The Day of the Dissonance Page 6

  The jailer ignored him, gazing in stupefied fascination at the slowly rotating cylinder of fluorescent gas that had gathered inside the cell. “Don’t lie to me. Something is happening. Something is happening!”

  “I know something’s happening, you moron! Let me loose!” He wrenched uselessly at his bonds.

  The jailer continued to keep his distance. “I am warning you, spellsinger. Put an end to this magic right now!”

  Keeping his thorny back against the walls, he edged around until he was standing close to the bars. From there he was able to prod the prisoner with the tip of his spear. It was extremely sharp.

  “I can’t stop it! I don’t know what I did and I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “I do not believe you.” The jailer’s voice had turned shrill and he was jabbing seriously with the spear.

  Suddenly a loud bang came from the cloud of gas. The glowing cylinder dissipated to reveal a massive, powerful form at least seven feet tall standing in the center of the jail cell. It had to crouch to keep from bumping its head against the ceiling.

  Mudge quailed back against the wall while Jon-Tom thought wildly about his last song. The indifferently sung song which apparently had been far more effective than all its anxiety-laden predecessors. The theme song from that Rocky film . . . what was it?

  Oh, yeah. The “Eye of the Tiger.”

  IV

  Actually there were two of them, and they glared around in bewilderment. Jon-Tom had never seen a white tiger before, much less one that wore armor and stood on two legs. Leather and brass strips made a skirt which covered the body from waist to the knees. Additional armor protected the back of arms and legs, was secured over the legs with crisscrossing leather straps. A finely worked brass helmet shielded the head, and an intricate inscription covered the thin nose guard. Holes cut in the top of the helmet allowed the ears to protrude.

  The huge furry skull glanced in all directions, taking in unanticipated surroundings. White and black ears flicked nervously as a quarter ton of tiger tried to orient itself.

  Paws dropped to sheaths, and in an instant each one held a five-foot-long sword with razor-sharp serrated edges.

  “By all the nine feline demons, what’s going on heah? I declare I’ll have some answers right quick or there’ll be hell to pay.” Slitted eyes fixed on the bars. She took a step forward and glared down at the quivering porcupine.

  “You! What is this place? Why am ah locked up? Y’all answer me fast or ah’ll make a necklace out of yo backbone!”

  “G-g-g-guards,” the porcupine stammered. It came out as a whisper. Aware his cry wasn’t reaching very far, he raised his voice. “Guards!”

  “Quit stabling and talk to me.” Feminine, Jon-Tom decided. Thunderous, but undeniably feminine. The conjuration was a she. She turned to eye Mudge. “Yo theah. Why won’t he talk to me?”

  “You talkin’ to me, m’dear?” Mudge inquired reluctantly.

  She reached down and lifted him easily off the floor with one paw, setting her second sword aside but within easy reach. Fully extended, her claws were nearly as long as Mudge’s fingers.

  “Now, who else would ah be talking to, you little sponge?”

  “Blimey, m’dear, I ain’t considered the possibility.”

  “Guards!” Suddenly it occurred to the porcupine that since he wasn’t having much luck obtaining help with his voice, it might be efficacious to employ his feet. He raced up the stairs with unexpected speed. “Guards, help me!”

  “Hey, yo!” The tigress dropped Mudge, who promptly retreated to the back of the cell. “Come back heah! Yo heah me?”

  “He thinks you’re a threat to him.”

  “What’s that?” For the first time she focused her attention on Jon-Tom.

  “I said, he thinks you’re a threat to him. Because you’re in here with us.”

  “Y’all are awfully big fo a human.”

  “And you’re awfully big period.” He continued struggling with the cuffs that bound him to the bars of the cell.

  “What is this place?” She turned slowly to make a more careful inspection of the prison. She did not appear frightened. Only irritated.

  “We’re in a dungeon in a town called Malderpot.”

  “Nevah heard of it,” said the feline amazon. “A dungeon, you say. I can see that fo mahself, honey.” She eyed his restraints. “Why ah yo tied up like that?”

  “I’m a spellsinger,” he explained. “I’ve been doing a little singing and I think I accidently brought you here.”

