She yawned again.
"How sleepy I am. It must be an age I have been dozing."
Aeriel drew near her and knelt at the edge of the burning bowl. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I am called the sfinx."
Aeriel felt something, some strange hope stirring. "Are you a Ion?"
The lyonesse shook her head. "No, though the Ancients made me. I was their mouthpiece hereabouts, and guarded the Feasting Stone."
"What is the Stone?" said Aeriel.
"A kind of passage," the sfinx replied, "to the Ancients in their cities. Offerings laid upon it travel to them. They studied such things."
"The duarough has destroyed the Stone, to set me free," said Aeriel.
The lyonesse shrugged. "No matter. It served no purpose anymore. The Ancients are all dead or gone away—at least, they have not spoken to me in years upon years."
She studied Aeriel.
"Are you not my sibyl, then? The satrap always sent me one, to tend the light. It is the flame that nourishes me—though it has not burned in a hundred years."
Aeriel began to feel the heat of the fire now, through the cold. Something else had begun to burn in her, too, some hope she dared not name.
"But why does it burn now," she found herself asking, "when it did not before?"
The sfinx tilted her shoulders languidly. "If, as you say, the Stone is destroyed, then that no longer feeds upon the fire's source—but I suppose it burns now because someone has fed one of the other flames with a seed from the tree of the world."
She sighed.
"This flame once had its tree as well, but my sibyl did not tend it well, and it withered."
She frowned then, peering out over the clifF. "What is that I see in my city below?"
Aeriel turned, looking, and felt a tremor pass through her. "The slave market," she said.
"Slave market?" the sfinx murmured. "How is it my satrap now traffics in slaves?" She came down from the roof in a lithe cat-leap. Her leonine brows were furrowed still. "I must see to that." She started forward.
"Wait," said Aeriel, one hand upon her temple now. The heat of the firebowl was making her giddy. "Sfinx, I have begun to feel the fire."
"Then come out," the lyonesse replied.
She did not turn. Her eyes were scanning the city below. Aeriel stepped down from the burning bowl. The night air moved, deliciously cool against her skin. She knew then what it was she hoped.
"I have a riddle," she began, then stopped herself. Her hope of answer had been dashed so many times before, she had to force herself to speak. "I came to ask it of the sibyl, but she is dead."
"A riddle?" said the sfinx, glancing back over one shoulder now. "I am good at riddles.
When I was mouthpiece of the Ancients, people came to me to find answers to what they did not know."
Aeriel felt her breath grow short.
"Half the riddle I already know," she said. "It is the second part I need:
"But first there must assemble
those the icari would claim, A bride in the temple
must enter the flame,
Steeds found for the secondborn 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 Esternesse 's
city, these things:
A gathering of gargoyles,
a feasting on the stone, The witch of Westernesse 's
hag overthrown. "
"That is Ravenna's rime," the sfinx replied. "A part of it."
Aeriel stared at her. Hope gripped her till she shook. "Can you tell me its meaning?"
The sfinx gazed at her, calmly. "Most riddlers, I have found, already know the answers to what they ask. Who are those the icari would claim?"
"Lons," said Aeriel. "The lost Ions of the West."
"And the bride?" the lyonesse asked.
Aeriel stopped a moment, gazed at the temple, the burning beacon, her wedding sari. "I am the bride," she said softly.
"The steeds and the secondborn?"
"The secondborn are Irrylath's half-brothers, the six younger-born sons of the Lady of Isternes. The steeds are the lons again."
"The arrows and the wand?"
Aeriel shook her head. "I do not know what the arrows are: something to wield against the darkangels, I suppose. The wand..." Again she stopped. "The wand is my staff."
She turned and saw it, standing where she had planted it beside the bowl. It was different somehow: still dark, slender wood, but seemed to have grown strangely crooked, gnarled like the slim trunk of a tree. Twigs, leaflets had sprung from the knob. Aeriel stared.
"Ambergris," the sfinx remarked, scenting the air. "The dust whales live many thousand years, and what comes of them is marvelous."
Aeriel went forward, touching her staff. It had grown rooted to the soil.
"But the rime," the lyonesse continued. "Who is the princess royal? What is the tree?"
Aeriel stopped herself again. She remembered Roshka, and Dirna's words. "I am the princess royal," she said. "The tree is the lighthouse tree in Bern."
"The tree whose root reaches the heart of the world," the sfinx replied. "Perhaps this tree's root, in time, will do the same."
The branches of the slender tree had grown longer, its bole thicker. Its leaves whispered against one another. Aeriel saw a fruit forming on one bough.
