The Tangle Box

“Knight of black thoughts and deeds!” she scorned. “Coward behind your armor and your weapons! Take me home!”


She might have been threatening him now, preparing to use her magic against him. But he did not think so. What magic she possessed seemed lost to her. He had come this far, and she had not attacked him with it. If she had been able to do so, she would have tried long ago. Not that it would have mattered. He was a weapon built of iron. He was less man than machine. Magic had no more effect on him than dust thrown in his eyes; it had no place in his life. His was a world of simple rules and tight boundaries. He was not frightened of anything. A Knight could not allow fear. His was an occupation where death was always as close as life. Fighting was all he knew, and the battles he fought could end in only two ways—either he would kill his enemy or his enemy would kill him. A thousand battles later, he was still alive. He did not believe he would ever be killed. He believed he would live forever.

He brushed the musing aside, the thoughts that came unbidden and were unwelcome. “You are traveling to a new home,” he told her, letting her anger fall away from him like leaves thrown against stone.

She shook with her rage, balled fists lifting before her breast, the tendons of her neck as tight as cords. “I will not go with you farther,” she whispered, and shook her head back and forth. “Not one step!”

He nodded noncommittally, not wishing to spar with her verbally, feeling inadequate to the task. He turned away again, walked to the far side of the clearing, and peered out into the gloom beyond. The trees were packed together like bundles of giant sticks, shutting out the light and the view, closing everything off. Which way to go? Which way had he been headed? The King would be waiting for him, he knew. It was always thus. But which way led home again?

He turned as the Lady came at him with the knife she had somehow kept hidden, the blade black and slick with poison. She shrieked as he seized her wrist and forced the knife away, then twisted it from her grasp. She beat at him and kicked wildly, trying to break free, but he was far stronger and immune to her fury, and he subdued her easily. She collapsed to the ground, breathing hard, on the verge of tears perhaps but refusing to cry. He picked up the blade and cast it far out into the gloom.

“Be careful what you throw about, Knight,” a new voice warned, deep and guttural.

He saw the Gargoyle then, resting on its haunches close by, come from the woods as silent as a shadow at midnight.

The creature’s eyes were yellow and hooded as they studied him, and there was nothing in their reptilian depths to offer even the slightest hint of what the mind behind them might be thinking.

“You’ve chosen to stay,” the Knight said quietly.

The Gargoyle laughed. “Chosen? A strange word in these circumstances, don’t you think? I am here because there is nowhere else to go.”

The Gargoyle was loathsome to look upon. Its body was gnarled and misshapen, with its arms and legs bandy and crooked, its body all sinew and corded muscle, and its head sunk down between its powerful shoulders. Its hands and feet were webbed and clawed, and the whole of it was covered in bristly dark hair. Its face was wrinkled like a piece of dried fruit, and its features were jammed together like a child’s clay model of something only vaguely human. Fangs peeked out from beneath its thick lips, and its nose was wet and dirty.

From atop its hunched shoulders, wings fluttered weakly, leathery flaps too tiny to be of any use, appendages that seemed strangely out of place. It was as if its forebearers might have flown once but had long ago forgotten how.

The Knight was repulsed, but he did not look away. Ugliness was a part of his life as well. “Where are we?” he asked the Gargoyle. “Have you looked about?”

“We are in the Labyrinth,” it replied, as if that answered everything.

The Gargoyle glanced at the Lady, who had looked up again on hearing him speak. “Don’t look at me!” she hissed at once, and turned away.

“In what part of our country is the Labyrinth?” the Knight persisted, confused.

The Gargoyle laughed anew. “In every part.” He showed his yellowed teeth and black tongue. “In all parts of every part of everything. It lies north and south and east and west and even in the center. It is where we are and where we would go and where we will always be.”

“He is mad,” the Lady whispered quickly. “Make him keep still.”

The Knight shifted the heavy broadsword on his back and glanced around. “There is a way out of every maze,” he declared. “We will find the way out of this one.”

The Gargoyle rubbed his hands as if seeking warmth. “How will you do that, Sir Knight?” His voice was disdainful.

“Not by staying here,” the Knight said. “Do you come with us or not?”