The Paths Of The Perambulator

by neetha Napew

  Utterly desperate now, the imp-monster counterattacked with the heaviest weapons in its arsenal—a string of greatest hits by Hank Williams himself. Taken aback by the overwhelming melancholy of the lyrics, Jon-Tom felt himself knocked back on his heels. Mudge was there to prop him up and to shout encouragement in his ear.

  “Don’t let ‘em get you down, mate! You’ve got ‘em on the run, you do. Stand up to it, fight back, let ‘em have everything you’ve got!”

  With the otter standing behind him and Dormas and Clothahump ranged to either side of him, Jon-Tom did just that, blasting out a string of platinum bullets by Stevie Wonder, the Stones, Tina Turner, and the Eurythmics. When the imp-monster sagged, he laid a little of its own medicine on it in the form of a soulful version of “Purple Rain.” The imps’ color began to run from red to lavender. “You’ve got it, lad, you’ve got it now! Finish it off!” Pulling itself together, the imp-monster tried to rally its former confidence and muster enough energy to attack with prosaic weapons like spears and swords. Mudge and Dormas made ready to defend Jon-Tom from this unmagical but possibly lethal attack.

  Their defense was not required. Jon-Tom had his own, knew exactly what he was going to use for a lyrical coup de grace. His fingers strummed faster than ever, and he felt as though the energy of the song would lift him off the ground. Certainly the imps had never encountered anything with the relentless energy of the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance.” Momentarily transformed into a miniature particle-beam generator, the duar struck to heart of the monster. There was a small, very localized explosion. Everyone covered their faces, trying to shield themselves from the flash. Jon-Tom did his best to protect himself by flinging the duar up in front of his eyes, but he was still temporarily blinded.

  When his vision finally returned, all that could be seen where the imp-monster had once stood was a ten-foot-high nonradiant mushroom cloud. It dissipated rapidly. The rocks and pathway were covered with bits of thin red flesh, as though a giant balloon had blown up in front of him.

  “Cute.” Dormas was eyeing the remnants of the cloud. “What do you call it?”

  “Pure nastiness.” He led them around the site of the explosion, giving the cloud a wide berth. It was impossible. There was no such thing as a thermonuclear explosion scaled down to midget size. Or was there such a thing as “no such thing” in this crazy world?

  “There’s the entrance!” Mudge pointed upward with his sword. “Nothin* to stop us now, mate.”

  Jon-Tom tried to keep up with the otter by lengthening his stride. “Don’t be too sure, Mudge. Remember the rest of Colin’s prophecy.”

  The otter forced himself to slow down so that the others could catch up. “Cor, I ain’t worried no more, mate. Wotever ‘tis, you can ‘andle it. You just proved that, you did.”

  “Do not let confidence give way to cockiness, water rat.” Clothahump was panting hard as he struggled up the steep path. “Though clumsy and not particularly skilled, there is much raw power at work here. I should not care to face it if its manipulator was better disciplined. I cannot believe we have penetrated his defenses so easily here, any more than I believed how quickly we made it through the pass.” He cast an appraising eye at Jon-Tom. “Our spellsinger has yet to confront and deal with his heart’s desire.”

  “I think I may already have done that, sir, but I’m ready in any case.”

  “Good,” said Dormas sharply, “because here they come.”

  Pouring from the fortress gate was a ragtag army of heavily armed soldiers. Well, perhaps not an army, Jon-Tom told himself. Twenty to thirty troops, none of them demonic in shape or appearance. They were waving swords over their heads and screaming like banshees.

  Colin steeled himself. “They think they’ve got us out-numbered, but I’ve handled nearly that many by myself. And we have the magic of both wizard and spellsinger to protect us. They haven’t got a chance.” He sounded more curious than uncertain. “One thing I don’t understand, though. Why would an evil sorcerer send only females against us, and only human ones at that?”

  Jon-Tom might have ventured a guess, but he couldn’t speak. He could only cling limply to the duar and stare up the slope as the thirty redheads came charging toward him. They had blood in their eyes and murder on their minds.

