They set their packs aside. Jon-Tom prepared himself while Clothahump placed a simple but effective lockspell on his front door. Then he and Sorbl stood off to one side while Jon-Tom walked out into the taller grass, away from the shade of the enormous old oak tree.
He let his fingers strum the duar’s double set of strings, adjusted the mass and tremble controls, and cleared his throat. Sorbl left his master’s side and tried to edge inconspicuously around behind the bulk of the tree. Clothahump was made of sterner stuff. He sympathized with his apprentice’s apprehension but held his ground.
Jon-Tom stood off by himself and let individual chords and notes tumble from the duar. This was not the first time he’d had to hesitate. The problem was that while he knew exactly what he wanted to bring forth, he didn’t know what song to employ. Snakes were not a popular subject of popular music.
There was a group that called itself Whitesnake, however. One of their tunes, anything related to transportation, might do it. He couldn’t think of anything more appropriate, and he was acutely conscious of an increasingly impatient Clothahump standing nearby and staring at him. Better to sing something, if only to loosen up, than to continue standing there looking like a complete fool. He closed his eyes, remembered the words, began tapping his right foot in time to the beat, and started to sing.
A slight fluttering in the air, more perceived than seen, caused him to open his eyes. One or two gneechees, those harbingers of magic, were teasing the fringes of his vision. They always appeared when his spellsinging was working. It was a good sign and spurred him to greater efforts with the duar. But while the gneechees remained, darting and dancing around the edge of reality, they did not appear in the hoped-for numbers. Neither did the long, scaly shape of the riding snake.
He sang harder still, peeling the riffs off the duar as smoothly as any Richie Blackmore might have wished. He strained and sang, and finally something did begin to materialize; a twisting, coiled form on the ground in front of him.
He would have smiled and called out to Clothahump and Sorbl but the spell was far from complete, and it was evident he still had a lot of singing to do. The famulus was confident enough to edge back around from behind the tree, since it appeared nothing was going to blast the earth out from beneath his feathers. Jon-Tom sang on and on. He was beginning to worry.
Not that anything remotely dangerous had appeared, but no matter how many verses he recited, the shape on the ground refused to expand. It was a beginning only. It remained nothing more than a beginning. He kept playing until both the song and his throat were wom-out. The last chord faded away into the trees. The pair of gneechees lit out for more congenial climes.
He approached what he had conjured. It was little more than a few feet long, only a thin shadow of the massive, powerful shape of a L’borian riding snake. But he had brought forth something. He hesitated, then reached down to pick it up. It was a snake, all right, but not one that would call L’bor home. Not only was it far too small, it was made of rubber.
Clothahump had walked up to join him, stared thoughtfully at the object over the top of his glasses. “It is well known among wizards, my boy, that even the fates have a sense of humor.”
“Son of a bitch.” Jon-Tom threw the rubber snake as far into the brush as he could. Anxiety had been replaced by anger. Not only had he failed in his declared intention, he’d gone and made a first-class fool of himself in front of his mentor. All those weeks of practice, all that careful studying of fingering methods and positions and sonic adjustments so he could call up something from an interdimensional novelty shop. Maybe the fates weren’t laughing at him, but something surely was, somewhere.
Clothahump sighed and called out to Sorbl, “Pick up your pack, famulus. Lynchbany has come no closer, and I don’t want to spend more than one night in these woods.”
“Wait—wait a minute. I’m not through.”
“You may not be through, my boy, but it appears that you are finished.”
“Just be patient, sir. One more attempt is all I ask.” So they wanted to see some spellsinging, did they? Spellsinging they were going to see! He was going to conjure up a L’borian riding snake or a reasonable facsimile, or bust a gut trying. Grim-faced, he turned away from both wizard and apprentice and settled on another song. His frustration and embarrassment gave added emphasis to each phrase he sang.
Both were powerful forces, though not the ones he would have chosen to fuel his magic, but there was no question about their eificacy. Instantly the transparent autumn morning seemed to darken around them. In the dim light the gneechees that had materialized stood out sharply. Not a couple this time but hundreds, enveloping singer and companions in a cloud of iridescent light. As usual, not one of the minuscule apparitions could be seen straight on. They could be perceived only out of the corner of one’s eye.
Jon-Tom wailed and twisted, sang and played. The fingers of his left hand danced a saraband over the upper strings while his right hand was a blur in front of the duar’s body. As he played, something new was taking shape and form in front of him, something substantial, something worthy of a spellsinger’s best efforts.
Sorbl retreated behind the tree again, and even Clothahump took an unwilling step backward. A foul-smelling wind blew outward from the solidifying manifestation. Its outlines did not flutter and break this time but grew steadily more visible. It grew and added weight and reality.
But the shape was still wrong. He hurried to bring the song to a conclusion, trying to see through the glowing mist that enveloped the object. It was not the object of his desires. It certainly was nothing like a L’borian riding snake. But neither was it a cosmic joke akin to the toy he had conjured up previously.
In shape it was more than recognizable; it was quite familiar. Certainly he had not expected to see anything like it. His throat was sore and his fingers numb from the effort he’d put into the song. Carefully, painfully, he slid the duar back around his shoulders so that the instrument rested against his back. Then he approached the product of his spellsinging. The lingering glow that attended to it was fading rapidly.
Sorbl flew out from behind the tree, circled the manifestation a couple of times, and then landed next to Jon-Tom. “What in the name of the seven aerial demons is it?”
Jon-Tom ignored him as he touched it. There was no burning sensation. Neither was it dangerously cold to the touch. The surface was smooth and shiny, like the skin of a L’borian riding snake. He walked completely around it, inspecting it from every possible angle as Clothahump joined them.
“As I feared, not what you wished for, my boy, but an interesting piece of work nonetheless. Though I recognize neither its origin nor composition, it is clear that it is a vehicle of some kind. For one thing it has wheels.” He tapped one. “They appear to be fashioned not of wood or metal but of some flexible alien substance.” He wrinkled his nose as best he was able. “It possesses a most disagreeable smell.”
“I know what it is, though,” Jon-Tom told him. “I didn’t think anything like it actually existed. I should say it’s considerably rarer than a L’borian riding snake. But it look like we’ll be riding to Lynchbany and beyond, after all. in style and I agree that it stinks, but at least we won’t have to walk.
“Where I come from there are books, magazines, other cheap publications, and they all have advertisements for this thing in them, but I never believed they actually existed, and I never heard of anyone actually obtaining one of them. The ads are for army surplus materials.”