The Hour of the Gate

  "Perhaps not a Pass, but a path. The Ironclouders will show them the way."

  Now derision filled the tent. "There is no such place as Ironcloud," said the dubious Wuckle Three-Stripe. "It is a myth inhabited by ghosts."

  "We climbed inside the myth and supped with the ghosts," said Clothahump calmly. "It exists."

  "I believe this wizard's word is proof enough of anything," said Aveticus softly, dominating the discussion by sheer strength of presence.

  "They have promised to guide the Weaver army here."

  Clothahump continued to his suddenly respectful audience. "But we cannot count on their assistance. I believe the Plated Folk will begin their attack any day. We confronted and escaped from the wizard Eejakrat. While he does not know that we know little about his Manifestation, he will not assume ignorance on our part, and thus will urge the assembled horde to march. They appeared ready in any case."

  That stimulated a barrage of questions from the officers. They wanted estimates of troop strength, of arboreals, weapons and provisioning, of disposition and heavy troops and bowmen and more.

  Clothahump impatiently waved the questions off. "I can't answer any of your queries in detail. I am not a soldier and my observations are attuned to other matters. I can tell you that this is by far the greatest army the Plated Folk have ever sent against the warmlands."

  "They will be met by more warmlanders than ever they imagined!" snorted Wuckle Three-Stripe. "We will reduce the populating of the Greendowns to nothing. The Troom Pass shall be paved with chitin!" Cries of support and determination came from those behind him.

  The badger's expression softened. "I must say we are pleased, if utterly amazed, to find you once again safely among your kind. The world owes you all a great debt."

  "How great, mate?" asked Mudge.

  Three-Stripe eyed the otter distastefully, "hi this time of crisis, how can you think of mere material things?"

  "Mate, I can always th-" Flor put a hand over the otter's muzzle.

  The mayor turned to a subordinate. "See that these people have anything they want, and that they are provided with food and the best of shelter." The weasel officer nodded.

  "It will be done, sir." He moved forward, saluted crisply

  His gaze fell on the form lying limply across Jon-Tom's back. "Shall the she be requiring medical care, sir?"

  Red hair tickled Jon-Tom's ear. He jerked his head to one side, replied almost imperceptibly.

  "No. She's dead."

  "I am sorry, sir."

  Jon-Tom's'gaze traveled across the tent. Clothahump was conversing intently with a cluster of officers including the wolverine, Aveticus, and Wuckle Three-Stripe. He glanced up for an instant and locked eyes with the spellsinger. The instant passed. The relief Jon-Tom had sought in the wizard's eyes was not there, nor had there been hope. Only truth.

  XV

  The meeting did not take long. As they left the tent the tension of the past weeks, of living constantly on the edge of death and disappointment, began to let go of them all.

  "Me for a 'ot bath!" said Mudge expectantly.

  "And I for a cold one," countered Bnbbens.

  "I think I'd prefer a shower, myself," said Flor.

  "I'd enjoy that myself, I believe." Jon-Tom did not notice the look that passed between Caz and Flor. He noticed nothing except the wizard's retreating oval.

  "Just a minute, sir. Where are you going now?" Clothahump glanced back at him. "First to locate Pog. Then to the Council of Wizards, Warlocks, and Witches so that we may coordinate our magicking in preparation for the coming attack. Only one may magic at a time, you know. Contradiction destroys the effectiveness of spells."

  "Wait. What about… you know. You promised." Clothahump looked evasive. "She's dead, my boy. Like love, life is a transitory thing. Both linger as long as they're able and fade quickly."

  "I don't want any of your fucking wizardly platitudes!"

  He towered over the turtle. "You said you could bring her back."

  "I said I might. You were despondent, You needed hope, something to sustain you. I gave you that. By pretending I might help the dead I helped the living to survive. I have no regrets."

  When Jon-Tom did not respond the wizard continued, "My boy, your magic is of an unpredictable quality and considerable power. Many times that unpredictability could be a drawback. But the magic we face is equally unpredictable. You may be of great assistance… if you choose to.

  "But I feel responsibility for you, if not for your present hurt. If you elect to do nothing, no one will blame you for it and I will not try to coerce you. I can only wish for your assistance.

