Racing back to the front hall, he yanked the unique instrument from its slot in the carved umbrella stand and tried to mink of an appropriate song as he rushed back to the kitchen. Years of practice under Clothahump’s aegis had made him facile. He was infinitely more confident than the awkward young man who’d first found himself transported to this world.
Still, he found himself struggling as he confronted the pandemonium in the kitchen. Historically, the domestic household did not figure prominently in the rock-and-roll lexicon with which he was conversant.
An old ditty by John Mellencamp finally leaped to mind. He began to play, and to sing, his voice and the mellifluous chords of the duar rising strong and pure above the uproar.
From cabinets and vents, from fractures in the floor and the seams around windows, a pink haze began to emerge. Swirling in lazy currents, it picked its way into the kitchen, smelling faintly of pumpernickel and Simellot cheese. There was nothing Jon-Tom could do about the latter. Considering what the miasma could have smelled like, he was rather pleased. Ancillary odors were not his primary concern at the moment.
The slightly moist mist had an immediate effect on the army of invading fiends (or maybe it was the smell). From cabinets and shelves, from pots and pans and dishes, they ceased their activities to stare and sniff. One whiff was sufficient. Shrieking and screaming, they proceeded to get the hell out. Nostrils pinched, mouths puckered, they plunged back into the depths of the cupboards, the floor, the ceiling, returning at breakneck speed to the noxious nexi of their respective existences. In their panicked recision they took with them not so much as a cookie.
The duar pulsed and trembled in Jon-Tom’s practiced hands. Unsourced wind caused his iridescent green cape (which was overdue for dry cleaning) to stream out behind him, as though he stood in the forefront of an intense but highly localized squall.
As he strolled deliberately through the kitchen a few of the bolder intruders threw themselves angrily at him, attacking from every direction. The music beat them back, the pink haze forming knots around their necks or club-shaped clouds which smashed them into oblivion.
Her feet and composure regained, Talea warily trailed her husband as far as the sink. She laid the bloody sword lengthwise in the basin, shaking her head. Getting the blade properly clean was going to take a lot of scrubbing. Ichor had a notorious tendency to cling.
Jon-Tom had halted in the middle of the kitchen, his voice quavering. Eighteen years of practice had improved but not perfected the weakest component of his spellsinging. The power of his playing more man compensated, however, for his less than operatic voice.
As she stared, those demons who hadn’t been able to escape, or who had foolishly chosen to attack Jon-Tom, began to swell like balloons. They started to rise, bouncing off the cabinets and finally the ceiling. As Jon-Tom brought the song to an end, they began to burst like soap bubbles.
She inhaled despairingly. As if the kitchen wasn’t enough a mess already.
Finally nothing remained save swirling pink mist and a powerful scent of cheese and pumpernickel. As Jon-Tom flung his fingers against the double strings of the duar in one last dramatic riff, the mist faded and began to dissipate. Taking a deep, relieved breath, he turned to face her.
“Now, then. Will you please tell me what happened here?” His brows drew slightly together. “Talea, have you been experimenting with thaumaturgical cooking spells again? I told you, I’m not that big on fried foods. Sometimes household shortcuts aren’t worth the trouble they cause.”
She waggled an admonishing finger in his face. “Don’t you lip me, Jon-Tom! I haven’t done a damned thing.” Moving to the window over the sink, she fought to open it. Coagulating blood and gore caused it to stick. She waved at the remnants of the pink mist, backing away as fresh air sucked it outside. The heavy stink likewise began to disperse, leaving in its wake a faint memory of dill pickle.
She eyed the shattered crockery, the broken crumbs of baked goods over which she’d labored long and lovingly, the disgusting mess which coated everything, the thin rivulets of unidentifiable fluids which dripped from counters to pool noisomely on the floor, and she wanted to scream. Instead she sank tiredly into one of the snakeskin-upholstered chairs in the breakfast nook.
Jon-Tom carefully leaned the warm duar against the cooler, brushed back his long hair, and sat down next to his distraught wife.
“Okay, so you weren’t messing with spells.” He indicated the kitchen. “How do you explain this?”