  Mudge and Clothahump were also paralyzed by the sight, but only momentarily. They were not as intimately affected by the manifestation as the man in their midst, though they had been afflicted with the same shock of recognition. Meanwhile Jon-Tom made no move to defend himself from the onrushing attack, not with his duar or with his ramwood staff. He just stood and stared, a man struck dumb by the sudden realization of what it meant to confront his heart’s desire.

  An arrow whizzed past his head. He blinked but could not bring himself to move, to dodge. He couldn’t do anything because each of the onrushing Valkyries looked exactly like its sister, and that meant all of them looked like his beloved Talea.

  Talea of the bright spirit and long red hair. Talea of the questionable occupation and brave heart. The same Talea he’d proposed to and who had spumed him because she wasn’t ready to be tied to one man or one place but whom he’d never ceased to love. A score and more of his heart’s desire running, racing toward him with something other than love in their hearts. He hadn’t seen her in over a year. He was totally unprepared to see her now, here, in this place, far less in multiple guises.

  “What’s wrong with the spellsinger?” Colin wanted to know. He held his saber ready to greet the first of the new arrivals.

  “I’ll tell you wot’s wrong, fuzzball,” said Mudge. “This whoever ‘e is don’t fight fair. Every one o’ them long-legged beauties is the splittin’ image o’ our friend’s lady-luv.”

  Colin absorbed this revelation, nodded tersely. “We’re dealing with a vile bastard for sure. What do you recommend?”

  The mob of maddened Taleas solved the problem for them. All feelings of empathy aside, there are few options available when someone tries to split your skull with a battle-ax. Colin parried neatly and stepped aside as the first woman’s rush carried her past him.

  Mudge defended himself against a sword stroke, skittering backward and drawing his longbow. A spear splintered stone at his feet, and one fragment cut through his fur, almost reaching the skin. He looked toward Jon-Tom, and something in his voice made the tall man turn to face him. Something Jon-Tom had never heard there before.

  Anguish.

  “I ‘ave to, mate,” the otter wailed helplessly, “I ‘ave to! We all ‘ave to.”

  The otter’s words and actions combined to make Jon-Tom move. He lurched toward his furry friend. “Mudge—no!” His feet didn’t seem to be working. He felt as if he were trying to sprint through freshly laid asphalt. “Don’t!”

  But the otter let the arrow fly as the woman in front of him raised her sword for a killing blow. It struck her square in the left breast, directly over the heart.

  Mortally wounded, the figure did not react as it should have. There was no gasp of pain, no collapsing body. Instead the female form began to writhe and contort. A whistling sound came from it as it shrank in upon itself, compacting and shrinking down into the shape of a fist-sized red-orange mass floating in the air before them. Then it exploded, sending tiny orange-and-red bits flying in all directions. There was a sweet, cloying, and yet somehow nauseating smell in the air. It was as though someone had just blown up a watermelon stuffed with freckles.

  “Bugger me for a tart’s tailor,” Mudge muttered aloud, “the bloomin’ broads ain’t real.” He glanced excitedly at his companion. “You see that, Jonny-Tom? They ain’t real!” He notched a second arrow into his bow and fired. Another Talea metamorphosed into an exploding puffball.

  Colin parried another ax swing and cut sideways. His blade passed completely through the body of his attacker, which promptly went the decorporalizing route of Mudge’s two assailants. Displaying an agility that belied her age, Dormas pivoted and struck ou
t with both powerful hind legs. Their supplies went flying. So did the Talea whose neck she’d broken. Change, compaction, poof—out of existence. The pattern repeated itself again and again.

  And still Jon-Tom was unable to bring himself to raise his staff and fight.

  Though the cluster of Taleas was fashioned of something other than flesh, there was nothing ephemeral about their weapons. One ax cut deeply into the flank of Clothahump’s shell.

  “C’mon, mate,” Mudge urged him, even as he was defending himself against an assault by three redheads, “fight back. You ‘ave to, and it ain’t the loverly Talea you’ll be fighting with.” He struck with his sword. Shrink, whistle, pah-boom. He worked his way back to his friend, yelling at Colin as he did so. “Over this way, fuzzball! We ‘ave to defend this twit. He ain’t ready to defend ‘imself.”