  "I am trying to tell you, my boy, that there is no formula I know for raising the dead. I said I would try, and I shall, when the time is right and other matters press less urgently on my knowledge. I must now try my best to preserve many. I cannot turn away from that to experiment in hopes of saving one." His voice was flat and unemotional.

  "I wish it were otherwise, boy. Even magic has its limits, however. Death is one of them."

  Jon-Tom stood numbly, still balancing the dead weight on his shoulders. "But you said, you told me…"

  "What I told you I did in order to save you. Despondency does not encourage quick thinking and survival. You have survived. Talea, bless her mercurial, flinty little heart, would be cursing your self-pity this very moment if she were able."

  "You lying little hard-shelled—"

  Clothahump took a cautious step backward. "Don't force me to stop you, Jon-Tom. Yes, I lied to you. It wasn't the first time, as Mudge is so quick to point out. A lie in the service of right is a kind of truth."

  Jon-Tom let out an inarticulate yell and rushed forward, blinded as much by the cold finality of his loss as by the wizard's duplicity. No longer a personality or even a memory, me body on his shoulders tumbled to the earth. He reached blindly for the impassive sorcerer.

  Clothahump had seen the rage building, had taken note of the signs in Jon-Tom's face, in the way he stood, in the tension of his skin. The wizard's hands moved rapidly and he whispered to unseen things words like "fix" and "anesthesia."

  Jon-Tom sent down as neatly as if clubbed by his own staff. Several soldiers noted the activity and wandered over.

  "Is he dead, sir?" one asked curiously.

  "No. For the moment he wishes it were so." The wizard pointed toward the limp form of Talea. "The first casualty of the war."

  "And this one?" The squirrel gestured down at Jon-Tom.

  "Love is always the second casualty. He will be all right in a while. He needs to rest and not remember. There is a tent behind the headquarters. Take him and put him in there."

  The noncom's tail switched the air. "Will he be dangerous when he regains consciousness?"

  Clothahump regarded the softly breathing body. "I do not think so, not even to himself."

  The squirrel saluted. "It will be done, sir."

  There are few drugs, Clothahump mused, that can numb born the heart and the mind. Among them grief is the most powerful. He watched while the soldiers bore the lanky, youthful Jon-Tom away, then forced himself to turn to more serious matters. Talea was gone and Jon-Tom damaged. Well, he was sorry as sorry could be for the boy, but they would do without his erratic talents if they had to. He could not cool the boy's hate.

  Let him hate me, then, if he wishes. It will focus his thoughts away from his loss. He will be forever suspicious of me hereafter, but in that he will have the company of most creatures. People always fear what they cannot understand.

  Makes it lonely though, old fellow. Very lonely. You knew that when you took the vows and made the oaths. He sighed, waddled oS to locate Aveticus. Now there was a rational mind, he thought pleasantly. Unimaginative, but sound. He will accept my advice and act upon it. I can help him.

  Perhaps in return he can help me. Two hundred and how many years, old fellow?

  Tired, dammit. I'm so tired… Pity I took an oath of responsibility alon
g with the others. But this evil of Eejakrat's has got to be stopped.

  Clothahump was wise in many things, but even he would not admit that what really kept him going wasn't his oath of responsibility. It was curiosity…

  Red fog filled Jon-Tom's vision. Blood mist. It faded to gray when he blinked. It was not the ever present mist of the awful Greendowns, but instead a dull glaze that faded rapidly.

  Looking up, he discovered multicolored fabric in place of blue sky. As he lay on his back he heard a familiar voice say, "I'll watch him now."

  He pushed himself up on his elbows, his head still swimming from the effects of Clothahump's incantation. Several armed warmlanders were exiting the tent.

  "Ya feeling better now?"

  He raised his sight once more. An upside-down face stared anxiously into his own. Pog was hanging from one of the

  crosspoles, wrapped in his wings. He spread them, stretching, and yawned.

  "How long have I been out?"

  " 'Bout since dis time yesterday."

  "Where's everyone else?"

  The bat grinned. "Relaxing, trying ta enjoy themselves. Orgy before da storm."

  "Talea?" He tried to sit all the way up. A squat, hairy form fluttered down from the ceiling to land on his chest.

  "Talea's as dead as she was yesterday when you tried ta attack da master. As dead as she was when dat knife went into her t'roat back in Cugluch, an dat's a fact ya'd better get used ta, man!"

