those the icari would claim, A bride in the temple
must enter the flame,
Steeds found for the secondbom beyond
the dust deepsea, And new arrows reckoned, a wand
given wings—
So that when a princess royal
shall have tasted of the tree,
Then far from Estemesse 's
city, these things:
A gathering of gargoyles,
a feasting on the stone, The witch of Westernesse's
hag overthrown."
The little man nodded. "You have learned it perfectly," he said. "I could not have taught you better myself."
Aeriel laughed, resting her head against Grey-ling. "That part of the steeds," she said, "is all I understand. Do you understand it?"
But the duarough shook his head. "I hardly understood the first part, daughter."
Aeriel looked off. Would she never find the answer? Was there no one who might help her but the sibyl in Orm? Her blood chilled. She shivered. She was so weary of journeying, and the task hardly even begun.
"I am going to Orm," she told him, "to ask the sibyl what it means."
"I will go with you," the little mage replied, and Aeriel felt her heart lift, just a little. She smiled her gratitude at him. The duarough said, "But tell me what has befallen to bring you this far."
Aeriel spoke then, of crossing the Sea-of-Dust, of the keeper of the light and the city of thieves. She told him of blighted Zambul, of Erin and Roshka, of the suzerain in Pirs and the caves of the underdwellers there. So saying, she showed him the little pick she had found. The duarough ran his fingers over it, testing the heft. It fit his smaller hand.
"A miner's pick, or a smith's hammer," he murmured. "I cannot tell." He put it away in the daycloak's pocket. "But it is strange. In all my journeying since Avaric, I have seen no other of my kind. Their halls stand empty, long unused, and the only answer I have gotten from those overlanders who even remember us is 'The un-derfolk have gone away.' "
He gazed off, fingering his long grey beard.
"It is strange, very strange. And it troubles me."
Lastly, Aeriel spoke of the lightbearers, and the blazing Torch, and of the darkangel that had gazed into her eyes, and screamed, and fled.
"Why was that?" she asked him. She shook her head. "I do not understand."
"Do you not?" the mage replied. "You are a slayer of darkangels, child. You have stolen the witch's last 'son' away and restored him to mortality. You wear his hallowed heart within your breast. Do you think a seraph cannot see that when it looks into your eyes?"
The duarough shook his head.
"The lorelei has been a fool to try to frighten you with darkangels, and she has called them all home to her now. As I crossed out of Elver, I saw the darkangel of that land, flying northeast toward Pendar, joined by the icarus of Terrain. Two blots of darkness against the stars—I wondered at it.
"But if she has called those two together to her, then she has called them all home. Be sure, she is still hunting us, but I do not believe she will use darkangels against you again."
Aeriel closed her eyes. She could not fathom any of this. It was all beyond her understanding. "Talb," she said, "the witch is hunting my gargoyles. Why?"
The little man across from her shrugged. "I do not know. They are a mystery to me.
Where they come from or what they are, I do not know. One thing is certain, though.
Whatever the witch's purpose for them, it can be no pleasant one. It is well they are mostly in our hands now, not hers."
"Mostly?" said Aeriel. "I had six gargoyles in Avaric. I have come upon only three___"
The other had gotten to his feet, brushing the crumbs from his robe. He had begun to pack up the little kettle, but stopped himself now. "Oh, did I not tell you? How absentminded I have become." He began searching his robe. "Where did I put them? Here it is."
He drew from one sleeve a little drawstring bag of black velvet no bigger than his hand.
Aeriel knew it at once. When she had journeyed in search of the Avarclon, that little bag had contained all the food she had needed for daymonths. She stared at it now, puzzled.
"When I learned the witch was hunting your gargoyles," the duarough was saying, "I set out to gather them. It has taken me daymonths, and I have caught only two, but added to your three..."
Aeriel was on her feet before she was aware. "My gargoyles," she cried. "You have them— where?"
She cast about her, at the roadway, at the rocks. The little mage looked up.
"Why, in here," he answered, holding up the bag. "For safekeeping. And of course, they really are not tame___"
Aeriel looked at him. "They are tame," she said.
