Marcus Stoneguard's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The horn kept working east. Post by post, stone heads lifted and eyes opened. Marcus counted twelve awake before the sky began to gray at the edge. Then Aldric Hornkeeper lowered the horn and pointed west. Marcus followed his hand. The far towers stood dark against the last of the night. Four gargoyles slept on them. Marcus had never spoken to any of them. He did not know their names. "Wake them the same way," Aldric said. "I can't. A stone won't answer to the threat alone. It has to hear its own name first. Then the threat. That's the order." Marcus had learned this the hard way three centuries ago, from a sentry who would not stir until an old mason called her by name. Pebble Groutstone climbed onto the parapet stone beside Marcus's foot. His moss was wet from the dew. "The far four," he said. "Never met them. Wall's too long. Mortar out there isn't mine." "Then who knows them?" "The wall does. Not the way you mean." Pebble tapped the stone with one knuckle. "Names get set in the seam when a gargoyle takes a post. Cut into the underside of the sill. Small. Under the claws." "I can't leave to read them." "Send a reader." Marcus looked at Aldric. Aldric shook his head once. "Horn stays here. You need the noise for the ones still coming." A pink butterfly lifted off a vine below the parapet and drifted up between them. It landed on Pebble's shoulder and folded its wings. "Not her," Pebble said. "Too slow. But she'll show me the seam lines. Bugs know the cracks." He climbed down onto the outer face of the wall, into the vines, and started west along the stone. The butterfly went with him. Marcus watched him shrink into the dark. The dragon still clung to the bare wall two hundred paces below, watching, not climbing. Marcus fixed his eyes on it and did not turn. A long time passed. The sky grayed further. Then Pebble's voice came back along the stone itself, close and small, carried through the seam. "First one. Hoken. Second, Vail. Third, Tress. Fourth, Marn." Marcus said each name back until he had them. Then he pointed west, and Aldric raised the horn. The sound rolled the long way. Marcus called Hoken first, then the dragon's name. A tower head lifted far off. He called Vail. Another lifted. Tress. Marn. By the time the fourth stone opened its eyes, sixteen gargoyles stood along the wall between the towers, and dawn was one hour off. The dragon shifted on the stone below. It began, at last, to climb.