  “So that’s it!” Jon-Tom did his best not to cower away from those burning yellow eyes. She stepped back and hefted both her swords. “Well then, y’all can just send me back.”

  He squirmed against the bars. “I, uh, I’m afraid I can’t do that. I don’t know how I brought you here. I can try later, maybe. But not without my duar.” He pointed into the room. “And I can’t play it with my hands tied like this.”

  “Well, that much is obvious. Ah’ve got eyes, yo know.”

  “Very pretty eyes, too.”

  “Huh,” she said, a little more softly. “Spellsingah, yo say? Yo sound moah like a solicitah to me.” Jon-Tom didn’t inform her about his legal training, not being sure of her opinion of solicitors.

  One sword suddenly cut forward and down. Mudge let out a half moan, half squeak, and Jon-Tom closed his eyes. But the sword passed between the bars to delicately cut the chain linking his wrist cuffs. A couple of quick twists of a clawed paw and his hands were free. He spoke, as he rubbed the circulation back into his wrists.

  “I still need the duar.” Loud noises reached them from somewhere on the level above, and he hurried his introductions. ‘-’That’s Mudge, I’m Jon-Tom Meriweather.” He recalled the song he’d sung prior to “Eye of the Tiger.”

  “By any chance would your name be Sage, Rosemary, or Thyme?” Somehow Scarborough didn’t seem a possibility.

  “Close enuf. Ah am called Roseroar.”

  Jon-Tom nodded to himself. Once again his songs and his desires had gotten themselves thoroughly mixed. He took a deep breath, repeated the gist of a by now familiar story.

  “We’re trying to help a wizard who is dying. Because of that a jealous wizard is trying to prevent us from doing so. He had us captured, brought here, and locked up.”

  “That’s no business of mine,” said the tigress. “Yo really think man eyes are pretty?”

  “Extremely so.” Why didn’t Mudge chip in with a word or two? he wondered. He was better at this sort of thing. But the otter hugged his comer of the cell and kept his mouth shut. Jon-Tom plunged on. “Like topaz.”

  “Yo have a gift of words as well as music, don’t yo? Well, let me tell yo, ah am not subject to the simple flattery of the male of any species!”

  “Of course you’re not. I didn’t mean for you to think I was intentionally flattering you, or anything like that. I just made a simple statement of fact.”

  “Did y’all, now? Where do yo have to go to help this dying friend of yours?”

  “Across the Glittergeist Sea.”

  “So ah’m that fah west, am ah?” She shook her head in wonder. “It’s a peculiah world we live in.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Jon-Tom muttered.

  “Ah’ve nevah been to an ocean, much less the Glittergeist.” She looked out through the bars. “So that’s yo instrument fo making magic?”

  “It is. Also, the keys are on the table nearby. If we could get ahold of the rope attached to the duar, we could maybe drag the keys over here.” He eyed the stairwell.

  “But I don’t think we’ve got much time.”

  “Well, sugah, if it’s the keys you want. . .” Roseroar put one paw on a bar to the left, the other on the bar immediately opposite, inhaled mightily, and pushed. Muscles rippled beneath the armor.

  There was a groan and the metal bent like spaghetti. The tigress stepped through the resultant gap, walked over to the table, and picked up the k
eyring.

  “Yo still want these?”

  Mudge was already out in the corridor. Jon-Tom was right on his heels. He snatched the duar and slung it over his shoulder.

  “I think we’ll be able to manage without them. Roseroar, you’re quite a lady.”

  “Aye, with a delicate and ladylike touch,” said Mudge

  “Ah think ah like you two,” she said thoughtfully, staring at Mudge, “though ah can’t decide if y’all are trying to be funny or flattering.” She gestured with the two heavy swords. “Ah hope fo yo sake y’all are trying to be funny.”

  Jon-Tom hastened to reassure her. “You’ve got to take whatever Mudge says with a grain of salt. Comments like that are part of his nature. Sort of like a disease.” He turned to bestow a warning look on the otter.

  “Ah can see that,” said the tigress. “Well, ah don’t know how ah’m going to get home, but ah sure don’t fancy this hole. Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk.”

  “Suits me,” said Jon-Tom agreeably.

