Well-Tempered Clavicle

  Go opened his mouth to protest, but she took a deeper breath, fastening him in place. She beckoned Picka forward.

  Go saw him. “What mischief is this?” he demanded. “I’m a musician, not an exorcist.”

  “Play a tune,” Dawn murmured.

  Picka quickly unlimbered his clavicles and played “Ghost of Tom.”

  Go’s jaw dropped slightly. “Now, that’s new! His own ribs!”

  “He can do it well,” Dawn said.

  “I doubt he knows the first thing about real music, let alone the second thing.”

  “Play the summoning music,” Dawn said.

  Picka played it.

  Go nodded. “That’s well beyond the first thing,” he admitted. “Where did he learn that?”

  “From Piper the Music Monster,” Dawn said.

  “Oh, bleep! We don’t want that creature here.”

  “Precisely,” Dawn said. “The monster wants to catch, tame, and marry me. I need you to train Picka Bone here so that he can fend off that attack. Can you do that?”

  “Only the finest musician in Xanth could do that. The Music Monster is a legend. An ill one.”

  “Then make Picka the best,” Dawn said.

  “You have no idea what you’re asking! It would take years, if the skeleton even had the potential.”

  “Days,” Dawn said. “We need it in days.”

  “Impossible! The very notion—” He paused, because Dawn had taken a really deep breath. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Dawn was a Sorceress, but Picka realized that she had drawn on a different type of magic to persuade the musician. She was mistress of the art of being female.

  And so, in due course, the four of them were in Go’s house demonstrating their music, while he considered options. He grudgingly acknowledged that Picka had potential, after Picka accurately played all tunes Go tried. Go’s way of making music was interesting: he could evoke it from anything, literally. He could tap the floor, and it resonated musically. He could tap his fingers against the wall, and music emanated. He could tap his own teeth, and they played notes, much in the matter of Picka’s ribs. He could even wave his hands through the air, and sustained notes sounded. He was good at it, very good. He was, in fact, a master musician. But Picka matched anything he produced, after hearing it once.

  “I am impressed. But whether it is enough, I doubt,” Go said. “Your opponent is the most formidable creature I know of; he’s had many years to achieve his potential.”

  Picka privately agreed with him, but Dawn didn’t. “Why not?” she asked. “Picka learns rapidly.”

  “Because I can take him only up to my level, if he is capable of reaching it,” Go said seriously. “But the monster is beyond that level. The monster is Xanth’s finest musician. Neither I nor anyone else here can match him. So the task may be hopeless.”

  “It can’t be hopeless,” Dawn said, “because otherwise I will have to marry the monster.”

  “Your reasoning is understandable,” Go said, “but not logical.”

  Picka agreed with him again. The man was sensible as well as being an excellent musician. Their case was hopeless.

  “Teach him what you can,” Dawn said firmly.

  “But there is not time to do more than barely acquaint him with the techniques, let alone enable him to practice enough to become proficient with them.”

  She leaned forward persuasively. Her blouse was coincidentally loose at the top. “Please.”

  “I will do what I can,” Go repeated, his eyeballs sweating.

  Picka saw that Dawn knew everything about GoDemon, so understood exactly how to manage him. She was managing Picka similarly, despite not being able to use her knowing magic on him.

  * * *

  That evening, after Go’s class was through, he worked with Picka. The other members of the group were out setting up a suitable place to camp inconspicuously. “You do have significant potential,” he said quietly, “but I would not be doing this if it were not for your friend’s persuasion.”

  “I know,” Picka agreed. “It is hard to say no to a princess.”

  “So she is the princess. I wondered. She certainly has a touch managing people.”

  “She does,” Picka agreed.

  “First, you need to know chords—that’s several notes played together. You have been playing a single note at a time, and while that is perfectly adequate for most musical purposes, it will not suffice against the Music Monster’s massive chords. He can play any number of notes together.”

  “He can,” Picka agreed. “But I have just my two clavicles.”

  “However, each clavicle has two ends. You can strike with both ends simultaneously to make chords. Try it.”

  Picka tried it. He lost his grip and a clavicle dropped to the floor.

  “Like this.” Go took a stick of similar size, held it in the middle, and struck two books simultaneously. They rang with two different notes.

  Picka tried again. This time he managed to strike two ribs together without dropping the stick. He could do it, but knew that it would indeed take time to do it well.

  “I regret that we have not the time to rehearse you in this aspect,” Go said. “But you can do that on your own. The next thing to practice is parts.”

  “Parts?”

  “A piece of music normally has four parts, or voices: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Your group has done some of that, with a different person taking each part.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a nice effect.”

  “You must learn to do the four parts yourself.”

  Picka stared at him, knowing that if he had had eyes, they would have been wide. “I don’t think I—”

  “Like this.” Go took his two sticks and stood before a row of books. He used the two ends of the two sticks, striking four notes at a time. The sticks almost seemed to whirl in his hands as he played four-part melodies simultaneously. It was beautiful.

  Picka was amazed. “And you are not Xanth’s finest musician?”

  “Not,” Go agreed. “That honor belongs to the Music Monster, as I said before. Now you have demonstrated the ability to play anything after hearing it once. Play this.”

  Picka tried. Had he been fleshly he would have been sweating, because this was the most difficult musical challenge he had faced. But to his faint surprise, he managed it. Not nearly as well as Go’s version, but adequate.

  Go nodded. “Only my top students can do that, and none of them succeeded on the first attempt. You are remarkable.”

  “I wasn’t sure I could,” Picka admitted. “And I didn’t do it well.”

  “The fact that you did it at all bodes well for your future as a musician. Again, you must practice on your own time. Learn the individual parts of each song, play them separately, then play them together. Only when you can do any four-part harmony well will you be able to even think of rivaling the monster.” He paused, considering. “But you just might.”

  “I will practice,” Picka promised.

  “Now the kill-music, as we call it. This is dangerous to others, so you must use it with extreme caution.”

  “I know. I practiced it yesterday, and a member of our party fell down.”

  “Precisely. The monster doesn’t care whom he harms, but you must care. The best you can do is learn to match the monster’s skill in this respect. That will block his ability but not defeat him. You can defeat him only by becoming a superior musician.”

  “I have encountered him. I don’t think I’ll ever be that good.”

  “You love the princess?”

  “I do,” Picka confessed. “Though she is not my type, nor I hers.”

  “Then you will do what is necessary to accomplish your purpose. If it is possible.”

  “Yes.”

  “She will see that you do.”

  “Yes.”

  Go drilled him on summoning, pacifying, stunning, and repelling music. Picka had not encountered the last before, but appreciated its advant
age. It meant that if any living creature menaced their party, he would be able to drive it away musically. That could be as useful a defense as a stink horn, and less smelly.

  “There is also the opposite of negative music,” GoDemon said. “That is healing music. That can be very good, when the need arises.” He taught Picka the healing theme. Picka practiced it, appreciating its value, though at the moment he had no need of it.

  “One more thing,” Go said. “There is an aspect that perhaps only I know about, and I do not use it, because it is dangerous. But I suspect you will need it.”

  “I need anything I can get,” Picka said.

  “Most varieties of kill-music are emotional in nature, generating attraction, fear, avoidance, and so on. They work only on living, feeling creatures, and have no effect on inanimate things. But one type does. This one can weaken the bonds of matter itself, causing collapse. Practice it only well away from ordinary things, and use it only when the need is dire.”

  “Why would I want to make anything collapse?”

  “I hope you will never want to. But I will teach you the theme. What you do with it will be your own responsibility.”

  Go took him out back, into a separate enclosed garden area. He set up a block of stone on a wood table. Then he stroked the wood to evoke an eerie music.

