Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles [61]
This time he would eat very well.
*****
“I told you!” boasted Newt.
“What is that?” whispered Tristan.
“It’s an affront to the land!” The prince turned, startled at the vehemence in Robyn’s voice. Her jaw was clenched tightly shut, and he saw tears welling in her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see?” She talked as if he were being very stupid.
Tristan looked. He saw huge stone walls, running for a hundred paces to the right and left of where they lay. Much of the surface of the walls was streaked with green moss or climbing tendrils of weeds – but in other places the stone was bare and gray. For the most part the walls were smooth and featureless, but the top of the structure was lined with a row of hideously grinning gargoyles.
The stone creatures looked down upon the approaches to the structure, their crystalline eyes seeming to glitter with malevolence.
Tristan, Robyn, and Newt lay behind a fallen tree trunk. They stared in awe at the massive structure.
Directly before them, a pair of huge wooden doors at least ten feet high stood between several wide columns. A deep pathway led from the doors into the depths of the fens, passing very near to their hiding place.
“But what is it? Why is it here?” Tristan could find no clue in the building’s appearance. All he knew was that he felt a very definite threat from the structure.
“Its purpose is to menace the goddess,” stated Robyn.
The stout walls seemed fortresslike in their strength, yet they contained no apertures through which defenders could fight.
Noiselessly, Daryth slid forward until he was alongside Tristan and Robyn. The Calishite pursed his lips in a silent whistle as he looked at the building.
“Pawldo and I will slip around behind it,” he whispered.
“Be careful!” the prince urged. He saw that the halfling was nearby, and then all of a sudden Pawldo and Daryth were gone – vanished into the underbrush with scarcely a sound.
“Um,” said Newt after a few minutes. The little dragon had been visibly restraining himself and could manage no longer. “Maybe I’ll go keep an eye on the foo – I mean, the horses.” He quickly blinked out of sight.
All day – Pawldo and Daryth from the rear and the prince and the maiden from the entrance – observed the strange structure. Once, the great doors opened and several Firbolgs emerged, tromping heavily down the path. Later, toward the end of the day, a score of the misshapen monsters marched back up the path. The leader pounded the doors with his club, and they quickly opened to admit the column.
Each time the door opened, Tristan strained to see inside the black hole. No guards were visible, but it would have been foolhardy to risk an approach. Their little bard would not stand a chance against an army of Firbolgs.
Finally, Tristan and Robyn wriggled back along the ground to the small clearing where they had tethered the horses. There they found Pawldo and Daryth, as well as Newt. The little dragon was busy putting a large dent in a massive slab of cheese.
“What did you find?” Tristan asked.
“There’s another set of doors at the rear – even bigger than those at the front,” Daryth replied. “Must be some kind of back door or escape route. I heard all kinds of noise behind ’em.”
“You went up to the doors?” Tristan was appalled.
“The fellow sneaks pretty well, let me tell you,” Pawldo said, amused. “I was right behind him, and I didn’t know he was there!”
“And what did you hear?” asked Robyn.
“I’m not sure. It sounded like some kind of digging, or maybe chopping. They might have been building something or excavating, but there were a bunch of those monsters in the next room! Nobody came in or went out, though, not while we were watching.”
“There seems to be no way around it.” The prince spoke low. “We’ll have to go in through the front door.”
Tristan did not feel very heroic at the thought. What would a true hero – what would Cymrych Hugh have done at a time like this?
“We might wait for nightfall. Maybe they’ll all go to