The Warlock Rock (6 page)

"Yet the point is well taken," Gregory pointed out. "Do witch-moss crafters impose some form of program on their witch-moss toys?"

"Toys!" the rocking horse snorted, insulted. "I am no toy, but a thing of great moment!"

"Of many moments, an thou dost hold to a clock," Geoffrey said, eyeing the sundial.

"Nay, such a hobbyhorse as thou wouldst be far more than a toy—thou wouldst be a boon companion." Gregory pouted. "Where wast thou when I did yearn for thee, three years agone?" The rocking horse stared at him, taken aback.

"Peace, brother," Magnus assured him. "We all did wish for such a companion in our nurseries."

"Save Cordelia!"

"Save thyself an thou dost say so!" Cordelia retorted. "I did ride Magnus's hobby more than he did himself!"

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"It need not be a broom for her to ride it," Magnus agreed, "though that last doth come more naturally to her."

Cordelia stuck out her tongue at him.

"Why," the rocking horse said slowly, "an thou dost wish my company, I am glad to give it. Wouldst thou ride me?"

"Oh, aye!" Gregory leaped up onto the horse's back. Startled, it rocked back with a wild and musical neigh, rearing, and Gregory howled with joy.

"Gregory!" Gwen cried, alarmed. "Do not…" But she held her tongue as she gazed at the little boy swooping and ducking along the great arc of the sundial, swatting at the rocking horse's flanks with his hat and whooping with glee.

"Let him be, dear," Rod murmured, smiling.

"Do not tell him not to, Mama," Cordelia pleaded. "We see no danger."

"Aye." Gwen relented. "He doth so seldom have the chance to behave as the child he is!"

"That had occurred to me," Fess admitted.

"He hath almost never behaved as babes rightly should," Geoffrey said stiffly, his body taut and his face a granite mask. Magnus saw, and started to reach out toward his younger brother, then hesitated and took his hand away. "I am sure the rocking horse will allow us all rides an we should wish it."

"Oh, aye!" Cordelia exclaimed, eyes alight, but Geoffrey snorted. "And foolish thou shouldst look, brother—a youth of seventeen, on a child's plaything! Nay, surely we who have grown past the nursery must be generous in allowing the lad this play."

Cordelia turned to him, startled. Then she saw the look on his face, and her own expression saddened. So did her mother's.

"Dost thou not agree, Delia?" Geoffrey ground out.

"Oh, aye!" she said quickly. " Tis even as thou dost say, Geoffrey! Nay, let the babe play."

"And let him have some moment of childhood that is his alone," Rod murmured. Cordelia looked at him in surprise. Then her face brightened a little, into a tremulous smile. "Aye, Papa. He hath ever played in our shadows, hath he not?"

"His clothes were once mine," Geoffrey agreed, "and I, at least, had a toy arbalest and catapult, which he disdained. Nay, let him be."

Gregory finished the circuit and sprang off the horse, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. He whirled about, doffing his cap and bowing low to the hobby. "I thank thee, good horse! Ne'er shall I forget this ride!"

"Thou art welcome," the horse answered, bowing forward on its rockers. "Nay, come here again, and
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thou shalt once more ride."

"Oh! May I?"

"Mayhap on the way home," Gwen answered. "Yet now, I think, we must needs be on our way, Gregory."

"Cannot the rocking horse come?" Gregory asked, crestfallen.

"Nay, though it doth warm mine heart to know thou dost wish it," the rocking horse answered. "Yet I must needs rock here on my dial, or I'll not grow. Wouldst thou deny me that?"

"No," Gregory said, as though it were pulled out of him. "Yet I shall miss thee, good horse."

"And I thee," the horse answered, and for a moment, its music swelled up, slower and sadder than it had been.

"It must let thee go thy way." Cordelia laid a hand upon Gregory's shoulder. "And thou must let it grow."

"Indeed I must." Gregory turned away, following his siblings and Fess with lowered gaze. Cordelia's eyes misted. But Gregory turned back and called to the horse, "Shall I see thee when thou art grown?"

"I doubt it not," the horse cried, rocking away on its arc.

"Belike I shall be transformed into a great spring-steed—yet I will know thee."

