Stepping out into the pitch-dark, tunnellike hallway, he listened, cupping his hand behind his ear. The song was coming from the left. Behind him Troff was beginning to sing again. Back in the room, Tymmon again closed the gargoyle’s mouth and then, snatching up the candle, set off down the hall following the sound of the flute.
But of course he was followed. He had gone only a few yards when he realized that Troff—and the children, too—were close behind him. He stopped, thinking to order them back to the room, but looking down into Petrus’s eager eyes he quickly realized that there was no time for the argument that would follow such an order. So they went on, the four of them, along a stretch of narrowing stone-walled passageway and then down a flight of circular steps.
The music grew louder as they went, and once or twice Troff began to sing, but he stopped quickly when Tymmon put a warning hand upon his muzzle. They were nearing an intersection where two long tunnels crossed when the music stopped.
“It be gone,” Petrus whispered. “The song be gone, Boy.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Maybe we best go back?”
“No,” Tymmon whispered. “No.” He moved on more slowly, waiting—until, just as he had hoped, the music began again. Another slow, sad tune but now even more loud and clear.
They passed by two more intersections and then down another stairway. Down and down into a narrower tunnel, where the air smelled of mildew and the walls oozed moisture.
The music was very near now, and up ahead a glimmer of light appeared and grew brighter. They turned a corner and came suddenly upon a gate. A great barred gate made of strong iron poles set in a metal frame. Beyond the gate an oil lamp burned brightly in an alcove, and beneath the alcove a man sat slumped forward over a table, his head on his arms. Near the sleeping man’s hand, a large ring of keys lay on the table.
As Tymmon peered between the bars of the gate the music ended, broken off in mid-phrase, and it was then that he noticed another barred gate to the left of the sleeping man. A series of iron bars—and behind them something was moving. A figure was moving toward the gate, and then a face appeared between the bars.
It was a thinner, paler face, and heavily bearded now, but the eyes were still the same, dark-lashed and wide-set beneath arching brows—and still alive with sharp intelligence and, at the moment, shocked surprise.
Pressing his face between the bars, Tymmon fought back a need to scream or shout so violent that his throat ached from the effort. Fought back all sound—and silently mouthed the word “Father.”
Komus’s finger flew to his lips, signaling silence. For a brief moment he stared at Tymmon, shaking his head in amazed disbelief, and then his eyes turned quickly toward the sleeping dungeon keeper. He grinned his old double-edged grin and then, pointing to the sprawled figure, pantomimed drunkenness, crossing his eyes and dropping his jaw. It was not until then that Tymmon noticed the wineskin that lay on the floor beneath the table.
“The keys,” Komus mouthed, miming the turning of a key in a lock.
Tymmon nodded. Putting an arm, a leg, and a shoulder between the bars, he tried desperately to force his head through. But the space was far too narrow. But as he gave up and extracted himself, he noticed that Petrus was trying too. Tymmon held his breath as the little boy managed to get half his body between the bars—and then, just as with Tymmon, his head stopped his progress. He tried frantically, and Tymmon tried to help, grasping the small head and turning it this way and that, to try again from another angle.
Tymmon was still pushing and Petrus was protesting not quite silently that he was in pain, when a soft voice whispered, “Doan hurt Petrus. I can do it,” and Dalia squeezed easily between the bars, tiptoed on tiny bare feet to the table, slowly and silently raised the ring of keys, and returned with them to where Tymmon waited with outstretched arms. And it was not until much later that he realized that she had spoken.
There followed a long period of nerve-racking tension as Tymmon tried one key after another—and finally found the correct one. The key turning in the lock grated slightly and the iron gate squeaked on its rusty hinges, while Tymmon held his breath in anguished dread. But although the flat-faced dungeon master mumbled when the key turned, and snorted and turned his head when the hinges squealed, his eyes stayed closed.
Only a few seconds later the door to Komus’s cell was opened and Komus was grasping Tymmon by his shoulders and then clutching him to his chest, as silent tears ran down his cheeks and Tymmon’s also. They were still standing there crying and laughing silently, or almost silently, when a sudden growl from Troff warned of danger.