  The stone cracked, fractured, and dissolved into sand. The wooden table was unaffected, being organic.

  Picka tried it on another stone, copying the theme. It cracked, but did not disintegrate. “I don’t seem to have it, quite,” he said, disappointed.

  “You have it, Picka. You simply need practice to build up your proficiency with it. Remember: far from anything you value. This theme is dangerous, because it can bring down a stone house, or theoretically a mountain.”

  “I will.” Picka could see that this was a singularly potent type of music. “Thank you.”

  “Now I have informed you what you need to accomplish,” Go said. “You will practice on your own, and with luck and application succeed in becoming the best that you can be. You no longer need my advice.”

  “But I do!” Picka protested. “You have shown me techniques that I never imagined before.”

  “Yes. But you can do it by yourself, in time. And you must do it far from here. I cannot afford to help you further.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Princess Dawn is staying close to you, and the monster is stalking her. If your party remains here any length of time, the monster will come. We do not want that. It would be great mischief.”

  Ah. “Yes, Piper will come. He travels slower than we do, but he is determined.”

  “So you understand why we must be promptly rid of you.”

  “I understand,” Picka agreed.

  15

  BATTLE

  “So that is why we must depart first thing in the morning,” Picka told the others.

  “I will persuade GoDemon to relent,” Dawn said.

  “No, he is correct. Piper will come, and it could be great harm for the town. We must not inflict this on it. Go has taught me what I need to know; I can practice it anywhere. We must leave.”

  Dawn sighed. “Morning,” she agreed reluctantly.

  They were camped in a town park, in a section not normally visited because stench puffers, related to stink horns, grew there. It didn’t smell too bad as long as no one stepped on a puffer. They were careful not to.

  They did not practice their music that night, because they were in the invisible handbag and the natives would wonder if music seemed to come from nowhere. Instead Dawn, Granola, and the pets ate their meals, and did their attendant natural functions in another section of the park. The business of constantly eating and eliminating seemed botheringly inconvenient to the skeletons, but that was one of the penalties of life.

  As they returned, a man did pass their way. “May I help you?” he inquired. “I am Mike. My talent is to make any rolling thing come up the way you want it. Such as dice.”

  “Can you make a gooey sliding thing go away?” Picka asked.

  “Sorry, no.”

  “We are sorry, then; you can’t help us.”

  Mike walked on, disappointed. “Too bad the monster doesn’t roll,” Dawn said. “We could make him come up upside down, and jam his pipes in the dirt.”

  Then they settled down in the handbag. Skully and Joy’nt interlocked bones, the pets curled up or perched, and Dawn had Picka form a close circle with his arms so that she could rest her head on it. Granola slept sitting, as was her custom.

  Woofer woke in the night. “Woof,” he woofed quietly.

  “You smell something?” Picka asked, not disturbing Dawn from her slumber.

  “Meow,” Midrange said.

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” Joy’nt said. “We can’t translate as well as Dawn can, but something’s up.”

  “Can you fly up and check it, Tweeter?” Picka asked.

  “Tweet,” the bird agreed, and flew up into the moonlit night.

  “Maybe it’s just a stray Rapper passing by,” Joy’nt said.

  “Woof,” Woofer said negatively.

  Tweeter returned. “Tweet!!”

  Dawn woke. “The monster!” she exclaimed. “Tweeter, wake Granola. We have to get out of here.”

  Tweeter started to fly up again, but then fell back into the handbag, stunned. He landed beside Woofer, whose head had dropped to his paws. Midrange was also still.

  “Bleep,” Dawn whispered. “I am almost paralyzed.”

  Now they heard the distant music. Piper was coming here, and using his stun music to prevent their escape. Tweeter couldn’t fly, Woofer and Midrange couldn’t run, and Granola would be unable to stand.

  “It is up to us to stop him,” Picka said. “We skeletons are the only ones who can move.”

