eerie chords correctly. He need not have worried. That
endlessly responsive, marvelously versatile instrument du-
plicated the sounds he drew from memory with perfect
fidelity, amplifying them so that they filled the chamber
around him. It was a strange, quavering moan, a galvaniz-
ing cross between an alien bass fiddle being played by
something with twelve hands and the snore of a sleeping
brontosaurus. Only one man had ever made sounds quite
like that before, and Jon-Tom strained hands and lips to
reproduce them.
“If you can just get your mind together,” he crooned to
the djinn, “and come over to me, we’ll watch the sunrise
together, from the bottom of the sea.”
The words and sounds made no sense to Roseroar, but
she could sense they were special. Bits and pieces of
broken light began to illuminate the chamber around her.
Gneechees, harbingers of magic, had appeared and were
swarming around Jon-Tom in all their unseeable beauty.
It was a sign the song was working, and it inspired
Jon-Tom to sing harder still. Harun al-Roojinn leaned
forward as if to protest, to question, and hesitated. Behind
the fiery yellow eyes was a first flicker of uncertainty.
Jon-Tom sang on.
“First, have you ever been experienced? Have you ever
been experienced?” The djinn drifted back on nonexistent
heels. His great burning eyes began to glaze over slightly,
as if someone were drawing wax paper across them.
“Well, I have,” Jon-Tom murmured. The notes bounced
off the walls, rang off the ears of the djinn, who seemed to
have acquired a pleasant indifference to those around him.