"And I thee," Gregory returned. "Till then!" He waved once, then turned away, catching his sister's hand as he straightened up, squared his shoulders, and lifted his chin. "Come Delia! For I must let it rock!" She squeezed his hand and followed a half-pace behind, hoping he would not see the tenderness in her smile.

Gwen blinked several times, caught Rod's hand, and followed.

"This deal of sound could become a great nuisance." Gregory winced at the raucous noise around him. As they walked ahead through the trees, it dwindled behind them; but before it had faded, the music of the next rock wafted toward them on a truant breeze.

"It is not terribly loud yet, Gregory," Fess suggested. "It is not truly the volume that irritates you."

"Cordelia," Rod said, "stop nodding."

"Mayhap." Gregory looked distinctly unhappy. "Yet the coarseness of it doth jar upon mine ear."

"Even so, son," Gwen agreed.

"It is the timbre, the quality of the sound, that bothers you, is it not?" Fess asked Gregory.
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"Cordelia," Rod said, "stop bobbing!"

"The quality?" Gregory frowned, listening to the music for a minute. "Aye, 'tis summat of the sort. 'Tis harsh; an 'twere less so, that fall of notes might be a ripple, whereas now, 'tis a grating."

"Perhaps it is the rhythm of the bass, the low notes, that bothers you."

"Magnus!" Rod snapped. "Can't you walk without tapping your toes?"

"Mayhap." Gregory cocked his head to the side, listening. "Aye, for each third beat hath stress when it should not… Fess!" Gregory's eyes widened. "It doth no longer grate upon mine ear!"

"I had hoped that would occur."

"Yet how hast thou…Oh! When I do begin to analyze it, the music doth cease to irritate, and doth fascinate! Or if not it, at the least its composition!"

"Precisely, Gregory. There are few irritants that cannot become a source of pleasure, if you make them objects of study."

"Fess! It hath become greatly louder!" Magnus called.

"It has." The robot-horse's head lifted. "What causes that?" The path widened suddenly, and they stepped past the last trees into a broad meadow with a stream running through it; but on the other side of the stream was a churning mass.

"Well, then, what have we here?" Geoffrey growled.

"Naught but a pack of children." Magnus looked up, frowning, then stared. "A pack of children ?"

"'Tis the bairns of three villages, at the least!" Gwen exclaimed.

"Each beast comes in its own manner of grouping," Gregory said. "Sheep come in flocks, as do birds—and lions come in prides. Yet 'tis wolves do come in packs, brother."

"Then what do children come in?" Geoffrey demanded.

"Schools," Gregory answered.

Geoffrey turned away with a shudder. "Scour thy mouth, brother! An thou dost wish to be fish, thou mayest go thine own way!"

"I do not seek to gain on such a scale," Gregory protested.

"Whatever their aggregate, we must discover their purpose." Magnus jumped into the air and wafted over the stream toward the mob of children. "Come, my sibs! Let us probe!" Rod started to call him back, alarmed, but found Gwen's hand on his arm. "There is no danger, and we must discover wherefore these children are gathered here."

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Rod subsided, nodding. "You're right. Let the younger generation take care of its own." Cordelia, Geoffrey, and Gregory swooped up to follow Magnus with yelps of delight.

"However," Rod said, "I'd like to hedge my bets. Fess, you don't suppose that you…"

"Certainly, Rod." The great black horse backed up from the riverbank a little, then bounded into a full charge, accelerating to a hundred miles per hour in fifty feet, and sprang into the air, arcing high over the water to come thudding down ten feet past the opposite bank. Not that he needed to fear wetting, of course—his horse-body had been built with watertight seams. But jumping was faster, and the river was muddy, and it would have been so tedious to have had to clean all that sediment out of his artificial horsehair.

Still, the children could have waited.

"I see a boat." Gwen pointed downstream.

Rod looked up and nodded. "Careful, dear. It gets soggy, over there." He offered his arm; they began picking their way through the cattails.

By the time Fess caught up, the Gallowglass children had landed and were prowling around the edges of the mob, staring, fascinated, for the crowd of children was in constant motion, pulsing like some huge amoeba. On closer inspection, the pack proved to be composed of smaller groups, each doing something different—skipping, dancing, tossing a ball—but each child was making every single movement to the beat of the music that twined all about them, throbbing and swooping.

