The Warlock Rock (14 page)

"Art thou not indeed?"

"The term syncopated refers to unexpected accents in the rhythm pattern, Geoffrey," Fess put in. "Such accents usually come on downbeats; in syncopation, they come on upbeats, or in between beats."

"What beat is this thou dost speak of?" Magnus demanded.

"The intervals of time between notes," Fess explained. "When a note sounds during what we expect to be a silence, we say it is syncopated."

"Why, that is the source of its excitement!" Cordelia cried. " 'Tis the surprise of it, that it comes when we do not expect!"

Her dance had grown considerably, in scope if not in complexity.

"Is't a jig or a reel?" Geoffrey wondered, his eyes on her feet.

" 'Tis neither, brother."

"Yet to watch it, doth make me to reel." Magnus turned away, with determination. "Come, my sibs! Let us seek further!"

"Why must the music change so, and so quickly?" Gregory's brow was furrowed in thought. "Was not the first form of it good enough?"

"A pertinent question," Fess argued, "but one which we lack data to resolve. Let us keep it open, Gregory."

Magnus halted, looking down. "Mayhap we have found thy data, Fess."

"Of what do you speak?" The horse halted, and the children gathered round. A stone sat on the ground, vibrating with the loudness of the sounds it blared out.

"What manner of music is this?" Magnus demanded.

"Why," said the rock, " 'tis but entertainment."

"It doth glisten," Cordelia murmured.

Geoffrey frowned. "Is't wet?" He reached out to touch it.

"Geoffrey, no!" Fess cried, and the boy, from long experience with Fess, halted. "An thou sayest it, I'll stay. I've ne'e'er known thy judgment to be false. Yet what need for caution dost thou see?"

"A rock that glistens when no water is near, is suspect," Fess explained. "I mistrust the nature of its moisture."

"Oh, 'tis naught of evil!" Cordelia scoffed. "Art thou, rock?"
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"Nay," the rock answered, and the children started, for the rock now spoke by modulating the strains of its music. " 'Tis but entertainment."

Gregory cocked his head, studying the sound. "This is yet a different sort of sound that it doth give."

"Perhaps a minor variation…" Fess allowed.

"Nay, 'tis truly new!" Cordelia tried to match both beat and bray with her feet, failed, and had to writhe her body to fit both. She gyrated, crying, " 'Tis harsh, but 'tis filled with verve!" Magnus stared at her, shaken by her sinuous movements.

Geoffrey shook his head, dissatisfied. " 'Tis not a proper sound. Its beat is too uneven."

"'Tis oddly structured, in truth." But Gregory was beginning to look interested. "Nay, I sense some interlocking between two sorts of counts…"

"It is employing two different time signatures in the same piece," Fess said briskly. "Surely that is elementary enough."

"Why, so it is!" Gregory cried. "How ingenious!"

"Largely instinctive, I fear," Fess demurred.

"And the tune! Note how the strains approach one another, till the two notes are almost one, yet not quite! Anon they strengthen one another; anon they war!"

"Yes; the product of their phases is termed a beat frequency, Gregory. Surely you cannot acclaim a lack of skill as ingenuity…"

"Can we not, if they do it a-purpose?" Cordelia countered.

"I mislike it." Geoffrey started to reach for the stone again. "Let us hurl it far from us."

"No, Geoffrey! I beg you, before you touch it, to perform a simple test!" Reluctantly, the boy straightened. "What test is this?"

"An acid test. Reach in my saddlebag, and take out the environmental kit." Frowning, Geoffrey reached up, rummaged, and came up with a metal box.

"Open it," Fess said, "and take out the tube filled with blue slips."

"The litmus paper?" Gregory was surprised. "What dost thou think it to be, Fess?" Geoffrey laid the box on the ground, lifted the lid, and took out a clear plastic tube. "Shall I take a strip of it?"

"Do, and touch it to the rock."

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Geoffrey pulled out the litmus and reached out to touch; the stone giggled. The paper turned bright pink.

Then it began to smoke, darkening; a hole appeared and spread. Geoffrey dropped it with an oath, just before the whole strip of paper disappeared, leaving only a fume behind.

"What was it?" Cordelia whispered, shocked.

