Sorbl was brought up as short, as if he’d smacked into a glass ceiling. He barely had time to right himself as he tumbled groundward, landing hard on his left side. Pushing himself upright with a wing, he hopped onto his feet and studied the seemingly empty air overhead.
“I am sorry I doubted you, Master. It was just like hitting a roof.”
“I still don’t see any bars or anything,” a thoroughly confused Jon-Tom muttered.
“This is not your ordinary sort of cage, my boy. I have seen cages fashioned of wood and cages made of steel. I have heard of cages built of clay and delicate cages woven of silk. I have even heard of cages built with the bodies of living creatures. But I have never heard of, read of, or expected to encounter a cage fashioned of gratuitous insults.”
“Who said they’re gratuitous?” chorused a cluster of voices around them. “Every one of ‘em’s well deserved.”
“It will not work,” Clothahump argued with the air. “You will never be able to hold us here, nor get us to fighting among ourselves. We are too intelligent and too diverse a group. Your best efforts have already failed.” Mudge and Colin exchanged an embarrassed glance.
“Sinister, malign, and loquacious you may be,” the wizard went on, “but you are also directed by an unbalanced personality and therefore can have no effect on those of us who are healthy.”
“He calls us unbalanced,” declared a voice. “Him, who’s been senile for the past fifty years.” This was followed by a roll of sardonic laughter. It faded away with frightening finality, like the door of a safe being slammed shut.
“This is ridiculous,” Jon-Tom said. “There’s nothing holding us here. All we have to do is walk away.” He wasn’t ready to grant that anything had actually stopped Sorbl. He started off to his left, striding deliberately toward the nearest trees.
“Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, kid? You know nothing and understand everything. The turtle knows everything and understands nothing.”
Jon-Tom bounced off nothing, as though he’d walked into a brick fireplace. Nothing was a good, solid, unyielding word. He reached out with both hands, found that the air in front of him had the consistency of transparent vinyl.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“I certainly hope so,” said the voice, forcing him back a couple of steps.
“Words can be stronger barriers than metal,” Clothahump told them all. “It has always been so, if not always recognized as such. This is one perturbation we cannot outwait. We must find a way to break through it. Insults can be as suffocating as any fire, for all that they smother the spirit instead of the body.”
Jon-Tom grabbed up his cape and duar. “This is crazy, and we’re getting out of here right now. Mudge and I have fought our way past djinn, monsters, swamps, evil magicians, and well-meaning muck, and I’m not going to let a few words stop me.” He swung the duar around and began to sing.
But as soon as the music began, so did the voices. “A spellsinger, huh? You’ve got a lot to learn about music.”
“Yeah. For openers, remarks aren’t lyrics.” Jon-Tom was knocked backward a step.
“He sings for the ages.”
“Sure does,” agreed another voice. “The ages between five and nine.” Jon-Tom felt his fingers trembling. He began to miss notes.
“Obviously descended from a long line,” said the first voice.
“Yep. A long line that his mother listened to.”
Jon-Tom was forced to his knees, and the words caught in his throat.
“Actually,” declared the first voice, “he hasn’t any enemy in the world. And his friends don’t like him, either.”
At that point Jon-Tom gave up trying to play or sing. He swallowed hard, the insults catching in his throat, and rolled over onto his knees as he fought to catch his breath. It had been a long time since he’d faced magic as powerful and relentless as this, and never had he been confronted by anything quite as insidious. The strength of the perambulator, he knew. How could he counter it with simple songs, mere spellsinging? What could you sing to counter an insult?
Rock music was designed to make you feel good, to raise your spirits, not to knock down. But there was one kind of rock that was a reaction to that, just as it was a reaction against any kind of authority, against anything worthwhile. Knees shaky, fingers uncertain on the strings, he struggled to his feet. Yes, those were the only kind of lyrics that might have some eifect on the cage of insults. He considered whom to begin with: Oxo, Sex Pistols, The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, or some of the new groups. He began to feel some of his control returning along with his confidence.
You didn’t need the haircut to sing punk.
Mudge put his paws to his ears, and Clothahump’s expression reflected his thorough disgust with the lyrics Jon-Tom was singing. Excellent! It was proof that he was doing exactly what he intended to do. Like any good punk singer, he was doing his utmost to insult his audience.
“What do you think?” wondered the first voice. Jon-Tom tried not to rush his music. It seemed that the cage was tightening around them, restricting their range of movement even further. He staggered but didn’t fall.
“Careful,” said the other voice, “he might be dangerous after all.”
“Not a chance. He’s a sheep in sheep’s clothing.”
“He sings,” rumbled the first voice, firing a serious salvo, “as if it were a painful duty.”
Jon-Tom was forced backward. Delivered with precision and perfect timing, each insult struck him like a physical blow, as any good insult should. He felt like a boxer trying to go the full fifteen rounds, and his hands were tied to the duar. But he kept singing nonetheless. It was all he knew to do.
And still he was forced back. It wasn’t that his punk anthems didn’t possess an equal amount of vitriol, he thought, but the fact that they were blatant and straightforward that made them less effective. There was nothing subtle about them. He was a barbarian with a battle-ax, trying to fend off the attacks of half a dozen lightning-fast fencers. If he could just get in one solid blow with his music, one unparried stab, he felt certain it would shatter the verbal cage contracting around them.
But the insults continued to flow unabated, drawing their strength and power from some unseen well of acid, out-maneuvering him at every turn. A little jab here, a crude comment on his bodily functions there, a deprecatory nod in the direction of his ancestry slipping in to stick him from behind before his cruder counterjabs could have any effect.
“He is dull,” claimed the first voice, “naturally dull, but it must have taken a great deal of work on his part for him to have become what we see now. Such excess is not in nature.” Jon-Tom went to his knees.
“He’s not all that bad,” countered the second voice. “After all, he is capable of running the full gamut of musical emotion from A to B.”
Now Jon-Tom was squirming helplessly on his back, still trying to play the duar, still trying to sing. He was finding it difficult to breathe.
Anxious faces peering down at him now; his friends, their concern reflected in their expressions.
“Take ‘er easy now, mate.” Mudge glanced up at Clothahump. “You ‘ave to do somethin’, Your Wizardship. ‘E’s in a bad way.”
“I have never encountered a distortion of reality of this nature before. It is difficult to know what to do or where to begin.”
“Well, / know where to begin!” yelled Mudge, and he pulled the duar from Jon-Tom’s weakened hands.
“Wait—no.” Jon-Tom tried to sit up, failed. “You can’t, Mudge! You don’t know how to spellsing.”
“Spellsingin* ain’t wot’s wanted ‘ere,” snapped the otter, “and neither is your bleedin’ useless magic, Your Sorceremess.” Mudge looked off-balance since the duar was nearly as tall as he was. Somehow he got it settled in front of him. He ran his fingers over the double set of strings, and notes, angry and atonal, floated out into the air.