"What hath set them to moving all together so?" Cordelia wondered, nodding her head in time to the beat.

"In truth, I could not say," Geoffrey answered, his hand beating time.

"Why, then, let us ask them." Magnus reached out to tap a six-year-old on the shoulder. The child looked up, nodding to the beat, but his eyes didn't quite seem to focus. After a moment, he turned away and, on the downbeat, tossed a ball to another six-year-old ten feet away.

"Hold! I would speak with thee!" Magnus cried, tapping him again; but the child only looked up once more with unseeing eyes.

"What dost thou?"

Magnus looked up to see a ten-year-old step up behind the smaller child. "I do but seek to speak with him."

The ten-year-old shrugged, head and shoulders bobbing, and spoke with the beat. "He is young, and hath not yet caught the trick of speech."

"Trick of speech?" Geoffrey was puzzled. "Why, how is this? A child hath learned that much by the time he is two!"

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"But not the knack of speech in time," the nodding boy answered. "He cannot therefore speak, till he hath caught the rhyme."

"There may be rhyme to thee, but no reason! Nay, then, do thou tell us—how dost thou come to all move together so?"

"Together?" The boy frowned, looking about him. "We do not move together. I move as I wish, and they as they wish!"

"Yet thou dost all make thy movements of a piece, at the same instant!"

"Why, how else can one move?" the boy asked, surprised.

"I do not understand."

"Then thou art dimwitted," a twelve-year-old said, stepping up. "Cease to pester my brother, and let him return to his jackstraws."

The children watched, astonished, as the ten-year-old knelt down in three separate, rhythmical stages, picked up the jackstraws on one beat, settled them on another, and dropped them on a third.

"Can he not move between beats?"

"What beats?" the twelve-year-old countered.

Geoffrey's face darkened. "Dost thou seek to mock me?"

The other boy's face hardened. "Have it as thou wilt."

Geoffrey's arm twitched, but didn't swing—only because Magnus had hold of it. "He doth not realize there are beats to the music about him."

Geoffrey was totally dumbfounded. "Dost thou not hear the music?"

"Aye! Why else would we have come?"

"But is not the music everywhere?"

The boy shook his head—in time to the beat. But his attention wandered, and so did he. Geoffrey leaped forward to catch him, but so did Magnus, catching Geoffrey. A twelve-year-old girl stepped in front of him, smiling. "What seekest thou?"

Her smile was radiant, and for a moment, Geoffrey was motionless, gazing at her. Then Cordelia giggled, and he flushed and said, "We did but ask the lad if this music is not everywhere."

"Oh, nay!" The girl laughed. "Our grown folk did gather up all the rocks, and hurl them hither! They cannot abide these sounds!"

"I cannot blame them," Gregory muttered, but Geoffrey said, "They do not come hither?"
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"Nay—and therefore may we here do whatsoe'er we please."

"They allow thee?"

The girl shrugged, her attention drifting. "We did not ask…" She remembered her purpose and turned back to Geoffrey. "Wilt thou dance?" He shrank back, horrified, and she gave him a strange look, then shrugged again. "Thou art so offbeat." She danced away, her whole body bobbing with the rhythm.

"So then—they have come to the music, with no care for their parents." Geoffrey frowned, watching the children, head nodding.

"And the music doth make them to move." Magnus looked out over the crowd. "There's none here older than twelve, from the look of them—and none younger than ten could pause long enough to talk."

"I have watched the two a-tossing of the ball," Cordelia told him. "They have never ceased their game for a moment."

"The younger they are, the more firmly the pulsing of the low notes doth seize them," Magnus said. "Yet why cannot the oldest comprehend our questions?"

"Who could think with this sound beating at one's ears?" Gregory answered.

"Come!" A fourteen-year-old boy leaped forward and caught Cordelia's hand. "Dance with me!" She gave a shriek, and her brothers yelled and leaped after her—but the crowd closed around her on the beat, and the boys slammed into bodies, bodies that rotated on one beat and punched at them on the next. Magnus shoved Gregory behind him and blocked, but Geoffrey had the sense to counterpunch on the offbeat, and his fist slammed home. His opponent's head snapped back and he fell; his comrades weren't able to move aside until the next beat, so he landed slowly, staring up at Geoffrey in amazement.