Talea was rapidly pulling a thick blanket of some woven gray material over the bodies. Then the three of them were running around to the front seat of the wagon.
There wasn’t enough room there for all of them on the down-sized platform. Talea had grabbed the reins and Mudge had already mounted alongside her, so Jon-Tom had no choice but to vault the wagon rail and sit in the bed behind them.
“’Tis best anyway, mate.” Mudge smiled sympathetically. “I know the wood’s ’ard, but as big as you are we don’t want to draw any more attention than we can get away with. Snuggle yourself down low and we won’t.”
Talea gave a flip of the reins and shouted a soft “Hup!” and they were on their way. Just in time, too. As they rumbled down the street another rider passed them close.
Despite his exhaustion and confusion Jon-Tom’s interest was aroused. He barely had time for a glance at the mist-shrouded rider.
A white-faced, leather-clad rabbit was mounted on a slim lizard traveling on all fours. The reptile had a long snout with two short tusks protruding upward from just back of the nostrils. Its eyes were searchlight bright and yellow with black slit pupils.
The rider sat in a saddle that was securely attached by multiple straps to the lizard’s neck and belly, the extra ties necessary because of the animal’s peculiar twisting, side-to-side method of travel. It gave a snakelike appearance to the motion. The long tail was curled up in a spiral and fastened to the reptilian rear with a decorative silver scroll. Blunt claws appeared to have been trimmed close to the quick.
As he watched them vanish down the street, he thought that the rider must be getting a smoother ride than any horse could provide, since all the movement was from side to side instead of up and down.
That inspired him to inspect their own team. Shifting around on the wood and trying to avoid kicking the terribly still forms beneath the gray blanket, he peered ahead beneath the raised wagon seat.
The pair of creatures pulling the wagon were also reptilian, but as different from the rabbit’s mount as he was from Mudge. Harnessed in tandem to the wagon, they were shorter and bulkier than the single mount he’d just seen. They had blunt muzzles and less intelligent appearances, though that evaluation was probably due more to his unfamiliarity with the local reptilian life than to any actual physiologic difference.
They trudged more slowly over the cobblestones. Their stride was deliberate and straightforward instead of the unusual twisting, side-to-side movement of the other. Stumpy legs also covered less ground, and leathery stomach folds almost scraped the pavement. Obviously they were intended for pulling heavy loads rather than for comfort or speed.
Despite their bovine expressions they were intelligent enough to respond to Talea’s occasional tugs on the reins. He studied the process of steering with interest, for there was no telling when such knowledge might prove useful. He was a good observer, one of the hallmarks of both lawyer and musician, and despite his discouragement about his surroundings he instinctively continued to soak up local information.
The reins, for example, were not attached to bits set in the lizard’s mouths. Those thick jaws could have bitten through steel. Instead, they were joined to rings punched through each nostril. Gentle tugs at these sensitive areas were sufficient to guide the course of the lumbering dray.
His attention shifted to a much closer and more intriguing figure. From his slouched position he could see only flaming curls and the silver-threaded shape of her blouse and pants, the latter curving deliciously over the back edge of the wooden seat.
Whether she felt his eyes or not he couldn’t tell, but once she glanced sharply back down at him. Instead of turning embarrassedly away he met her stare. For a moment they were eye to eye. That was all. No insults this time. When he stepped further with a slight smile, more from instinct than intent, she simply turned away. She had not smiled back, but neither had that acid tongue heaped further abuse on him.
He settled back against the wooden side of the wagon, trying to rest. She was under a lot of pressure, he told himself. Enough to make anyone edgy and impolite. No doubt in less dangerous surroundings she was considerably less antagonistic.
He wondered whether that was likely or if he was simply rationalizing away behavior that upset him. It was admittedly difficult to attribute such bellicosity to such a beautiful lady. Not to mention the fact that it was bad for a delicate male ego.
