The Warlock Rock

Chapter Twenty-Seven

They came back to find Brother Dorian still at his keyboard, and the children, caught up in his music, still with their instruments. Rod paused to watch, astonished—the sound of the pipe and tambour, the sweeps of the harp and the doubled pure-tone chords, all fitted perfectly with Brother Dorian's melody, punctuating and underscoring it as though they, too, were parts of his instrument.

All about them, angels danced.

At least, if angels could really be seen, they might have looked like this—no wings or long white robes, but abstract glowing forms, fluxing and shifting in time to the music. The pillars of a cathedral soared up around them, pillars that seemed real even though Rod could see through them, supporting a dome inlaid with abstract designs that somehow blended tranquility with excitement.

Around them wreathed the aroma of incense.

Father Thelonius finished veiling the chalice and looked up to give them a taut smile. He started toward them, but Rod could see his strain and held up a palm. The monk stopped, nodding his thanks, then stilled as his eyes lost focus.

Rod glanced at Gwen; she nodded, and the two of them opened their minds to the conceit Brother Dorian led.

It was glorious—a heavenly choir singing to the tones of massed strings, with trumpets now and again gliding high above. The tones of the children's instruments were there, though subtle, and nowhere nearly as vivid as their delight. Rod sensed a hundred souls or more, all welcoming, all exalted with the beauty of the music and the glory of their praising; the beneficence of their purpose was still there, but less important than the wonder of the experience itself.

Gwen's mind blended with his own, and they saw together why the choir still sang, felt the waves of dissonance and the clashing chaos of interference arising from the turmoil of despairing, angered minds all across Gramarye—from youth led into confusion by the sorceress, seduced into the nightmare disorientation that made them malleable and would have brought them eventually to her coven, to swell her power.

But the harmonies of the choir of linked minds rolled out over the land now, welling from the monastery in the southeast and this small fountain in the northwest, to soothe and calm and reassure, lifting souls from despair and giving them the inspiration of a fundamental certainty that there was some sort of sense to existence somewhere, that harmony and hope still existed, though the troubled young might not yet perceive them—but could eventually find them, and the peace and, perhaps, even the happiness they sought.

Finally, Rod could feel exhaustion dimming Brother Dorian's music, could feel the choir weakening—but they had lasted long enough. The worst of the standing waves of confusion and chaos spreading outward from the psychic storm had decayed; physical entropy had subsumed emotional entropy. The energy input was gone, and the nightmares it had generated had begun to die.

Slowly, Brother Dorian began to soften his tones. The glowing forms around him dimmed, then faded. Finally, his chords were silenced, and only a single melodic line held sway. One by one, the Gallowglasses laid down their instruments as the single tune resolved the whole symphony, was met with a final chord, and was done. Brother Dorian stood, face uplifted, exhausted but exalted, immobile.

" 'Twas miraculous," Cordelia said softly.

"A miracle of thine own making, then." Brother Dorian's voice seemed to come from far away.

"Nay, Brother," Father Thelonius demurred. "Miracles come from God alone—we can but hope that they flow through us."

Still, Brother Dorian's voice was not of this world. "There are more miracles than we realize, then, for they are all about us, and need not be great and mighty. Grace comes to all who are open to it; miracles hap in places far removed from fame. Tis only the few that catch the eye of mighty folk that do astound us all."

"Thy work this day hath astounded me," Geoffrey said, and that was enough to make Rod marvel.

"I believe more strongly in Heaven, for having been a part of this upwelling of souls," Cordelia said. "Can we never be of it again?"

"Mayhap thou canst." Finally, Brother Dorian's gaze met theirs, and he came back to the present. "You have but to learn to make music yourselves, and play it together—and, now and again, when all is true and right, this feeling may come upon you. Not in such intensity, no, for such as this is rare, that so many souls be conjoined—but enough, enough."

"Then I will anticipate it," Magnus murmured.

Gwen turned to Father Thelonius. "What form of Mass was this, that had every form of sense involved, and made so many folk a channel for the common greatness?"

"Each one of us was a medium for the goodness in the hearts of all others," Father Thelonius answered, "and for a while, we were able to put aside our jealousies and spites, our shadows' hungers and desires. For some brief time, we learned again that what is good in us is of greater moment than what is fell."

That wasn't much of an answer, Rod decided, but it was enough.

"Yet what of thee?" Father Thelonius' tone sharpened with anxiety. "How didst thou fare, who took the brunt of peril upon thee?"

The children looked up, suddenly aware again of the potential for horror. "Oh, Mama!" Cordelia fled to embrace Gwen, and the boys crowded round.

"Nay, child, I am well." Gwen caressed Cordelia's hair. " 'Twas harrowing, I will own, but 'tis done, and though thy father and I had some pain in the doing of it, we emerge unscathed."

"What pain?" Magnus cried, but Gwen said, "Hush. 'Twas of the passing moment, and is gone."

"Forgive me, then, when thou art so wearied." Father Thelonius wasn't looking too spruce himself. "But I must know, if I can—didst thou discover aught more of the way in which this blasphemy came to be? I must forestall its recurrence, if I can."

Rod shuddered at the thought. "I'm afraid we had a good summary of that, Father."

