The Warlock Rock

Chapter Five

"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.

"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."

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!"

"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?"

"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. "How didst thou that?"

" 'Tis almost as though the time between beats doth not exist for them," Gregory exclaimed.

"Why, then, betwixt beats, we can wend betwixt bodies! Come, brothers!" Magnus nodded his head. "One, AND two AND three, NOW!"

They shoved through and saw Cordelia dancing, her whole body bobbing and weaving, a delighted smile on her face and a glazed look in her eyes as she stared at the boy who had pulled her in.

"Is he handsome?" Gregory asked, with interest.

"As lads go, I suppose," Geoffrey grudged, "though he cannot be much of a boy if he doth wish to dance with a lass."

"Alas!" a pretty blond twelve-year-old girl cried, catching his hand. "Wilt thou not dance with me?"

Geoffrey recoiled as though a snake had bitten him. The girl flushed, hurt, and Gregory tried to smooth it over by asking quickly, "Dost thou not mind this great press of bodies about thee?"

"Nay." The girl beamed. "Wherefore should I? 'Tis but entertainment." She eyed Geoffrey with a slow smile, but he recovered, straightening, his lip curling. The girl saw and pouted for a beat, shrugged on the next, and whirled away on the third.

The boys stared at their dancing sister in the wrapping of music.

"There are words to it!" Gregory said, wide-eyed.

They listened, and heard the twanging music form into phrases:

Chew bop, chew bop! Bee bee yum hop! Yum chew sip sop, Boy and girl drop!

"What arrant nonsense!" Gregory shivered with distaste.

"What is its meaning?" Geoffrey wondered.

"Naught, I hope," Magnus scowled. "Come, brothers! We must haul our sister out from here."

"Yet how?"

"Catch her arms and fly."

"They will seek to prevent us," Gregory warned.

"I depend upon it." Geoffrey clenched a fist, his eyes glittering. "On the 'and,' brothers!"

"One AND two AND," Magnus counted. "To HER left NOW, catch HER arm AND rise AND fly NOW!"

He and Geoffrey shot off the ground with Gregory trailing behind. Cordelia disappeared so suddenly that her partner looked about for her, at a loss—to left and to right, but not up above.

She writhed and twisted in their hands. "OH! Do LET me GO now! THOU foul KILLjoys!"

"Sister, wake!" Magnus cried, but she kept twisting until Gregory swooped up before her, beating time with his hands, then clapped suddenly under her nose on the offbeat. Cordelia's head snapped up, her eyes wide, startled. "OH! What…"

"Thou wert ensnared," her littlest brother informed her.

"I was not." She blushed and looked away. "I did only… attempt to…"

"Study the phenomenon from within, perhaps?"

All looked down, startled, to see Fess looking up at them from the edge of the crowd.

Cordelia couldn't fib with his plastic optics on her. "Nay, I was caught," she admitted grudgingly. "But, oh! It doth take such a hold of one!"

"I do not doubt it," Fess said. "There is entirely too high a concentration of rock music in this meadow. Come away, children, so that we can hear one another talk."

He turned and trotted away. The boys exchanged a glance, nodded, and swooped off after him.

After about fifty feet, Magnus looked up, alarmed, and circled back to accompany his sister. "What kept thee?"

"My broomstick," Cordelia reminded him. "Thou couldst have waited, Magnus! 'Twas but a second's work to leap upon it—yet in that time, thou wast an hundred feet ahead."

"My apologies," Magnus said ruefully.

Down, Gwen's voice commanded inside their heads.

They looked down, surprised, to see their parents climbing out of a skiff and onto the bank. Aye, Mama, Magnus thought back at her, and all four children landed neatly in front of Rod and Gwen.

"What hast thou learned?" she asked.

Cordelia blushed, and Magnus was just starting to answer, when a sizzling sound made them all turn and look up.

Sudden heat seared, and a muted roaring swelled in volume and rose in pitch. "Hit the dirt!" Rod yelled and leaped aside, knocking his children down like bowling pins as a huge mass of flame shot by overhead and plummeted away in front of them, its roar fading and dropping in pitch.

"Children! Are you well?"

"Aye, Mama," Cordelia answered shakily, and her brothers chorused after her. "What is that?" Magnus cried.

"The Doppler effect," Fess answered obligingly. "As the object approached, its sound rose in pitch, and as it went away…"

"No, not the sound!" Rob said. "The object! What was it?"

"Why, do none of you recognize it? You have seen enough of them in your lifetimes, I know."

"Wilt thou tell us!"

"Why," said Gwen, "it was a fireball, such as witches and warlocks throw at one another! You have seen them ere now."

"It was a fireball." Cordelia stared off at the trail of smoke.

"That? 'Twas as much a fireball as a hillock is a mountain!"

"The difference is merely a matter of scale," Fess pointed out.

"A scale of mat much difference must come from a whale!"

"The whale is no fish, thou ninny!"

"Nay, but thou wilt be, and thou dost call me a…"

"Quiet!" Rod snapped. "Here comes another one!"

