"It's alive," said Mary.
They watched it, fascinated, while it stood unmoving.
"Do you have any idea," Hal asked Sniveley, "what in the world it is?"
Sniveley shook his head.
"It seems to be all right," said Gib. "It isn't angry at us."
"Let's wait awhile," cautioned Hal, "before we get too sure of that."
Its head was the cage, and inside the cage was a floating sphere of brightness that had a tendency to sparkle. The cage sat atop the tank-like body, and the body was networked with many tiny holes, as if someone had taken a nail and punched holes in it. The legs were so arranged that there was no front or back to the creature; at its option it could walk in any direction. It seemed to be metal, but there was no surety it was.
"Son of the Chaos Beast," said Cornwall speculatively.
"Maybe," said Hal. "The son? The ghost? Who knows?"
"The castle folk might know," suggested Mary. "They were the ones who knew about it." But there was still no sign of the castle folk.
31
Baths had been taken, clothing washed, supper cooked and eaten. A faint stench still, at times, wafted from the direction of the vault, but other than that, everything was peaceful. The horses munched methodically at a pile of ancient hay stacked in one corner of the courtyard. The pigs continued to root here and there, but the chickens had ceased their scratching and had gone to roost.
None of the castle folk had made an appearance.
"I'm getting worried about them," said Cornwall. "Something must have happened to them."
"They're just hiding out," said Sniveley. "They made a deal they know they can't deliver on, and now they're hiding out and waiting for us to leave. They're trying to outwait us."
"You don't think," said Mary, "they can help us with the Hellhounds?"
"I never did think so," said Sniveley.
"The place still is stiff with Hounds," said Gib. "I went up on the battlements just before sunset and they were all around. Out there and waiting."
"What are we going to do?" asked Oliver. "We can't stay here forever."
"Wait and see," said Cornwall. "Something may turn up. At least we'll sleep on it."
The moon came tumbling over the eastern horizon as night settled in. Hal piled more wood on the fire and the flames leaped high. The thing they had taken from the pit prowled restlessly about the courtyard; the rest of them lounged about the fire.
"I wonder what is wrong with Tin Bucket over there," said Hal. "He seems to have something on his mind. He is jittery."
"He's getting oriented," said Gib. "He's been jerked into a new world and he's not sure he likes it."
"It's more than that," said Hal. "He acts worried to me. Do you suppose he knows something we don't?"
"If he does," said Sniveley, "I hope he keeps it to himself. We've got enough to worry about without him adding to it. Here we are, locked up in a moldering old stone heap, with the owners of it hiding in deep dungeons and Hounds knee-deep outside. They know we'll have to come out sometime, and when we do, they'll be there, with their teeth all sharpened up."
Cornwall heaved himself to his feet. "I'm going up on the wall," he said, "and see if anything is going on."
"There are stairs over to the left," Gib told him. "Watch your step. The stones are worn and slippery."
The climb was long and steep, but he finally reached the battlement. The parapet stood three feet high or so, and the stones were crumbling. When he reached out a hand to place it on the wall, a small block of stone came loose and went crashing down into the rnoat.
The ground that stretched outward from the walls was splotched with moonlight and shadow, and if there were Hounds out there, he realized they would be hard to spot. Several times it seemed he detected motion, but he could not be certain.
A chill breeze was blowing from the north and he shivered in it. And there was more than the wind, he told himself, that might cause a man to shiver. Down at the fire he could not admit his concern, but here, atop the wall, he could be honest with himself. They were caught in a trap, he knew, and at the moment there was no way to get out. It would be foolishness, he knew, to try to cut their way through. A sword, an ax, a bow (with two dozen arrows at best) were the only weapons they had. A magic sword, of course, but a very inept swordsman. An expert at the bow, but what could one bow do? A stout man with an ax, but a small man, who would go under in the first determined Hellhound rush.
Somewhere out on the darkened plain a night bird was startled into flight. It went peeping its way across the land, its wings beating desperately in the night. Something was out there to have startled it, Cornwall told himself. More than likely the entire plain was alive with watching Hounds.
The peeping went away, growing fainter and fainter as the bird blundered through the darkness; but as the peeping faded, there was a cricket chirping, a sound so small and soft that Cornwall found himself straining to hear it. As he listened, he felt a strange panic stirring in him, for it seemed to him he had heard the same sound once before. Now the cricket-chirping sound changed into another sound, not as if there were a new sound, but as if the chirping had been modified to a sort of piping. And suddenly he remembered when he had heard the sound before—on that night before they had stumbled on the battlefield.
The quavery piping swelled into a wailing, as if some frightened thing in the outer dark were crying out its heart. The wailing rose and fell and there was in it something that hinted at a certain madness—a wild and terrible music that stopped one's blood to hear.
The Dark Piper, Cornwall told himself, the Dark Piper once again.
Behind him came a tinkling sound as a small bit of stone was dislodged and went bouncing down the inside wall. He swung about and saw a little sphere of softly glowing light rising above the inner wall. He stepped back in sudden fright, his fist going to the sword hilt, and then relaxed as he realized what it was—Tin Bucket making his slow and cautious way up the slippery flight of stairs.
The creature finally gained the battlement. In the light of the risen moon his metallic body glinted, and the luminous sphere inside his head-cage sparkled in a friendly manner. Cornwall saw that Tin Bucket had sprouted arms, although arms was not quite the word. Several ropelike tentacles had grown, or had been extruded, from the holes that pierced his body.
Tin Bucket moved slowly toward him, and he backed away until he came up against the parapet and could go no farther. One of the ropelike arms reached out and draped itself across one of his shoulders with a surprisingly gentle touch. Another swept out in an arc to indicate the plain beyond the wall, then doubled back on itself, the last quarter of it forming into the shape of the letter "Z." The «Z» jerked emphatically and with impatience toward the darkness beyond the castle.
The piping had stopped. It had been replaced by what seemed a terrible silence. The «Z» jerked back and forth, pointed to the plain.
"You're insane," protested Cornwall. "That's the one place we aren't going."
The letter «Z» insisted.
Cornwall shook his head. "Maybe I'm reading you wrong," he said. "You may mean something else."
Another tentacle stiffened with a snap, sternly pointing backward to the stairs that led down from the wall.
"All right, all right," Cornwall told him. "Let's go down and see if we can get this straightened out."
He moved away from the parapet and went carefully down the stairs, Tin Bucket close behind him. Below him the group around the fire, seeing the two of them descending, came swiftly to their feet. Hal strode out from the fire and was waiting when they reached the courtyard.
"What is going on?" he asked. "You having trouble with our friend?"