Gwen nodded, gaze fixed on Thelonius' eyes. "As the sorceress died, her memories sped through our minds. We know more of her than we wish."

"Say, then—what manner of thing was she?"

"Only another peasant with a modicum of talent of the mind," Gwen explained. "Partly for this, and partly for her misshapen features, she was scorned and shunned by her fellows, till their contempt did fester within her soul and yield conviction that she was far better than any, though her qualities were hidden. Yet she was certain that they would one day burst forth to bring her power and glory—and scope for revenge."

Father Thelonius nodded sadly. " 'Tis an old tale and a sad one, told out aye many times. Its only cures are grace and faith, and devotion to charity. Yet lacking these, she was fertile ground for those who sought to make a tool of her."

Rod nodded. "You have it. That was no psionic construct that held that tornado in check—it was a force field, set up by electronic devices and maintained by the power of a nuclear reactor."

"Ah." Father Thelonius lifted his head. "It was an agent from off-planet, then, who played her tempter."

"He was indeed," Gwen said, "though she knew it not. He came to her in the guise of a devil, pleading for her sympathy and offering her the satisfaction of her lust. If she would worship him, he said, he would give her power— power to destroy. He gave her a mission—to reduce the land of Gramarye to anarchy. And he showed her the way to it—told her of the peasant who did make the witch-moss stones, and how to entice him to make rocks that would bend to her will the common folk who have no witch-talent of their own. Then did he show her how, once bent, she could bring them to her, could use music to entice them into blending what little mind-power they had with her own talent, thus shaping a stronger power to bend more folk and bring them in. Thus did she gather a 'coven' of deluded mortals who, like herself, did think themselves great because, in their hidden hearts, they believed themselves diminished. She promised them the power of the devil who had appeared to her, and aided them in deluding themselves to believe they had witch-powers."

"But they truly had no talent of any kind?" Father Thelonius asked.

"None, save perhaps the great-heartedness that might have been, had they not killed it aborning with their own poisoned pain. Some among these she sent out to the crafter, to pay him and tell him what new forms of music she wished to have come from his next rocks. Others she sent out to spread those first rocks broadcast, and bring in more folk like them."

"That's why the music took such an unpleasant turn," Rod explained.

"Aye," Father Thelonius agreed, "there was something of a poisoned mind underlying it. But what of the strange beings that did seem to accompany this music as it spread?"

Rod shook his head. "No one person's doing. But the music itself did start to suggest strange things. My own guess is that they came into existence the way the elves did—from the vivid imaginations of people who didn't know they were projectives. Only this time, instead of old folk-tales suggesting forms for witch-moss constructs, it was music."

Father Thelonius nodded. "And did this agent in a devil's guise give her the thought of worship of him?"

"There are men who would enjoy such a thing," Rod admitted. Magnus glanced sharply at him.

"Even so," Gwen agreed. " 'Twas he who built her the altar that hid her devices of power, he who told her how to make of it a reservoir of minds' energies. Yet not being psionic, he could not tell her the manner of using that resource; she discovered that herself, and this opened a channel she could not close, directly from the reservoir to her mind."

"And it destroyed her mind?" the monk asked.

Gwen nodded. "As her music gathered in more and more deluded folk to yield what little power they could, and channel the far greater amount that came from others stirred by her grating sounds, the power from the reservoir overwhelmed her brain. She began to lose control; the dismind-ing noises she herself had made beat most strongly on the brain that had engendered them, making her to think of sounds more strongly bent. These did she make to sound in the minds of those about her, and her agents took the memory of those sounds to the crafter, to make rocks that would emit such noise."

"And the reservoir would distort the new sound into a grosser sound, and the agents would take that out to the crafter," Rod added. "So the whole cycle would begin again, swelling the reservoir from the power of the people it absorbed, with no one directing it."

"A regenerative cycle," Father Thelonius said, "a vicious circle."

"A feedback loop by any other name," Rod agreed. "The more it fed back, the more it warped the brain that had begun it—and the more power that the coven brought in, the more it seared its single path through her neurons, numbing what intellect she had."

"The power she used burned her out," Gwen agreed. "She may have harnessed the whirlwind, but she had little mind left with which to direct it."

Rod nodded. "She turned the whole assemblage— herself, her adherents, and the reservoir—into a runaway engine, out of control."

"But thus they sought to be," Gwen protested. "They sought to lose control, all—even, toward the end, the sorceress herself!"

Father Thelonius shook his head. " 'Tis the instinct in the social animal, to yield itself up and become a part of something greater than itself."

"That is the impulse that should start us on the road to Heaven," Brother Dorian murmured.

"But can be used to turn us onto the path to Hell." Father Thelonius scowled. "Thus can we be misled—oh, so easily misled! And the younger we are, the more easily 'tis done."

The junior Gallowglasses exchanged glances.

Then they turned, as one, to Brother Dorian.

He was packing up his keyboard.

"What!" Cordelia protested. "Wilt thou leave us lorn?"

The monk paused in the act of slipping his keyboard away under his robe. "Nay, I think not," he said with a smile. "I shall return to the monastery, aye—but I think there shall be some new songs in the land ere long."

The End