The sorcerer cowered back against the shelving. His expression was desperate as he sought refuge and found none. He dropped to his knees and begged.
“Forgive me, forgive me, I did not know!”
“IGNORANCE IS THE EXCUSE OF THE CONTEMPTUOUS,” bellowed the djinn. “ABUSERS OF KNOWLEDGE RARELY SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT FROM OTHERS. THOSE WHO TRAMPLE CONVENTION DESERVE NO PITY. THOSE WHO DO NOT PAY WHAT THEY OWE DESERVE TO PERISH.”
“I’m sorry!” Zancresta screamed, utterly frantic now. “I was blinded by anger.”
“YOU WERE BLINDED BY EGO, WHICH IS FAR WORSE.”
“It is a terrible thing to feel inferior to another. I can’t stand it. I was overcome with the need to redeem myself, to restore my standing as the greatest practitioner of the mystic arts. All I have done was only for love of my profession.” He prostrated himself, arms extended. “I throw myself on your mercy.”
“YOU LOVE ONLY YOURSELF, WORM. MERCY? YOU WOULD HAVE SLAIN MY MORTAL TO SAVE A FEW COINS, TO SHOW YOUR DOMINANCE. MERCY? YEA, I WILL GRANT YOU MERCY.” The ferret’s head lifted, and there was a hopeful look on his tormented face.
“THIS IS MY MERCY: THAT YOU SHALL DIE QUICKLY INSTEAD OF SLOWLY!”
Zancresta shrieked and dodged to his left, but he wasn’t fast enough to escape that immense descending hand. The fingers contracted once, and the shriek was not repeated. There was only a quick echo of bones crunching. Jon-Tom and his companions stared numbly.
The hand opened and dropped the jellied smear that had been Jalwar-Zancresta, Wizard of Malderpot.
“I ASK YOU,” the djinn muttered in slightly less deafening tones, “YOU TRY TO RUN A LITTLE BUSINESS DOWN THROUGH THE AGES AND YOU FIND ETERNITY FULL OF WELCHERS.SPEAKING OF WHICH”—the massive toothy skull and burning yellow eyes lifted to regard Jon-Tom—“THERE IS MORE YET TO DO.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” said Jon-Tom, starting to back away, “we’re ready to pay for what we want. We didn’t come here to stiff anybody.” He glanced toward Snooth, who only shrugged helplessly. Apparently now that the djinn had been called, she was powerless to control it.
“PAY FOR YOUR GOODS YOU MAY, BUT NOW I HAVE BEEN CALLED FORTH, AND I MUST ALSO BE PAID. HOW WILL YOU DO THAT, PALE WORM? I HAVE NO NEED OF YOUR MONEY. PERHAPS YOU WILL SING ME A SONG SO THAT I MAY LET YOU LEAVE?” Volcanic laughter filled the Shop of the Aether and Neither.
Jon-Tom felt a hand pushing at him. “Well come on, then, mate,” Mudge whispered urgently, “go to it. I’m right ’ere behind you if you need me ’elp.”
“You’re such a comfort.” Still, the otter was right. It was up to him to somehow placate this djinn and get them out of there. But he was exhausted from his duel with Charrok and Zancresta, and worn out from thinking up song after song. He was also more than a little irritated. Not the most sensible attitude to take, perhaps, but he was too tired to care.
“You listen to me, Hargood ali rooge.”
The djinn glowered. “I DON’T LIKE MORTALS WHO GET MY NAME WRONG.”
“Okay, I can go with that,” Jon-Tom replied, “but you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve had a helluva couple of weeks. We came here to get some medicine for a sick friend. If that old fart hadn’t intruded,” and he gestured at the smear on the floor, “we’d be out of here and on our way by now. We didn’t have a damn thing to do with his actions.”
“TRULY YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN ON YOUR WAY, BUT WHICH WAY IS RIGHT AND PROPER FOR YOU TO GO, LITTLE MORTAL?”
“Do you still have the medicine, Snooth?” The kangaroo nodded, opened a fist to show the precious container. A hand the size of a bus lowered to block her from Jon-Tom’s sight.
“THE MEDICINE YOU MAY TAKE. If YOU CAN SATISFY ME. AND YOU HAVE SEEN WHAT HAPPENS TO MERE MORTALS WHO DISPLEASE ME.”
Jon-Tom was beginning to understand why Crancularn had acquired a less than favorable reputation among travelers in this part of the world, in spite of the miracles it offered for sale.
