The Hour of the Gate (34 page)

Everywhere, Jon-Tom thought, but there was no way to say it.

“T
HE COURSE OF MY JOURNEY HAS BEEN FOREVER CHANGED
,” bellowed M'nemaxa. “I
HAVE HAD TO CHANGE MY DIRECTION BECAUSE OF THE EVIL IN YOUR WORLD AND NOW MY ROUTE IS ALMOST THROUGH
. C
OME WITH ME TO THE OUTSIDE, LITTLE MAN, YOUR WORLD IS FULL OF DOOM
. I
WILL SHOW SUCH THINGS AS NO MORTAL SHALL EVER AGAIN SEE
.”

“Wot's 'e talkin' about, guv'nor?”

“Eejakrat's magic, Mudge. Clothahump knew that they could not control it, and it has created devastation so utter that even M'nemaxa had to detour around it. It's happened before, but in my world. Not here. Look.”

The mushroom cloud that billowed skyward from the far end of the Troom Pass was not large, but it was considerably darker and denser than any of the mists behind it.

Below them now the last of the Plated Folk army, those who'd been lucky enough to be trapped in the middle of the Pass, were surrendering, turning over their weapons and going down on all sixes to plead for mercy.

Beneath the now fading mushroom cloud that marked the failure of Eejakrat's imported magic, the butte he'd stood upon had vanished. In its place there was only an empty, radioactive crater. The bomb Eejakrat had been in the process of creating had been a relatively clean one. What remained would serve as a warning to future generations of Plated Folk. It would block the Pass far more effectively than had the Jo-Troom Gate.

Flaming wings slowed. Mudge was deposited gently back on top of the wall. Jon-Tom thanked the flaming being but would not return with him.

“T
HREE MILLION YEARS
!” M'nemaxa boomed, his neighing shaking boulders from the cliffsides of the canyon.

“O
NLY THREE MILLION
. T
HANK YOU, LITTLE HUMAN
. Y
OU ARE A WIZARD OF UNKNOWN WISDOM
. F
REWELL
!”

The vast fiery form rose into the air. There was an earsplitting explosion that rent the fabric of space-time. The gap closed quickly and M'nemaxa had gone, gone back to resume his now truncated journey, gone back to the everywhere other place.

Bodies, furred and otherwise, swarmed around the returnees—Caz, Flor, Bribbens holding his bandaged right arm where he'd taken a sword thrust. Pog fluttered excitedly overhead, and warmlander soldiers mixed queries with congratulations.

The battle had ended, the war was over. Those Plated Folk who had not perished in the modest thermonuclear explosion at the far end of the Pass were being herded into makeshift corrals.

Jon-Tom was embarrassed and nervous, but Mudge glowed like M'nemaxa himself from the adulation of the crowd.

When the excitement had died down and the soldiers had gone to join their companions below, Clothahump managed to make his way up to Jon-Tom.

“You did well, my boy, well! I'm quite proud of you.” He smiled as much as he could. “We'll make a wizard of you yet. If you can only learn to be a bit more specific and precise in your formulations.”

“I'm learning,” Jon-Tom admitted without smiling back. “One of the things I've learned is to pay attention to what lies
behind
a person's words.” He and the wizard stared into each other's eyes, and neither gave ground.

“I did what I had to do, boy. I'd do it again.”

“I know you would. I can't blame you for it anymore, but I can't like you for it, either.”

“As you will, Jon-Tom,” said the wizard. He looked past the man and his eyes widened. “Though it may be that you condemn me too quickly.”

Jon-Tom turned. A petite, slightly baffled redhead was walking toward them. He could only stare.

“Hello,” Talea said, smiling slightly. “I must have been unconscious for days.”

“You've been dead,” said a flabbergasted Mudge.

“Oh cut it out. I had the strangest dream.” She looked down at the canyon. “Missed all the fighting, I see.”

“I saw you… out there,” Jon-Tom said dazedly. “Or a part of you. It came to me and I knew it was you.”

“I wouldn't know about that,” she said sharply. “All I know is that I woke up in a tent surrounded by corpses. It scared the shit out of me.” She chuckled. “Did worse to the attendants. Bet they haven't stopped running.

