The Warlock Rock (24 page)

"Let us go to it," one of the men said, "for I crave its shelter." Everyone started down the road again, but it wasn't wide enough for more than four abreast, so the Gallowglasses followed after.

"Husband," said Gwen, "go up among these folk, and learn why they have come."

"If you say so—but I would have said it was pretty obvious." Rod lengthened his stride and caught up with the peasants. "If you don't mind, goodman—I need a bit of information."

"Assuredly, my lord! What wouldst thou?"

"Well, for starters—how did you find out about this place?"

"Word of it hath run through every farm and village," the wife answered, "wherever folk do groan under the burden of this clamor that hath begun these few months past." More than two months, then, Rod noted. "You've had to try to keep up with your daily work all that time?"

"Aye, and it hath become a trial greater and more sore as the days have rolled," her husband said. "A neighbor told us there was sanctuary in the fen, yet we had crops in the field, and sought to keep our daily round."

"Yet our heads began to ache, and sorely," the wife added. "We stopped our hearing with waxen covers for our ears, we tied bandages to hold them—yet still the strident thumping came through, to make us falter."

"I began to stumble as I went out to the pasture," the other peasant man explained. "I found that I did trip as I sought to follow the plow."

"Anon the burden became too great to bear," his wife said, "and so we came here, for sanctuary."

"Ere any others of our children were reived from us," the first wife said darkly.

"Children reived!" Cordelia stiffened. "Who would do so craven a deed?"

"The music, maiden," the first man answered. "The music, that doth capture the affections of our older children."

"Why, how is this?" But there was foreboding in Cordelia's voice; she remembered the groups of young people she had seen.

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"Our son was aged twelve, when he began to twitch with the music's rhythm," the second wife answered. "Our daughter was fourteen. Her head began to nod, and she commenced singing wordless songs as she went about her chores…"

"Not wordless," the ten-year-old protested.

"Well, if there were words to them, I could not make them out. She did move more slowly about her tasks, and more slowly still, till finally she threw them over, and went off to join the other maidens in the forest."

"Pray Heaven they are maidens still!" the second father said with a shudder, "for the older boys and young men have gone to the forest, too. Mine eldest was twenty, mine other son sixteen. Where are they now?"

Magnus saw the real worry that lined his face. "Peace, goodman. He's well, I doubt not."

"Then thou hast not seen what we have seen," the first father grunted. "The twitching and spasms they call dancing, the strange foods they gather, the bands of them that wind about the countryside with strange kicking steps, knowing not whither they go— Pray Heaven they have not come to their undoing!" Magnus started to say that he hadn't seen the youths doing anything dangerous, but remembering the sense of peril he had felt with the lotus-eaters, the cadaverous pebble-eaters, and the vampire, he held his peace.

"So many families!" Gwen saved him with a change of subject. "And look, they do come from all points of the compass!"

They could see for a mile or two in each direction, for the fens were flat and level, and covered only with bushes and tussocks, with here and there a small stand of trees. Against the waning sun came the silhouettes of families and groups of older peasants, trooping in from all directions.

"Where are they going?" Rod asked.

"We shall know soon enough," Gwen assured him.

"The music has grown louder," Gregory noted.

It had, though not unpleasantly so. Rod glanced at his children, and saw that even Geoffrey was beginning to relax—and he was relieved that Magnus and Cordelia had stopped twitching. Then they came into a grove of small, stunted, twisted trees, and saw a large pool in front of them. It lay still, molten gold in the late-afternoon sun, its surface rippled only by a passing breeze—and the whole pond seemed to resonate with the gentle melody. All around its edge, people were sitting or reclining, doing simple chores such as whittling or mending. Campfires blossomed.

"Water at last!" Magnus knelt by the pool. "I thirst!"

"I would not," the older peasant said, but Magnus had already dipped up a handful. He sipped, then shook the water off, making a face. " 'Tis brackish."

"Aye," the peasant said. "This is fen-land, look you, young master. We are near the sea; the water is
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salt."

"Even as our blood is," Rod murmured.

"How sayest thou, gentleman?"

"Nothing major." Rod sat down with a sigh. "We'll have to get a campfire going, of course."

"Certes." Gwen sat beside him. "Yet we may rest awhile."

"I shall search for water," Magnus said.

"Don't bother, son." Rod held up a hand. "Any water you find will taste of the sea. Anything in that waterskin, Gwen?"

His wife held up a leather bottle that was almost flat. Suddenly, it bulged. "Aye," she said. "Here, my son."

Magnus took the skin thankfully and squirted a long stream into his mouth.

"Cordelia," Gwen called, "what dost thou?"

The girl was ten yards away, by the brink of the pool. "Only looking to see what lies under the water, Mama," she called, all innocence—but she was making faces, giving exaggerated looks behind her, where Gregory was prowling along the shoreline on hands and knees, studying the water with a pensive expression.

Gwen smiled. "Oh, aye. Thou hast not seen such a pool aforetime, hast thou?"

"Nay, Mama," Cordelia said, with a smile of relief. She turned back to making sure that Little Brother didn't fall in—when he was so consumed by curiosity, he tended to ignore little things like safety. But of course it would have hurt his feelings if Cordelia had come right out and said she had to take care of him—or thought it, for that matter.

"Are there other places like this?" Rod asked one of the peasants. The man looked up from setting kindling. "We have heard of some. A minstrel came by with clay o'er his ears; he had come from a grove to the north, where some chandlers had moved their shops, and did sing of the sea. He did say he was bound for the south, to an island on which some troubadors had gathered, where the music of the sea did keep the clamor at bay."

"A few little oases of calm, all up and down the coast, I'll bet." Rod nodded and turned to Gwen. "We'll have to encourage their growth inland."

"Aye, my lord. There is need for refuges from the wild life."

"Mama! Papa!" Cordelia called. "Come see! 'Tis most amazing!"

"Not truly, sister," Gregory disagreed. "They are but clams, after all. Wouldst thou not expect to find such near to the tidewater?"

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"Not such as these, addlepate! Tis they who do make the music!" Gregory looked up, incredulous.

Rod pulled himself to his feet. "I think we'd better have a look at this."

"Aye," Gwen agreed. "What manner of creatures are these?" They moved around the curve of the pool, followed by Geoffrey and Magnus. Fess stayed where he was, but kept an eye on them.

Cordelia had followed Gregory out onto a sand-spit that ran twenty feet into the pool—and, sure enough, there they were, on a ledge two feet under the water: five clams, standing on end in the sand, almost in the middle of the pond, and they were moving, though slightly, in time to the music.

"But how can clams make music?" Gregory wondered.

"Why," said a voice from the water, "how can I keep from singing?" The children did a double take, and Gregory asked, "Was it thou who didst speak, little clam?"

"Aye," she answered, "if 'twas thou didst ask."

"These," Rod whispered to Gwen, "are not your average clams."

"I had guessed it," she returned.

"It was a little obvious," Rod admitted. "Is there no end to the wonders of this island?"

"Only in people's hearts and minds, my lord."

"Dost thou sing only because thou must?" Cordelia asked. The clam gave a melodious chuckle. "Is that so little?"

Cordelia blushed, and Gregory said, "Then why must thou needs sing?"

"Why," said a deeper voice, "we seek to keep alive the music that otherwise might die for want of singing."

"Do you unearth new tunes, then?"

"Some new, but many old. We seek to keep alive simple music, and ornate music, and songs with words worth hearing—but, more than aught else, we seek to foster melody, that theLand ofSong may not die."

"'Tis poetry, look thou," said another clam, "the lyric poetry that had its birth in song."

" Tis beauty," said a fourth, "beauty of poetry and melody alike."

