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

fried all of us by now."

"But that little lead saddle, Hor..."

"The magic, Jon-Tom, the magic. The magic's in the

music and the music's in you. Do it!"

It was Clothahump who finally convinced him. "It is all or

nothing now, my boy. We live or we die on what you do. This

is between you and Eejakrat."

"I wish it wasn't. I wish to God I was home. I wish.. .ahhh,

fuck it. Let's go!"

He could not see a barrier shielding the streaming nuclear

material that was the substance of M'nemaxa, but one had to

be present, as Hor had so incontrovertibly pointed out. He

cradled the battered duar against his chest. That barrier had

momentarily lapsed when M'nemaxa had touched down, and

a thousand tons of solid rock had run like butter. If it lapsed

again, there would not even be ashes left of him.

A series of stirrups led to the saddle, which was much

larger up close than it had appeared from a distance. He

mounted carefully, feeling neither heat nor pain but watching

fascinated as tiny solar prominences erupted from M'nemaxa's

epidermis only inches from his puny human skin.

It was little different in the saddle, though he could feel

some slight heat against his face and hands.

"Just a minim, guv'," said a voice. A small gray shape

had bounded into the saddle behind him.

"Mudge? It's not necessary. Either I'll make it or I

won't."

288

THE HOUR Or THE GATE

"Shove it, mate. I've been watchin' you ever since you

stuck your nose int' me business. You don't think I could let

you go off on your own now, do you? Somebody's got t'

watch out for you. This great flippin' flamin' beastie can't be

'urt, but a good archer might pick you off 'is back like a

farmer pluckin' a bloomin' apple." He notched an arrow into

his bowstring and grinned beneath his whiskers.

Jon-Tom couldn't think of anything else to say: "Thanks,

Mudge. Mate.'i"

"Thank me when we get back. I've always wanted t' ride a

comet, wot? Let's be about the business, then."

The serpentine fiery neck arched, and the great head with

its bottomless eyes stared back at them. "COMMAND, MAN!"

"I don't know..." Mudge was prodding him in the ribs.

"Shit... giddy up! To Eejakrat!"

Whether the message was conveyed by the word or the

mental imagery connected with it no one knew. It didn't

matter. The vast wings seared the earth and a warm hurricane

blasted those who were beneath. Those wings stretched from

one side of the canyon to the other, and the honclouders,

seeing it race toward mem, scattered like gnats.

A swarm of dragonfly fighters rose to meet them, the

Empress' private aerial guard. They attacked with the mind-

less but admirable courage of their kind.

Mudge's bow began its work. The soldiers riding me

dragonflies fell from their mounts and none of their arrows

reached the sun riders. Those that were launched impacted on

me body or wings or neck of M'nemaxa and were vaporized

with the briefest of sizzling sounds.

"Hy past them!" Jon-Tom ordered. "Down, over there!"

He gestured toward the blunt butte rising fingeriike near the

rear of the Pass. Beyond lay the mists of the Greendowns.

Jon-Tom's attention shifted to concentrate on a single

figure standing before a pile of materials and a semicircle of

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metal forms. Dragonflies and riders tried to break through to

do battle with swords, but wings and hooves touched them,

and their charred remnants fell earthward like so many sizzling

lumps of smoking charcoal.

The imperial bodyguard sent a storm of arrows upward.

Not one passed the belly of that flaming body. Jon-Tom was

watching Eejakrat. He held his own spear-staff tightly, ready

to pierce the sorcerer through.

Then his attention was diverted. In the air above the

computer floated two faintly glowing pieces of stone. They

were so tiny he noticed them only because of their glow.

Behind the sorcerer danced the fearful, iridescent green shape

of the Empress Skrritch.

What devastating magic so terrified the imperturbable

Clothahump? What was Eejakrat about to risk in hopes of

winning a lost war?

"Down," he ordered M'nemaxa. "Down to the one

surrounded by maggots and evil, down to destroy!"

A whispery sorceral mumbling, rapid and desperate, sounded

from the crest of the butte. Eejakrat had panicked. He was

rushing the incantation, as others had done before him,

though he knew nothing of them. The two glowing shards of

stone moved through the air toward the onrushing spirit fire

and its mortal riders, and toward each other. Stones and spirit

would meet at the same point in the sky.

They were no more than fifty yards from it and as many

more from the butte's summit when M'nemaxa suddenly gave

forth a thunderous whinny. The infinite eyes glowed more

brightly than the stones as the two came almost together a

couple of yards in front of them.

There was a faint, hopeless scream from Eejakrat below, a

desperate croaking Jon-Tom deciphered: "Not yet... too near,

too close, not yet!"

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THE HOUR OF THE GATB

Then the world was spinning farther and farther below

them like a flower caught in a whirlpool.

Gone was the Troom Pass. So too was the butte where

Eejakrat had gesticulated frantically before the Empress Skrritch.

So were the milling mob of Plated Folk plunging to war and

the insistent battle cries of the warmlanders.

Gone were the mists of the distant Greendowns and noi-

some distant Cugluch, gone too the mountain crags that

towered above insignificant warriors. Soon the blue sky itself

vanished behind them.

They still rode the spine of the furiously galloping M'nemaxa,

but they rode now through the emptiness of convergent

eternity. Stars gleamed bright as morning around them,

unwinking and cold and so close it seemed you could reach

out and touch them.

You could touch them. Jon-Tom reached out slowly and

plucked a red giant from its place in the heavens. It was warm

in his palm and shone like a ruby. He cast it spinning back'

free into space. A black hole slid past his left foot and he

pulled away. It was like quicksand. He inhaled a nebula,

which made him sneeze. Behind him Mudge the otter seemed

a distant, diffuse shape in the stars.

He breathed infinity. The wings and hooves of M'nemaxa

moved in slow motion. A swarm of motile, luminescent dots

gathered around the runners, millions of lights pricking the

blackness. They danced and swirled around the great horse

and its riders.

Where the world had no meaning and natural law was

absent, these too finally became real. Gneechees, Jon-Tom

thought ponderously. Only now I can see them, I can see

them.

Some were people, some animals, others unrecognizable;

the afterthoughts, the memories, the souls and shadows of all

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intelligent life. They were all the colors of the rainbow, a

spectrum filled with life, both mysterious and familiar.

He began to recognize some of the forms and faces. He

saw Einstein, he saw his own grandfather. He saw the moving

lips of now dead singers he had loved, and it was as if their

music swelled around him in the ultimate concert. He noted

that the faces he saw were not old, and showed no trace of

death or suffering. In fact the famous physicist's eyes glittered

like a child's. Einstein had his violin with him. Hendrix was