“Clothahump, where are you? Right now, this instant?”
“Now? Why, I am in the Library, of course! The great Library. What a wonder it is! I am so glad you have found it, too, my boy. I shall require all the help I can get in the many years ahead.” He displayed the weathered hunk of shale he was holding. “See, I have found the key already. Here is the first page of the index, clearly defined for any who cares to look, and easy even for the uninitiated to read.” He started to wave it toward something in front of him. He paused halfway through the wave, staring straight ahead as if paralyzed.
“Clothahump? Sir, are you all right?”
Another moment of silence, followed by a whisper of resignation. “There is no Library here, is there?”
“No, sir.” The wizard’s expression was pitiful to behold. “I’m sorry, sir. It was an illusion. I experienced one myself. I still don’t know if I came out of it because it had run its course or because I happened to hit the right notes on the duar.”
“Not an illusion, my boy.” The turtle swallowed hard. “A perturbation. Another cursed, damnable, cheating perturbation. You didn’t see it, then? The Library?”
“No, sir. My illusion was different. I was standing on a stage, performing, at the summit of my profession. A beautiful dream. The fulfillment of all my most heartfelt desires. I had everything I’d ever wanted.”
“And I as well. This time the perturbation drew on our innermost selves for its trickery.” He looked down at the piece of shale, then irritably tossed it aside. “We are all fools.”
“No, sir. Being fooled doesn’t make us fools. The perambulator affects geniuses as well as idiots.”
Clothahump smiled up at him. “You are trying to make me feel better, my boy. It isn’t working, but it is appreciated. Give me a hand up.” Jon-Tom did so. Then the wizard gave vent to as great a display of frustration as Jon-Tom had ever seen. Clothahump often grew incensed at others. Sorbl in particular. But never at himself. So Jon-Tom understood the depth of the wizard’s disappointment when he kicked the shale hard, sending it bouncing down the trail.
“I feel better for that. My foot does not, but the rest of me does. I was in a Library, my boy. Such a library as has never existed. It contained within its shelves all the knowledge of everything that is, ever was, and ever would be. A Library of the past, the present, and the future. All the answers were contained within its walls. That’s what I’ve dreamed about, what I’ve wanted all my life, my boy. A little wisdom and a few answers. It is not nice to be cheated by a phenomenon of un-nature.” He sighed deeply. “What of the others?”
Jon-Tom gestured to his left, then up toward Colin’s branch. “As you can see, sir, they’re still all suffering from their individual perturbations. Their respective illusions must have a stronger hold on them than yours or mine did on us.”
“Do not flatter yourself that your will or knowledge of reality is any stronger. You needed the music to bring me back to myself. I suspect you needed it to shock you back as well.”
Jon-Tom shrugged. “You’re probably right, sir. A little rock goes a long way.”
The wizard growled. “Don’t talk to me about rocks. Come, we have work to do. You use your spellsinging and I will employ my magic.”
Jon-Tom chose to revive Dormas. She was deeply embarrassed despite his assurances that she shouldn’t feel that way. They had all of them been equally bewitched. Nonetheless, she insisted on trotting off to recover and to suffer in peace. She also spent more than an hour walking back and forth through the forest, searching for the emerald meadow of clover and flowers and finding only dirt and scrub. Thus satisfied, she located a small mountain pool and thoroughly doused herself. From all the rolling about she’d done in her imaginary field, she was filthy from forehead to fetlock. The dirt washed off, but the anger and embarrassment did not.
Jon-Tom set about trying to put their supplies back into some kind of order while Clothahump sought to magic some reality into his famulus. When magic didn’t quite do the trick, the wizard began slapping the owl back and forth across his muddy beak. Perhaps it was the lingering magic, perhaps the slaps, or maybe the combination. In any case, Sorbl returned to them. Returned to them as drunk as if his perturbation had been real. Apparently certain mental effects were not as easily shaken off.
