"I don't doubt it," Rod said.
He turned at a knocking sound, just in time to see the door swing open a little farther as a brand new chair came walking into the room.
"Oh, come, come!" Ari clucked his tongue. "Knowest thou not better than to leave a door ajar?"
Rod could have sworn the chair blushed. At any rate, it turned around and knocked the door shut with a leg.
"'Tis such a trial to teach them not to slam it." Ari sighed. "Nay, little chair, find one who needs service." He nodded at Magnus, and the chair scuttled over to the eldest.
Magnus edged away. "Oh, I could never take a chair when a lady hath need of a seat!"
The chair turned toward Cordelia.
"Nay, brother, I'll yield it to thee," she said quickly. "I am quite settled now."
"Magnus," Gwen said, with a tone of dire warning.
The eldest sighed, rose from the floor, and sat in the chair. It settled contentedly under his weight.
"It will stay still now," Ari assured them.
"Desirable," Rod admitted. "And now you have one more, in case your witch-friends bring company."
"Aye, though I doubt that they will. There have never come more than two of them, though Ubu Mare hath not come this half-year and more."
Rod could feel his whole family tensing. "Ubu Mare?"
"Aye. She…"Ari bit his lip, then glanced about him as though to make sure no one was listening, and leaned closer to Rod and Gwen with a conspiratorial whisper. "She is ever polite and well-spoken, mind, but the poor woman is burdened with a hideous countenance."
"Is that so?" Rod eyed Gwen.
"The poor woman, indeed," she murmured.
"Aye," Ari sighed. "She must be the ugliest witch in the whole of the land. Yet she is civil, and did give me gold for things I made! Couldst thou credit it? Gold!"
"Somehow, I don't doubt it." Rod had a nasty suspicion of where the witch was getting the money. "You built the house, too?"
"Nay, for I've no skill as a carpenter. The goodmen from the village did that for me; they were happy to, when I gave them gold for it."
"I should think they would have been," Gwen said. "And dost thou pay one to clip thy lawn?"
"Only a lad from the village, who doth bring his sheep. 'Tis no great sum, and I can craft aught else I need, or trade for it. I scarce know what to do with all the gold they give me."
"In truth?" Magnus asked, disbelieving.
"Aye." Ari threw up his hands. "I could think of naught else—so I give each month's gold piece to the folk of the village, that they may buy food for the needy, and clothing."
"Dost thou indeed!" Gregory was incredulous, too, and Geoffrey was shaking his head slowly, in wonder.
"Oh, aye! And all this from the generosity of Ubu Mare! Is it not wondrous?"
"Amazing," Rod said, feeling a chill envelop his back.
"It is, in truth! Yet she hath not come these six months, no, but doth send Yaga and Axon in her place. I've no doubt 'tis still her gold they bring, for they, too, buy of me rocks that make music."
"Oh." The tension was winding tighter. "You crafted those wonderful stones that made the enchanting sounds we heard in your front yard?"
"Aye, they are mine!" Ari beamed. "These are my latest, look you. I essay new musics each time; I delight in inventing new forms." He frowned. "Yet not of the sort Ubu Mare doth wish me to make, no. 'Tis hideous stuff with a scratching and wailing to it, and words that make no sense. And they do not even rhyme!"
"Horrible," Rod agreed. "I think we've heard a few like that. Where did they come up with the sound?"
Ari shrugged. "Belike whence I found mine—in my heart."
"What manner of heart must they have!" Cordelia exclaimed.
Ari turned to her, saddened. "Lass, lass! Is it for us to judge our neighbors? Nay, nay! If their taste and fashion differ from mine, who am I to say theirs is wrong and mine is right?"
"The one who actually makes the rocks," Rod said.
Ari looked up, astonished. "Assuredly that doth not give me the right to judge!"
"It doth," Gwen said, "and it doth give thee also the duty."
"Duty?" Ari stared at her, totally at a loss.
"Responsibility," Rod explained. "You do have to bear in mind what they want to do with the things you've made."
"Why, these music-rocks are but entertainment!"
