A Gathering of Gargoyles
Chapter 14 Mage

By the time Solstar had climbed a third of its way toward zenith, Aeriel knew she had crossed into Terrain. The rocks had grown cream-colored, no longer grey. Here and there slides had scarred the brittle surface of the steeps.
The road led very nearly north. She met no one, avoided towns. Below her, in the valleys where the denser air gathered, leaf fir and hardy fingergrass clustered, higher up, white starblaze and brittlescrub. She walked with her hood raised against the sun, went quickly and steadily, took little rest.
She found herself growing very hungry and weary. She felt chilled from having walked the last hour in the shadow of a steep. Halting where the road curved around a boulder, she sat down in the sunlight. Two of her gargoyles lay panting in the boulder's shade. The third browsed along the road's edge ahead. Aeriel felt ravenous.
And she had no food, she realized, searching her pack. She must have finished off what little she had brought out of Pirs the last time she camped. She eyed the last two apricoks a moment, fingered them - but no.
She put them up again and turned to gaze up the barren road ahead, wondering what root or seed she might gather there. Again, as she had on the beach in Bern, she found herself longing for Talb the duarough and his little velvet bag of delicacies.
Aeriel started from her thoughts. A figure rounded the bend ahead. The mooncalf shied, but the traveler brushed by without seeming to see it. The figure was swathed in a long dark robe, a deep hood hiding the face from view. Sleeves covered even the fingertips.
The hem of the garment dragged on the ground.
The traveler was very short, Aeriel realized as it neared, stood little more than half her height. It nearly wandered off the cliff's edge before righting its course. The fair girl sat staring. The gargoyles beside her had begun to growl.
The figure tripped on the hem of its robe, sprawling flat in the middle of the road. After a moment, it picked itself up and progressed diagonally across the path. It came up against the hillside presently, halting with a muffled curse.
"A plague upon this garment! I vow, let the witch take it - I hate it so. Oof."
It collided with the hillside across from her again. Aeriel's mouth had fallen open.
"You," she said, getting to her feet. "What are you about? Throw back your hood or you will come to harm."
The figure started violently and whirled, feeling the air with its sleeve-hidden hands.
"What's that - who's there?" came a voice much smothered in cloth. Greyling had begun to gibber and Catwing to yowl. "I warn you," the figure cried, "I am a wizard, and you had best be one yourself if you mean to harm me."
Aeriel took the greyling by the scruff of the neck and shook it to be still. Catwing slunk around behind her.
"I am no wizard," she answered, "and I mean you no harm. I only meant you will harm yourself if you do not watch your way. I am Aeriel."
"Aeriel?" the figure exclaimed, struggling with its hood. "Did you say Aeriel? I cannot hear properly in this sack. Where's a shadow?"
Its arms groped for a moment, until they touched the boulder's shade. The figure ducked into the shadow of the rock and threw back its hood. Aeriel gave a little cry, for she recognized the wizened face, the stone-grey eyes and long twining beard. The duarough stood blinking.
"Talb," she cried. "Little mage of Downwend-ing."
The duarough cast about him. "Aeriel?" he said. "Where are you, child?"
"Here," said Aeriel, directly before him now.
The little mage frowned, peered straight through her, then away. He caught sight of the gargoyles suddenly. Greyling yipped and Catwing snarled. The mooncalf on the slope above sent a shower of tiny stones raining down.
"Stop that!" the little mage exclaimed. "Cease, you monstrosities. Aeriel, come out and call off your beasts. Where are you? This is a fine greeting."
Aeriel stilled the gargoyles with a word. "I am right here," she answered, kneeling before the little man. "Can you not see me?" She put back her hood to be able to see him better.
The duarough's eyes found her suddenly, at last. He stared a moment, then began to laugh. "Of course I can see you, daughter - now. Where ever did you get a daycloak? I could well have used one, these last daymonths, in place of this wretched garb."
He gestured to his own ill-fitting garment, then fingered the material of her cloak.
"It is a simple traveler's cloak," she told him, puzzled. "I got it in Bern four daymonths past. What is so remarkable in it?"
"Do you mean," exclaimed the duarough, "you have traveled all the way from Bern in a daycloak and did not know it?"
Aeriel gazed at her robe, feeling the material now herself. It seemed as it had always seemed to her, very soft, pale without, darker within.
"My people make such cloaks," the little man said. "We cannot bear the light of Solstar, for the Ancients made us to dwell underground. We may travel by night, of course, without difficulty, but when we must go overland by day, we must wear a daycloak. That, or swaddle ourselves completely in other stuff."
"But how is my cloak different from yours?" asked Aeriel.
