Jon-Tom beamed indulgently. “We’ll do what we’ve always done, Mudge. Handle each crisis as it develops. Buy me no trouble and I’ll sing you no lies.”
“I’m encouraged no end,” the otter replied dryly.
Days succeeded one another in comparative tranquillity as they reached the junction with the Tailaroam itself and turned southwestward. Small sailing craft coursed rapidly toward the distant Glittergeist, while the crews of vessels bound in the opposite direction strained at their oars to make headway against the current, rowing upstream toward Pfeiffumunter and still more distant Polastrindu. From time to time human and otter would wave at them, and various members of the disparate crews would wave back, occasionally hesitating, to gesture and gape at the softly tinkling cloud which preceded the odd pair down the trail.
“Weegee won’t believe me letter.” Mudge amused himself by catching a small grasshopper and letting it go, then catching it again with a snatch of the fingers that was little more than a blur. “She’ll think I’ve stumbled off to Lynchbany to carouse and drink.”
“A not unnatural assumption,” Jon-Tom deposed.
“Oi now, mate, that ain’t bloomin’ fair. You know I’ve outgrown that wastrel existence. I’m a respected, settled family type, I am.”
“Most all the time,” his friend agreed. “Don’t worry about it. As long as Weegee knows you’re with me, she’ll know that I’ll keep an eye on you. For what that’s worth. In any case, she’ll be more tolerant of your taking off than will Talea.”
“Well, naturally.” Mudge looked mildly surprised. “I’m an otter.”
Far behind them now his tree home stood deserted and silent. The Wooden walls of the study did not tremble to the vibrations of Jon-Tom’s bardic modalities, nor the kitchen to the vibrant rustling of Talea’s apron or cursing. The spell-soundproofed upstairs bedrooms were devoid of human presence, not to mention the raucous rapping of Buncan, Squill, and Nocter. Beds stood neatly made, closets dripped with clothing unworn, and the floors reposed somnolent and unscuffed, awaiting the return of the occupants.
The only movement was produced by the infrequent sprite or demonic appurtenance as it skittered along a crack in the floor or ceiling, brightly tinted and shy. Anxious to avoid Jon-Tom’s artfully concealed thaumaturgic traps, they were careful to manufacture no mischief, though there was the occasional disputatious encounter with this or that wandering, pugnacious cricket.
In the soporific silence of the empty dining room, the air crackled brilliantly as if a thousand old newspapers were suddenly being indecently assaulted by an army of starving termites. The carbonated atmosphere fractured shrilly, admitting the edgy components of an ambulatory something which rapidly coalesced into a shape possessed of weight as well as form.
Little taller than Mudge, the attenuated creature wore a strap-and-pouch arrangement across its upper back, and little else. Its hard-shell exoderm shone in the sun, throwing off echoes of lapis and malachite. Stiff-jointed fingers manipulated the devices strapped to its underside while the breathing orifices on its middle wheezed rhythmically.
Firmly braced on multiple legs, it turned a slow circle while considering its immediate environs. Six finely filigreed metal shoes shod its feet, each covered in delicately worked and utterly incomprehensible script. Vast eyes scrutinized the table, chairs, china cabinet, and assorted wall decorations. Except for the soft whisper of its breathing, it made not a sound, though its multiple mouth parts were in constant motion. The cutting edges were stained purple, as though their owner had eaten nothing but grapes for a month.
Less than a thumbnail in width and the same color as the metal shoes, radiant in the afternoon light, a bright golden headband encircled the hairless skull. A rectangular box fashioned of complex but unthreatening polymers dangled from the four fingers of a left hand. Lights and contact points dimpled its surface. Set flush in its center was a transparent oval readout. It whined insistently.
When the creature touched the transparent facing with another finger, the whine went away. Golden eyes finished scanning the room, whereupon it moved on to the kitchen. Its search eventually encompassed every room in the tree. Only briefly distracted by intriguing objects irrelevant to its purpose, the visitor finally found itself in Jon-Tom’s study.
