The Warlock's Companion (19 page)

When it quieted, Gregory asked, "Ought we go home, then?"

"Nay." Magnus said it even faster than Rod. "Whatever is here, we must face and banish it."

Thunder blasted them again, the next lightning flash following so hard on the first that it seemed one long, unbroken instant of light with only a flicker between. Then it died, and the afterimage danced before Rod's eye, confirming what he'd thought he had seen.

As the thunder faded, Cordelia gasped, "Was it a lass?"

"Mayhap." Geoffrey's voice hardened. "Whatsoe'er 'twas, it was long-haired and cloaked."

"Yet why did it plummet head-first toward the ground?" Gregory wondered.

"Because it was pushed, brother," Geoffrey answered.

"Or did it throw itself down?" Cordelia wondered.

"Whate'er 'twas, it was the fruit of wickedness," Magnus answered.

Rod could hear the anger in his voice, and said quickly, "
Was
, Magnus. Remember the
was
. Whatever happened there, however cruel or vicious, it was done two hundred years ago, not tonight."

"But how evil must it have been," Cordelia cried, "that the spirit must live through it again, and again and again, for two hundred years!"

"Then 'tis time it was finished." Magnus's voice was grim, with a determination Rod had never heard in it before. "Whatever lies within that stone pile, 'tis a fell, foul evil, and we must not let it stand."

Rod frowned down at his boy. He was right, of course—but where had this sudden determination come from? Magnus had never heard anything about Castle Foxcourt but its name, before tonight. He wondered further about it as the family settled down once again, but decided to say nothing to Gwen—yet.

"Wherefore doth it not now appear so grim, Papa?" Cordelia looked up at the walls of the castle, golden now in the morning light.

"Because it's dawn, dear, and everything looks better by the light of the day.''

"Then too, the rain hath washed it clean," Gwen explained, "as it doth with all. The sky is cleaner above, and mine heart doth sing within me to behold it."

"But we still have to get into the castle." Rod frowned up at the drawbridge. "There's the little problem of getting that slab of wood down."

"We must turn the windlass, Papa," Magnus said brightly. "Shall I?"

Rod turned to him. "What—do you think you can make it move without even having seen it?"

"Oh, aye, and next shalt thou bid a mountain come to thee!" Geoffrey jibed.

"Aye, sin that I know where it
should
be."

"Thou canst not truly, Magnus!" Cordelia stated.

Gregory didn't say anything; he just gazed up at Magnus wide-eyed. After all, if Big Brother
said
he could do it…

"Mayhap he can," Gwen suggested, "though even if he cannot, 'twill be good practice for him."

"Yeah, you need to stretch if you want to grow." Rod nodded slowly. "Okay, go ahead. It
would
save a bit of time."

Magnus frowned up at the drawbridge, his eyes losing focus. Gwen watched him carefully.

Rod glanced from Magnus to the castle, half-expecting the old planks to come rattling down. Just as a caution, he waved the other children back. They went, but with poor grace.

Magnus relaxed and shook his head in chagrin. " 'Tis no use—there is no response."

Gregory looked disappointed. Geoffrey's eye lit with vindictiveness, and both he and Cordelia started to say something, but Rod caught their eyes, and they stopped openmouthed.

"Still, 'twas good for thee to attempt it." Gwen stared at the castle. " 'Tis odd, though."

"So we do it the old-fashioned way." Rod replied.

"I shall!!"

"No, I am best at…"

" 'Tis my turn…"

"
No
!" Rod barked.

The kids fell silent, staring at him with truculence—but also with apprehension. He saw, and forced a smile. "I appreciate your willingness, kids, but there might be a bit of danger there—you know, rotten beams and falling rocks. I'm pleading seniority on this one—just me and Magnus."

"Wherefore doth Magnus go!"

"Magnus, thou dost cheat!"

"Wherefore not Mama?"

"Because," Rod said, "someone has to take care of you three."

"Fess can mind us!"

"Fess cannot stop you from following," Gwen pointed out. "Wouldst thou promise me not to go within?"

"Nay!"

"Then I bide here." Gwen gave Rod a sunny smile. "Go quickly, husband."

