“I think the shock finally wore off.” “The shock?” Neena frowned. “Wot shock?”
“Recall our fellow traveler’s condition at the moment we were about to storm the Baron’s domicile,” a suddenly comprehending Gragelouth suggested. “It was only an unexpected fall from a great height which returned him abruptly to consciousness. That has finally worn off.”
“Wot’s worn off?” Squill made a face. “You talk in riddles, merchant.”
“I am saying that he has been functioning under the impact of that moment ever since. Until now.” The sloth dispassionately considered the unsteady heap of sudden insensibility. “It has finally worn off.”
“Got that right,” agreed Viz with feeling.
“But it’s been days,” Buncan pointed out. “How is that possible?”
“I did not think it was possible for any living being to get that drunk, either.” Gragelouth shrugged.
Squill found himself a soft patch of sand beneath the shade of a wind-polished boulder. “Looks like rest time, mates.”
“Not hardly.” Buncan moved to unlimber his duar. “We’ve got to sing away the last of his inebriation.”
“Wot, now? ‘Ere?” The otter indicated the towering buttes, the peculiar spiny plants, the tiny but highly active reptile scuttling into a hole. “Why not just wait for ‘im to sleep it off?”
“That could mean days,” Viz informed him. “I’ve seen it take that long.”
Gragelouth considered the sky. It was cloudless, intensely blue, and while not burning, decidedly less than comfortable. “Better not to linger in such a place. I, for one, am not of a mind to wait if it can be avoided.”
“Come on.” Buncan plucked experimentally at the strings. “It shouldn’t take much of a spellsong. We’re just going to cure a delayed hangover, not transform birds or call up unwilling whales.”
Neena sidled over to her brother. “Wot are you afraid o’, slime-breath? Me, I don’t want to squat ‘ere drinkin’ up our water an’ waitin’ for the Gut-that-Walks to get over ‘is beauty sleep.” She kicked at him, and he scurried to avoid her foot. Buncan noticed that she’d done her best to reapply her makeup, though it was considerably less florid than when they’d started out. The streaks of color that flowed back from her muzzle were not as bright or well-defined as before.
Why she felt the need to wear makeup into a trackless desert was a question only another female could answer.
“Let’s leave it up to the one who knows him best.” Buncan turned to the tickbird.
“Help him if you can,” Viz replied. “He’ll dehydrate lying out in the sun like that.”
“Why is he kicking and moaning?”
“D.T.’s,” the tickbird informed him curtly, adding, “You don’t want to know what a drunken rhinoceros hallucinates.”
Buncan nodded, found himself a comfortable rock to sit on after first making sure it was not home to anything small and fast that was inclined to bite him on the butt, and settled the duar across his knees. For a change he could enjoy improvising. This time their lives weren’t at risk. They were only trying to help a friend in distress.
“Got no time to waste in this place
Got to move on, got to find our space
Tis a race
We’re in, so you “ave to feel better
Get over your trouble, get to somewhere that’s wetter
Shit, you ain’t sick
You’re in the thick
O’ the trick.”
Neena tracked the musical line easily, chivvying her brother into a reluctant harmony. It was good to hear the two of them singing together again, Buncan thought, after the successful but erratic sorcery he had perpetrated with each of them individually.
He relaxed as the by now familiar silvery cloud began to take shape alongside the moaning rhino, growing thicker and more pronounced with each note, each rapped rhyme. It would be interesting to see what form the cure would take. Would it be visually intriguing, or simply straightforward and functional?
It took the form of a grotesque, misshapen outline stained green and yellow that laughed horribly out of the side of slavering, rotting jaws.
Furthermore, it was not alone.
Horrid multiples of the initial phantasm were taking shape all around them, half stolid, half invisible. Noxious ichor dripped from wicked, curving claws.
“Stop it,” wailed Gragelouth. “Make them go away!”
“Go away?” Frantic, Buncan didn’t know whether it would make things worse to cease playing or keep on. Judging by their dismayed expressions, neither did the otters. “How can we make them go away? We’re calling them up!” Something stung him on the cheek. Hard.
“Sorry.” Viz was apologetic. “I had to get your attention. You’re not calling these things up. He is.” A wingtip indicated the moaning, twitching Snaugenhutt. “They’re what he’s seeing. I know, he’s described his D.T.’s to me before. Your singing is just making them visible, giving them substance.” The tickbird’s voice was hard. “Of course, I’m not experienced in such matters, but it seems to me that if you just quit cold you’re liable to leave something like these things hanging around.”
Something that smelled like rotting flesh on burned toast was shuffling toward them, fungoid arms extended, eyeballs dangling from the ends of raw, frayed strings. It was still only half solid, and Buncan forced himself not to run.
“If we keep singing,” he muttered even as his fingers continued to draw music from the duar, “we’re liable to make it worse.”
“We got no choice, mate,” Squill called to him. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere with these drunken imaginin’s taggin’ along. ‘Ow can I meet any ladies with somethin’ like this ‘angin’ off me bloomin’ shoulder?”
The specter that had chosen to focus on Buncan hovered nearby, not quite corporeal enough to make actual physical contact. He shuddered. There was entirely too much of it as it was.
If they stopped singing and playing it might simply fade away. If Viz was wrong. Except that thus far the tickbird had usually been proven right.
If their music could give substance to someone else’s nightmares, surely it could also give them the boot? He caught the otters’ attention as he changed keys.
Brother and sister modified their lyrics. Sure enough, as they did so the loathsome shapes began to dissipate.
“Not fair,” gibbered something with six arms and a spastic proboscis.
“Just getting ready to suck some brain,” groaned another. It took an intangible swipe at Squill with a glistening, translucent tentacle. The blow passed right through her.
The more the swiftly deteriorating D.T.’s complained, the less the unconscious Snaugenhutt moaned and kicked. As with most alcoholics, he couldn’t conquer his problem until he faced it. Only mis time, the otters and Duncan were facing it for him. Literally.
A concatenation of rotting fangs and putrefying eyeballs swam up in Duncan’s vision only to seep past and vanish. It turned out to be the last of the discomfiting visions. As it evaporated Snaugenhutt slumped into peaceful rest, breathing in slow, steady heaves like an armored bellows.
“That ought to do it.” Viz couldn’t sweat but looked like he wanted to.
Buncan slumped, his fingers numb and sore. “He’s still asleep.”
“Aftermare,” the bird informed him. “Might last an hour, maybe a couple. No more.” He let out an elated chirp. “Guaranteed. You did good.”
“Thanks. I think.” Thoroughly worn out, Buncan felt like a nap himself, but decided to hold off. Snaugenhutt’s nightmares were still too vivid in his own memory.