neetha Napew - Spellsinger

their plodding pace, it hinted that Lynchbany was a good-sized community. In

fact, it might be even larger than he supposed, since he didn't know if they'd

started from the city center or its outskirts.

A two-story thatched-roof structure of stone and crisscrossed wooden support

beams loomed off to their left. It leaned as if for support up against a much

larger brooding stone building. Several smaller structures that had to be

individual homes stretched off into the distance. A few showed lamps over their

doorways, but most slept peacefully in the clinging mist.

No light showed in the two thick windows of the thatched building as Talea edged

their wagon over close to it and brought it to a halt. The street was quite

empty. The only movement was from the mouths and nostrils of lizards and

passengers, where the increasing chill turned their exhalations to momentarily

thicker, tired fog. He wondered again at the reptiles. Maybe they were hybrids

with warm blood; if not, they were being extremely active for cold-blooded

creatures on such a cold night.

He climbed out of the back of the wagon and looked at the doorway close by. An

engraved sign hung from two hooks over the portal. Letters painted in white

declaimed:

NILANTHOS-PHYSICIAN AND APOTHECARY

A smaller sign in the near window listed the ailments that could be treated by

the doctor. Some of them were unfamiliar to Jon-Tom, who knew a little of common

disease but nothing whatsoever of veterinary medicine.

Mudge and Talea were both whispering urgently at him. He moved out of the street

and joined them by the door.

It was recessed into the building, roofed over and concealed from the street.

They were hidden from casual view as Talea knocked onee, twice, and then harder

a third time on the milky bubble-glass set into the upper part of the door. She

ignored the louder bellpull.

They waited nervously but no one answered. At least no one passed them in the

street, but an occasional distinct groan was now issuing from the back of the

wagon.

" 'E's not in, 'e ain't." Mudge looked worried. "I know a Doctor Paleetha. 'E's

clear across town, though, and I can't say 'ow trustworthy 'e be, but if we've

no one else t' turn t'..."

There were sounds of movement inside and a low complaining voice coming closer.

It was at that point that Jon-Tom became really scared for the first time since

he'd materialized in this world. His first reactions had been more disbelief and

confusion than fear, and later ones were tied to homesickness and terror of the

unknown.

But now, standing in an alien darkened street, accomplice to assault and battery

and so utterly, totally alone, he started to shake. It was the kind of real,

gut-chilling fear that doesn't frighten as much as it numbs all reality. The

whole soul and body just turn stone cold--cold as the water at the bottom of a

country well--and thoughts are fixated on a single, simple, all-consuming

thought.

I'm never going to get out of this alive.

I'm going to die here.

I want to go HOME!

Oddly enough, it was a more distant fear that finally began to return him to

normal. The assault of paranoia began to fade as he considered his surroundings.

A dark street not unlike many others, pavement, mist chill inside his nose; no

fear in any of those. And what of his companions? A scintillating if irascible

redhead and an oversized but intelligent otter, both of whom were allies and not

enemies. Better to worry about Clothahump's tale of coming evil than his own

miserable but hardly deadly situation.

"What's the matter, mate?" Mudge stared at him with genuine coneern. "You're not

goin' t' faint on me again, are you?"

"Just queasy," said Talea sharply, though not nearly as sharply as before. "It's

a nasty business, this."

"No." Jon-Tom shook away the last clinging rags of fear. They vanished into the

night. "It's not that. I'm fine, thanks." His true thoughts he kept to himself.

She looked at him uncertainly a moment longer, then turned back to the door as

Mudge said, "I 'ear somethin'."

Footsteps sounded faintly from just inside. There was a rattling at the

doorknob. Inside, someone cursed a faulty lock.

Their attention directed away from him, Jon-Tom dissected the fragment of

Clothahump's warning whose import had just occurred to him.

If something could bring a great evil from his own world into this one, an evil

which none here including Clothahump could understand, why could not that same

maleficent force reverse the channel one day and thrust some similar

unmentionable horror on his own unsuspecting world? Preoccupied as it was with

petty politics and intertribal squabbles between nations, could it survive a

powerful assault of incomprehensible and destructive magic from this world? No

one would believe what was happening, just as he hadn't believed his first

encounters with Clothahump's magic.

According to the aged wizard, an evil was abroad in this place and time that

would make the minions of Nazism look like Sunday School kids. Would an evil

like that be content at consuming this world alone, or would it reach out for

further and perhaps simpler conquests?

As a student of history that was one answer he knew. The appetite of evil far

exceeds that of the benign. Success fed rather than sated its appetite for

destruction. That was a truth that had plagued mankind throughout its entire

history. What he had seen around him since coming here did not lead him to think

it would be otherwise with the force Clothahump so feared.

Somewhere in this world a terror beyond his imagining swelled and prepared. He

pictured Clothahump again: the squat, almost comical turtle shape with its

plastron compartments; the hexagonal little glasses; the absentminded way of

speaking; and he forced himself to consider him beyond the mere physical image.

He remembered the glimpses of Clothahump's real power. For all the insults Pog

and Mudge levied at the wizard, they were always tinged with respect.

So on those rounded--indeed, nonexistent--shoulders rested possibly not only the

destiny of one, but of two worlds: this, and his own, the latter dreaming

innocently along in a universe of predictable physics.

He looked down at his watch, no longer ticking, remembered his lighter, which

had flared efficiently one last time before running out of fuel. The laws of

science functioned here as they did at home. Mudge had been unfamiliar with the

"spell," the physics, which had operated his watch and lighter. Research here

had taken a divergent path. Science in his own, magic in this one. The words

were similar, but not the methodology of application.

Would not evil spells as well as benign ones operate to bewildering effect in

his own world?

He took a deep breath. If such was the case, then he no longer had a safe place

to run to.

If that was true, what was he doing here? He ought to be back at the Tree, not

pleading to be sent home but offering what little help he could, if only his

size and strength, to Clothahump. For if the turtle was not senile, if he was

correct about the menace that Jon-Tom now saw threatened him anywhere, then

there was a good chance he would die, and his parents, and his brother in

Seattle, and...

The enormity of it was too much. Jon-Tom was no world-shaker. One thing at a

time, boy, he told himself. You can't save worlds if you're locked up in a