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
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