Chapter Thirty-Six #2
Then there was a flapping, leathery sound, and from the night sky dropped a large form with membranous wings almost twenty feet across.
It came gliding down with an aerial grace that was too elegant and precise to be entirely natural and landed on the far side of the roof with a mild thump of something heavy and hard being set gently on stone.
The figure dropped into a crouch, wings withdrawing, folding up around it like some kind of dark tent.
From where the being crouched, there was a stir in the air and then pale blue light began to spread through the stones around it, running along faint, ancient knotwork channels carved in the stones.
The light spread out from the strange being in a sphere that swept up the merlons behind it and in a circle around where it crouched, slowly illuminating it with increasing clarity.
Steel torches were set in iron sconces on the outside of the merlons every ten feet or so, and they abruptly burst into life, flames burning upon no fuel, wardlights like the ones I’d once used to warn me of magical intruders back in the day.
Except apparently Merlin had set the enchantments on these, and more than a dozen centuries later they were still good to go. No idea how that had been done.
Guess they really don’t make them like they used to.
“Avaunt, varlet!” Toot-Toot shrilled, and drew his sword from his side. “Avaunt and begone!”
“Toot,” I said calmly. “Go get Bear. Now.”
Toot flicked a glance around and down at me. “But, my lord!”
I raised my shield bracelet, ready to snap a shield to life or throw a quick strike from the rings as needed. “Now, Major General. That’s an order.”
Toot made a frustrated sound but suddenly turned into a blur, zipping over the back side of the castle and down, leaving a streak of glowing motes of light in his wake.
I squared off on the intruder and said, “All right, then. Who the hell are you?”
The winged being slowly lifted…his, I was somehow sure, head.
He had a face like a lion’s, if it had been sculpted by someone who had only a messy drawing and a brief description to go on—it was balanced and attractive and more human-looking than it should have been and not at all correct.
A mane of dark grey hair grizzled with strands of metallic silver curled wildly down past his shoulders.
He was vaguely humanoid, but his arms were longer than human proportions, and he bent forward at the waist like a gorilla, his weight resting on lion-paw feet and upon the knuckles of his close-fisted hands.
He might have been made of warm grey granite, if it had been a fluid, living substance.
His eyes were golden brown and very, very human.
The being rose, rolling his broad, heavily muscled shoulders.
He carefully, almost fastidiously, tucked his wings back behind him and against his back, until they hung like a long pack down his spine.
He straightened his back and fetched me a bow straight out of the Renaissance, sweeping and overblown, one leg forward.
When he spoke, his voice was deep, resonant, melodic. “Wizard Dresden. I bid you good evening.”
I stared at the heavily muscled, armored creature warily. “Uh-huh. You couldn’t have called ahead?”
The creature tilted his head and blinked its eyes at me. “You invited me, did you not?”
“Hah,” I said. I totally had, when I’d told him to come down.
The outer defenses of the castle were based upon the foundation of its threshold, the magical energy field around any home.
Given all the people living under my roof at the moment, that threshold had been a very, very solid one—and I’d invited the thing right past it.
“Hah, heh, hah. I…actually did, didn’t I? ”
Dozens of tiny pinpoints of light had risen around the battlements, the Little Folk, pixies and their like, rising from all around the castle in response to the wardlights being lit.
Seconds later, there was a flicker of blue light deep in the stone, and it whirled around the roof as if a child had been waving a laser pointer until it settled on the ground to my left.
“Boss!” Bob the Skull cried. “Intruder! Somehow it got through the outer perimeter!”
I glanced down at the light by my feet.
“Yeah,” I said, a bit embarrassed. “I, uh…kind of invited it to come down.”
Bob made a sputtering, flabbergasted sound.
“You,” rumbled the creature, staring hard at Bob. “What is a failed experiment doing here?”
“You!” spat Bob, zipping back and forth in anxious little movements. “Who ordered the uptight anal-retentive burger?”
I frowned down at Bob and then at the creature. “You two have met, I take it.”
“Some small number of years ago,” rumbled the creature.
“It’s been a thousand years at least!” Bob protested. “You’re just jealous ’cause Etienne the Enchanter spent more time on me than you!”
