neetha Napew - Spellsinger

"Well, so far they've accepted me as a warrior more than a toy. If that's due to

my size more than my personality, at least it's a start." She lay down and

stretched langorously. The fire seemed to spread from the burning embers to

Jon-Tom's loins.

"Here I have a chance to be more than what heredity seemed to have locked me

into. And it's like my childhood dreams of adventure."

"People get killed here," he warned her. "This is no fairyland. You make a

mistake, you die."

She rolled over. It was a warm winter night and her cape was blanket enough.

"I'll take my chances. It can't be any worse than the barrio. Good night,

Jon-Tom. Remember, when in Rome..."

He kicked dirt over the fire until it subsided and wished he were in Rome, or

any other familiar place. All he said was, "Good night, Flor. Pleasant dreams."

Then he rolled over and sought sleep. The night was pleasant, but his thoughts

were troubled.

The following day found them climbing and descending much hillier terrain. Trees

were still plentiful, but on the higher knolls they tended to be smaller and

with more land between. Occasionally bare granite showed where the ground cover

had thinned, though they were still traveling through forest.

And the gneechees were back. Even when Jon-Tom was not strumming his duar,

swarms of almost-theres were clustering thickly around the little party of

travelers.

He explained to Flor about gneechees. She was delighted at the concept and spent

hours trying to catch one with her eyes. Talea mumbled worriedly about their

inexplicable presence. Clothahump would have none of it.

"There is no room in magic for superstition, young lady," the turtle admonished

her. "If you would learn more about the world you must disabuse yourself of such

primitive notions."

"I've seen primitive notions kill a lot of people," she shot back knowingly. "I

don't mean to question you, but I bet you'd be the last person to say that we

know everything there is to know."

"That is so, child," agreed the wizard. "If the latter were true we would not be

making our way to this glade." He snapped irritably at Pog. The bat was diving

and swooping above their heads.

"You know you'll never catch one, Pog. You can't even see one."

"Yeah. Dey don't even react to my headseek either." He snapped at empty air

where something might have been.

"Then why do you persist?"

"Gives me somethin' ta do, as opposed ta idly dancin' in da air currents. But

dat's a thrill you'll never know, ain't it?"

"Do not be impertinent, Pog." The wizard directed Talea to stop. He dismounted,

looked around. "We walk from now on."

Packages and supplies were doled out, stuffed into backpacks. Then they started

uphill. The rise they were ascending was slight but unvarying. It grew dark, and

for a while they matched strides with the mounting moon. Clouds masked its

mournful silver face.

"We are close, close," Clothahump informed them much later. The moon was around

toward the west now. "I have sensed things."

"Yeah, I just bet ya have, boss," the bat muttered under his breath. He snapped

hungrily at a passing glass moth.

If the wizard had heard, he gave no sign. In fact, he spent the next two hours

in complete silence, staring straight ahead. No conversational gambit could

provoke a response from him.

A subtle tingling like the purr of a kitten began to tickle Jon-Tom's spine.

Tall trees closed tight around them once again, ranks of dark green spears

holding off the threatening heavens. Stars peeked through the clouds, looking

dangerously near.

A glance showed Talea looking around nervously. She reacted to his gaze, nodded.

"I feel it also, Jon-Tom. Clothahump was right. This is an ancient part of the

world we are coming to. It stinks of power."

Clothahump moved nearer to Jon-Tom. Clouds of gneechees now dogged the climbers.

"Can you feel it, my boy? Does it not tease your wizardly senses?"

Jon-Tom looked around uneasily, aware that something was playing his nerves as

he would play the strings of the duar. "I feel something, sir. But whether it's

magical influences or just back trouble I couldn't say."

Clothahump looked disappointed. Somewhere an anxious night hunter was whistling

to its mate. There were rustlings in the brush, and Jon-Tom noted that the

hidden things were moving in the same direction: back the way the climbers had

come.

"You are not fully attuned to the forces, I expect," said the wizard,

unnaturally subdued, "so I suppose I should not expect more of you." He looked

ahead and then gestured pridefully.

"We have arrived. One corner of the subatomic forces that bind the matter of all

creatures of all the world lies here. Look and remember, Jon-Tom. The glade of

Triane."

XIII

They had crested the last rise. Ahead lay an open meadow that at first glance

was not particularly remarkable. But it seemed that the massive oaks and

sycamores that ringed it like the white hair of an old man's balding skull drew

back from that open place, shunning the grass and curves of naked stone that

occasionally thrust toward the sky.

Here the moonlight fell unobstructed upon delicate blue blades. A few darker

boulders poked mushroomlike heads above the uneven lawn.

"Stop here," the wizard ordered them.

They gratefully slid free of packs and weapons, piled them behind a towering

tree that spread protective branches overhead.

"We have one chance to learn the nature of the great new evil the Plated Folk

have acquired. I cannot penetrate all the way to Cugluch with any perceptive

power. No magic I know of can do that.

"But there is another way. Uncertain, dangerous, but worthy of an attempt to

utilize, I think. If naught else it could give us absolute confirmation of the

Plated Folk's intentions, and we may learn something of their time schedule.

That could be equally as valuable.

"You cannot help me. No matter what happens here, no matter what may happen to

me, you must not go beyond this point." No one said anything. He turned, looked

up into the tree. "I need you now, Pog."

"Yes, Master." The bat sounded subdued and quite unlike his usual argumentative

self. He dropped free, hovered expectantly above the wizard's head as the two

conversed.

"What's he going to try?" Talea wondered aloud. Her red hair turned to cinnabar

in the moonlight.

"I don't know." Jon-Tom watched in fascination as Clothahump readied himself.

Flor had the collar of her cape pulled tight up around her neck. Mudge's ears

were cocked forward intently, one paw holding him up against the tree trunk.

From beneath the leaf-shadowed safety of the ancient oak they watched as the

wizard carefully marked out a huge ellipse in the open glade. The fluorescent

white powder he was using seemed to glow with a life of its own.

Employing the last of the powder, he drew a stylized sun at either end of the

ellipse. Red powder was then used to make cryptic markings on the grass. These

connected the two suns and formed a crude larger ellipse outside the first.

"If I didn't know better," Flor whispered to Jon-Tom, "I'd think he was laying

out some complex higher equations."

"He is," Jon-Tom told her. "Magic equations." She started to object and he

hushed her. "I'll explain later."

Now Clothahump and Pog were creating strange, disturbing shapes in the center of

the first ellipse. The shapes were not pleasant to look upon, and they appeared