"With all dispatch. Let's go, son." Rod gazed up at the castle, but this time, he didn't really see it. His attention was on the unseen world, as he thought of pushing against the ground, away—and, slowly, drifted up to the arrow-slit at the top of the gatehouse.

"Thou didst promise all dispatch," Magnus reminded him, hovering in midair and leaning against the narrow window.

"All right, so I'm a slow old man," Rod grumbled, "just because I didn't have the good fortune to grow up using psi powers, the way you did. Come on, inside." He turned sideways and drifted in. It took a little shoving, though.

"Thou art hardly come," Magnus said, sliding in effortlessly.

Rod slapped his belt. "That's muscle, boy, not flab." He looked around, frowning. "Not so bad."

It wasn't. There was a slab fallen from the roof, and the morning sunlight coming through it and the arrow-slits, showed them a round room of old, mellow stone. The corners were filled with antique spiderwebs, and a broken table and bench stood near one wall. Except for that, the room was empty, with a few shards of crockery on the floor.

"Not anywhere nearly as bad as… What's the matter?"

Magnus's eyes had lost focus; he was turning slowly about the room, his face drawn. "I do hear voices, Papa."

"Voices?" Rod tensed. "What are they saying?"

"Naught… too distant… only some feel of loud talk, and soldiers' oaths…"

"Well, it's the gatehouse; there would have been soldiers here, so it's easy to ascribe it to them." Rod carefully ignored the chill oozing down his spine. "Probably just the wind playing a trick with the acoustics, son, like a whispering gallery."

"Dost thou truly think so?"

Rod didn't, so he said, "What bothers me is what I
don't
hear—or see."

That caught Magnus's attention. "And what is that?"

"Birds." Rod pointed up toward the rafters. "There's a dozen nesting places in this room, but not a single one is used—not even a trace that there ever was a nest."

Magnus looked around, nodding slowly.

"Come on, let's find that winch." Rod turned away toward the doorway. "High time we got your brothers and sister in here." And Gwen. Most especially Gwen.

The porter's room was empty, except for some more crumbled furniture. Shafts of sunlight pierced its darkness, from a row of slits along one wall.

"Well, that's why you couldn't turn the windlass." Rod looked around him as he stepped in. "No windlass."

"Aye… I thought at a thing that was not…" But Magnus had his abstracted air again. "Yet how did they make the drawbridge raise or lower?"

"Counterweights, probably. Let's go find the gateway." Rod led the way across the room, out into the passageway, and looked around. Light filled it, from the courtyard archway. "There!" He strode over to the great portal, closed now by the drawbridge, and pointed to a huge iron ball attached to a chain that ran up into darkness. "But there had to be an operating line, somewhere…"

"Yon." Magnus pointed. Rod followed his direction and saw, centered above the gate, a huge pulley with a strip of something that might once have been rope hanging from it and looping over to the side, into a hole in the wall.

"Into the porter's room." Rod nodded. "Makes sense. Come on." He ducked back into the chamber they'd just come from and looked up at the front wall. The rope came through the hole, sure enough, and draped into a pulley like the one over the gateway. Only about four feet of it hung down, though, and on the floor under it was a mound of toadstools.

"Well, so much for the operating line. But how…" Rod broke off, frowning. "Wait a minute. The drawbridge goes higher than that pulley."

"Aye. 'Tis for the portcullis." Magnus stepped back out into the passageway and pointed.

Just below the central pulley was the top of the iron gate. Rod's gaze traveled over to the corner and traced the chain attached to it, following it down to the huge iron ball that rested on the ground. "Frozen open, fortunately. But then how did they work the drawbridge?"

"Yon." Magnus pointed up into the gloom.

Squinting, Rod could barely make out huge links that traversed overhead to run over great, rusty sprocket wheels in the back wall.

"Very sharp, son." Rod nodded. "Very good observation."

"It is not."

"Oh?" Rod peered at him, with a stab of apprehension. "This is definitely not your standard drawbridge. How're you figuring out what to look for?''

"I am not. I hear them."

"Them?" The stab twisted. "Who?"

"A murmur, a babble of voices—but among them is one telling another how to manage these devices.