“YOU THINK LONG, MORTAL. Do NOT THINK TO TRICK ME BY SOME FOOLISHNESS SUCH AS ASKING ME TO SHRINK MYSELF INTO A BOTTLE. “A hand hovered above them and Folly flinched. “I DON’T NEED TO CHANGE MY SIZE TO SHOW MY POWER. ALL I NEED TO DO IS PUT MY THUMB ON YOUR HEAD.”
“Whatever happened to the customer’s always right?” Jon-Tom shot back.
The djinn hesitated. “WHAT OTHERWORLDLY IDIOCY IS THAT?”
“Just good business practice.”
“A MORTAL WITH A KNACK FOR BUSINESS.” The djinn looked interested. “I WILL LET YOU PAY WITH YOUR BUSINESS, THEN, AND PERHAPS YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS WILL LEAVE HERE WITH YOUR BONES INTACT. YOU ARE A SPELLSINGER. I HAVE HEARD MANY SPELLSINGERS, BUT NONE THAT PLEASED ME. I DO NOT THINK I KNOW OF ONE FROM YOUR WORLD. SING ME A SPELLSONG OF YOUR WORLD, WORM. SING ME A SONG THAT WILL AMUSE ME, INTRIGUE ME. SING ME SOMETHING DIFFERENT. THEN, AND ONLY THEN, WILL I LET YOU TAKE THE MEDICINE AND GO!” The djinn folded arms with thick muscles like the trunks of great trees.
“THINK CAREFULLY ON WHAT YOU WILL SING. I GROW IMPATIENT QUICKLY AND WILL NOT ALLOW YOU A SECOND CHANCE.”
Jon-Tom stood sweating and thinking furiously. What song could he possible sing that would interest this offspring of magic, who had access to the goods of thousands of worlds? What did he know that might be offbeat and just weird enough to have some effect on a djinn?
Off to his left Roseroar stood watching him quietly. Mudge was muttering something like a prayer. Folly paced anxiously behind him while Drom pawed at the floor and wished he were outside where he’d at least have a running chance.
Feathers caressed his neck. “You can do it, colleague.” Charrok was smiling confidently at him.
Mystical. It had to be overtly mystical, yet not so specific as to anger the djinn into thinking Jon-Tom was trying to trick him. What did he know that fit that description? He was just a hard rocker when he wasn’t studying law. All he knew were the hits, the platinum songs.
There was only one possibility, one choice. A song full of implications instead of accusations, mysterious and not readily comprehended. Something to make the djinn think.
He let his fingers slide over the duar’s strings. His throat was dry but his hoarseness was gone.
“Watch it, mate,” Mudge warned him.
To his surprise Jon-Tom found he could smile down at the otter. “No sweat, Mudge.”
“Wot can you sing for ’im ’e don’t already ’ave, guv’nor?” The otter waved a hand at the endless shelves crammed with goods from dimensions unknown. “Wot can you give ’im in song ’e don’t already own?”
“A different state of mind,” Jon-Tom told him softly, and he began to sing.
He was concerned that the duar would not reproduce the eerie chords correctly. He need not have worried. That endlessly responsive, marvelously versatile instrument duplicated the sounds he drew from memory with perfect fidelity, amplifying them so that they filled the chamber around him. It was a strange, quavering moan, a galvanizing cross between an alien bass fiddle being played by something with twelve hands and the snore of a sleeping brontosaurus. Only one man had ever made sounds quite like that before, and Jon-Tom strained hands and lips to reproduce them.
“If you can just get your mind together,” he crooned to the djinn, “and come over to me, we’ll watch the sunrise together, from the bottom of the sea.”
The words and sounds made no sense to Roseroar, but she could sense they were special. Bits and pieces of broken light began to illuminate the chamber around her. Gneechees, harbingers of magic, had appeared and were swarming around Jon-Tom in all their unseeable beauty.
It was a sign the song was working, and it inspired Jon-Tom to sing harder still. Harun al-Roojinn leaned forward as if to protest, to question, and hesitated. Behind the fiery yellow eyes was a first flicker of uncertainty. Jon-Tom sang on.
“First, have you ever been experienced? Have you ever been experienced?” The djinn drifted back on nonexistent heels. His great burning eyes began to glaze over slightly, as if someone were drawing wax pape
r across them.
“Well, I have,” Jon-Tom murmured. The notes bounced off the walls, rang off the ears of the djinn, who seemed to have acquired a pleasant indifference to those around him.
Jon-Tom’s own expression began to drift as he continued to sing, remembering the words, remembering the chords. A brief eternity passed. It was Mudge who reached up to break the trance.
