Jon-Tom continued to gape at the endless rows. “How do you know what you’ve got here, let alone where it’s located?”
“Oh, we’re very up-to-date in the store.” From a side pocket she extracted a length of bright blue metal six inches long and two and a half inches thick. A transparent facing ran the length of it. There were no buttons or switches visible.
“Pocket computer.” She showed it to Jon-Tom. As he watched, words scrolled rapidly across the face. Languages and script changed as he stared. Twice Snooth turned it vertically and the words scrolled from top to bottom. Several times they reversed and traveled from right to left. Once there were no letters at all, only colors changing in sequence. Once there was only music.
“Thought-activated. Handy little gadget. Bought it from a place whose location can’t be determined, only inferred. Very talented folks there. See?”
A chemical formula appeared on the transparent facing and froze in position. A long numerical sequence appeared below it.
“Down this way.” Snooth hopped off to her left, eventually turned down an aisle.
Roseroar stared at the endless ranks of goods. “How many shelves do y’all have down heah?”
“Can’t really say,” the kangaroo replied. “It changes all the time.”
“You run this whole place by yourself?” Jon-Tom asked her.
She nodded. “You get used to it. I like stockwork, and the perks are good.”
“How far is the medicine?”
“Not far. Only about half a day’s hop. Any longer and I’d have paused to pack us a meal or dig out a scooter.”
“Is that anything like the Honda ATC we saw one of your customers riding around outside of town?”
“That’d be Foharfa’s toy. He’s going to break his neck on that thing one of these days. No, a scooter’s just an inertialess disc. You guide it by sensing your relationship to the local planetary magnetic field.”
Jon-Tom swallowed. “I’m afraid I don’t have a license to drive anything like that.”
“No matter. I’m enjoying the walk.”
“Can we buy one to get us ’ome, maybe?” Mudge asked hopefully.
“Sorry. I’ve none in general stock. Besides, I make it a rule not to let certain goods travel beyond Crancularn. The world’s a complicated enough place as it is. You can overtechnologize magic if you’re not careful.”
“Looks like your business is rather slow,” observed Drom.
Snooth shrugged in mid-hop. “I’m not looking to get rich, unicorn. I just like the business, that’s all. Besides, it’s a good way to keep up with what’s going on in the greater cosmos. Goods are better than gossip and more honest reflections of what’s happening elsewhere than official news pronouncements and zeeways.”
“Must be ’ard on profits,” Mudge commented.
“That depends on what kind of profit you’re trying to make, otter.”
Jon-Tom eyed the kangaroo uneasily. “That’s a funny thing for a shopkeeper to say. Are you sure you aren’t some kind of sorceress yourself?”
“Who, me?” Snooth appeared genuinely shocked. “Not I, sir. Too many responsibilities, too many regulations attached to the profession. I prefer my present employment, thank you. And the cost-of-living in Crancularn is low.” A pause, then, “What about this ferret and girl you referred to earlier?”
“They were traveling with us,” Jon-Tom explained. “We had an unfortunate parting of the ways.”
“Unfortunate, ’ell!” Mudge rumbled. “The dirty buggers stole our map, they did, and it were only by dint o’ good luck and this spellsinger’s determination and this one-horn’s knowledge o’ the lay o’ the land that we … !”
Snooth interrupted him, smiling at Jon-Tom. “So you are a spellsinger? I noticed the duar you carry right off, but I imagined you to be no more than a traveling musician.”
“I’m still an amateur,” Jon-Tom confessed. “I’m still learning how to control my abilities.”
“I think one day you will, though I sense you still have a long way to go.”
“It’s just that it’s so new to me. The magic, not the music. Everything’s so new to me. I’m not of this world.”
“I know. You smell of elsewhere. Do not let your transposition faze you. Newness is life’s greatest pleasure and delight.” She indicated the shelves walling them in. “Every new product I encounter is a source of wonderment to me.”
