Free Song of the Gargoyle by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page B

found in the castle kitchen, where he and Lonfar had often been treated by the good-natured cooks. Not to mention the wonderful meals he and his father had often eaten late at night after Komus returned from entertaining King Austern’s guests, bringing with him a great basket of strange and wonderful food—leftovers from the king’s banquets. Even the simple porridge he himself often prepared in the three-legged stewpot on their own hearth became a regular feature of his nightly imaginings.
    But food was, of course, not the most important reason Tymmon felt driven to move on. There was another constant yearning even more deep and basic than the need for food and human companionship, and that was his need for some word of his father. Even if there was nothing he could do to rescue him, he yearned to discover where he had been taken, and why.
    It was an impossible dream, he told himself. Even to dream that he might hear word of Komus was hopeless—and dangerous. Dangerous because the search for news would surely lead back to Austerneve—where Black Helmet and his men would most certainly be lying in wait. But the fantasy persisted—that somehow he might rescue his father or, at least, at some future time, discover the identity of his captors and punish them for their evil deed.
    The last was, indeed, a forlorn and hopeless fantasy, but over the weeks in the Sombrous it had begun to mingle with an older flight of imagination that had begun soon after Komus had let slip the truth about his noble birth. A fantastical plan for the future in which Tymmon saw himself one day returning to his birthplace, to the city of Nordencor, where he would reclaim the honorable position that was rightfully his, and then someday return to Austerneve as a knight, famed throughout the North Countries for his valor and skill in battle.
    But now that older dream had lengthened to include further scenes in which Tymmon, a knighted nobleman of Nordencor, was going forth with page and squire to find his father’s captors and vanquish them in honorable combat.
    It was, indeed, a far and distant dream. Nordencor was many leagues to the south, and certainly Tymmon had not originally planned to make his pilgrimage there at such an early age. But now that he had been forced by fate to leave Austerneve, why should he not head south, in the direction of Nordencor and his birthright?
    But there were other matters to consider, among them the problem of Troff. If Tymmon did in fact decide to make his way out of the forest and onto the highroad, what would he do about Troff? It would be wonderful if he were able to take the gargoyle with him. Wonderful, but quite obviously impossible.
    Tymmon looked at the gargoyle, who was, at the moment, lying beside him on the riverbank. It was a warm afternoon, almost like summer, and they were resting after a tough and gamy meal of roasted heron. Troff was lying on his back with his feet in the air. With his great round head turned upside down, his floppy jowls fell back, exposing his sharp white teeth. Except for the teeth, which were fairly alarming from whatever angle they happened to be seen, he did not at the moment seem at all intimidating. But still, it was impossible to imagine the effect such a strange creature might have on the inhabitants of farm and village. Simple peasant folk who were, as Komus often said, beset by so many superstitions that every change in the weather was taken as the work of supernatural beings, evil or otherwise.
    “Have you ever shown yourself to other human beings?” Tymmon asked.
    Troff rolled the one eye that Tymmon could see and said quite clearly that, yes, he had. The one eye rolled again, the tufted tail thumped the ground, and changing the subject, he asked for another scratch.
    Tymmon sighed and scratched the furry belly, and Troff, a hind foot twitching, grunted in satisfaction. But Tymmon wasn’t convinced by Troff’s answer. There had not been, as far as he knew, any