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To my relief, we don’t have much further to go. After a few quickly taken sets of steps, I come to a pair of large glass doors and draw to a halt. Nora pushes the doors ajar and steps through into a small, dark room. I expect her to clap for light, but she marches through the gloom without slowing.
The room opens into a corridor, and there’s a large window running along one side, so it’s nearly as bright here as it is outside.
I spot the mouth of the lift shaft. The lift has arrived and the gargoyle is waiting for us. Nora strides towards it, cracking her knuckles, but I slip ahead of her.
“Let me,” I say.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yes,” I grunt, wanting to prove I’m not entirely useless.
“He might not have the best set of lungs,” Nora says to Inez as I pick up the gargoyle, “but he’s a good lad. Thank you, Archie.”
“No problem,” I gasp. “Where do you want it?”
“Follow me,” Nora says.
At the end of the corridor we come to another pair of glass doors. Nora stops this time and raps on one of the doors with her knuckles.
“Come in,” a voice cries.
Nora pushes the door open and a low buzzing noise fills the air. Nora steps through and holds the door for me. I struggle across the threshold, face red again, but this time from the strain of carrying the gargoyle.
“Set it down, set it down,” someone says in a quivering voice. “No need to break your back.”
I lay the gargoyle down and take a steadying breath. The annoying buzz is still there. I stick my little fingers into my ears and work them round – it makes no difference – then look up to find what can only be King Lloyd shuffling towards me.
The king is dark-skinned, dressed in a crumpled, light grey business suit. He’s wearing a pair of red, furry slippers. He’s old, worryingly thin, wrinkled and jittery. He walks with a series of limps and tics. He’s completely bald on top, but with long white hair running over his ears and meeting at the rear of his head. His eyes are large – the whites bloodshot – and his lips are spread in a warm smile. His teeth are transparent, and after a confused few seconds I realise they’re made of glass.
“Hello,” King Lloyd says, making the greet several times. “Who are these fine folk? They’re not gargoyles, are they? Are the gargoyles coming to life, Nora?”
“This is Inez and Archie,” Nora says. “They’re not gargoyles. They’ve come to pay their regards.”
The king blinks at us. “How very kind.” He squints at me, cocking his trembling head. “Are you Archie or Inez?”
“Archie,” I mutter.
“Are you sure you’re not a gargoyle?”
“Yes,” I tell him, then add, “your highness.”
“Oh well,” he shrugs, “it’s an easy mistake to –”
As he’s speaking, the buzz rises a few notches and he winces, losing his train of thought. I wince too, though it doesn’t seem to affect Nora or Inez. I guess some people are more sensitive to sounds like this.
As the buzz changes again, settling into a lower pitch, King Lloyd cocks his head at Inez. “Are you my sister?”
“Sire?” Inez replies uncertainly.
“You remind me of my sister. Are you?”
“No, sire,” Inez says.
“Ah,” he breathes. “Faces confuse me. That’s the problem with living so long. You see so many people that they start to look the same. New faces replace the old, but they’re the same sorts of faces in most kinds of cases.” King Lloyd gives a little cry of triumph. “That was a poem. Did you hear it, Nora?”
“I did,” she says.
“Write it down. It was a good one.”
“A classic,” she says drily.
“Are you sure you’re not my sister?” King Lloyd asks Inez. “Your face is familiar. Your boots too.”
“My boots?” Inez stares at her feet.
“You were wearing them when you came before.” The king smiles. “That’s it. You’ve visited me in the past, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Inez says, returning his smile.
“I knew it,” King Lloyd exclaims, beaming at Nora.
“That’s good,” Nora says. “Do you remember anything else about her?”
The king’s smile flickers. “You’re not a deviser, are you?”
“No,” Inez says.
“No. But you worked for me. You...” His expression clears. “You’re a singer. A heavenly voice. We must have her sing to us, Nora, before she leaves.”
He bends to focus on the gargoyle.
Nora sighs. “I thought for a moment that he really did remember you.”
“He did,” Inez says, smiling sadly.
“What are you talking about?” Nora says. “You’re a camel, not a singer.”
“But I sang to him once,” Inez says. “He mentioned an old song that he’d heard in the Born, and I knew it and sang it for him. I must have left an impression.”
Nora stares at Inez silently, then coughs and turns her head aside to wipe away a few bittersweet tears.
King Lloyd is studying the gargoyle like a comics collector examining an old issue of Spiderman or Batman. “Yes,” he mumbles, “this is very good, a most unusual specimen.”
“It’s the same as all the others,” Nora says, clearing her throat and brushing away the tears. She waves a hand around the room. It’s a huge, open space, and there are gargoyles everywhere.
“No,” the king says. “This one’s different. Look at its face, its snarl, the crinkle of its nose.”
“The same,” Nora says softly.
“I wonder what wonderful tales it has to tell?” the king whispers, and stretches out a hand. He rubs his fingers round the gargoyle’s head three times, clockwise, then taps the centre of its scalp with his knuckles.
I assume this is part of the king’s madness, but then the gargoyle’s lips move, and I take a quick step back with shock.
“– told him not to do it,” a woman’s voice says through the gargoyle’s mouth. “I told him if people wanted a fruit that mixed the taste of an apple with an orange, it would have been invented centuries ago.”