"For you, daughter." The duarough tugged at the knotted drawstrings, then turned the little bag over and shook it. "Come out," he said, "the pair of you."
Aeriel saw the fabric twitch. Something very small fell from the bag. One moment it was as tiny as two fingers—then in the next it had grown as large as two people. Aeriel scrambled back.
It looked something like a long-necked hen with neither feet nor tail feathers, its body merging into a great eel's tail that coiled away behind. Its shabby plumes were the grey of stone, its snaky body exactly the same. It shrieked at the mage, snapping at him. A brass collar encircled its throat.
"Keep off, you fright," the little man commanded. "You have your mistress to answer to now."
Aeriel rushed forward then, crying, "Eelbird, Eelbird." The eelbird whirled and abruptly subsided, catching sight of her.
"Named them, have you?" inquired the duarough.
Aeriel shook her head, laughing. "Just foolish names. Child's names." She stroked the new gargoyle's matted feathers, its scabrous scales. The eelbird beat its pinions, rubbing against her, gave a weird and loonish cry.
"That one I found in Elver," the duarough was saying. "People there were in great fear of it, calling it a dragon—but where is the other one?"
He shook the little velvet bag, chafing it.
"Oh, will you not come out?" he muttered, groping inside, though for all Aeriel could see, the little sack remained as limp and empty-seeming as before. "There it is."
The little mage gave a sudden cry and yanked free his hand. Aeriel glimpsed a miniature gargoyle, teeth clamped to the mage's thumb, before it loomed suddenly into a great, hairless creature with batlike wings, a tail, lithe limbs halfway between a lizard's and a man's.
"Release me," the duarough cried.
The gargoyle hissed through its teeth. Aeriel hastened to touch it. Its skin was cool and dry. The brass band about its throat gleamed dully.
"Lizard," Aeriel murmured. "Monkey-lizard, leave off."
The creature started, releasing the mage, and turned with a hoot of recognition. Its grey double tongue flicked across her hand. Aeriel scratched its cold, pebbly hide.
"I came upon that one in Rani," the little mage said.
Aeriel glanced at the black velvet bag, demanded, "How long have you kept them in there?"
The duarough shrugged, nursing his hand. "Only a daymonth or two."
"They are starving," Aeriel exclaimed. She gazed at the two of them. They were all bone.
"So I discover," the mage replied, flexing his ringers. They did not appear to be bleeding.
A moment later, he added, "They would not eat what I offered them."
"Here," said Aeriel, gentling now. She spoke to the gargoyles. "Eat this. Eat these."
Reaching into her pack, she drew out the last remaining apricoks, fed one to each beast in turn, saving the seeds. When they had done, she watched their fallen sides fill out a little, their crusted skin grow more supple and smooth. They circled her, and the other gargoyles. She turned back to the duarough again.
"There is only one left now," she told him, "the one I called Raptor, for it looked like some bird of prey before and an animal with paws behind." She frowned a little. "Where is it now? W
hat has become of it?" She shook her head. "I have no more apricoks."
"Come," the duarough said, putting away the last of his things. He kicked dust over their blue-burning fire, raised the daycloak's hood before stepping out into Solstar's light. "The sibyl will know, and it is still a long way to Orm."
They traveled north, toward the capital. The duarough wore the daycloak now; Aeriel saw him only when their path led through shade. She used the mage's old overcloak to make her pack, wore Hadin's robe, all yellow fire in the shadowless glare of noon.
They took high roads and avoided other travelers. Twice, Aeriel glimpsed below them slave caravans: ragged captives stumbling behind their captors, roped together, their hands bound.
Terror and anguish filled her then. She could almost feel the choking cords herself. I can never live like that again, she thought. If slavers take me, I shall die. Aeriel could not bear to look at the caravans. She and the duarough took other paths.
Solstar was low in the east, nearly setting, when they came to Orm, a city of white mudbrick houses in a low place between three steeps. Talb insisted that the gargoyles secrete themselves in the black velvet bag again. They did so, all five, but only at Aeriel's coaxing.
