Masters of Fantasy Part 25

Still, he found himself wondering and worrying, until their explorations eventually brought them to an expansive, exquisitely decorated bedchamber. Rainbow-hued light poured in through stained-gla.s.s windows, burnis.h.i.+ng the furnis.h.i.+ngs with gold and turning the canopied, lace-netted bed at the far end to filigreed suns.h.i.+ne.

The woman who slept thereon might or might not be a princess, but she was certainly of ravis.h.i.+ng beauty. She was sleeping peacefully on her back, her hands folded across her chest, a soft smile on her full lips. Slapping away Mudge's fingers, Jon-Tom considered the somnifacient figure thoughtfully.

"Something familiar about this. . . ." * * *

-V-.

"Not to mention somethin' irregular." Mudge contemplated the unconscious female with mixed emotions. "That Wolfsheep didn't say anythin' about 'is beloved bein' in a coma. 'Ow are you supposed to sing 'er a song o' love if she can't bleedin' 'ear you?"

The soft shush of fine leather on stone made the trio turn as one. Standing in the doorway was their erstwhile employer, but it was a Wolfram transformed. No longer the supplicating elder, he seemed to have grown taller in stature and broader of frame. His formerly simple cloth cloak glistened in the stained-gla.s.s light, and the vitreous globe atop his staff flickered with caged lightning. His entire being and bearing radiated barely restrained power.

"So you have done that which I could not." Stepping into the room, he ignored them to focus his attention on the figure lying supine in the bed. "Ignorant sots. Did you really think that I, Wolfram the Magnific, the All-Consuming, Master of the Warmlands, would consign the future of the Mistress of the Namur to your puerile attentions?"

As he replied, Jon-Tom slowly edged his duar around in front of him. "Somehow I knew you'd say

something like that."

A belligerent Mudge stepped forward. "If you're so b.l.o.o.d.y all-whatever, guv'nor, then wot did you need us poor souls for?"

The sorcerer gazed down contemptuously. "Isn't it obvious? The bonds that conceal this place are such as I cannot penetrate. It needs the attention of a kind of magic different entirely from what I propound, powerful as that may be. It required someone such as an innocent spellsinger to blaze a path here and divert any dangers that might lie along the way. This so that I could follow safely in your wake-as I have done. Why should I take the risks?"

"Then," Jon-Tom said, indicating the figure reposing serenely in the bed, "this isn't your beloved?"

"Oh, but she is." Wolfram smiled thinly behind his narrow, pointed beard. "It is just that she does not know it yet. You see, whoever touches the princess in such a way as to rouse her from her sleep shall

make of her a perfect match to the one who does the touching, and shall have her to wife, thus acquiring dominion over this portion of an important realm and its concurrent significant interdimensionality."

"Is that all?" Mudge was studying his fingernails. " 'Tis okay by me, guv."

"Oh no it isn't." Jon-Tom advanced to stand alongside the otter. "If an interdimensionality is involved

here, it means that this piece of whiskery double-crossing sc.u.m might be able to make trouble in my

world as well."

The otter shrugged. "Not me problem. Mayhap his meddlings might improve that revolting London place."

The sorcerer nodded knowingly. "I thought I would have no trouble with you three."

His fingers creeping across the strings of the duar, Jon-Tom mentally considered and discarded a dozen different songs. Which would be the most effective against a powerful, malign personality like

Wolfram? Knowing little about the man, it was hard to conjure something specific. Then he recalled the sorcerer's words, and knew what he should do.Whirling, he raced for the bed."Ha.s.sone!" Raising his staff, Wolfram thrust it in the spellsinger's direction. Gray vapor shot from the globe at its terminus to coalesce directly between the diving Jon-Tom and the bed. Slamming into the

wall of solid gray rock, Jon-Tom stumbled once, staggered slightly, and then crumpled to the floor.

Gathering anxiously around their fallen comrade, Mudge and Stromagg exchanged a glance, then turned their rising ire on the serene figure of Wolfram. Raising their weapons, they rushed the sorcerer, each screaming his own battle cry.

"Beeeer!" The grizzly's below echoed off the walls and rattled the stained-gla.s.s windows."No refunds!" the otter howled."Parimazzo!" Wolfram countered, bringing his glowing staff around in a sweeping arc parallel to the floor.

Rising from the stone underfoot, all manner of fetid, armed horrors confronted the onrus.h.i.+ng duo,

swinging weapons made of the same stone as that from which they had arisen. Mildly amused, Wolfram leaned on his staff and solicitously observed the battle that ensued.

Behind the fracas, a groggy Jon-Tom slowly came around. Discerning what was taking place, he reached

cautiously for his duar. Still lying on the floor, trying to avoid Wolfram's notice, he began to play, and started to sing.