Tymmon whirled in time to see the dungeon keeper rising unsteadily to his feet, his eyes fixed in dull wonder on the small crowd that now clustered in Komus’s cell. The blank eyes focused with difficulty, blinked and focused again, and then the man’s hand went to the hilt of a broadsword that hung from his waist. He had unsheathed the heavy weapon and was starting forward when Troff charged.
With an angry roar the gargoyle crossed the anteroom at full speed and flung himself on the guard, striking him in the chest. They went down heavily, with a thud and a great clatter, as the sword flew backwards and struck the wall. And then, as Troff stood over him growling softly, the guard moaned, twitched, and then lay still.
Tymmon and Komus were still frozen in shocked surprise when Petrus, with his usual interest in fateful happenings, joined Troff beside the fallen guard. Putting his ear near the man’s mouth, as Tymmon had done with the unconscious knight, he listened and then sat up to announce, “I think he be dead, Dog. I think you deaded him.”
But Petrus’s diagnosis proved to be premature; the guard was already beginning to stir as Tymmon and Komus carried him to Komus’s cell. There, after binding and gagging him with strips of blanket, they left him behind the locked cell door.
In the guards’ room, Tymmon had already gathered the children and was starting toward the outer gate, when Komus called to him, “Come with me, Tymmon. We may need your help,” and led the way down a narrow passage. They passed one cell and another, and then Komus stopped and unlocked the door of the third.
Inside the tiny enclosure a man wrapped in a blanket was sitting on the edge of a hard, bare bench. A young-old man with a long tangled beard, haunted empty eyes, and trembling hands. At first Tymmon thought him to be a stranger, and a hopelessly mad one, far gone into living death. But he was wrong. When Komus laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Can you stand, Prince? We have come to take you home,” the prisoner’s eyes lit with understanding and he struggled to his feet.
And Tymmon’s mind reeled as he recognized King Austern’s son, Prince Mindor, who had been taken by brigands three long years ago and long since given up for dead.
EIGHTEEN
IT WAS NOT UNTIL they had crossed the dungeon guardroom, passed the outer gate, and started up the first narrow passageway that a question arose that had no immediate answer. The question was asked by Prince Mindor, and it was immediately clear that everyone, including Komus, expected Tymmon to supply the answer.
In his raspy voice, creaky with disuse, the prince asked, “Where are we going?”
Tymmon realized that he didn’t know. After some moments thought he shook his head. “It must be past midnight now,” he said. “We cannot leave the castle grounds at this hour. The gates are certain to be closed. I don’t know how... He stopped to think. “But the gates will be opened early tomorrow to permit the passage of a “wagon caravan.”
“A wagon caravan?” Komus asked.
“Yes, a ladies’ cavalcade,” Tymmon said. “Taking the ladies of Unterrike to—a celebration.” He glanced at the prince and decided against mentioning that the festivities would be in honor of the betrothal of his little daughter to the baronet Quantor. Instead he forced his mind to turn to the possibilities that might be presented by the crowds and excitement of the caravan’s departure.
“There will be a great bustle and... he began, and Komu
s took up his thought. “...much confusion. A swarm of excited noble ladies and their even more excited maids and attendants. Besides a great throng of common folk, no doubt, who will come to goggle and gossip. Yes, if there is any chance of passing through the gates unnoticed it would be at that time. But where are we going at the moment, Tymmon?”
“Well,” Tymmon hesitated. “I don’t...
“You seem uncertain,” Komus said. And then, smiling, “But your noble friend does not.”
Following his father’s glance Tymmon saw that Troff, who had gone on ahead, was now looking back impatiently.
“Yes,” he said. “He thinks I do not know the way back to the room where we were staying when we heard your flute and... But that was a long story. For the moment Tymmon returned to the question at hand. “And in truth I am not sure I do know the way. We came down many passageways. But Troff will know. Take us back to our room, Troff.” He again moved forward. “Come. We must stay somewhere until daybreak, and the room will be as safe a place as any.”