“I wish I could share your enthusiasm. But I can’t help my homesickness. You can’t, by any chance, send me home by the same means you use to stock your goods?” he asked hopefully.
“I am truly sorry,” Snooth told him softly, and it struck him that she was. “This is only a receive-and-disperse operation. I can only ship products, not people.”
Jon-Tom slumped. “Well, it’s no more than what I expected. Clothahump said as much.”
“You must tell me about your travels. Oddly, I know more about many other worlds than about this one. The result of being tied to my business.”
So partly to please her and partly to help relieve his own disappointment, Jon-Tom regaled her with a recitation of the adventures they had experienced during their long journey. It took at least the half day Snooth had claimed before she finally called the march to a halt. Jon-Tom looked down the aisle. They still were not in sight of its end.
Strange medications filled bottles and jars and containers of unfamiliar material. The twenty-foot-high shelves they had halted before represented a cosmological pharmacopia. Jon-Tom made out pills and drops, salves and unguents, bandages and bindings, scattered among less recognizable items.
Snooth regarded the shelving for a moment, consulted her blue metal bar, and hopped a few yards farther down the aisle. Then she climbed one of the motorized ladders that ran from the topmost shelf to tracks cut in the stone floor and ascended the shelving halfway.
“Here we are,” she said, sounding gratified. She opened an ordinary cardboard box and removed a small plastic container. “Only one. I’ll have to restock this item. I don’t have the room to keep more than one of any item on the shelves. There are instructions on the side which I presume your wizard will know how to interpret.”
“I’m sure he will,” Jon-Tom said, reaching relievedly for the container.
“Stop right there, please.”
Jon-Tom whirled. Roseroar growled and reached for her swords as Mudge tried to ready his longbow.
“Don’t!”
A figure emerged from behind a translucent crate containing frozen flowers and came toward them. In his hands Jalwar held something resembling a multiple crossbow. At least three dozen lethal-looking little darts were clustered in concentric circles at the tip of the weapon.
“Poison. Enough to kill all of you at once. Even you, mistress of long teeth.” Roseroar continued to glower at the new arrival, but let her paws fall slowly from the hilts of her swords.
“A wise decision,” Jalwar told her.
Jon-Tom was staring past him. “Folly. Where’s Folly?” When the ferret did not immediately reply, Jon-Tom felt a surge of excitement despite the precariousness of the situation. “So she didn’t go with you voluntarily, did she!”
“No.” Jalwar made the admission indifferently. “But she came, and that was all I required. I needed assistance in hauling rudimentary supplies, and she struck me as the easiest of all of you to manipulate. As a beast of burden she proved adequate.” He smiled thinly, enjoying himself. “Then, too, the destruction of innocence has always appealed to me, and she still had a little left.”
Jon-Tom struggled to restrain himself. He didn’t for a second doubt the lethality of those multiple darts or Jalwar’s willingness to employ them.
“Where is she? What have you done with her?”
“In good time I will tell you, my impetuous blind friend.” The ferret cocked an eye toward Snooth. “So that is the precious medicine our friend Clothahump requires so desperately. How interesting. I suddenly feel the need
for some medication myself. You, proprietress! I’ll take that container, if you don’t mind.”
“Take a ’elluva lot more than that to cure wot ails you, mate,” said Mudge insultingly.
“You think so, do you? Yet I am not so sick that I have failed to outwit you all. I did not think you would make it here without the map, and in my confidence I slowed my approach. I thought in any event that with the aid of my help I would always know your location. Indeed, without that help I would not have been able to rush in close on your heels and track your progress within this place from two aisles over.”
“What help?” Jon-Tom asked warily.
“Now, be that the right tone with which to greet an old comrade, man?” said a voice Jon-Tom had hoped never to hear again. He turned to his right.
“Corroboc.”
The parrot executed a half bow. “It be right good of you to remember me name. That singing magic you worked on me ship, that be my fault for not guessing you had more than entertainment for old Corroboc in mind. But I’m not the one to dwell on old regrets. No, not I, even though me worthless crew chose a new captain and set me adrift barely within flying range o’ the mainland.