She glared at him. “Why ask me? You’re the great spellsinger. Someone have a grudge against you?” She sighed. “I’d kill for a cup of tea.”
He found a reasonably clean empty cup. “Iced or hot?”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, “no shortcuts!” Rising, she made her way to the stove and checked to make sure that it was set on medium heat. Filling a pot from the sink, she set it on the burner. Beneath, the indentured fire elemental set to work, grumbling audibly. Have to get him adjusted, she thought idly. Thoughtfully, she found a second cup before resuming her seat.
Jon-Tom had been pondering her question. “Clothahump and I have some long-term, overdue debtors, but we’ve never used any strong-arm collection techniques. Nothing that would turn anyone vengeful. At least, I haven’t. I can mention it to Clothahump. You know how he can get about money sometimes.”
“The old miser,” Talea muttered.
“With him it’s not the interest. It’s the principal of the thing.”
She gestured at the kitchen, her arm shaking slightly. “Jon-Tom, I’m reasonably well versed in the nature of the inhabitants of the Nether Regions. I’d have to be, being married to you. But I didn’t recognize half of what materialized here.”
He shrugged. “Other dimensions, other demons. Don’t blame yourself. Even the standard references have to be updated every year.”
She leaned toward him, smiling at sudden memories. “Sometimes I think things were easier when you and I were on the road all the time, fighting and slaughtering, living by our wits. Having fun.”
“We were a lot younger then, Talea. I didn’t have the responsibilities that come with being Clothahump’s junior partner. We didn’t have a home, or a family.”
“You’re forty-one, Jon-Tom. That’s hardly old.”
He stiffened slightly. “I didn’t say it was. Why, by now Mick Jagger must be…” He changed direction. “Never mind. This doesn’t tell us what happened here.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I mixed something wrong. Maybe I whistled a happy tune the wrong way. Maybe some netherworld entity has a grudge against you from some years-old encounter you’ve long since forgotten.”
“I could check the records,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but as near as I can remember all old conflicts have been resolved, all numinous debts paid off.”
“You’re sure you haven’t offended any important deities or spirits recently? Trod on the toes of some easily offended Prince of Darkness?”
“Clothahump and I are careful to observe all protocols. We’re very proud of our work habits. Before signing any contracts we run them through half a dozen legal spells and have at least three eternally damned lawyers check them for errors. I’m clean, darling.
“Even if there was a serious problem somewhere, the provoked entity would take up the quarrel with me, not you.”
“I don’t know about that,” she countered. “All I know is what went on in my kitchen. Unless you isolate the causality, it could happen again.” She shuddered slightly.
“I know that.” He put a reassuring arm around her. “Interdimensional manifestations of pure evil don’t just happen. There has to be a reason.” His lips tightened. “It has to be something I’ve done. Or haven’t done.”
They fell silent. After a moment Talea looked up. “Listen.”
In the absence of conversation or chaos a faint, rhythmic moaning became audible. A distinctly unpalatable, eerie, pulse-pounding rise and fall of verbalizations t
hat verged on the incomprehensible. The sound issued not from the Nether Regions, but from above. From upstairs.
Jon-Tom followed his wife’s gaze. They exchanged a look.
“There it is, then,” she told him confidently. “You haven’t offended any paranormal princes, and it’s not a consequence of random chance. The Plated Folk aren’t involved, and neither are the Inimical Outer Guards of Proximate Perdition. It’s much, much worse than that.” Her gaze rose, tracking the inhuman discord.
“Jon-Tom, you have got to do something about that kid.”
Chapter 2
AS HE MOUNTED THE spiral staircase cut into the heart of the interdimensionally expanded tree, the music, if such it could be called, grew steadily louder. Actually, some of what he could hear through the heavy-handed, sound-dampening spell was no worse than borderline awful. The awkwardness of the lyrics, however, made him wince.
Standing just outside the room, he was better able to judge the volume within. He estimated that it fell somewhere between deafening and permanent brain damage. Steeling himself, he hammered on the solid door.
“Buncan! Turn that racket down and open up! I’ve got to talk to you.”