  At that moment the porcupine appeared at the top of the stairs, preceded by a pair of big, heavily armed wolves.

  They saw Roseroar about the time she saw them. She emitted a battle cry, a mixture of roar and curse, that shook moss from the ceiling. Waving both swords like propellers, she charged the stairway, which cleared with astonishing speed.

  Mudge executed a little bow and gestured with his right hand. “After you, master o’ magic and spellsinger extraordinaire.”

  Jon-Tom made a face at him, hurried to follow Roseroar upward. From ahead sounded shouts, screams, frantic cries, and yelps. Above all rose the tigress’s earthshaking growls.

  “Don’t be so quick to compliment me,” Jon-Tom told the otter. “She’s not what I was trying to conjure up.”

  “I know that, guv’nor,” said Mudge, striding along happily in his companion’s wake. “It never is, wot? But even though you never get wot you’re after with your spellsingin’, wotever you gets always seems to work out.”

  “Tell me that again when she finds out there’s no way I can send her home-”

  “Now, mate,” Mudge told him as they started up to the next level, “wot’s the use o’ creatin’ worry where there ain’t none? Besides,” he went on, his grin widening, “if she turns quarrelsome, you can tell ‘er ‘ow beautiful ‘er eyes are.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  They emerged into the main guardroom, which looked as if a modest typhoon had thundered through it. Every table was overturned and broken furniture littered the floor.

  Broken spears and pikes sopped up spilled liquid from shattered jugs. A couple of the guards remained, decoratively draped over the broken furniture. None offered a protest as Jon-Tom and Mudge began to search the still intact chests and drawers.

  One .yielded Mudge’s longbow and arrows, another Jon-Tom’s ramwood fighting staff. There was no sign of the full purse Clothahump had given him, nor did he expect to find it. Mudge was more disappointed than his companion at the absence of the gold.

  “Bloody bedamned stinkin’ thieves,” he mumbled, ignoring the fact that he’d lifted a purse or two in his own time.

  “Be quiet.” Jon-Tom led him up the next flight of stairs. “From the way you’re carrying on, you’d think this was the first time you’d ever been penniless.”

  “I’m not sayin’ that, mate,” replied Mudge, putting a leash on his lamentations, “but when I gets friendly with a bit o’ gold or silver and it ups and disappears on me, I feel as if I’ve lost a good friend. The loss strikes me to the quick.”

  “One of these days it’d be nice to see you get so emotional over something besides money.”

  “You do me an injustice, mate.” Mudge carried his bow in front of him, a hunting arrow notched and ready to fire.

  If the fates were kind they’d give him one clear shot at Chenelska or his bullyboys. Nothing would please him more than to be able to give the coati the shaft.

  “You want emotional?” he continued as they climbed.

  “You should’ve seen me at Madam Lorsha’s.”

  “I’m talking about honest emotion, about caring. Not lust.”

  “Cor, you mean there’s a difference?”

  The third landing was the last. They emerged into a small open square lit by torches and oil lamps. To their left was the city wall, to the right the outermost buildings of the town. The light danced wildly as sources of illumination were hastily moved to different positions. Shouts and yells filled the air.

  Jon-Tom ducked as a wolf whizzed over his head. It pinwheeled once before striking the wall with a sickening thud.

  Roseroar’s efforts threw everything into confusion. Horns and shouts were beginning to rouse a whole section of the community. Lights were starting to appear in nearby windows as residents were awakened by the commotion.

  Mudge bounced gleefully up and down, pointing at the evidence of the chaos the tigress was causing. “Wot a show! The poor buggers must think the ‘ole bloomin’ city is under attack.”

  “Maybe they’re right.” Jon-Tom started forward.

  “Hey, you two!” Roseroar called to them as she idly batted aside a large rat armed with a short sword who had tried to sneak under her guard. The rodent went skidding across the paving stones, shedding bits and pieces of armor and flesh as he went. “Ovah heah! This way!”

  They ran toward her. Jon-Tom placed his staff in front of him while Mudge ran backward to guard their rear, his short legs a blur. As they ran they dodged spears and arrows. Mudge responded to each attack individually, and they were rewarded as one figure after another fell from the wall above.

