Song of the Gargoyle Read Online Free PDF Page B

exactly what he expected, or should have if he had stopped to think. The little boy threw his pail in the air, screeched in terror, and took off running like a frightened hare. And belatedly realizing the stupidity of what he had done, Tymmon ran too, across the square and toward the alley that led to the storage yard behind the marketplace.
    In a moment every dog in Qweasle was barking and the village was full of half-dressed men, waving stairs or pitchforks and shouting questions as they ran wildly in all directions.
    Tymmon had not yet reached the alley when he was suddenly confronted by two men armed with heavy clubs. Snatching up a length of firewood from a doorway, he waved it over his head and ran to meet them.
    “What happened?” he shouted. “Which way did they go?” And when the men ran on he pretended to follow until the next corner, when he doubled back toward the marketplace. He passed several other searchers in the same fashion and at last gained the alley, dashed through the storage yard and out into the empty meadow.
    He went on running until the sounds of shouting and barking were far away in the distance, and even then he staggered on, across rock-strewn, uneven ground, his heavy pack pounding against his back, its rough rope bindings digging into his shoulders. He crossed a hayfield, an open meadow, and went on until, reeling from exhaustion, he reached the shelter of a thick stand of trees and sank to the ground.
    Sprawled face downward in the deep grass he gasped for breath, his throat burning and his lungs on fire. The pain brought anger. Anger at himself for doing such a foolish, dangerous thing, and then, as so often happened, at Komus.
    That was a Komus trick, he told himself. If he had been caught and delivered up to Black Helmet, it would have been Komus’s fault. Komus’s fault because—well, because one could not live all one’s life with a joker and clown without becoming, to some extent, a joker oneself. So it was obviously his father’s example that had made him do what he did. Had made him risk everything to play the role of a phantom of the night, in order to frighten a poor little village boy within an inch of his life.
    Tymmon found himself grinning again. It had been—amusing. And the way his other ruse had worked, the way he had saved himself by pretending to be one of the would-be rescuers. He actually found himself chuckling for a brief moment before he slowly became aware of his surroundings. Became aware of a dank woodsy chill and of the rustling darkness all around him. And it came to him suddenly in a great wave of terror that he was alone at nightfall—in the Sombrous Forest.
    Inching backward until he encountered the trunk of a large tree, Tymmon curled himself up against it like a frightened hedgehog and buried his head in his arms.

FOUR
    N IGHT SETTLED OVER THE Sombrous, the deepest, darkest, and most feared forest in all of the North Countries. The stories of the forest’s terrors had been a part of Tymmon’s childhood, growing up as he had in Castle Austern, where it could be seen from the highest battlements—a dark green ocean stretching away to the farthest horizons.
    According to Mistress Mim no man in his right mind entered the forest at night. And many of his other friends and acquaintances had said the same. Some said that not even the fierce and fearless brigand bands, who often roamed the forest during the day, would allow themselves to be caught within its endless green maze after nightfall.
    “Shun the Sombrous when the sun has set,” was a saying that Tymmon had known and heeded for years. He would not, in fact, have entered its shadowed pathways, either by day or night, if he had been given a choice. But one has little choice when pursued by an angry mob.
    Actually he had been in the forest once before—but not alone and in broad daylight. That had been some years earlier, when he and Lonfar had gone to Qweasle to play with the village boys.