"I ken not," she replied, "save that 'tis a term they've not heard before."
The other three had picked up Magnus's mood, and were grinning now.
Timon came back in with a tray. He set a tankard in front of each of them, saying, "I regret there's naught but stew this night, milord, milady. We had no notion of thy coming."
"I have no doubt thy stew will suit," Gwen assured him. "Bread, too, an thou wilt."
"Oh, of a certainty!"
Magnus grimaced, overdoing it a little, and said, "How dost thou withstand the noise all about?"
"Noise?" Timon looked up, frowning, head cocked to the side, listening. "Oh, the music of the rocks, dost thou mean? Aye, 'tis still there, is't not?"
Cordelia stared. "How canst thou have missed it?"
Timon shrugged. "A month agone we were ever in the meadows, dancing to fair strains; yet somehow, of late, we have taken less and less notice of it."
"Timon!"
"Aye, Dad!" He flashed a grin back at the Gallow-glasses. "I've a notion thy stew is ready." He strode off toward the inner doorway.
"So that is the fashion of it," Magnus said thoughtfully.
"How can they cease to notice the music?" Cordelia wondered.
Geoffrey shrugged. "Mayhap through over-familiarity. We treasure least what we have known too long. Yet I find that hard to credit, when 'tis so loud."
At any level, Fess's voice said inside their head, it can be ignored, when people are saturated with it. Some scholars claim that the mind protects itself by becoming numb when it is overloaded, and blocks out the irritation.
Magnus scowled. "How now! 'Tis pleasant sound, not irritation!"
Too much of anything can be an irritant.
"Each of us," Gwen said diplomatically, "hath gorged too much on sweetmeats."
Magnus flushed, not liking the reminder of his childhood, and Gregory looked guilty.
An excellent example, Fess agreed, and when you have eaten too much of any food, no matter how tasty, the mere aroma of it sickens you. In the same fashion, these people's minds have erected blockades of numbness.
Geoffrey gained a sudden wary look. "Yet blockades can be breached, Fess."
"Oh, be not so silly," Cordelia scoffed. "We speak of music, not of castles. How can one breach a wall of surfeit?"
Why, said Fess, by a change in the music, one that catches attention.
Gregory asked, "What manner of change is that?"
A howl sounded from outside.
They stared at one another, startled. Then they jumped up, turning away to the door.
They went out, looking toward the sound—for the howl had died, but was replaced by a rough, rhythmic scraping, and chanting in time to it:
The children stood stock-still, and Gregory asked, "Can this be music?"
You may need to redefine your terms, Fess suggested.
"Assuredly," said Gwen, "it cannot be verse."
"I don't know," Rod said, "though I did think it was as bad as it could get."
It has meter and rhyme, Fess pointed out. It must be so classified.
"But its source!" Magnus protested. "Are there rocks now that chant?"
With a prickle of uneasiness, Rod noticed that the young folk of the village were looking out of windows and doorways.
Down the street they came, clad in roughly tanned leather garments that left their backs bare—young men and young women in their teens, moving in time to the beat, stepping three times and, on the fourth beat, slashing at each other's backs with whips.
"Flagellants," Rod whispered, horrified. "But why? There's no plague here."
"'Tis not repentance," Gwen said, her tone hardening. "Hearken to their words, husband."
Rod heard, but could scarcely tell whether the sounds came from the young people, or from the rocks they wore tied around their necks:
"Nay!" Cordelia's voice trembled. "Assuredly the voice doth not tell them that pain is pleasure!"
"It doth," Gwen said, mouth a thin, grim line, "and I assure thee, daughter, 'tis the foulest lie that e'er I heard!"
"But how can the music say it, an it is false?" Magnus asked, bewildered.
"Because," Rod said, "these rocks were made by somebody, and that somebody can put lies in them if he wants to."
Quite probable, Fess agreed. At the very least, I question their programming.
Somebody jostled them; Rod staggered back, with a cry of anger, then stepped forward, hand going to his sword— but slammed back against the inn again, as the innkeeper bumped past him, calling, "Nay, lad! Timon, no! Come back!"
But tall Timon, eyes unfocused, had torn off his tunic and caught up a broom. He tailed onto the end of the line, shuffling along and slashing with the broom straws at the back in front of him. A young girl jumped in behind him, instantly adopting the three-step shuffle, untying her sash and striking at Timon's back with it. Another lad stepped in behind her, tearing away the back of her dress and lashing at her with a rope's end.
Cordelia turned away, stumbling back into the inn, eyes squeezed shut.
"Magnus, no!" Gwen screamed, for her eldest, glassy-eyed, was moving forward toward the line of flagellants, stepping into place, fumbling at the buckle of his sword-belt…
Rod reached out and clamped pincer-fingers into his son's shoulder.
Magnus winced and twisted from his grasp with a yell of pain. His hands left the buckle and leaped to the sword.
Rod yanked him out of the line. Still angry, the youth drew out his blade…
Rod caught his son's wrist and forced it down. It surged back up—Rod was amazed at how strong his son had grown—but Geoffrey reached up, catching his brother's elbow, thumb probing. Magnus sagged, eyes bulging, with a high, thin whine of agony. His face came down to a level with Geoffrey's, and his younger brother snapped, "Shall I admire thee now? Art thou the toy of women, then, that thou mayest be enslaved by song?"
Magnus's face reddened with anger again. "Be still, sprout!"
Rod sagged with relief—it was brother talking to brother, not a teen entranced.
Then Magnus looked up, his glance darting around. "What… wherefore…"
"The music had entrapped thee, son," Gwen said gently.
"Aye." Geoffrey's lip curled with contempt. "And wilt thou let it hold these others enslaved?"
'Nay!" Magnus roared, covering his embarrassment. He whirled, sheathing his sword but drawing his dagger, and leaped after the line of youths, running up to the first who had a stone hung round his neck, slipping the dagger in, cutting the thong, and hurling the stone away. The youth snapped upright and turned on him with an angry roar, lashing out with his whip.
But Magnus was already on down the line to the next, slashing and snatching, working his way quickly toward the front, hurling the glinting stones far away.