The Warlock Rock

Chapter Seventeen

A day's journey was uneventful, and a night's sleep the same. The next morning they were dousing the fire as the sun cleared the horizon. The day was fresh and clear, and might have been filled with birdsong, but the strains of rock music drowned them out.

"Us odd how we did sleep through the night, without the music's slackening," Geoffrey opined.

"Not for thee," Cordelia taunted. "Thou wouldst sleep through the Trump of Doom!"

Geoffrey considered the notion, and nodded. "True. Gabriel will not summon us to battle."

"Hist!" Magnus put out a hand to silence him. "Look up!"

They all did—and saw it float by, glinting in the dawn light, gray against the early blue of the sky.

"'Tis a giant egg!"

"Nay—'tis far too elongated," Gregory disagreed. "What manner of object is't, Papa?"

"A blimp." Rod was taut as a guitar string, eyes narrowed. "Like a balloon, only made of metal."

"So much iron as that?" Gwen sounded doubtful.

"Not iron, dear—aluminum. It's a lot lighter."

"But it doth not glister," Gregory objected.

"A point." Rod thought a moment. "Maybe some other metal."

"Yet it is not of Gramarye," Gwen inferred.

The children looked up in alarm.

"No," Rod said. "It takes a much higher technology than we have here."

"So it is of our enemies," Geoffrey said flatly.

"Why, yes, son." Rod felt a small glow that his offspring so readily assumed Rod's enemies were his. "It definitely is."

"Might it have aught to do with the dancing dead, and the stones that bring music?" Cordelia guessed.

Rod shrugged. "It does seem likely."

"Not really, Rod," Fess protested. "The phenomena merely coincide chronologically; there is no indication of causality."

"Not by thine own teaching," Geoffrey said stoutly. "Thou hast taught me that once may be chance, and twice may be coincidence, but thrice is the work of intelligence."

"I do remember saying something of the sort," the horse sighed.

"Then we follow it!" Geoffrey set off after the blimp, not waiting for anyone else.

"Why call him back?" Rod asked rhetorically. "En avant, troops!"

They set off, following a bubble.

Fortunately, the sun was behind them, so they were able to see the broad reach of the sky as they came out of the woodlands; and equally fortunately, they were following the blimp, so they were looking up.

Magnus frowned. "Why are there so many hawks ahead?"

"Belike due to a plenitude of game, brother," Geoffrey guessed.

"Mayhap," Gregory conceded, "but wherefore doth the blimp course toward them?"

"Why, it doth steer toward the west," Gwen answered, "and here, at least, I think we may say 'tis coincidence."

Gregory shrugged. "As thou wilt."

But as they hiked westward, one of the hawks broke loose from its mates and sailed toward them.

"What?" said Magnus. "Doth it seek us out?"

The small blot grew bigger in the sky.

"Either it's mighty close," Rod said, "or…"

"'Tis a giant!" Geoffrey snapped.

It had to be, with a wingspan of at least thirty feet. As they watched, those wings folded, and the bird suddenly dropped toward them, swelling hugely.

"It doth stoop—upon us!" Geoffrey cried. "Back, all back!"

"In a semicircle!" Rod shouted. "And get ready to hit it with everything you've got!"

The bird plunged with a cry that filled the air—straight toward Gregory. The boy tried to dodge, but huge talons caught him up.

"Hit him!" Rod yelled, and his dagger shot through the air, with Magnus's and Geoffrey's right behind it, to bury themselves in the bird's breast. A storm of rocks and sticks shot up from Cordelia and Gwen, and Rod hurtled into the midst of them, sword first. The giant hawk screamed and tried to rise, but Rod slammed into it before it could lift more than a yard. The hawk slashed with its beak, and blood welled in a long gash on Rod's left arm, shoving him slightly off target. He howled with the pain but drove the sword in, then wrestled it out and stabbed again—and the bird's face was peppered with stones and sticks. It reeled, keeled over, and fell to earth with a thud. Gregory sprang free, and Gwen swept him up in her arms.

Rod sprang for the bird's head, but saw the eyes glaze. He stood, trembling, watching its last spasmodic shudder, muttering obscenities.

"Vile raptor, to prey upon children," Magnus spat, and slashed its throat.

"Well done, my son," Gwen said. "Thus may it be to all who seek to harm little ones! There, now, Gregory, thou art not hurted."

The boy's trembling slackened.

Rod stood looking down at the dead hawk.

Come away, Rod, Fess's voice said inside his head. It is dead.

"Yes." Rod's eyes were hidden under his brows. "I've just taken the life of a living being. Why don't I feel guilty?"

"Because it deserved to die!" Cordelia spat. "Be exalted, Father! It was evil!"

"Yes. It was, wasn't it?" Rod turned away. "Fess, what kind of bird was that, anyway?"

"A chicken hawk, Rod, though immensely gross."

"And evil." Gwen set Gregory free, and Magnus clapped him on the shoulder and took him aside. Gwen turned to Rod. "Now, husband, we must see to that wound. There is no telling what manner of foulness may have been in such a monster. We must use strong spells, to banish its corruption."

"We can try, anyway," Rod grunted.

Half an hour later, they were back on the trail. The blimp was only a smudge on the western sky, but it was still in sight.

