food or wotever. Or maybe I’m crazier than a neon worm.”

  “I don’t care why you did it, I’m just glad that you did.”

  Mudge jerked his head in the direction of the rapidly shrinking island. “Wot ’appened in there, anyways? Never ’eard a screekin’ and yowlin’ like that in me life. You put a spellsong on ’em?”

  “Not exactly. I just sort of convinced them to engage in a dialogue aimed at preventing the spread of injustice while maintaining equality among themselves.”

  “Cor, no wonder they was ’avin’ a bloody mess of it! The poor flap-faces. Think they’ll come after us after they get things sorted out among themselves?”

  “Not right away, if then. If their leader survives this little debate, he’s going to be too busy trying to put his organization back together again to worry about my whereabouts for a while. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep a close watch on the sky for a few days, though.”

  “I follow you, mate. We won’t be surprised from above like that again.”

  “Damn right we won’t.” He turned thoughtful. “I’m hoping that Gyrnaught … that’s the eagle who snatched me … finds out what happens to the kind of system he espouses, finds out that it’s doomed to self-destruction. I hope he learns that power corrupts absolutely. That greed quickly overtakes loyalty in the minds of supposedly obedient followers.”

  “Why ’e grab you anyways, mate, if not for munching?”

  “He needed a musician.”

  “Tch. All ’e ’ad to do was ask, and I’d ’ave told him as ’ow ’e was wastin’ ’is time.” He grinned. “Sounds like a fowl business all the way ’round, mate.”

  If he hadn’t just saved his life, Jon-Tom would have pushed him overboard.

  The further south they rowed, the more relaxed Jon-Tom became. Clearly Gyrnaught had his wings full with his newly enlightened flock, and even if he did find the time to wonder where his musician had gone to, he had no way of knowing which way Jon-Tom had fled. As days slipped by, he was more and more convinced he’d seen the last of the eagle.

  His relief was tempered by their surroundings, which grew thicker and more humid than ever. Clothahump’s “pleasant tropical country” was closing in on them with a vengeance. The trees of the Wrounipai towered above their frail raft, supported by labyrinthine root systems which sometimes choked off their chosen route, forcing them to detour to east or west. Occasionally the roots themselves grew so tall it was possible to paddle beneath them. Shelf fungi and toadstools clung determinedly to the bases of the smaller trees.

  What little dry land they did encounter was so thickly overgrown with brambles and thorn thickets that they had to hunt carefully to find campsites for the night. Mudge insisted they do this because the regular evening concert of eerie squeals and groans made him leery of anchoring out on the water.

  Man and otter would huddle close together in front of their small fire for a long while before drifting off into an uneasy, disturbed sleep. But while both found the nocturnal noises unnerving, nothing slouched out of the muck to devour them as they slept.

  Still, the dark, dank gloominess was all-pervading. Not quite as Clothahump had described it.

  Mist clung to them day and night, rising from the steaming surface of the water. When it rained, which was often, the heat abated somewhat, but it became almost impossible to judge direction. This forced them to seek shelter beneath the towering roots of the larger trees. After a couple of weeks, Jon-Tom was certain the morning growth that covered his face was more mildew than beard.

  Everything in the Wrounipai was slick with moss or rough with fungi. The intense humidity threatened to rot the clothes off their backs. It also seemed to penetrate to work on their minds, disorienting them and making identification of the most ordinary objects difficult.

  They had beached the raft on a sand bar beneath the natural roof formed by several interlocking air roots, sharing it with freshwater crustaceans and other inhabitants of the brackish environment. Their campfire crackled fitfully, the flames struggling against the cloying atmosphere. It was a pitch-black night. Trees blocked out the clouds, and the clouds shuttered the moon. Their only light came from the fire.

  But he could still hear, and something sounded very peculiar indeed.

  Jon-Tom roused himself, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep. Nearby, Mudge lay rolled up in his thin blanket, snoring on, oblivious of the strange rushing noise which had awakened Jon-Tom.

  The spellsinger listened for a long time before donning his cape and walking to the edge of the water. The sound was an unnatural one, steady and moist, like a rushing in a vacuum. He put his hand out into the rain, jerked it back as if he’d been stung, then slowly extended it a second time. He stared at it in wonder, shook his head to clear it. The phenomenon persisted. So he wasn’t crazy.

