Title: The Time of the Transference
Author(s): Alan Dean Foster
Release year: 1986
Publisher: Phantasia
Why in Database: After Clothahump had a fair share in the previous volume, here again, the scenes with him are mostly at the beginning and end of the book. It is also the original final volume – it has a clear conclusion for the adventures of the main character. Six years after this book was published, the author published two more volumes, so it’s not quite the end of the series. Below, as standard, only a few sample fragments.
“The wizard sleeps the sleep of the dead and I know what Sorbl sounds like when he’s drunk. This is different, Jon-Tom. Trust me, I know sounds in the night.”
He eyed her longingly for another moment, then turned and slipped from beneath the covers. Winter was loosening its grip reluctantly this year, so he stepped into slippers and a heavy robe. While Clothahump could dimensionally expand the interior of a tree to provide its occupants with spacious living quarters, he had yet to figure out a practical way to heat one without burning the tree itself to the ground.
At four feet he had to stretch to lean over the back of the chair to which Clothahump was tied. He wore a suit of thin chain mail which jangled as he hopped up and down in anger and frustration. Clothahump had retreated completely into his shell. The wizard’s hands, feet and head were not visible. The guinea pig was leaning over the opening in the top of the shell and screaming inside. Ugly scars showed on his neck where the hair had never grown back.
“Come out of there, damn you! I’m tired of talking to a carapace.”
He started to reach inside with a paw, thought better of it and did not. Then he stepped back and nodded to the civet cat. To Jon-Tom’s Horror he saw that the bucket held boiling hot mud, which the cat was preparing to dump down Clothahump’s shell.
The threat was sufficient to induce Clothahump to slowly stick out his head. He squinted in the light, his hexagonal glasses unsteady on his beak. Obviously he and Sorbl had been surprised while sleeping, before either could take any defensive action.
“For the last time, I am telling you to get out while you still have a chance.” Clothahump sniffed disdainfully. “I am the world’s greatest wizard. Tying me to a chair will not prevent me from turning all of you into walking flagons of pain. I will strip the flesh from your bones, slowly and agonizingly. It is only out of the goodness of my heart and out of sympathy for such blatantly ignorant morons as yourselves that I have not done so already!”
Was he going about it all wrong? But all he knew how to do was spellsing. He couldn’t use potions and powders like Clothahump. What was it the wizard was always telling him? “Always keep in mind that magic is a matter of specificity.”
Putting aside his initial anger, Jon-Tom did just that. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t want to consider the matter logically and dispassionately. He wanted to stomp about and yell and shout imprecations. Unfortunately he knew he was doomed to lose from the start. Not only was Clothahump right, the turtle had two hundred and fifty years of debating experience on him.
Author: XYuriTT