  The koala nodded, dispatched another opponent as he retreated to help protect the useless Jon-Tom. He was enjoying himself. For the first time since he’d begun his long journey, he had a chance to fight back against their unseen nemesis. It was a pleasure to be able to resort to good, solid swordplay for a change. He’d about had his fill of magic and mysticism.

  Together he and Mudge, and to a lesser extent Dormas, greatly reduced the-number of Talea-doppelgangers.

  Sorbl was busy as well, swooping and diving while clutching a honeycomb dagger in each foot, the red hair making individual targets easy to hit. Mudge and Colin kept reminding the dazed Jon-Tom that their opponents were no more human man they were Talea and for him to fight back.

  But how? His friends and his brain told him one thing, but his eyes were filled with contradictions.

  “Put it out o’ your mind, mate,” the otter instructed him as he dodged a spear thrust and put an arrow in still another assailant. “You’re too easy a target. We can’t ‘old ‘em off you forever.”

  Even as he spoke the remaining Taleas had clustered around them and were trying to separate Jon-Tom from his stubborn bodyguards. Despite their valiant effort, Colin and Mudge were driven in opposite directions, away from Jon-Tom and from each other. Dormas and Sorbl were trying to protect Clothahump and had no time to spare for someone who wouldn’t raise a hand to defend himself.

  Then one of the Taleas burst through, charging down on Jon-Tom, holding her sword over her head. He could only stare. Talea, it was Talea, from her flowing hair to the tips of her toes. Yet he’d just watched while a dozen identical Taleas had turned into something small and brightly colored before exploding. They had been cloned by some devilry, called up by a sinister magic. They were not his beloved. His heart’s desire was a phantom.

  Then it was time for reflexes to take control from an unwilling mind. As the sword came down he brought up the front of the ramwood staff. The blade glanced off the nearly indestructible wood and slid harmlessly off to the side. He wasn’t even nicked. Continuing the defensive motion, he brought the club end of the staff around to strike his attacker just above the temple, staggering her. The pain that shot through him had nothing to do with the recoil his arm muscles absorbed. Recovering, she brought the sword around in a low arc, aiming for his legs and trying her best to cripple him. He had no choice but to thumb the concealed button on the side of the staff, releasing the six-inch-long blade hidden in the shaft.

  Closing his eyes as he did so, he stabbed swiftly. The point went right through his assailant’s throat. She let out a violent gurgle and fell away from him, but there was no blood, not a drop, not even when he withdrew the blade. Contraction, change, explosion, and she—or rather it—was gone.

  “See, mate!” Mudge called over to him. “None of ‘em is for real. They’ve been conjured up to confuse and bemuse us, and you most of all!”

  Of course. When he’d defeated the impish spellsingers sent to stop them, he’d alerted the evil force within the fortress.

  Recognizing the danger Jon-Tom posed, the perambulator’s captor had somehow conceived of and put into effect a defense specifically designed to take care of his most dangerous opponent. And it had nearly worked. Only his companion’s ceaseless defense on his behalf had preserved him from a death by deception.

  They’d carried the load for him long enough. It was time to strike a few blows on his own behalf.

  “You’re right, Mudge. I’m sorry.” Angrily he waded into the thick of the fight, swinging the club end of the staff in great sweeping arcs. Now that he’d been jolted out of his reverie, he fought with twice the resolve of his friends, furious beyond measure at anything that would employ such insidious intimacy against an opponent. The ranks of identical attackers grew thin as one after another blew up and vanished into the clear mountain air.

  Showing unexpected speed, Colin ducked, twisted, and struck with one booted foot at an unprotected knee. The Talea on his left dropped her Weapon, let out a loud moan, and fell to the ground. She knelt there, holding her leg and rocking back and forth. The koala brought the long saber up and around for a killing blow. At the same time it struck Jon-Tom forcefully that this was the first time anything like a lingering cry of pain had been produced by any of their attackers. But having progressed from one mental and emotional extreme to the other, he was loath to make a fool of himself again. So he hesitated.

  “Son of a bitch,” the injured Talea mumbled girlishly. Jon-Tom’s eyes went wide.