"Two more!"

"Three!"

They stood rooted to the spot, staring at the huge spheres of flame that roared toward them. "They truly are great balls of fire," Gregory marvelled.

Fess's head snapped up. "But their elevation is significantly lower than mat of the first! Flee! Fly! Or you will be seared for certain! Go!"

The family leaped into the air, the boys shooting away over the meadow, Gwen and Cordelia swooping away on their broomsticks. Rod brought up the rear.

But the fireballs swooped faster.

"To the sides!" Gwen called. "Out of their pathway!"

They veered sideways, Cordelia and Gregory to the left with their mother, Magnus and Geoffrey to the right with their father—but the outside fireballs only sheared off after them.

"The menace comes with purpose!" Fess cried. "Up! See if you can rise above it!"

The family made a full-scale try at transcendence, swooping up into the sky so fast their stomachs thought they'd been forgotten—but the fireballs swooped up after them.

"They have our measure!" Magnus cried in despair. "How can we evade them?"

"I see a river!" Rod called. "Dive, kids! With as deep a breath as you can, then hold it! Maybe the fireballs will stay away from the water!"

As one, the children gulped air and stooped, barrelling downward like lead weights from the Tower of Pisa, and shot into the water as though they were holding a splash contest, with Rod and Gwen right behind.

The outside fireballs veered back toward the center one, and the three of them shot by overhead. Fess knew he had to be mistaken; the noise of their passage couldn't truly have had an undertone of disappointment. "They have passed! You may come up!"

Four waterspouts erupted with four children inside them, exhaling explosively and gulping air like landed fish. They fell back into the water with cries of relief. Rod and Gwen followed with a little more dignity.

"They were chasing us!" Now that the crisis was over, Geoffrey could afford to be angry. "They truly did chase us!"

"Go rebuke them, then, brother," Magnus said, disgusted.

"Who could have set them on us?" Gregory wondered.

The four young Gallowglasses were silent, staring at one another.

"We do have a few enemies," Fess admitted.

"And these fireballs, like the rocks, have sprung from one of them!" Geoffrey slapped the water. "Did I not say 'twas an enemy behind it?"

"We do not know that, and… Out of the water!"

"Wherefore?" Geoffrey asked, peering around him. "I see naught to fear."

"Aye," Magnus agreed. "There is naught but those four bumps on the water's surface."

"Those four bumps approach," Cordelia said nervously,

"and there is a log on our other side that doth likewise come nearer!"

"Out!" Gwen snapped, and gave them a head start with telekinesis as Fess explained, "Those are no logs, but giant amphibians! And they are hungry! Quickly, children! Out of the water!"

The family shot out like pellets from a blowpipe, looking rather bedraggled; the ladies' brooms were definitely not at their best with soggy straw. The collection of bumps and the log shot toward each other, slammed together, and climbed halfway out of the water, following them in a crescendo of flashing teeth and writhing serpentine bodies. But the huge jaws snapped shut a good yard short of anyone's heels, and the two great lizards fell back on top of each other and lay glaring up at the children.

"Don't just sit there like a bump on a log," the bottom one grumbled, "go get them!"

"I didn't come equipped with wings, fishface!"

"Fishface? Who do you think you're calling fishface, snaketail?"

"What are they, Fess?" Cordelia stared down at them fearfully.

"Why, I do know them!" Magnus said, staring too. "Thou didst show them me in my bestiary—though we have never seen them here, and I had thought them but myths! They are crocodiles from Terra!"

"Very good, Magnus!" Rod said, impressed.

"However," said Fess, "only one is a crocodile. The other is an alligator."

"How canst thou tell?" Gregory demanded.

"The alligator's snout is more rounded at the tip; the crocodile's is more pointed. There are other differences, but those are the most obvious ones."

"They got away," the crocodile groused, glowering up at the children.

"Inflation does it," the alligator answered. "Everything's going up these days—even food."

"Well, it was a nice try." The crocodile sighed, turning away.

"Probably sour children anyway." The alligator turned away, too.

"Well! Such audacity!" Cordelia exclaimed, jamming her fists onto her hips. "I'll have thee know I am quite mmfftfptl!" The last bit of pronunciation was occasioned by the clapping of Magnus's hand over her mouth as he hissed in her ear, "Wilt thou be still! The last we should wish would be to have them think thee sweet and tender!"

Cordelia gave him a murderous glare over the top of his wrist, but held her tongue.

"I'm gonna go hunt up some mud guppies," the crocodile grumped.

"Yeah." The alligator turned away. "Me for some crayfish."

"They'll do in a pinch," the croc agreed. "See you later, alligator."

"With a smile, crocodile."

They swam away, disappearing into the muddy waters of the river.

"Well! Praise Heaven we have survived that!" Cordelia watched the two reptiles depart, still miffed. "How dare they call me sour!"

"Thou wouldst not wish them to know thee better, sister," Magnus assured her.

"Come," said Gwen, "let us be on our way, and quickly—I do not wish to give them time to think again."