“What difference why it is here?” the Lady demanded irritably. “It is here, and that is all that matters. We have a chance to find our way again. What purpose is there in questioning that?”
The Gargoyle edged forward a step, stooped and hunched within his dark cloak, keeping as always to shadow. “I mistrust this,” he said. “There is something wrong here.”
The Knight nodded. He felt it, too. Something was not right. Still, the town was here, and they could not simply pass it by. Someone living there must know of a way to leave the Labyrinth; someone must know of a way back out into the real world.
“We will go down to see what we can learn. We will not stay beyond that.” The Knight looked over at the other two.
“If they discover me, they will kill me,” the Gargoyle said.
“Remain behind, then,” the Lady snapped, unmoved.
“Ah, but I hunger for their words,” the Gargoyle murmured, as if ashamed. “That is the puzzle of me. I am loathed by those I would come to know.”
“You would be them, you pathetic creature,” she sneered. “Admit it.”
But the Gargoyle shook his head. “I would not be them. Oh, no, Lady—not for all the gold and silver in the world. They are such uncertain, indecisive beings, all wrapped up in the small measure of their lives. I, on the other hand, am certain, and have the gift of immortality. I am not burdened by the smallness of their existence.”
“Nor do you have their beauty. Easy to belittle those whose lives are finite when death for you is so distant you barely need consider what it means.” The Lady fixed him with her cold eyes. “I have life beyond that of humans, Gargoyle, but I treasure beauty as well. I would not be ugly like you even if I could live forever.”
“Your ugliness is within,” the Gargoyle whispered.
“And yours, always and forever, is plainly stamped so that no one can mistake what you are!”
The Knight moved to stand before the Lady, to draw her hard gaze away from the Gargoyle to himself. He shuddered as those cold eyes found his own and he saw the measure of himself mirrored there.
“We will keep to ourselves and not speak if we do not have to. You and I, Lady, will seek the answers we need. He”—he nodded back toward the slouched, cloaked figure behind him—”will remain silent But be forewarned that if you attempt trickery or betrayal, you will be silenced. Give me your word.”
“I will give you nothing!” She sneered openly at him, drawing herself up haughtily.
“I will leave you here with him then,” the Knight said softly. “I will be safer on my own down there.”
The Lady paled at the suggestion, and the rage that emanated from her was palpable. “You cannot do that!” she hissed.
“Then give me your word.”
She trembled with frustration and despair. “Very well. You have it, Sir Knight. May it rise up within you and devour your soul!”
The Knight turned away. He cautioned the Gargoyle to keep hidden within his cloak and stay back from the light. “Do not be drawn into conversation,” he warned. “Do not stray from my side.”
They descended rapidly in the failing light, the town beginning to vanish already into the growing darkness, the buildings reduced to glimmers of light framed in windows like pictures hung against a black velvet curtain. They slipped through the cloaking gloom like wraiths come from the trees of the forest, following the line of the cradling slope downward. In minutes they had reached the hollow floor and the beginnings of the town. Their eyes adjusted to the shift in light, and they followed one of the short roadways that ran through the town’s center, a rutted, worn stretch of earth that began on one side of the clustered buildings and ended on the other. Men and women passed them in the gloom, but none spoke. The doors and windows of the houses and shops on either side were closed. Dogs and cats prowled the length of the building walls and scooted beneath the walkways where they had been elevated above the earth. Voices were muted and indistinguishable. The Knight listened with his heart as much as his ears, and he found no hint of solace, no measure of comfort. The town was a coffin waiting to be nailed shut.