"Are the gargoyles gathered?" the sfinx asked her.
"Yes."
"Has the Stone feasted?"
Aeriel nodded, shuddered. "Yes," though all mark of that upon her body had now been burned away.
"And the witch of Westernesse's hag?"
"Dirna," whispered Aeriel. "Overthrown."
"There is your riddle, then," the lyonesse said. "Look, the satrap has seen the beacon. A procession of torches comes."
Looking below, Aeriel saw a line of lights wending from the palace toward the cliffs. The sfinx arose.
"I will go to meet them," she said.
Aeriel shook her head, reached after her desperately. "But stay," she cried, dismay filling her. "The arrows, the Ions—the rime means nothing if I cannot find them___"
The sfinx regarded her a moment then, and Aeriel noticed for the first time that the cat-woman's eyes were deep violet. Her heart beat wildly.
"But you have the Ions," the sfinx replied. "They came with you."
The lyonesse disappeared in a lithe cat-bound, vanishing down the footpath toward the torches below. A moment later the gargoyles appeared over the precipice: Greyling and Cat-wing and Mooncalf, Eelbird and Monkey-lizard and Raptor.
They prowled before her on the cliff's edge, hooting and gabbling. Aeriel stared as if she had never seen them before, all wild and haggard in the light. A whitr> bird fluttered from the darkness above and alighted in the branches of the tree. Aeriel left the gargoyles and went to her.
"Wand-given-Wings," she murmured.
The heron sighed. "Ah, at last you have called me by my right name."
Aeriel asked, "Did ever you carry a green-eyed girl child...?"
"Out of Pirs?" the heron finished for her, nodded. "Yes, once. Years ago. Her mother conjured me. I was to take the babe to a certain family in the north, but a darkangel pursued me, and she slipped from my grasp. I could not find her when I returned."
"Slavers found her," said Aeriel. "I was taken to Terrain."
An apricok was growing on the bough. The heron bent and plucked it, giving it to Aeriel.
She turned and called softly.
"Raptor. Raptor, come to me."
The last of the gargoyles came then, and she fed it the golden-red fruit. Some of its haggardness left it. As with the others, it soon looked less starved. Aeriel found herself thinking of the sfinx's words. The sfinx had called the riddle solved. Solved? Aeriel clenched her teeth.
The vital lines—the arrows and the Ions—they s
till meant nothing to her. Nothing!
Frustration seized her. To have come so close. She held the clean seed in her hand.
Turning now in dismay, she flung it into the fire, then drew the rest of the heart-shaped seeds from her pack and flung them in as well.
"I do not know why I have been keeping these," she said, "or why the keeper bade me save them."
But the words were no more than half spoken when the gargoyles hooted and howled.
First the raptor, then the others sprang past her into the flame Aeriel cried out, starting forward, then stopped herself, for she saw they stood as she had done, and did not seem to feel the heat.
The gargoyles' collars began to melt, the brass running down their grey hides like golden blood. But the silver pins that held the bands were not melting. Instead, they were growing bright with the heat. Then the collars were gone, dissolved. The gargoyles shook their heads, and six silver pins flew, falling like glowing stars upon the ground beyond the bowl.
The apricok seeds floated upon the molten treasure and did not burn. They had begun to swell, like grain in broth. Each gargoyle took into its mouth one seed, each now the size of two doubled fists and exactly the shape of a gilded heart. The scent of ambergris rose on the night.
The gargoyles swallowed them whole, without chewing, then lapped at the running silver as though it were milk. Aeriel saw them beginning to change. Their limbs altering, their fur and their feathers growing sleek; their pebbly hides or scales lay smooth.
Then Greyling came down from the bowl, stepping from the fire, and was no longer Greyling, but a black she-wolf with silver throat and belly and legs.
"Bernalon," whispered Aeriel.
"I am she," the Ion replied, "and we are the ones that you have sought."
Catwing followed, a winged panther, pale with shadowy silver spots.
"Zambulon," said Aeriel.
"The White Witch overthrew us, one by one, using her sons," the pale cat said.
A great stag, all color of bronze, with eyes and hooves and antlers of gold came forth.
"Mooncalf," cried Aeriel, then caught herself. "Pirsalon."
"She tore out our hearts and put collars on us to strangle our strength, and our thoughts, and our speech," he said.
A copper-colored paradise bird with a snake's tail, dark green, emerged.
"Eelbird," said Aeriel. "Elverlon."
"But you have given us new hearts," she said, "new blood, and taken the witch's collars away."
A long-limbed, winged salamander that looked almost manlike came forth. His hide was as black as Erin's skin, all speckled with reddish spots.
