"Oh, it is thy music, is it?" Geoffrey breathed.
"Naught but music?" Gregory was still wide-eyed. "What had you to eat?"
"The river provides." Alno reached out and pulled in a lotus as he passed. Looking up, Gregory saw that the others were nibbling the plants, too. He squeezed his eyes shut, then looked up again. "Thou dost say there was no need to puzzle out the sense of the world, and its people?"
"Aye, and what a deal of peace did it bring us!" sighed a redheaded lass.
"Peace indeed, Adele. How blessed an end to all confusion," Wenna agreed.
Orin nodded with slow conviction. "Therein lay our error—in wrestling with the world, in seeking to strive."
"Nay, surely," the dark-haired beauty agreed, "for when we cease to strive, there's an ending to strife."
"But thou dost speak of ceasing to think!"
"Aye," said Johann, "and therein lies tranquility. We ceased to ponder the matter."
"And gained a ponderous peace," Geoffrey murmured.
"But how couldst thou still the workings of thy mind?" Gregory asked.
"By hearkening to the music," Johann explained. "When thou dost think of nothing but its sweet strains, all else doth ebb from thy mind."
"I cannot believe it," Gregory protested. "Attending to music cannot obliterate thought!"
But it can, Fess's voice said inside his head, as concentration on any one notion can dull any other mental activity. And the lotus aids them in this, for it dulls the mind and induces a sense of euphoria. It is, after all, a narcotic.
"Narcotic," Gregory mused. "Doth not the word mean 'deathlike'?"
'Pertaining to death' might be a more accurate definition. It usually refers to a sleeplike state.
"And Sleep is the brother of Death," Gregory murmured.
Johann turned to Cordelia, holding out a lotus. "Come, join our bliss."
"By ceasing to think?" she exclaimed, shocked.
"Aye! Turn off thy mind."
"Relax." Adele gave them all an inviting smile.
"Float downstream with me." Wenna gave Magnus a roguish glance. She leaned back and stretched languorously again, holding out a hand toward Magnus. He gazed at her, fascinated, and Geoffrey stared, too.
"Whether thou canst or no, thou must not!" Gregory seemed near tears. "Thou must needs strive to understand, for all else is false!"
"But what if there's no sense to be found?" Alno said, with a skeptical smile.
"Nay there is, there must be! For why else have we minds?"
There is some sense to that notion, Fess's voice said, for your species evolved intelligence to comprehend its environment. By doing so, it became better able to survive and prosper. If the world were truly random and without sense, the more intelligent person would not be any better fit, and so would not survive.
"Nay, in truth!" Gregory averred. "The sharper mind would be less fit for life—for the world would drive it mad!"
" Tis not so bad as that, little one." Yhrene smiled with sympathy and reached out to him. "The world is as it is; we cannot change it. We can but enjoy it whiles we may."
"But what of the morrow?"
"Tomorrow, we shall yet drift upon the river."
"But all the rivers flow home to the sea!" Gregory insisted. "What wilt thou do when thou art come to the ocean?"
Adele frowned. "Be still, mite!"
"Speak not so to my brother," Cordelia snapped, since it was the kind of thing she might have said herself.
Adele fixed her with a glare and was about to speak, but Johann forestalled her. "When we come to the ocean? Belike we shall float!"
Gregory rolled his eyes up, exasperated. "Nay, but think! What of the barons through whose lands thy river doth flow? Will they leave thee to thy pleasures?"
"Wherefore should we care? We leave them alone."
"Thou mayest leave Life alone, but it shall not always leave thee alone. What shall thou do when it doth once again touch thee?"
"Must we have aught to do with it?" Alno fixed him with a stony stare. "We have that choice. Is there a law that says we must live?"
"There is," Johann said softly, "but how shall they enforce it?"
"Aye! How shall they reach us? We float on the river!"
"Dam the river," Gregory shouted, "and they may!"
Johann waved the notion away with the first signs of exasperation. "Peace, peace! An thou wilt have it, then, there will come a day when we must strive again for an answer! Will that appease thee?"
"Nay," Gregory answered. "Dost thou not see thou must seek the means to deal with that day ere it doth come?"
"Dost thou not see that even the most earnest seeker doth need rest?" Yhrene countered, striving to keep her tone gentle.
Gregory paused, then finally admitted, "Aye. Even our minds need some ease. Yet tell—how long is this rest to be?"
"Oh—a day, a week!" Adele said crossly. "What matter?"
"Why," said Gregory, "so long a rest is a sleep."
"What matters it?" said Yhrene, amused now. "This is the little sleep, not the great one."
Geoffrey shrugged impatiently. "A great sleep, a little death—what difference?"
"Try the Little Death with me, and learn." Wenna stretched her arms up.
"Come dally with me!" Johann reached out for Cordelia. "Golden slumbers kiss thine eyes! Smiles shall wake thee when thou dost rise!"
"Nay," Cordelia said, as though it were dragged out of her. "I must remain vigilant."
Adele exhaled a sigh of frustration, and Johann said, smiling, "But even the watchman must rest, soon or late. Come, repose thy brain awhile, as we do. Hearken to the words of the music and let them fill thy mind."
"Words?" Geoffrey looked up, alert. "What words are these?"
"Why, in the music," said Orin. "Has thou not heard them?"
"Pay heed," Yhrene suggested.
The Gallowglasses frowned, listening.
"I hear it," said Cordelia, "but 'tis not a voice. 'Tis the music itself doth speak."
"Yet I ken not the sense of it," Geoffrey said dubiously.
"Thou hast but to attend," Yhrene assured them. "It will begin again. It ever does."
And it did, repeating itself. It only lasted a few minutes, but it started again immediately—and again and again, cycling on and on. Gradually, the words became clearer: