Chapter Eleven #5
The southern window was very narrow. There was no way for the gargoyle to get through it.
Even for Bait, it would be a tight squeeze.
The stonework on the southern side was treacherous.
She dug her toes into the gaps, sending pebbles cascading down the mountainside far below.
For an instant, she hung there, sky all around her, more exposed than she’d ever felt in her young life.
Nothing at all between here and the terrible vastness of the world.
And then her questing fingers found the edge of the window, her toes caught the sill, and she squeezed through the gap. The Dungeon enfolded her again, and she was in.
This is what Bait saw, in the last moments of her time in the Dungeon.
A glimpse of the room she’d landed in – the Master’s bedroom, unused since Orphir’s day (in all my nights in that room, I never slept well.
The room’s too cold, the bed’s too hard, and the things of knife and shadow snore).
Behind her, the gargoyle’s grey arm is lunging through the window, snatching and clawing, stone splintering on stone, but she’s already running forward, out of reach (did she remember, in that moment, a dragon clawing at another tower, far away?).
She throws open the door, finds the spiral stair beyond.
She has never been here before, but she’s heard me reminiscing about my old living days, she’s seen the tower laid out in blue ink in the RAS charts, it’s in her stolen Dungeon Book.
She sprints up the steps, sure-footed, even as things howl and gibber on the levels below.
Outside, the scrape-scuttle of the gargoyle as it races up the outside of the tower, trying to reach the wide windows of the topmost level before she bounds up the last stair –
And now she’s in the throne room, the Master’s room, the wizard’s sanctum. No time to look at the wonders assembled here, the cabinets behind the glass, the reliquaries, the ancient tomes and grimoires. No time for anything except the Master’s throne, the heart of the Dungeon.
When you are a child, your home is shelter and security. It keeps you safe.
When you grow up, you must find a home, or build one, to keep those you care for safe.
One day, every child, no matter how strange, no matter how unprepared they might feel, must claim their place.
Even if they return, through long peregrinations and unlikely corridors, to the home of their childhood they once knew, they must make it theirs and so make it anew.
That is what Bait thought as she ran to claim the throne. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the gargoyle at the window, but Old Throte was too slow and she was too goblin-clever to be caught by him.
But it was a trap.
Chains of blue fire blazed, and dragged her back.
Orphir stepped past her and sat down on his throne.
Bait had not seen him since she was two years old, and though the wizard had changed greatly in that time – his hair whiter, his robes finer, his paunch stately and distinguished – she knew him in an instant, and hated him with all the fierceness of a manticore.
She hated him for his smug self-assurance, for what he’d done to her family, for the way he sat in the throne as if it was an imposition on him to be there.
“Throte?” he called.
The gargoyle climbed in through the window.
“You were very slow, Throte.”
The gargoyle ground out a response. “As you say, Master.” Grit fell from his teeth.
“Unforgivably slow.”
“As you say, Master.”
“Take this,” and he pointed at Bait, “and bring it to the Wychwood Door. You will find my mortal servants there. Give her, alive and intact, into their custody. Do not harm the mortals, but slay any others who stand in your path. Do not tarry or stray from the path. This I command by my authority as Master of Tower and Dungeon alike. Do you understand, Old Throte?”
“I understand,” groaned the gargoyle, “and I am bound to obey, by the Rules set down by Yrn Kyos.”
“Good. When that task is done, return to this tower. Climb up to the highest pinnacle, and throw yourself off into the chasm below.”
“Master . . .” said Throte, “my wings are broken. I cannot fly.”
“Should you survive the fall, crawl back up and try again.”
Once more, Old Throte carried her through the Dungeon.
His stone grip was unbreakable. She called out, her cries echoing through the deserted halls, hoping some Denizen would come to her rescue.
She called for the minotaur, but the minotaur was lost, and few creatures in the Dungeon could match the gargoyle’s strength.
The ghast was far below, the dragon dead. No rescue came for Bait.
She begged Throte to let her go.
“I cannot,” he said, “the Rules bind us all.”
“But the stupid Rules will get you killed!”
“The Rules are greater than I am,” he said. “It is not in me to break them.”
“You bent them for me before!”
“I did,” he said, “and I hope some good comes of it, even if I do not live to see it.”
Then sunlight, a light that burns away illusion and enchantment and leaves only the stark undeniable reality. A dozen armoured guards waited there to receive the prisoner. A dozen RATS, and one old man.
She did not recognise me.
And why would she?
After all, she had never seen me in the flesh.