Geis of the Gargoyle (46 page)

That night, hot and miserable.
 
Iris moaned in her restless sleep and dreamed a dream:

By the hot and humid noon, in a dale of dragons, Almost lifeless, a golden arrow in my breast, I lay;

Smoking mirrors rose all around me, and scarlet Drops of blood ran over my breast and dripped away.

I lay upon the golden burning sands alone.
 
The sheer precipices of the seven devils made no sound, The kettenhund (watch-dog) lay panting in the sun, And I scorched too, near the River of No Return, on the ground.

I dreamt I heard an infant crying in the light.
 
The Demon struck; there in the sand, my lover's body lay;

Steam rose from hell's canyon's Oh-No hot springs, The blood ran cold and down and out of it, and dripped away.

She woke, wondering what it meant.
 
She had never been struck by an arrow, especially not a golden one, or had a lover suffering like that.
 
Yet the dream seemed much like a memory.
 
Surely it had special significance.

She heard thunder outside the mouth of the cave.
 
It was raining with appalling violence, and water was coursing down along the floor past her feet and on into the deeper reaches of the mountain.
 
No one knew how far the caves extended, for not even the slavers dared explore them to their end.
 
Only the water dared do that.

It was morning, and now there seemed to be a break in the storm.
 
The children needed to eat.
 
So she led them out.
 
But she was mistaken; in a moment the rain resumed, and to her surprise it was freezing.
 
Sleet battered them, making them hunch low and seek the partial shelter of trees.

She decided to go back to the cave, but it was too late.
 
The storm intensified into a hurricane filled with screaming demons.
 
It drove her to her knees, obliterating her view of the cave entrance and filling her mind with fear.
 
The children cried, but could hardly be heard over the roar of the storm.
 
She reached out, trying to bring them in to her for what scant protection she was able to offer.
 
She realized that Fracto, the evil cloud, must be here, trying to destroy her.
 
Fracto was one of the few things she could not readily befuddle by her illusions.
 
Fracto had no illusions; he was simply destructive.

Blinded and deafened by the terrible storm.
 
Iris went for the only shelter within range: a vulgar thyme tree.
 
It was vulgar not in its appearance or attitude, but in the sense that it was a common, imperfect specimen with little effect on what was near it.
 
Thus Iris and the children were able to huddle by it while suffering only a little distortion of time.
 
It made it seem as if the storm had slowed, with the hailstones angling down at a lazy rate, bouncing slowly on the ground, and rolling in leisurely manner.
 
The howling wind howled in a lower tone, as if tired, and blew the tree's leaves as if they were reluctant to respond.

She knew it was still daytime, but a great darkness was closing in all around them.
 
Part of it was because of the density of the awful cloud, she knew, but that couldn't account for the rest.
 
The children gazed around fearfully.
 
Even little Surprise seemed daunted.
 
She didn't blame them; the effect was unnerving.
 
She knew she should not have gone out into the storm like this; such weather was never to be trusted.
 
But where was the darkness coming from?

Then she'realized that it was because of the thyme tree.
 
It was slowing down the light itself, so that not enough could reach this spot, and that gave the darkness its chance.
 
They would have to get away from the tree if they wanted more light.
 
They couldn't stay here anyway, because the hailstones were piling up around their feet and making their toes deathly cold.
 
This refuge was no refuge.

"Ch-children," Iris said, her teeth chattering.
 
"We m-must go on before we fr-freeze.
 
I will m-make a Might to lead us to the m-mess hall."

They nodded their little heads, dully.
 
Even the slavery they faced was better than this bone-chilling cold.

Then something halfway good happened.
 
The manacle on Iris' left wrist glazed over, wrinkled, and cracked partly open.
 
The thyme and the cold were stressing it beyond its limit, and it was coming apart.

"Children!" she cried.
 
"The manacles are being unmanned! Maybe we can get them off!"

They drew together in a circle, and pulled on the chain that linked them, and pried with sticks and banged with stones, and bit by bit the manacles came apart.
 
One by one they pried them open and off, slipping their little hands free.
 
They were no longer physically chained to each other.

But they remained socially and practically linked.
 
None of them could survive this storm alone, and the children would surely perish if they escaped the storm and ran into the surrounding wilderness.
 
Iris herself was little better off, because her illusion could not make a material change in her situation.

"Children, we are only half free," she said.
 
"We must get to the mess hall and get warm before we can think about getting away from here.
 
I will make illusion manacles and chains, and you must act as if they are real, until we see a good chance to escape.
 
Do you understand?"

They nodded.
 
They understood all too well.
 
They knew that the chain was only part of what bound them.
 
Otherwise they could have escaped with Iris as a group.
 
They knew how to play the part.
 
