Magnus led him out through the archway and into the courtyard.
It seemed spacious after the porter's room and the tunnel, but Rod knew it could only be a hundred feet across. The keep bulged out into it, like a hugely fat tower. There were a lot of dead leaves and broken branches, of course, and mounds of humus in the corners, with weeds sprouting luxuriantly.
But not a single bird. Nor, now that Rod noticed it, a butterfly.
He wrenched his mind back to business, to suppress a shiver. "Where's this counterweight?"
"We have stepped over it." Magnus pointed behind him. Rod looked down, and saw a metal slab set in the stone; he'd thought it was a threshold to the archway. But now that he looked, he could see it was rust, not just brown stone, and that rings rose from its corners, rings that were fastened to huge links whose chains stretched up on the wall to disappear, over huge sprocket wheels, into the stone above the archway.
Now. Rod shivered.
Magnus was pointing up. " 'Tis so well balanced that the drawbridge doth need but a strong pull to let it down."
"Yeah—but the iron slab goes up then, and everybody coming in or going out has to ride under it."
"True." Magnus frowned, in an abstracted sort of way. "Wherefore did the Count not use iron balls again, and keep the gateway clear?"
"Nice question." And Rod had an answer, which was anything but nice. Not that he was about to say it, of course—and he decided, then and there, that Magnus was never going to touch that bar.
A caroling cry echoed above them.
Rod's head snapped up.
There, atop the gatehouse, perched his two younger sons, with his wife and daughter gliding down in lazy spirals on their broomsticks. He couldn't help noticing, all over again, that Cordelia had a full-sized broomstick now, not just a hearth broom, and wasn't much shorter than her mother any more.
Gwen pulled up beside Rod and hopped off. "Thou wert so long about it that we grew impatient." But he saw the concern in her eyes. "What kept thee?"
"Trying to figure out the drawbridge system." Rod noticed his two boys drifting down like autumn leaves. He shuddered, and hoped the simile wasn't apt.
"Is't so rare?" Gwen asked.
" 'Tis odd, at the least," Magnus answered.
Gwen turned to him, and her eyes widened. "How is't with thee, my son?"
"Well enough…"
"Is it truly?" Gwen set her broomstick against a wall and reached up to press a hand against Magnus's forehead. She stared off into space for a few seconds, then said, "Step to the wall, and touch the stones."
A crease appeared between Magnus's eyebrows, but he did as she bade. Rod "listened" to Gwen's mind, eavesdropping on the eavesdropper, as Magnus's hand touched rock.
A babel of urgent voices filled his ear, some conjecturing whether or not there would be a battle, some discussing how exciting it all was. Beyond them were the voices of soldiers bawling orders, and under it, surfacing and submerging, the sinister laugh they had heard in the midst of the thunderstorm.
"Away," Gwen snapped, and Magnus slowly took his hand from the wall, then turned to his mother with a troubled gaze. "Thou hast heard it?"
"Aye. 'Twas some peasant folk come into the castle for fear of a siege—and 'twas hundreds of years agone."
"He is a past-reader!" Gregory's eyes were huge.
"Magnus always gets to do things first!" Geoffrey grumped.
" 'Tis not fair!" Cordelia complained.
" 'Tis as like to be a burden as a joy," Gwen assured them, and turned to Magnus again. "Thou hast a form of clear sight, my son. I've heard it spoken of, yet never known a one who had it. Thou canst read the thoughts embedded in the stones, or wood or metal, by the anguish or joy of those who dwelt near them."
"A psychometricist!" Rod's eyes were wide.
Magnus turned to Gwen, trying to focus on her face. "Yet wherefore have I not noted this aforetime?"
"For that thou hast ever been in places thronged with living folk, whose thoughts did obscure any that came from stones."
"Sure it might not be part of the boy turning into a young man?" Rod asked.
"Mama did speak of strong feelings," Gregory pointed out. "Mayhap such thoughts stay not in stones, with lesser feelings."
Gwen nodded. "There is some truth to that—and I bethink me that this castle has seen many who were overwrought."
"And not pleasantly." Rod scowled. "Try not to touch anything, okay, son?"
"I will endeavor…"
"Then I'll give you some help." Rod turned to face the gatehouse. "We still have to get that drawbridge down, unless we're going to expect Fess to wait outside the whole time."
"Aye…" Magnus turned, his frown deepening, seeming to come into clearer focus.
"Gregory, help me. Just think of holding that chain up, when the time comes. Gwen, if you and the other kids would take the right-hand chain… ? Good. Now, everybody think hot at it." He glared at the bottom link, concentrating on it while the rest of his surroundings grew fuzzy. The link began to glow, first red, then orange, on through yellow into white, until finally the metal flowed. "Now," Rod grated, and the chain lifted a foot. Rod sighed and relaxed, watching the metal darken back down the spectrum as it cooled. He turned to look at the rest of his family, but their chain was just now yellowing. Rod glanced back at his own, saw it was ruby again, and told Gregory, "Okay, put it down now." The chain lowered to swing clinking against the wall, and Rod turned to add his bit to the right-hand chain. The metal flowed, the chain rose—and, with a low and rising growl of breaking rust, the huge old sprocket wheels began to turn. The growl rose to a grown, underscored by a furious clanking as the drawbridge fell away at the end of the tunnel, faster and faster, till its tip slimmed into the far bank of the moat. Hooves clattered on the wood.
"Careful, there!" Rod called, alarmed. "Those boards might be rotten!"
"The unsound ones fell to powder when the drawbridge dropped, Rod, and I can pick my way well enough around the holes." Then the clattering changed to thunder as Fess's hooves echoed in the tunnel, and the great black horse came trotting in.
The children cheered. Gwen glanced at Magnus, saw his face alight, and relaxed a little.
"Why is destruction the only thing I do better than the rest of you?" Rod grumbled.
" 'Tis for cause that thou hast come to it lately, husband, not grown to it," Gwen assured him breezily.
Gregory was staring at the huge bar buried in the stone. "We could have lifted it, Papa…"
"This was faster."
"Yet now we cannot draw the bridge up again."
"I know." Rod grinned. "Works out nicely that way, doesn't it?"
They spent the morning exploring the rest of the castle, and found a lot of dead leaves and branches blown in through the windows over the years. They also found a fair quantity of antique furniture, some of it still intact.
But not a single bird. Not even a rat or a mouse, for that matter.
"And never a one, through all these years." Cordelia looked up at the rafters. "How could that be, Papa?"
Rod shrugged. "They felt unwanted, dear."
"What was it that wanted them not?"
Rod avoided the question. "But look at the bright side—at least we won't have to set out traps. Or endanger a cat, either."
"Nay, Papa." Geoffrey corrected. " ' Tis the cat would endanger the rats."
"Not some of the rats I've seen—but there aren't any here. One advantage to ghosts, anyway." Rod had a brief, dizzying vision of an advertising sign: "Rid your house of those troublesome pests! Hire a haunt!" With, of course, a picture of a comical ghost shouting "Boo!" at a rat and a cockroach who were neck-and-neck in a dead heat away from the spook. Rod found himself wondering what to name the ghost? Buster? He shook his head and came back to the here and now.