neetha Napew - Spellsinger

to move across the grass and stone of their own volition. But the double ellipse

held them in. From time to time the wizard would pause and use a small telescope

to study the cloudy night sky.

It had been a windless night. Now a breeze sprang up and pushed at the huddling

little knot of onlookers. It came from in front of them and mussed Jon-Tom's

hair, ruffled the otter's fur. Despite the warmth of the night the breeze was

cold, as though it came from deep space itself. Branches and leaves and needles

blew outward, no matter where their parent trees were situated. The breeze was

not coming from the east, as Jon-Tom had first thought, but from the center of

the glade. It emerged from the twin ellipses and blew outward in all directions

as if the wind itself were trying to escape. Normal meteorological conditions no

longer existed within the glade.

Clothahump had taken a stance in the center of the near sun drawing. They could

hear his voice for the first time, raised in chant and invocation. His short

arms were above his head, and his fingers made mute magic-talk with the sky.

The wind strengthened with a panicky rush, and the woods were full of

zephyr-gossip. These moans and warnings swirled in confusion around the

watchers, who drew nearer one another without comment.

A black shape rejoined them, fighting the growing gale. Pog's eyes were as wide

as his wing beats were strained.

"You're all ta stay right where ya are," he told them, raising his voice to be

heard over the frightened wind. "Da Master orders it. He works his most

dangerous magic." Selecting a long hanging limb, the famulus attached himself to

it and tucked his wings cloaklike around his body.

"What is he going to do?" Talea asked. "How can he penetrate all the way to

Cugluch through the walls of sorcery this Eejakrat must guard himself with?"

"Da Master makes magic," was all the shivering assistant would say. A wing tip

pointed fretfully toward the open glade.

The wind continued to increase. Flor drew her cape tight around her bare

shoulders while Mudge fought to retain possession of his feathered cap. Large

branches bent outward, and occasional snapping sounds rose above the gale to

hint at limbs bent beyond their strength to resist. Huge oaks groaned in protest

all the way down to their roots.

"But what is he trying to do?" Talea persisted, huddling in the windbreak

provided by the massive oak.

"He summons M'nemaxa," the terrified apprentice told her, "and I don't intend ta

look upon it." He drew his wings still closer about him until his face as well

as his body was concealed by the leathery cocoon.

"M'nemaxa's a legend. It don't exist," Mudge protested.

"He does, he does!" came the whimper from behind the wings. "He exist and da

Master summon him, oh, he call to him even now. I will not look on it."

Jon-Tom put his lips close to Talea in order to be heard over the wind. "Who or

what's this 'Oom-ne-maxa'?"

"Part of a legend, part of the legends of the old world." She leaned hard

against the bark. "According to legend it's the immortal spirit of all combined

in a single creature, a creature that can appear in any guise it chooses. Some

tales say he/she may actually have once existed in real form. Other stories

insist that the spirit is kept alive from moment to moment only by the belief

all wizards and sorceresses and witches have in it.

"To touch it is said to be death, to look upon it without wizardry protection is

said to invite a death slower and more painful. The first death is from burning,

the second from a rotting away of the flesh and organs."

"We'll be safe, we'll be safe," insisted Pog hopefully. "If da Master says so,

we'll be safe." Jon-Tom had never seen the bellicose mammal so cowed.

"But I still won't look on it," Pog continued. "Master says da formulae and

time-space ellipsoids will hold him. If not... if dey fail and it is freed,

Master says we should run or fly and we will be safe. We are not worthy of its

notice, Master say, and it not likely to pursue."

A delicate gray phosphorescence had begun to creep like St. Elmo's fire up the

trunks and branches of the trees ringing the glade. Argent silhouettes now

glowed eerily against the black night. The glade had become a green bowl etched

with silver filigree. Earth shivered beneath it.

"Can this thing tell Clothahump what he wants to know?" Jon-Tom was less

skeptical of the wizard's abilities than was Pog.

"It know all Time and Space," replied the bat. "It can see what da Master wants

to know, but dat don't mean it gonna tell him."

There was a hushed, awed murmur of surprise from the otter. "Cor! Would you 'ave

a look at that."

"I won't, I won't!" mewed Pog, shaking behind his wings.

Clothahump still stood erect within his sun symbol. As he turned a slow circle,

arms still upraised, he was reciting a litany counter-pointed by the chorus of

the ground. Earth answered his words though he talked to the stars.

Dark, boiling storm clouds, thick black mountains, had assembled over the glade

with unnatural haste. They danced above the wind-bent trees and blotted out the

friendly face of the moon. From time to time electric lava jumped from one to

another as they talked the lightning-talk.

Winds born of hurricane and confusion now assaulted the ancient trees. Jon-Tom

lay on the ground and clung to the arched root of the sage-oak. So did Talea and

Mudge, while Pog swayed like a large black leaf above them. Flor nestled close

to Jon-Tom, though neither's attention was on the other. Branches and leaves

shot past them, fleeing from the glade.

None of the swirling debris struck the chanting wizard. The winds roared down

into the double ellipse, then outward, but avoided the sun symbol. Above the

center of the glade the billowing storm clouds jigged round and round each other

in a majestic whirlpool of energy and moisture.

Lightning leapt earthward to blister the ground. No bolt struck near Clothahump,

though two trees were shattered to splinters not far away.

Somehow, above the scream of wind, of too close thunder and the howling vortex

that now dominated the center of the glade, they could still hear the steady

voice of Clothahump. Trying to shield his eyes from flying dirt and debris,

Jon-Tom clung tightly to the tree root and squinted at the turtle.

The wizard was turning easily within his proscribed symbol. He appeared

completely unaffected by the violent storm raging all around him. The sun symbol

was beginning to glow a deep orange.

Clothahump halted. His hands slowly lowered until they were pointing toward the

small heap of powders in the center of the inner ellipse. He recited, slowly and

with great care, a dozen words known only to a very few magicians and perhaps

one or two physicists.

The ancient oak shuddered. Two smaller trees nearby were torn free of the earth

and hurled into the sky. There was a mighty, rumbling crescendo of sound that

culminated in a volcanic rumble from the glade, and a brief flash of light that

fortunately no one looked at directly.

The shape that appeared out of that flash within the inner ellipse took away

what little breath remained to Jon-Tom and his companions. He could not have

moved his knuckles to his mouth to chew on them, nor could his vocal cords give

form to the feelings surging through him.

Soft, eerie moans came from Flor and a slight, labored whistling from Mudge. All