They had learned how to survive in this awful situation.

Of course Iris herself didn't want to escape yet, because she had yet to identify the Master Slaver.
 
But maybe he would show up before a good chance to escape with the children turned up.

Iris made a bright illusion lamp and sent it floating ahead.
 
She no longer knew exactly which way the mess hall was, but anywhere was better than here.
 
Then, as an afterthought, she caused the lamp to float down close to the hailstone-covered ground, and brightened it until it shone like a little sun.
 
The ice closest to it melted, giving them a clear path.
 
It was a good thing the hailstones did not realize that the light was illusion.

They followed the light, not much caring where it was going.
 
The storm still raged around them, obscuring everything, but the little ball of light gave them comfort.
 
It floated this way and that as the wind buffeted it, leading them along a tortuous path.
 
It seemed to Iris that they should have reached the mess hall by this time, even after allowing for the curlicues of the route, but she didn't say anything for fear of alarming the children.
 
She didn't dare let them be lost.

Then she spied a dim light ahead.
 
She diminished her illusion light so that the slavers would not see it and forged on toward the real light, the children in her wake.
 
The storm intensified around them as if trying to stop them from getting there.
 
For a moment an icy blast of blown snow air swirled into her lungs and made her breath crystallize within them.
 
She fell to her knees, gasping.

But she had to set an example.
 
She put down her hands and crawled toward the light ahead, slowly drawing near to the huge heavy wooden doors of the building.
 
The children crawled after her.

Then she hesitated.
 
This didn't look like the mess hall.
 
It seemed to be a strange building.
 
But they couldn't stay out here, and her limbs were already too numb to get her to any other place.
 
They would have to gamble on this one.

She repaired her illusion as she struggled to her feet.
 
She made herself resemble a beautiful damsel in distress, and the children looked like cute wee lasses in worse distress.
 
Actually this was all true enough; she merely enhanced their appearances so that anyone answering the door would find them appealing.

She conjured an illusion mirror, and by the light of its reflection adjusted her decolletage to show a bit more bulge of breast and depth of cleavage.
 
Then she clenched her numb fists and jammed them at the doorbell, but couldn't break the ice that froze it.
 
So she tried to beat her knuckles on the door, but they were too numb to make any sound.
 
So she kicked at the door instead, and her lady slipper managed to make a faint feminine tap.

At last the door creaked forward.
 
There was an old maid.
 
"Why it's you.
 
Iris!" the maid said.
 
"What are you doing out there, with your knuckles numb and your cleavage getting iced over?"

"Magpie!" Iris exclaimed.
 
For it seemed to be her old demoness lady-in-waiting maid who had helped raise her before she bloomed somewhat anemically into maidenhood.

"Close enough," the other said.
 
"I was just checking to see how you were doing.
 
You seem to be locked into an interesting memory." She vanished.

Iris tried to figure out exactly what Mentia was doing in her memory, but her chilled mind could not think efficiently enough to figure it out.
 
So she took advantage of the open door to plod on in, with Surprise and the other children following.
 
For that matter, what was Surprise doing here? She hadn't even been delivered until about seven decades later.
 
But it didn't matter, as long as the building offered warmth.

When the children were all in, she pushed the door shut, locking out the dread storm.
 
Immediately her extremities began to lose their chill, and the children looked better too.

But what was this building? Would they be welcome here? Or was this merely the prelude to worse mischief?

She decided to make a wild gamble.
 
"This may be a strange house," she whispered to the children.
 
"Where the slavers don't govern.
 
I'm going to abolish our chains." And the illusion manacles and chains vanished.

There was the sound of feet tramping along the floor of the hall to the door.
 
Iris adjusted her illusory bust line, because that was her best line of defense.
 
A man appeared, wearing a great sword.
 
He paused, gazing at her artful front.
 
"Now that's interesting," he remarked.

Well, it was meant to be.
 
"Kind sir," she said plaintively.
 
"I am a Maiden in Distress, and these are poor waifs in similar state.
 
Will you help us?" She took a deep breath to accent the extent of her maidenly distress.

"Might as well," he said.
 
"I am the Knight Guard, here to protect this house from the ravages of dragons.
 
Do you have anything to do with any dragon?"

"Not if we can help it, bold sir knight," Iris said meekly.

"Then make yourselves useful," he said sardonically.
 
He turned on heel and toe and went back to his dicey card game board court.

Iris hesitated only two-thirds of a moment.
 
"We can be most useful in the kitchen," she told the children.
 
"Besides, there should be food there." So they trooped down the hall, following the smell of baking bread and curdling whey.
 
It led to a large chamber whose entrance bore a sign reading HELL'S KITCHEN.
 
That did not seem encouraging, but what else was there to do but go on in?