Shut up, he told himself. You’ve got more important things to worry about. Think with your head instead of your gonads. What are you going to tell Clothahump when you see him again? It might be best to …
He wondered how old she actually was. Her diminutive size was the norm among local humans and hinted at nothing. He already knew her age to be close to his own because she hadn’t contradicted his earlier comment about it. She seemed quite mature, but that could be a normal consequence of a life clearly somewhat tougher than his own. He also wondered what she would look like naked, and had reason to question his own maturity.
Think of your surroundings, Meriweather. You’re trapped, tired, alone, and in real danger.
Alone … well, he would try his best to be friends with her, if she’d permit it. It was absurd to deny he found her attractive, though every time she opened her mouth she succeeded in stifling any serious thoughts he might be developing about extending that hoped-for friendship.
They had to become friends. She was human, and that in itself was enough to make him homesick and desperate. Maybe when they’d deposited the bodies at whatever location they were rolling toward she would relax a little.
That prompted him to wonder and worry about just where they were taking their injured cargo, and what was going to be done with it when they got there.
A moan came from beneath the blanket behind him, light and hesitant. He thought it came from the squirrelquette, though he couldn’t be certain.
“There’s a doctor out on the edge of town,” Talea said in response to his expression of concern.
“Glad to hear it.” So there was at least a shred of soul to complement the beauty. Good. He watched in silence as a delicately wrought two-wheeled buggy clop-clopped past their wagon. The two moon-eyed wallabies in the cab were far too engrossed in each other to so much as glance at the occupants of the wagon, much less at the lumpy cargo it carried.
Half conscious now, the little squirrel was beginning to kick and roll in counterpoint to her low moans. If she reawakened fully, things would become awkward. He resolved that in spite of his desire to make friends with Talea, he would bolt from the wagon rather than help her inflict any more harm. But after several minutes the movement subsided, and the unfortunate victim relapsed into silence.
They’d been traveling for half an hour and were still among buildings. Despite their plodding pace, it hinted that Lynchbany was a good-sized community. In fact, it might be even larger than he supposed, since he didn’t know if they’d started from the city center or its outskirts.
A two-story thatched-roof structure of stone and crisscrossed wooden support beams loomed off to their left. It leaned as if for support up against a much larger brooding stone building. Several smaller structures that had to be individual homes stretched off into the distance. A few showed lamps over their doorways, but most slept peacefully in the clinging mist.
No light showed in the two thick windows of the thatched building as Talea edged their wagon over close to it and brought it to a halt. The street was quite empty. The only movement was from the mouths and nostrils of lizards and passengers, where the increasing chill turned their exhalations to momentarily thicker, tired fog. He wondered again at the reptiles. Maybe they were hybrids with warm blood; if not, they were being extremely active for cold-blooded creatures on such a cold night.
He climbed out of the back of the wagon and looked at the doorway close by. An engraved sign hung from two hooks over the portal. Letters painted in white declaimed:
NILANTHOS—PHYSICIAN AND APOTHECARY<
br />
A smaller sign in the near window listed the ailments that could be treated by the doctor. Some of them were unfamiliar to Jon-Tom, who knew a little of common disease but nothing whatsoever of veterinary medicine.
Mudge and Talea were both whispering urgently at him. He moved out of the street and joined them by the door.
It was recessed into the building, roofed over and concealed from the street. They were hidden from casual view as Talea knocked once, twice, and then harder a third time on the milky bubble-glass set into the upper part of the door. She ignored the louder bellpull.
The waited nervously but no one answered. At least no one passed them in the street, but an occasional distinct groan was now issuing from the back of the wagon.
“’E’s not in, ’e ain’t.” Mudge looked worried. “I know a Doctor Paleetha. ’E’s clear across town, though, and I can’t say ’ow trustworthy ’e be, but if we’ve no one else t’ turn t’…”
There were sounds of movement inside and a low complaining voice coming closer. It was at that point that Jon-Tom became really scared for the first time since he’d materialized in this world. His first reactions had been more disbelief and confusion than fear, and later ones were tied to homesickness and terror of the unknown.
