neetha Napew - Spellsinger

sanity than his wound. "What is more real than the components of magic?" He

nodded at the watch. "I do not recognize your timepiece, yet I accept that it

keeps true time."

"That's not magical, though."

"No? Explain to me exactly how it works."

"It's a quartz-crystal. The electrons flow through... I mean..." He gave up.

"It's not my specialty. But it runs on electricity, not magic formulae."

"Really? I know many electric formulae."

"But dammit, it runs on a battery!"

"And what is inside this thing you call a battery?"

"Stored electric power."

"And is there no formula to explain that?"

"Of course there is. But it's a mathematical formula, not a magic one."

"You say mathematics is not magic? What kind of wizard are you?"

"I keep trying to tell you, I'm..." But Clothahump raised a hand for silence,

leaving a frustrated Jon-Tom to fume silently at the turtle's obstinacy.

Jon-Tom began to consider what the wizard had just said and grew steadily more

confused.

In addition to the firefly explosions dancing on its surface, the paste-brew had

changed from green to yellow and was pulsing steadily. Clothahump laid his wand

aside ceremoniously. Lifting the crucible, he offered it to the four corners of

the compass. Then he tilted it and drained the contents.

"Pog." He wiped paste from his beak.

"Yes, Master." The bat's voice was subservient now.

Clothahump passed him the crucible, then the brass bowl. "Scullery work." The

bat hefted both containers, flapped off toward a distant kitchen.

"How's that now, my boy?" Clothahump eyed him sympathetically. "Feel better?"

"You mean... that's it? You're finished?" Jon-Tom thought to look down at

himself. The ugly wound had vanished completely. The flesh was smooth and

unbroken, the sole difference between it and the surrounding skin being that it

wasn't suntanned like the rest of his torso. It occurred to him that the pain

had also left him.

Tentatively he pressed the formerly bleeding region. Nothing. He turned an

open-mouthed stare of amazement on the turtle.

"Please." Clothahump turned away. "Naked adulation embarrasses me."

"But how...?"

"Oh, the incantations healed you, boy."

"Then what was the purpose of the stuff" in the bowl?"

"That? Oh, that was my breakfast." He grinned as much as his beak would allow.

"It also served nicely to distract you while you healed. Some patients get upset

if they see their own bodies healing... sometimes it can be messy to look upon.

So I had the choice of putting you to sleep or distracting you. The latter was

safer and simpler. Besides, I was hungry.

"And now I think it time we touch on the matter of why I drew you into this

world from your own. You know, I went to the considerable trouble, not to

mention danger, of opening the portals between dimensions and bending

space-time. But first it is necessary to seal this room. Move over there,

please."

Still wordless at his astonishing recovery, Jon-Tom obediently stepped back

against a bookcase. Mudge joined him. So did the returning Pog.

"Scrubbing crucibles," the bat muttered under his breath. Clothahump had picked

up his wand and was waving it through the air, mumbling cryptically. "Dat's all

I ever do around here; wash da dishes, fetch da books, clean da dirt."

"If you're so disgusted, why stick around?" Jon-Tom regarded the bat

sympathetically. He'd almost grown used to its hideousness. "Do you want to be a

wizard so badly?"

"Shit, no!" Pog's gruffness gave way to agitation. "Wizarding's mighty dangerous

stuff." He fluttered nearer. "I've indentured myself to da old wreck in return

for a major, permanent transmogrification. I only got ta stick it out another

few years... I tink... before I can demand payment."

"What kind o' change you got in mind, mate?"

Pog turned to face the otter. "Y'know da section o' town at da end of da Avenue

o' da Pacers? Da big old building dere dat's built above da stables?"

"Cor, wot be you doin' thereabouts? You don't rate that kind o' trade. That's a

high-rent district, that is." The otter was grinning hugely under his whiskers.

"I know, I know," confessed the disconsolate Pog. "I've a friend who made a

killing on da races who took me dere one night ta celebrate. He knows Madam

Scorianza, who runs da house for arboreals. Dere's a girl who works up dere, not

much more dan a fledgling, a full flagon o' falcon if ever dere one was. Her

name's Uleimee and she is," he fairly danced in the air as he reminisced, "da

most exquisite creature on wings. Such grace, such color and power, Mudge! I

thought I'd die of ecstasy." The excitement of the memory trembled in the air.

"But she won't have a thing ta do wid me unless I pay like everyone else. She

dotes on a wealthy old osprey who runs a law practice over in Knotsmidge Hollow.

Me she won't do much more dan loop da loop wid, but whenever dis guy flicks a

feather at her she's ready ta fly round da world wid him."

"Forget 'er then, mate," Mudge advised him. "There be other birds and some of

'em are pretty good-lookin' bats. One flyin' fox I've seen around town can wrap

'er wings 'round me any time."

"Mudge, you've never been in love, have ya?"

"Sure I 'ave... lots o' times."

"I thought dat much. Den I can't expeet ya ta understand."

"I do." Jon-Tom nodded knowingly. "You want Clothahump to transform you into the

biggest, fastest falcon around, right?"

"Wid da biggest beak," Pog added. "Dat's da only reason why I hang around dis

hole waitin' wing and foot on da doddering old curmudgeon. I could never afford

ta pay for a permanent transmogrification. I got ta slave it out."

Jon-Tom's gaze returned to the center of the room. Having miraculously cured the

stab wound, the doddering old curmudgeon was beckoning for them to rejoin him.

The windows were dimming rapidly.

"Come close, my friends." Mudge and Jon-Tom did so. Pog hung himself from the

upper rim of a nearby bookcase.

"A great crisis threatens to burst upon us," the wizard said solemnly. It

continued to darken inside the tree. "I can feel it in the movement of worms in

the earth, in the way the breezes whisper among themselves when they think no

one else is listening. I sense it in the pattern formed by raindrops, in the

early flight of leaves this past autumn, in the call of reluctant winter

seedlings and in the nervous belly crawl of the snake. The clouds collide

overhead, so intent are they on the events shaping themselves below, and the

earth itself sometimes skips a heartbeat.

"It is a crisis of our world, but its crux, its center, comes from another...

from yours," and he stabbed a stubby finger at a shocked Jon-Tom.

"Be calm, boy. You yourself have naught to do with it." It was dark as night

inside the tree now. Jon-Tom thought he could feel the darkness as a perceptible

weight on his neck. Or were the other things crowding invisibly near, fighting

to hear through the protective cloak the sorcerer had drawn tight about the

tree?

"A vast malevolence has succeeded in turning the laws of magic and reason inside

out, to bring spells of terrible power from your world into ours, to threaten

our peaceful land.

"It lies beyond my meager skills to determine what this power is, or to cope

with it. Only a great en'geeneer-magician from your own world might supply the

key to this menace. Woeful difficult it be to open the portal between

dimensions, yet I had to cast out for such a person. It can be done only once or