That was the signal for the rest of the band to charge. Dodging Prugg’s lethal swings, they darted all around him, poking and prodding with their spears and swords while yelling encouragement to each other.
“Get ’im! … take ’is bloomin’ ’ead off! … kill ’im!… get the ugly bastard down!”
“Knock ’im over, tear ’is throat out!” a solitary voice yelled from behind Jon-Tom. The spellsinger turned, tapped Mudge on the shoulder.
“Kill? Tear his throat out?” he said dangerously
Mudge put his paws behind his back and tried to smile. “I was just sort o’ coverin’ our rear, mate. Don’t want to be taken from behind, we don’t.”
“Guarding our rear, my ass!”
“Oi, that’s wot I said, weren’t it?”
There were times when Jon-Tom could tolerate his friend’s shameless displays of cowardice. This wasn’t one of them. Not with petite warriors like Sasswise and Splitch Fighting to make a path for him.
Actually, he went a little crazy.
“You rotten, smelly, no-good … !” Reaching down, he grabbed Mudge by the tail and the ruff of his neck. The otter’s feet bicycled through the air as he fought to free himself.
“Hey, take it easy, mate!”
“Get in there and fight alongside your cousins, damn you!”
Jon-Tom threw the otter forward, harder than he intended. He was too mad to judge his strength. To his horror, Mudge performed a single somersault and landed neatly on top of Prugg’s head. The otter’s impact shoved the bear’s helmet down over his eyes, temporarily blinding him. Seeing this, Quorly lowered her head and charged underneath a deadly but badly aimed swing to hit the bodyguard headfirst between pillarlike legs. Prugg let out a low grunt, bent over, and tried to find Mudge, who was frantically retreating down the bear’s back. The club fell to the floor.
Memaw, Knorckle, and Wupp immediately dropped their own weapons in favor of the club. Turning the business end toward their opponent, they rushed forward at full speed, short legs churning, and made loud contact with the leather helmet Mudge had so recently abandoned. The impact sent them tumbling.
Prugg let out a strange low sigh and sort of keeled over, like a falling redwood. He hit the floor with a muffled brrouummm! out cold.
Jon-Tom and the others raced past while the club-wielders tried to collect themselves.
The last door beckoned. Were they in time? Had they moved fast enough? Or was Markus the Ineluctable waiting just inside, prepared to strike all of them dead with whatever new evil he had drawn into this world?
Jon-Tom pushed on the latch. Somewhat to his surprise, the door was not locked. The otters crowded in around him.
At the far end of the Room, Markus the Ineluctable, née Markle Kratzmeier, sat waiting on his throne. He looked different somehow. He’d straightened his bow tie and his white shirt gleamed. He did not seem particularly upset by the intrusion.
“Heard what was going on, kid. Didn’t think you’d get this far. Congratulations.” He tried to see past Jon-Tom, out into the hall, searching for his bodyguard.
“Sleeping,” Jon-Tom told him wolfishly. “My friends here took care of that.”
“Let me at the bald bastard!” yelled Drortch. Jon-Tom had to put out an arm to restrain her.
“This looks easy. I don’t think it’s going to be.”
“No, it ain’t, kid,” said Markus quietly as he rose. Standing there on the dais, silhouetted by torchlight, he did not look anything like the cheap stage magician from Perth Amboy that he’d once been. There was a dark radiance about his person, a palpable aura of evil. It poured down from the throne to cascade over the onlookers clustered in the doorway, and several of the otters reflexively shrank back.
Markus stepped off the dais. He was wearing white gloves now, Jon-Tom noticed, and his shoes had been polished to a blinding sheen. Still brown, though. The spellsinger held his ground as the magician raised his plastic wand.
“Oops.” Mudge did his own disappearing act, 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-Tom 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 broke 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 perform 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 funny. There was an old cartoon song about a Chinese laundry … no, that wouldn’t work.
In desperation he tried some lyrics from Carole King’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 enraptured 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 I 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 toward him, one perfect hand outstretched to lead 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, reassuring 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 shimmy 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 imita
te 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 flying machines seemed insufficient to counter the threat, but maybe it would buy him some time.
So he sang, “‘Up, up and awaaay, in my beautiful balloon.’”
They filled the room in an instant: hundreds of 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 slashed 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 executed 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 knock 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 I can think of. Don’t flowers say it all?” 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 flowers 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 miasma 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 shock at his hypnotic handful of blossoms, they began to depart in time to the lyrics. Their petals spinning like the blades of tiny helicopters, they lifted from his fingers and, traveling neatly in single file, circled once around Jon-Tom’s head before flying off in perfect formation through the nearby high window.
Leaving behind in Markus’s hand a paper cone which concealed a five-inch-long stiletto.
Markus stumbled away from the spellsinger, retreating 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 I really get into my music. It’s over, finished.”
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. I 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 concentrated 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, Emperor of Everything, and no skinny punk-rocker was going to take that away from him!
Removing the top hat, he held it in his right hand while whispering and passing the wand over the opening. Then he tapped the brim several times. At first nothing happened, and Jon-Tom found himself hoping that the magician had finally reached his limits. 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, exploring 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 perfumed 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. Apparently 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 was 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 chilling.
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 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 shapes.
Then he knew what it was that Markus had conjured 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 closing 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 terrified at how feeble it had become. “But … you said you came for me, and that I called you. I didn’t call you.”
For an instant oblivion retreated. The wisps of 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 elsewhere within the cloud. There was a pause, a brief eternity while the room hung suspended in the void.