There it paused to massage with two sets of fingers tiny whorls located just beneath the gold headband. While performing this task it emitted a strong, aromatic perfume and a distinct air of puzzlement, giving every indication of having overlooked something vital.
Issuing a decidedly discouraged whistle, it flicked several of the contact points on the polymer box. Once more the atmosphere in its immediate vicinity began to effervesce. Accompanied by the piquant tinkling sound of miniature glass chimes, the creature fragmented, the multiple shards of itself sliding into transient tracks in space-time, until all was once again non compos corpus.
The peculiar visitor had brought nothing, taken nothing, and left nothing behind, save perhaps a faint odor of broiled nutmeg.
Chapter 4
DAYS LATER, JON-TOM and Mudge were beginning to wonder if the vagrant music was going to lead them straight on into the tide-tossed waters of the Glittergeist Sea, when the flickering chord-cloud made a sudden and demanding turn southward. The only problem with the abrupt change of direction was that it took the music straight across the Tailaroam, which by now had become a river both wide and deep.
While Mudge could have crossed it easily, carrying with him not only his own gear but Jon-Tom’s as well, the river confronted the spellsinger with a serious challenge. Cupping hands to mouth, he shouted toward their ethereal guide.
“Are you sure this is the right way?”
The cluster of sounds darted back until it was hovering directly in front of his face, then shot out across the river a second time. It repeated the action three times, the last time pausing a quarter of the way across, bobbing up and down with obvious impatience.
“I can tow you part o’ the way, mate, but not to the bank awaitin’ opposite. Not with carryin’ all the gear as well, especially that bleedin’ precious duar o’ yours.”
“We’ll look for an easier way across. Not that I couldn’t manage it if I had to. I’m still a pretty good swimmer.”
“For a rock,” the otter agreed.
“Your tolerance level hasn’t improved with age. Want to have a high-jumping contest?”
There being only the most limited development along the rocky south shore of the Tailaroam, they finally located not a ferry, but a genet with a boat. He was willing to take them across for what Jon-Tom thought was a reasonable fee and what a gagging Mudge insisted was outrageously exorbitant. Once they had been safely and efficiently deposited on the other side, Jon-Tom went so far as to insist that the otter return the fee he had efficiently pickpocketed from the startled boatman.
“I don’t understand you.” Jon-Tom chastised his friend as they resumed their march along the far less traveled path south of the river. “We’re not youngsters scrabbling for change anymore. We can afford to pay for honest service. What you were trying to pull back there can only get us in trouble.”
Mudge was only mildly abashed. “Old ’abits die ’ard, guv. I ’ave this aversion to lettin’ money, any amount o’ money, out o’ me ’ands.”
“I understand, but it was my money.” Jon-Tom shifted his light pack against his shoulders.
“’Tis not the owner, but the principle o’ the matter,” the otter argued as they followed the insistent chords across the beach and into the trees that marked the southernmost march of the Bellwoods.
While remaining heavily forested, the terrain soon grew hilly and difficult, gradual ascents alternating with steep slopes and fiendishly slippery ravines. They were entering the eastern reaches of the Duggakurra Hills, a rarely visited region noted for irksome terrain and little else. Streams and rivulets seemed to flow between every rock and boulder, tumbling remorselessly down from the towering mountains th
at lay wreathed in cloud far to the east, cutting their way through the solid granite as they groped blindly coastward, with gravity their indifferent and easily distracted guide. The endlessly winding gullies and arroyos made for hard walking, and the travelers had to pause frequently to rest.
Whenever they stopped, the chords would gather anxiously nearby, ringing insistently lest they linger too long. Too long for what? Jon-Tom found himself wondering at the urgency.
“Hey you up there! Take it easy.” Sucking air as they crested yet another hill, Jon-Tom did not stop to wonder at the incongruity of attempting to hold intelligent converse with a musical sequence. “We’re not the hikers we used to be. Besides, we can’t travel as perfectly straight a course as a piece of music. We’re not made of light, you know.”
