The Warlock Rock

Chapter Fourteen

Back on the shore of the river, the children trudged on.

"We still have not found the magic that maketh the soft rocks exude acid," Gregory reminded.

"I doubt not we'll discover it," Magnus said grimly, "at least, if that one we came upon was not alone among its kind."

"Well, we have found summat." Geoffrey stopped, looking down.

There on a patch of bare earth, a knot of grass was walking.

"What is't?" Cordelia breathed.

" 'Twould seem to be a bunch of dill weed that hath been cut off from its roots," Gregory observed.

"A bob of dill? How came it to walk?"

"How came thy toes to tap?" Geoffrey returned. "This music about us would set the dead to prancing, sister! How much more likely, then, is't for a living thing?"

But Gregory, more practical, observed, " 'Tis a thing of witch-moss."

"I doubt it not," Magnus agreed. "Must not all these music rocks be so?"

"Behold! Tis our beetles again!" Geoffrey exclaimed, pointing.

The others turned to look. The four insects crouched around the circle, almost exactly alike, watching the dill with sharp attention.

"Scarabs," Fess pronounced. "They would seem to be identical with the ones you saw earlier."

"Can they be the same?" Cordelia wondered.

Magnus knit his brows. "How could they have come so far, so fast?"

" 'Tis a wonder if they have." Geoffrey gazed thoughtfully down at the little panorama. "What doth the dill?"

The animated grass was dusting its way to a soft rock that sat at the edge of the bare patch. It reached out with its stem tops to touch the pebble, and froze.

"Doth it have so great a liking for the sound, that it must touch?" Gregory wondered.

A thin curl of lavender spiralled up from the stone.

"What smoke is that?" Gregory asked.

"Mayhap a thing of hurt!" Cordelia caught his arm and yanked him back. "Away, little brother! It might sear thee!"

"Hist! The tone doth harden!" Geoffrey said.

Gregory watched, wide-eyed—for the timbre of the music had indeed changed, to a more brazen sound.

"It doth glisten!" Cordelia breathed.

Sure enough, where the dill touched the surface of the stone, moisture grew and spread, expanding to cover the pebble.

The dill broke contact and turned around toward the scarabs with a flourish, seeming almost boastful.

The scarabs waved their antennae, then scurried away into the grass.

The children sat for a second, taken by surprise. "What do they?" Cordelia breathed.

"Follow!" Geoffrey cried.

The children scattered, each seeking out a scarab.

"Yours has turned northward, Geoffrey," Fess directed, tracking the silver with his radar. "Magnus, yours has turned right… South by southeast, Cordelia… Gre-gory, you have overshot the mark; yours has already stopped."

Gregory slid to a halt, whirled about, and stepped back, eyes on the ground. Then he called out softly, "It hath found a soft rock, Fess."

"So hath mine," Cordelia answered.

"What do they do, children?"

"Mine doth reach out to the rock with its antennae," Gregory called back. "It doth touch the surface."

"Fess!" Cordelia cried. "Moisture doth spread from the beetle to the stone!"

"As doth mine," Magnus called.

"And mine!" Geoffrey echoed.

Four curls of lavender mist rose up from the grass, deepening in color as they spiralled higher.

"Surely it cannot, children!" Fess stepped over to look. "How can silver and silica create acid?"

"Mayhap the silver is only the scarab's shell," Gregory suggested. "Within, their ichor could be acidic."

"Whatever the means," Geoffrey responded, "it doth occur! Dost thou doubt, Fess? Shall I take it up to hurl?"

"No, do not!" the robot said quickly. "We can tell it by its music, children—the rock has indeed turned to acid."

"But what substance can the bobbed dill have spread to the scarabs, that they may use to transform rock itself?" Gregory marvelled.

Geoffrey looked up, brows knit. "Doth the day darken already?"

They looked about.

"It would seem that it doth," Magnus said.

Fess was quiet, analyzing their surroundings with spectrometer and chemical assayers. After a minute, he said, "It is not the sunlight, children, but some localized substance which seems to fill the air."

"The purple mist!" Gregory cried. "It hath risen and spread into a haze!"

Five more curls of lavender rose about the clearing, deepening and adding their mist to the ambience.

"What manner of mist is this?" Gregory wondered.