"Look out!"

Rod reached out to catch Gregory around the middle and yanked him back just in time. A foot-thick boulder came crashing and banging down the hillside in front of the family, narrowly missing them. Rod let out a shaky breath. "Son, I keep telling you—when you're mulling over a problem, sit down! Don't go wandering around half-aware !"

Gregory swallowed. "Aye, Papa."

" 'Ware!" Gwen cried, and Rod looked up the hillside to see another small cannonball bowling toward them. He leaped back, hoisting Gregory high.

"Fly, Papa!" Magnus called.

Rod spat an impolite word; when would using his psi powers start becoming automatic for him? He concentrated on pushing the earth away, and the world grew dim; the rattling and bouncing of the boulders seeming distant. Then Gregory wriggled out of his arms, and Rod's concentration disappeared as he made a frantic grab for his son. But he saw that Gregory was floating ten feet off the ground, realized he himself was falling, and just barely managed to push the ground away in time to loft him above the trajectory of the next cannonball. Not quite high enough—it smacked him a wicked one on the great toe—but he managed to stifle a yelp, keep his concentration, and still observe the hillside, in a remote sort of way.

The first thing he noticed was that his wife and daughter were circling over it on their broomsticks. The next was that his sons were floating in the updrafts.

The third was that there were an awful lot of those spinning, jouncing stones.

"Why are they so round?" Cordelia called.

"Because they have rolled so far down the hillside, sister," Gregory answered. " 'Tis a very long hillside, and hard."

So it was—only a ten-degree slope, but it had to be a quarter of a mile long. That was a plateau up there, not a crest—and the hillside itself was rough and rocky, with glints of flint. "That's a long way to slide, once you start to slip," Rod said.

And totally barren, of course. Anything that had tried to grow there, the tumbling boulders had mashed flat.

Fess posed a question. "How long have they been rolling?"

Geoffrey retorted, "What made them start?"

Gregory's eyes lost focus again. "The hill slopes up toward the east. Belike there are soft rocks down here that split, and shoot their offspring up—and those that cannot fly past the ridge above come tumbling back down here."

A loud crack sounded. They looked up in surprise, and saw two rocks flying toward the top of the hill.

"Why," said Cordelia, "that was a rock that lodged in a cranny, until it was time for it to split!"

Rod nodded. "And thus they do eventually get up to the top; it's just that some of them probably go up that hill and come back down several times, before they're finally lucky enough to lodge against an outcrop that will hold them."

"But every time they start again," Gwen called, "they do so by splitting. Nay, of course there are so many here!"

"An excellent resolution," Fess carolled. "Really, Rod, your whole family fills me with pride! Though of course I cannot take any credit for Lady…"

"Wait a minute." Rod frowned. "That rock that mashed my toe wasn't so soft." ,

They all studied the rocks, struck by the notion.

Then Fess said, "Could it be that the long tumble back down the hill hardens them?"

"Of course!" Gregory cried. "As they roll, they compress!"

"And as they compress, they harden." Magnus nodded. "Yet how large they are!"

"They have been long here," Cordelia said. "Mayhap they swell as they wait."

"Or mayhap," said Gregory, " 'tis simply that we near the stones' source."

Rod had another question. "But why does becoming hard make their music so much more strident?"

Everybody was silent, trying to puzzle it out.

Finally, Fess said, "We have noticed constant mutation in the music, as though some force were ever striving to create some new form. But such evolution must surely be cultural, not physical."

"I take it you mean 'cultural' in the broadest sense." Rod scowled. "Look, can we move on, please? I'm getting a headache."

"Poor Papa!" Cordelia sympathized. "And surely we will lose the skycraft if we tarry longer."

"Aye. Away!" Gwen called. She banked toward the west, the boys swooping to follow her.

Or at least two of them did. "Magnus!" Rod called. "Snap out of it!"

Magnus looked up, startled. "What, Papa?" He looked around and saw his mother and younger brothers drifting away. "Oh, aye! Forgive my distraction!" Then he drove off after them—but his feet were still tapping the air, in time to the music of the hard rocks..

Someone else was still hovering about.

"Daughter," Rod intoned.

Cordelia looked up from the intricate routine she was trying to work out, involving the front end of the broomstick moving in circles while the bristles went up and down—and all, Rod could have sworn, in time to two different sets of beats coming from the same music. His daughter finally focused on his face, looked startled, glanced quickly around, then gave a little cry and peeled off after her mother.

Rod heaved a sigh and sailed off after her. "You coming, Fess?" he called out. "Fess!"

"Here, Rod. I had my audio amplification turned down. Yes, I am following along on the ground."

"That's reassuring, anyway." Rod glanced back at the hillside with trepidation. "So by the time any rock gets over that ridge, all those trips down the hillside have turned it hard."

"That is true, Rod."

"And that means that after a while, all the rocks east of here will be hard, too."

Fess was silent for a moment, then said, "I think not, Rod. There are already many soft rocks in the lands we have passed through, and they are multiplying. There is room for both types of rock in the East."

"I hope you're right." Rod lofted higher, hoping the music would become fainter. It did, but not much. He sailed on west, with only one glance back at the hillside where the rolling stones developed into hard rock.