Slowly, one by one, the gargoyles fell back, and didn't bother climbing up again—they'd found it was no use. Instead they prowled around the grotto, their stone limbs filling the little valley with clashing and grinding, their steel teeth gnashing in fury.
Tears streamed down Yverne's cheeks, but she said bravely, "Praise Heaven! We are safe here!"
"Aye." Fadecourt patted her hand. "They cannot come in."
"On the other hand," Matt said, "we can't go out."
"Have we need to?"
"Unless we want to spend the next several years here—I'd say so, yes."
"Surely they will tire and go away!" Yverne protested.
"They don't look like the type to bore easily," Matt said. "Not very intelligent, at a guess, but very, very determined. Besides, there's the question of how long we can wait."
"I have fasted before," Fadecourt informed him. "I can endure some days without food."
Yverne looked apprehensive, but she nodded.
"All well and good," Matt said slowly, "but let's say, now—water?"
They were all quiet.
"Aye," Fadecourt admitted. "Thirst will drive us out within a day or two."
"And there's nothing to drink," Matt said. "We found that out this afternoon, while we were patching the place up."
"But surely they will not linger past dawn," Yverne protested.
"Only one way to find out." Matt lay down on a patch of grass and rolled over, covering himself with his cloak and pillowing his head on his arm. "Wake me if anything goes right."
Narlh nuzzled him awake. Matt sat up with a start, looked about him in a panic, and remembered where he was. He relaxed with a sigh. "Thanks, O Vigilant One. Anything changed?"
"Yeah—the sky." Narlh nodded upward. "Dawn's coming—and your gargoyles are getting restless."
"Not mine," Matt muttered automatically—but he watched the gargoyles.
They were pacing about, snapping at one another, apparently quite agitated. As the first ray of sunlight struck the hillside above them, each of them began to dig. They went down into the ground very fast, of course, with steel claws and all that weight—down, and down, dirt gouting up about them though they stayed pretty much in place, reminding Matt of pigs wallowing into mud. In a few minutes, they had disappeared, their places marked only by mounds of dirt.
Yverne sat up, stifling a yawn and blinking about her. Then her eyes went wide. "They have gone!"
"No," Matt said, "only gone underground. They'll rise again at sunset, I'm sure."
"What will?" Fadecourt sat up, scowling. He saw the mounds of dirt, at least a hundred of them, and realized what they meant. "So. Our enemies await us without and withunder, do they not?"
"They do," Matt agreed. "My question is, will they dare come out if they know they'll be in sunlight?"
"We might try them," Fadecourt suggested. "How much is the knowledge worth to you—an arm, or a leg?"
Matt gazed at the dirt mounds, thinking it over.
"Mayhap the course of discretion is wiser," the cyclops suggested.
"Definitely. After all, I'm not eager to lose a member."
"There are other ways to test," Fadecourt pointed out. "Yet to be clear, we must wait till sunlight covers the ground outside of this shrine."
"I can wait."
He didn't have to wait long. The sun's rays soon covered the grass outside the shrine, what was left of it. Fadecourt nodded, satisfied, went back into the cave behind the grotto, and came back with a boulder. He bowled it toward the nearest dirt pile. Matt wondered whether it would be able to pass out of the gate.
It did, rolling a couple of feet away from a burrow. There was an explosion of dirt, a blinding flash of granite legs with a horrendous clashing. Steel teeth slashed, and the boulder was gone.
Abruptly, the gargoyle froze. Then, slowly, it turned toward the humans, giving them a look of such pure malevolence that Matt felt his heart trying to sink down into his boot tops.
"It knows we deceived it," Yverne whispered. "It would rend us limb from limb for that deception, if it could."
Narlh snorted behind them. "How many pieces can it tear you into? It was ready to do that last night."
But already, the monster's skin was dulling. It turned and dragged itself painfully back to its hole, where it wallowed down, sending up a cloud of soil that settled to hide it from the light.