So Troff set off leading the way, down passageways and up flights of stairs, passing intersections confidently that might have fooled a less keen-nosed guide. Trotting along sharply, he stopped now and then and turned back to wait as the rest of the party followed more slowly. First Petrus, carrying the dungeon keeper’s lamp, with Dalia beside him. And then Komus supporting the weak and shaky prince on one side while Tymmon steadied him on the other.
As they moved cautiously forward, Tymmon found himself given to bone-shaking shudders that came and went and came again, especially when he let his eyes turn to the left, to the pale, bearded face of the prince. The noble prince, so long ago given up for dead, but now here beside him, clutching his arm and leaning heavily against his shoulder. And to an even deeper quaking that shook him so hard he almost forgot to breathe when his eyes turned even farther, to where his father met his glance and grinned at him in the same old mock-the-devil way.
Before they had gone very far Komus whispered, “How is it that you are here, at Unterrike, Tymmon? Did you guess that I was here?”
Tymmon shook his head. “No. No. I did not guess at all. I was on my way back to Austerneve to search for you when we stopped here, but I did not dream that you were here.” He started, then, to tell about Sir Wilfar and about why he and Troff and the children had been in the Unterrike Woods—and then gave up.
“It is a very long story,” he said. “Perhaps it will do for now to say that we were here only by accident, and we were planning to leave tomorrow. Until we heard your flute. Or that is, until Troff heard it.” He glanced at the flute that hung around Komus’s neck by a leather cord.
Komus shook his head in amazement. “You would have left without knowing, except that you heard the flute,” he said wonderingly. “So the flute has truly saved my life. It was a gift from one of the dungeon guards. Not the drunken gentleman who is now resting in my cell, but another, more sensitive, soul. I told him he saved my life by giving it to me, and now that seems a greater truth than I knew. Without it I might well have lived for scores of years and then died in that godforsaken hole,”
“But why?” Tymmon asked. “Why were you in the baron’s dungeon?”
“I was abducted by the baron and... Komus had begun when Tymmon gasped.
Black Helmet. Black Helmet was the baron of Unterrike. Now that he had heard the words, it seemed that he had always known it. The thick-bodied, harsh-voiced man in the shrouded armor could not have been anyone else. “But what—what did the baron want of you?”
“He took me because he knew that I had been trying to warn the king against him. That I was trying to prevent him from stealing Austerneve by guile, since the High King had forbidden the use of force in such endeavors. Prince Mindor and I have discussed it many times since we met here in the baron’s luxurious hostelry just three months ago. Prince Mindor was taken by a band of Unterrike knights disguised as brigands, in order to rob King Austern of his rightful heir. And I, to stop my warnings about the heir the baron had in mind to replace him on the throne of Austerneve.”
The prince nodded and agreed, but Tymmon was already away on another thought. “But why me? That night in the tower they were trying to take me also.”
“Yes, they tried and failed. And how did you manage to escape them for so long? I see that I have raised a son of matchless artfulness and cunning,” Komus said. And then before Tymmon could start to answer, “Another long story, I suppose. But the answer to your question—why they also wanted you—is simple enough. The baron’s original plan was not to imprison me but to force me to become his advocate in court. To make me, whom they knew to be a trusted friend to King Austern, into a supporter of all of Unterrike’s schemes and purposes. Which I would do because it would be you, Tymmon, who would be held hostage, under threat of death if I failed in any mission they set for me to do. But when they could not find you they kept me instead, reasoning that if they could not have me as a supporter, they would at least keep me from being an opponent.”
A bloodcurdling thought came to Tymmon and he started to ask, “But then why, when they couldn’t find me, didn’t they...?”
He stopped as Komus interrupted. “Why did they keep me alive? I, too, have asked myself that question. As well as why they kept the prince alive. I do not know, really, except that the baron is a cautious man. I believe that he likes to have a second plan on hand to fall back on in case his favorite evil scheme does not develop properly. He must have had other possibilities in mind for the prince and me also.”
As they moved slowly forward, Komus continued to make comments and ask questions. He asked in particular about Troff and the children.
