"That's why the music took such an unpleasant turn," Rod explained.
"Aye," Father Thelonius agreed, "there was something of a poisoned mind underlying it. But what of the strange beings that did seem to accompany this music as it spread?"
Rod shook his head. "No one person's doing. But the music itself did start to suggest strange things. My own guess is that they came into existence the way the elves did—from the vivid imaginations of people who didn't know they were projectives. Only this time, instead of old folk-tales suggesting forms for witch-moss constructs, it was music."
Father Thelonius nodded. "And did this agent in a devil's guise give her the thought of worship of him?"
"There are men who would enjoy such a thing," Rod admitted. Magnus glanced sharply at him.
"Even so," Gwen agreed. " 'Twas he who built her the altar that hid her devices of power, he who told her how to make of it a reservoir of minds' energies. Yet not being psionic, he could not tell her the manner of using that resource; she discovered that herself, and this opened a channel she could not close, directly from the reservoir to her mind."
"And it destroyed her mind?" the monk asked.
Gwen nodded. "As her music gathered in more and more deluded folk to yield what little power they could, and channel the far greater amount that came from others stirred by her grating sounds, the power from the reservoir overwhelmed her brain. She began to lose control; the dismind-ing noises she herself had made beat most strongly on the brain that had engendered them, making her to think of sounds more strongly bent. These did she make to sound in the minds of those about her, and her agents took the memory of those sounds to the crafter, to make rocks that would emit such noise."
"And the reservoir would distort the new sound into a grosser sound, and the agents would take that out to the crafter," Rod added. "So the whole cycle would begin again, swelling the reservoir from the power of the people it absorbed, with no one directing it."
"A regenerative cycle," Father Thelonius said, "a vicious circle."
"A feedback loop by any other name," Rod agreed. "The more it fed back, the more it warped the brain that had begun it—and the more power that the coven brought in, the more it seared its single path through her neurons, numbing what intellect she had."
"The power she used burned her out," Gwen agreed. "She may have harnessed the whirlwind, but she had little mind left with which to direct it."
Rod nodded. "She turned the whole assemblage— herself, her adherents, and the reservoir—into a runaway engine, out of control."
"But thus they sought to be," Gwen protested. "They sought to lose control, all—even, toward the end, the sorceress herself!"
Father Thelonius shook his head. " 'Tis the instinct in the social animal, to yield itself up and become a part of something greater than itself."
"That is the impulse that should start us on the road to Heaven," Brother Dorian murmured.
"But can be used to turn us onto the path to Hell." Father Thelonius scowled. "Thus can we be misled—oh, so easily misled! And the younger we are, the more easily 'tis done."
The junior Gallowglasses exchanged glances.
Then they turned, as one, to Brother Dorian.
He was packing up his keyboard.
"What!" Cordelia protested. "Wilt thou leave us lorn?"
The monk paused in the act of slipping his keyboard away under his robe. "Nay, I think not," he said with a smile. "I shall return to the monastery, aye—but I think there shall be some new songs in the land ere long."
The End