“We were not faulty,” the creature said. Perhaps very, very slightly smug about it.
“Oh, bite me, Basil!” Bob snapped. “Air spirits rule, gargoyles drool!”
Basil lifted a hand toward his leonine mouth, frowning. He had sharp-looking, thorn-shaped claws on the tips of his fingers. “That is not possible.”
“It’s an expression, you dolt!”
Basil frowned, perplexed. “You do not even have a face.”
“Augh!” Bob cried. “It’s figurative! Not everything is literal!”
Basil frowned more severely and folded his arms. “After a thousand years, you continue to make no sense,” Basil said. “If you serve in this house, it would be useful to your master to make introductions.”
“Oh,” Bob said. “You’re moving in?”
“Indeed,” Basil said. He looked around the roof of the castle, at the glowing designs all around him. His expression softened. “I had not thought to return to this place.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold your horses, there,” I said.
“Don’t—” Bob began.
“I see no horses,” Basil said seriously, eyes sweeping around the rooftop as he turned.
“Bob,” I said plaintively.
“He’s a gargoyle,” Bob said. “Not like those cheap things Ancient Mai does. Basil here is one of Etienne the Enchanter’s master projects—a spirit of earth.”
“Like you’re a spirit of air?”
“Hey!” Bob said, outraged. “He is not like me. He’s…”
Basil was looking studiously into the middle distance, but he let out a low growl that shook the stone of the roof.
“…practical,” Bob finished tactfully. “He’s so practical it can sometimes be mistaken for idiocy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But what is he doing here?”
“You invited me,” Basil said gravely.
I held up a finger toward the gargoyle. “Hey, uh, Basil. Let me talk to Bob for a moment.”
“Of course, Wizard Dresden,” Basil said.
“Is he a threat?” I asked Bob.
“I mean,” Bob said, “he’s a security system. So it kinda depends on what you mean by threat.”
I frowned. “Security?”
“We were created,” Basil intoned gravely, “to protect the castle”—he held up one finger—“of a good-hearted wizard”—and he put up the next one.
He paused to consider his fingers. “I have found it historically unusual for each to happen concurrently. I have considered the idea that owning a castle does something to a wizard’s state of mind. ”
“Uh,” I said, blinking. “How do you know I am a good wizard? I mean, I’m mostly competent, but…”
“Not skilled,” Basil said firmly. “Good.” Standing straight, he was as tall as I was.
He took a step forward and pointed his forefinger at my heart.
“There.” His grey skin wrinkled around his nose as he leaned toward me and sniffed.
“Kindness. Hope. Even a little faith.” He straightened and met my gaze calmly.
“We have been watching you for months. In great pain, you nonetheless make kind choices. Care for others.” He turned and paced over to Maggie’s covered bicycle, crouching down into an easy animalistic stance.
“This was infused with great love for an innocent. A gift for the child?”
I blinked. “Uh. Yeah.”
Basil nodded. “We were made to sense benevolence and malevolence. To protect the former from the latter. We are extremely efficient at doing so.”
I blinked again. “We?”
“He’s part of a set,” Bob said petulantly. “Please tell me they aren’t all here, Basil.”
“I cannot,” Basil said firmly. “It would be a falsehood. If Wizard Dresden wishes it, I will call them in.”
The door slammed open and Bear appeared, wearing clamshell tactical armor on her torso, carrying the four-bore in one hand.
She held a heavy, long-handled war hammer whose head was shaped like a clenched fist with a spiked thumb pointing off the back in the other.
She looked around with her eyes a bit wide, focused on the gargoyle, and said, “Everyone all right?”
“Fine,” I said slowly. “Uh. This is Basil.”
“One of Etienne the Enchanter’s guardians,” Bear said firmly. “I know of them. Why is it here?”
“I was invited,” Basil offered.
“Apparently Basil has been watching me for a while,” I noted. “Deciding whether he wanted to, ah, offer his services.”
“And you let him in through the defenses without even calling me or knowing if…” Bear closed her eyes for a second and then let out a slow breath through her teeth. “Dammit, Dresden. I was eating potpie.”