  “Colin, no!” He managed to interpose himself between the fallen woman and the falling sword just in time to block the decapitating blow. Colin gaped at him for a moment but, with no time to argue, turned to deal with another attacker.

  It wasn’t possible, of course. He held his staff out warily in front of him as he approached the figure that was rocking back and forth on the ground and clutching her injured knee. Lifting the spear end of the ramwood, he held it ready to thrust into the body beneath him. He was acutely conscious of the fact that the rapidly diminishing band of Taleas might be attempting to substitute craftiness for numbers. This might be a new ploy, designed to trap and bemuse him anew.

  The figure seemed to see him for the first time, raised a hand in a feeble attempt to ward off the spear’s point. “Please, Jon-Tom, don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Talea!”

  While the battle raged around him there was another, no less furious, boiling within him. It looked like Talea, it sounded like Talea, but so had all the others, and when pricked, they had gone up in puffs of orange-red gas. He had time to hesitate, to consider, because Mudge and Colin were temporarily in control of his flanks.

  “I—I have to do this. Forgive me.” And he jabbed down with the point of the spear.

  But only to puncture lightly, not to kill, tearing the slightest of cuts along one arm. The figure let out a little scream.

  “You motherfucking bastard, you’ve ruined my blouse!” She started to sob.

  Yes, it certainly sounded like Talea, but of more importance was the thin flow of blood that began to trickle down her arm. She grabbed at the wound and continued to curse him. It was difficult because she was crying so hard.

  “She’s bleeding, she’s bleeding!” He whirled, shaking the ramwood staff joyfully over his head. “Did you hear me, Mudge, she’s bleeding!”

  “Right, mate, I ‘eard you.”

  Colin spared a glance for the tall man, then commented to the otter fighting at his shoulder. “Sounds like these two have a wonderful relationship.”

  “Of course, I’m bleeding, you stupid imbecile! You stabbed me.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He was so relieved and so happy, he could hardly speak. “I had to.”

  “You had to stab me?” She looked down at her arm. Blood continued to filter through her fingers. “If you wanted to tell me mat you still love me, you could have given me flowers instead.”

  “You don’t understand. Look. Look around you.”

  She did so, and blinked, several times. Jon-Tom had to catch her to keep her from falling. She was warm and familiar against him. Her anger vanished, to be replaced by fear and
confusion.

  “Where am I, Jon-Tom? What is this place? And—and why do all those women look like meT’

  “You really have no idea?” She shook her head, wide-eyed, and suddenly looking very small and vulnerable.

  He eased her gently down to the ground, left her sitting there, holding on to her still bleeding arm. “I’ll explain it to you as best I can,” he assured her softly, “as soon as the rest of you are all dead.”

  XIII

  Thanks largely to the fighting skills of Mudge and Colin, the number of redheaded attackers was soon reduced to half a dozen. Acting under orders from an unseen master, these viragos retreated and prepared to roll heavy rocks down on the advancing intruders. They never had the chance to complete the planned ambush. Using his longbow, Mudge picked them off one by one. In so doing, he used the last of his arrows, but he was able to recover the majority of them from the surrounding rubble-strewn slope, where they had come to rest after passing completely through the spurious bodies of the Talea clones.

  Jon-Tom and the others waited for the otter to conclude his collecting, a task in which he was greatly aided by Sorbl. Meanwhile the spellsinger held the hand of his heart’s desire and tried to comfort her. Talea, however, was her usual self again, which meant that she was in no mood to be coddled. She did acquiesce to Clothahump’s ministrations, allowing the wizard to bind the shallow cut in her arm. Actually Colin’s kick to the leg was giving her more trouble than Jon-Tom’s revealing spear stroke. With his help she rose and tried walking. She found she could move well enough but with a definite limp.

  Her shoulder-length red hair framed her delicate face, which at the moment was full of frustration and confusion. “I don’t understand any of this. I was taking my ease with a friend in Darriantowne when the world turned inside out.”

  “Male or female? Your friend?” Jon-Tom couldn’t keep himself from inquiring.

  She managed a small smile. “Ever the hopeful lover, Jon-Tom?”