The Warlock Rock

Chapter Twenty-One

They left the fen refreshed, but they were instantly immersed in pandemonium again. They followed the blimp from a distance, and by late afternoon they were dazed and reeling as they topped a ridge and saw a village below them, tranquil under the evening sun, with peasants coming in from the fields, hoes over their shoulders. Wreaths of smoke rose from the central holes in the thatches of the cottages. Wives came out to chat with one another for a few minutes, then returned to their homes. Adolescent girls shooed children and chickens. On the village green, young men kicked an inflated bladder around.

Magnus looked, then looked again. "Why, their young folk abide with them!"

"Yes, and they're doing something besides listening to the music." Rod smiled. "There's a certain amount of promise in this. Let's go find out how they're doing it."

They went down into the town, finding the large hut with the bunch of greenery hanging from a pole.

"Pretty dried-out bush," Rod said, with critical appraisal. "Old ale, then."

"Thou hast told me old ale is better, betimes," Magnus reminded him. "Come, Papa—at the least, 'twill be another's cooking tonight."

"Hast thou aught to complain of?" Gwen demanded as they walked in.

"Naught, yet thou hast," Cordelia reminded her. "Wilt thou truly regret not preparing a meal o'er a campfire?"

"Well, I shall suffer it," Gwen allowed.

They sat at a table. The landlord looked up, then looked again in surprise. "Good e'en, gentlemen and ladies!"

"Just travelling through," Rod assured him. "I could stand a flagon of ale, landlord. Is there a supper?"

"Aye, milord—Timon, ho!"

A lanky teen-ager came in from the back room, saw the Gallowglasses, and smiled in welcome. Then he saw Cordelia, and the welcome deepened. She smiled back, coming a little more alive somehow, and Magnus cleared his throat. "Good e'en, goodman!"

"And to thee." Timon wrenched his eyes away from Cordelia, amused, and turned to the landlord. "What need, Dad?"

"Ale, my lad, and quickly, for these good folks!"

"Only the two," Gwen qualified. "As to the rest, hast thou clear water?"

"Aye, most surely. That too, lad."

"As thou wilt, Dad." Timon turned away and ducked back through the doorway.

"Ho! 'Dad,' is it?" Magnus grinned. "What meaning hath that?"

"Oh, it's just another intimate form of 'Father'—the one I expected my own children to use, in fact. But you four preferred 'Papa.'"

"I shall no longer, then! Oh, nay, I would not disappoint thee so! Aye, 'Dad' it shall be henceforth! Oh, ho!" And Magnus couldn't quite hold his laughter in.

Rod frowned, turning to Gwen. "What's the joke?"

"I ken not," she replied, "save that 'tis a term they've not heard before."

The other three had picked up Magnus's mood, and were grinning now.

Timon came back in with a tray. He set a tankard in front of each of them, saying, "I regret there's naught but stew this night, milord, milady. We had no notion of thy coming."

"I have no doubt thy stew will suit," Gwen assured him. "Bread, too, an thou wilt."

"Oh, of a certainty!"

Magnus grimaced, overdoing it a little, and said, "How dost thou withstand the noise all about?"

"Noise?" Timon looked up, frowning, head cocked to the side, listening. "Oh, the music of the rocks, dost thou mean? Aye, 'tis still there, is't not?"

Cordelia stared. "How canst thou have missed it?"

Timon shrugged. "A month agone we were ever in the meadows, dancing to fair strains; yet somehow, of late, we have taken less and less notice of it."

"Timon!"

"Aye, Dad!" He flashed a grin back at the Gallow-glasses. "I've a notion thy stew is ready." He strode off toward the inner doorway.

"So that is the fashion of it," Magnus said thoughtfully.

"How can they cease to notice the music?" Cordelia wondered.

Geoffrey shrugged. "Mayhap through over-familiarity. We treasure least what we have known too long. Yet I find that hard to credit, when 'tis so loud."

At any level, Fess's voice said inside their head, it can be ignored, when people are saturated with it. Some scholars claim that the mind protects itself by becoming numb when it is overloaded, and blocks out the irritation.