  Snarling, a hyena draped in heavy chain mail headed right for Ion-Tom, swinging a viciously studded mace over his head. Jon-Tom blocked it with his staff, and the ramwood held as the mace’s chain wrapped around it. He pulled and twisted in one motion, bringing the knobbed end of the staff down on his assailant’s helmet. The hyena dropped like a stone. They ran on, Jon-Tom unwrapping the chain from his staff.

  Then they were up against the thick wooden door in the city wall. Crossbow bolts thudded into the wood or splintered against the rock as the wall’s garrison struggled to regroup.

  Mudge inspected it rapidly. “Locked, damn it, from the other side!”

  “Pahdon me,” said Roseroar. While they covered her she put her back against the door, dug her feet into the pavement, and shoved. The door broke with a snap, the wood holding but not the iron hinges. It fell with a crash.

  The trio ran out, pursued by yells and weapons. No one chose to pursue beyond the city wall in person. The tigress had demonstrated what she could do at close range, and Malderpot’s soldiery had taken the lesson to heart. They held back, waiting for someone higher up to give the necessary orders, and praying those directions would take their time arriving.

  Before they did, the fugitives were deep within the concealment offered by the Bellwoods and the night.

  Eventually they located a place where several giant trees had fallen, forming a natural palisade, and settled in behind the wooden barricade nature had so thoughtfully provided.

  The long run hadn’t troubled Jon-Tom, who was a good distance runner, nor Mudge, who was blessed with inexhaustible energy, but Roseroar was tired. They waited while she caught her breath.

  There in the moonlight she pulled off her helmet, undid the thick belt that held both swords, and put it aside. Then she leaned back against one fallen trunk. Her bright yellow eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. Physically she was unharmed by the fighting, though her armor showed plenty of cuts and dents.

  “We owe you our lives,” he finally told her.

  “Yes, ah expect that’s so. Damned if ah know how ah’m going to collect on that debt. Yo told me yo didn’t mean to conjuh me up in the first place?”

  “That’s right,” he confessed. “It was an accident. I was trying to put our jailer to sleep. When it didn’t work I got upset and spellsang the first thing that came to mind an
d—poof—there you were.”

  “Ah was the first thing that came to yo mind?”

  “Well, not exactly. Matter of fact, I’ve never seen anybody like you. This kind of thing happens to me a lot when I try to spellsing.”

  She nodded, turned to look to where Mudge was already searching the bushes for something edible. “Is he telling the truth, squirt?”

  “Me name is Mudge, lady o’ the long tooth,” said the voice in the bushes, “and I’ll make you a deal right now. You can like me o’ not, but you don’t call me names and I’ll respond likewise.”

  “Ah favor politeness in all things, being a lady of refined tastes,” she replied evenly.

  Mudge restrained the first reply that came to mind, said instead, “Aye, ‘e’s tellin’ you the truth. A powerful spellsinger ‘e is. Maybe the most powerful ever, though we ain’t yet sure o’ that. ‘E certainly ain’t. See, ‘e ‘as this bad ‘abit o’ tryin’ to do one thing and ‘e ends up doin’ something total unexpected.”

  Jon-Tom spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “It’s true. I have this ability but I don’t seem able to control it. And now it’s caused me to go and inconvenience you.”

  “That’s a fine, politic way of putting it, sub. Going to the Glittergeist, yo said?”

  “And across it. We have to get to Snarken.”

  “Ah’ve heard of Snahken. It’s supposed to be an interesting place, rich in culture.” She thought a long moment, then sighed. “Since yo say y’all can’t send me home, ah guess ah maht as well tag along with y’all. Besides, ah kind of like the way you have with words, man.” Her eyes glittered and Jon-Tom felt suddenly uncomfortable, though he wasn’t sure why.

  “Oh, ‘is a fine one with words ‘e is, luv,” Mudge said as he reappeared. He was carrying an armful of some lime-green berries. Jon-Tom took a few, bit into one, and found the taste sweet. More out of politeness than any expectation of acceptance, the otter offered some to the tigress.

  “Bleh!” she said as she pulled back. She smiled widely, displaying an impressive array of cutlery. “Sun, do ah look like the kind to enjoy weeds?”