“Then I asked around for you and got directions. Is it true what everyone's saying about you and M'nemaxa and…”

“Everything's true, nothing's false,” Jon-Tom said. “Not anymore. Whatever entered me I sent back to you, but it doesn't matter. What is is what matters, and what is, is you.”

“You've gotten awfully obscure all of a sudden, Jon-Tom.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “I suppose we have to stay together now.” He smiled shyly, not able to explain what had happened in Elsewhere. She looked blank. “Don't you remember what you said to me back in Cugluch?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “I don't know what you're talking about, but that's nothing new, is it? You always did talk too much. But you're wrong about one thing.”

“What's that?”

“I do remember what I said back in Cugluch,” and she proceeded to give him the deepest, longest, richest kiss he'd ever experienced.

Eventually she let him go. Or was it the other way around? No matter.

Caz and Flor sat on the ramparts nearby, hand in paw. Jon-Tom shook his head, wondering at that blindness that conceals what is most obvious. Bribbens had disappeared, doubtless to make arrangements for reaching the nearest river. Falameezar was able to help the boatman with that, being a river dragon. That is, he was when he wasn't too busy reeducating his rodent charges about their responsibilities and rights as members of the downtrodden proletariat. Clothahump had gone off to discuss the matters of magic with the other warmlander wizards.

“What now, Jon-Tom?” Talea looked at him anxiously. “I guess now that you've mastered your spellsinging you'll be returning to your own world?”

“I don't know.” He studied the masonry underfoot. “I'm not so sure you could say I've
mastered
spellsinging.” He plucked ruefully at the duar. “I always seem to get what I need, not what I want. That's nice, but not necessarily reassuring.

“And for some reason being a rock star or a lawyer doesn't seem to hold the attraction it once did. I guess you could say I've had my horizons somewhat expanded.” Like to include infinity, he told himself.

She nodded knowingly. “You've grown up some, Jon-Tom.”

He shrugged. “If experiences can age you, I ought to be the equivalent of Methuselah by now.”

“I'll see what I can do about keeping you young… .” She ran fingers through his hair. “Does that mean you'll be staying?” She added quietly, “With me, maybe? If you can stand me, that is.”

“I've never known a woman like you, Talea.”

“That's because there aren't any women like me, idiot.” She moved to kiss him again. He edged away from her, preoccupied with a new thought.

“What's the matter? Not coy enough for you?”

“Nothing like that. I just remembered something that's been left undone, something that I promised myself I'd try to do if given the chance.”

They found Pog hanging from a spear rack in the middle of the remaining wall. The warmlanders were beginning to disperse, those not remaining behind to guard the Plated Folk forming into their respective companies and battalions preparatory to beginning the long march home. Some were already on their way, too tired or filled with memories of dead companions to sing victory songs. They were traveling west toward Polastrindu or southward to where the river Tailaroam tumbled fresh and clear from the flanks of the Teeth.

The sun was setting over the fringes of the Swordsward. The poisonous silhouette of the mushroom cloud had long since been carried away by the wind. Their kilts flashing as brightly as their wings, squads of aerial warmlanders in arrowhead formations were winging back toward their home roosts. A distant line of silk-clad shapes showed where the Weavers were wending their way northward along the foothills, and a dark mass was just disappearing over the northern crest of the mountains in the direction of fabled Ironcloud.

“Hello, Pog.”

“Hi, spellsinger.” The bat's voice was subdued, but Jon-Tom no longer had to ask why. “Some job ya did. I'm proud ta call ya my friend.”

Jon-Tom sat down on a low bench near the spear rack. “Why aren't you out there celebrating with the rest of the army?”

“I attend to da needs of my master, you know dat. I wait for his woid on what ta do next.”

“You're a good apprentice, Pog. I hope I can learn as well as you.”

“What's dat supposed ta mean?” The upside-down face turned to stare curiously at him.

“I'm hoping mat Clothahump will accept me as an apprentice wizard.” The duar rested in his lap and he strummed it experimentally. “Magic seems to be the only thing I have any talent for hereabouts. I'd damn well better learn how to discipline it before I kill myself. I've just been lucky so far.”