There was no response from within. Either his son couldn’t hear him over the din, or else he was pretending not to. The instrumental work wasn’t bad, Jon-Tom decided, but as usual Buncan’s voice was excruciatingly off-key. In fact, his singing was so bad he made his father sound like a La Scala heldentenor by comparison.
He pounded on the wood afresh. “You hear me, Buncan? Stop that wailing and open this door!”
Something was coming through the barrier. Jon-Tom retreated to the far side of the hall and watched with interest as a two-foot-long white whale emerged, glanced to right and left, then swam off down the hall. It was attached by a thread to a small wooden boat crewed by half a dozen nautically garbed mini-imps wearing tormented expressions. There was barely room in the boat for their tails.
Standing in the bow was a wee fiend with skin the hue of pea soup. His forked tail flicked wildly back and forth, metronoming time for his crew to row by. One leg was fashioned of white ivory, and his expression was suitably demented.
Chanting a plangent tune, he directed his reluctant rowers in pursuit of the retreating mini-whale. They drifted off toward the stairway and disappeared below.
The inevitable scream reached him a moment later, followed by the outraged and angry voice of his wife, who, from the tenor and tone of her voice, he could tell had had it up to the proverbial here.
“Jon-Tom, you make your son quit that now!”
This time he kicked the door. “Last chance, Buncan! Open up. Or I’ll cast an all-encompassing blanket of silence on your room that’ll last for weeks!”
The music within, together with its decidedly unpleasant caterwauling accompaniment, abruptly ceased. With a reluctant creak, the door opened slightly.
Avoiding a cluster of hovering eyeballs that blinked as they looked him over, Jon-Tom pushed his way inside.
“It’s all right,” said a voice from across the room. “It’s just my dad.”
Jon-Tom shut the door behind him. “Don’t get funny with me, young man. I’m not here on funny business.”
Buncan sat up on his bed. “You’re right, Dad. Existence is tragic as hell, isn’t it?”
Jon-Tom walked over to the single oval window, stared out at the neatly kept grounds and the river beyond. After what he felt was a sufficiently lengthy pause of suitably solemn significance, he turned to regard his son.
Buncan balanced the duar easily in his lap. That had to be the source of the trouble, Jon-Tom knew. Using his own singular duar as a template, with the aid of Lynchbany’s finest craftsfolk he and Clothahump had fashioned the new instrument as a gift for Buncan’s twelfth birthday. The boy had kept it close at hand ever since. While no match for Jon-Tom’s own instrument, it was quite capable of propagating a conjuring nexus at the point where the two sets of strings intersected.
Until recently, however, Buncan had not acquired sufficient skill to do anything other than make music with it. This morning’s events showed how drastically that had changed. Making magic with music was one thing. Controlling it, as Jon-Tom probably knew better than anyone else alive, was something else again.
Given Buncan’s genuinely appalling voice, it represented a bona fide threat to anyone unlucky enough to come within hearing distance.
Over the years Buncan had added some decorative modifications of his own to the instrument. Instead of the graceful, curving lines of Jon-Tom’s duar, his son had grafted on spikes and fake claws. Bright green and red parallel lines gave the instrument the look of a runaway migraine.
But it worked. He could see the nebulous blend of reality and nonreality fading at the stringed nexus even as he spoke. Occasional sparks flared and vanished. Yes, his son’s carefully crafted duar functioned like the magical instrument it was.
It was Buncan who didn’t always function properly.
Which, since he was only eighteen, was to be expected. After all, Jon-Tom had been considerably older and more experienced when he’d first made the acquaintance of the mysterious duar and its remarkable capabilities.
He left the window and approached the bed, sitting down near the end and promptly sinking clear to the floor. That seemed to rouse Buncan. The boy mumbled a few off-key words and the bed promptly reinflated. Jon-Tom wished he could say the same for his son’s attitude.
Buncan was clad entirely in gray with emerald accents. Spiral stripes wound down his pants, as though his legs had been thrust into a pair of green tornadoes. His low-top day boots were bright red.