The little mage took off his own dusty over-cloak, careful to stand still completely in the boulder's shadow. He wore, underneath, the garment she remembered, a loose grey robe with many folds.
"Hand me your cloak," he said. Aeriel did so. The duarough shook it out. "The fiber is such, and the weave is such - an ancient art, and one I regret I never learned - as to make the wearer unseen by day, for it is invisible to the light of Solstar."
"Unseen?" said Aeriel, and began to laugh. "I never vanished."
"Not from your own sight," the little man replied. "Those who wear daycloaks can always see themselves." He put the daycloak on.
"And I can see you now," Aeriel said.
"Naturally," the mage replied. "My hood is down. But lift it - " He did so. Nothing happened. Aeriel saw him still, as plain as plain in the shadow of the rock. "And step from the shade - " He stepped into the light of Solstar then, and vanished.
Aeriel started. The gargoyles whined. She heard the duarough's chuckle, and a scuffing as of someone walking. Little puffs of dust rose from the road. She saw footprints there, but no shadow, no form. The little mage reappeared, stepping back into the boulder's shade.
"Of course, I don't dare put back the hood in sunlight," he said. "I'd be visible then, as were you - but being a duarough, I'd turn to stone."
But Aeriel was hardly listening now. "The hood," she murmured. "It only works by sunlight, you say? That is why Erin said I appeared out of the air," she cried, "why she and Roshka looked suddenly so frightened when I left them - why Nat jumped so when she first saw me. The goat-boy called me a sorceress___"
She turned back to the duarough, lost for words.
"It fits you," she found herself saying in a moment, for the garment did, fitting his much shorter, stockier frame exactly as it had fit her tall, slender one.
The duarough nodded. "It is a virtue of day-cloaks always to be exactly the proper size."
Aeriel said, "Is that why I have had no shadow? Even by night, by lamplight, I have no shadow." But gazing down at her feet, she saw with a rush of relief she was casting a shade again, for she was not wearing the daycloak now.
The duarough nodded again. "Who wears a daycloak has no shadow by any light." He sat down, leaning against the rock. "Have you been wearing it hood-up by daylight, daughter?" And when Aeriel nodded, again the little man laughed. "Then no wonder the White Witch has not managed to find you yet."
Aeriel looked at him.
"Oh, yes. She has been hunting you, and me, these many daymonths. Prince Irrylath, too, I suppose, though he is safe in Esternesse."
The mention of her husband's name brought a painful sensation to Aeriel's breast. She turned that the little mage might not see her face. "What do you know of the White Witch's hunting?" she asked him softly.
The other shifted where he sat, stretching as one very weary of travel. He began rummaging through the many pockets of his robe. Aeriel remembered suddenly how ravenous she was.
"I mean to tell you, daughter," he answered then. "But I am hungry. Let us eat first."
SO THEY ATE. THE DUAROUGH PRODUCED tiny melons the size of fists, plump rosy appleber-ries, yellow rumroot wrapped in husks, shelled halver nuts and the great white mushrooms of which he was so fond, along with a sprig of withered, aromatic leaves.
Aeriel gathered sticks, and the little mage conjured fire. The melons they roasted until they split, crackling and fizzing over the low, licking flames. The rumroots they baked, basting them with the juice of appleberries, and the mushrooms they ate between handfiils of halver nuts.
Then, to Aeriel's surprise, the duarough drew from his robe a tiny kettle, which he filled with water from a flask, then steeped the leaves to a dark green tea which smelled of ginger and tasted of lime. They sipped it from the halves of the split melon rinds.
He told her of all that had befallen him since they had parted a half year ago in Avaric.
How he had journeyed to the witch's palace of cold, white stone, pretending to be some servant of her "son" so that Aeriel and her prince might have time to weave their sail of darkangel's feathers and escape to Isternes.
He told Aeriel of the witch's scream when she had learned at last that Irrylath was lost to her, how he himself had fled then, avoiding her hunters ever since. At last his tale was done; they could eat no more. The little man eyed Aeriel a moment, sipping his tea.
"Were you very unhappy in Esternesse?"
Aeriel sighed. Was it so obvious? "Irrylath loathes the sight of me," she said.
"Does he?" the little mage asked, gently. "The only loathing I saw in him was self-loathing, when last we parted."
Aeriel hugged Greyling, shivering slightly. She did not want to think of Irrylath.
"Maidens came to me," she said, "that had been the vampyre's brides in Avaric. They told me the second part of Ravenna's rime." She looked at the duarough then. "That is why I came away."
The mage's brows went up. "Did they?" he murmured. "Recite it for me."
Aeriel said:
"But first there must assemble
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? What 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."