nature of your companions.
"Knowing of your insipidly tender nature, I took care to
keep the girl tightly under my control, lest she foolishly try
to run to you for misguided salvation."
"You hypnotized her?"
"I am unfamiliar with the term, but if you mean did I
blur her simple mind in order to make her compliant, yes.
I no longer have need of her as crude labor or as insurance
against your actions, however." He pointed down the
aisle.
"These shelves reach far back into the mountain, which
you may have noticed is of volcanic origin. I would
presume that each aisle ends in a fairly hot place. Perhaps
the proprietress stores goods back there that require con-
stant heat. Being of a warm nature myself, I dismissed the
girl and bid her wander down to the end of the aisle. She
acquired on Corroboc's ship a dark coloration which I
venture to say will change rapidly to red as she stumbles
into the hot center of this mountain."
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
267
Jon-Tom took a step backward and Zancresta raised his
peculiar multiple dart-thrower. "Let her go. She is nothing."
There was a flash of gold from behind Roseroar. Again
Zancresta raised the weapon, but a feathery hand came
down on his arm.
"Nay, let the horned one go," snarled Corroboc. "I've
no real quarrel with him. He won't be in time to save the
girl and I want these three left alive and conscious." He
started toward the ladder, sword in one hand, the other
outstretched toward Snooth. "The medicine, if you please,
hag."
"As you wish."
"No!" Jon-Tom shouted. "Don't give it to him!"
The kangaroo's reply was firm. "I am not a party to
what is a private quarrel. This is between you and him."
She handed over the precious container. "Here, catch." At
the last instant she tossed it toward the pirate captain.
Corroboc grabbed for the small plastic cylinder and
missed. It struck the floor, vaporizing instantly and spitting
out a thick cloud of black smoke.
Jon-Tom threw himself sideways and down. The dart-
thrower twanged and something struck his boot while
others thunked harmlessly into the back of his thick snake-
skin cape. He heard no screams of pain and prayed that his
friends had also managed to dodge Zancresta's weapon.
He started to rise, preparing to do battle with his staff,
when it occurred to him that in a hand-to-hand fight
Roseroar's swords and Mudge's bow would be more effec-
tive, and that, in any case, they had a sorcerer to deal with
now. So he put the ramwood aside and fumbled with the
duar. An old Moody Blues tune came to mind, suitable for
combating evil. He played and sang.
It had its intended effect. As the smoke began to
dissipate he could hear the ferret moan, see him staggering
backwards clutching at his head.
But Zancresta was not to be so simply vanquished.
268
Alan Dean Poster
Gathering his strength, he glared at Jon-Tom and began to
recite:
"Nails of rails and coils of toil,
Come to me now, rise to a boil,
Become with strength my herpetological foil!"
The sorcerer's fingers stretched, elongated, became pow-
erful constrictors that writhed and curled toward Jon-Tom.
Whether it was out of fear for Folly or for himself or
sheer anger, he couldn't say, but now the music flowed
easily through him. Without missing a bar he segued straight
into a slithering song by Jefferson Airplane. The snakes
shriveled and shrank to become ferret fingers once more.
A second time Zancresta threw out his hands toward
Jon-Tom.
"Xyleum, phylum, cellulose constrained,
Hypoblastic hardwood rise up now unrestrained.
Chlorophyllic transformation make thyself known.
Long and strong and sharp and straight
And solid as a stone!"
The wooden stake that materialized to leap at Jon-Tom's
chest was the size of a small tree. A few branches erupted
from its trunk, and it continued to grow even as it flew
toward him, sending out roots and leaves. He barely had
time enough to switch to a throaty rendition of Def
Lepard's "Pyromania."
The huge, growing spear blew up in a ball of fire. The
force of it knocked Zancresta backward to the floor.
It gave Jon-Tom a moment to check on his companions.
They were unhurt, but there was plenty of blood on the
floor of the aisle. It all came from the same source, and
was sticky with green and blue feathers. A beaked skull
lay sightless in one place, a leg elsewhere, a pair of wings
on a half-empty shelf. More blood stained Roseroar's
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
269
muzzle and claws. Her swords were still sheathed and
clean. She hadn't needed to use them, having dismembered
Corroboc as neatly as Jon-Tom would have a fried chicken.
Mudge stepped forward to fire a single arrow at Zancresta.
The sorcerer raised a hand, uttered one contemptuous
word. The arrow turned rotten before it crumpled against
the ferret's hip. Meanwhile Jon-Tom wondered and wor-
ried about Folly. If only Drom had time enough to reach
her before ...!
Sensing his opponent's lapse of concentration, Zancresta
waved a hand over his head and declaimed stentoriously. A
small black cloud appeared in the air between them.
Thunder rolled ominously.
Jon-Tom barely had the presence of mind to shout the
right words from Procol Harum's "In Held I Was" and
hold up the duar in front of him in time to intercept the
single bolt of lightning that emerged from the cloud. The
instrument absorbed the bolt, though the impact sent him
stumbling. The cloud disintegrated.
Now, for the first time, there was a hint of fear in
Zancresta's eyes. Fear, but not surrender. Not yet. He
stood staring at his opponent, making no effort to draw his
torn and ragged clothes tighter about him.
"Not accident, then," he muttered as he stood there.
"Not just luck. I worried about that, but in the end gave it
little credence. Now I see that I was wrong. You think
you've won, don't you? You think you've beaten me?" He
looked up at the ladder. Snooth stood on it holding the
original container of medicine. Zancresta had been so busy
watching Jon-Tom that he hadn't seen the proprietress
switch it for the smoke bomb.
"You all think you've beaten me. Well, you haven't.
Not Zancresta, you haven't. Because you see, I came
prepared to deal with every possibility, no matter how
remote or unlikely. Yes, I even came prepared to deal with
the chance that this stripling spellsinger might possess
some small smidgen of talent."
270
Alan Dean Foster
"Go ahead and try something." Jon-Tom felt ten feet
tall. He could feel the power surging inside him, could feel
the music fighting to get out. His fingers tingled and the
duar was like a third arm. He was riding high, on the same
kind of high the stars got when they sang in front of
thousands in the big halls and arenas. He stopped just short
of levitating.
"Come on, Zancresta," he taunted the sorcerer, "trot
out anything you can think of, bring forth all your nasti-
ness! I've got a song for every one of 'em, and when
you're finished"—he was already humming silently the last
song he planned to sing this day—"when you're finished,
Jalwar-Zancresta, I've got a final riff for you."
The ferret pursed his lips and shook his head sadiy.
"You poor, simple, unwilling immigrant, do you think I'm
so easily beaten? I know a hundred powerful conjurations
to throw at you, remember a thousand curses. But you are