"Dost thou indeed!" Gregory was incredulous, too, and Geoffrey was shaking his head slowly, in wonder.
"Oh, aye! And all this from the generosity of Ubu Mare! Is it not wondrous?"
"Amazing," Rod said, feeling a chill envelop his back.
"It is, in truth! Yet she hath not come these six months, no, but doth send Yaga and Axon in her place. I've no doubt 'tis still her gold they bring, for they, too, buy of me rocks that make music."
"Oh." The tension was winding tighter. "You crafted those wonderful stones that made the enchanting sounds we heard in your front yard?"
"Aye, they are mine!" Ari beamed. "These are my latest, look you. I essay new musics each time; I delight in inventing new forms." He frowned. "Yet not of the sort Ubu Mare doth wish me to make, no. 'Tis hideous stuff with a scratching and wailing to it, and words that make no sense. And they do not even rhyme!"
"Horrible," Rod agreed. "I think we've heard a few like that. Where did they come up with the sound?"
Ari shrugged. "Belike whence I found mine—in my heart."
"What manner of heart must they have!" Cordelia exclaimed.
Ari turned to her, saddened. "Lass, lass! Is it for us to judge our neighbors? Nay, nay! If their taste and fashion differ from mine, who am I to say theirs is wrong and mine is right?"
"The one who actually makes the rocks," Rod said.
Ari looked up, astonished. "Assuredly that doth not give me the right to judge!"
"It doth," Gwen said, "and it doth give thee also the duty."
"Duty?" Ari stared at her, totally at a loss.
"Responsibility," Rod explained. "You do have to bear in mind what they want to do with the things you've made."
"Why, these music-rocks are but entertainment!"
"I'm beginning to develop a definite suspicion that nothing can be 'just entertainment,' " Rod said. "You must consider, Goodman Ari, what effects your wonderful inventions can have."
"But what effects could music have?" Ari asked, pole-axed.
Rod took a deep breath. "We've seen young people walk away from their parents, and from their chores, to do nothing but listen to the rocks' music."
"Aye," said Gregory, "and to float down the river with thy rocks, to do naught but eat lotus and lie dreaming."
"Folk of our age are ever mired in confusion, though we hide it," Cordelia said gently. "We have seen folk in whom that confusion has been steadily worsened by the words that accompany this music."
"But how can that be!"
Then, one by one, they told him of the things they had seen as they came across the country from Runnymede. He was shocked to hear of the wakened dead, but he was horrified to hear of the flagellants. Finally, when they were done, he sat, gray-faced and whispering, "No more. What horrid things have I wrought? Nay, never again must I make music-rocks!"
"Nay, thou must needs make more," Gwen said, with that tone of motherly sternness that evoked total attention from any listener. "What thou hast broke, thou must needs mend."
"But how can I mend music?"
"Why, with harmony!" Gregory offered.
"Aye!" Magnus's eyes lighted. "Take the words of greatest beauty thou dost know, and set them to the clearest melodies thou canst make!"
But Ari shook his head. "How can sweet music heal a ruptured soul?"
"How can it not?" Cordelia countered, and Gwen laid her hand on Ari's. "If dissonance hath sickened their hearts, may not harmony cure them?"
Ari's eyes lost focus. "It may be…"
"But it must not!"
They whirled. Two forms stood black against the twilight that filled the doorway, and the shorter, a woman, cried, "Who are you, who would twist our Ari against our bidding?"
Gwen stood, and only Rod could see the mantle of rage building about her. "Why, who art thou who dost seek to claim this good and gentle man as thy slave?"
"We are Yaga and Axon," the hag shrilled, "and we have bought him!"
Rod noticed Magnus sidling around behind the taller intruder, pushing Gregory behind him, and Geoffrey slipping around on the far side.
"Oh, nay!" Ari cried, shocked. "Thou hast bought my music, aye, but never myself!"
"Thyself, body and soul!" The old woman stumped forward into the light, eyes filled with malevolence. "Thou art ours, Ari, bought and paid for! Who is this that doth seek to rend thee from us!"
"I am Gwendolyn Gallowglass," Gwen said, in glacial tones, "and I have come to consign thee to the doom thou hast made for others!"
Before she even finished the sentence, Yaga's form erupted into flame.
The children glared, and Axon, the tall warlock, was immersed in a globe of inwardly stabbing light. He screamed, then slumped unconscious as one of the spears found his spinal cord.
But Yaga only cackled with glee as the flames drew in, swallowed up by her person. "Fools! Dost thou not know 'tis this, even this, I have sought all my life? To be as wrapped in throes of anguish as I am filled with them? Nay, have at thee!"
Gwen screamed and twisted as something flamed inside of her. Yaga crowed with delight and turned on Rod. A current seethed through him, jolting him with pain, immobilizing him with spasms.
But Yaga howled, hands clutching at her head, and spun to face Magnus's unrelenting glare. She stumbled toward him, screaming, "Stop! Make it stop!"
Magnus twisted, and his lip trembled; but he clung more tightly to Gregory's hand, and his gaze held steady.
Cordelia's eyes narrowed and, quite calmly, she walked over to the witch and touched her temple. Yaga froze, and the pain inside Rod and Gwen was gone, as though their daughter had turned a switch. They staggered, clutching at one another, striving to rally their senses to attack…
But Ari came up to Yaga, his hands twisting and molding something, then held it up to her forehead.
It was a rock.
The witch's eyes lost focus; her face unclenched, looking startled.
Then she slumped.
Geoffrey reached up and caught her, lowering her to lie beside the warlock he had been guarding.
"Are they dead?" Ari asked anxiously.
"Nay," Geoffrey assured him, "though they ought to be."
"Oh, nay! For if thou hast the right of it, I have cured them!"
Geoffrey could only stare at him as though he were mad.
"Thank Heaven you kids were on the ball!" Rod staggered up to them.
"We would not have been," Magnus returned, "hadst though not drawn her anger first, to show us the manner of her attack."
"Believe me, I wasn't trying." Rod shook his head. "Where did she ever get that kind of power?"
"From a hundred and more of her kind." Gwen was kneeling by the unconscious witch, fingers against the base of her skull. "I read it in her memories…" She shuddered. "Faugh! What a twisted mass of vileness is there! Yet in it I see that she and many others have been gathered into a coven by this Ubu Mare."
"For what purpose?" Ari asked, white-faced.
Gwen shook her head. "To yield up their power to her in some fashion, and to bear hers, vastly magnified by all of theirs united—but it doth make of Yaga only a tool, an extension of that vile witch."
"And in that," Rod guessed, "she was content—as long as she could be part of something bigger than herself?"
Gwen nodded. "Yet now, by a wonder, the twisting and turnings within her that made her easy prey to this Ubu Mare, all that bitter confusion and hatred, is straightened to the beginnings of harmony!" She looked up at Ari. "How didst thou achieve it?"
The crafter relaxed, and his smile returned. "Why, even as thou didst say, good folk—I crafted a rock that would make music with all the lightheartedness, harmony, and order that is in me."
And he was, of course, an unusually tranquil, optimistic person. Rod looked up at Magnus. "But what did you do, that stopped her in her tracks?"