"The rock is coated with acid," Fess explained. "I suspect that it exudes the fluid. Put the kit away, Geoffrey."

"Aye, Fess." Geoffrey bent to stopper the tube and put it back in the box. "And I thank thee. Would my skin have burned had I touched that rock?"

"I do not doubt it… Yes, back in my saddlebag, that is correct."

"Yet what are we to do with this thing?" Magnus looked at the stone. "We cannot leave it here, to eat through any living creature that doth chance to wander by."

Cordelia shuddered.

Fess looked up, nostrils catching the breeze—and feeding it to molecular analyzers. "I detect a familiar aroma… Geoffrey, look beyond those trees."

Geoffrey stepped over. "I see a small pit, perhaps a yard across, filled with some white powder."

"It is alkali; I know it by the aroma. The problem is solved, at least in this instance. Geoffrey, take a fallen stick and bat the stone into the pit."

Geoffrey turned, coming back, stooped, and came up with a four-foot branch. He took his stance by the stone and swung the stick up. As it swooped down, the stone saw, and in alarm, shrilled, "Do not knock the rock!" But Geoffrey had too much momentum, and wasn't about to stop anyway; the end of the stick connected with the stone, and it flew through the air, emitting a keening drone, to land in a puff of powder.

"Well aimed, Geoffrey," Fess approved.

But the boy was staring at his accomplishment. "What doth happen to it?" The rock was drying out and, as they watched, gained an odd, crinkled texture, with here and there a glint of reflected light. The music changed, too, gaining a new sort of piercing twang.

"Its surface has undergone a chemical change," Fess explained. "It exuded acid—but you sent it into a pit of alkali, which is a base."

"Then I have scored it with a base hit?"

"And bases and acids combine to produce salts!" Gregory said. "But why doth it glisten so, Fess?"

"Presumably this alkali was a compound of one of the heavier elements, children—or perhaps even the
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acid itself was. In any event, the salt is metallic."

"Aye—there is something of that in the sound." Cordelia cocked her head to the side, listening.

"But how could a soft rock turn into an acid rock?" Gregory wondered.

"An excellent question, Gregory—and one which I am sure we will find answered as we journey farther west." Fess turned his back on the alkali pit. "Come, young friends. I confess I have grown curious as to the manner of the transformation, for it is one I have never seen on Gramarye before."

"Aye!" Cordelia skipped to join him. "That is the wonder of it—that it is so new!" Her brothers fell in behind her with varying degrees of eagerness, and marched away, following their equine guide.

Behind them, the alkali pit emitted a steady stream of sound, growing harsher and harsher as the rock hardened.

Suddenly, with a sharp report, two rocks sprang out of the pit, sailing away eastward. They flew in long flat arcs, ninety degrees apart, and when they came to earth, their music was louder.

The day was waning as they came to a riverbank. Cordelia sank down. "Let us stay the night here, Fess, I pray thee! For I'm overborne with the toils of this day, and must rest!" Fess tested the breeze with electronic sensors. "Not here, young friends, for the trees grow too close to the edge of the water. Only a little farther, I pray you."

"Courage, sister." Magnus extended a hand. "Tis only a little way. Lean thou on mine arm."

"Oh, I can bear mine own weight." Cordelia caught his hand and pulled herself upright. " 'Tis only the burden of all the things we've seen that doth weigh on me."

"On me, also," Gregory said.

"Aye," said Geoffrey, "yet thou art wearied by efforts other than ours, brother." He forced himself to stand straight. Together, they turned to follow the black horse, whose outline was beginning to be obscured by the dusk.

Gregory tried to blink away the sleepiness. "How dost thou mean, effort other than thine?"

"Why," said Geoffrey, "I am wearied by marching or battle, but thou art wearied by striving to comprehend anything that confounds thee."

"Everything is comprehensible," Gregory muttered. " Tis only a matter of striving, until it comes clear."

"True," said Fess. "Some problems, however, require generations of striving."
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"Well, true," the little boy admitted. "Yet such riddles as those, I can tell apart in a few hours' time. 'Tis the ones for which I've all the knowledge I should need that confound me."

"I think we have not yet found all that we require." Magnus clasped his brother round the shoulder—and helped hold him up. "I, too, am worn not only with marching, but also with striving to understand."

