A Gathering of Gargoyles

Chapter 7 Demon Pass

They hurried through the streets of Talis, all but deserted now, for it seemed Bern too, like Isternes, kept custom of feasting and sleeping just after Solset. The city gate was bolted fast, the gatewatch gone. The blue-skinned girl and her young man halted in dismay, but Aeriel found herself drawn forward by the Beast.
The heron spread her wings upon the staff, gave a clear, wild cry. The vast bolt barring the timber doors - too heavy, far, for them to have moved themselves - tripped suddenly, slid on its own. The portals of the city swung wide.
Aeriel had no time even to draw breath, for the gargoyle was drawing her forward again.
Just outside, though, she halted, turning to the heron on her staff. "How have you managed that?"
The heron shrugged. She was pale still and feathery, not yet turned again to wood. "I am a messenger. The Ancients made me to travel unimpeded - so I can open doors."
Aeriel made to say more then, but the heron glanced at her.
"However, it is quite tiring. And by heaven, this is an excellent perch. I must sleep."
She tucked her bill, shut her eye and melted again into the hard, blond wood. Aeriel heard Nat and Galnor draw up beside her.
"You are a sorceress," a man's voice said.
Aeriel turned, taken by surprise, then realized it was no stranger who had spoken, but Galnor. Nat stood pressed against his side, staring at Aeriel. Aeriel shook her head.
"I thought you did not speak."
Galnor met her eyes. "I speak at need." He looked off then, up the road. The gates behind them were drawing shut. "We must not linger here."
He moved past her and the gargoyle then, his arm still about Nat. The blue-skinned girl glanced back. Aeriel heard the soft boom of the closing gates, the great bar sliding into place. Galnor and Nat were already six paces up the road. Aeriel took the gargoyle by the collar and followed them.
The road climbed steeply into the hills, crowded on either side with close-spaced trees.
The gargoyle trotted before them upon its fantastically jointed limbs, its jaws agape, panting. Nat, after a little time, gained courage and came back to walk beside Aeriel.
"That girl," she ventured, "the one you told of in the inn. She was you."
Aeriel looked up, surprised. Then she nodded. "A year, a half year gone, she was me."
The blue-skinned girl looked down. "What happened in the end?" she asked. "To the dark-angel."
"I overthrew him," answered Aeriel, "with the magic cup, and... and rescued a prince that was his prisoner." She looked away, feeling the bitterness of failure at the thought of Irrylath. "Or thought I did."
Nat said no more. They climbed on.
After a little time, Galnor spoke. "They will follow us very hard at first, I think. But the farther into the hills we go, the more reluctant they will be to pursue."
Aeriel glanced at him, but the young man was already striding on. Nat answered her.
"It will be deeper into the night," she said, "and we will be closer to the haunt woods."
"What place is that?"
"A dire place," answered Nat, "surrounding the demon's pass which leads into Zambul.
Each year, they say, it encroaches a little more upon the rest of Bern, and one day will cover it all. No one will go there, even by day, for the night-haunts live there."
"Night-haunts," murmured Aeriel.
"Frights," Galnor replied, glancing over one shoulder. "Weird, ghostly things that roamed the woods long before that day-beast of yours appeared." He snorted, chafing his arms.
"No one who is not desperate travels this road after dusk."
He broke off abruptly, with a glance at Nat. Aeriel saw her shivering.
"We saw them once," the girl whispered, "almost two years ago. I turned my ankle in the woods late one daylight, not many hours from night. And no one from my village would come look for me."
She glanced up then, her eyes on Galnor's back. . "Only the woodcutter, who had scarcely ever even spoken to me but to teach me a little juggling once, took a torch and set out in search of me. They barred the village gate after him."
She glanced at Aeriel.
"We have been upon the road since then. After he found me, we kept ourselves safe with fire till morning came, though we nearly starved. But no nightfall since that time has not seen us safely within some village or inn."
"Till now," said Aeriel.
Nat looked down, fingering the dirk thrust into her sash. Aeriel was silent a little while.
"What is the demon pass?" she asked at last.
"The way into Zambul," Galnor replied. "This road leads there. A winged demon has settled upon the pass, a stealer of people in the night. He shuns all light save that of Oceanus and the stars."
Aeriel felt her skin grow cold. "A winged demon," she said, sought Galnor's eyes. "A dark-angel?"
The other shook his head. "That is not a word we use in Bern."
"What does he do with those he steals?" she pressed. "Drain them of lifeblood, drink off their souls?"
The other shrugged. "No one knows. They are not seen again. Some say they become the night-haunts. There were no night-haunts before he came."
"This demon," Aeriel pressed, "he is the son of a lorelei?"