“But it was clever of him to develop it,” another woman’s voice says, and the gargoyle’s lips twist a different way this time.
“Clever?” the first woman’s voice snorts. “The orpple? Clever is one word for it, but I could think of many others.”
King Lloyd taps the gargoyle’s scalp and it falls silent. He runs his fingers round its head, five times clockwise, then taps again, and more voices come, different people, the gargoyle’s mouth adjusting swiftly to give each voice a unique tone.
“It’s a recorder,” I gasp.
“Yes,” Inez says. “Most of the gargoyles in the Merge are recorders.”
King Lloyd runs his fingers round the gargoyle’s head again, this time twice in an anti-clockwise direction, and yet more voices come, a mix of men and women. The king listens for a while. Then the buzzing noise picks up and he shivers. With an exasperated grunt, he leaves the gargoyle talking and goes to one of the others, to rub its head and listen to more strings of disconnected conversations, all the time muttering away to himself.
We trail after the distracted king, Nora pausing to tap the first gargoyle’s head and silence it. He moves on to another gargoyle and we follow him again.
“This is how he passes his days,” Nora says, “listening to voices from the past.”
“Does he ever talk back to the gargoyles?” Inez asks.
“Oh yes,” Nora says. “He sometimes talks to them for hours at a time.”
The irritating buzzing noise hits an even higher note. I feel a headache forming, and it affects King Lloyd too, as he shudders and moans, then starts rambling fitfully at the gargoyle.
“He’s off,” Nora says with a pitying look at her king. “We should leave him.”
She turns to lead us away. Inez sees me holding my ground and says, “Come on.”
“Can’t we give him earplugs to block the noise?” I ask.
Inez looks at me oddly. “What noise?”
“The buzzing sound.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Inez says, and glances at Nora.
“No,” Nora says, having listened for a few seconds.
“But you must,” I protest. “It wasn’t that loud when we came in, but now it’s like fingernails being scratched across a blackboard.”
“Maybe you have an ear infection,” Nora says. “Now, I will show you to –”
“Hold on,” Inez says. “Have you heard anything like this before, Archie?”
“No,” I say, wincing as the noise changes pitch again, dropping and rising sharply while King Lloyd squeals painfully.
“I must insist that you leave,” Nora says firmly. “He’ll writhe on the floor shortly and it’s not right that you bear witness to his humiliation.”
Inez ignores Nora and says to me, “Can you locate the noise’s origin?”
“That’s enough,” Nora snaps. “Come with me or I’ll summon Cal to eject you.”
Inez faces the glowering Nora. “Has anyone tried to help King Lloyd?”
“Of course,” Nora says. “Our finest physicians did all they could for him.”
“Did they enjoy any success?” Inez presses.
“Early on, yes,” Nora says.
“But not recently?”
“No. They told us he’s degenerating rapidly and nobody can stop it.”
“What if they were wrong?”
Nora’s flummoxed. “You’re a camel, not a doctor. What do you know about a condition like this?”
“Nothing,” Inez says, “but I know a bit about locksmiths, and if you’ll allow us a few minutes, maybe Archie can help.”
“Hold on,” I say hastily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t –”
“Trust me,” Inez says, laying a hand on my shoulder to hush me. She stares deeply into Nora’s eyes. “I could be wrong, but please let us help if we can.”
A sceptical but intrigued Nora grunts, “How?”
Inez tells me, “Trace the sound to its source.”
“I’m not sure I can,” I croak. “It’s all around us.”
“Try,” she says with an encouraging smile.
I don’t know what Inez thinks I can do, but I focus on the whining noise. After a while I realise it’s not as all-surrounding as it seemed. It’s coming from an area to my right. I move in that direction, uncertainly at first, then with purpose. The noise loudens piercingly as I walk, as if someone’s jabbing a pin into my brain.
Eventually I stop at one of the gargoyles. It looks no different to the others as I walk around it, except in one respect. There’s a small, glimmering patch on its back. When I lay a finger on it, the patch turns translucent and I spy...
“A lock,” I whisper.
A glowering Inez doesn’t seem surprised. “Can you pick it?”
The keyhole is tiny, but expands as I rub a thumb across it, like the one on the beehive door in the prison did. I stick a finger into the lock and explore. It’s not a very complicated model and doesn’t resist for long. Moments later it clicks open and I find myself gripping a thin cylinder, the source of the buzzing. It practically screams as I remove it, and King Lloyd falls to the floor in agony.
“What is that?” Nora asks, eyes wide.
“Something I heard about long ago in Ruby,” Inez says grimly. “Destroy it, Archie.”
“How?” I ask.
“Stamp on it,” she growls.
I’d happily do anything to stop the accursed noise, so I drop it, line up my shot, then bring my heel crashing down. The cylinder cracks. I strike it again, then a third time, and it splits apart. The noise quits and blessed silence reigns. I sigh with relief.
“Has it stopped?” Inez asks.
“Yes.”
“The king...” Nora whimpers.
We turn and look. King Lloyd is sitting up. He’s stopped shaking and is no longer mumbling. He’s looking at us with a calm but puzzled expression. “Nora,” he says, “why am I spread-eagled on the floor and conversing with a gargoyle?”
In response, the normally reserved Nora sweeps forward, grabs the startled king in a bear hug, and squeezes tightly as tears – happy tears this time – flood from her eyes and soak them both.