Magnus scowled. "How now! 'Tis pleasant sound, not irritation!"

Too much of anything can be an irritant.

"Each of us," Gwen said diplomatically, "hath gorged too much on sweetmeats."

Magnus flushed, not liking the reminder of his childhood, and Gregory looked guilty.

An excellent example, Fess agreed, and when you have eaten too much of any food, no matter how tasty, the mere aroma of it sickens you. In the same fashion, these people's minds have erected blockades of numbness.

Geoffrey gained a sudden wary look. "Yet blockades can be breached, Fess."

"Oh, be not so silly," Cordelia scoffed. "We speak of music, not of castles. How can one breach a wall of surfeit?"

Why, said Fess, by a change in the music, one that catches attention.

Gregory asked, "What manner of change is that?"

A howl sounded from outside.

They stared at one another, startled. Then they jumped up, turning away to the door.

They went out, looking toward the sound—for the howl had died, but was replaced by a rough, rhythmic scraping, and chanting in time to it:

The children stood stock-still, and Gregory asked, "Can this be music?"

You may need to redefine your terms, Fess suggested.

"Assuredly," said Gwen, "it cannot be verse."

"I don't know," Rod said, "though I did think it was as bad as it could get."

It has meter and rhyme, Fess pointed out. It must be so classified.

"But its source!" Magnus protested. "Are there rocks now that chant?"

With a prickle of uneasiness, Rod noticed that the young folk of the village were looking out of windows and doorways.

Down the street they came, clad in roughly tanned leather garments that left their backs bare—young men and young women in their teens, moving in time to the beat, stepping three times and, on the fourth beat, slashing at each other's backs with whips.

"Flagellants," Rod whispered, horrified. "But why? There's no plague here."

"'Tis not repentance," Gwen said, her tone hardening. "Hearken to their words, husband."

Rod heard, but could scarcely tell whether the sounds came from the young people, or from the rocks they wore tied around their necks:

"Nay!" Cordelia's voice trembled. "Assuredly the voice doth not tell them that pain is pleasure!"

"It doth," Gwen said, mouth a thin, grim line, "and I assure thee, daughter, 'tis the foulest lie that e'er I heard!"

"But how can the music say it, an it is false?" Magnus asked, bewildered.

"Because," Rod said, "these rocks were made by somebody, and that somebody can put lies in them if he wants to."

Quite probable, Fess agreed. At the very least, I question their programming.

Somebody jostled them; Rod staggered back, with a cry of anger, then stepped forward, hand going to his sword— but slammed back against the inn again, as the innkeeper bumped past him, calling, "Nay, lad! Timon, no! Come back!"

But tall Timon, eyes unfocused, had torn off his tunic and caught up a broom. He tailed onto the end of the line, shuffling along and slashing with the broom straws at the back in front of him. A young girl jumped in behind him, instantly adopting the three-step shuffle, untying her sash and striking at Timon's back with it. Another lad stepped in behind her, tearing away the back of her dress and lashing at her with a rope's end.

Cordelia turned away, stumbling back into the inn, eyes squeezed shut.

"Magnus, no!" Gwen screamed, for her eldest, glassy-eyed, was moving forward toward the line of flagellants, stepping into place, fumbling at the buckle of his sword-belt…

Rod reached out and clamped pincer-fingers into his son's shoulder.

Magnus winced and twisted from his grasp with a yell of pain. His hands left the buckle and leaped to the sword.

Rod yanked him out of the line. Still angry, the youth drew out his blade…

Rod caught his son's wrist and forced it down. It surged back up—Rod was amazed at how strong his son had grown—but Geoffrey reached up, catching his brother's elbow, thumb probing. Magnus sagged, eyes bulging, with a high, thin whine of agony. His face came down to a level with Geoffrey's, and his younger brother snapped, "Shall I admire thee now? Art thou the toy of women, then, that thou mayest be enslaved by song?"

Magnus's face reddened with anger again. "Be still, sprout!"

Rod sagged with relief—it was brother talking to brother, not a teen entranced.