"I'm beginning to develop a definite suspicion that nothing can be 'just entertainment,' " Rod said. "You must consider, Goodman Ari, what effects your wonderful inventions can have."
"But what effects could music have?" Ari asked, pole-axed.
Rod took a deep breath. "We've seen young people walk away from their parents, and from their chores, to do nothing but listen to the rocks' music."
"Aye," said Gregory, "and to float down the river with thy rocks, to do naught but eat lotus and lie dreaming."
"Folk of our age are ever mired in confusion, though we hide it," Cordelia said gently. "We have seen folk in whom that confusion has been steadily worsened by the words that accompany this music."
"But how can that be!"
Then, one by one, they told him of the things they had seen as they came across the country from Runnymede. He was shocked to hear of the wakened dead, but he was horrified to hear of the flagellants. Finally, when they were done, he sat, gray-faced and whispering, "No more. What horrid things have I wrought? Nay, never again must I make music-rocks!"
"Nay, thou must needs make more," Gwen said, with that tone of motherly sternness that evoked total attention from any listener. "What thou hast broke, thou must needs mend."
"But how can I mend music?"
"Why, with harmony!" Gregory offered.
"Aye!" Magnus's eyes lighted. "Take the words of greatest beauty thou dost know, and set them to the clearest melodies thou canst make!"
But Ari shook his head. "How can sweet music heal a ruptured soul?"
"How can it not?" Cordelia countered, and Gwen laid her hand on Ari's. "If dissonance hath sickened their hearts, may not harmony cure them?"
Ari's eyes lost focus. "It may be…"
"But it must not!"
They whirled. Two forms stood black against the twilight that filled the doorway, and the shorter, a woman, cried, "Who are you, who would twist our Ari against our bidding?"
Gwen stood, and only Rod could see the mantle of rage building about her. "Why, who art thou who dost seek to claim this good and gentle man as thy slave?"
"We are Yaga and Axon," the hag shrilled, "and we have bought him!"
Rod noticed Magnus sidling around behind the taller intruder, pushing Gregory behind him, and Geoffrey slipping around on the far side.
"Oh, nay!" Ari cried, shocked. "Thou hast bought my music, aye, but never myself!"
"Thyself, body and soul!" The old woman stumped forward into the light, eyes filled with malevolence. "Thou art ours, Ari, bought and paid for! Who is this that doth seek to rend thee from us!"
"I am Gwendolyn Gallowglass," Gwen said, in glacial tones, "and I have come to consign thee to the doom thou hast made for others!"
Before she even finished the sentence, Yaga's form erupted into flame.
The children glared, and Axon, the tall warlock, was immersed in a globe of inwardly stabbing light. He screamed, then slumped unconscious as one of the spears found his spinal cord.
But Yaga only cackled with glee as the flames drew in, swallowed up by her person. "Fools! Dost thou not know 'tis this, even this, I have sought all my life? To be as wrapped in throes of anguish as I am filled with them? Nay, have at thee!"
Gwen screamed and twisted as something flamed inside of her. Yaga crowed with delight and turned on Rod. A current seethed through him, jolting him with pain, immobilizing him with spasms.
But Yaga howled, hands clutching at her head, and spun to face Magnus's unrelenting glare. She stumbled toward him, screaming, "Stop! Make it stop!"
Magnus twisted, and his l
ip trembled; but he clung more tightly to Gregory's hand, and his gaze held steady.
Cordelia's eyes narrowed and, quite calmly, she walked over to the witch and touched her temple. Yaga froze, and the pain inside Rod and Gwen was gone, as though their daughter had turned a switch. They staggered, clutching at one another, striving to rally their senses to attack…
But Ari came up to Yaga, his hands twisting and molding something, then held it up to her forehead.
It was a rock.
The witch's eyes lost focus; her face unclenched, looking startled.
Then she slumped.
Geoffrey reached up and caught her, lowering her to lie beside the warlock he had been guarding.
"Are they dead?" Ari asked anxiously.
"Nay," Geoffrey assured him, "though they ought to be."
"Oh, nay! For if thou hast the right of it, I have cured them!"
Geoffrey could only stare at him as though he were mad.
"Thank Heaven you kids were on the ball!" Rod staggered up to them.