"Whatever it may be, I do not trust it!" Fess paced forward into the melange of droning, pulsing music. "This springs from no natural chemical reaction, children! Such things cannot happen—and the inference is obvious!"

"Magic," Cordelia breathed.

"Illusion, sent by an enemy," Geoffrey snapped.

"A projected illusion, carried by the rock and strengthened by the beetles," Gregory deduced. "What genius of magic hath concocted this spell?"

"A genius indeed," breathed a husky voice, "if he hath led me to you!"

It was a nymph, coalescing out of the haze, wrapped in a mauve gown of gauzy mist, with long, purple hair that twined about her to hide her secret. She undulated through the air, curling about Magnus.

"A succubus!" Cordelia leaped to her feet in indignation. "Avaunt thee, witch!"

But Magnus was staring, spellbound.

"Be not so hard," a warm masculine voice cajoled. "Let them be, and come to me."

He was a strikingly handsome young man, glad in jerkin and hose of purple, drifting through the air to bow low before Cordelia, to catch and kiss her hand.

"However bad the nymph may be, thou art worse!" Geoffrey's sword whispered out of its scabbard. "Stand away from my sister!"

But the purple man only laughed.

Geoffrey reddened and thrust out his sword to prick the stranger's throat.

The point passed through the skin.

Cordelia cried out in alarm.

Once again the stranger only laughed, and slid on down the blade toward Geoffrey. "Thy sword avails thee naught, foolish lad—for it is but a dream, and I am real."

"Thou liest, foul image!" Geoffrey fairly screamed. "The sword is real—the truest steel!"

"Nay," said the image, " 'tis I am real—for look upon my riches." He turned with a flourish and gestured towards a castle towering above them. The drawbridge was down, the portcullis up, and through the gatehouse, they could see chairs of gold and cups of amethyst, with chests of rubies and sapphires around them.

"All this is real," the young man breathed. "Come in with me."

"And me," the nymph cooed.

"Why, how is this?" Gregory stepped forward, confounded. "How canst thou be real, who art but a dream of purple haze?"

"I?" the stranger laughed. "I am true, I am a man of substance! Thou art my dream, child, and all thy life is but an idle invention of my slumbering brain!"

"This cannot be true!" Gregory argued. "I must exist, for I do think!"

"Thou dost but think that thou dost think," the nymph murmured. " 'Tis all a part of my brother's dream—that thou dost walk, remember, talk, and think."

"But… but…" Gregory sputtered, at a loss to prove his own existence.

"Behold!" The young man turned with another flourish. "Yonder lie what all children wish! I know thy desires, for I did make them!"

On the golden table inside the castle, a huge sugarplum appeared, two feet across if it was an inch.

Gregory's eyes grew big, and he took a mechanical, dragging step forward.

Fess saw the white all around his eyes and knew the agony of soul for what it was. "Do not be deceived, Gregory. You are real, and these riders of the purple haze are only dreams."

"Why, thou firm illusion!" the young man mocked. "How canst thou say that thou art real?"

"Because I am not organic, and cannot be influenced any more by specious arguments than by glamours of mist. I was not born, but made in a factory, and recall every second of five hundred years and more. You have existed for exactly seven minutes, thirty-four seconds… thirty-five, now. And no longer!"

The young man stared, incredulous, then laughed with a harsh and mocking sound.

Fess turned his back on the illusion. "Let us go, children! You are real, and proof against delusions—for you are of the line of d'Armand! Come! Reality awaits!"

He stepped away toward the surrounding forest, not even looking back to see if they were following.

Gregory shivered and whirled about, staring after Fess, then ran to catch up. Geoffrey marched after him, face burning with anger, but obedient to command.

"Away, hussy!" Cordelia caught Magnus's hand. "What, brother! Wilt thou be enslaved by thine own waking dream?"

Magnus shook himself, and turned away from the purple nymph, moving slowly and mechanically, but moving.

"Tis I shall be thy slave," the purple youth purred. "Only stay with me!"

Cordelia wavered, leaning toward his ready embrace.

Magnus's head snapped up as though he'd been slapped. Then his eyes narrowed, and he strode forward to catch Cordelia's wrist. "Why, what a poxy lie is this, that would seek to entrance a maiden with her own longings! Begone, foul seducer! My sister's not for thee!" And to Cordelia, "What—wilt thou not wait for a true love who's truly real? Is not a real man, however flawed, of greater worth to thee than barren dreams?"