“Oi, music don’t give us wings, ya blitherin’ blast o’ bastard brass!” Slumping onto a broad, polished boulder, Mudge rubbed at his ankles and winced. On a long journey, the otter’s unflagging energy did not always compensate for his absurdly short legs. He would have found the going far easier on level ground.
Also, he was becoming bored. The music tolerated no deviation in its course, chiding them sonically whenever they tried to find an easier way around the next ravine in their path. It cajoled and pleaded, urged and admonished. All most melodically, of course.
“Where d’you think these twisted tones are takin’ us, mate?”
“How should I know?” Jon-Tom flinched as his ankle voiced a complaint. Having resumed the march, they found themselves skittering down a rocky slope where evergreens gave way to tall, swooping sycamores, red cyanimores, and a diversity of othermores. Splashing through the cold, shallow stream at the bottom, they started grudgingly up the other side.
“Clothahump thinks that it’s after something. Whatever that might be, it evidently needs the help of others to accomplish its goal.”
“So why us?”
“Maybe it senses that I have sorcerous capabilities. Beyond that you’d have to ask Clothahump. Perhaps it has a problem resolving itself, musically speaking. Maybe it just wants some company. I’ve always wondered if music remains music when there’s no one around to hear it.”
“Oh, no!” As they reached the crest of the next ridge, Mudge drew back from his friend. “I know where that sort o’ philosophical shatscat leads, and I ain’t ’avin’ none o’ it!”
They started down the other side. To no one’s surprise, its base formed in the bank of yet another stream, which, like the dozens already encountered and traversed, also had to be crossed. Just as the slope on its far side had to be climbed. Beyond there doubtless lay other ravines, other streams, other slopes.
Mudge was eager for any change in the terrain. A sheer cliff, an impassable chasm: anything, so long as it was different. While humans tended to find consistency in their surroundings reassuring, a lack of variety made otters irritable.
While the rocky forest was less than comforting, at least they hadn’t encountered any threatening inhabitants. No poisonous plants or befanged animals crossed their path. The temperature at night was brisk but tolerable, and the profusion of shade ensured cool if not exactly comfortable hiking during the day. As for the numerous streams, they offered barriers that were damp but not impassable, and their presence obviated the need to carry more than a few swallows of water.
Occasionally Jon-Tom looked longingly to the west. An uncertain number of leagues in that direction lay the Lake District and the comely cities of Wrounipai and Quasequa, places he and Mudge knew well. They would be remembered and welcomed there.
But the music continued to flow resolutely southward, into country arduous and unknown, and showed no sign of swerving to pass anywhere near those accommodating communities.
There’d better be something to all of this, he found himself thinking. If after having led them all this way the insistent chiming simply and suddenly faded away, not only was he going to be angry, unlike Mudge he wouldn’t have anything to be angry at. Mudge, he knew, could always vent his anger on him.
More than he would have liked, he found himself thinking of his warm study and comfortable bed back in the familiar home tree. Of Talea’s stimulating presence and noteworthy meals. Almost in spite of herself, she had turned out to be something of a gourmet cook. He mused affectionately on the arguments he and Buncan enjoyed on the days when his son was home from school, and on the little interruptions that spiced his daily routine. He even missed Clothahump’s gruff admonitions and predictably constructive insults.
He blinked. All that lay many days’ walk behind him. In its place he had to be content with a cloud of cryptic modalities, a brooding if not openly hostile landscape, and an otter who had made the art of complaint a daunting proportion of his life’s work.
Also, his back hurt.
What was he doing out here, sleeping on unforgiving ground and eating trail food and forage? What had possessed him? His questing days lay properly in the past, not the present. He was an accomplished member of a highly respected profession, with a reputation that reached across the length and breadth of the Bellwoods. The novelty of traipsing about the unknown Duggakurra in the company of a garrulous otter and a fragment of enigmatic music was beginning to flag.
It would help if he had someone else to talk to.
As if reading his state of mind, the music drifted back to embrace him with its tinkling warmth, trying to cheer and invigorate him. The motes danced before his eyes, insistent and optimistic.
