The Warlock Rock

Chapter Eleven

They had gone some ways, Magnus on Fess's back, when he suddenly stopped and frowned down at Geoffrey. "What didst thou say?"

Geoffrey gave him a look of exasperation and spoke again, but Magnus could still barely make out the words. "Nay, say!" he demanded, more loudly.

"Why, thou loon, canst thou not hear what's clearly spoke to thee?" Goeffrey yelled.

"Aye, now—and mind whom thou dost call loon! An thou dost speak so softly, how am I to hear thee?"

"I did not speak softly!" Geoffrey bellowed. "I did speak as ever I do!"

"Which is to say, in impatience," Cordelia called. "If aught, Magnus, he doth ever speak too loudly. Wherefore canst thou not hear him today?"

"Wherefore dost thou call out?" Magnus returned.

Cordelia halted, surprised, and stared up at her brothers. "Why, I did call, did I not?"

"Thou didst," Geoffrey assured her loudly. "Wherefore?"

"I know not…"

"Why, for that we'd not have understood her words an she had not," Gregory said reasonably, though at much greater volume than was his custom. "Yet wherefore must she? Doth the air swallow our words?"

They all looked at one another, confounded, trying to puzzle it out.

Then, suddenly, each of them was struck with a subtle sense of wrongness. Geoffrey looked up. "Summat hath changed."

"Aye." Cordelia glanced about her, brows knit. "What is it?"

Magnus eyed the trees around them with suspicion.

Then Geoffrey said, "The music hath stopped."

They turned to him, eyes wide. "Why, so it hath!" Cordelia exclaimed.

With a sudden, jangling chord, all the rocks around them began emitting music again.

Gregory winced and clasped his hands over his ears. "That is why we shouted so! The music had grown so loud, it had drowned out our voices!"

"So it would seem." Cordelia smiled, head tilted to the side as she nodded with the beat. "Yet 'tis pleasant withal."

"As thou wilt have it, sister…"

"As she will or will not!" Magnus called. " 'Tis all about us; we can go to no place where it is not. Yet wherefore hath it grown so much louder?"

"Belike because there are so many more rocks here," Geoffrey suggested.

"Mayhap." But Magnus seemed unconvinced.

"Yet why did I not perceive that it had grown louder, till it ceased?" Cordelia wondered.

"And why did it cease?" Geoffrey demanded.

"For that all the rocks do give off the same sound," Gregory explained, "and the tune paused for a brief time."

"Aye, then would it yield silence." Magnus nodded slowly. "And as we have come west, the number of rocks making music hath increased, thus yielding louder sound."

"Yet so slowly that we did not notice!" Geoffrey agreed. "Thou hast it!"

But Gregory still looked doubtful. "There would be some such increase, aye—yet not so much as this."

"Gregory is right," Fess declared. "The proportion of rocks to decibels is not by itself enough to account for so great an increase in emitted sound."

"Then what else?" Cordelia demanded.

"Why, the music itself hath grown louder, sister," Gregory said, spreading his hands. " 'Tis the only other source of gain."

They looked at one another, astonished.

"Assuredly," Magnus said. "What else, indeed?"

"And now I bethink me, there's some other difference in the music." Geoffrey tapped his foot impatiently. "What is it?"

"Thou dost tap thy toe in time with the music, brother," Gregory pointed out.

Geoffrey stared at his toe, astonished. "Surely not! What dost thou take me for, manikin!"

"My brother," Gregory answered, "who hath ever hearkened to the soldier's drum."

"Aye…" Geoffrey was absorbed in the music, actually listening to it, for once. "Thou hast it aright—there are drums, though of divers kinds."

"More than there were," Cordelia agreed.

"Aye, and a scratching, raucous note to the melody that was not there aforetime," Magnus added.

"If you must call it melody," Fess said, with mechanical dry ness.

"Aye, assuredly 'tis melody!" Cordelia blazed on the instant. "The strain doth rise and fall, doth it not?"

"A strain indeed. It varies by no more than six notes, and uses only four of them. Yet I must admit, it is technically a melody."

"Oh, what matter is it, when the drums, and the deep notes, have so much life in them?" Cordelia's eyes lit, and she began to move her feet in the patterns of a dance. What dance is that?" Geoffrey said, perplexed.

"I'll tell thee when I've finished the crafting of it."

"The rhythmic patterns have grown more complex," Fess agree, "and some are syncopated."

"Sink and pay?" Geoffrey asked. "What meaning hath that?"

"Nay, sink thy pate!" Magnus aimed a slap at his head. "Dost not know the words speak of offbeats?"

Geoffrey stepped nimbly back from the blow, leaped, and tagged Magnus, calling, "None so off the beat as thou! What matters it, when the beat is only for marching?"

"Why, when it is for dancing!" Cordelia moved lightly on her feet, her steps becoming more certain.

Magnus eyed her askance. "Wilt thou dance, when thou wert so lately compelled to?"

"Aye, for now I'm not."

"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?"

"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."

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 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.