  Water beaded up against his extended hand. It felt like normal rain. It looked like normal rain. He drew back his hand again and tasted of it. A pungent, salty flavor that wasn’t normal. He was relieved for that. It meant his senses were functioning properly, and he was relieved that it was the precipitation that was deranged and not himself.

  He watched it until he was completely awake, then walked back to wake Mudge.

  “Huh … wuzzat, wot?” The otter blinked up at him. Jon-Tom’s face must have presented a less than pleasing sight, lit only by the feeble glow of their campfire. “Wot is it, mate? Cor, ’tis black as a magistrate’s thoughts out.”

  “It’s still night. The sun’s not up yet.”

  “Then why,” asked a suddenly irritated Mudge, “did you wake me?”

  “It’s raining, Mudge.”

  The otter paused a moment, listening. “I can hear it. So wot?”

  “It’s not raining right.”

  “Not right? ’Ave you gone daft?”

  “Mudge, it’s raining up.”

  “Gone over the edge,” the otter muttered. “Poor bugger.” He slipped free of his blanket and staggered sleepily toward the water’s edge. A paw reached out into the rain. Water beaded up against the back of his hand while the palm stayed dry.

  “I’ll be corn’oled, so it is.”

  Jon-Tom’s hand reached out parallel to the otter’s. “What does it mean?” It was fascinating to watch the droplets strike the back of his hand, crawl around the fingers, and shoot up into the dark sky.

  “I guess it means, guv, that ’is wizardness wasn’t kiddin’ when he told us this part o’ the world was tropical. My guess is that the land ’ereabouts gets so wet from the ’umidity that it ’as to give back some o’ the water to the sky from time to time. Not such an improper arrangement, if you thinks about it. Keeps everythin’ in balance, wot? Up, down, up, down: a body could get confused.”

  “I can see what it’s doing, but what does it mean?”

  Mudge pulled his paw out of the upside-down storm and licked the fur on his wrist to dry it as he strolled back toward his makeshift bed.

  “It means that the world’s a wet place, mate.”

  Jon-Tom watched the up-pour a while longer before rejoining his friend. He curled up underneath his cape but lay wide-awake, staring out into the storm. The steady rush of sky-bound water was soothing.

  “Actually, it’s kind of neat. I mean, there’s a wonderful symmetry to it, a kind of meteorolo
gical poetry.”

  “Right, mate. Me thought exactly. Now go to sleep.”

  Jon-Tom turned to him. The otter’s silhouette was barely visible against the fading fire. “You live too fast, Mudge. Sometimes I don’t think you have the slightest appreciation for any of the world’s natural wonders.”

  “Wot, me?” He blinked sleepily at Jon-Tom. “’Ow can you say that, mate? Why, this upside-down drizzle, it revises me ’ole estimation o’ ’ow the world’s constructed.”

  “Does it? Then maybe there’s hope for you yet, if it enables you to appreciate the strangeness and beauty of nature, the astounding surprises that it has in store for all of us. There is magnificence in a slightly altered natural phenomenon like rain.”

  “Actually, mate, I see it a little differently. See, I always thought the world was a toilet. ’Tis nice to learn that it can function as a bidet also.” Whereupon he rolled over once more and went back to sleep.

  Jon-Tom resigned himself to the fact that his companion was, aesthetically speaking, a primitive. He contemplated the upside-down rain thoughtfully. It was disorienting, but lovely and not at all dangerous. If naught else it was a welcome change to their monotonous surroundings.

  It continued to pour upward for a good part of the early morning. Standing on the raft, they remained clean and dry as they paddled through a sheet of rising precipitation. The raft was a little cube of dryness sliding across the plant-choked waters of the Wrounipai.

  Eventually the humidity fell below a hundred percent and they left the region of constant rain behind. The water had become a narrow, lazy stream, one of many cutting through parallel ridges of upthrust granite and schist. It was an improvement over the country they had crossed, but not the balmy paradise Clothahump had described. Dense undergrowth still crowded for space among the stone and water. They found themselves paddling down a green tunnel lit by intermittent sunlight.

  On one rocky outcropping Mudge located bushes which produced delicious green-black berries shaped like teardrops, and the two travelers spent a whole afternoon gorging themselves. The stony island provided a clean, dry resting place as well, and they decided to spend the night.