“And your companions, Tymmon?” he asked. “This noble band of warriors who have overcome dungeon walls and iron bars to free the Dark Baron’s most important prisoner. I would dearly love to know where and how you managed to recruit such an army. Or would adopt be a better word for it?”
And again Tymmon began to explain, and then because of breathlessness brought on by emotion as well as the effort needed to support the badly sagging prince, he said that he would explain it all later. “But for the moment”—he smiled at his father across the prince’s drooping head—“I have heard you say, Father, that one makes many new friends when one travels. And I have been on the road for more than three months.”
Komus returned his grin and said, “God be praised you were not wandering for an even longer span. You might well have returned with a dozen children for me to father, as well as an untold number of enormous four-legged beasts.”
At that Petrus, who had been walking just ahead, turned and, walking backwards, said to Komus, “Be you our father now, sir? ‘Cause Boy be our brother.” He looked at Tymmon slyly. “See, I dinna forget. Your name be Hylas, except when it be Tymmon, and me and Dalia be your brothers.”
And then Dalia said clearly and distinctly, “I be a sister, Petrus. Girls be sisters,” which caused Tymmon to stagger in astonishment. And it was only then he remembered hearing the same small voice say, “Doan hurt Petrus. I can do it.” Tymmon was still staring at Dalia, speechless with surprise, when Troff stopped suddenly before the door of the servants’ room that they had left less than an hour before.
Back in the small room, while the children huddled beneath blankets on one pallet and the prince on another, the thinking and planning went on. The prince, although seemingly gaining in alertness and understanding with every moment spent outside his cruel, dark cell, was still alarmingly weak and frail. The three long years that he had been held in the dark and cold of the dungeon had robbed him of all his former strength. Getting him out of Unterrike Castle and then across the long miles to Austerneve was going to present a multitude of difficulties and dangers.
Their only chance, Tymmon thought—and Komus agreed—would be to start at earliest daybreak and make their way into the narrow alleys that wound among the jumbled and crowded tenements of the castle’s laborers. There they
would wait until the courtyard filled with crowds awaiting the departure of the caravan. And then among laborers, merchants, and beggars they would wish the departing ladies Godspeed and, in the meantime, work their way down to and through the great gates. It was a dangerous plan but, it seemed, the only possible one.
The eastern sky was barely beginning to lighten when Tymmon’s company, which now included two thin, ragged, and bearded men, made its way through the sculleries and pantries. There was no point in strolling casually here in order to suggest innocence. Strangers seen to be wandering inside the palace walls before daybreak would cause immediate suspicion, no matter how innocent their bearing. Like a herd of wolf-threatened deer, they stopped to listen before every doorway and then scurried to the next.
Their luck held. The huge kitchen was still uninhabited, the outer door to the vegetable scullery was bolted only on the inside, and the servants’ courtyard was empty. But once outside the inner keep their behavior changed. Now they could no longer hope to avoid being seen, so they had to rely on being seen but not noticed.
Here on the poor streets inhabited by palace servants and laborers, some early risers were already up and about. Grooms passed on their way to the stables, no doubt to prepare the caravan’s many horses. Bakers stoked their ovens and peddlers prepared their wares for the crowds that would soon be gathering. Now Komus and the prince walked apart from the others, pretending to be what they greatly resembled, two notably unsuccessful beggars, while Tymmon and his family followed a few yards behind.
Tymmon’s group moved slowly, stopping at food shops to stock their packs, and at booths and shops to pretend to examine the wares. And then they moved on, always keeping the two ragged men in sight. And by the time the sun had cleared the horizon they had joined a growing crowd in the palace courtyard.
The caravan was now being assembled in front of the palace doors. The first four wagons, richly painted, fitted with padded benches, and covered by elaborately decorated canopies, were obviously vehicles prepared for the comfort of noble passengers. These were followed by several open transports which would carry not only servants but also a great number of trunks and clothespresses. And beyond the palace, in the passageway that led to the stables, a mounted escort was gathering, a troop of men-at-arms that would accompany the caravan to protect it from attack by brigands or other dangers.
Song of the Gargoyle Page 17
