Mudge hastened to interrupt the steady flow of derogatory appellations. “Let’s not be overenthusiastic, mate. O’ course I’m volunterin’. You’re goin’ to need me ‘elp. Neither you nor ‘is wizardship is wot you’d call a master at scoutin’ or fightin’, and that flyin’ bag of feathery booze old hard-shell calls ‘is famulus ain’t much better.”
“We’ve managed to make it this far.” It was Jon-Tom’s turn to be insulted.
“Luck always travels in the company o’ fools, wot? Nonetheless, I’ll come along if you’ll ‘ave me. Wot’s left o’ me, that is.”
The combination of the once vibrant otter’s wrenched appearance coupled with his apparently selfless eagerness to be of assistance caused moisture to begin forming at the corners of Jon-Tom’s eyes. He had to struggle to keep his voice from breaking as he replied.
“Of course, we’ll be glad of your company and your help, Mudge.”
The otter appeared both pleased and relieved. “That’s settled, then.” He nodded toward the mud fountain where Clothahump was engaged in the erection of his sorcerous apparatus, mixing the steady litany of a long spell with selected curses that he heaped on the bumbling, unsteady Sorbl. “Wot’s ‘e up to?”
“I don’t know,” Jon-Tom confessed. “He said that he was going to try to help these people, but he didn’t go into details. You know Clothahump: he’d rather show than tell.”
“Aye. That’s so innocent bystanders like you an’ me don’t ‘ave a chance to get out of the way.”
A few of the blasted inhabitants of Ospenspri had gathered to watch, but all remained on the fringe of the square. Only the aged fox was daring enough to stay and chat with them. Jon-Tom left him conversing animatedly with Mudge and walked over to see if he could help the wizard in his work.
“You certainly can, my boy,” the old turtle told him as he adjusted his glasses on his beak. Jon-Tom started to swing his duar off his back, and the wizard hastened to forestall him. “No, no, I do not have need of your singing. Could you hold this up here?”
Mildly mortified, Jon-Tom bit back the response he wanted to make and took hold of the folding wooden platform, steadying it on the cracked surface of the square. Mudge did not comment on this demotion with the expected flurry of jeers. Perhaps the otter’s disfigurement had sobered him.
He tried to make some sense out of the interlocking platform and failed. “What’s this setup for, anyway?”
Instead of answering, the sorcerer was walking a slow circle around the enigmatic apparatus, studying it intently from every angle, occasionally bending over or kneeling to check its position relative to the hills on the north side of the city. From time to time he would interrupt his circumnavigation to adjust this or that piece of metal or wood, then step back to resume his journey.
Having returned to the precise spot where he’d begun, he turned and marched over to his supply pack. A large box had been removed and now stood next to it. It contained half a dozen drawers. As Jon-Tom watched and struggled to contain his curiosity, the wizard began to mix powders taken from the six drawers in a small bowl. It took only a few minutes. Then he dumped the contents of the bowl into a small, deep metal goblet that hung suspended in the center of the structure Jon-Tom was steadying against the breeze.
“That cloud overhead,” the wizard explained, as though no time at all had elapsed since Jon-Tom had first asked his question, “is the localized center of the disturbance that continues to hold Ospenspri and its population fast in its perturbing grasp. If we can change its composition, not to mention its disposition, back to that of a normal cloud, I believe this also will result in a shift in the perturbation.”
Jon-Tom tilted his head back to gaze up at the threatening mass of black moisture billowing overhead. “How are you going to do that, sir?”
“The best way I know how, my boy, the best way I know how. Hold the platform firmly now.”
Jon-Tom tightened his grip on two of the wooden legs, at the same time frowning at his mentor. “This isn’t going to be dangerous, is it?”
“My boy, would I ever involve you in anything dangerous?” Before Jon-Tom had an opportunity to oifer the self-evident reply, the wizard had launched into a most impressive and forceful incantation, simultaneously passing his hands rapidly over the central goblet as he traced intricate geometric shapes in the empty air.
Harken to me, affronting front.
Winds that linger, false winter solstice.
Prepare to flee, to leave, to shunt
Aside thy paralyzed coriolis.
Disintegrate and break apart the lattice
That maintains thy present cumulostrarus status!
As the wizard recited, the goblet began to jiggle and bounce. Then it broke free of its leather bindings, and instead of falling to the hard ground below, it remained in place, dancing and spinning and beginning to glow. Jon-Tom could feel the powerful vibrations through the supporting sticks. The apparatus seemed far too fragile to contain the rapidly intensifying ramble that was emanating from the base of the goblet, but somehow the aracane concatenation held together.
The goblet was glowing white-hot. The ground began to tremble. He held his position as the few observers who had clumped on the outskirts of the square scattered into the mud huts. The ramble became a deafening roar in his ears. He felt as if he were standing under a waterfall. Clothahump’s words faded into inaudibility.
The wizard abruptly brought both hands together over his head. A small thunderclap rolled across the square. Sorbl was knocked from his perch atop the jeep’s windshield. Jon-Tom gritted his teeth and held on, the concussion making his ears ring, his fingers beginning to go numb.
Through half-closed eyes he saw something bright and shiny rocket skyward from the mouth of the goblet. The whistling sound of the miniature comet’s ascension was quickly swallowed up by the roiling blackness above. Clothahump was shading his eyes with one hand. He spoke absently, clearly concentrating on the place where the shiny object had vanished into the bottom of the great cloud.
“You can let go now, my boy.”
With relief Jon-Tom did so, joining the wizard in gazing skyward while he tried to rub some feeling back into his hands.
The cloud let out a rumble that was a vaster echo of the one the goblet had generated. It was less explosive, more natural, and the sound of it lingered not unpleasantly in the ear. It was preceded by something akin to lightning but not of it, a more benign electrical relative. The pale white pulsation that lit the underside of the cloud spread quickly to its edges. A second rumble came from the far side. It sounded like a question.
“What did you do, sir?”
“The only thing I knew how, my boy, the only thing I knew how.”
“What happens now? Something wondrous and magical?”
“If we’re lucky, yes.”
Unable to keep his head tilted back any longer, Jon-Tom turned his attention to the now-silent jumble of wooden poles and metal strips that had been used to precipitate the glittering whatever-it-had-been into the sky. The leather strips that had originally supported the metal goblet had been vaporized. The goblet itself now lay on the ground, a blob of half-melted pewter. In contravention of every law of physics, the fragile wooden apparatus remained standing. The explosion that had flung the shiny object skyward should have blown the collage of dowels to bits; the heat that had melted the goblet should have fired it like kindling. Jon-Tom shook his head in amazement. Truly Clothahump was a master of elegant supernatural forces.
Mudge, who had limped over to join him, nodded at the construction. “Weird, ain’t it?” His black nose twitched as he leaned toward it. “One o’ these days I ‘ave to ask ‘is conjureness why magic always stinks.”
“Mudge, you could steal the wonder from a fairy castle.”