"It can endure the sun," Fadecourt said, "though not for any great length of time."
"Long enough to tear us to shreds, though." Matt shook his head. "No, we're very effectively penned up here."
They were quiet, digesting the fact.
Then Yverne rose. "Well, we must proceed with the morning's duties, as best we may. By your leave, gentlemen." She turned and went away, behind the grotto, to the cave. Narlh lifted his head as she passed and gazed after her.
Matt knew the feeling. After seeing those gargoyles, he would never trust honest stone again.
"Well, Wizard," the dracogriff challenged, "how're you gonna get us out of this one?"
"I don't know," Matt confessed. "If these obscene; uh, works of art, really do come from Hell, any power I can wield probably won't be enough. It'd take a direct miracle, straight from Heaven."
"Is our plight so desperate that a saint might intervene?" Fadecourt asked.
Matt shook his head. "As I understand it, that takes direct, personal participation by a major devil. Subordinate demons like these aren't enough—they're no more than the evil ideas Satan lends his minions, to make people miserable." He wondered about the nature of that power. Since he could feel a sort of magical pressure around him when he was casting a spell, maybe Satan just gave his worshipers the ideas for verses; the magical power was always there, only needing to be shaped and formed.
It would be very chancy, he realized, working for Satan. You'd never know when that devastating power would hit you, as well as your chosen target. You could never be sure your boss wouldn't turn against you.
Yverne came back just in time to hear Narlh growl, "So what would happen if you prayed real hard, and a saint came to kick these monsters out?"
"That would just provide an opening for a devil to show up for a showdown. See, God leaves it to us to work out our own destinies, but He'll give us whatever spiritual help we need—and guidance, if we'll just shut up and listen to Him."
"That is Grace," Yverne murmured.
"Right. He'll even perform constant small miracles, if they'll help us improve our souls and not hurt anybody else's, and we really, sincerely, want them enough to help open the way—like an alcoholic going on the wagon, or an incurable illness going into spontaneous remission..."
" 'Spontaneous remission'?" Narlh frowned. "What is that?"
"What you call a miracle when you don't want to admit it's a miracle. And, of course, Hell is allowed its own low-key interference, except that it has to work through the human agents it cons into its service, not directly—and the result can be some really gruesome temptations to despair. But outright, open meddling isn't allowed—so no saint would show up without a devil to kick out."
"But a devil may appear, to interfere in human affairs?"
"It's been known to happen. Not very often, because the devils know that, against a saint who's a channel for God's power, they can't do anything—and the first thing the saint will do is banish them."
"But then," Yverne cried "if a saint did come to aid us, and a devil came to oppose him, the saint would banish the devil!"
"Yes—but the saint won't break God's rules. We have free will, after all—that seems to be the whole purpose of human existence, as well as I can understand it, which may not be much: for us to choose to go to Heaven, and transform ourselves into something good enough to belong there. Outright interference is too much influence."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Narlh frowned. "You're trying to say that to get to Heaven, we have to choose not to have free will, to just do whatever Heaven wants!"
&
nbsp; "Yes, but we use free will in making that choice."
"But..." Narlh tried to follow the loop of the paradox, got lost, and grumbled, "Too deep for me."
"Me, too—I need an Aqua-lung. Of course, the trick is trying to know what Heaven wants; a lot of people have done some very horrible things, believing they knew God's will and were just carrying it out. And, of course, each of the few who really did manage to become a medium for God always had the temptation not to and had to constantly be choosing His will instead of their own. I understand it does require a lot of self-sacrifice. Wouldn't know from my own experience, of course."
Yverne eyed him narrowly, and Matt hastened to explain, "Of course, I don't really understand any of this."
"There are three of us who do not, then," Fadecourt said, with a quick glance at Narlh. "Yet I take it that all of this makes you believe you can do naught 'gainst these engines of Hell."