"Once there was an-urrrp!"The unexpected belch did more than put a crimp in the chosen spellsong. The visible result was a solid, softly glowing, jet-black musical note that hovered in the air a foot or so in front of the astonished Jon-Tom's face.

"Well, what do you know," he murmured to himself. "Music really does look like that."Reaching up, he grabbed the note, rose, whirled it over his head, and flung it in Wolfram's direction.

Seeing it coming, the sorcerer raised his staff to defend himself. The note pa.s.sed right through the protective glow to smack the startled mage on the forehead and send him staggering backward.

Emboldened, avoiding the nearby swordplay, Jon-Tom strode determinedly toward the stunned sorcerer;

playing, singing, and belching as never before."And ever the drink (urp) shall flow freely (breep) to the sea (burk). . . ."Each belch produced a fresh glowing note, which he heaved one after another in the direction of the now quietly panicking Wolfram. Desperate, the wizard executed a small motion in the air with his staff."Immunitago!" A pair of large earm.u.f.fs appeared before him, drifted backward to settle themselves against his ears. Slowly, his confident smile returned. Staff upraised, he started toward Jon-Tom. Unable to hear the flung notes, they burst harmlessly in the air before reaching him.

Now it was a newly anxious Jon-Tom's turn to retreat. Changing tactics as he backpedaled, he also

changed music. The roar of Rammstein thundered through the chaotic chamber. The duar glowed

angrily, fiery with bist mist.Shaken by the heavy chords, Wolfram halted and clutched at his stricken ears. Trying to keep the earm.u.f.fs from vibrating off his head, he flung a wild blast from his staff. Ducking, Jon-Tom watched as the flare of malevolent energy shot over his head.

To strike the grizzly, who was busy making gravel of his stony, stone-faced a.s.sailants.

"Stromagg!" a pained Jon-Tom yelled.

The force of the blast blew the bear backward into, and through, the stone wall that Wolfram had

conjured earlier to encircle the sleeping princess. Rocks went flying as the bear landed, barely

conscious, on the bed. Moaning, he rolled slightly to his right. His arm rose, arced, and fell loosely-to

fall across the waist of the slumbering princess.Aghast, a horrified Wolfram let out a shriek of despair. "Nooo!" Jon-Tom remembered the sorcerer's words.

"Whoever touches the princess in such a way as to rouse her from her sleep shall make of her a perfect

match to the one who does the touching, and shall have her to wife."

A delicate haze enveloped the Princess Larinda. Her outline s.h.i.+mmered, s.h.i.+fted, and flowed. She was changing, metamorphosing, into . . .

When the mist finally cleared, not one but two grizzlies lay rec.u.mbent on the bed. One was clad in leather armor, the other in attire most elegant and comely. Rubbing at her eyes, the princess sat up, and turned slightly to gaze across at her savior. Blinking, holding one hand to his bleeding head, Stromagg looked up. Instantly, the pain of the sorcerer's perfidious blow was forgotten.

"Duhh-wow!"

"No, no, no!" Shrouded in tantrum sorceral, a despairing Wolfram was fairly jumping up and down, swinging his deadly staff indiscriminately.

Sitting up on the bed, which now creaked alarmingly beneath the unexpected dual weight, Stromagg

took both of the princess's hands-or rather, paws-in his own and gazed deeply into dark-brown eyes that mirrored his.

"Duh, hiya."

Long lashes fluttered as she met his unflinching, if somewhat overwhelmed, gaze. "I always did like the strong, silent type."

"This shall not last! By my oath, I swear it!" Numinous cape swirling about him, Wolfram whirled and fled through the open doorway. "I shall find a way to renew the sleeping spell. Then it will most a.s.suredly be I who awakens her the second time!"

Lightning flickering from his staff of theurgic power, he raced unimpeded down the stairway and back

through the foyer. Outside the smashed main doorway, the bridge back to the rest of reality beckoned.

From a shadow there emerged a foot. A furry foot, sandal-clad. It interposed itself neatly between the sorcerer's feet.

Looking surprised, Wolfram went down and forward, his momentum carrying him right over the side of the bridge. As he fell, he looked back up at a rapidly shrinking fuzzy face, astonished that he could have been defeated by something so common, so ordinary. As he fell, he flailed madly for the staff he had dropped while stumbling. Though he never succeeded in recovering it, at least staff and owner hit the bottom of the canyon in concert.

Peering over the side of the bridge, Mudge let out a derisive whistle. "Bleedin' wizards never look where

they're goin'."

By the time the otter rejoined his companions, Jon-Tom was facing a revitalized Stromagg and his new- found paramour. The two grizzlies held hands daintily.

"Sorry, guys," Stromagg was murmuring. "I think I'd kinda like to stay here."