The Gargoyle Heart, Part V
Updated: Nov 14, 2021
She was eventually aware of two voices, familiar and unfamiliar. The familiar one spoke first. “Couldn’t it have been anybody but the dark elf?” Lady Geraldine said, very upset. “Your most dangerous enemy, Ardell? I just can’t stand seeing her lie there like that, all because of me.”
“I didn’t plan on Garneth showing up!” The unfamiliar voice said, male, young and tense. “You can’t un-gargoyle anybody without sacrifice. I was trying to arrange for a minor dragon, sometime next week, after she’d had more time to recover from the full moon!”
“A minor dragon!” Lady Geraldine moved from upset to incensed. “You know how those creatures terrorize the poor shepherds around here! You get too cocky, young man and I’ll put you in your place! Don’t think my magic has deteriorated so far that I can’t at least do that!” A gentle hand rested on her brow. “And the poor child, sent into the clutches of a dark elf, for only me!”
“Well you weren’t supposed to be truly taken ill and I was supposed to be on hand to help her out if necessary.” Ardell said and Soria imagined the speaker running his hands through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know why she’s not waking up yet. She really ought to be coming out of it now.”
They sounded so worried, Soria decided to be kind to them and open her eyes. She looked up into a friendly, freckled face in whose features she immediately recognized Lady Geraldine’s high forehead and wide-set eyes.
“Soria!” He said, and blushed. “But you don’t know me, sorry. I’m Ardell. Uh, Sorcerer Ardell. I’ve been invisible, before, so you haven’t officially met me…”
Soria lifted a hand to find a bandage on her chest. It hurt, but it was the normal pain of blood and muscle and nerves; the numbing cold of the stone in her heart was gone. It was gone. Whatever they had done, she was wholly alive again. She felt that in light of this she could probably excuse Ardell for having been invisible.
His mother shouldered him aside. “I’m so sorry dear, we didn’t mean for it to happen quite this way.”
“But it’s gone?” Soria said. “My gargoyle heart?” She felt tears suddenly hot on her eyelids and blinked them back.
“Forever.” Lady Geraldine and her son said in unison. Soria shut her eyes again, embarrassed. Silly to cry about something so wonderful. Silly to suddenly be afraid that she would be sent back to her grandmother and her family who had not cared whether or not she would die.
Lady Geraldine seemed to think she was upset because she needed an explanation so she began to explain. “I trained my boy as a sorcerer until I began to fade. DuPontier sorcerers do, you know. Most of the high magical houses have some failing and that’s ours. We manage magic for so long, and then it begins to manage us. My magic began to suck my life away to support itself. So my son put a spell on me; I cannot do anything by myself, beyond basic self care—but I can assist someone else to do it. Less of a drain on my magic, you see. So we needed someone to help me, first of all.”
Soria nodded.
“And then we found you, and Ardell had discovered that the only way you can destroy a gargoyle heart is to sacrifice what’s left of your real one for someone else. And I thought, you were such a nice, bright young thing, and Ardell seemed quite taken with you,”
Ardell flushed beet red.
“We thought we could do something good with what was left of my magic.” Lady Geraldine finished, and gave Soria a worried look. “It has been good for you.”
“Will I have to go home now?” Soria said, trying to sound like she didn’t much care one way or another.
Mother and son looked at each other. “Actually,” Lady Geradline said, “We were surprised to find you adapted to a magically dense life surprisingly easy.”
Ardell stepped forward and smiled at her—what nice eyes he has, she thought in an aside to herself—and said, “My magic will fade someday, too. Will you be my apprentice? You will have a home with us as long as you wish.”
Soria smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”
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