Matt nodded. "Unless I can figure out a way to harness some sort of natural force. I used to have a scab demon who had taken a liking to me—no, no, my lady, I'm not a sorcerer in disguise! He wasn't part of the Hell crew; in fact, properly speaking, he wasn't even a demon. Humans named him that, because they didn't know what else to call him. He was the personification of a natural process called entropy, and people called him Maxwell's Demon."
"Who was Maxwell?" Narlh grunted.
"A scientist—uh, that was the equivalent of a wizard, where I came from—and he never met the demon, just imagined that it might exist. Which it didn't, back home. But when I came here, I took a chance and called him up—and sure enough, here, he did exist!"
"And his power was enough to break such as these?" Fadecourt asked, looking skeptical.
Matt nodded. "He could make anything go to wrack and ruin, if somebody asked him to in the right way. He could freeze these monsters back into ordinary stone, for example, then make them crumble away into powder."
"Why, then, call him up!" Yverne clapped her hands.
"I wish I could—but he went adventuring with a friend of mine, and I can't take him back without asking. Asking him, I mean—and I'd have to find him, first"
"Can you not conjure up some other such spirit?" Fadecourt asked.
Matt sat still for a minute, letting the idea soak in. Then he nodded. "Yes, I could—but we'd be taking a chance. Whatever I got might do as much damage to us as to our enemies—or might not be willing to do what we ask. It's a risk."
"Could it be worse than what awaits us yon?" Yverne nodded toward the mounds of dirt outside the gateway of the shrine.
Matt thought about steel claws and teeth—vanadium steel, to judge from the way that one monster had sheared through a stone—and shook his head. "I don't think so, no—and there would be a chance that I might be able to banish whatever I called up."
"There is a chance that you could not?" Fadecourt stared.
"Depending on what kind of monster I got—definitely."
"Then don't start up something you can't finish off," Narlh growled.
"That's what they told Frankenstein. No, don't ask—he was another, uh, wizard from back home, though not a very wise one. Still, the point's well taken. Anybody got any ideas as to what kind of spirit I could call up, that would be strong enough to get rid of these gargoyles, but not likely to turn against us?"
A very deep silence answered him.
"Well, so much for that idea." Matt sighed.
" 'Tis a question without an answer, Lord Wizard," Yverne said, looking miserable. "What spirit could be strong enough to aid us, yet not apt to wreak unholy mischief upon us?"
"Mischief!" Matt sat bolt upright.
Then he jumped to his feet, stepped over to Yverne, and gave her a big, loud kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, milady! I should have known I could depend on you!"
"What...what have I said?" she asked, eyes round.
"Mischief! Not malice, mischief! A spirit who loves to play pranks, but doesn't get nasty about it unless people deserve it—or turn out not to be able to take a joke."
"But," she protested, "would a spirit of mischief not be one also of evil?"
"Not necessarily. My parish priest, when I was a boy, had a very active sense of mischief—you know, jumping out of dark hallways shouting "Boo!' and that sort of thing. Gave you the willies, if you were an altar boy going into a dark church on a Sunday morning—but it did teach me to be alert."
"With a priest, all well and good." Fadecourt frowned. "But with a spirit, there might be less of goodness to alloy the meanness."
"Well, it could subject us to some very undignified pranks, of course, but no real damage," Matt answered, "as long as we can take practical jokes in good part."
"What spirit is this?" Fadecourt asked with foreboding.
"I can't guarantee the form or the name." Matt tried to smile. "The worst I've heard him called, is Hobgoblin."
"I like not the sound of that," Fadecourt said darkly.
Yverne, however, clapped her hands and cried, "Hop o' My Thumb!"
"Oh." Matt turned to her. "You've heard of him?"
"Aye. 'Tis said the careful housewife will now and again find a sixpence in her shoe, and 'tis his work—but the lazy sloven will discover naught but black stones, or mayhap beetles." She sobered. "Not a pleasant jest."