“There I found your strange boat and picked up your trail. I knew o’ your aims and thought somehow to follow until I found a way o’ repayin’ you all for your kindnesses to me. In the forest I saw two of you leave from the rest.” He nodded toward Jalwar.
“When I saw the respect with which he were treatin’ me old friend Folly, I thought to meself, now here be one after me own heart. So I settled down for a chat, and after an exchange of pleasantries me and the good ferret here, we came to an understandin’, har.”
“That bird will cut out our hearts and dance on them,” Roseroar whispered to Jon-Tom. “We might as well rush them now.”
“Steady on, you oversized bit o’ fluff,” Mudge warned her. “All the cards ’aven’t been dealt yet, wot?”
“Whisper all you want,” snapped Jalwar. “It will avail you naught.”
Corroboc pulled a short, thin sword from the flying scabbard slung at his waist. Holes in the blade made it light and strong. He caressed the flat side of the blade lovingly.
“Many days have I had to anticipate the pleasures of our reunion. I beg you not to provoke me new friend lest he put an end to you all too quick. I want our meeting to be a memorable experience for all. Aye, memorable! You see, I’ve no ship, no crew anymore. All I have left to me be this moment, which I don’t want to hurry.”
Realization rushed in on Jon-Tom as he turned on Jalwar. “You work for Zancresta, don’t you? You’ve been working for Zancresta from the first! Running into you on the northern shore of the Glittergeist was no coincidence. Those brigands weren’t attacking you. It was all a ploy to let you worm yourself into our company.”
“An apt metaphor, Jon-Tom,” said Roseroar.
“Tell me something,” Jon-Tom went on quietly. “How much is Zancresta paying you to keep this medicine from Clothahump?”
The ferret burst out laughing, though the business end of the strange weapon he held did not waver. “Paying me? You idiots! Spellsinger? Pah! I am Zancresta! Wizard of Malderpot, supreme master of the arcane arts, diviner of the unknown and parter of the shrouds! Fools, beggars of a humble knowledge, you are blinder than the troglodytes of Tatrath and dumber than the molds that grub out an existence in the cracks between the stones.”
The ferret seemed to swell in their eyes as they stared, though neither his size nor shape actually changed. But the curved spine stiffened, the voice was no longer shaky, and an inner unholy light emanated from suddenly bottomless eyes while a barely perceptible dark aura sprang to malevolent life around him.
“I didn’t think you’d get this far, none of you! But where a spellsinger, however inept, is involved, there are never any assurances. So when you escaped from Malderpot and my servants lost you in the woods, I determined to find you myself. Your bold and unforeseen move into the Muddletup Moors confused me, I must admit. But only for a time, and I was just able to intercept you on the shores of the Glittergeist and execute my little charade.
“I did not think I would be with you long, but luck and false fortune seemed to follow you wherever you went. Across the ocean, on this kindred spirit’s vessel, even into the land of the bellicose enchanted folk. When you not only managed your release from their hands but induced them to assist you with a map, I determined to press on ahead on my own to seek out this Shop of the Aether and Neither and buy up all the necessary medicine before you could arrive.
“And again you surprised me, not out of cleverness or insight, but through blind luck. So Corroboc and I paralleled your progress through this bloated emporium of useless goods, he flying above to check periodically on your position, until you kindly located the object of the quest for me. Which I will now take possession of.” He glanced up at Snooth.
“I do not think she has in hand a device or medicine that can save her from the fast-acting effects of hruth venom. Once that container has been handed over I will relieve you of your weapons and leave you to the tender attentions of my patient friend. Perhaps he will grow bored before all of you are dead.” Corroboc made neat, thin slices in one of his own feathers with the razor-sharp sword while Zancresta looked suddenly wistful.
“Ah, the day that I stand at that fat fraud’s bedside, holding the precious medicine he so desperately requires just beyond his feeble reach, making him plead and beg for it, that will be a day of triumph indeed.”