"But if you keep it alive," said Geoffrey, "then it must have begun before thee."
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"Thou speakest aright," said two clams at once, and a third said, "The fen was once filled with the sounds of natural music until the hard rocks drowned them out, and we clams do keep the music of the fen alive."

"Also the music of the folk," said the fourth clam.

Gregory sidled over to Rod and said, low-voiced, "I have discerned the manner of five small beings making music enough to fill this grove."

"I don't think they're doing it deliberately," Rod pointed out.

"That they may not realize how much they do? Aye. Yet their sounds are carried by the water, making the whole pond to vibrate—and thus their music spreads."

You are correct, Gregory, said Fess's voice. They have set up a ripple effect .

"Yet if what thou dost say is true," Cordelia said to the clams, "thou must needs treasure all music."

"All good music, aye."

"Is there no good rock music then?" she protested.

"Music that the rocks have brought? Aye! There do be some!" the first clam said, but even as she spoke, a bass voice near her had begun to thrum in a steady rhythm. Then three other voices began to vocalize in a higher register, repeating a wordless refrain.

The Gallowglasses looked at one another, astonished. " 'Tis like the music of the first soft rocks we did hear," Magnus said.

"It is the same," Cordelia said.

Then the tenor clam broke in, singing,

"Live with me, and be my love, And we shall all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, And all the craggy mountains yields.

There will we sit upon the rocks, And see the shepherds and their flocks, By shallow rivers, by whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses, With a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers and a kirtle Emblazoned all with leaves of myrtle.

A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs, And if these pleasures may thee move, Then live with me and be my love."

The soprano clam sang the answer:

"If that the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love."

"Why, 'tis beauteous!" Gwen said, enthralled. "At the least, it is when thou dost sing it."
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But Cordelia frowned. "The tune, I know—yet the words are new."

"Thou speakest aright," said a baritone clam. "It was but melody when first we heard it. Later, there were words, but we liked them not, so we gave the tune to other verses that we'd heard anon." Rod frowned. "I don't know if I quite like the drift of that song's sentiments."

"Oh, thou art but one who would kill joy!" Cordelia scoffed. "Is not the lass's reply enough for thee?"

"It is," Rod said, "if you remember it."

"It was indeed the music of the soft rock," Gregory said. "Yet assuredly thou canst find no delight in the hard rocks' music!"

"Wherefore not, brother?" Geoffrey asked. "That, at least, I can begin to comprehend, for it hath the sound of an army on the march."

The clams began to vibrate with a strong, quick rhythm, and chanted:

"Crabbed age and youth Cannot live together, For youth is full of pleasure, Age is full of care!

Youth, like summer morn, Age, like winter weather; Youth, like summer brave, Age like winter bare. Youth is full of sport, Age's breath is short, Youth is nimble, age is lame, Age, I do abhor thee!"

"Now, wait a minute," Rod said; but the music rode right on over his words:

"Youth, I do adore thee!

Oh, my love, my love is young!

Age, I do defy thee!

Oh, sweet shepherd, hie thee,

For methinks thou stay'st too long!"

"Definitely," Rod said, "I find that offensive."

"Wherefore?" asked a baritone clam. "Thou art not aged." Rod froze, agape, then managed to close his mouth. Cordelia giggled. Rod gave her a black look, then said to Gwen, "Of course, I do kind of agree with the sentiments of that last verse." But her eyes were already glowing at him.

"Twas fair, I will allow," Geoffrey said. "Yet surely thou canst do naught with this plague of noise that doth come from the heavy metal stones!"

"Oh, but we have heard good sounds from them!" another baritone clam cried. "Aye, mayhap nine in ten
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are worthless—but is not that true of all things? The tenth is well worth keeping." But the tenor clam was already vibrating, and Rod was awestruck at the sound. It was like surf breaking on a shingled shore, like wind howling over a frozen tundra. It was an ancient locomotive, throbbing across that barren plain; it was a driving rhythm that beat and battered at him, then broke into a cascade of jangling notes as the tenor voice cried out: