Chorus Skating (42 page)

“But not until I've received the acclaim my talent is due.” He gestured diffidently. “Meanwhile, I give you your freedom. Go on, leave. Take a hike. I'm feeling magnanimous today.”

Jon-Tom frowned. “You don't talk like your average heavy metal singer.”

Hieronymus Hinckel let out a snort. “You think that schmuck Gathers is the only one with an education? I was a year short of a B.A. in economics at NYU.”

Mudge leaned to whisper to his companion. “'E's chock-full of lies, mate. Who ever 'eard o' someone goin' from studyin' economics to bein' a lead singer in a mad band?”

“We're not leaving.” Jon-Tom steeled himself.

When Hinckel's brows drew together, creasing his already narrow face, he no longer looked quite so elementally nerdy. He managed to look almost threatening.

“I'm warning you. I'm only giving you a chance because you're not one of these stupid nattering animals like that rat standing next to you.” Mudge drew his sword. “Not goin' to be so easy for you to sing, guv, without any vocal cords. Or maybe we'll try permanently raisin' your voice a couple o' octaves an' see if it improves any. I guarantee your disposition will.”

“As for thinkin' to insult me by callin' me an animal, why, we're all animals together 'ere, guv.”

“That's so,” agreed Jon-Tom proudly.

“You're right.” Hinckel spun sideways and put his legs up on the side of the throne. “You
have
been here a long time. So what do you expect me to do?”

“Free the music. Remove the sorceral shackles that hobble each harmony. Let it return to the instruments and throats that wait.” With a gesture Jon-Tom took in the grim battlements. “If you want to stay here and be king of the island and sing yourself silly I'll be the first to support your right to do so. But taking everyone else's music leaves you a poorer musician, not a better.”

“Too bloody right,” Mudge barked. “You can steal a lot o' things, guv. I should know. But you can't steal talent.”

“What pretty speechifying. Are you both finished?”

Jon-Tom had been readying his lyrics. “Not quite. If you still don't get it, well, I've always been a firm believer in audiovisual aids.” His hand brushed the duar and he began to sing.

An evanescence unlike any Mudge had ever seen before began to emerge from the depths of the duar's nexus. Bright as neon, the deep purple flux oozed from the impossible omphalos where the wondrous instrument's double sets of strings intersected. The otter retreated several steps. At such times there was no telling what might happen.

Jon-Tom himself was often the last to know.

“One thing 'bout the music

Most folks don't seem to know

Ain't no good to lock it up

A song needs space to grow

Doesn't matter what kind

Classical, rap, jazz, or show

Find it in your heart to find

Freedom for that rock and roll!”

Hieronymus Hinckel was less than impressed. Straightening once more, he eyed the cloud dubiously, as though it were a puff of pollution clouding the intersection of Second and Twenty-sixth.

“Hey, not bad.” Rising from his erstwhile throne, he wandered over to a tall, narrow window and peered out. A rush of sound washed over the room, a vast musical sigh as of a hundred clarinets suddenly deprived of air. “Looks like you've managed to free a
small
amount of the music I've gathered here. Now I'll just have to bring it back.” He turned to regard his visitors.

“Of course, I'm also going to have to make you stop. Didn't really want to take your music, but if you insist on playing hardball …”

Jon-Tom managed an uncharacteristic sneer even as he was concocting additional lyrics. “Hum a few bars and I'll give it a shot.”

Smiling unpleasantly, from a front pocket Hinckel extracted a battered but still functional harmonica. Putting it to his lips, he blew a few simple, basic, incredibly off-key notes.

The purple haze which had begun to dominate the atmosphere of the central hall recoiled as if from a blow. It all but vanished before gathering new strength from Jon-Tom's lyrics and a shift to a major key.

Surprised, Hinckel stumbled back in the direction of the throne. The air of cockiness he'd maintained ever since their arrival vanished. As Jon-Tom continued to play and sing, the purple cloud pressed close. When Hinckel, clearly deciding that stronger methods were in order, finally began to sing, the cloud's advance was slowed but not shattered.

“That's it, mate!” Hovering close at his friend's side, Mudge was hopping about wildly, waving his sword over his head. “Give it to 'im! Show 'im wot real spellsingin's about! Fix 'im so 'e can't co-opt so much as a lazy lie-about stanza ever again!”