"All I know," Galnor replied, "is that he first appeared in my grandmother's time. She and her people came over from Zambul not long before his coming closed the pass. They say he overthrew the Dark Wolf that was the guardian of Bern."
"The Dark Wolf," Aeriel whispered; her breath grew quick. "Tell me of her. Do you know where she has gone?"
Galnor sighed. "I know nothing of her but what my grandmother spoke of: when she was warden of Bern, there was no demon, no haunts. No one feared the woods by night or the roads by day. There were no thieves, for Pernlyn hunted them. When travelers heard the long cry of the Wolf, they smiled and took it for a good omen."
"That is what they called her," murmured Aeriel, "Pernlyn?" The keeper had called her Bernalon.
Galnor glanced back and shrugged. "Some such. I don't recall."
Aeriel looked away and was silent for a few strides, then roused herself and found Galnor's eyes again.
"But if this road leads through the haunt woods," she said, "to the demon pass, were it not better to take another road?"
The young man laughed. "There is no other road."
"The woods, then."
"We are too near the city. The thieves know these woods. They would find us. We can only flee and hope they give up before we reach the pass."
Aeriel glanced about her at the dark and knotted trees.
Galnor was saying, "For now, the road is safe enough. And the woods will soon be full of haunts."
The road wound on, the sky a black ribbon overhead, scattered with stars. The black grew deeper the farther they climbed. They lost sight of Talis and the shining Mare in the distance behind.
The trees grew more tangled; the night grew more still. Greyling no longer ranged ahead, but stayed close. They camped after a long time of walking. Aeriel could not gauge how much of the night had passed, for there was no horizon against which to measure the movement of stars. Oceanus hung low; she caught only glimpses of it through the trees.
They had no fire and nothing with which to make a fire. Galnor cursed himself for not having thought to bring a torch from the inn. They huddled together in a wide place in the road and drew lots to see who would keep first watch.
The short lot fell to Galnor. Aeriel and Nat lay down and slept. After what seemed far too short a time, Galnor shook her. Aeriel sat up beside the gargoyle then, stroking its mangy fur.
The silence was utter, save for their own near-noiseless breathing. The woods creaked, randomly. There was no wind. Nat slept curled in Galnor's arms. Aeriel felt a twinge of longing and of loss, even a little envy as she eyed them. I have been a bride four daymonths, she thought, and have never slept in anyone's arms.
Save Bomba's. She gazed off across the dark. When I was very young, a child in the syndic's house in Terrain, and lay thrashing, screaming in nightmares, then I slept in my old nurse Bomba's arms.
Aeriel put her closed eyes to Greyling's stiff fur for a moment. I have no husband and no kith, she thought, and am utterly alone in the world. She shook herself then, lifting her head, and struggled to throw off her useless feeling of despair.
She sat up until she adjudged three or four hours had passed. Then she wakened Nat, lay down and drifted into exhausted sleep. She started awake suddenly, some time after, to find Nat shaking her. "Hist - awake!"
Aeriel sat up groggily. She felt sore and tired still. Nat had shaken Galnor as well. He was already on his feet at wood's edge. The gargoyle stood near him, lip curled. Nat pointed.
"Night-haunts."
Two pale things lurked half hidden among the trees. One stood upright, almost human-shaped, the other, four-footed and hairless white, lifted its muzzle, testing the air. Bone -
they were all strange bone under papery skin. Nat pulled a dagger from her sash. Galnor caught up a stone from the roadway and threw.
"Don't waste a dirk," he said.
The pair started, vanished like smoke among the trees. Aeriel caught a whiff of something then that smelled like lye. She noticed where the pair had stood, the earth was bare, the ground cover dying.
"Let's be off," Galnor said.
They lived on berries and crabapple pomes. Oceanus, the pale stars gave a little light.
Galnor stripped the underbark from certain trees: it had a leathery, cheeselike taste. The gargoyle ate nothing. Galnor slashed fruiting gourds for water. They passed no streams.
The higher into the hills they went, the more pale, bony figures they saw. Some followed the travelers a little way, others merely stood staring. At first Nat and Galnor threw stones at every one they saw, but soon they grew too frequent and too many to be constantly trying to drive away. At length Aeriel all but forgot them, and wondered what travelers feared in them, for they never approached.
It was during their fifth camp that she awoke abruptly from deep sleep. The gargoyle beside her had lunged to its feet. Aeriel rolled, blinking, still half asleep, and saw Nat across from her nodding into a doze at her watch. A white ghost-shape crouching behind the girl was reaching its small, unearthly slender hand to touch Nat's cheek.
The gargoyle snarled savagely. Aeriel started up with a cry and swung her staff, but the creature ducked. Uncannily, it seemed to collapse like a heap of bone. Then it scrambled away; the trees swallowed it, and its long, thready wail wandered through the air.
Greyling plunged after it. Nat shrieked, waking, holding her cheek.
"It touched me," she screamed.
Galnor knelt beside her, caught her face in his hands. Aeriel saw blood. He was shaking.
His voice shook. "It might have killed you," he cried.
Nat burst into tears. "I was so tired. I didn't mean to sleep."
Galnor took her in his arms and stood, lifting her, carrying her like a child. "We'll stop more often," he said.
They broke camp. Nat's had been the last watch. They struggled off along the road again, Nat dozing in Galnor's arms. "It wanted to take something from me," she murmured.
"The bleeding won't stop."
Aeriel remembered the whale's wax she carried, and what the innkeeper had called it. She broke off a little from the lump in her pack and, crumbling it, spread it over the tiny patch on Nat's cheek. The skin was grey there, seemingly unbroken, but oozing blood.
"Better," muttered Nat, drifting again. "It doesn't hurt now."
When she awoke later, the bleeding had stopped. Galnor set her on her feet. Not long after, the gargoyle rejoined them. Something like bone meal dusted its jaws, and there were scratches on its hide, but they seemed very slight and did not bleed.
Not a dozen hours after that, Aeriel spotted the first signs of pursuit.
They were now very deep into the wooded hills. They had stopped halfway up an uncommonly steep grade, exhausted. Through a break in the trees, Aeriel spotted a cluster of flares snaking along the road they had just traveled: pinpricks of red among the dark, far trees. Galnor nodded.
"As I feared. The Arlish bandits have come for their Beast."
They pressed on at once, though Aeriel's limbs were as sore as she could ever remember them. The trees around them grew stunted and shriveled; some had only a thin covering of leaves. Later, they passed many with no leaves at all. Food grew scarcer, and the night-haunts more bold. Then the trees themselves grew scarce until between their ninth and eleventh camps, the road ran mostly treeless, with only occasional stands of scrub.
The sound of their voices dwindled from whispers to muted nothing, the air so high had grown so thin. The night grew very cold. Nat and Galnor walked wrapped in a single cloak. Aeriel nestled the little dustshrimp on the inside of her garment, and tied the wide sleeves of her traveling cloak close about the arms.
Only the gargoyle seemed unaffected. Its strange, strangled voice carried the same as before. The grey beast did not shiver. The night around grew blacker still, the stars above more hoary bright. Oceanus appeared in the heavens again, pale blue and brilliant, as the haunt woods fell away. But always when they looked behind, Aeriel spotted the clutch of red torches, so that Galnor cursed.
"Are they mad? They will not give up until they have driven us into the teeth of the demon himself!"
They kept a sharp eye out ahead then, as well as to the rear, but at least the night-haunts seemed to have vanished. Aeriel wondered if they found the light of Oceanus hard to bear.
The torches of the bandits gained ground steadily, until at last their fire - low-burning and blue now with the thinness of the air - lay barely an hour's distance behind. Aeriel could see their pursuers very clearly in the starlight.
Galnor paused, just for a moment, pointing upward. "The demon's pass."
Aeriel glimpsed the gap in the peaks. She felt her skin prickle. A darkangel waited there.
Natstood clutching Galnor's hand. The young man himself looked grim and desperate.
The road led only in one direction, the surrounding slope now grown too steep to let them turn aside.
Aeriel and the others climbed toward the pass. The torches of the bandits were gaining below. Galnor and Nat, their breathing shallow, were using their hands to help them climb. Aeriel clutched her staff in one hand, the collar of the gargoyle in the other. She saw a stone building above them at the mouth of the pass. Galnor nodded.
"Used to be... the garrison and taxhouse," he said. "Only the demon... bides there now."
He laughed grimly, breathless. The stars above burned like tiny suns. The atmosphere had grown so scant Aeriel could move only slowly. The gargoyle lifted its muzzle and snarled.
The bandits below were singing and shouting, giddy with the altitude. They were seacoast dwellers, while Aeriel had been raised in the steeps of Terrain. Her chest felt tight, her heart huge and straining, but she felt no giddiness. Galnor and Nat struggled ahead of her.
Aeriel spotted something, a flash in the starlight. Onto the roof of the taxhouse a figure emerged. He was clothed in pale garments, cloaked in a black cape thrown back from his shoulders. Nat gasped and ducked behind a ledge at road's edge. Galnor followed. The gargoyle trembled, a rumble beginning in its throat.
But Aeriel could only stare. Her skin went numb. She felt as though she had been made into stone. Disbelief overwhelmed her: it was not he. It could not be he. She had overthrown him in Avaric - that darkangel. It seemed she would stand in the middle of the roadway, staring at that familiar figure till she crumbled to dust.
