Narlh folded his wings and stooped.
He hit the ground running, cupping his wings against the wind, then dug in with his claws and plowed to a stop. "Down! Those monsters will be here any minute!"
They didn't stay to argue.
Now that they were back on the ground, the sound swelled again—faster and faster. They bolted ahead of it, Fadecourt hanging back a little, Matt pacing himself to Yverne. The clamor clashed and clanged louder behind him, and he was very much tempted to shoot past the girl, but he held himself in until he saw her bolt through the gateway. Then he shot through, with Fadecourt right on his heels. Matt turned to look back, dreading the sight of their pursuers—and saw Narlh.
The dracogriff was facing into the wind, wings spread, running at an angle from them—but toward their pursuers.
And there they were, just coming into sight, moonlight glinting off granite faces and steel teeth.
"Narlh!" Matt shouted. "Are you out of your mind? Get in here!"
Narlh skidded to a stop, head lifted, staring. "Me? In a holy place like that?"
"You're good enough, you're good enough! After all, you helped clean it, didn't you?"
The dracogriff took one look over his shoulder, then bounded toward the shrine. As he squeezed through the gateway, he panted, "You sure there's room?"
"You'll have to curl up around the statue, I expect," Matt said, "but you should be able to make it."
Narlh did as he said, curving right around the statue, then left, as his head came out from behind. He lay down as he went, the roof being low, and looked up at the statue. " ' Scuse me, sir."
Matt turned back to the plain and saw the gargoyles waddling up toward them. They were a horrible sight—bits and pieces of recognizable beasts, legs from crocodiles, wings from bats, tails from snakes, human arms that were covered with fish scales—but with heads never seen on any living man or beast. And every single one was different; no two were remotely the same combination.
The heads were crested with growths that looked like feathers, fins, or wattles, and the faces were travesties of the human, just close enough to look really horrible. But every mouth was filled with glinting, pointed teeth. Matt looked at the moonlight winking off them and felt a chill shiver through him. Were those polished surfaces really steel?
"Close the door!" Narlh called.
"I can't," Matt answered. "There isn't any."
"There are no walls, either." Fadecourt braced himself for his last fight. "I implore thee, wizard-ready a spell, in case this shrine is no longer shielded by God."
"Well...I suppose that's wise." Matt tried to remember a shielding spell.
He stopped, eyes wide. The air seemed to tingle about him; he could feel some sort of field pressing in on his skin. But it wasn't the turgid weight of evil magic that he was used to pushing against.
"Why do you stop?" Fadecourt cried.
"Because," Matt said, "somebody, or something, doesn't want me to go on."
"Who could have taken power here?" Yverne cried.
"Nobody," Matt said with total certainty. "You don't know how this feels, but believe me, if you did, you'd know nobody could even ruffle it."
Then the monsters struck the shrine.
They struck—and reared on up into the air, just as though they'd slammed into a wall. The ones in back climbed up on top of the ones in front, then went on climbing with their front legs. Their rear claws flailed at thin air, seeking to gain purchase on something, but not finding it. Then the third tier climbed on top of the second, and they had a little luck—they were able to bend forward, as though they were leaning over the curve of a domed roof. But they couldn't climb it—not that it mattered; the fourth row of monsters did that. They crawled up above Matt's head on thin air, claws scrabbling at the unseen roof—but unable to dent it. It was quite a sight, wall-to-wall living gargoyles, and up above, too. Their ugliness was bad enough, but the sheer, unrelieved malice in their eyes made Matt's spirit quail. Every now and again, a gargoyle looked down at him as though to say he was going to get his—and that the gargoyle would thoroughly enjoy every second of shredding his flesh.
Matt shrank back against the base of the statue next to Yverne and asked, yelling to make himself heard above the grinding and clashing, "What are they? Did Gordogrosso have them all carved out of granite and brought to life, just so he could use them for his own hunting dogs?"
But Yverne only shook her head and yelled back, "I know not"
"They are demons, of course," Fadecourt called. "I can only conjecture how 'tis the artists who did carve the ornaments for cathedral roofs did know of them—but be sure that they are demons, brought hot from Hell for this night's chasing."
That explained the malice, and the feeling of pure, unmitigated evil. If they hadn't been carved from stone, they seemed to have been made of it; their hides varied from slaty gray to charcoal black, and looked like igneous rock. Their limbs grated as they moved, clashing against one another as they slipped or fell back, then clawed their way back up—and those claws glinted with metal. Each clawing roused anger and was answered with a sudden slash of glittering teeth, but it was a case of the impervious object meeting the superhardened alloy. Then one of the gargoyles discovered the wall.
His jaws, grinding against each other with the sound they had first heard miles away, ripped into the stones forming the arch over the grotto. The jaws bit through the stone and met, taking a neat, smoothly beveled chunk out of the wall. The creature spat out the stone and bit again—and froze, its mouth open. It fought to close its jaws, but couldn't, though there was nothing between them; it had come up against the field force surrounding the statue and could make no headway against it.
Slowly, one by one, the gargoyles fell back, and didn't bother climbing up again—they'd found it was no use. Instead they prowled around the grotto, their stone limbs filling the little valley with clashing and grinding, their steel teeth gnashing in fury.
Tears streamed down Yverne's cheeks, but she said bravely, "Praise Heaven! We are safe here!"
"Aye." Fadecourt patted her hand. "They cannot come in."
"On the other hand," Matt said, "we can't go out."
"Have we need to?"
"Unless we want to spend the next several years here—I'd say so, yes."
"Surely they will tire and go away!" Yverne protested.
"They don't look like the type to bore easily," Matt said. "Not very intelligent, at a guess, but very, very determined. Besides, there's the question of how long we can wait."
"I have fasted before," Fadecourt informed him. "I can endure some days without food."
Yverne looked apprehensive, but she nodded.
"All well and good," Matt said slowly, "but let's say, now—water?"
They were all quiet.
"Aye," Fadecourt admitted. "Thirst will drive us out within a day or two."
"And there's nothing to drink," Matt said. "We found that out this afternoon, while we were patching the place up."
"But surely they will not linger past dawn," Yverne protested.
"Only one way to find out." Matt lay down on a patch of grass and rolled over, covering himself with his cloak and pillowing his head on his arm. "Wake me if anything goes right."
Narlh nuzzled him awake. Matt sat up with a start, looked about him in a panic, and remembered where he was. He relaxed with a sigh. "Thanks, O Vigilant One. Anything changed?"
"Yeah—the sky." Narlh nodded upward. "Dawn's coming—and your gargoyles are getting restless."