"Ranilon," said Aeriel.
"The world is not lost while we live," he said. 'We will gladly go with you to Isternes, to serve as steeds against the witch."
Aeriel felt buoyed up, breathed in the night. A deep joy began to well in her, infusing her.
I have found them, she thought. I did not fail, and the lorelei has not yet won.
Catching movement then from one corner of her eye, she turned and saw Irrylath standing in the temple door. His face seemed haunted in the flame's pure light. He stared at her as if he did not know her, and at the Ions.
She saw the duarough too now, kneeling beside one of the silver pins. Still it glowed. He tapped it with the blunt side of his pick, shaping it. His strokes became surer and more expert as the glowing pin flattened, razor-edged.
"Strange metal, that," he murmured, "very hard and keen. Ancients' silver, I think they call it. No mortal fire could melt it, they say. Hot enough now, though, to reckon. One might make arrowheads of these."
The last of the Ions emerged from the fire, a tawny gryphon, formed like a gyrfalcon before and a great cat behind.
"Terralon," laughed Aeriel. She felt heady now, flushed with triumph. All things seemed possible.
"We must hold a council of war in Isternes,'' the gryphon said.
"And there are the free Ions yet to be gathered," said Bernalon "Marelon, and Pendarlon, and more."
The white bird upon the knotted tree rose. "I will bid them come to you in Esternesse,"
she answered. Then spreading her wings, she sailed over the cliff's edge, away over the steeps. Aeriel gazed after the line of her flight, ghost-pale against the night-shadowed hills.
"Haste, haste," the bird-of-paradise said. "We, too, must fly."
Aeriel drew a little away, reined in her exultation now. "There is a young girl in Pirs," she began. "I promised to return for her."
"The witch has already called her sons home," the panther warned. "There will be war."
"We must make plans to assail her, and soon," Pirsalon added. "Before the White Witch steals another babe to give her seven darkangels again."
Irrylath had come down from the temple porch. Aeriel could feel him in the darkness behind. The steady cling, cling of the duarough's hammer, making weapons, filled the night. Irrylath halted. Aeriel turned, and then drew back startled, for the prince was holding out his hand.
"Come, Aeriel," he said softly. "Our task is only just begun. We must return to Isternes, and hold a conclave of the Ions."
Slowly, Aeriel went to him, eyeing him carefully, for still he gazed at her, as though she were some strange, astonishing thing. There was blood in his hair where Dirna's spindle had struck him. Without thinking, she reached to touch it—and to her astonishment, he did not draw away, nor turn from her gaze.
"We must go by way of Pirs," she found herself telling him, "for Roshka and Erin are waiting for me."
"Climb on my back," the gryphon said, and Irrylath lifted her, setting her between the Terra-Ion's great buff-colored wings. Aeriel searched her husband's face, but he was not looking at her now, though he no longer shrank from her.
"Go on," she heard the duarough say, pausing a moment at his work. "Just leave me a mount and I'll follow you, as soon as I have finished these."
The arrowheads gleamed silvery white. The panther of Zambul went and sat beside Talb.
The little mage's hammer rang. Irrylath sprang onto the back of the paradise bird. Aeriel sat watching him. Perhaps you cannot love me yet, she thought. But at least we can work together now, until our task is done. Afterward, who knows?
The gryphon rose into the air, followed by the salamander and the prince's cockatrice.
The wingless stag and wolf flung themselves over the cliff, plunging in bounds no mortal creature could have made. Aeriel gripped her mount's soft, close fur as they wheeled away over torchlit Orm. The sky spanning vast and starlit before them, they sped eastward, toward Isternes.
Don't miss the startling conclusion of The Darkangel Trilogy
The Pearl of the Soul of the World
Within a small white pearl resides all of the magic and knowledge Aeriel needs to save her world. "All my sorcery," Ravenna had said of the pearl, "and you are to be my envoy.
It is left to you to save the world." But are the pearl and its powers enough to enable Aeriel to defeat the vile white witch, whose evil magic blights the land and threatens everyone Aeriel holds dear? With the help of the darkangel Irrylath and the enigmatic Erin-Black-as-Night, Aeriel prepares to confront the white witch in a desperate final battle whose outcome will determine not only AeriePs fate—but that of everyone and everything.
"In sheer power of imagination, intensity of emotion, and high drama, this would be a brilliant achievement in itself.... It enriches the entire work, heartbreaking, and heartlifting." —Lloyd Alexander, author of The Prydain Chronicles Available at your local bookstore
rayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
A Gathering of Gargoyles Page 20