"You do have to watch your step," Matt admitted. "He has a knack of taking advantage of human foibles, finds them very fertile ground for humor. Not that he's alone in that, of course."
But Fadecourt was still frowning. "How could such a spirit aid us 'gainst monsters such as these?"
"By having fun with them."
"Fun! With...such as these!?"
"Fun," Matt affirmed. "Get them chasing their tails, or something. Look, it's possible, isn't it?"
"Don't tell him no," Narlh advised Fadecourt. "Anything else he dreams up is likely to be worse."
"There is that," Fadecourt admitted, "and these gargoyles are assuredly far worse than aught else we might bethink us of. Nay, Lord Wizard, call thy sprite."
"Okay. Just a minute, though—I have to try to remember the verse." Matt frowned, running through it silently, then looked up. "Okay. Here goes:
"Unless I mistake his shape and making quite,
He is that merry wanderer of the night
Who might a fat and bean-fed horse beguile
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.
Or slips he in a gossip's bowl
In likeness of a roasted crab.
Against her withered lips he bobs,
And on her withered dewlap, spills the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh he.
Then slips he from her bum, down topples she,
And "Tailor!" cries, and falls into a cough.
Then all the choir waxen in their mirth, and laugh,
And sneeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
Let him come near,
if he Will aid poor wanderers beset,
such as we!"
He ended holding out his hands, as though pleading, which was not perhaps the wisest idea—for a glimmer appeared in his palm, progressing to a glitter, then a luster of twinkling that clustered and faded—leaving a miniature human being, leaning back cross-legged in Matt's palm, one ankle propped on the other bended knee, hands behind his head, and a wisp of timothy between his teeth. He wore a sort of furry kilt, a feather in his hair, and nothing more. And he was very small. If it hadn't been for the feather, Matt might have thought he was a nut.
Later on, he was to decide he would have been right.
"Those that Hobgoblin call me, and sweet Puck," the apparition rumbled, in a surprisingly deep voice,
"I do their work, and they shall have good luck.
"And who are ye?"
"Uh—a poor wizard, down on his luck." Matt tried to stop goggling, and failed.
"At whom do you stare, horse-face?"
"Uh—sorry." Matt managed to blink and forced a smile. The real, genuine Puck! He felt like asking for an autograph. "Just that you're, uh—amazing."
"Certes. Yet not what you did expect?" The manikin sat up, pulling the wisp out of his mouth and tossing it away. "Why, what did you think I am?"
"Uh—well, a little bigger, actually. At least a foot high."
"A foot? Nay, faugh! What use would such a size be? How then could I capture bees to ride, or steal their honey bags? How should I lie in a cowslip's bell?"
"But...I thought that was Ariel..."
"How foolish can you be? Cowslips come from earth, not air." The little man leaped up, standing with legs spread, arms akimbo. "And, too, you did speak with your friend of 'Hop o' My Thumb'—and if 'tis by that name they know me here, 'tis in that guise I'll appear!"
He was, Matt had to admit, fitting the name. He was about three-quarters of the size of Matt's thumb, and he certainly did look as though he was ready to hop with excess energy. In fact, Matt realized he'd better figure out a way to channel all that mischief fast, or it would be turned against him. "Uh—thanks for coming. We really could use the kind of help you can give."
"I, and only I!" Puck thrust out his chest and strutted. "Nay, I will gladly help you—if you have the wit to use my aid. For look you, you must be careful what you ask for."
"'Cause I might get it, huh?" Matt muttered. "How about if I asked for...No, never mind. We don't have time for that, now."
"There is always time for a jest." Puck smiled, not altogether pleasantly. "What did you think of?"
"Well, I was just wondering what would happen if I asked you if my thoughts had wings...Help!" His mind had suddenly filled with a picture of flapping wings, all kinds of wings—bee's, bird's, bat's, bounder's...What was a bounder? "No, no! I was just wondering!"
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