"Riddle-me-ree, riddle-me-rune!" Cordelia sighed. "And I am wearied with seeking to riddle it out."

" 'Tis the bizarre folk we've seen, in a bazaar of sound," Magnus protested.

"And with a rack of bizarre behaviors." Geoffrey shook his head. "I ken it not." Gregory plodded ahead, fighting to keep his eyes open. "Wherefore doth the music change so oft? Is not one form enough?"

"Or doth it truly change?" Magnus countered. " 'Tis not so great a transformation, when all's said and done. Is it truly so, or is it only as we hear it?"

"Oh, be done!" Geoffrey said, exasperated. "Dost thou say all life's but a dream?"

"Nay, then, do not wake me!" Cordelia stopped, gazing ahead. "For yonder lies a web of gossamer that no daylight mortal could sustain!"

The river widened into a small lake, overhung by willows. The rest of the forest drew back, leaving a little meadow between the bank and the forest, and the current slowed, leaving room for a great abundance of water plants. The evening mist blended outlines, and the gathering dusk made the landscape indeed appear to be something out of a dream.

"Let us rest now, I prithee." Cordelia sank into the soft meadow grass.

"Yes—this location would be appropriate," Fess said. "Boys, gather wood."

"Aye—directly, Fess." But Gregory was near to collapse, leaning back against Big Brother's knee.

"He is done," Magnus said gently.

"Nay!" Gregory struggled back upright, forcing himself to stay awake. "I am as able as any!" He looked up at the lake. "What are these flowers, Fess?"

"Some are water lilies, Gregory, but most are lotuses."

"Lotuses?" Magnus repeated. "I have ne'er seen their like before."

"We have never been so far to the west, brother, either," Cordelia reminded. Magnus felt a weight against his leg, and looked down to see that Gregory had succumbed to sleepiness after all. He stretched his little brother out in the soft grass, with a smile of gentle amusement. "I shall gather wood, Fess. Sister, do thou…" He stopped, seeing Cordelia's lifted head. "What do you see?"

"Naught," she said, "yet I do hear yet another sort of music."
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Magnus cocked his head, listening. After a few minutes, he said, "I can make out some hint of it."

"And I." Geoffrey wrinkled his nose. "Wherefore must it ever transform?"

"I too hear it," Fess said, and of course that decided the issue. Around the curve of the river, lights came into view, seeming to float on the water. One single light drifted up higher.

"What manner of thing is this?" Cordelia wondered.

As the music came closer, they could see that the lights were campfires, with young people grouped around them, talking and laughing—and growing more intimate. Cordelia gaped in surprise, then glanced anxiously at her little brother, but he was sound asleep.

"How now!" Geoffrey said in wonder. "Do they float upon the water?"

"No, Geoffrey," Fess assured him, "they have rafts." And rafts there were, a half-dozen or more, each with a handful of young men and women. Above each raft, a single lantern hung on a pole.

"How can they have fires on rafts without burning the logs?" Cordelia wondered.

"Mayhap they brought hearthstones," Geoffrey suggested.

One of the rafts bumped the shore near them, and a soft voice called, "Wherefore dost thou stay lonely?"

"Join us!" invited a bulky young man, beckoning to them with a smile. "Pass a happy hour, and…"

"Join us!" called a young woman's voice. "Leave thy cares to glower, and…"

"Join us!" called a dark-haired young beauty. "In our river bower, and…"

"Join us!" they called all together.

"I misdoubt me…" Magnus began, but Cordelia had no hesitation. "Up, sleepyhead!" She nudged Gregory awake. "Here are they who will spare us a long day's march on the morrow!"

"Nay," Geoffrey protested, "for we know not their intentions…" But Cordelia had already set foot on the raft, and what could he do but follow?

"I beg you, young friends, do not!" Fess's voice said inside their heads. "You must not put yourself at the mercy of people who may be your enemies!"

"Pooh! An we cannot defend ourselves against the likes of these, we are poor fighters indeed," Geoffrey said scornfully. "And if all else fails, we may fly."

Magnus stepped onto the raft. "Come, brother. If there's a trap of some sort, each of us must clasp our
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