"Mayhap not," she murmured, but fell into step with him. "I cannot tell…"

"I can!" Magnus proffered his arm, somehow managing to catch her hand around his biceps without releasing his hold on her wrist. "Come away, fair sister! Come, walk with me… so! Forever, we shall walk together… and thus shall we save one another!"

And so they did, each following the other's movements, step by step, up out of the haze of illusion, back into the light of day.

Before them, their brothers marched, following the robot, whose horse sense could pierce through dreams.

As they caught up, Gregory was saying plaintively, "Yet how can I prove it, Fess? How can I know that I am real?"

"Aye." Geoffrey was scowling. "This Bishop Berkeley that thou dost speak of—was he not right? Does nothing exist if it is not perceived?"

"That is a matter decided some years ago," Fess answered, "if ever it can be." He lashed out with a hoof, and a rock spun through the air, bounced off a tree, and fell to the forest floor—all without missing a beat. "Thus did Dr. Johnson refute Berkeley," Fess replied. "And I submit that, like Dr. Johnson, you, Geoffrey, gave as much evidence as we can have, when you batted the acid rock into the pit."

Gregory perked up. "Why, how is that proof? If 'tis our eyes that are fooled as well as our ears, did we truly see the rock fly through the air, or did we but dream it?"

"'Twas true enough for me," Geoffrey assured him. "The stone did sail through the air; I saw it do so, I felt the shock as the stick hit the rock!"

"That was Doctor Johnson's point when he kicked a cobblestone, Geoffrey."

"Yet his eyes might be deceived as easily as thine ears," Gregory objected.

"And what of his foot?" Geoffrey jeered.

"Yet that too could have been illusion! The sight of the rock flying through the air was only what mine eyes did tell me! It might be as much illusion as that purple castle—for did not mine eyes also tell me of that?"

"Yes," said Fess, "but your senses were distorted when they received that impression, distorted by the purple haze."

"Were they?" Gregory challenged. "How are we to know that?"

"Because I did not see them directly," Fess answered. "I perceived them only at second hand, through your thoughts."

Gregory stopped, eyes losing focus. "Nay, then… Assuredly, they were not there…"

"Yet, Fess, we will not always have you with us," Magnus said.

"I fear not. Remember, then, that Bishop Berkeley's main point holds—we cannot totally prove what is real and what is not; some iota of faith is necessary, even if it is only faith that what we perceive, when our senses are clear, is real."

"Yet how are we to know if it is truly real, or is not!"

"By whether or not it is there when you come out into the light again," Fess said severely, "by whether or not what you see by night is still there in the morning: by your interaction with other objects, and their interaction with you. The cobblestone might have been illusion, but if so, it created a very convincing illusion of flying away from Dr. Johnson's foot. Dr. Johnson may have been an illusion, but I suspect he had a very convincing sense of pain when his toe hit the cobble."

"But we cannot prove…" Gregory let the sentence trail off, not sounding terribly worried anymore.

"Thou dost say that whether it is real or not, it will hurt as though it was," Geoffrey amplified. "My sword may be an illusion, but it will nonetheless spill another illusion's blood."

"You approach the solution. What if you had touched the gleaming rock, even though I bade you not to?"

"Then my illusory hand would have felt illusory agony, and my illusory skin would have rotted as the illusory acid seemed to eat it away," Geoffrey answered, "and my illusory self would liefer not, thank you! Thou mayest burn thine own illusion, an thou dost wish!"

"But then… our whole frame of reference may be illusion…" Gregory ventured, his expression troubled.

"That is the point." Fess nodded. "It is real within our frame. Whether it is ultimately real or not is beside the point; it is pragmatically real. It is the reality you must live with, like it or not."

"I see." Gregory's face cleared. "It may not be ultimate, but it is the only reality we have."

"Even so."

Magnus frowned. "Then the purple lad and lavender lass, they were not real at all?"

"Certes, they were not real!" Cordelia said with a shudder, "and I thank thee for saving me from them, brother."

"As I thank thee, for saving me," Magnus returned. "Yet how can we have needed saving from them, if they were not real?"

"Because they were real illusions," Fess explained. "Be sure, children—illusions can do as much harm as anything else in this world. By clouding your perception of reality, illusions can kill."