Finishing with the supplies, Jon-Tom climbed the big pine and got a firm grip on Colin. The koala was mumbling mantras to himself as he chewed on the pine needles, and Jon-Tom had to shake him hard while trying to play the right notes on the duar. Colin must have had a stronger grasp on reality than the rest of them because he snapped back immediately.
Unfortunately Jon-Tom had pushed a little too hard. The koala went over sideways right out of the tree and landed with a disquieting thunk on the hard ground below. He was also tougher than any of them, for he rolled over and was on his feet in seconds, looking around as though nothing had happened. The pose was an illusion itself. A moment later Colin staggered and sat down hard, put his face in his hands.
This was not because he had suffered a concussion from the fall, as Jon-Tom first feared. Just as Sorbl had retained the effects of his imaginary imbibing, so had Colin kept the by-product of chewing handfuls of eucalyptus leaves. As he explained to Jon-Tom, they were mildly narcotic. That was why koalas eating them full-time were always so sleepy and slow-moving. It would take awhile for the effect to wear off.
As for Mudge, once Clothahump got over the shock of his first sight of the otter, it took the two of them and Colin to pull him off his log. Whereupon they braced themselves for a confession of embarrassment that would put Dormas’s to shame. The otter’s response, however, was somewhat different. As soon as events had been explained to him, he let out a string of expletives and oaths and execrations such as this part of the world had never heard. The air trembled around them.
When he ran out of steam, not to mention insults and wind, he gave the remnants of the devastated log a swift kick, sending splinters flying, and stalked off to sulk by his lonesome.
“You’d think the degenerate water rat would be ashamed of himself,” Colin commented.
“I don’t think Mudge knows the meaning of the word. I think he’s upset because we brought him out of his dream. He’ll get over it, but it’ll take awhik.”
True to Jon-Tom’s word, the otter pouted for another hour, then shambled back to help with the repacking of the supplies. Not a word was said until the last bedroll was back in place, the last container of food strapped down and secure. Then he glanced up at his tall friend.
“Did you ‘ave to do it, mate? Bring me back, I mean?”
“What do you think, Mudge?” Jon-Tom checked the position of a sack of spare clothing on the hinny’s back. “It was just a perturbation, an illusion. It wasn’t real. I miss my own dream too. I had to bring you back.”
“I know that. We ‘ave a job to do an’ we’re all of us in this together. But did you ‘ave to bring me back so soon7”
“There’s no telling what might’ve happened if I’d waited any longer.” He worked on another strap that looked a little loose. Dormas glanced back at him.
“Take it easy back there, man. That’s not your shoe you’re tying, you know.”
“Sorry.” He let the binding up a notch. “If I hadn’t intervened when I did,, you might never come back to reality. Clothahump says you might’ve been stuck in that dreamworld forever.”
“Now would that ‘ave been so bloody awful?”
“Not for you, or for me, or for the rest of us, but it wouldn’t have brought us any nearer to our goal, and there are others depending on us.”
“That bleedin’ altruistic streak of yours again! I’ve warned you about that, mate.” He turned and stomped off in search of his longbow and sword, looking very unhappy.
Jon-Tom watched him go, considered what had happened to all of them. Each member of the group had seen their wildest fantasy come true. Unlike Mudge, however, none of the rest of them h
ad any desire to succumb to that dreamworld for a lifetime. Eventually they would have given in to boredom, for when one has accomplished everything, even in a dream, there is nothing left to strive for. Clothahump explained it very clearly. Trapped in an illusion of complete fulfillment, unable to escape, the final result would have been not nirvana but death.
Now, if he could only think of a way to call it up for an hour or two at a time . . .
What might the perambulator be thinking? Did it think? Clothahump wasn’t sure if it possessed intelligence or not, or even if it did, if it assumed a recognizable form. Did it dream, and if so, what might something capable of traveling between universes and dimensions dream of? Certainly it was confused. Confused and nervous. The by-products of this space-time traverser’s anxiety were increasingly frequent perturbations. Interdimensional sweat.
