Soul Music

craftsmen even touches the wood he has to spend two weeks sitting wrapped in a bullock hide in a cave behind a waterfallll.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. It’s traditionall. He has to get his mind pure of allll distractions.”
    “There’s bound to be something else, though,” said Glod. “We’ll buy something. You can’t be a musician without an instrument.”
    “I haven’t got any money,” said Imp.
    Glod slapped him on the back. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve got friends! We’ll help you! Least we can do.”
    “But we all spent everything we had on this meal. There’s no more money,” said Imp.
    “That’s a negative way of looking at it,” said Glod.
    “Wellll, yes. We haven’t got any, see?”
    “I’ll sort out something,” said Glod. “I’m a dwarf. We know about money. Knowing about money is practically my middle name.”
    “That a long middle name.”

    It was almost dark when they reached the shop, which was right opposite the high walls of Unseen University. It looked like the kind of musical instrument emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors.
    “You ever bought anything in here?” said Lias.
    “No…not that I remember,” said Glod.
    “It shut,” said Lias.
    Glod hammered on the door. After a while it opened a crack, just enough to reveal a thin slice of face belonging to an old woman.
    “We want to buy an instrument, ma’am,” said Imp.
    One eye and a slice of mouth looked him up and down.
    “You human?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “All right, then.”
    The shop was lit by a couple of candles. The old woman retired to the safety of the counter, where she watched them very carefully for any signs of murdering her in her bed.
    The trio moved carefully amongst the merchandise. It seemed that the shop had accumulated its stock from unclaimed pledges over the centuries. Musicians were often short of money; it was one definition of a musician. There were battle horns. There were lutes. There were drums.
    “This is junk,” said Imp under his breath.
    Glod blew the dust off a crumhorn and put it to his lips, achieving a sound like the ghost of a refried bean.
    “I reckon there’s a dead mouse in here,” he said, peering into the depths.
    “It was all right before you blew it,” snapped the old woman.
    There was an avalanche of cymbals from the other end of the shop.
    “Sorry,” Lias called out.
    Glod opened the lid of an instrument that was entirely unfamiliar to Imp. It revealed a row of keys; Glod ran his stumpy fingers over them, producing a sequence of sad, tinny notes.
    “What is it?” whispered Imp.
    “A virginal,” said the dwarf.
    “Any good to us?”
    “Shouldn’t think so.”
    Imp straightened up. He felt that he was being watched. The old lady was watching, but there was something else…
    “It’s no use. There’s nothing here,” he said loudly.
    “Hey, what was that?” said Glod.
    “I said there’s—”
    “I heard something.”
    “What?”
    “There it is again.”
    There was a series of crashes and thumps behind them as Lias liberated a double bass from a drift of old music stands and tried to blow down the sharp bit.
    “There was a funny sound when you spoke,” said Glod. “Say something.”
    Imp hesitated as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they’ve been told to ‘say something.’
    “Imp?” he said.
    WHUM-Whum-whum .
    “It came from—”
    WHAA-Whaa-whaa .
    Glod lifted aside a pile of ancient sheet music. There was a musical graveyard behind it, including a skinless drum, a set of Lancre bagpipes without the pipes, and a single maraca, possibly for use by a Zen flamenco dancer.
    And something else.
    The dwarf pulled it out. It looked, vaguely, like a guitar carved out of a piece of ancient wood by a blunt stone chisel. Although dwarfs did not, as a rule, play stringed instruments, Glod knew a guitar when he saw one. They were supposed to be shaped like a woman, but this was only the case if you thought a woman had no legs, a long neck, and too many ears.
    “Imp?” he said.
    “Yes?”
    Whauauaum . The sound had a saw-edged, urgent fringe to it.
    There were twelve strings, but the body of the instrument was solid wood, not at all hollow—it was more or less just a shape to hold the strings.
    “It resonated to your voice,” said Glod.
    “How can—?”
    Whaum-wha