“I'll do just that,” Jon-Tom growled, “if you don't cut my head off with that damn sword!”

“Oi, right.” The otter promptly lowered his enthusiasm along with his weapon.

Unable to faze either the menacing purple cloud or Jon-Tom's music, a wide-eyed Hinckel had retreated all the way to his garish sit-upon. When Mudge seemed about to dart forward and put an end to the business with a most unmelodic thrust of his sword, the would-be singer turned and let out a cry of desperation. It was the piteous baying of a mistreated child; of the one always picked last for any game, of he who perpetually finished, not at the bottom of his class (which would have bestowed a certain perverse distinction), but simply in the lower tenth, that inchoate academic abyss from which no hint of excellence ever arises.

In response to his moan, shapes began to emerge from the insubstantiality that heretofore had held sway behind the throne. Beyond the fortress battlements lightning flared for the first time since Jon-Tom and Mudge had set foot on the island.

Black lightning.

Angry thunder rattled the ill-hewn stones of the castle, shaking them in their footings. Hinckel's lyrics were largely unintelligible, his music as excruciating as ever, but this time there was an underlying desperation to each chord, a pathetic necessity that had previously been lacking. So pitiful was it that Jon-Tom hesitated.

It was not his hesitation which cost them control. He and Mudge simply found themselves outnumbered.

Emerging from the darkness, the various specters were attired in everything from satin and silk to cotton waistcloth and breeches. Some wore Romanic togas while others showed off torn blue jeans and battered sandals. Bleached tie-dyes backgrounded chipped love beads, hairy arms bulged from too-small tuxedos, and black leather jackets glowed with lace trim.

One apparition approaching Mudge was clad in a manner so hideous that the hardened otter was forced to look away.

“Not that!” Mudge moaned. “Anythin' but … but
plaid
!”

Into the great hall they drifted on wings fashioned of filthy feathers and frayed membrane, each and every one of them years overdue for a bath. As they drifted, they played. And sang, and hummed, and clapped their hands to a beat no two of them seemed able to follow. In their hands they carried their instruments, from ancient lutes to not-quite-state-of-the-art synthesizers and everything in between.

Jon-Tom recognized a viola da gamba. One apparition wrestled with a mistuned gamelan. There were flutes and guitars, maracas and drums, didgereedoos and banjos. The phantasms sang as they played.

While each individually realized distinct degrees of tastelessness, not a one of them could match Hieronymus Hinckel when it came to sheer ugh. Though several did come close, Jon-Tom had to admit as his outraged ears began to ring. All poor Mudge could do to try and fend off the aural horror was hold his sword out in front of him with both hands, as if it might function as some sort of steel talisman. But while the blade could cut easily through flesh and bone, it was useless against tectonically bad music.

Once more the otter retreated behind his friend. “In the name o' the Great Odor, wot
is
this?”

“Spirits.” It was becoming a real struggle to sustain any kind of musical comportment in the face of such overwhelming ghastly sonics. “The shades of dead musicians from my world.” Jon-Tom winced in pain. “The worst failures and most talentless performers in the history of popular music must be in this room.”

A wild-eyed Hinckel confidently slid off the throne to confront them. “Hey, they're baaaad.”

“You're telling me.” A particularly grating
whanggg
from an acoustic guitar brought tears to Jon-Tom's eyes. As a riff it was pure raff.

Hinckel continued to advance. “They're just misunderstood, like I am. Though none of them's as good, of course.”

Mudge retreated from the hideous performance. “Do somethin', mate! I can't stand it much longer!”

As he detected what he thought must be Gregorian chant executed (and that was surely the right word) to a disco beat, Jon-Tom, too, found himself having to give ground. His retreat was cut off by the shade of a shambolic Elvis impersonator from Uttar Pradesh who was essaying “Jailhouse Rock” in a voice that verged on the Lovecraftian. His funeral persona was complete to sequined white Vegas outfit, long sideburns, and pompadour greased with hog lard. Worse than a travesty, it was potentially lethal.

Hovering on slim batwings, a squat, tubby ex-accountant's assistant from the cheaper suburbs of Osaka was fighting to render (and that was surely the right word) a classic Bessie Smith soliloquy. A more lyrical sound could have been produced by cutting titanium with a chain saw.