"We must go as discreetly as possible now," the little mage said. "The White Witch may have called her darkangels home, but she has other agents looking for you. Now tell me of this sibyl you seek."
Aeriel shook her head, tried to clear it, to think of nothing. "I know little of her, only what I have heard. She is a hermitess in the highest temple upon the altar cliffs beyond Orm. She is very old, a priestess to the Unknown-Nameless Ones. Her face is hidden by a veil. All who come before her must offer a gift to her bowl, and she will receive petitioners only by day. She spends the long fortnight in fasting and prayer."
They entered the city then, and the duarough fell silent. Aeriel walked, seemingly alone through the wide stone streets of Orm, the adobe buildings rising to four and five stories on either side. She spoke no more to the little mage, walking unseen by her side, for he wished his presence to remain unknown.
Some upon the streets, seeing Aeriel's bare feet, thought her a slave. They cried out jeers or offers to her imagined masters. Others, noting the fineness of Hadin's cloak, took her for some foreigner come to buy slaves and cried out invitations to view their wares.
And others, eyeing her winged staff, murmured she must be some priestess and left her strictly alone. To none of them did Aeriel pay any heed. Fear made her stiff. Even with the duarough at her side, she was afraid to pause or turn her head—save to those that came too close.
These she turned to look at, and most fell back then, some muttering:
"Green eyes, green eyes," and once one whispered, "Sorceress."
She had to pass very near the slave market in the center of the city, for all the thoroughfares led like wheel spokes to the satrap's palace, across from which the market stood. Aeriel took side streets, trying to skirt it, though she could see the palace roof rising above the other roofs. She had to put her hands over her ears to shut out the noise of bidding and the crowd.
The center of the city fell behind, and at last they reached Orm's northern edge. Aeriel felt a great weight lifting from her. She could breathe again. White, crumbling cliffs rose steeply there, dotted with holy places and shrines. Footpaths threaded up the near-vertical slope. Aeriel had to crane to see the sibyl's temple at the top. She and the duarough began to climb.
Halfway up the narrow, twining path, Aeriel heard the little man halt. She stopped as well, a bit breathless—they had been going very hard. Her shadow fell across the mage, and she was able to see him leaning against the cliff, mopping his brow. He waved her on.
"Go on ahead, daughter," he panted. "My frame was not made for such exertions in this thin overland air. Let me rest a little, and I will come after. But you must hurry. Solstar is nearly down."
Aeriel glanced back, and the sun indeed floated low upon the jagged steeps. After a moment's hesitation, she left the little mage and climbed on until at last the path grew so steep she could not see the temple overhead, had to use her staff to help her climb. All Orm stretched out below. She spotted the palace roof, the market square. She struggled over another rise, and found herself before the sibyl's shrine.
It was set into the rock itself, the stone above it carved into the semblance of a roof.
Freestanding pillars stood upon a narrow porch of stone, flanking the entryway. A stone lyonesse with a woman's face and breast lay upon the roof, overlooking a great smoldering bowl, piled high with offerings.
Aeriel stood a moment, not quite knowing what to do. She had never entered a temple before. They had always frightened her. As a child in the syndic's house, she had heard tales of slaves sacrificed upon the altar cliffs of Orm.
She stared at the bowl upon the ground before the temple porch, at the great heap of flowers and fruit, coins of silver, pieces of silk, and studded cups of white zinc-gold. She had no offering.
Then she remembered something she carried. Kneeling, she reached into her pack and drew out the pale green lump of ambergris. She held it out over the smoking heap. Heat rose from there as from smothered coals. She laid the lump upon the other gifts.
"Come into the temple," someone behind her said. "I have been waiting for you."
FIFTEEN
15
Sibyl
Aeriel whirled, but no one stood before the temple. She saw now that the entryway was a natural opening in the rocks, devoid of doors. A weird wordless crooning began within, very soft.
"Sibyl?" she said. No answer came. The contents of the offering bowl shifted, smoking.
The stone lyonesse lay motionless, facing the sun. Handling the ambergris had left Aeriel's hand waxy. She rubbed the sweet-smelling stuff off on one arm. The singing continued. Aeriel went inside.
