of the Empress Skrritch.
What devastating magic so terrified the imperturbable
Clothahump? What was Eejakrat about to risk in hopes of
winning a lost war?
"Down," he ordered M'nemaxa. "Down to the one
surrounded by maggots and evil, down to destroy!"
A whispery sorceral mumbling, rapid and desperate, sounded
from the crest of the butte. Eejakrat had panicked. He was
rushing the incantation, as others had done before him,
though he knew nothing of them. The two glowing shards of
stone moved through the air toward the onrushing spirit fire
and its mortal riders, and toward each other. Stones and spirit
would meet at the same point in the sky.
They were no more than fifty yards from it and as many
more from the butte's summit when M'nemaxa suddenly gave
forth a thunderous whinny. The infinite eyes glowed more
brightly than the stones as the two came almost together a
couple of yards in front of them.
There was a faint, hopeless scream from Eejakrat below, a
desperate croaking Jon-Tom deciphered: "Not yet... too near,
too close, not yet!"
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THE HOUR OF THE GATB
Then the world was spinning farther and farther below
them like a flower caught in a whirlpool.
Gone was the Troom Pass. So too was the butte where
Eejakrat had gesticulated frantically before the Empress Skrritch.
So were the milling mob of Plated Folk plunging to war and
the insistent battle cries of the warmlanders.
Gone were the mists of the distant Greendowns and noi-
some distant Cugluch, gone too the mountain crags that
towered above insignificant warriors. Soon the blue sky itself
vanished behind them.
They still rode the spine of the furiously galloping M'nemaxa,
but they rode now through the emptiness of convergent
eternity. Stars gleamed bright as morning around them,
unwinking and cold and so close it seemed you could reach
out and touch them.
You could touch them. Jon-Tom reached out slowly and
plucked a red giant from its place in the heavens. It was warm
in his palm and shone like a ruby. He cast it spinning back'
free into space. A black hole slid past his left foot and he
pulled away. It was like quicksand. He inhaled a nebula,
which made him sneeze. Behind him Mudge the otter seemed
a distant, diffuse shape in the stars.
He breathed infinity. The wings and hooves of M'nemaxa
moved in slow motion. A swarm of motile, luminescent dots
gathered around the runners, millions of lights pricking the
blackness. They danced and swirled around the great horse
and its riders.
Where the world had no meaning and natural law was
absent, these too finally became real. Gneechees, Jon-Tom
thought ponderously. Only now I can see them, I can see
them.
Some were people, some animals, others unrecognizable;
the afterthoughts, the memories, the souls and shadows of all
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Alan Dean Foster
intelligent life. They were all the colors of the rainbow, a
spectrum filled with life, both mysterious and familiar.
He began to recognize some of the forms and faces. He
saw Einstein, he saw his own grandfather. He saw the moving
lips of now dead singers he had loved, and it was as if their
music swelled around him in the ultimate concert. He noted
that the faces he saw were not old, and showed no trace of
death or suffering. In fact the famous physicist's eyes glittered
like a child's. Einstein had his violin with him. Hendrix was
there, too, and they played a duet, and both smiled at Jon-Tom.
Then he saw a face he knew well, a face full of fire and
light. He concentrated on that face with all his strength,
trying to pull it into his brain through his eyes. The face was
distinct and warm; it seemed to float toward him instinctively.
His whole being glowed with love as it neared him, and
suddenly when it touched his lip a flame ignited inside him
and he almost lost his seat. It was the Talea gneechee, he
knew, and he surrounded it with his entire will.
"We must go back. Now!" he roared at the fiery stallion.
"YOU MUST KNOW THE WORDS, LITTLE MAN, OR REMAIN
WITH ME UNTIL THE END OF MY JOURNEY."
What song? Jon-Tom thought. There seemed no music
equal to the immensity of space and stars all around him.
Every song he had ever heard dried up on his tongue.
The Talea gneechee seemed to stir someplace deep inside
him, and he looked out at the cold blue distance ahead. It was
time to go back where he belonged. He couldn't be specific,
but he suddenly had a real sense of where he belonged in life
and he knew he could get there.
His mouth opened and his fingertips caressed the duar. A
new sound rose, a new voice came both from the duar and
from his mouth, and though he had never heard it before he
knew it was, finally, his true voice.
Stars spun faster around him, the universe seemed wrenched
292
THE HOUR OF THE GATE
for an instant. His head throbbed and his throat burned with
the strange wordless song that poured from him like a river a
million times stronger than any earthly river.
Now blue sky hurried toward them, then the snowy caps of
mountains. The boundary was back—the luscious, palpable
limit of existence. He felt more alive than he had ever in his
life.
"Cor, wot a friggin' ride!" Mudge's joyous voice came
from behind him.
"Love you, Mudge!" screamed Jon-Tom, ecstatic to hear
that familiar sound.
"You're crazy—where the 'ell we been?"
Everywhere, Jon-Tom thought, but there was no way to say
it.
' 'THE COURSE OF MY JOURNEY HAS BEEN FOREVER CHANGED,''
bellowed M'nemaxa. "I HAVE HAD TO CHANGE MY DIRECTION
BECAUSE OF THE EVIL IN YOUR WORLD AND NOW MY ROUTE IS
ALMOST THROUGH. COME WITH ME TO THE OUTSIDE, LITTLE
MAN, YOUR WORLD IS FULL OF DOOM. I WILL SHOW SUCH
THINGS AS NO MORTAL SHALL EVER AGAIN SEE."
"Wot's 'e talkin' about, guv'nor?"
"Eejakrat's magic, Mudge. Clothahump knew mat they
could not control it, and it has created devastation so utter
that even M'nemaxa had to detour around it. It's happened
before, but in my world. Not here. Look."
The mushroom cloud that billowed skyward from the far
end of the Troom Pass was not large, but it was considerably
darker and denser than any of the mists behind it.
Below them now the last of the Plated Folk army, those
who'd been lucky enough to be trapped in the middle of the
Pass, were surrendering, turning over their weapons and
going down on all sixes to plead for mercy.
Beneath the now fading mushroom cloud that marked the
failure of Eejakrat's imported magic, me butte he'd stood
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upon had vanished. In its place there was only an empty,
radioactive crater. The bomb Eejakrat had been in the process
of creating had been a relatively clean one. What remained
would serve as a warning to future generations of Plated Folk.
It would block the Pass far more effectively than had the
Jo-Troom Gate.
Raming wings slowed. Mudge was deposited gently back
on top of the wall. Jon-Tom thanked the flaming being but
would not return with him.
"THREE MILLION YEARS!" M'nemaxa boomed, his neighing
shaking boulders from the cliffsides of the canyon.
"ONLY THREE MILLION. THANK YOU, LITTLE HUMAN. YOU
ARE A WIZARD OF UNKNOWN WISDOM. FAREWELL!"
The vast fiery form rose into the air. There was an
earsplitting explosion that rent the fabric of space-time. The
gap closed quickly and M'nemaxa had gone, gone back to
resume his now truncated journey, gone back to the every-