Then Magnus looked up, his glance darting around. "What… wherefore…"

"The music had entrapped thee, son," Gwen said gently.

"Aye." Geoffrey's lip curled with contempt. "And wilt thou let it hold these others enslaved?"

'Nay!" Magnus roared, covering his embarrassment. He whirled, sheathing his sword but drawing his dagger, and leaped after the line of youths, running up to the first who had a stone hung round his neck, slipping the dagger in, cutting the thong, and hurling the stone away. The youth snapped upright and turned on him with an angry roar, lashing out with his whip.

But Magnus was already on down the line to the next, slashing and snatching, working his way quickly toward the front, hurling the glinting stones far away.

Geoffrey leaped to join him, but Rod caught his shoulder. "You don't have the height for this one."

"Daughter!" Gwen called, and Cordelia hurried out from the inn. "Hurl," Gwen commanded, and turned to glare at Magnus.

Cordelia looked, startled, saw what Magnus was doing, and narrowed her gaze to the rock flying from his hand. It lurched and flew farther, much farther, out over the village and into the nearby stream.

In a few minutes, the rocks were all gone, and the young people converged on Magnus with angry shouting.

Gwen gave Rod a stony look. Rod nodded and stepped forward. "Fess, fifteen thousand Hertz."

"Certainly, Rod."

A sharp, piercing tone slid over the village. Gwen and the children clapped their hands over their ears, for the sound seemed to stab right through their heads. It only lasted five seconds, then cut off—but the flagellants were down, rolling on the ground in agony, hands over their ears, howling. Magnus alone still stood, staggering, bringing his hands away. He looked up at his father, dazed.

Rod stepped up beside him, and turned to look at the peasant youths all about him. Gradually, the youths began to realize that someone out of their league was looking down on them. They quieted; faces settled into truculent expressions.

"How are your backs?" Rod said quietly.

They stared at him, taken aback by the question. Then they looked at one another, saw the stripes and blood, and the wailing began.

Half an hour later, Magnus was just finishing gulping down a tankard of ale. Timon set another in front of him. "Drink,. I pray. Tis the least thanks I can make, sin that thou hast saved my back and brain."

Magnus lowered the tankard with a gasp and reached for the new one, but Gwen laid a hand over his. "Give it time to work," she said gently. "Too much, and thou wilt be the toy of this music that doth surround thee."

Magnus shuddered and pulled his hand back.

"Stew," Rod said to Timon.

"I could not eat!" Magnus protested.

"Let him smell it," Rod assured Timon. "He'll find his appetite."

"Thou hast saved them, Magnus," Gregory said, his eyes huge.

"Aye," said Magnus, "but only by Dad and Geoffrey saving me!"

"At least," said Rod, "you had your question answered."

Gregory looked up. "What question was that?"

"Why," said Rod, "you wanted to know what kind of music it would take to break through the mind's defense of numbness."

Magnus lifted his head. "Aye, even so! Yet what was the manner of it?"

"Sheer ugliness, I guess," Rod said. "Every time people become used to one sort of music, the crafter breaks through to them by coming up with something that's even more distorted. It shocks them into paying attention again." He shrugged. "Just a guess, though."

But Gregory's eyes had filled with tears. "I did not mean…"

"Peace, brother." Cordelia wrapped an arm around him. "These poor folk were entrapped days before thou didst think to ask."

"Aye," said Gwen. " 'Twas not thy doing."

But Geoffrey's eyes narrowed. "Papa, where a wall is breached, there is a captain who commanded a siege engine."

"Yes," Rod agreed. "A musical change like that does seem rather deliberate, doesn't it?"

"Good Timon!" Magnus rose and turned to the tall youth by the inner door. "Whence could that train of youths have come?"

The lad looked surprised, then nodded. "I will ask." He stepped through the door and was gone.

"Shall we spend the night here, Papa?" Gregory asked.

Rod turned to Gwen; she nodded. He turned back. "Yes, son—but I think we'll camp by that stream out there. I'd like to make sure no one goes fishing tonight."