Foster, Dean - Spellsinger 04 - The Moment Of The Magician

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 Hying machines seemed

insufficient to counter the threat, but maybe it would

buy him some tune.

THE MOMKHT W THB UAOSCIAM

299

So he sang, " 'Up, up and awaaay. in my beautiful

balloon;" £"

They filled the room in an instant: hundreds of

1 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 dashed

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 execut-

ed 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 1 can think of. Don't flowers

Aim Dean FoBter

300

say it ail?** 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 Howers 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 mias-

ma 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

THE MOMENT or Tax MAGJCWT 301

I shock at his hypnotic handful of blossoma^they

began to depart in time to the lyrics. Their petals spin-

ning like the blades of tiny helicopters, they lifted

[from his fingers and, traveling neatly in single Hie,

|circled once around Jen-Tom's head before flying off

gin perfect formation through the nearby high window.

| Leaving behind in Markus's hand a paper cone

|,which concealed a five-inch-long stiletto.

t Markus stumbled away from the spellsinger, re-

I'treating 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 1 really gel into my

music. I^s over, finished."

i' 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. 1 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 concentrat-

ed 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, Em-

peror of Everything, and no skinny punk-rocker was

going to take that away from html,

Removing the top hat, he held it in his right hand

while whispering and passing the wand over the

i opening. Then he tapped the brim several times. At

f first nothing happened, and Jon-Tom found himself

^hoping that the magician had finally reached his

I limits.

302 Alan Dean Foster

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, explor-

ing 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 per-

fumed 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. Appar-

ently 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