But now, standing in an alien darkened street, accomplice to assault and battery and so utterly, totally alone, he started to shake. It was the kind of real, gut-chilling fear that doesn’t frighten as much as it numbs all reality. The whole soul and body just turn stone cold—cold as the water at the bottom of a country well—and thoughts are fixated on a single, simple, all-consuming thought.
I’m never going to get out of this alive.
I’m going to die here.
I want to go HOME!
Oddly enough, it was a more distant fear that finally began to return him to normal. The assault of paranoia began to fade as he considered his surroundings. A dark street not unlike many others, pavement, mist chill inside his nose; no fear in any of those. And what of his companions? A scintillating if irascible redhead and an oversized but intelligent otter, both of whom were allies and not enemies. Better to worry about Clothahump’s tale of coming evil than his own miserable but hardly deadly situation.
“What’s the matter, mate?” Mudge stared at him with genuine concern. “You’re not goin’ t’ faint on me again, are you?”
“Just queasy,” said Talea sharply, though not nearly as sharply as before. “It’s a nasty business, this.”
“No.” Jon-Tom shook away the last clinging rags of fear. They vanished into the night. “It’s not that. I’m fine, thanks.” His true thoughts he kept to himself.
She looked at him uncertainly a moment longer, then turned back to the door as Mudge said, “I ’ear somethin’.”
Footsteps sounded faintly from just inside. There was a rattling at the doorknob. Inside, someone cursed a faulty lock.
Their attention directed away from him, Jon-Tom dissected the fragment of Clothahump’s warning whose import had just occurred to him.
If something could bring a great evil from his own world into this one, an evil which none here including Clothahump could understand, why could not that same maleficent force reverse the channel one day and thrust some similar unmentionable horror on his own unsuspecting world? Preoccupied as it was with petty politics and intertribal squabbles between nations, could it survive a powerful assault of incomprehensible and destructive magic from this world? No one would believe what was happening, just as he hadn’t believed his first encounters with Clothahump’s magic.
According to the aged wizard, an evil was abroad in this place and time that would make the minions of Nazism look like Sunday school kids. Would an evil like that be content at consuming this world alone, or would it reach out for further and perhaps simpler conquests?
As a student of history that was one answer he knew. The appetite of evil far exceeds that of the benign. Success fed rather than sated its appetite for destruction. That was a truth that had plagued mankind throughout its entire history. What he had seen around him since coming here did not lead him to think it would be otherwise with the force Clothahump so feared.
Somewhere in this world a terror beyond his imagining swelled and prepared. He pictured Clothahump again: the squat, almost comical turtle shape with its plastron compartments; the hexagonal little glasses; the absentminded way of speaking; and he forced himself to consider him beyond the mere physical image. He remembered the glimpses of Clothahump’s real power. For all the insults Pog and Mudge levied at the wizard, they were always tinged with respect.
So on those rounded—indeed, nonexistent—shoulders rested possibly not only the destiny of one, but of two worlds: this, and his own, the latter dreaming innocently along in a universe of predictable physics.
He looked down at his watch, no longer ticking, remembered his lighter, which had flared efficiently one last time before running out of fuel. The laws of science functioned here as they did at home. Mudge had been unfamiliar with the “spell,” the physics, which had operated his watch and lighter. Research here had taken a divergent path. Science in his own, magic in this one. The words were similar, but not the methodology of application.
Would not evil spells as well as benign ones operate to bewildering effect in his own world?
He took a deep breath. If such was the case, then he no longer had a safe place to run to.
