Sorbl interrupted long enough to point. “Look. It’s not deserted.”
They were passing through the first buildings now, though the mud and wattle structures were hardly worthy of the term. Staggering listlessly through the filthy alleys were the citizens of Ospenspri. It was evident that whatever catastrophe had blasted their community had affected them personally.
As with all large cities, the population was a mixture of species, and all had been equally devastated. Felines and lupines, quadrupeds and bipeds, all wore the same dazed expressions. They shared something else besides a communal aura of hopelessness, a singular physical deformity that owed its presence to something other than defective genetics. Difficult to accept at first, the evidence overwhelmed the visitors as they drove on toward the main square.
Every inhabitant of Ospenspri, every citizen irrespective of age or species or sex, from the youngest cub to the eldest patriarch, had become a hunchback.
Clothahump adjusted his glasses, his expression solemn. “Whatever has happened here has crippled the people as well as their land. Turn right at this corner, my boy.”
Jon-Tom complied, and the jeep slowed as it entered an open circular courtyard. In its center stood a thirty-foot-high pile of mud and gravel. Water trickled forlornly down its flanks. It was surrounded by a fence fashioned of rotted wood and a few lumps of granite.
“Stop here.” Jon-Tom brought the jeep to a halt, watched as Clothahump climbed out to stare at the pitiful structure.
“What is it, sir?”
“The Peridot Fountain. Three years in the designing, twenty years in the construction. Fashioned by the Master Artisan’s Guild of Ospenspri. I’ve read of it all my life. This is where it should be, and this patently is not it. It is built of marble and copper tubing, of sculptured alabaster and peridots the size of my shell. Whatever has infected this place breaks beauty as well as backs.”
Many dispirited citizens had seen the strangers drive into the square, but only one retained enough curiosity and spirit to seek them out. The fox was old and bent like the rest of the populace. He had to lean hard on the cane he carried to support himself. The fur of his face was white with age and he was missing all the whiskers on the right side of his muzzle. A few of the others tried to hold him back, but he shook them off and advanced. The thought of death no longer frightened him. There are some older folks who are never touched by that particular fear, and the fox was one of them.
“Strangers, where do you come from? By your posture as well as your faces I know you are not from the city or its immediate environs.”
“We’re up from the south,” Jon-Tom told him. “From just south of Lynchbany.”
“A long way.” The fox was nodding to himself. He turned his attention to the jeep, walked slowly around it, felt of the metal with an unsteady hand. “A most peculiar method of transportation. I have never seen the like. I should like to compliment the blacksmith who fashioned it.”
“We make do with what we have.” Clothahump waddled around to confront him. “I am more concerned with what has happened here. I have never visited your city, but I feel as though I know it from all that I have read about it and been told by other travelers. The last description I was given was not so very long ago. Surely Ospenspri cannot have changed so much in such a short time.” He gestured at the sagging edifices surrounding the square, the dead or dying vegetation. “This has all the hallmarks of a sudden disaster, not one long in the making.”
The fox was eyeing him with interest. “You are perceptive, hard-shell. In truth, we lost everything in an instant. There was no warning. One moment all was well with our city and selves. The next—there was the cloud.” He jabbed skyward with his cane.
“See the evil thing hanging there? It does not drop rain and move on. It does not thunder or hail. No wind blows out of it save an ill one. It is as motionless as stone.”
“You have been unable to influence it?” Clothahump had his head tilted back and was studying the black mass.
“All the efforts of our best magicians have failed. Their spells either have no effect on it at all or else they pass right through it. It is only vapor, after all. How does one threaten vapor? We have invoked every agent in the meteorological pantheon, all to no avail.”
“It is not a climatic phenomenon that hangs over your city and your lives but a pall of supernature. Weather spells will have no effect on something like this.”
“The perambulator,” said Jon-Tom, with a sudden realization of what the wizard was getting at.
“Quite so, my boy.”
“But we’re inside the city now, and we haven’t changed.” He found himself straightening his back reflexively. “And the forest beyond the city limits wasn’t affected.”
“Not all the effects of the perambulator are global in scope, lad. Many perturbations, of varying degree, are highly localized. It is shifting and spinning and throwing off, upsetting energy all the time. Sometimes nothing larger than a plot of land a foot square is affected. Sometimes a grove of trees. Or, in this case, an entire community.
“But this is the severest perturbation we have yet encountered. Remember what I told you, that unless it is freed, the perambulator’s perturbations will grow steadily more intense, until we run the risk of being locked in permanent change. That is what has happened here in Ospenspri. The perturbation, of which I believe that cloud to be an indication, has settled in permanently. This part of the world has been damaged for good. Unless . . .”
“Unless you can do something about it—Master,” Jon-Tom finished respectfully.
The wizard nodded. “We must certainly give it our best effort.”
“ ‘Our’ best effort.” Jon-Tom moved to the back of the jeep and began unpacking his duar. Clothahump moved over to put a hand on the young man’s wrist.
“No, my boy. Leave this one to me. The citizens of this poor community have suffered enough.”
Jon-Tom swallowed his hurt. He knew nothing of the mechanism that had devastated Ospenspri, and he’d had many occasions on which to learn the error of false pride. It was time to abide by the turtle’s wish.
The fox watched them intently as Sorbl aided Clothahump in his preparations. A second distorted figure came hobbling over the dirt to join them. It made for Jon-Tom.
He turned to the newcomer as the bent shape drew close. “We’re friends. We’re going to try to help you. But my mentor there needs plenty of room to work his magic and— He stopped in mid-sentence, staring. Despite the hunchback, there was something almost familiar about the oncoming figure. That was absurd, of course, but still, that outline, those eyes, those whiskers . . .
“Don’t tell me to get lost, you ‘airy son of an ape!”
“Mudge?” Jon-Tom couldn’t take his eyes off the figure. It was nearer now, and he could see the speaker more clearly. Bent, duty, undistinguished—and unmistakable. “Mudge, it is you!”
“O’ course it’s me, you bloody oversized naked monkey! ‘Ave you gone blind? Me ‘ead ‘appens to be a mite nearer the ground at the moment, but it ain’t by choice, wot? Me face is still the same, though. So’s yours, I see. As ugly as ever.”
A warm feeling spread throughout Jon-Tom’s body. “Mudge, it’s good to see you again. Even under these circumstances.”
“Circumstances ain’t the ‘alf of it, mate.” The otter nodded toward the jeep. “There’s ‘is sorcerership, senile as ever, and ‘is sot of an apprentice. Would ‘e ‘ave any booze with ‘im, do you know? I could use a good stiff one, if ‘e ain’t drunk all the liquor betwixt ‘ere an’ the southern ocean. I never could understand those people wot drinks to excess.”
“That sounds pretty funny coming from you, Mudge.”
“Why? I never drink to excess, mate. Me body don’t know the meanin’ of the word. I just drink till I’m full. Then I piss it out and start over. So I never reach excess, wot? Tell me, wot are you and ‘is nibs doin’ so far from ‘is tree? I’d think you’d be hunkered down south, warm an’ cozy an’ waiting for winter.”