He was shorter than Jon-Tom, a consequence of his mother’s genes, but he retained his father’s red hair. It was cut in a short, stiff brush with twin arcs shaved in the sides above and behind each ear. A lanky, almost disjointed build corraled a carefully constructed air of adolescent indolence.
“Look at yourself,” muttered Jon-Tom as he considered his progeny.
“Can’t do that, Dad. Nearest mirror’s in the bathroom.”
“There must be a gene for sarcasm. Until now I was sure it was recessive.”
Buncan grinned slightly but said nothing. Better not to laugh until he found out what was on his old man’s mind.
“And your hair. What’s with this short hair? Why can’t you wear it a decent shoulder-length like your friends?”
“Caswise wears his short. So does Whickwith.”
“Caswise and Whickwith are orang-utans. Orangs are the reverse of humans, follicle-wise. They have naturally short hair on top and long hair everywhere else.”
“Maybe I should try and grow long hair everywhere else. I can probably scribe something hairy.”
Jon-Tom counted silently, giving up at seven. “I don’t suppose you have any knowledge of what just happened downstairs?”
Buncan sat up a little straighter. “No, what?”
“You nearly destroyed your mother’s kitchen. Not to mention your mother.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been spellsinging again, haven’t you?” Buncan turned away. “How many times have I told you not to spellsing in the house?”
The younger Meriweather looked frustrated. “Well, where am I supposed to practice?”
“On the riverbank. In the Bellwoods. Outside school. Anywhere but at home. It’s dangerous.” He softened his tone. “You’ve got a lot of natural talent, Buncan. You may even be a better duar player than I. But as to spellsinging … you’ve got to work on your lyrics, and your voice. It’s taken me eighteen years to learn how to carry a tune adequately. Your pitch, your tonal control, is worse than mine. Sometimes it’s nonexistent.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Buncan replied sardonically. “For the vote of confidence.”
“Son, not everyone has the skills necessary to make magic, much less be a spell singer. It may be that despite your obvious instrumental talents your true vocation lies e
lsewhere. It’s all very well and good to be a brilliant instrumentalist,” Buncan perked up at the compliment, “but if the words and phrasing aren’t there, you risk unpredictable consequences of a possibly lethal nature.”
“Dad, you’ve been hanging with Clothahump much too long.”
“Let me put it another way. You could total yourself.” Jon-Tom rose from the end of the bed. “Now come downstairs and take a look at what you did to your mother’s kitchen.”
Buncan sounded uncertain. “You mean my singing…?”
Jon-Tom nodded. “Demons, devils, imps, inimical sprites, and all manner of nasty conjurations. It’s a real mess.”
Buncan rose to follow, sarcasm giving way to contrition. “I’m really sorry, Dad. I thought I was being careful. Will you tell Mom I’m sorry?”
“You can tell her yourself.” Jon-Tom opened the door and headed down the hall. “This has got to stop, Buncan. You’re just not experienced enough to be taking these kinds of chances. Especially in the house. What if you accidentally freed the monster under your bed?”
Buncan followed slowly. “There’s no monster under my bed, Dad.”
“Shows how much you know. Until they reach their twentieth birthday every kid has a monster under their bed.”
His son considered. “Was there one under yours when you were a kid, Dad?”
“I told you, there’s one under everybody’s. I just didn’t know it when I was your age. Mine,” he added as they started down the stairs, “was warty and leprous, and wanted to force-feed me eggplant. I hated eggplant. Still do.” They reached the den and paused there. “I think it was a Republican.”
“No more spellsinging, anytime, anywhere, until your voice improves.”
“But, Dad…!”
“No buts.”
“I hate voice school. Sitting in a chair for hours, listening to that stupid nightingale. I’m not a bird, Dad.”
“Mrs. Nellawhistle makes appropriate allowances for the natural limitations of her students. She’s very patient.” She has to be, he thought, with pupils like Buncan. “She really can help you with pitch and tone, if you’ll let her. Spellsinging takes study and work. Or did you just think you could pick up a duar and successfully manipulate the forces of Otherness? If I hadn’t come home when I did, your mother could be lying on the kitchen floor right now, sword in one hand, broom in the other, eviscerated and dismembered.”