equal to the immensity of space and stars all around him.
Every song he had ever heard dried up on his tongue.
The Talea gneechee seemed to stir someplace deep inside
him, and he looked out at the cold blue distance ahead. It was
time to go back where he belonged. He couldn't be specific,
but he suddenly had a real sense of where he belonged in life
and he knew he could get there.
His mouth opened and his fingertips caressed the duar. A
new sound rose, a new voice came both from the duar and
from his mouth, and though he had never heard it before he
knew it was, finally, his true voice.
Stars spun faster around him, the universe seemed wrenched
292
THE HOUR OF THE GATE
for an instant. His head throbbed and his throat burned with
the strange wordless song that poured from him like a river a
million times stronger than any earthly river.
Now blue sky hurried toward them, then the snowy caps of
mountains. The boundary was back—the luscious, palpable
limit of existence. He felt more alive than he had ever in his
life.
"Cor, wot a friggin' ride!" Mudge's joyous voice came
from behind him.
"Love you, Mudge!" screamed Jon-Tom, ecstatic to hear
that familiar sound.
"You're crazy—where the 'ell we been?"
Everywhere, Jon-Tom thought, but there was no way to say
it.
' 'THE 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. COME 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 mat 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, me butte he'd stood
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Alan Dean Poster
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.
Raming wings slowed. Mudge was deposited gently back
on top of the wall. Jon-Tom thanked the flaming being but
would not return with him.
"THREE MILLION YEARS!" M'nemaxa boomed, his neighing
shaking boulders from the cliffsides of the canyon.
"ONLY THREE MILLION. THANK YOU, LITTLE HUMAN. YOU
ARE A WIZARD OF UNKNOWN WISDOM. FAREWELL!"
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 every-
where otherplace.
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 me adjulation 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
294
THE HOUR Or THE GATS
yet. If you can only leam 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
295
Alan Dean Foster
had happened in Elsewhere. She looked blank. "Don't you re-
member 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 Hor 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.
296
THE HOUK OF TBK GATE
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 pre-
paratory 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 foot-
hills, and a dark mass was just disappearing over the northern
crest of the mountains in the direction of fabled h-oncloud.
"Hello, Pog."
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Alan Dean Foster
"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 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 appren-
tice 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
298
. THE HOUR Or THE GATE
course. I thought I wanted Hor." Talea said nothing. "What I
,really wanted was someone to want me. That's all I've ever
jwanted. 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.
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Alan Dean Foster
"Never mind, never mind, never mind!" sang (fae trans-
formed 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 trans-
formation 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.
300
FB2 document info
Document ID: 1d7209fd-c8d5-4291-8e84-08b6bdc47e90
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 20.12.2011
Created using: calibre 0.8.18 software
Document authors :
Foster, Alan Dean
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