“That’s it, mate,” he whispered. He shook Jon-Tom hard. “C’mon, guv, snap out o’ it.” Jon-Tom continued to play on, a beatific expression on his face. The djinn hovered before him like some vast rusty blimp, hands folded over his chest, great claws interlocked, whispering.
“BEAUTIFUL … Beautiful … beautiful…”
“Come on, mate!” The otter turned to Roseroar, who was swaying slowly in time to the music, her eyes blank. A thin trickle of drool fell from her mouth. Mudge tried to kick her in the rump, but his foot wouldn’t reach that high. So he settled for slapping Folly.
“What … what’s happening?” She blinked. “Stop hitting me.” She focused on the drifting djinn. “What’s happened to him? He looks so strange.”
“’E ain’t the only one,” Mudge snapped. “’Elp me wake the rest of ’em up.”
They managed to revive Drom and Charrok and Roseroar, but Jon-Tom stubbornly refused to return to reality. He was as locked into the deceptively langorous state of mind he’d conjured up as was the target of his song.
“Wake up!” Roseroar demanded as she shook him. He turned to her, still playing, and smiled broadly.
“Wake up? But why? Everything’s so beautiful.” He looked half through her. “Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?”
Roseroar was taken aback by that one, but only for a moment. “Tell me later, suh.” She threw him over her left shoulder and started for the door, keeping a wary eye on the stoned djinn.
“Just a second.” Drom paused at the portal and snatched the container of medicine from Snooth’s fingers.
“Hey, what about my payment, sonny?”
“You’ve already been paid, madame.” The unicorn used his horn to point at Harun al-Roojinn. “Collect from him.” Drom trotted out, through the storeroom of broken devices, through the living area, and out the front door to join his friends.
Snooth watched him go, hands on hips, her expression grim.
“Tourists! I should’ve known they’d be more trouble than they’re worth.” She stomped out onto the porch and watched until they’d vanished into the woods. Then she reached inside, found the sign she wanted, hung it on the door, and slammed it shut. The message on the sign was clear enough.
OUT TO LUNCH
BACK IN TEN THOUSAND YEARS
Jon-Tom bounced along on Roseroar’s powerful shoulder. Mudge kept pace easily alongside, Folly rode atop the reluctant but soft-hearted Drom, and Charrok scouted their progress from above.
As the Shop of the Aether and Neither receded behind them, Jon-Tom gradually began to emerge from the mental miasma into which he’d plunged both himself and Harun al-Roojinn. Fingers moved less steadily over the duar’s strings, and his voice fell to a whisper. He blinked.
“’E’s comin’ round,” Mudge observed.
“It’s about time,” said Folly. “What did he do to himself?”
“Some wondrous magic,” muttered Drom. “Some powerful otherworldly conjuration.”
Mudge snorted and grinned. “Right, mate. What ’e did to the monster was waste ’im. Unfortunately, ’e did ’imself right proud in the process.”
Jon-Tom’s hand went to his head. “Ooooo.” Shifting outlines resolved themselves into the running figure of Mudge.
“’Angover, mate?”
“No. No, I feel okay.” He looked up suddenly, back toward the smoking mountain. “Al-Roojinn?”
“Zonked, skunked, blown-away. A fine a piece o’ spellsingin’ as was ever done, mate.”
“It was the song,” Jon-Tom murmured dazedly. “A good song. A special song. Jimi’s best. If anything could dazzle a djinn, I knew it would be that. You can put me down now, Roseroar.” The tigress set him down gently.
“Come on, mate. We’d best keep movin’ fast before your spellsong wears off.”
“It’s all right, I think.” He looked back through the forest toward the mountain. “It’s not a restraining song. It’s a happy song, a relaxing song. Al-Roojinn didn’t seem either happy or relaxed. Maybe he’s happy now.”
They followed the winding trail back toward Crancularn and discovered a ghost town populated by slow-moving, nebulous inhabitants who smiled wickedly at them, grinning wraiths that floated in and out of reality. “It’s there but some don’t see it,” Drom had said. Now Jon-Tom understood the unicorn’s meaning. The real Crancularn was as insubstantial as smoke, as solid as a dream.
They forced themselves not to run as they left the town behind, heading for the familiar woods and the long walk back to far-distant Lynchbany. Somewhere off to the right came the grind of the ATC, but this time the helpful rabbit, be he real or wraith, did not put in an appearance. Once Jon-Tom glanced back to reassure himself that he’d actually been in Crancularn, but instead of a crumbling old town, he thought he saw a vast bubbling cauldron alive with dancing, laughing demons. He shuddered and didn’t look back again.
By evening they were all too exhausted to care if Al-Roojinn and a dozen vengeful cousins were hot on their trail or not. Mudge and Roseroar built a fire while the others collapsed.
“I think we’re safe now,” Jon-Tom told them. He ran both hands through his long hair, suddenly sat up sharply. “The medicine! What about the—!”
“Easy, mate.” Mudge extracted the container from a pocket. “’Ere she be, nice and tidy.”
Jon-Tom examined the bottle. It was such a small thing on which to have expended so much effort, barely an inch high and half again as wide. It was fashioned of plain white plastic with a screw-on cap of unfamiliar design.
“I wonder what it is.” He started to unscrew the top.
“Just a minim, mate,” said Mudge sharply, nodding at the container. “Do you think that’s wise? I know you’re a spellsinger and all that, but maybe there’s a special reason for that little bottle bein’ tight-sealed the way it is.”
“Any container of medicine would be sealed,” Jon-Tom responded. “If there was any danger, Clothahump would have warned me not to open it.” Another twist and the cap was off, rendering further argument futile.
He stared at the contents, then held the bottle under his nose and sniffed.
“Well,” asked Drom curiously, “do you have any idea what it is?”
Jon-Tom ignored the unicorn. Frowning, he turned the bottle upside down and dumped one of several tablets into his palm. He eyed it uncertainly, and before anyone could stop him, licked it. He sat and smacked his lips thoughtfully.
Abruptly his face contorted and his expression underwent a horrible, dramatic change. His eyes bugged and a hateful grimace twisted his mouth. As he rose his hands were trembling visibly and he clutched the bottle so hard his fingers whitened.
“It’s got him!” Folly stumbled back toward the bushes. “Something’s got him!”
“Roseroar!” Mudge shouted. “Get ’im down! I’ll find some vines to tie ’im with!” He rushed toward the trees.
“No,” Jon-Tom growled tightly. “No.” His face fell as he stared at the bottle. Then he drew back his hand and made as if to fling the plastic container and its priceless contents into the deep woods. At the last instant he stopped himself. Now he was smiling malevolently at the tablet in his hand.
“No. We’re going to take it back. Take it back so that Clothahump can see it. Can see what we crossed half a world and nearly died a dozen times to bring him.” He stared at his uneasy companions. “This is the medicine. This will cure him. I’m sure it will. Then, when the pain has left his body and he is whole and healthy again, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands!”
“Ah don’t understand yo, Jon-Tom. What??
?s wrong if that’s the right medicine?”
“What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong.” He shook the bottle at her. “It’s acetylsalicylic acid, that’s what’s wrong!” Suddenly the anger went out of him, and he sat back down heavily on a fallen tree. “Why didn’t I think that might be it? Why?”
Mudge fought to pronounce the peculiar, otherworldly word, failed miserably. “You mean you know wot the bloody stuff is?”
“Know it?” Jon-Tom lifted tired eyes to the otter. “You remember when I arrived in this world, Mudge?”
“Now, that would be a ’ard day to forget, mate. I nearly spilled your guts all over a field o’ flowers.”
“Do you remember what I was wearing?”
Mudge’s face screwed up in remembrance. “That funny tight shirt and them odd pants.”
“Jeans, Mudge, jeans. I had a few things with me when Clothahump accidently brought me over. My watch, which doesn’t work anymore because the batteries are dead.”
“Spell’s worn out, you mean.”
“Let’s don’t get into that now, okay? My watch, a lighter, a few keys in a small metal box, and another small box about this big.” He traced an outline in the air in front of him.
“The second box held a few little items I always carried with me for unexpected emergencies. Some Pepto-Bismol tablets for an upset stomach, a couple of Band-Aids, a few blue tablets whose purpose we won’t discuss in mixed company, and some white tablets. Do you remember the white tablets, Mudge?”
The otter shook his head. “I wouldn’t ’ave a looksee through your personal things, mate.” Besides, he’d been interrupted before he could get the two boxes opened.
“Those tablets were just like these, Mudge. Just like these.” He stared dumbly at the bottle he held. “Acetylsalicylic acid. Aspirin, plain old ordinary everyday aspirin.”
“Ah guess it ain’t so ordinary hereabouts,” said Roseroar.
“Now, mate,” said Mudge soothingly, “’is wizardship couldn’t ’ave known you ’ad some in your back pocket all along, now could ’e? It were a sad mistake, but an ’onest one.”
“You think so? Clothahump knows everything.”