retreating back behind the door.
Markus lowered the wand and smiled. "See how
fast your companions desert you."
"They're not deserting me," Jon-Tom told him. He
turned and looked down at his friends. "All of you:
this is between Markus and me- Wait in the hall."
Obediently, they filed out, leaving him with words of
encouragement and a promise to rush in no matter
what the danger should he call out to them.
"That takes care of my friends. Where are yours?"
Markus lost his smile. "Wise-ass. You'll be sorry."
He glanced at the duar. "So that's what you've been
so keen to get your hands on. Weird-lookin' gadget."
jon-lbm let his fingers fall casually across the
duar's strings. An explosive note Filled the room.
"Hey, pretty good trick!" Markus complimented
him. "Here's one of mine"
He aimed the wand at Jon-Tom and mumbled
under his breath.
Jon-Tom prepared to duck or sing, as the attack
demanded. Instead he nearly brokq^out laughing. A
steady stream of brightly colored scarves emerged
from the magician's sleeve. It was exactly the sort of
trick you'd expect to see someone like Markus per-
form at a neighborhood party.
Except that the scarves knotted themselves around
his ankles and began enveloping his legs, winding
steadily upward. Meanwhile the flow from the
magician's sleeve showed no signs of slowing.
If he didn't do something fast, in a couple of
minutes he'd look like a psychedelic mummy. But
what songs did he know about clothing? About scarves,
or ties? Suddenly the flood of silk didn't seem so
THE MOMENT w THE MAOICIAH 297
funny. There was an old cartoon song about"*? Chi-
nese laundry... no, that wouldn't work.
In desperation he tried some lyrics from Carole
Ring's "Tapestry" album. The scarves quivered but
didn't vanish. Instead^they began to unknot themselves*
fold up neatly, and stack in piles according to color
on the nearby table. They unwound from his thighs
and calves, then his ankles, until they were twisting
and folding and stacking themselves as quickly as
they emerged from Markus's sleeve.
Furthermore, each one bore in its upper right-
hand corner the monogram JTM.
Markus frowned, lowered his arm. The silk assault
ceased. "You're fast, kid. Not fast enough to make it
in Atlantic City. but pretty good for here." This time
he raised both hands. "For this one we need an
assistant."
Something began to coalesce in the space between
them. A faint silvery glow that drew shape as well as
substance from his wand-and Fingers. An hourglass
.outline traced in air.
It didn't have fangs or talons. Jon-Tom was enrap-
tured by it.
She was tall, as tall as he was. Blond, alluring, clad
in. next to nothing.. She was walking toward him and
whispering through puckered, inviting lips; cajoling
him, tempting him. pleading with him.
"Please, can 1 have a volunteer from the audience?**
Jon-Tom found himself stumbling forward, a step
at a time. He couldn't be certain, but he thought he
could see Markus through her. A single gold tooth
flashed in the magician's mouth. He was smiling
again. ,
Somehow Jon-Tom retreated, though the effort
of will required to back away from that seductive
' vision was tremendous. And she was still coming
i toward him,, one perfect hand outstretched to lead
Alan Dean Foster
268
him, lead him up onto the stage. How could he resist
her? She was obviously so beautiful, so innocent, so
badly in need of this job.
He couldn't resist her. But he could sing to her.
Sure, nothing wrong with that. What gentle, reassur-
ing ballad could he dedicate to her?
Hesitantly at first, then with growing strength, he
began to play "Killer Queen,"
The blond houri contorted as the first chords
filled the room. She shimmied and twisted in front
of him, though not the way he wanted her to shim-
my and twist. But as she spun he was able to see the
knife she clutched in her other hand. With a cry she
lunged at him. Maybe he should have raised the
duar to absorb the force of the blow, but he just kept
on singing, trying to match the notes perfectly, trying
to imitate Freddie Mercury as best he could.
The instant before the knife started to come down
toward his throat, it, the girl, and the conjuration
dissolved before his eyes like a lump of sugar in a
cup of hot tea. *
He blinked. Markus growled something vile and
looked past him, mumbling and gesturing with his
wand. His black cape stood out behind him even
though there was no wind in the room.
A snarl came from behind Jon-Tom, familiar and
yet alien to this place. The sound of the faceless
demons.
They leaped from their alcoves, their curved teeth
aiming for his face. He ducked the Fokker and ran
for cover behind a table as they soared and dove at
him, thirsting for his eyes. He knew nothing about
airplanes. The only tune he could remember that had
anything at all to do with Hying machines seemed
insufficient to counter the threat, but maybe it would
buy him some tune.
