Read Online Chorus Skating by Alan Dean Foster - Free Book Online

diversity of othermores. Splashing through the cold, shallow stream at the bottom, they started grudgingly up the other side.
    â€œClothahump thinks that it’s after something. Whatever that might be, it evidently needs the help of others to accomplish its goal.”
    â€œSo why us?”
    â€œMaybe it senses that I have sorcerous capabilities. Beyond that you’d have to ask Clothahump. Perhaps it has a problem resolving itself, musically speaking. Maybe it just wants some company. I’ve always wondered if music remains music when there’s no one around to hear it.”
    â€œOh, no!” As they reached the crest of the next ridge, Mudge drew back from his friend. “I know where that sort o’ philosophical shatscat leads, and I ain’t ’avin’ none o’ it!”
    They started down the other side. To no one’s surprise, its base formed in the bank of yet another stream, which, like the dozens already encountered and traversed, also had to be crossed. Just as the slope on its far side had to be climbed. Beyond there doubtless lay other ravines, other streams, other slopes.
    Mudge was eager for any change in the terrain. A sheer cliff, an impassable chasm: anything, so long as it was different. While humans tended to find consistency in their surroundings reassuring, a lack of variety made otters irritable.
    While the rocky forest was less than comforting, at least they hadn’t encountered any threatening inhabitants. No poisonous plants or befanged animals crossed their path. The temperature at night was brisk but tolerable, and the profusion of shade ensured cool if not exactly comfortable hiking during the day. As for the numerous streams, they offered barriers that were damp but not impassable, and their presence obviated the need to carry more than a few swallows of water.
    Occasionally Jon-Tom looked longingly to the west. An uncertain number of leagues in that direction lay the Lake District and the comely cities of Wrounipai and Quasequa, places he and Mudge knew well. They would be remembered and welcomed there.
    But the music continued to flow resolutely southward, into country arduous and unknown, and showed no sign of swerving to pass anywhere near those accommodating communities.
    There’d better be something to all of this, he found himself thinking. If after having led them all this way the insistent chiming simply and suddenly faded away, not only was he going to be angry, unlike Mudge he wouldn’t have anything to be angry at. Mudge, he knew, could always vent his anger on him.
    More than he would have liked, he found himself thinking of his warm study and comfortable bed back in the familiar home tree. Of Talea’s stimulating presence and noteworthy meals. Almost in spite of herself, she had turned out to be something of a gourmet cook. He mused affectionately on the arguments he and Buncan enjoyed on the days when his son was home from school, and on the little interruptions that spiced his daily routine. He even missed Clothahump’s gruff admonitions and predictably constructive insults.
    He blinked. All that lay many days’ walk behind him. In its place he had to be content with a cloud of cryptic modalities, a brooding if not openly hostile landscape, and an otter who had made the art of complaint a daunting proportion of his life’s work.
    Also, his back hurt.
    What was he doing out here, sleeping on unforgiving ground and eating trail food and forage? What had possessed him? His questing days lay properly in the past, not the present. He was an accomplished member of a highly respected profession, with a reputation that reached across the length and breadth of the Bellwoods. The novelty of traipsing about the unknown Duggakurra in the company of a garrulous otter and a fragment of enigmatic music was beginning to flag.
    It would help if he had someone else to talk to.
    As if reading his state of mind, the music drifted back