Rod stared at him for a moment, not that Magnus was watching. Then he linked his mind to his son's. The rest of the room darkened even more about him.

"Dost thou hear?"

Rod shook his head. "Just a babble, like a distant crowd."

"Yet 'tis there."

"Oh, yeah, it's there all right. Where it's coming from, is another matter." Rod turned away. "Come on, let's figure out how to get that drawbridge down. I think we need your mother in here."

Magnus led him out through the archway and into the courtyard.

It seemed spacious after the porter's room and the tunnel, but Rod knew it could only be a hundred feet across. The keep bulged out into it, like a hugely fat tower. There were a lot of dead leaves and broken branches, of course, and mounds of humus in the corners, with weeds sprouting luxuriantly.

But not a single bird. Nor, now that Rod noticed it, a butterfly.

He wrenched his mind back to business, to suppress a shiver. "Where's this counterweight?"

"We have stepped over it." Magnus pointed behind him. Rod looked down, and saw a metal slab set in the stone; he'd thought it was a threshold to the archway. But now that he looked, he could see it was rust, not just brown stone, and that rings rose from its corners, rings that were fastened to huge links whose chains stretched up on the wall to disappear, over huge sprocket wheels, into the stone above the archway.

Now
. Rod shivered.

Magnus was pointing up. " 'Tis so well balanced that the drawbridge doth need but a strong pull to let it down."

"Yeah—but the iron slab goes up then, and everybody coming in or going out has to ride under it."

"True." Magnus frowned, in an abstracted sort of way. "Wherefore did the Count not use iron balls again, and keep the gateway clear?"

"Nice question." And Rod had an answer, which was anything but nice. Not that he was about to say it, of course—and he decided, then and there, that Magnus was never going to touch that bar.

A caroling cry echoed above them.

Rod's head snapped up.

There, atop the gatehouse, perched his two younger sons, with his wife and daughter gliding down in lazy spirals on their broomsticks. He couldn't help noticing, all over again, that Cordelia had a full-sized broomstick now, not just a hearth broom, and wasn't much shorter than her mother any more.

Gwen pulled up beside Rod and hopped off. "Thou wert so long about it that we grew impatient." But he saw the concern in her eyes. "What kept thee?"

"Trying to figure out the drawbridge system." Rod noticed his two boys drifting down like autumn leaves. He shuddered, and hoped the simile wasn't apt.

"Is't so rare?" Gwen asked.

" 'Tis odd, at the least," Magnus answered.

Gwen turned to him, and her eyes widened. "How is't with thee, my son?"

"Well enough…"

"Is it truly?" Gwen set her broomstick against a wall and reached up to press a hand against Magnus's forehead. She stared off into space for a few seconds, then said, "Step to the wall, and touch the stones."

A crease appeared between Magnus's eyebrows, but he did as she bade. Rod "listened" to Gwen's mind, eavesdropping on the eavesdropper, as Magnus's hand touched rock.

A babel of urgent voices filled his ear, some conjecturing whether or not there would be a battle, some discussing how exciting it all was. Beyond them were the voices of soldiers bawling orders, and under it, surfacing and submerging, the sinister laugh they had heard in the midst of the thunderstorm.

"Away," Gwen snapped, and Magnus slowly took his hand from the wall, then turned to his mother with a troubled gaze. "Thou hast heard it?"

"Aye. 'Twas some peasant folk come into the castle for fear of a siege—and 'twas hundreds of years agone."

"He is a past-reader!" Gregory's eyes were huge.

"Magnus always gets to do things first!" Geoffrey grumped.

" 'Tis not fair!" Cordelia complained.

" 'Tis as like to be a burden as a joy," Gwen assured them, and turned to Magnus again. "Thou hast a form of clear sight, my son. I've heard it spoken of, yet never known a one who had it. Thou canst read the thoughts embedded in the stones, or wood or metal, by the anguish or joy of those who dwelt near them."

"A psychometricist!" Rod's eyes were wide.

Magnus turned to Gwen, trying to focus on her face. "Yet wherefore have I not noted this aforetime?"

"For that thou hast ever been in places thronged with living folk, whose thoughts did obscure any that came from stones."

"Sure it might not be part of the boy turning into a young man?" Rod asked.