Tangle Box (22 page)

“That was not your decision to make!”

“Nor did I make it.” The Gargoyle was unruffled, his ugly face lifting slightly into the light, his yellow eyes calm. “I let events take their own course and nothing more.”

“You could have warned me!”

“You could have warned yourself if you had been thinking straight. There is no mystery to Gypsies of any kind—they
are the same the world over and always have been. They live by their own rules, and if you choose to drink and sing with them you accept that this is so. Consider it a lesson, Sir Knight, and let it pass.”

The Knight forced down his rage. Fear lurked just beneath, the feeling that he was losing control and could do nothing to stop it. The Lady and his weapons were gone, and he had been powerless to prevent it. Why hadn’t he seen better what might happen? Why hadn’t he taken the precautions he knew were necessary?

He breathed in deeply and looked up and down the river. “Which way did they go?” The Gargoyle did not respond, and the Knight turned on him quickly. “Do not give me reason to mistrust you further!” he snapped.

The Gargoyle held his angry gaze. “I have given you no reason ever.”

“Haven’t you?” The Knight squared himself. “When I woke in the Labyrinth, you were already there. You knew where we were; you called the Labyrinth by name. You said that there was no way out, before anyone else had even mentioned it. When we reached that town and we were told of the Haze, you knew the story. The counterman identified you as a monster that preceded its coming. Last night, when we came upon the River Gypsies, you knew who they were when the Lady and I did not. You seem to know a great deal about a place which you do not claim to come from. I cannot help but wonder what cause you serve in all of this.”

The Gargoyle stared at the Knight, and for a long moment he said nothing. “You have cause to be suspicious, I suppose,” he replied finally, reluctantly. “I would be suspicious as well, were I you. It must seem as if I am duplicitous. But I am not. What I know comes from living for a very long time and having been to a great many places. I have acquired knowledge for which I can no longer name the source. I remember things that I heard about or discovered
centuries ago. I am very old. Once, as the River Gypsy said, there were many of my kind. Now there is only me in all the world.”

He paused, as if reflecting. “This place and those who live here and the things that happen within are familiar to me, known from another time, one for which my memory has long since been erased. I sense, as well, some of what will be. I know this place; I recognize it. I anticipate some events. But I am not from here, and I am not sure I have ever visited before.” The Gargoyle scowled. “It bothers me that this is so. My memory is quite fragmented, and I confess that nothing of my previous life is clear to me anymore. Save,” he added darkly, “that I am no longer who or what I was.”

The Knight nodded slowly. He sensed truth in the Gargoyle’s words. “Nor am I. The past seems long ago and far away.”

“But there are associations that trigger memories, as with the River Gypsies last night,” the Gargoyle said. “I knew them without ever having met them. I knew what they were about. I could have told you, it is true. I did not. I wanted them to take the Lady. I wanted her gone.” His gaze was direct. “I am not ashamed.”

“I must get her back from them,” the Knight said.

“Why? What reason is there to do so?” The Gargoyle seemed genuinely interested.

The Knight was silent. His hands clenched as he struggled to speak. “Because it is what I was given to do before I came here. It is the only certainty I possess. Without her, I am lost. She is all that keeps me going. She is the reason for my being. I exist because of her. Do you see?”

The Gargoyle thought for a moment and then nodded. “I think I do. You have no cause beyond taking her to your master, no cause that you can remember. But do you remember anything even of that, Sir Knight?”

The Knight shook his head. “This place seems to have stolen my past.”

“And mine.” The Gargoyle’s voice was bitter. “I wish my life back again. I wish my memories restored.”

“Did you see which way they went?” the Knight repeated.

“You are better off without her,” the Gargoyle replied. There was no response from the Knight, no change in his expression. The Gargoyle sighed. “Upstream, back the way we came.” He shook his head wearily. “I will go with you.”

They set out at once, moving through the long grasses of the riverbank, following the earth-colored ribbon into the misty gray. They found tracks almost immediately, and it wouldn’t have been hard for the Knight to have discovered for himself which way the River Gypsies had gone. It made him suspicious anew of the Gargoyle’s place in the scheme of things; after all, the Gargoyle might have told him simply to serve his own purpose. But that was harsh thinking, and the Knight was not comfortable with it. He believed the Gargoyle to be a fundamentally honorable creature. He did not sense lies in what he had been told. They had both come into this world from some other, and their destiny here, along with that of the Lady, was of a single piece.

