Song of the Gargoyle (6 page)

“Troff,” it said again with what seemed to be a nod.

A living gargoyle. A gargoyle—perhaps called Troff? “Troff?” Tymmon asked, and moving forward immediately as if it had been summoned, it trotted toward him around the fire. It did not stop until it was standing over where Tymmon cowered back on one elbow, whispering frantic Hail Marys and trying to protect his throat with his free hand. With its enormous head only inches from his face, its rank breath hot on his cheeks, it stared down at Tymmon and licked its chops.

Hungry. It was hungry, and its next meal might well be... Groping desperately behind his back, Tymmon grasped the parcel that held the last of his food, a small piece of salt-cured meat. “Here,” he said. “Here, gargoyle. Would you like this good beef? Here, take it. It’s yours.”

The disappearance of the salted meat occurred in an instant, accompanied by a variety of disgusting chomping and slobbering noises. When the last morsel had disappeared, the monster sat down in front of Tymmon and stared at him with eager expectancy, as if waiting for more. And staring back, Tymmon could only think that he himself was being considered as the next course.

But the creature made no immediate move in his direction, and for the first time Tymmon’s terror diminished enough to allow him to study it more closely.

Thick-bodied and long-legged, the gargoyle when on all fours would stand somewhat taller than Tymmon’s waist. Its face was a ghostly gray that shaded around the eyes and muzzle to almost black, while its body seemed to be closely covered with a short gray-brown fur. The feet were large and rounded like the paws of lions, and the long tail ended, like a lion’s, in a short tuft of black hair. Lionlike it was indeed except for its face, which was a thousand times uglier than any lion. Snub-snouted, fisheyed, with great flapping jowls, it had a mouth that became an upside-down U when closed, and when open, a terrifying cavern filled with long white teeth.

Tymmon shuddered and drew away, and the monster closed its mouth, tipped its head to one side, and regarded him more intently.

“Why?” it seemed to be asking.

“Why am I afraid of you?” Tymmon smiled ruefully and then went on. “I meet a living gargoyle in the middle of the forest on a dark night, and you wonder why I am afraid? It would seem that gargoyles know very little about humankind.”

The gargoyle raised its head and, with what almost seemed to be a grin, asked what Tymmon knew about gargoyles.

“Well.” Tymmon considered the question. “Not a great deal, I suppose. Just that they are usually carved from stone and extend from the roofs of buildings.”

The gargoyle blinked its bulging eyes and twitched its tail and again asked why.

“To serve as water spouts. And some say to frighten away evil spirits. That’s why they are all so ug—” Tymmon paused. “So frightening to look upon.”

The creature’s mouth dropped open into its evil, tongue-lolling grin. Reaching out, it placed one of its great paws firmly on Tymmon’s foot, regarded him sternly, and said that, yes, he was frightening—when he wanted to be. But not always. Then it lay down on its belly, and slowly lowered its great head onto its front paws.

Tymmon watched it with unblinking attention while it yawned, snorted, and mumbled, rolled its eyes, and then closed them firmly. It was not until then that Tymmon crept back under his blanket and pulled it up to his nose. Peering out over the top, he watched the sleeping monster intently for a long time—and then intermittently for several shorter periods in between violent struggles to keep his heavy eyelids from falling shut. But he soon lost the battle and fell asleep—and slept more soundly than he had since leaving Austerneve.

Some hours later Tymmon awoke with a frightened start. Something had made an evil sound, a snuffling snort that was clearly that of some inhuman creature. For a moment he cowered under his blanket until, suddenly remembering the events of the night before, he thrust it aside and peered out. The gargoyle was still there, its great gray-brown body sprawled out near the dead ashes of the fire. Tymmon pushed the blanket to one side and leaped to his feet, forgetting that Komus’s cap was still on his head. At the ringing of the bells the creature was instantly alert and staring with that eager expectancy that once again made Tymmon uneasy.

“There is no more meat, Troff,” he said hastily. “I have nothing more to give you. But I am going to go now to look for food.”

The gargoyle jumped up, stretched, and opened its great mouth in a growling yawn and then said something eager and enthusiastic about the possibility of food.