"We would not have been," Magnus returned, "hadst though not drawn her anger first, to show us the manner of her attack."
"Believe me, I wasn't trying." Rod shook his head. "Where did she ever get that kind of power?"
"From a hundred and more of her kind." Gwen was kneeling by the unconscious witch, fingers against the base of her skull. "I read it in her memories…" She shuddered. "Faugh! What a twisted mass of vileness is there! Yet in it I see that she and many others have been gathered into a coven by this Ubu Mare."
"For what purpose?" Ari asked, white-faced.
Gwen shook her head. "To yield up their power to her in some fashion, and to bear hers, vastly magnified by all of theirs united—but it doth make of Yaga only a tool, an extension of that vile witch."
"And in that," Rod guessed, "she was content—as long as she could be part of something bigger than herself?"
Gwen nodded. "Yet now, by a wonder, the twisting and turnings within her that made her easy prey to this Ubu Mare, all that bitter confusion and hatred, is straightened to the beginnings of harmony!" She looked up at Ari. "How didst thou achieve it?"
The crafter relaxed, and his smile returned. "Why, even as thou didst say, good folk—I crafted a rock that would make music with all the lightheartedness, harmony, and order that is in me."
And he was, of course, an unusually tranquil, optimistic person. Rod looked up at Magnus. "But what did you do, that stopped her in her tracks?"
"Much the same," Magnus answered. "I had seen her swallow the flames of Mother's anger, so I sought to fill her with peace and goodwill. I enwrapped it in those strains of Bach that Fess hath taught us, and projected it into her mind."
"Yet surely she struck back at thee!"
"Aye, most horribly," Gregory said, and shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut.
"And thou wast my shield." Magnus turned to hug his little brother against his hip. "I am sorry, Gregory—but I could not unravel her hideousness and think Bach at her, both at once."
"I was glad to aid," Gregory said, pale-faced, "and I sought to loosen the knot of anger and bitterness as quickly as she sought to tie it within thee—but oh, brother! May I never have to again!"
"Amen to that," said Cordelia, "but that must needs be why she could not repel my hand."
"And what didst thou?" Gwen looked up, worried.
"I thought of May mornings, and my delight in the dawn and the songs of the birds. Naught more—but blended toward music, as Papa did say of the rocks without this house."
"So." Ari was filled with wonder. "She succumbed to my music, only because thine had prepared her for it!" He turned to Gwen, uncertain. "Cannot my music, then, heal ripped souls?"
Gwen pulled herself together and managed a smile, rising to her feet. "It can, oh! Assuredly, it can! Yet as thou hast seen, good crafter, it will take not one melody, but many—and not one hearing, but an hundred."
Ari stared at her.
Then he turned away, with decision. "I must set to crafting them! An hundred, a thousand! I will make them and spread them throughout the length and breadth of this land, though I have to walk it myself!"
"In that, at least, I think thou wilt have aid." Gwen turned to her children. As one, they nodded.
A few minutes later, as they walked away from Ari's house into the gathering dusk, they could hear, rising from the cottage behind them, strains of melody that told of sheer delight in the beauty of the world—but all underscored by a beat, a repetitive rhythm that, no matter how light, could only be termed characteristic of rock music.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They hadn't gone very far the next morning before the music began to be physically painful. It wasn't just the volume of the sound—it was the total cacophony of a dozen different tunes and beats all going at once. They were all oddly similar, but contrasted just enough to set Rod's teeth on edge. He remembered what the young folk near the rocks' meadow had said, that the sounds had to be so loud that they could feel them in their bodies, and wondered once again how impoverished their souls must be, if the only way they could have any feeling was through the impact of sound waves.
Gregory walked with his hands over his ears, looking miserable. Gwen and Geoffrey stumbled along, determined to be brave and stoic about it, but even Magnus was beginning to look a little dazzled, and Cordelia was glassy-eyed and twitching three ways at once. As for Rod, he had a humdinger of a headache building, which he could swear was working its way up to a migraine.