  Jon-Tom winced, looked away from the little gargoyle face confronting him. "I'll never accept it. Never."

  Pog hopped off his chest, landed on a chair nearby, and leaned against the back. It was designed for a small mammalian body, but it still fit him uncomfortably. He always preferred hanging to sitting but given Jon-Tom's present disorientation, he knew it would be better if he didn't have to stare at a topsy-turvy face just now.

  "Ya slay me, ya know?" Pog said disgustedly. "Ya really think you'resomething special."

  "What?" Confused, Jon-Tom frowned at the bat.

  "You heard me. I said dat ya link you're something special, don't ya? Ya tink you're da only one wid problems? At least you've got da satisfaction of knowing dat someone loved ya. I ain't even got dat.

  "How would ya like it if Talea were alive and every time ya looked at her, so much as smiled in her direction, she turned away from ya in disgust?"

  "I don't—"

  The bat cut him off, raised a wing. "No, hear me out. Dat's what I have ta go trough every day of my life. bat's what I've been going trough for years. 'It don't make sense,' da boss keeps tellin' me." Pog sniffed disdainfully. "But he don't have ta experience it, ta live it. 'Least ya know ya was loved, Jon-Tom. I may never have dat simple ting. I may have ta go trough da rest of my life knowin' dat da one I love gets the heaves every time I come near her. How would you like ta live wid dat? I'm goin' ta suffer until I die, or until she does.

  "And what's worse," he looked away momentarily, sounding so miserable that Jon-Tom forgot his own agony, "she's here!"

  "Who's here?"

  "Da falcon. Uleimee. She's wid da aerial forces. I tried ta see her once, just one time. She wouldn't even do dat for me."

  "She can't be much if she acts like that toward you," said Jon-Tom gently.

  "Why not? Because she's reactin' to my looks instead of my wondaful personality? Looks are important. Don't let anybody tell ya otherwise. And I got a real problem. And dere's smell, and other factors, and I can't do a damn ting about 'em. Maybe da boss can, eventually. But promises don't do nuthin' for me now." His expression twisted.

  "So don't let me hear any more of your bemoanings. You're alive an' healthy, you're an interesting curiosity to da females around ya, an you've got plenty of loving ahead of ya. But not me. I'm cursed because I love only one."

  "It's kind of funny," Jon-Tom said softly, tracing a pattern on the blanket covering his cot. "I thought it was Flor I was in love with. She tried to show me otherwise, but I couldn't… wouldn't, see."

  "Dat wouldn't matter anyhow." Pog fluttered off the chair and headed for the doorway.

  "Why not?"

  "Blind an' dumb," the bat grumbled. "Don't ya see anyting? She's had da hots for dat Caz fellow ever since we fished him outa da river Tailaroam." He was gone before Jon-Tom could comment.

  Caz and Flor? That was impossible, he thought wildly. Or was it? What was impossible in a world of impossibilities?

  Bringing back Talea, he told himself.

  Well, if Clothahump could do nothing, there was still another manipulator of magic who would try: himself.

  Troops gave the tent a wide berth during the following days. Inside a tall, strange human sat singing broken love songs to a Corpse. The soldiers muttered nervously to themselves and made signs of protection when they were forced to pass near the tent. Its interior glowed at night with a veritable swarm of gneechees.

  Jon-Tom's efforts were finally halted not by personal choice but by outside events. He had succeeded in keeping the body from decomposing, but it remained still as the rock beneath the tent. Then on the tenth day after their hasty retreat from Cugluch, word came down from aerial scouts that the army of the Plated Folk was on the march.

  So he slung his duar across his back and went out with staff in hand. Behind he left the body of one who had loved him and whom he could love in return only too late. He strode resolutely through the camp, determined to take a position on the wall. If he could not give life, then by God he would deal out death with equal enthusiasm. Aveticus met him on the wall.

  "It comes, as it must to all creatures," the general said to him. "The time of choosing." He peered hard into Jon-Tom's face. "In your anger, remember that one who fights blindly usually dies quickly."

  Jon-Tom blinked, looked down at him. "Thanks, Aveticus. I'll keep control of myself."

  "Good." The general walked away, stood chatting with a couple of subordinates as they looked down the Pass.

