It was, of course, the perambulator.
Jon-Tom had expected something full of power and majesty. That would be in keeping with something capable of altering entire worlds by means of an interdimensional hiccough. He had expected it to be good-sized, and it was, for it almost filled the chamber. It was substantial but also light and airy. What he had not expected it to be was beautiful.
It hung there in the stagnant air of the chamber, and it was never still. Changing, shifting, metamorphosing, altering its structure from moment to moment, it looked like a series of interlocking dodecahendrons one moment, an explosion of colored fireworks the next. Each new shape was perfect and tightly controlled, and each lasted no more than a few seconds. Now it was an electrifying mass of sharp, fluorescent blades, now a series of infinitely concentric alternating gold-and-silver spheres. The spheres gave way to a collage of squares and triangles, which in turn were subsumed by an exploding mass of tiny glowing tornadoes. It was translucent and then it was opaque. It was a growling DNA-like helix spinning at a thousand rpm and throwing off blue and green sparks. The helix collapsed and left in its place a towering cone of light within which multicolored bands traveled from base to peak before bursting into the air at the crown as blobs of pure color.
As it changed and contorted, rippled and glowed, it sang, all whistles and panpipes and synthesizerlike dominant chords, a living fugue of color and sound.
“Crikey,” Mudge whispered as he joined his friends in gazing at the marvel, “you could bloody well charge admission.”
“There are isolated descriptions in the ancient texts.” Clothahump was equally transfixed by the ever-changing magnificence before them. “But they are based more on supposition than on eyewitness knowledge. To actually see a perambulator . . .” His voice trailed away, lost in awe.
“Exquisite,” said Dormas. “Wouldn’t it look grand over the entrance to the stalls?”
“Pretty but dangerous.” Colin had one arm over his eyes. “It doesn’t belong here. You said as much, Wizard, and I can sense it.”
“Seeing the future again?” Donnas asked him.
“No. Relying on my own inner convictions. It’s been here much too long. It wants out.”
“Is it intelligent?” Jon-Tom wanted to know.
“There are as many different definitions for intelligence as there are different varieties of intelligence, my boy.” Clothahump was drowning in wonder but not to the point of having forgotten why they were there. “A more knowledgeable sorcerer than I would have to say. But I am of one mind with our fractious, furry friend. It needs to be freed, to be allowed to depart this cold prison so that it may continue its journey through the cosmos.”
“Freed how?” Talea was brushing back her hair even as she was trying to shield her eyes. “I don’t see any ropes or chains binding it.”
Clothahump smiled as much as his relatively inflexible mouth would permit. “The ties that bind are not always visible, my girl. To tie down a perambulator in the manner you allude to would be as futile as trying to bottle a star. No, you require something else, at once barely perceptible and yet strong, like the forces that bind the building blocks of matter together. Something that even the perambulator cannot twist through.” He was staring straight at the explosively metamorphosing mass now and no longer trying to protect his eyes. He was functioning at the pinnacle of wizardry perception, and he drank in the light as he drank in the beauty.
Jon-Tom tried to stare, too, but his eyes kept filling with water, and to his chagrin he was forced to turn away from the brightness. “I don’t see a thing, sir.”
“Aye, if there’s a cage ‘ere, ‘tis more than a mite insubstantial,” Mudge added.
“So it is,” Clothahump told them solemnly. “As insubstantial as an evil thought, as fragile as sanity, as tenuous as a nightmare, but as strong as life and death. This perambulator has been imprisoned in a cage of madness powered by hatred. I see it as clearly as if it were made of iron.
“Think! A perambulator is in constant motion, ever-changing, but there is nothing illogical or irrational about it. Each universe it speeds through is founded upon logic and consistency, no matter how alien or different from our own. But every universe is subject to aberrations, to unpredictable flare-ups of insanity and illogic. These the perambulator studiously avoids. Until now. Because someone here has managed to entrap it in a sphere of madness, which is the only thing it cannot penetrate. It has been walled in and pinned down.
“But it continues to change, and each time we see it change, a perturbation travels swiftly through the world and affects the fabric of existence. Most of the time the changes are infinitesimal and we notice them not. A red bug becomes a yellow bug. A leaf separates from a tree only to fall up. A human’s tan deepens or the hairs fall from the tip of an otter’s tail.” Mudge glanced reflexively at his own.
“Normally a perambulator passes close by the world so infrequently that its presence is not remarked upon and its effects never noted. They move too fast to be detected, though sometimes their waste products can be measured by sorcerous means, even as it passes harmlessly through our own bodies.”
Jon-Tom struggled to find an analogy for his own world, but the only thing he could come up with wasn’t very pleasing. Could cosmic rays really be perambulator piss? Try laying that explanation on a particle physicist.
“That is what we have to deal with,” the wizard was saying. “A cage of insanity. Somehow we must destroy it.”
Jon-Tom found his attention wandering from the perambulator to the doorways that ringed the chamber. All stood empty—for the moment.
“Who could generate something like that?”
Clothahump, too, was studying the portals. “One of great power and utter madness. Both are required.”
“A sorcerer off ‘is nut. Great.” Mudge moved a little closer to his tall friend. So did Talea.
“So you think I am crazy?”
Everyone turned. Instead of appearing at one of the other entrances, the questioning figure had snuck up behind them.
He was alone. Nor did he leave much room in the narrow corridor for anyone else. He was nearly as tall as Jon-Tom and much more heavily built. Mental condition aside, the owner of the challenging voice was not someone Jon-Tom would have cared to meet in a dark alley.
Colin held his long saber tightly in both hands. “Wolverine. Biggest one I ever saw.”
“And quite mad,” Clothahump murmured.
Even Jon-Tom could see the wildness in the wolverine’s eyes, that faint burning light that was a mockery of the perambulator’s own. It was staring straight at them without really seeing them, as though the animal’s perception had become unfocused. He wore what originally must have been fine robes of silk and leather but which now hung about his massive body in rags.
In one huge paw he clutched a four-bladed battle-ax. Jon-Tom couldn’t have lifted it, much less made use of it. But the wolverine made no move to attack. Instead he seemed to be searching the chamber beyond them. It was almost as though their very presence confused him.
“I am not crazy. I am Braglob, supreme among the wizards of the Northern Marches, and there is nothing wrong with me.” He stretched his other arm out toward them. “Go away, get out, begone all of you! Leave me alone or it will go worse for you. I won’t warn you a second time.” He raised the immense battle-ax, holding it easily over his head.