There was no malice in them, save for those that the perambulator’s captor might be directing. The last one had left them all feeling better, though relieved at its end. Perhaps the perambulator suffered with each change just as they did.
As they climbed toward the pass he found that he no longer wanted to free the perambulator simply to stop the disturbing changes it was foisting on the world. He wanted to free it because it was the right thing to do for the perambulator itself, whether it was capable of emotion or feeling or not. As a child, he’d once been locked in a trunk by some friends. That caged feeling had never left him. He knew what it was like to be trapped, unable to run, hardly able to move. Nothing deserved a fate like that, not even something as inexplicable and otherworldly as a perambulator.
We’re not going to loosen a piece of frozen machinery, he told himself. We’re on our way to perform a rescue.
Clothahump called a halt just below the top of the pass.
They took shelter from the wind that blew steadily through the gap in the mountains.
“It would be useful to know what lies ahead and worth making the effort to find out. Would you be good enough to try, rune-caster?”
Colin sought out a protected spot beneath an overhanging granite ledge. “No promises now, friends. I’m willing to make the attempt, but don’t expect too much.”
“Anything you can tell us will be a great deal more than what we presently know about tomorrow, which is nothing,” Clothahump pointed out.
“Right. So long as you don’t expect too much.”
The sun gleamed off the silver thread as the koala removed the rune pouch from his knapsack. Everyone gathered close as he untied it and spread the leather out flat on the hard ground. They waited quietly while he went through his preparations, finally picking up the runes and letting them fall onto the leather square. No one spoke; everyone stared.
Jon-Tom tried to find some recognizable pattern, to make some sense of the double handful of bone and stone and fabric spread out before him. He found nothing but the beginnings of a slight headache from concentrating too hard. Much as it bothered him to confess to ignorance, he had to admit that Mudge’s description of the runes as so much garbage was as accurate as anything he could think of himself.
Clothahump was staring intently at the debris and nodding slowly to no one in particular. Whether the wizard actually understood any of what he was looking at or was just trying to keep up appearances, Jon-Tom couldn’t tell, and thought it undiplomatic to inquire.
When he finally spoke, Colin’s voice was unusually soft and thoughtful. “You were right, Old One. He knows we’re coming.”
“What can you see?” Clothahump asked anxiously. “Can you tell anything of it at all? Size, strength, mental powers, anything that would be useful in compiling a profile? Any indication at all of whom we are up against?”
“First that ‘he’ is accurate. There are too many signs of maleness for it to be otherwise. And there are many suggestions of magic. A wizard or sorcerer of some kind, surely. The forest fire that almost engulfed us may not have been a perturbation after all. There is power at work here, enough to constitute a threat on its own, without the aid of a perambulator.”
Clothahump spoke quietly but firmly. “Is his power greater than mine?” He waited silently for the rune-reader to reply. They all did. Even the skeptical Mudge looked on anxiously.
“I cannot say that it is stronger,” Colin finally declared. “Different certainly, in a manner I can’t describe or understand. I’m only a rune-caster, not a sorcerer myself.”
“What else do you see?” Dormas asked him.
“He will not let the perambulator go without a fight. We will be strongly opposed. At that time one among us must take the lead. Only that one has the ability and strengths to see us through the final confrontation. At that time also, Wizard, your knowledge and experience will be of paramount importance to our survival. All of us may have to sacrifice, but one of us will be the key. Only he can counter what our opponent will throw against us.” He looked up then to stare at Jon-Tom. So did the others.
Well, he’d half expected as much. He and Clothahump were the prime movers in this business. He was neither embarrassed nor intimidated by the stares of his companions. He’d been through similar situations often enough in the past to have gained a certain amount of confidence. And it was too much to expect that for once he’d be able to hang back and let bloodthirsty types like Mudge and Colin do the heavy work. He sighed.