THE MOMKHT W THB UAOSCIAM
299
So he sang, " 'Up, up and awaaay. in my beautiful
balloon;" £"
They filled the room in an instant: hundreds of
1 them. Thousands, in all colors and shapes and sizes.
| Dozens of pops and/bangs made it sound like, the ,
Chinese New Year as Markus's metallic demons dashed
through the brightly colored obstacles.
The Fokker's wing brushed Jon-Tom's scalp as it
shot over him. Its sharp propellor, the same one that
had nearly decapitated a raven named Pandro, was
entangled in a hundred strips of thin latex. It execut-
ed a Final desperate Immelmann turn before it crashed
into the wall behind him. A minute later the second
demon bounced off the floor and skidded to a halt,
its engine gasping and completely jammed by dozens
of broken balloons.
When the third and last demon flew out a window,
sputtering and wheezing as it plunged to its death in
the waters below, jon-Tom concluded his song, sent a
silent thank-you from the Fourth Dimension to the
Fifth, and waited while the balloons evaporated to
see what Markus might try next.
He didn't look scared. Not yet. But neither did he
look quite as sure of himself-
"You were right, kid. You were right and I was
wrong. You're not a punk. You know your stuff.
Maybe we should make a deal after all." He started
toward the younger man. "Here, a peace offering:
okay? Better we work something out between us than
we keep trying to knoc
k each other off."
Jon-Tom eyed him suspiciously, but this time
Markus's hand brought forth no homicidal houris,
no mechanical assassins. Just a simple bouquet of
flowers.
"Be more appropriate if you were a broad," Markus
said, "but this is the best 1 can think of. Don't flowers
Aim Dean FoBter
300
say it ail?** He waved the bouquet at his erstwhile
opponent.
Jon-Tom grinned, found himself nodding in
agreement. Only problem was, he didn't want to
nod. Nodding he was, though. Maybe it was because
the Howers smelled so beautiful, so fresh and relaxing.
Relaxing. He hadn't been able to relax in a long
time. The flowers told him it was okay to relax, to
take it easy. A wonderfully reassuring, cloying mias-
ma issued from the bouquet.
"That's it, kid. It's all over. Nothing else to fight
about. We'll just kiss and make up. Hell, what's there
to fight about? There's plenty here for us to
shareeeeee...."
Somehow Jon-Tom backed away from that soporific
spiel, until his back was against the near wall and he
couldn't retreat any further. Did he want to retreat?
The small part of him that hadn't been drugged by
the bouquet's aroma was frantic. Sing something! Sing
anything, the first thing that comes to mind, so long
as it has something to do with flowers!
Van Halen didn't sing about flowers. Neither did
Men With Hats or Motley Crue or Godwanna. Blooms
and daisies weren't the stuff heavy metal anthems
were made of.
Not every great new group was that heavy, though.
In fact, there was one...
He started to sing, amazed at how appropriate the
music was. So it would be better if he were a broad,
would it? Somehow that fit too.
This time he didn't sing to Markus. He sang to the
bouquet. "'Karma, karma, karma camelliaaa, you
come and go, you come and go, oh-oh-oh.'"
It was hard for him to duplicate Boy George's
smooth, slightly buttery sound, but he managed, and
the duar spit out everything from the background
guitar to the harmonica solos. As Markus stared in
THE MOMENT or Tax MAGJCWT 301
I shock at his hypnotic handful of blossoma^they
began to depart in time to the lyrics. Their petals spin-
ning like the blades of tiny helicopters, they lifted
[from his fingers and, traveling neatly in single Hie,
|circled once around Jen-Tom's head before flying off
gin perfect formation through the nearby high window.
| Leaving behind in Markus's hand a paper cone
|,which concealed a five-inch-long stiletto.
t Markus stumbled away from the spellsinger, re-
I'treating back toward the throne- His hat was askew
^on his head, and he'd lost a couple of buttons off his
cheap white shirt. He looked less like Markus the
Ineluctable and more like a cheap bum.
"You're through here, Markus," Jon-Tom told him,
"Quit while you're ahead, before 1 really gel into my
music. I^s over, finished."
i' Markus pulled himself together, seeming to draw
fresh strength from his proximity to the throne and
the power it represented. "You think so, kid? You
think I've had enough? Hell, I've just been playing
up till now. Kid stuff. 1 thought that would be
enough, but I was wrong. It's over, all right, but not
for me. For you."
His face was wild, his expression full of concentrat-
ed fury. Everything he'd built here, everything he'd
taken from a world he'd been pulled into against his
will, was slipping out of his grasp. He was hanging
onto his sanity by emotional fingernails. No, he
wasn't finished. He was Markus the Ineluctable, Em-
peror of Everything, and no skinny punk-rocker was
going to take that away from html,
Removing the top hat, he held it in his right hand
while whispering and passing the wand over the
i opening. Then he tapped the brim several times. At
f first nothing happened, and Jon-Tom found himself
^hoping that the magician had finally reached his
I limits.
