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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
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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.
Mudge slipped around behind Jon-Tom so he could notch an arrow into his
longbow without being seen-and coinci-dentally take cover behind the human's
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lanky form.
Clothahump took a step forward. "I am Clothahump of the Tree, supreme among
all wizards, and I tell you that we can't leave just yet. You know that we
can't."
The wolverine's heavy brows drew together as he struggled to make sense out of
this comment. It occurred to Jon-Tom that this Braglob was completely out of
it. Not that it made him any less dangerous.
If anything, the contrary was true.
"You have been warned!" Braglob waved the ax over his head. "I am master of
the perambulator. I will cause it to turn all of you into pebbles. No, into
tiny crawling things, into worms I can use for fishing. You will know your own
slime."
"You will do nothing of the kind," Clothahump replied with impressive
self-assurance, "or you would have done it already. You have repeatedly made
attempts to prevent us from reaching this place, yet we stand here before you. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]