Foster, Dean - Spellsinger 02 - The Hour of the Gate

almost-people parading in unison.

Two legs and two arms. They were nude but smooth-

bodied and devoid of external sex organs. For that matter they

displayed nothing in the way of differentiating characteristics

They might have been stamped from a single mold.

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Their white flesh was truly white, blank-white, like milk

and bordering on translucence. Two tiny coal-pit eyes sat in

the puttylike heads where real eyes ought to have been. There

were no pupils, no ears or nostrils, and only a flat slit of a

mouth cutting the flesh below the eye-dots. Hands had short

fingers, which along with the legs looked jointless as rubber.

In time to the music they marched toward the ship, waving

their arms slowly and hypnotically while singing their moan-

ing, methodical song.

Jon-Tom looked to Clothahump. The wizard looked baf-

fled. "I don't know, my boy. None of the legends says

anything about a tribe of albino chanters living in the Throat."

He called to the marchers.

"What are you called? What is it you want of us?"

"What can we do for you?" Flor asked, adding something

unintelligible in Spanish.

The singers did not respond. They descended the slight

slope of the beach with fluid grace. The ones in the lead

began reaching, clutching over the railing.

Two of them grabbed Talea's right arm. "Ease back

there," she ordered them, pulling away. They did not let go

and continued to tug at her insistently.

Several other pale singers were already on the deck and

were pulling with similar patient determination at Jon-Tom

and Mudge.

" 'Ere now, you cold buggerers, take your bloody 'ands off

me!" The otter twisted free.

So didJTalea and Jon-Tom. Yet the pale visitors wordlessly

kept advancing, groping for the strangers.

Another sound quietly filled the cavern. It seeped across

the river and dominated the rise and fall of the expressionless

choir. A deep, low moaning, it was in considerable contrast

to the melody of the white singers. It was not at all nice. In

fact, it seemed to Jon-Tom that it embodied every overtone of

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menace and malignance one could put into a single moan. It

issued from somewhere back in the black depths, beyond

where the singers had come from.

"That's about enough," said Bribbens firmly. He hefted

his backup steering sweep and began swinging it at the

singers stumbling about on deck. Two of them went down

with unexpected lack of resistance. Their heads bounced like

a pair of rubber balls across the deck. The black eyespots

never twitched and they uttered not a word of pain. Their

singing, however, ceased. One of the skulls bounced over the

railing and landed in the water with a slight splash, to sink

quickly out of sight.

A shocked Bribbens paused to stare at the decapitated

corpses. There was no blood.

"Damn. They aren't alive."

"They are," Clothahump insisted, struggling awkwardly in

the grasp of three singers who were trying to wrestle his

heavy body off the ship, "but it is not our kind of alive."

"I'll make them our kind of dead." Talea's sword was

moving like a scythe. Three singers fell neatly into six halves.

They lay on the deck like so many lumps of white clay,

motionless and cold.

Jon-Tom hurried to assist Clothahump. "Sir, what do you

think we... ?"

"Fight for it, my boy, fight! You can't argue with these

things, and I have a feeling that if we're taken from this boat

we'll never see it again." He had retreated inside his shell,

confounding his would-be abductors.

Above the shouts of the boat's defenders and the singsong

of their horribly indifferent assaulters came a reprise of that

ominous, basso groaning. It was definitely nearer, Jon-Tom

thought, and redoubled his efforts to clear the deck.

He was swinging the club end of his staff in great arcs,

indiscriminately lopping off heads, arms, legs. The singers

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THE HOUR Or THE GATE

broke like hardened clay, but the dozens dismembered were

replaced by ranks of thoughtless duplicates, still droning their

eerie anthem.

"Get us out in the current!" Talea was trying to keep the

white bodies away from the bow.

With Mudge shielding him from clutching fingers Bribbens

put down his oar and returned to the main sweep. Though he

leaned on it as hard as he could, and though the current was

with them, they still couldn't move away from the shore.

Jon-Tom leaned over the side. Using his reach and the long

club he began clearing bodies from the waterline. White

bands pulled possessively at him from behind, but Flor was

soon at his side swinging her mace, cutting them down like

pale shrubs. Most of them ignored her. Possibly it had

something to do with her white leather clothing, he mused.

He concentrated on swinging the club in long arcs, knocking

away heads or pieces of boneless skull with great rapidity.

Their slight resistance barely slowed the force of his swings.

When the heads were knocked loose the bodies simply

ceased their shoving and slid below the surface. A few

bobbed on the current and drifted like styrofoam down the

river.

The singing continued, undisturbed by the bloodless slaugh-

ter, by screams of anger or despair. Rising louder around the

boat was that rich, bellowing moan. It had become loud

enough now to drown out the chorus. A few fragments of

rock fell from the cavern roof.

Finally enough of the bodies had been swept from the side

of the boat for it to drift once more out into the river. Like so

many termites supple white singers continued to march down

toward the water. They walked until the water was up to their

chests and began swimming slowly after the boat.

Breathing hard, Jon-Tom leaned back against the railing,

holding tight to his staff for additional support. All of the

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original swimmers who'd forced the craft in to shore had

been knocked away or decapitated. Now that they were out

again in midstream, the current kept them well ahead of their

lugubrious pursuers.

"I don't understand what—" He was talking to the boat-

man, but Bribbens wasn't listening. He'd suddenly locked the

steering oar in position and was unbolting smaller ones from

the deck.

"Paddle, man! Paddle for your life!"

"What?" Jon-Tom looked back at the shore, expecting to

see the horde of singers clumsily stumbling after them across

the rocks.

Instead his gaze fastened onto something that stifled the

scream welling up in his throat and turned it into that peculiar

choking noise people make at times of true horror. A vast,

glowing gray mass filled the cavern shore behind them. It

came near to touching the ceiling. Where large formations

rose the gray substance flowed over or around it, displaying a

consistency partly like cloud and then like lard. Its moans

rattled the length of the cavern and echoed back from distant

walls.

It looked like a fog wrapped with mucus, save for two

enormous, pulsing pink eyes. They stared lidlessly down at

the tiny fleeing ship and the stick figures frozen on its deck.

Bits of its flanks were in constant motion. These portions

of mucus slid toward the ground. As they did so their color

paled to a now familiar white. Tumbling like the eggs of

some gigantic insect, they dropped off the huge slimy sides