The interior of the cave was no bigger than a chamber. Light of Solstar streamed in from the door. On the far side of the room lay a slab of stone, dark like obsidian, and smooth.
A faint hum seemed to come from it, and a slight, bitter scent.
Before it lay a small firepit, beside which a woman in sackcloth sat, spinning. Her great spindle was dark iron. Her drab wool came from beaten nettles. The woman's face was turned from the sunlight, and it was she who murmured the wordless tune.
"Are you the sibyl?" said Aeriel.
The woman lifted her head. Her face was lined. She wore no veil, only a bandage across her eyes. "What, is someone there?"
Her voice was soft, like paper on sand. The glow of the coals played across her features strangely. Aeriel knelt.
"Sibyl," she said, "I need your help. I have come from Isternes to lay a riddle before you.
My name is Aeriel."
"Aeriel?" the old woman whispered. Her hair was unkempt, her fingers stained with nettle juice. "Aeriel that was my fellow in the syndic's house?"
Her thin, calloused hands groped through the air. Aeriel started violently, recognizing the other now. She remembered her years in the syndic's house, in the company of a madwoman of Avaric who told horrific tales of once pushing her sovereign's son into a desert lake as tribute for a lorelei.
"Dirna," Aeriel breathed.
Leathery hands darted over her face. "It is you," the blind woman cried. "My little Aeriel.
But what are you doing here, my love? We all heard you had run away—oh, a long time ago."
Aeriel nodded. "Yes. I went back to the steeps where Eoduin was taken. The darkangel returned and carried me away. But what are you doing here? I must speak to the sibyl."
"Oh, I never treated you kindly," Dirna moaned, "but I meant no harm. I was spiteful once, but I serve the temple now. I had to run away, like you." Her spidery fingers left Aeriel's face. "The syndic was in a rage when he discovered you gone, said someone must have helped you."
"No one helped me," answered Aeriel. "Was it you who spoke to me outside?"
Dirna's ringers flutte
red. "Did I?" She shook her head, frowning. "I can't recall." Her bandaged eyes seemed to seek Aeriel's. "You know how I forget sometimes___"
"Is the sibyl here?" Aeriel asked.
Again the other shook her head. "Not here— but wait," clutching Aeriel's wrist as the girl made to rise. "She will return. Stay with me a little while."
Aeriel leaned her staff in one corner by the dark stone slab. It was nearly black, but had the look somehow of being clear, as though if only she looked long enough, she might be able to see deep down, as into a well. Still it hummed, almost below her hearing, and the odor that came from it was faintly like tar, or lightning flash. Aeriel sat down again.
Dirna sat winding her wool about her spool.
"What is that bandage?" Aeriel asked.
Dirna touched the gauze. "The light of Solstar hurts my eyes," she muttered, "for all that I am blind."
Aeriel gazed about the room. There was nothing to see, not even a bed. The cave was bare. Dirna's hand brushed a stray nettle. She began twisting it.
"But list, I remember now. There was a thing I wanted to tell you. Poor Bomba!"
"What of Bomba?" said Aeriel, looking up.
The other laid her spindle aside. "Are you not hungry, my dear?" she asked dreamily. "It is a long climb up that slope."
Her fingers darting above the firepit, she found a dipper and a cup. A low pan of something lay simmering there. She ladled some and pressed it to Aeriel. The stuff tasted of vinegar, berries, and barley meal. Aeriel set it aside barely touched.
"I am not hungry," she said. "Tell me of Bomba. Is she ill?"
"Not hungry?" Dirna crooned. "After such a climb? Come, drink. You will swoon if you do not eat something. But what was I speaking of?"
Aeriel sighed, sipped from the cup. She toyed with a pebble upon the floor. The hands of the woman across from her darted blindly, searching for something. Dirna was mad, had been mad as long as Aeriel had known her. She sighed again. Pressing her would do no good.
"Oh, yes," the other cried, clutching a handful of dust. She laughed brittlely. "I have remembered now. Of Bomba. I was speaking of Bomba. Your old nurse—Eoduin's nurse.
A Gathering of Gargoyles Page 17