The Hour of the Gate

by Alan Dean Foster

  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 leam as well as you."

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

  "I'm hoping that 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 leam 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 Ror 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 Hor." 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 wannlander 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-oncewas 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.