“What have you done with Folly!”
Zancresta came back from his private reverie. “Ah, my pack animal and my insurance. I have never feared you, spellsinger, but your talents act in ways wayward and unpredictable. Sometimes it is awkward to deal with such implausibilities, and I do worry some on the impetuous nature of your companions.
“Knowing of your insipidly tender nature, I took care to keep the girl tightly under my control, lest she foolishly try to run to you for misguided salvation.”
“You hypnotized her?”
“I am unfamiliar with the term, but if you mean did I blur her simple mind in order to make her compliant, yes. I no longer have need of her as crude labor or as insurance against your actions, however.” He pointed down the aisle.
“These shelves reach far back into the mountain, which you may have noticed is of volcanic origin. I would presume that each aisle ends in a fairly hot place. Perhaps the proprietress stores goods back there that require constant heat. Being of a warm nature myself, I dismissed the girl and bid her wander down to the end of the aisle. She acquired on Corroboc’s ship a dark coloration which I venture to say will change rapidly to red as she stumbles into the hot center of this mountain.”
Jon-Tom took a step backward and Zancresta raised his peculiar multiple dart-thrower. “Let her go. She is nothing.”
There was a flash of gold from behind Roseroar. Again Zancresta raised the weapon, but a feathery hand came down on his arm.
“Nay, let the horned one go,” snarled Corroboc. “I’ve no real quarrel with him. He won’t be in time to save the girl and I want these three left alive and conscious.” He started toward the ladder, sword in one hand, the other outstretched toward Snooth. “The medicine, if you please, hag.”
“As you wish.”
“No!” Jon-Tom shouted. “Don’t give it to him!”
The kangaroo’s reply was firm. “I am not a party to what is a private quarrel. This is between you and him.” She handed over the precious container. “Here, catch.” At the last instant she tossed it toward the pirate captain.
Corroboc grabbed for the small plastic cylinder and missed. It struck the floor, vaporizing instantly and spitting out a thick cloud of black smoke.
Jon-Tom threw himself sideways and down. The dart-thrower twanged and something struck his boot while others thunked harmlessly into the back of his thick snake-skin cape. He heard no screams of pain and prayed that his friends had also managed to dod
ge Zancresta’s weapon. He started to rise, preparing to do battle with his staff, when it occurred to him that in a hand-to-hand fight Roseroar’s swords and Mudge’s bow would be more effective, and that, in any case, they had a sorcerer to deal with now. So he put the ramwood aside and fumbled with the duar. An old Moody Blues tune came to mind, suitable for combating evil. He played and sang.
It had its intended effect. As the smoke began to dissipate he could hear the ferret moan, see him staggering backwards clutching at his head.
But Zancresta was not to be so simply vanquished.
Gathering his strength, he glared at Jon-Tom and began to recite:
“Nails of rails and coils of toil, Come to me now, rise to a boil, Become with strength my herpetological foil!”
The sorcerer’s fingers stretched, elongated, became powerful constrictors that writhed and curled toward Jon-Tom.
Whether it was out of fear for Folly or for himself or sheer anger, he couldn’t say, but now the music flowed easily through him. Without missing a bar he segued straight into a slithering song by Jefferson Airplane. The snakes shriveled and shrank to become ferret fingers once more.
A second time Zancresta threw out his hands toward Jon-Tom.
“Xyleum, phylum, cellulose constrained,
Hypoblastic hardwood rise up now unrestrained.
Chlorophyllic transformation make thyself known.
Long and strong and sharp and straight
And solid as a stone!”
The wooden stake that materialized to leap at Jon-Tom’s chest was the size of a small tree. A few branches erupted from its trunk, and it continued to grow even as it flew toward him, sending out roots and leaves. He barely had time enough to switch to a throaty rendition of Def Lepard’s “Pyromania.”
The huge, growing spear blew up in a ball of fire. The force of it knocked Zancresta backward to the floor.