“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already suspect. Are you sure you can’t tell us anything more about what we’re going to have to deal with?”
Again Colin turned his attention to the runes. “I can see something but I can’t define it. The runes are rarely precise. It isn’t something I’d know how to handle myself. I can tell you that it will manifest itself in two ways. The first will take the form of a magic only you can counter.”
“More spellsinging.” Jon-Tom grunted. “Well, I had to fight it out with another spellsinger once before, and he and I ended up the best of friends. If I have to go up against another one . . .”
“The runes read in multiples.”
“All right, then, if I have to go up against several singers, maybe I can convert them the way I did the other one. They may end up as our allies instead of our enemies.”
“It’ll be a wonder if you can turn these to friendships. I read no accommodating signs in the pattern. You will have a tough time combating them. The runes don’t say if you’ll survive the confrontation; so powerful, so evil and destructive is their particular brand of magic.”
Jon-Tom sat up a little straighten “I’ll handle it. What form is the second manifestation going to take?”
“That much, at least, is clear.” The koala stared at him appraisingly. “The runes say that you will have to do battle with your own greatest desire.”
That set Jon-Tom back on his heels. He thought immediately of the dreamworld he’d been drifting through not long ago, of the thousands of fans cheering and screaming at him and the promise of a respected and venerated career in government.
“But I’ve already done that. It was part of the illusion I experienced earlier.”
Colin looked back down at the fragments of wood and stone. “Maybe you’ll have to deal with it again. It isn’t clear here, but that’s the closest description I can give. You must prepare to deal with that desire as best you’re able.”
“Will we be successful in the end?” Dormas asked somberly.
“The runes don’t say. Finality of any kind is the hardest pattern to interpret. The runes lead to a place and time of ultimate confrontation, but that’s it. Beyond that point nothing is visible.” He started gathering up the runes and the corners of the pouch.
“O’ course, we don’t know ‘ow much o’ wot you’ve said is certain an’ ‘ow much a product o’ your fevered imagination, fuzzball.”
Colin glared at the otter but his expression quickly softened. “I could take that for an insult, pilgrim, but I won’t. Because it happens to be the truth. The reading felt unusually good here”—and he put on
e finger over his heart—”and here.” He moved it to his forehead. “Sometimes the casting is bad and I can sense it, but this one was as accurate as they come.” He glanced sideways at Jon-Tom. “I almost wish it were otherwise.”
“No, I’m glad you did the reading,” Jon-Tom told him thankfully. “I’d rather have some idea of what we’re up against, even if your description did border on the nebulous.”
Clothahump was peering through the pass ahead. “There is no point in putting off the inevitable. That is something that must always be coped with.”
The attacks commenced soon after they started through the far end of the pass. Landslides repeatedly threatened to trap and crush them in the narrow defile. Each time the boulders came crashing down toward them Clothahump raised his arms and bellowed a single powerful phrase. And each time the rocks were blasted to fragments.
“Not the ideal solution,” the wizard said, apologizing for the dust that soon covered all of them, “but I promise you a good cleansing spell as soon as we have done with this.”
Eventually there were no more landslides. Instead the clouds opened up and they were drenched with a misplaced tropical downpour. It washed away the rock dust but also threatened to wash them right back down the pass.
Again Clothahump went to work, raising his hands and grumbling about the amount of overtime he was having to put in at his age. The flood rushing down upon them was transformed into a vast cloud of warm steam. For ten minutes the pass was turned into a giant sauna. Finally the steam dissipated enough for them to proceed.
“Look at this,” Mudge complained, fingering one side of his vest. “ ‘Ow the ‘ell am I supposed to get these bloomin’ wrinkles out?”
“I am responsible for preserving your life, water rat,” Clothahump told him sharply, “not your appearance. It would do you well to be more attentive to the terrain ahead and less narcissistic.”
The otter regarded his filthy, damp fur and bedraggled attire. “As you say, Your Wizardship. I just ‘ope we don’t meet anyone I know.”