  “We’ll go out and take him on,” Skully agreed.

  “Be careful,” Dawn whispered. Picka realized that it wasn’t because she was trying to be quiet, but because it was all the strength she could summon.

  “We will,” he assured her. Then the three of them climbed out of the handbag and went to face the music.

  Now they heard music from GoDemon’s house. The musician was using his ability to nullify the monster’s sound.

  They hurried to the house just as Go emerged. “He’s coming,” Picka said. “Dawn can’t move.”

  “Can you carry her?” Go asked.

  Picka hadn’t thought of that. “I could. We skeletons are magically strong. But the monster’s already here, and would follow us through the town. I think we simply have to fight him.”

  “Easier said than done,” Go said grimly. “You try to fend him off. I’ll alert the townsmen.” He hurried away, rapping on his own clothing to make defensive music.

  By this time it was clear where Piper was: sliding in from the east. He wasn’t trying to conceal himself; he was simply advancing, using his music to stun the natives so they couldn’t resist. Maybe he expected to nab Dawn before anyone realized, and carry her away before effective resistance materialized.

  But the pets had sensed him coming, giving a little bit of warning. Not much, but maybe enough.

  Picka, Joy’nt and Skully advanced three abreast to tackle the monster. Piper would have to pass them to reach Dawn, and they would not allow that.

  “Bet we need more than just our bones,” Skully said. “We know we can’t stop him physically.”

  “I hope to stop him musically,” Picka said. “The best I can hope for is to slow him. If you see he is going to get by, run to carry Dawn away from here. She’s what he’s after.”

  The monster hove into sight. It was dark, but the skeletons could see well enough. Maybe Piper had not thought of that aspect.

  “Turn slightly left. We’re getting close.”

  The dark form veered slightly left, orienting more accurately on Dawn.

  “Pundora!” Joy’nt said. “Bleep.”

  Picka got an idea that fl
ashed momentarily over his skull. “If we can get her away from him, he’ll be much less effective.”

  “We’ll do it,” Skully said. “Cover us.”

  Picka played stun music directed at the monster. That got Piper’s attention. His antenna aimed at Picka. Picka’s ability might not match that of the monster, but it could not be ignored.

  Skully and Joy’nt ran to either side, avoiding detection. Then they made a coordinated charge in from those sides. “Haaa!” Joy’nt shrieked, charging from her side, coming right up to the monster’s fringe, waving her arm bones.

  “Bleep!” Pundora said. “It’s those other bones. Ignore them.”

  Picka continued playing his stun music, covering the action with the firepower of his mean theme. Piper shook it off, but it was an obvious distraction. Maybe like that of a hornet buzzing a man whose hands were occupied.

  Skully leaped in from the other side. He stepped into the monster’s jellylike flesh, reached out, and grabbed Pundora, who had been watching Joy’nt. “Eeeek!” she screamed, in a perfect emulation of a distressed maiden.

  Skully lifted her high and slogged on through the monster’s substance. In two and a half moments he came out the other side, beside Joy’nt. He ran on, carrying the struggling woman.

  “Bleep!” Pundora cried, more outraged than frightened. “Unhand me, you ridiculous spook!”

  “Give me a kiss, you luscious nymph,” Skully replied, putting his skull toward her face.

  “You pervert!” she screamed. “You’re a bleeping skeleton!”

  “And you’re a lovely female pun. Come on, you know I’m more your type than the monster is.”

  Pundora puffed up like a balloon, but was so annoyed that she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Joy’nt ran alongside them, not trying to conceal her amusement. She knew Skully had no interest in Pundora, and was just trying to make her so mad that she could not decide on any effective counter. He seemed to be succeeding.

  Meanwhile Piper was indeed disoriented. He paused in place, barely fending off Picka’s music. He could think for himself, and had done so for a long time, but had evidently become accustomed to Pundora’s initiative. Should he follow her, or continue with his original objective?