To look for food. But where? It was a question that must be answered quickly since he himself was already dangerously weak and light-headed from hunger. And the gargoyle was obviously also hungry, which might well be even more dangerous. He must find food and very soon. Here in the forest there might be wild game such as deer and rabbits, but to live by hunting required a bow and arrow and the skill to use them. No, it would have to be the highroad and farm and village, no matter what the danger from Black Helmet and his men.

“Troff,” Tymmon said, and the gargoyle moved nearer, its ears cocked. “I’m going to have to leave the forest and go to the nearest village and find food, even if I have to beg for it. So I’ll be leaving soon.”

The ears drooped and Tymmon imagined that the monster looked regretful, but it made no comment and Tymmon moved away to gather up his belongings. A moment later, when he turned back, the grove was empty. “Troff?” he said softly and then louder, “Troff,” but there was no response and nothing stirred in the underbrush that surrounded the clearing.

Tymmon sank down against a tree trunk and remained there for some time lost in thought. Where had it gone so suddenly, and what kind of magical creature had it been? Magical surely, since it had the power of speech—or did it? Had he heard the things it said with his ears, or in some other manner? It was a question that, for some reason, had not even occurred to him before. But now, in recollection, it seemed that it had not been through his ears that the gargoyle’s thoughts echoed in his mind. It was instead as if its thinking reflected inside his own head, in the manner that still water reflects all that it is near.

But magical or not, what it had surely been was a monstrous creature that came out of the night and slept at his feet like a faithful guardian. A faithful guardian so fearful in appearance that no other creature, however evil, would have dared to approach them.

Tymmon smiled then, a lopsided, mock-the-devil smile like the one that Komus used to suggest that something was only amusing on one side and more or less disastrous on the other. As in a case where a faithful guardian perhaps saves one from other dangers but also consumes the last of one’s food supply, leaving one on the brink of starvation.

It was with some relief—but also with a strangely deep feeling of loss, and not just for the salted beef—that Tymmon went about the business of preparing to move on. Retrieving his articles of clothing from where he had spread them out to dry, he stacked them on the linen pack cover and collected his other belongings, the knife, the ax, the rope, the tinderbox, the flute—and then the cap and bells. Komus’s jester’s cap.

Komus. The memory was a sharp and rending pain. Where was he now and how was he faring? The thought of his father in captivity, perhaps hungry or in pain, caused Tymmon’s throat to tighten and a hot and aching fire to rage behind his eyes. And after the pain, as usual, there came anger.

Anger at his own helplessness, at first. Anger that there was no way that he could help his father. No way to help him—and not even the hope that he might someday take revenge against his captors, which he would surely have done had he, Tymmon, been destined for knighthood. Destined for knighthood as he might have been if only Komus had not... He twisted the cap in his hands and threw it angrily to the ground—and then, as quickly, picked it up again. He was about to add it to his pile of belongings when another thought occurred to him.

Komus’s colorful jester’s cap, with its red, orange, and purple horns, was well known in all of Austerneve. So it followed that to take it with him might increase the danger he would surely be facing if Black Helmet’s men had visited the villages and farms that lay to the south.

“What?” he imagined himself saying to a suspicious villager. “Am I the fugitive son of Komus, the court jester of Austerneve? No, of course not. I am only Arn (or some such name), born a baker’s son though now an orphan.”

Yes, with his usual quick-wittedness, he might well think of something of the sort to say. And then all might be well—until some less trusting townsman insisted on searching his belongings—and there found
the cap and bells.
No, it would be too dangerous a thing to carry. And God only knew why he brought it with him in the first place.

He was still musing on such things, turning the jester’s cap in his hands and listening, perhaps for the last time, to the chiming bells when, from just behind him, there came a sudden sound—a strange mumbling grunt like someone trying to speak with his mouth full. Whirling around, Tymmon saw Troff emerging from the underbrush at the other side of the grove with something in his jaws.

Dropping the jester’s cap at his feet, Tymmon gasped in surprise and consternation. He had, in just that little time, forgotten how huge the creature was—and how ugly. And then he saw what it was that Troff was holding in his mouth and gasped again. The object in the gargoyle’s mouth was a fine fat pheasant.

