Song of the Gargoyle Read Free Page A

floor was covered by a dark red flood.
    Somehow it was the wine barrel that was the most frightening—the shallow red sea more heart-stopping than all the rest of the destruction. For a moment Tymmon didn’t know why, but then he understood. The trunks and cupboards might only have been raided in the search for Tymmon, but the intruders could not have expected to find a boy in a barrel of wine. So the spilling of the wine had been an act of needless violence, without cause or reason. Which made all of it, the armed men, the search, and the taking of Komus, seem an act of meaningless cruelty. Not a joke or a mistake or a misunderstanding, but something brutal and savage beyond reason or purpose.
    It was an understanding that shook Tymmon like a deep chill and made his hands tremble so that it was hard for him even to settle the candle into a holder and place it on the mantel. He whispered a prayer to the Blessed Mother and then forced himself to stop and gather his wits and prepare to follow his father’s advice—to leave Austerneve Castle before the light of morning.
    He dressed hastily, pulling on breeches, boots, doublet, jerkin, and his warm winter cloak. A sheet of heavy linen spilling out of an overturned trunk caught his eye and he spread it out on his bed and then began to search through the debris for provisions for his journey. Wading through the wine he located a loaf of bread, a small chunk of salted beef, and a round of cheese.
    What else? It was of the greatest importance that he choose wisely. He must not carry so much that he would be unable to move swiftly, and yet he must not forget those things that would be necessary to survival alone in the fields and forests.
    Choose wisely. But how, when his mind jittered and jumped with fear and continually interrupted his attempts to think clearly by imagining sounds—the scuff of heavy footsteps on the stairs and the clink and rattle of armor.
    But even in his haste and fear he managed to remember a tinderbox, a knife, and a small ax. A few more articles of clothing, chosen almost at random, a blanket, a length of rope—all good useful choices.
    Remembering his rosary, a gift from his old nurse, he was lifting it down from a peg above his bed, when his fingers touched another object that hung there. His old flute. And although he had not played in many months, his fingers curled longingly around the familiar shape and held on until it, too, was added to the pack. Then he tied the ends of the sheet together with a stout cord and slung it over his back.
    At the door he turned and looked back. The candle was still burning on the mantel. He was on his way back to blow it out when something round and hard rolled beneath his foot, and looking down, he saw that it was a bell. One of three bells attached to the three horns that adorned the cap of a court jester. And without plan or purpose he picked up the belled cap and shoved it, too, into his pack. Then he snuffed out the candle and left the room that had been his home since before his earliest memory, and started down the twisting staircase into a darkness that seemed deeper than any he had ever known.
    Groping his way on the worn stones of the tower staircase, he came at last to ground level, and the broad oaken door that gave onto the alley. It was unbarred. Of course, it must have been or the armed men could not have entered. But how had it come to be so? Komus always slid the heavy bolts home before darkness fell. Could he have forgotten on this one fateful night?
    But the mystery was soon solved when, as Tymmon pushed against the door, it gave way, but not by swinging outward. Instead it quivered and then fell out into the alley with a thunderous crash. The intruders had gained entry by removing it from its hinges. While the shattering din still echoed back from the castle’s stone walls, Tymmon, his heart thudding in his throat, dashed out the door and away.
    Running almost blindly in the near darkness, and