If that was true, what was he doing here? He ought to be back at the Tree, not pleading to be sent home but offering what little help he could, if only his size and strength, to Clothahump. For if the turtle was not senile, if he was correct about the menace that Jon-Tom now saw threatened him anywhere, then there was a good chance he would die, and his parents, and his brother in Seattle, and …
The enormity of it was too much. Jon-Tom was no world-shaker. One thing at a time, boy, he told himself. You can’t save worlds if you’re locked up in a filthy local jail, puking your lunch all over yourself because the local cops don’t play by the rules. As you surely will if you don’t listen to Mudge and help this lovely lady.
“I’m all right now,” he muttered softly. “We’ll take things easy, pursue the internal logic. Just like researching a test case for class.”
“Wot’s that, mate?”
“Nothing.” The otter eyed him a moment longer, then turned back to the door.
Life is a series of tests, Jon-Tom reminded himself. Where had he read that? Not in the laws of ancient Peru, or in Basic Torts or California Contracts. But he was ready for it now, for whatever sudden turns and twists life might throw at him.
Feeling considerably more at peace with himself and the universe, he stood facing the entrance and waited to be told what to do next.
The stubborn knob finally turned. A shape stood inside, staring back at them. Once it had been massively proportioned, but the flesh had sagged with age. The arms were nearly as long as the otter’s whole body. One held a lantern high enough to shower light down even on Jon-Tom’s head.
The old orangutan’s whiskers shaded from russet to gray. His glasses were round and familiar, with golden metal rims. Jon-Tom decided that either wizardly spells for improving eyesight were unknown or else local magic had not progressed that far.
A flowing nightgown of silk and lace and a decidedly feminine cast clad that simian shape. Jon-Tom was careful not to snicker. Nothing surprised him anymore.
“Weel, what ees eet at thees howar?” He had a voice like a rusty lawnmower. Then he was squinting over the top rims of the glasses at Talea. “You. Don’t I know you?”
“You should,” she replied quickly. “Talea of the High Winds and Moonflame. I did a favor for you once.”
Nilanthos continued to stare at her, then nodded slowly. “Ah yes. I reemeember you now. ‘Taleea off thee poleece records and thee dubeeous reeputation,’” he said with a mocking smile.
Talea was not upset. “Then along with my reputation you’ll recall those s
ix vials of drugs I got for you. The ones whose possession is frowned upon by the sorceral societies, an exclusion extended even to,” she coughed delicately, “physicians.”
“Yees, yees, off course I reemeember.” He sighed resignedly. “A deebt ees a deebt. What ees your probleem that you must call mee op from sleep so late?”
“We have two problems, actually.” She started for the wagon. “Keep the door open.”
Jon-Tom and Mudge joined her. Hastily they threw aside the blanket and wrestled out the two unlucky victims of Talea’s nighttime activities. The muskrat was now snoring noisily and healthily, much to Jon-Tom’s relief.
Nilanthos stood aside, holding the lamp aloft while the grisly delivery was hauled inside. He peered anxiously out into the street.
“Surgeree ees een back.”
“I … remember.” Talea grunted under her half of squirrelquette burden. Blood dripped occasionally onto the tiled floor. “You offered me a free ‘examination,’ remember?”
The doctor closed and locked the door, made nervous quieting motions. “Sssh, pleese. If you wakeen thee wife, I weel not bee able to canceel my half off thee deebt. And no talk off exameenations.”
“Quit trembling. I just like to see you sweat a little, that’s all.”
Nilanthos followed them, his attention now on the limp form slung over Jon-Tom’s shoulders. “Eef eether off theese pair are dead, wee weel all sweat a leetle.” Then his eyes widened as he apparently recognized the blubbering muskrat.
“Good God, eet’s Counceelman Avelleeum! Couldn’t you have peeked a leess dangerous veecteem? He could have us all drawn and quarteered.”
“He won’t,” she insisted. “I’m depending on you to see to that.”
“You and your good nature.” Nilanthos closed the door behind them, moved to spark the oil lamps lining the surgery. “You might have been beetter off leeting theem die.”
The Spellsinger Adventures Volume One Page 11