Finally, Gwen had had enough. Rod saw her halt, standing firm with resolution; he saw her hands clap together, he saw her mouth move; but he didn't hear the clap, or a single word. He frowned, shaking his head, and pointed toward his ear. Gwen sighed, and her words echoed inside all their heads: We cannot abide this. We must halt and find some way to block out these sounds.
The children stopped and gathered round her. Mayhap as the peasants did, Gregory suggested.
Well thought, Gwen approved. Find wax.
It didn't take long to find, or much doing to get—the bees were limp on the floor of the hive, stunned by the sonic booms. The boys did think it odd that the markings grew in the shape of a G on their abdomens, but dismissed the oddity and brought the wax to their mother—and found their sister busy stitching together strips of bark into a little pot. They knew better than to ask why.
Gwen took the wax and molded it in her hands, staring at it intently the while. For his part, Rod was astonished at her fortitude, as always—softening the wax by telekinesis took concentration, and being able to concentrate in the midst of this racket took incredible strength of mind.
As Gwen finished each pair of covers, she handed them to the child whom they fit. Rod took a spare blanket from his saddlebag, tore it into strips, and helped tie the makeshift bandages over the earcovers. Each relaxed visibly as he or she tied the knot. Then Rod set his own into place, and the worst of the racket dimmed amazingly—except for the thumping and growling of the bass notes. He turned to explain this to Gwen, but she was wearing her own earcovers now, and was busily at work, stirring herbs into the bark pot Cordelia had made. Steam rose from it; she had heated the water without fire, by speeding up molecular motion. She finished, lifted the pot to her lips, swallowed, then handed it to Cordelia, who sipped and passed it on. When it came round to Rod, he drained what was left—and found that the thumping rhythms dwindled to a bearable level. He turned to Gwen, amazed. How'd you do that?
I brewed a potion, she thought simply. Our minds can shut out aught we do not wish to heed; I have only aided and directed them.
A perceptual screen, Rod realized—and more a matter of persuasion than of medicine. The potion had done what they wanted it to do; he suspected sugar pills would have done just as well, provided it had been Gwen who had made them.
Whatever the method, the goal was accomplished— Gwen had brewed an excellent rumble phyltre.
He faced her and moved his mouth slowly a
s he said, "Of course, now we can't talk to each other without mind-reading."
But surprisingly, he could hear her answer. Her voice sounded muffled, but it was there. "It would seem we can, my lord. What magic is this, that the music is muted but our voices are not?"
"Your speaking voices are in the middle of the range of pitches human ears can hear," Fess explained. "The waxen covers seem to block out the higher frequencies, while the potion dampens the lower ones."
"So they're filters, more than silencers?"
"Yes, Rod. They screen out the noise and preserve the information."
"I guess we can manage with that. Thank you, wonderful woman." Rod offered his arm. "Shall we promenade?"
They strode off into the worst that music could do. The good part was that Rod's headache began to fade. The bad part was that Cordelia and Magnus were tapping their toes again.
Then they followed the road around a curve and saw the priest sitting by the roadside.
Instantly, Rod distrusted him—he wasn't wearing ear-muffs. He also wasn't wearing the habit of the Order of St. Vidicon, and they were the only legitimate Order in Gramarye. No, this man was wearing a robe of plain black broadcloth, and his tonsure was definitely the work of an amateur. Needed a shave, too. The man was obviously self-ordained—one of the new crop of hedge-priests he and Tuan had been worrying about lately.
But the priest was, at least on the surface, all affability.
He looked up with a smile of welcome. "Godspeed, goodfolk! Whither art thou bound?"
"North," Rod said, forcing a smile. "We're trying to find out where this plague of noise is coming from."
"So small a thing as that?" The priest said, surprised. "Why, I myself have been to its center and back again!"
Rod was astonished—and while he was trying to figure it out, his daughter, with the full friendliness of innocence, was pleading, "Lead us to it, then! For we shall be forever on the road, without thy guidance!"
Rod caught his breath for a blistering tirade, but Gwen's fingers touched his lips, and he just barely managed to bite it down. Probably wouldn't have been heard, anyway. "If thou wilt, holy man," Gwen said. "We would cry thy mercy."
The Warlock Rock Page 21