They pushed on through the day, moving steadily ahead in the wake of the wagon tracks, pausing infrequently to rest themselves, intent on completing their chase by sunset. The river broadened after a time, growing so large that the far bank was little more than a dark line against the clouded skies. The Knight was growing depressed by the constant grayness, by the absence of any sunlight, by the oppressive lowering of the sky toward the earth. He missed people and animals and the presence of other life. He had enjoyed those once, he knew. Mostly, he felt the loss of his identity beyond the vagueness of his present existence. It was not enough to sense who and what you were; memories were
needed as well, clear pictures of the life you had lived and the things you had done while you lived it. He had almost none of those—fewer, it seemed, than the Gargoyle. He was cast adrift in a limbo, and the emptiness he felt was beginning to breed madness.

It was after sunset when they came upon the River Gypsies again. They were fortunate to see the firelight well before they were close enough to be seen themselves. The Gypsies were encamped on the riverbank once more, and the sound of their singing rose into the twilight stillness with careless disregard. The Knight and the Gargoyle moved back within the trees and edged along within the protective fringe until they were close enough to see what was happening. There were no surprises. The River Gypsies sat about their fires drinking wine, letting the night close in about them. The Lady sat with them. She did not appear to be restrained in any way. She held a cup in one hand and sipped at it. Her face was cold and empty, but she did not appear afraid.

“Perhaps she wants to be with them,” the Gargoyle whispered. “Perhaps she is freer with them than she was with you.”

The Knight ignored him. “I need my sword back.”

The Gargoyle shook his head reprovingly. “You are of a single mind, aren’t you? No deviation in your life.” His laugh was deep and soft. “We are both cast in a mold that can never be changed.”

He rose abruptly. “Wait here for me.”

He disappeared into the trees. The Knight waited, watching the camp. Darkness deepened until everything beyond the glow of the firelight disappeared. The drinking and singing went on, uninterrupted, unabated. All other sounds and movements disappeared behind the gaiety, submerged as deadwood in a river’s flow. Time passed, and the Knight grew anxious.

Then the Gargoyle was there beside him again, holding
out the broadsword, sharpened teeth gleaming along the edges of a smile. The Knight accepted the sword, balanced it in his hand to study its condition, then slipped it back into the sheath he wore across his back.

“Now we will ask them to give the Lady back,” he said, rising.

“Wait.” The Gargoyle’s clawed hand restrained him. “Why ask when there is no need? Wait until early morning, then slip down and take her while they sleep. It might be the easier way.”

The Knight thought it over a minute and nodded. “We will wait.”

They sat together in silence within the concealment of the forest trees. The River Gypsies began to dance, and the merriment went on. It did not end until the night was mostly gone and the fires burned away. Then the men and women rolled themselves into their blankets and were still. The Lady slept with them. She had not moved from the place she had been sitting; she had merely eased herself down onto the grass. Mist edged in about the wagons and animals, no longer kept at bay by the heat of the flames, and soon it covered the sleepers.

The Knight and the Gargoyle rose then and slipped from the trees. They made their way in silence through the long grasses toward the camp. They searched for a sentry and found none. When they reached the wagons, they paused again, listening. There was only the sound of the Gypsies sleeping and the distant rustle of the river against her banks. They edged along the wagons until they were close to where the Lady lay. Then the Knight went forward alone.

He found her, knelt close, and placed his hand over her mouth. She came awake at once, looking up at him with cool, appraising eyes that were free of any fear. He started to help her up, then saw the chain that ran from a clamp fastened about her ankle to a wagon wheel.

The Knight stood, fury racing through him. He’d had
enough. He walked through the sleepers heedlessly until he found the one who had spoken so enticingly to him of leaving one’s cares for another day. He reached down, fastened his fingers in the man’s tunic, and hauled him to his feet.

“I will cut you end to end if she is not freed at once,” he hissed.

The man looked him in the eye and nodded wordlessly. The Knight steered him back across the camp to where the Lady waited. The bearded Gypsy reached into his pocket, produced a key, released the lock, and stood back.

“You should not be angry at us,” he said quietly.

The Knight pulled free the clamp from the Lady’s leg and brought her to her feet. She reached down to rub her ankle, then turned and strode out of the camp for the trees.

“Wine and entertainment come at a price,” the Gypsy declared. “You owe us.”

The Knight turned. “Be grateful I do not kill you.”

The Gypsy put his fingers to his lips and whistled, a shrill, piercing sound. Instantly the camp was awake, and there were armed men all about. They held daggers and short swords and axes, the metal blades gleaming wetly in the damp air. They took in the situation at a single glance and edged toward the Knight.

“Do not be foolish,” the Knight warned, placing his back to the nearest wagon.

“It is you who have been foolish, I think,” the bearded Gypsy replied.

They came at the Knight in a swarm, but he scattered the rush with a huge sweep of his blade. His chain mail protected him from the dirks thrown at his chest, and he turned and moved swiftly past the wagons for the woods. Where was his heavy armor? he wondered suddenly. Where were his plates and greaves and helmet? He sensed them somewhere close at hand once more, but still they would not come to him. This was twice now that he had been forced to stand and fight without them. He had never had to do so
before. His armor had always been there when he needed it. Why didn’t he have it now?

Again the Gypsies rushed him, and this time he was forced to defend himself. He cut two of them down and wounded a third, taking no injury himself. He could hear the Gargoyle calling. When he glanced back, he saw the Lady standing at the edge of the trees, watching him.

Rage at the stupidity of the River Gypsies washed through him. He braced himself for another rush.

It never came. A familiar, wicked green light lifted off the river in a towering curtain and began to advance on the camp. The Gypsies turned at its coming and screamed in recognition. The Haze swept out of the mist and dark, a terrible hissing rain that ate away the landscape. The Knight turned and ran for the woods, taking advantage of the Gypsies’ terror and confusion. He gained the trees as the Haze reached the camp. It ate its way through the wagons and animals and people so quickly that they disappeared in seconds. Even the screams lingered only an instant. No one seemed able to escape.

It was over in moments. The Haze advanced until the camp was devoured and then it drew back. As with the town, it retreated across the scorched, barren earth and disappeared from view. As with the town, nothing of the River Gypsies remained behind.

The ravaged ground steamed in the early dawn light. The Knight stared out from the trees in shock. The Lady stood at one elbow, the Gargoyle at the other. No one spoke. The Knight was wondering how this had happened, how it was that the Haze had come again, how it could be that it took only the camp and left them alone. What had brought it? What had kept it from destroying them as well? Something in all of this was not right. There was a surreal aspect to everything that had happened—in their discovery of that nameless town, in their encounter with the River Gypsies, in the coming of the Haze. There was an unmistakable
skewing of reality that lacked identity, but not form. Ignorant of its source, he was nevertheless aware that it existed.

An unpleasant suspicion began to form at the back of his mind, one so terrible that he could not give it voice. He buried it away deep inside himself in despair and disbelief.

“What monstrous thing is this,” the Lady whispered, stepping forward to stare out across the river. “Does it track us like dogs at hunt?”

“It does,” the Gargoyle growled softly. “I can sense its hunger.”

The Knight could sense it, too. And while he would not say so, while he could not bring himself to speak the words, he thought that its hunger had not yet been sated.

They must have seemed an odd sight, Abernathy thought as they approached the gates of Rhyndweir, castle fortress of Kallendbor, the most powerful of the Lords of the Greensward. A tall, scrawny, gangly man with a bird on his shoulder, a smallish, wiry beast that looked a little like a crazed monkey, and a dog with human hands and wearing reading glasses—Horris Kew, Biggar, Bunion, and himself. Up the roadway through the town surrounding the fortress they trudged, carrying before them (well, Bunion carrying, actually) the banner of the current and still absent King of Landover. Their horses trailed on a line behind them, grateful no doubt to be rid of riders who didn’t much care for the beasts anyway. The mule with the chests of mind’s eye crystals plodded along with them. The day was hot and humid, the air still, and the prospect of a bath and a cold drink was foremost in everyone’s mind.