302 Alan Dean Foster
Then something came creeping out of the hat.
The room darkened as the sickly green vapor
emerged. It pulsed with inner evil, curling around
the legs of chairs, clinging to the floor as it crept
down the steps from the dais. It moved slowly, explor-
ing the environment into which it had been summoned.
Markus eyed it uncertainly, and it occurred to
Jon-Tom that his opponent, in his anger and fury,
might have overextended himself, might have called
forth something stronger than he'd intended to.
Certainly that expanding cloud of poisonous green
sprang from a source of evil far stronger than per-
fumed bouquets and faceless demons. There was
nothing even faintly amusing about it. Despite its
apparent insubstantiality, it was real in a way none of
Markus's previous conjurations could match.
The magician glanced down into his hat. Appar-
ently he saw something he didn't like, because he
dropped it as if it had burned him and stepped back
toward the throne, never taking his eyes from it. The
hat tumbled down the steps, rolling to a stop on the
floor. The frightening cloud continued to pour forth
from the dark opening,
You could see through it, but the effort wa& dizzying.
Furthermore, there were shapes inside the cloud,
shapes that wrenched and heaved in agony at their
surroundings. They moaned softly as they fought to
escape their nebulous prison. The sound was chill-
Vapor reached the ceiling and began to spread out
sideways. Jon-Tom wanted to run, to get out of that
room. The threat that was Markus had been reduced
to insignificance by the cloud. Markus no longer
mattered. Only getting away, getting out of there,
getting away from that, mattered.
But a wispy tentacle of ichorous green brushed
his foot, and he found he couldn't move. It was Just a
303
THE MOMENT OF THE MAOTCLUI
tiny thing, an airy caress. It paralyzed him in his
tracks.
And it was so cold.
Eyes in the cloud then, small and piercing, floating
above a round oval of a mouth. They hovered within
the fog, sleepy and indifferent. The shapes flashed
and slipped around eyes and lips as they fought to
escape.
The cloud spoke softly in a patient, irresistible
voice. Jon-Tom felt a chill strike him with each word.
"I've come for you. It is good that you called me."
Green vapor filled most of the room now. It was
starting to spread out along the wall behind him.
Soon it would engulf him completely. He knew what
would happen then. It would suck him up inside
itself, to join those other helpless, moaning stiapes.
Then he knew what i
t was that Markus had con-
jured up, had called forth out of the depths of his
fury and frustration. Instinct told him.
His body might be frozen to the spot, but he
found he could still talk. Maybe the vapor wanted
him to talk. Maybe that was a final gift it gave to all
that it swallowed up.
"You... you're Death, aren't you?"
An eloquent silence was his reply. Jon-Tom could
feel the cold dosing in around him, patient, irresistible.
"I didn't know you could see Death." The cloud
was thicker now, an icy green cold that began to
prick at his bare skin.
"Any man who cannot see Death approaching is
blind." The mouth-oval drifted closer. It was going
to touch his own lips. The kiss of Death.
Jon-Tom listened to his own voice and was terri-
fied at how feeble it had become. "But... you said
you came for me. and that 1 called you. I didn't call
you.
For an instant oblivion retreated. The wisps of
^
Alaa Dean Foster
304
green foulness drew back and the cold fell away.
Jon-Tom found he was shivering, and it was the first
time in his life he regarded it as a sign of health.
"You called me."
"No." He tried to raise a hand to his duar, but
his fingers suddenly weighed a thousand pounds
apiece. He tried the other one, straining with his
whole being. It rose, slowly, but it rose. He moved it
because he had to. He didn't try to touch the duar
this time. There was no point. Here was an opponent
his spellsinging could not defeat.
Fingers weak and trembling, he pointed through
the cloud.
"He called you."
"No," came a quavering voice from far across the
chamber. Markus cowered down on his throne, trying
to hide. "No, it wasn't me. I didn't call you!"
The eyes didn't free Jon-Tom from their relentlessly
peaceful gaze- Perhaps another pair appeared else-
where within the cloud. There was a pause, a brief
eternity while the room hung suspended in the void.
Then Death whispered, "Markie Kratzmeier, age
forty-eight, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. You fell into
a dynamo. You were electrocuted instantly. You died."
"No!" Markus shook as he waved his wand errati
cally toward the cloud. He was hysterical now, his
eyes wide as the vapor moved to envelop him. "No, I
didn't diel I came here. I am here."
"You died," Death insisted softly. "I came for you
but you had gone. I couldn't find you. I do not enjoy
being cheated."