back a little, but he thought he could get used to it. He used both hands,
trying to strum the upper strings while plucking in counterpoint at the lower.
Talea sighed, turned away, and started off again, Mudge in tandem and Jon-Tom
bringing up the rear. His heart still hurt more than his feet, but the music
helped. Gradually he discovered how to swing his arm in an arc instead of
straight down in order to follow the curve of bar and strings. Soon he was
reproducing familiar chords, then snatches of song. As always the tranquilizing
sounds made him feel better, lifting his spirits as well as his adrenaline
level.
Some of the songs sounded almost right. But though he tuned and retuned until he
was afraid of breaking the strings or the tuning knobs, he couldn't create the
right melodies. It wasn't the delicate instrument, either, but something else.
He still hadn't discovered how to tune it properly.
It was late afternoon when Talea edged closer to him, listening a while longer
to the almost music he was making before inquiring, with none of her usual
bitterness or sarcasm, "Jon-Tom, are you a spellsinger?"
"Hmmm?" He looked up at her. "A what?"
"A spellsinger." She nodded toward the otter, who was walking a few yards ahead
of them. "Mudge says that the wizard Clothahump brought you into our world
because he thought you were a wizard who could help him in sorceral matters."
"That's right. Unfortunately, I'm in prelaw."
She looked doubtful. "Wizards don't make those kinds of mistakes."
"Well, this one sure did."
"Then you're not..." She eyed him strangely. "A spellsinger is a wizard who can
only make magic through music."
"That's a nice thought." He plucked at the lower strings and al-most-notes
danced with dust motes in the fading daylight. "I wish it were true of me." He
grinned, slightly embarrassed. "I've had a few people tell me that despite my
less than mesmerizing tenor, I can make a little music-magic. But not the kind
you're thinking of."
"How do you know you can't? Maybe Clothahump was right all along."
"This is silly, Talea. I'm no more a magician than I am any other kind of
success. Hell, I'm having a hard enough time trying to play this thing and walk
at the same time, what with that long staff strapped to my back. It keeps trying
to slide free and trip me.
"Besides," he ran his fingers indifferently along the upper strings "I can't
even get this to sound right. I can't play something I can't even tune."
"Have you used all the dutips?" When he looked blank, she indicated the tuning
knobs. He nodded. "And what about the dudeeps?" Again the blank gaze, and this
time he had a surprise.
Set into a recess in the bottom of the instrument were two knobs. He hadn't
noticed them before, having been preoccupied with the strings and the "dutips,"
as she'd called them. He fiddled with the pair. Each somehow contracted tiny
metal and wood slats inside the resonator. One adjusted crude treble, the other
lowered everything a couple of octaves and corresponded very roughly to a bass
modulator. He looked closely at them and then looked again. Instead of the usual
"treble" and "bass," they read "tremble" and "mass."
But they definitely improved the quality of the duar's sound.
"Now you should try," she urged him.
"Try what? What kind of song would you like to hear? I've been through this with
Mudge, so if you want to take the risk of listening to me...."
"I'm not afraid," she replied, misunderstanding him. "Try not for the sound. Try
for the magic. It's not like a wizard as great as Clothahump, even if his powers
are failing, to make such a mistake."
Try for the magic, he thought. Huh... try for the sound. That's what the lead
bass player for a very famous group had once told him. The guy had been higher
than the Pope when Jon-Tom had accidentally run into him in a hall before a
concert playing to twenty thousand. Stuttering, hardly able to talk to so
admired a musician, he'd barely been able to mumble the usual fatuous request
for "advice to a struggling young guitarist."
"Hey, man... you got to try for the sound. Hear? Try for the sound."
That hastily uttered parable had been sufficiently unspecific to stick in his
mind. Jon-Tom had been trying for the sound for years, but he hadn't come close
to finding it. Most would-be musicians never did. Maybe finding the sound was
the difference between the pro and the amateur. Or maybe it was only a matter of
getting too stoked to notice the difference.
Whatthehell.
He fiddled a little longer with the pseudo-treble/bass controls. They certainly
improved the music. Why not play something difficult? Stretch yourself, Jon-Tom.
You've nothing to lose. These two critics can't change your career one way or
t'other. There was only one sound he'd ever hoped to reach for, so he reached.
"Purple haze..." he began, and thereafter, as always, he lost himself in the
music, forgetting the watching Talea, forgetting Mudge, forgetting the place and
time of where he was, forgetting everything except reaching for the sound.
He played as hard as he could on that strange curved instrument. It lifted him,
juiced him with the natural high playing always brought him. As he played it
seemed to him that he could hear the friendly prickling music of his own old
electric guitar. His nerves quivered with the pleasure and his ears rang with
the familiarity of it. He was truly happy, cradling and caressing that strange
instrument, forgetting his surroundings, his troubles, his parents.
A long time later (or maybe it was only a couple of minutes) he became aware
that someone was shaking him. He blinked and stopped playing, the last rough
chord dying away, soaked up by the earth and trees. He blinked at Talea, and she
let loose of his arms, backed away from him a little. She was looking at him
strangely.
Mudge also stood nearby, staring.
"What's going on? Was I that bad?" He felt a little dizzy.
" 'Tis a fine chap you are, foolin' your mate like this," said the otter with a
mixture of awe and irritation. "Forgive me, lad. I'd no idea you'd been toyin'
with me all this time. Don't go too harsh on me. I've only done what I thought
best for you and..."
"Stop that, Mudge. What are you blubbering about?"
"The sounds you made... and something else, spellsinger." He gaped at her.
"You're still trying to fool us, aren't you? Just like you fooled Clothahump.
Look at your duar."
His gaze dropped and he jumped slightly. The last vestiges of a powerful violet
luminescence were slowly fading from the edges of the instrument, slower still
from the lambent metal strings.
"I didn't... I haven't done anything." He shoved at the instrument as though it
might suddenly turn and bite him. The strap kept it seeure around his neck and
it swung back to bounce off his ribs. The club-staff rocked uncomfortably on his
back.
"Try again," Talea whispered. "Reach for the magic again."
It seemed to have grown darker much too fast. Hesitantly (it was only an
instrument, after all) he plucked at the lower strings and strummed again a few
bars of "Purple Haze." Each time he struck a string it emitted that rich violet
glow.
There was something else. The music was different. Cold as water from a mountain
tarn, rough as a file's rasp. It set a fire in the head like white lightning and
sent goosebumps down his arms. Bits of thought rattled around like ball bearings
inside his skull.
My oh, but that was a fine sound!
He tried again, more confidently now. Out came the proper chords, with a power