“Hey, I sent for you the second he got here,” I said. Then added, “Sorry.”
She grimaced and stepped back, relaxing, draping the four-bore over her shoulder more casually. “Basil, eh?” she asked.
He inclined his head to her and turned to face me, his eyes and voice intent.
“The world grows darker. Pain and fear spread. Chaos and war have gone running through the earth. A Titan’s screams of despair have shaken the firmament.
Ancient things stir in their dark lairs.
Grand events are gathering speed. The storm is coming.
And I, and my brothers, have come to offer our allegiance to you, wizard. ”
And the gargoyle dropped smoothly to one knee in front of me.
I blinked. I looked at Bear.
The Valkyrie traded a look at me and whistled silently. She stepped close and murmured, “One-Eye tried to recruit them after Etienne passed. They refused him. They’ve gotten involved here and there over the years.”
“He what he says he is?” I asked.
Bear tilted her head and stared hard at the gargoyle, eyes glittering with flecks of color from across the spectrum.
“He’s an original,” she confirmed, nodding.
“Tell them to pound sand!” Bob snapped. “They’re a pain! All they do is stand around and guard all the time and fail to understand jokes!”
“Them?” I asked.
“With your permission, wizard,” Basil said calmly.
I frowned and nodded.
Basil lifted his head and let out something that very much sounded like a lion’s coughing roar.
In a moment, there was the leathery rustle of membranous wings, and half a dozen more of the things came swooping down, landing on merlons with almost dainty crunching sounds.
Apart from the wings, none of them looked alike, and none of them looked like anything natural.
Basil was the largest. The others were like stairsteps down, and the smallest, with a bizarre, asymmetrical monkey-like face, was made of some kind of smooth, red-orange living stone and wasn’t much larger than Maggie in the body, though it was wiry with muscle.
The rest were a menagerie of strange faces, bodies that varied between apelike, birdlike, and anthropomorphic, and were covered in pebbly texture or stony scales.
All had eyes that were various colors and almost disturbingly human.
“Basil,” Basil said touching his own chest, and then went down the stairsteps in order of height. “Bay. Thyme. Cardamom. Sage. Parsley. And Cinnamon.”
“Etienne liked to cook,” Bob said sourly.
“The Spice ’Goyles,” I said with a straight face.
Bob groaned.
Basil tilted his head to one side like a dog that had heard a new sound. The other gargoyles mirrored him.
“Uh,” I said. “You hungry? I mean, what do you guys eat?”
“Stories,” Cinnamon piped up in a wobbly, tinny voice. “A new story. Every day.”
“Ugh,” Bob said, disgusted. “It’s less food than maintenance for their limited intellect, Harry. Keeps them centered.”
“I suppose I can afford it at least,” I said. “And we have the room. Bob, you’re sure you know these guys?”
“Yes,” Bob said glumly. “Doesn’t mean you need to put up with them.”
“But they could be useful,” I pressed. “Protecting the place?”
Bear nodded firmly.
“I guess, yeah, technically,” Bob said sourly.
I pursed my lips, thinking. I could have Mouse check them over and get his take on them, too. He was downstairs in the great hall. With Maggie. And the potpie. But my instincts told me how he would react. Given the way the past few years had gone, I almost didn’t want to listen to my own.
But in my chest, the tiny star kept burning.
Hell.
Maybe sometimes, good things happen, too.
Even to me.
“Okay,” I said. “For the time being, Basil, you all should consider yourselves my guests, I suppose. We’ll talk about what you have in mind.”
“Excellent,” said the gargoyle. Something, a tension, seemed to ease out of him. There was a faint, sad relief in his tone. “It has been longer than I would like since we have served in a home.”
Something told me that the gargoyle’s emotions on the subject were considerably less understated than Basil’s words.
“We all kind of washed up together here,” I told him seriously. “Still making a home of it, I think. And I’m a sucker for strays.”
“We did not stray,” Basil corrected with quiet conviction. “We deliberately sought you out.”
I felt myself smiling lopsidedly. “Right,” I said. “You’re going to fit in fine.”