Geis of the Gargoyle (23 page)

"I don't know.
 
What are the potentials of youth?"

There was another pause, not as long.
 
"You perhaps hesitate to indulge with a married woman? Let me assure you that I will never tell.
 
This is purely passing fun, a private diversion."

"Indulge in what?" he asked, baffled.

"In signaling the stork, you idiot!" she snapped.

He began to get a bit of her drift, possibly.
 
"The stork? But for that I would need a female."

"What the bleep do you suppose I am? A wall-rus?"

"Why, you're human," he said, perplexed by her vehemence.

"Precisely.
 
So what is your objection?"

"I am a gargoyle.
 
I have no stork interest in any other species."

"For pity's sake! You are in human form at the moment."

Gary remembered that it was true.
 
"Still, I am really a gargoyle, just as you are really an ancient hag.
 
We have no human relationship."

This time the pause was so many moments long that he lost track.
 
He drifted peacefully off to sleep.
 
He assumed that Iris did the same.

In the morning they foraged for grapefruit and passionfruit.
 
The grapes were good, but Gary didn't eat the other.
 
He remembered that the cloudbed he had shared with Iris rested on passion vines.
 
That accounted for her attitude, he realized belatedly.
 
He would try to avoid those in the future, so as to be able to get better sleep.
 
It would have been nice had there been a girl gargoyle, though.
 
Meanwhile Surprise conjured several livers, looked disgusted, and finally got what she wanted by trying to conjure the most loathsome liverworts she might imagine: she got a pun-kin pie and a honey-comb.
 
She poured the honey on the pie and stuck the comb in her hair so it wouldn't flop around.
 
Then she gobbled down the pie with an appetite that would have done credit to a goblin.

The Sorceress Iris seemed somewhat out of sorts.
 
Gary realized that it might have been polite to pretend some sort of interest in her, of the sort that he presumed a human man his seeming age and health would have.
 
But there was just no denying the fact that she was not a gargoyle.

"The follies of the human folk seldom cease to amuse demons," Mentia remarked as she glanced at the passion vines.
 
"Would you like me to assume the shape of a gargoyle?"

"Of course not.
 
We gargoyles never confuse any other creature for one of us.
 
No others can hope to match our impressive ugliness."

"To be sure," the demoness agreed, still amused.

They followed the giant's footprints on into what seemed to be the very center of the Region of Madness, though Mentia explained that this could not be so, because the center was the Magic Dust Village.
 
Nevertheless, the maddening effects remained, with the trees coming to resemble enormous sea monsters, and sometimes acting like them too.
 
Iris had to use her illusion frequently to fend them off, and Hiatus was kept busy growing loathsome hairy excrescences on those branches that weren't daunted by the illusions.
 
When both these measures failed, Mentia assumed the form of a tree-chomping huge-a-saur and crunched off their reaching limbs.

Still, they were glad when the jungle thinned somewhat, and they climbed through a moderate range of hills.
 
The hills themselves resisted their passage, becoming mountainous and angling their slopes unexpectedly so as to cause the travelers to lurch into treetrunks or boulders and bash their own noses.

"I think I know of these hills," Mentia said.
 
"They're called the Poke-a-nose."

At last they emerged onto a level plain.
 
That was a relief, because their noses were pretty sore by this time.
 
But they were wary, knowing that soon enough some new threat would materialize.

Here the trees were somewhat stunted, though the madness was frighteningly strong.
 
Gary, who specialized in stone, discovered why: 'There is hardly any place here for their roots to gain purchase.
 
The ground is covered with chunks of stone."

"Doesn't stone underlie most land?" Hiatus asked.

"Deep down it does," Gary agreed.
 
"But it is usually covered by layers of sand and soil, so that plants can get purchase.
 
These seem to be artificially carved stones, perhaps parts of buildings that collapsed.
 
Some seem to form ancient roads.
 
So there just isn't much soil, and the plants can't make much progress.
 
This is our fortune, because most of the plants here seem to be hostile."

"I wonder," Iris mused.
 
"The trees and plants around Castle Roogna do their best to repel unfriendly strangers.
 
But it isn't malice; they were instructed to do that, to protect the castle.
 
They also did their best to encourage any Magician to remain there.
 
So maybe we simply don't properly understand these particular plants." Then a nettle vine tried to curl around her ankle and yank her into the bed of nettles.
 
"But I could be wrong," she said as an afterthought.

"Whatever they were in the past, they must be different now," Hiatus said.
 
"Because the madness changes everything."

Surprise found a stone in the general shape of a chair.
 
She crossed her eyes, and it quivered and started walking.
 