There was a would-have-been rocker from East Prussia who added to the harmonic devastation by flagellating “Stairway to Heaven” with his accordion, a New England preppie complete to Yale sweater, white slacks, and yachting loafers struggling in an aching New England drawl to mimic the best of Joe Cocker, and a humorless dyke from Des Moines out to convince eternity she could indeed play “I Will Always Love You” on her kazoo.

And many, all too many more.

If the threat hadn't been so real, it would have been drop-dead funny. As it was, that was half true, and Jon-Tom was acutely conscious of the rising danger. He had to find some way to fight back. But it was hard to think of chords and lyrics when your ears were screaming in pain, your teeth were jangling, and the soul of music itself was being riven before your very ears.

In the midst of the caterwauling, cacophonic specters he had called forth from some unimaginable Necronomicon of Pop stood Hieronymus Hinckel and his harmonica, grinning like a malevolent troll. Beset from all sides, Jon-Tom's purple haze writhed and twisted under the dissonant assault. Just as antimatter could annihilate matter, so Hinckel's antiharmony threatened to do the same to whatever spellsong Jon-Tom tried to promulgate.

The odious vibrations threatened to shake the irreplaceable duar to splinters. If the duar failed, all was lost. Jon-Tom saw no recourse but to retreat.

“
Midi, veni, vici!
” Hinckel cackled. Beckoning his army of failures to follow, he loped off in pursuit of the intruders.

Trailed by Hinckel's wailing phantasms, Jon-Tom and Mudge fled the keep. Around them the solid rock of the mountain was exfoliating as the antimusic pulverized the gray basalt, reducing it to traumatized shards. It was not surprising that in the confusion they missed the slope by which they had ascended.

Screeching to a stop at the edge of a sheer precipice, Mudge sought frantically for an alternate route. Waves crashed against naked rock impossibly far below, their echoing boom a distant white-foam whisper. Jon-Tom slowed to a halt alongside.

Hinckel and his unholy chorus were right behind.

“Sorry, man. You had your chance. I can't let you or anyone else stand in my way.” Then he did the worst thing possible.

Accompanied by his spectral attendants, he began to sing.

The open air did nothing to improve his voice, as pernicious an instrument as was ever propounded by an inimical strand of DNA.

Mudge teetered at the edge of the drop, paws clapped desperately over his ears. “Do somethin', Jon-Tom! I can't stand it!”

The spellsinger peered into the gorge. Not even an otter's agility could get them down that smooth rock face. If they could cross the chasm to the next peak lower down, they could easily negotiate a path to the shore. Since neither of them possessed wings or the immediate prospect of acquiring same, this seemed an unlikely course of action.

“I don't know …”

“Sing somethin' 'opeful, optimistic,” Mudge urged him frantically. “Sing it loud, sing it clear.”

The years had given Jon-Tom practice in composing melodies and lyrics under pressure. The song he eventually essayed was as lovely as Hinckel's was harsh. Compared to their antagonist, Jon-Tom's usually uneven tenor sounded like Nat King Cole.

Exactly how Donner's solo from the conclusion of
Das Rheingold
sprang to mind he couldn't have said, but a rock version of the heroic soliloquy turned out to be exactly what the situation called for. He didn't have a hammer with which to strike the stone underfoot, but he could call upon some seriously heavy metal.

Purple haze billowed from the duar, not as a cloud this time but in a straight, almost machined arc. It leaped from the duar's nexus across the dizzying abyss, changing color as it coalesced. Racing through all the hues of the spectrum, it solidified into a rainbow bridge that not only spanned the chasm but didn't terminate until it reached all the way to the distant shoreline.

Half mad from the pain of being subjected to Hinckel's macabre vocalizing, Mudge didn't hesitate. He jumped out onto the rainbow and started down, his boots sinking a couple of inches into soft florid evanescence with every stride.

“Come on, mate!” he called back to Jon-Tom. “She's holdin'!”

“Not fair, not fair!” Hinckel tried to follow, but his courage wasn't sufficient to let him step out onto the shimmering, translucent bridge. He didn't have to. A ketchup-stained finger pointed in Jon-Tom's direction. “Get 'em! Go for the ears. Turn up the volume!” On tattered but all-too-functional wings, the dissonant choir soared out over the bridge in pursuit.