“For—us?” Tymmon asked in a voice that he could not keep from quavering in anticipation.

Troff trotted across the clearing and dropped the bird at Tymmon’s feet. With his great head hanging low, he continued to stare at the dead bird, making a soft growling noise in his throat and twitching the end of his tail. Then he backed away, looked up into Tymmon’s face, and clearly said that it was, indeed, for both of them.

And in just the time it took for Tymmon to pluck and clean the bird, and roast it over a newly built fire, he was eating one of the most important meals of his life. Eating and sharing the rich meat with Troff, the skillful hunter, the faithful guardian, the—whatever else he really was.

“Gargoyle?” Tymmon asked him once with his mouth full of pheasant. And the creature licked his chops, grinned, and tossed his great round head.

“Troff,” he said, and Tymmon grinned back and repeated, “Troff, the gargoyle.”

When the feast was over they lay for a while before the fire, but then Troff stirred restlessly, got up, and began to wander about the clearing. Stopping at a hollow that had recently held rainwater, he snuffled at the damp leaves, pawed at the earth, and snuffled again. Then he trotted back to Tymmon and stared urgently into his face.

“Thirsty?” Tymmon asked. “I know. I am too. Where can we find water?”

Troff turned and trotted off to the west, and jumping up, Tymmon grabbed his pack and followed. Halfway across the clearing he stopped, ran back, and retrieving the belled cap from where it had fallen, stuffed it deep into the pack. Then he ran to catch up.

Beyond the clearing they plunged into dense forest—and the endless network of trails that Tymmon remembered all too well. Faint, narrow footpaths that wound in every direction between towering trees, beds of fern and flowers, and dense thickets of underbrush.

Again, as on his previous visit to the Sombrous Forest, Tymmon’s mind raced faster than his feet, imagining dreadful things. Imagining all the dangers he had so often heard about—wolves in the underbrush, robbers lying in wait behind tree trunks, and harpies roosting overhead. Time and again, gasping at some newly envisioned horror, he thought to turn back. But they had already gone too far, too far to hope that he could find his way back to their starting place in the clearing. No, his only hope was Troff, and that was but a faint one, since he had no idea where, and to what, the gargoyle was leading him.

Once when the path became a narrow canyon between high walls of underbrush, Tymmon hesitated, and in doing so lost sight of his fast-moving guide. For a moment he was overcome by panic, but when he called in a voice pinched by fear, “Troff. Troff, come back,” the gargoyle returned, trotting up to Tymmon and staring into his face with his furry forehead creased into furrows of concern.

But when he asked what was wrong, Tymmon, embarrassed at his own lack of courage, answered briefly and grumpily. “Nothing. Nothing, except you are going much too fast. Wait for me.”

They went on then at a slightly slower pace for what seemed a great distance, so that Tymmon could only wonder, and tremble with awe, at the thought of the trackless maze that seemed to have engulfed all the land, as endless as the heavenly firmament. His legs were weak and trembling with exhaustion by the time he began to be aware of the sound of flowing water. Soon afterwards they came out upon the bank of a wide river.

Tymmon built a fire that night on a thumb-shaped peninsula of land that projected out into a deep curve of the river—as far away from the close-crowding shadows of the forest as he could get. Above the curve the river ran still and deep, but just below, it spread out into wide shallows that rippled over rocks and around many small boulders.

That night there was plenty to drink, and together Tymmon and Troff trapped a large trout in the shallows and caught it. They drank and ate, and when night fell they lay by the fire and listened to the sound of the river—and talked. That is, Tymmon did most of the talking, but Troff listened and now and then commented briefly or asked a question.

Tymmon spoke first of the five armed men and how they had taken Komus away. Troff listened carefully while he told the whole frightening story, from the strange sound that had awakened him to the end, when Komus secretly warned him to leave Austerneve and then had been led away by the terrible knight in the black-snouted helmet and his four companions.

“One of them struck him,” he added after a moment. “I did not see the blow but I heard it and I heard the one with the black helm threaten to do worse if they found he was lying to them when he said I had gone from Austerneve. I wish I knew where they took him—and why.”