“Da master, da old fart-face, says dere's no such ting as luck.”

“I know, I know.” He was slowly picking out a tune on the duar. “But I'm going to have to work like hell if I'm going to attain half the wisdom of that senile little turtle.” He started to hum the song that had come to him back in the tent on that day of fury not long ago, when a certain famulus had been thoughtful enough to comfort him and lay down the life laws.

“I appreciated what you said to me that time in the tent, when I came out of the stupor Clothahump was forced to put me into. You see, Pog, Clothahump cared about me because he knew I might be able to help him. Caz and Flor and Bribbens cared about me because we were dependent on one another.

“But the only ones who cared about me personally, really cared, turned out to be Talea, and you. We've got a lot in common, you and I. A hell of a lot in common. I never saw it before because I couldn't. You were right about love, of course. I thought I wanted Flor.” Talea said nothing. “What I really wanted was someone to want me. That's all I've ever wanted. I know that's what you want, too.”

Now he began to sing out, loud and clear. Suddenly there was a shimmering in the air around the bat. It was evening now, and the wall was growing dark. Camp fires were beginning to spring up on the plain where Plated Folk and warmlander for the first time in thousands of years were beginning to talk to one another.

“Hey, what's going on?” The bat dropped from his perch, righted himself, and flapped nervous wings.

The bat shape was flowing, shifting in the evening air.

“That was my falcon song, Pog. I've got to get my spellsinging specific, Clothahump says. So I'm giving you the transformation you wanted from him.”

Talea clung tight to Jon-Tom's arm, watching. “He's changing, Jon-Tom.”

“It's what he wants,” he told her softly, also watching the transformation. “He gave me understanding when I needed it most. This is what I'm giving in return. The song I just sang should turn him into the biggest, sleekest falcon that ever split a cloud.”

But the shape wasn't right. It was all wrong. It continued to change and glow as Jon-Tom's expression widened in disbelief.

“Oh God. I should've waited. I should've held off and waited for Clothahump's advice. I'm sorry, Pog!” he yelled at the indistinct, alien outline.

“Wait,” said Talea gently. Her grip tightened on his arm and she leaned into him. “True, it's no falcon he's becoming. But look—it's incredible!”

The metamorphosis was complete, finished, irrevocable.

“Never mind, never mind, never mind!” sang the transformed thing that had been Pog the bat. The voice was all quicksilver and light. “Never mind, friend Talea. Be true to Clothahump, Jon-Tom. You'll get a wing on it, you will.”

A flock of fighters, eagles perhaps, crossed the darkling sky from east to west. A few falcons were scattered among them. Perhaps one was Uleimee.

“Meanwhile you've made me very happy,” Pog-that-once-was assured the spellsinger.

Jon-Tom realized he'd been holding his breath. The transformation had stunned him. Talea called to him softly and he turned and found her waiting arms.

Above them the change which had been Pog searched with keen eyes among the winged shapes soaring toward the distant reaches of the warmlands. It saw a particular female falcon emerging with others of her kind from a thick cloud, saw with eyes far sharper than those of any bat, or owl, or falcon.

Leaving the two humans to their own destinies, and rising on suddenly massive wings, the golden phoenix raced for that distant cloud, the sun setting on its back like a rare jewel.

A BIOGRAPHY OF ALAN DEAN FOSTER

Alan Dean Foster (b. 1946) is the bestselling author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels. His prolific output and accessible style have made him one of the nation's foremost speculative fiction writers.

Born in New York City in 1946, Foster was raised in Los Angeles and attended filmmaking school at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s. There he befriended George Lucas, with whom he would later collaborate. Rather than trying to break into Hollywood, however, Foster took a job writing copy for an advertising firm in Studio City, California, where he remained for two years, honing the craft that he would soon put to use when writing novels.

His first break came when the
Arkham Collector
, a small horror magazine, bought a letter Foster had written in the style of suspense legend H. P. Lovecraft. Encouraged by this sale, Foster began work on his first novel,
The Tar-Aiym Krang
(1972), which introduced the Humanx Commonwealth, his most enduring creation. He went on to set more than twenty novels in the Humanx universe; of these, Midworld (1975) is among his most acclaimed works.