The child jumped up onto it and rode in style for a while, until a leg tripped on an irregularity in the ground and the animated chair toppled, dumping her out.

They continued to follow the giant's tracks.
 
The stones in the ground became larger, and some rose up above the ground, presenting ragged silhouettes.
 
"These are definitely artificial," Gary said.
 
"I mean that they have been quarried and moved here.
 
I begin to see the outlines of large buildings."

"Then we must have found the ruins," Mentia said.
 
"Maybe our quest is almost done."

"That would be nice," Gary agreed doubtfully.
 
"But finding the ruins is only one step.
 
We have to find the philter.
 
And we have to try to find a way to save Desiree's tree.
 
I don't see either, yet."

Iris gazed ahead at the barren plain.
 
"This is a wasteland, for sure.
 
It seems to me that if the philter were here, it would be purifying water, and making an oasis or something.
 
But all I see are more ruins."

Gary had to agree.
 
But what could they do, except search the ruins as well as they could, hoping to find what they sought?

"Now that's odd," Mentia remarked, staring up at a particularly large stone set endwise in the ground.

The others looked too.
 
Gary saw that it seemed to consist of two stones, connected at the top with a band of a different kind of stone.
 
"Odd?" Hiatus said.
 
"That's downright weird! Why prop two stones together like that?" "To make an arch?" Iris suggested.
 
"Too narrow," Mentia said.
 
"Far too narrow.
 
Those stones are right together, so that no one can pass between them, let alone have anything useful here."

Surprise approached the stones.
 
Then claws extended from her hands and she dug them into the stone and pulled herself up, climbing to the linked top.
 
She inspected the connection.
 
"Hinge!" she announced.

"A stone hinge?" Iris asked.
 
"Ridiculous." But she reconsidered immediately.
 
"Yet that does look like what it is.
 
A hinge made of stone, connecting the two big stones."

"Why would a stone be hinged?" Hiatus asked.
 
"It would take a giant or a pair of ogres to lift up one of these stones; they each are the size of small buildings."

"And neither giants nor ogres go in for fancy construction," Mentia said.
 
"Only humans and termites do, as a rule, and termites don't ordinarily work in stone."

Gary considered the matter.
 
"Gargoyles don't work stone," he said, "but we do appreciate it.
 
I would say that this is one support for a fancy building.
 
One stone is set deep into the ground, while the other rests on top of the ground; that second stone could be lifted to a horizontal position and connected to another stone column, here." He touched a nearby pillar.
 
"Other stones could be lifted similarly, and form a solid roof for the building.
 
I see columns appropriately placed all around."

"You do?" Hiatus asked.
 
"I see nothing but lumps of broken stone."

"They are broken, but they are in a pattern.
 
See, here is another hinged column, and there is one whose hinged stone has broken off.
 
This city has been destroyed by time and weather, but it once contained some marvelous buildings."

The others shook their heads, not seeing it.
 
But to Gary it was clear enough.
 
He wished he could show them his vision of stone.
 
But they weren't gargoyles.

They walked on through the ruins, but found nothing special.
 
There might have been greatness here a long time ago, but it was forgotten now-and had been forgotten long before the madness overran it.
 
And there was no philter they could find.
 
They searched all day, but only succeeded in getting more tired and depressed.
 
Even Surprise had become bored and passive.

In the center of the plain was a sodden pool.
 
It was overgrown with disreputable weeds that hissed at anyone who tried to dip water, but Hiatus grew some truly loathsome shapes on them, and they shut up.
 
This was as good a place as any to camp for the night.

This time Iris did not try to bother Gary, to his relief.
 
She did try to distract Hiatus, but Hiatus could think only of Desiree.
 
She finally made herself a fancy pavilion of illusion and retired there with Surprise, who formed her own smaller pavilion within it.

Gary lay on his human back and stared up at the stars.
 
He was familiar with the constellations, having contemplated them many rimes over the centuries.
 
But tonight something was wrong; he didn't recognize any of them.
 
Instead he saw a merman swimming through a field of grazing mice.
 
The merman spied Gary watching and mouthed words at him: WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING UP HERE FOR, GARGOYLE?

"Where are the regular constellations?" Gary demanded.

"We are the regular constellations," the merman retorted angrily.

"Not where I came from."

"You are not where you came from, stone-heart." And the merman and mice glared.
 
"You are from the dull side of the veil."

Gary thought about that, and concluded it was true.
 
"This is the Region of Madness, so it figures that there are mad constellations."

"You got that right, man-rump."

"How long have you been here, fishtail?" Gary asked, responding in kind.

The merman mellowed insignificantly.
 
Perhaps it had been some rime since anyone had taken him seriously.
 
"As long as the madness has reigned."