Only when Galnor grabbed her arm, snatching her into the shadow of the ledge, did Aeriel realize the figure upon the garrison was not the same, only similar to the one she had known. Crouching, gasping to regain her breath, she studied it now.
She saw its garments were not of Avaric. Only its black wings, falling like a thick, dark cape, were the same - huge and umbrous. No starlight gleamed in them. They were deeper than the night-dark sky. The darkangel flexed its dozen wings.
It was not looking at her and her companions. Aeriel realized that suddenly. It was gazing beyond them at the torches down the slope, shielding its eyes from their dim glare. The giddy laughter and shouting of the bandits continued below. They had not seen the icarus.
Aeriel watched, holding the gargoyle, shushing it. The grey beast struggled as if it longed to lunge upslope after the demon of the pass. Nat and Galnor huddled behind the ledge, heads down. The vampyre crouched suddenly, and flew.
It gave a cry - strangely birdlike and inhuman. The sound of it rebounded from the cliffs.
Below, the bandits were looking up. Their laughter ceased. Some of them cried out.
Aeriel felt the wind of the darkangel's passing, its flight a fury of dark, churning wings.
Downslope, the bandits were drawing their weapons.
"Don't look at its eyes!" she heard the bandit leader shout.
The vampyre swooped. Aeriel felt a hand close on her arm, dragging her. For a moment she struggled, confused - the darkangel was below her, nowhere near - before she heard Galnor hissing in her ear.
"The pass. Hurry - now!"
They stumbled from the boulder's shelter, out into the road again: Nat first, running desperately, then Galnor. Aeriel followed. The greyling still strained after the icarus, but Aeriel kept her hold. They passed the taxhouse, gained the entrance to the pass.
Below, she saw two of the bandits drop their torches and fall back. The blue flares guttered in the gusts from the vampyre's wings. The dark-angel swooped, feinted, then seized one of the thieves by the wrist, disarming him. The dark-angel hoisted the unarmed man aloft.
Aeriel cried out, halting. Those bandits who had fallen back rushed forward now, their blades catching the starlight in gleams. The vampyre hovered just above their reach, as if mocking them. It was their captain it had seized.
Galnor caught Aeriel's arm again. "Hist," he gasped, "come on while we may."
"But the bandit lord," cried Aeriel.
"He's lost!" shouted Galnor.
He was holding her staff. Aeriel stared at the dark wood in his hand. She must have dropped it - when? She realized it was with two hands that she restrained the gargoyle now. The hard brass collar cut her ringers till they bled. Galnor's grasp was bruising her.
Below, the bandit in the vampyre's grip pulled a short, hooked blade from his sash and drove it into the icarus' shoulder. The vampyre utterly ignored the wound - it seemed hardly to feel the blade. There was no blood. It buried its teeth in the bandit captain's throat.
Aeriel screamed, stood screaming. She stumbled forward then, dragged off-balance by the gargoyle's lunge. Its collar slipped her grasp. Galnor's hold on her kept her from falling. He hauled her with him into the rocky, narrow pass.
She cried out again, this time after the gargoyle, and saw it check, glancing over one shoulder back at her. Beyond, the bandit dangled limp in the darkangel's grasp. With a howl, the gargoyle sprang on toward the icarus and its victim down-slope.
Aeriel lost sight of them. The lip of the canyon hid her view. She heard shouts, the greyling's furious gabbling, the icarus' inhuman shriek. Aeriel shuddered, turning away.
She ran on blind beside Galnor, not daring now to look behind.
The way was very narrow, rocky, with high steep walls on either side. Aeriel could hardly see, the night had grown so dark, the starlight so scant despite the thinning of the air. Then the pass opened before them, and the road fell suddenly down. They plunged down its steepness breakneck, careless how they went. They ran until they could run no more.
Bushes and scrub brush grew along the road. None had the twisted look of those in Bern.
These bushes had leaves, some of them fruit. Nat sank to the ground at last, gasping.
Galnor knelt beside her, his legs as unsteady as hers. Aeriel herself could hardly talk for weariness.
In a little while, the gargoyle joined them again, loping down the hillside like one barely winded. Handfuls of fur had been torn from its shoulders, and from its jaws dangled a ravel of dull grey cloth. When Aeriel pulled it from its teeth, it burned her fingers - cold as ice.
They left the gargoyle to keep watch. All three of them slept. It was afterward, after they had walked and eaten, toward the end of their second march since leaving the pass, that Solstar arose, spilling its white light over the hills. Nat pointed out a village below.
Not until they had reached it and stood among the villagers with pale green skin, like Galnor's skin, and yellow-green hair, like Galnor's hair, did Aeriel realize at last that they had crossed over from Bern into Zambul.