  A ripple of expectancy passed through the soldiers assembled on the wall. Weapons were raised as their wielders leaned forward. No one spoke. The only noise now came from down the Pass, and it was growing steadily louder.

  As a wave they came, a single dark wave of chitin and iron. They filled the Pass from one side to the other, a flood of murder that extended unbroken into the distance.

  A last few hundred warmlander troops scrambled higher into the few notches cut into the precipitous canyon. From there they could prevent any Plated Folk from scaling the rocks to either side of the wall. They readied spears and arrows. A rich, musky odor filled the morning air, exuded from the glands of thousands of warmlanders. An aroma of anticipation.

  The great wooden gates were slowly parted. There came a shout followed by a thunderous cheer from the soldiers on the ramparts that shook gravel from the mountainsides. Led by a phalanx of a hundred heavily armored wolverines, the warmlander army sallied out into the Pass.

  Jon-Tom moved to leave his position on the wall so he could join the main body of troops pouring from the Gate. He was confronted by a pair of familiar faces. Caz and Mudge still disdained the use of armor.

  "What's wrong?" he asked them. "Aren't you going to join the fight?"

  "Eventually," said Caz. "If it proves absolutely necessary, mate," added Mudge.

  "Right now we've a more important task assigned to us, we do."

  "And what's that?" "Keepin' an eye on yourself." Jon-Tom looked past them, saw Clothahump watching him speculatively.

  "What's the idea?" He no longer addressed the wizard as "sir."

  The sorcerer walked over to join them. His left hand was holding a thick scroll half open. It was filled with words and symbols.

  "In the end your peculiar magic, spellsinger, may be of Jar more use to us than another sword arm."

  "I'm not interested in fighting with magic," Jon-Tom countered angrily. "I want to spill some blood."

  Clothahump shook his head, smiled ruefully. "How the passions of youth do alter its
nature, if not necessarily maturing it. I seem to recall a somewhat different personality once brought confused and gentle to my Tree."

  "I remember him also," Jon-Tom replied humoriessly. "He's dead too."

  "Pity. He was a nice boy. Ah well. You are potentially much more valuable to us here, Jon-Tom. Do not be so anxious. I promise you that as you grow older you will be presented with ample opportunities for participating in selfsatisfying slaughter."

  "I'm not interested in-—"

  Sounding less understanding, Clothahump cut him off testily. "Consider something besides yourself, boy. You are upset because Talea is dead, because her death personally affects you. You're upset because I deceived you. Now you want to waste a potentially helpful talent to satisfy your personal blood lust." He regarded the tall youth sternly.

  "My boy, I am fond of you. I think that with a little maturation and a little tempering, as with a good sword, you will make a fine person. But for a little while at least, try thinking of something besides you."

  The ready retort died on Jon-Tom's lips. Nothing penetrates the mind or acts on it so effectively as does truth, that most efficient but foul-tasting of all medicines. Clothahump had only one thing in his favor: he was right. That canceled out anything else Jon-Tom could think of to say.

  He leaned back against the rampart, saw Caz and Mudge, friends both, watching him warily. Hesitantly, he smiled.

  "It's okay. The old bastard's right. I'll stay." He turned from them to study the Pass. After a pause and a qualifying nod from Clothahump, Mudge and Caz moved to join him.

  The wolverine wedge struck the center of the Plated Polk wave like a knife, leaving contorted, multilated insect bodies in their wake. The rest of the warmlander soldiers followed close behind.

  It was a terrible place for a battle. The majority of both armies could only seethe and shift nervously. They were packed so tightly in the narrow Pass that only a small portion of each force could actually confront one another. It was another advantage for the outnumbered warmlanders.

  After an hour or so of combat the battle appeared to be going the way of all such conflicts down through the millenia. Led by the wolverines the warmlanders were literally cutting their way up the Pass. The Plated Folk fought bravely but mechanically, showing no more initiative in individual combat than they did collectively. Also, though they possessed an extra set of limbs, they were stiff-jointed and no match for the more supple, agile enemies they faced. Most of the Plated Folk were no more than three and a half feet tall, while certain of the warmlanders, such as the wolverines and the felines, were considerably more massive and powerful. And none of the insects could match the otters and weasels for sheer speed.