‘They wants to kill it! You got to come quick!’
That sounded sinister, though Will had no idea what a goggly was. Still, it was his opportunity to escape and he seized it. ‘Stand back!’ he said, waving an uncompromising arm at the crowd.
There were groans for fear that he would leave them. Some gave tongue to angry shouts and began to press in around him, but he leapt up behind the rider and thrust out his oak staff. He cried out as he had once heard Gwydion cry out, ‘Give way, there! Hinder me who dares!’
The crowd was struck dumb by that. Dimmet and Duffred and their helpers began to push people back from the gate. A way parted and allowed the pony to canter away. A moment later they had left Eiton village far behind, and Will clung on as they passed into open country.
They followed the road that Will had taken the day before along the broad valley and past the ruined chapter house. But when they came up the ridge where the tower stood he saw that it was abandoned no more. A knot of folk were gathered at its foot, and they were looking up at the mottled brown stone. Many had armed themselves with sticks and were shouting angry oaths at the tower. They broke off when they saw their messenger had returned with the wizard.
As Will got down from the horse he saw one of the young men begin throwing stones up at the tower.
‘Hoy!’ he shouted, and made the lad turn. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Trying to wallop that there goggly.’
When Will shaded his eyes and looked up he saw they were trying to dislodge the gargoyle.
‘It’s naught but a carven image!’
‘Nooo! ‘tis a goggly! Look, it moves!’
Will stared at their red faces and began to suspect they had been put under an enchantment. But then the creature actually did move.
‘See, Master! Now then! What kind of a carving is that?’
Will’s eyes narrowed. It was a live animal trapped high up in a corner of the wall. One of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. Its every movement lifted the hairs in Will’s flesh, as the sight of a spider did in some. The creature was brown-grey and mottled, batlike yet baby-faced at the same time, and there was something elfin about it. It had wings and a tail and four thin limbs, and was about the size of a three-year-old child, though it was built much slighter and in strange proportions. Whenever it moved the folk below gasped and hooted. And when the bold lad made to pitch another stone up at it Will stayed him with a question.
‘Who found it?’
One of the men spoke up. ‘My brother seen it up there around dawn when we come up from Morton Ashley to check on the snares.’
‘Snares?’ Will asked sharply. ‘Shame on you. There’s a deal of suffering in snares, you know that.’
‘Well, fetch it down then so’s we can kill it!’ the man said.
‘Is that what you brought me out here for?’ Will demanded.
‘Look!’
The thing moved again, crouched in a corner, then scuttled at speed across a sheer wall, clinging to the vertical surface and the overhang of the parapet with long, clawlike nails. Will saw that something was clamped to its ankle and it trailed a long, rusty chain that seemed to be attached to the masonry of the tower.
Stones were let fly at it and fists shaken.
‘Naaw! Naaaw!’ it cried, and a shower of grit flaked down into their eyes from its struggles.
‘Stop that!’ Will cried with all the authority he could muster. ‘You must try to calm yourselves!’
‘At night them gogglies fly out from caverns and drink the milk of our animals,’ a woman said, hate shining in her eyes. ‘And they steal babies from out their cradles!’
‘And they shuns the light,’ another told him. ‘But ‘tis said they can sit out even in the noonday sun and not budge once they’ve tasted of the flesh of a child!’
‘Nonsense.’
‘’Tis true! That’s why they hide out on towers and the like. Pose as gargles in the daytime, they do. Until folk discovers them and drives them away. Pitch a rock at it, Erngar!’
‘I said no throwing!’ Will pointed his staff at the man and he dropped the rock. ‘Or I shall not help you.’
A memory stirred as he caught the latest movement. He was reminded of a candle-blackened roof and hideous faces and winged creatures just like this one. What he had at first taken for carvings had clustered high up among the roof beams of the great chapter house of Verlamion, looking down on him with hungry eyes.
‘Goggly child-stealer!’ a fat woman shouted up at it, wrathfully shaking her fist.
Just then, Duffred came up on a horse. ‘What’s to do here?’ he asked.
Once he had dismounted Will drew him aside out of earshot of the others. ‘What is that thing?’ he asked shading his eyes.
‘Don’t rightly know. But you want to be careful, the folk at Morton Ashley and right down as far as Helmsgrave say these creatures steal newborn babes,’ Duffred murmured.
‘So I’ve discovered.’
The Nadderstone man who had brought Will here joined them, and so did his wife. ‘Gogglies come from a land under the ground.’
‘How do you know that?’ Will asked, a sudden anxiety seizing him.
The man looked back challengingly. ‘Every seven years them gogglies must pay a tithe to the infernal king who lives down below. But it’s a living tithe. They must give over one of their own young – unless they can find a manchild to offer instead.’
‘That’s why they’re always prowling for our young ones,’ the woman said, picking up a stone.
Duffred said quietly, ‘I don’t know if it’s the truth, but it’s what they believe. They all do. When this chapter house was still lived in, the folk hereabouts would bring their children here to have a mark put on their heads – the Rite of Unction they called it. It was supposed to be a protection against these…things.’
Will folded his arms. ‘And was it paid for?’
‘Aye. A gold piece taken from the village coffer.’
He snorted. ‘Gwydion says the Sightless Ones love gold above all else. And that the Elders of the Fellowship delight most in taking it piecemeal from the needy and the credulous.’
‘But is that not a fair exchange?’ Duffred asked. ‘A piece of gold for a charm against evil?’
‘Evil!’ Will gave Duffred a hard look. ‘That is a meaningless word, an idea invented by power-hungry men to enslave folk’s minds. And how many times must it be said: true magic is never to be bought or sold. Don’t you see? The red hands were just squeezing these folk, frightening them into bringing their babes here. Doubtless so they could be registered with a magical mark, one that helps to make recruits of them in later life. Gwydion says the Sightless Ones believe in something very dangerous.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘It’s called the Great Lie.’
Duffred looked unsure and gave the cloister a thoughtful glance. ‘So you’re saying the goggly ain’t a child-stealer after all?’
‘I hardly think so. Look at it, Duff. It’s terrified!’ Will thought of the vent in the cellar under the chapter house and smelled again the strange air that had issued from below.
As he walked towards the tower, one of the skin-like wings flapped pathetically and he knew the creature was in pain.
‘I’m going up there,’ he said,