“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” he muttered as he grabbed a branch and hauled himself over a difficult spot. How much farther, he wondered, to wherever it was they were going? What if this clutch of notes had no particular destination? It could lead them right around the world and back again. What if Clothahump was wrong and it constituted a complete musical thought that was simply toying with whoever was dumb enough to follow its lead? What if they were going nowhere in particular, down a path with no end on course to a nonexistent destination?
Such thoughts did nothing to lengthen his stride or boost his spirits and he did his best not to dwell on them. Mudge could be pessimistic enough for both of them.
If naught else, the following morning brought a break in the seemingly endless geologic sequence of hills and ravines. Instead of a steep slope, the travelers had to work their way down a short but dangerous cliff, into a ravine that boasted not only a stream but a boulder-spotted beach of substantial breadth. Shallower and wider than the gullies they had previously crossed, the stream spread out to form a pond big enough to swim in.
Rugose lily pads and other water plants adorned with yellow and lavender blossoms clustered near the natural dam at the far end, supplying more color than the travelers had seen in many days. Small amphibians peeped and sang from beneath this sheltering verdure, seeking the water insects that shot through the crystalline depths. While hardly a temperate paradise, it was positively idyllic compared to the terrain they had been struggling through.
There was no restraining Mudge. He was out of his clothes before Jon-Tom could reach the pebbly beach. Plunging into the pool, he burst from its center like a breaching dolphin, his dark brown fur shiny and slicked back as he turned a neat somersault in the still air. A broad smile crossed his face as he swam back to rejoin his friend.
“’Tis at least ten body lengths deep, and as clear and clean as old hardshell’s favorite crystal sphere. Come an’ join me!”
Jon-Tom studied the mirrorlike surface. “I don’t know …”
“Cor, come on, mate. I won’t let you sink.” Mudge whirled and dove, surfacing moments later in the middle of the pool. “There’s eatin’-size fish in ’ere, too. Maybe freshwater mussels on the rocks. Let’s idle a day an’ I’ll do some serious fishin’. We’ve earned it.” He swatted at a querulous chord idling above his ears. “As for our guide, ’ere, it can bloody well wait till we’ve put some decent food in our bellies.”
Mudge was right, Jon-Tom realized as he began peeling off
his clothes. They deserved a rest. He found himself seeking a protruding rock from which to attempt a proper dive.
When half an hour later Jon-Tom finally emerged from the pool refreshed and rejuvenated, Mudge already had a fire going in a little alcove running water had hollowed out of the northern cliff face. With his short sword the otter was gutting the half dozen thick-bodied fish he’d caught without aid of bait or line. The passage of time might have slowed him on land, but in the water he was as quick and agile as ever.
Otter and man lay back on a pair of smooth granite slabs and let the sun dry them while the spitted fish hissed and sputtered over Mudge’s excellent fire.
A nude Jon-Tom considered the blue sky, framed by the walls of the miniature canyon. “You know, I’d forgotten how good it could be just to get away. To see different country and smell different smells.”
“Aye.” Even Mudge’s whiskers were relaxed. “An’ if I ain’t mistakin’, there’s a distinct absence o’ naggin’ in the air which adds decidedly to the general ambiance.”
Jon-Tom turned to regard his friend. “Talea doesn’t nag.”
The otter made a sound halfway between a snort and a squeak. “This is ol’ Mudge you’re talkin’ to ’ere, mate. Females, they metamorphose, they do. Only ’tis all backwards reversed. Matin’ changes their body chemistry. See, they start out as butterflies, but after they’ve been cocooned for a while, they pop back out as caterpillars, all predictability and bristles.”
“Not Talea.” The spellsinger rolled his head back to gaze anew at the sky. “And while I’m not qualified to comment on otterish pairings, I’d say you’re pretty lucky to have Weegee. In fact, if it wasn’t for her, I’d say you’d probably be dead.”
“Get away with you, guv.” Mudge whistled softly. “Weegee, she’s okay. Wot you’re forgettin’ is that we otters do everythin’ at twice your speed an’ with twice as much energy. That includes naggin’.”