The Castle of Llyr

the bard's face told Taran that Fflewddur shared his fears.

'I say, there's an odd thing,' called Rhun, pointing to a tumble of rock.

It was, indeed, one of the strangest shapes Taran had seen in the cavern, for it looked like a hen's egg sticking halfway out of a nest. The stone was white, smooth, and somewhat pointed at the top, crusted here and there with patches of lichen, and stood nearly as tall as Taran himself. What at first resembled a nest was a tangled, discolored fringe of coarse strands that seemed to balance on the edge of a sharp drop.

'Amazing!' called Rhun, who had insisted on striding closer to peer at it. 'This isn't a rock at all!' He turned in surprise to the companions. 'This is unbelievable, but it's almost like…'

Taran seized the astonished Rhun and dragged him backward so abruptly the Prince nearly went head over heels. Gurgi yelped in terror. The shape had begun to move.

Two colorless eyes appeared, in a face pale as a dead fish; the eyebrows glittered with flecks of crystal; moss and mold edged the long, flapping ears and spread over the beard that sprouted below a lumpy nose.

Swords drawn, the companions huddled against the jagged wall. The huge head continued to rise and Taran saw it wobble on a skinny neck. A choking noise bubbled in the creature's throat as it cried, 'Puny things! Tremble before me! Tremble, I tell you! I am Glew! I am Glew!'

Chapter 11 King of the Stones

GURGI FLUNG HIMSELF to the ground, covered his head with his hands, and whimpered piteously. The creature threw a long, spindly leg over the ledge and began slowly drawing himself upright. He was more than thrice as tall as Taran, and his flabby arms dangled below a pair of knobby, moss-covered knees. With a lopsided gait he shambled toward the companions.

'Glew!' Taran gasped. 'But I was sure…'

'It can't be,' whispered Fflewddur. 'Impossible! Not little Glew! Or if it is, I certainly got the wrong impression of him.'

'Tremble!' the quavering voice cried again. 'You shall tremble!'

'Great Belin!' muttered the bard, who was indeed shaking so much he had almost dropped his blade, 'I don't need to be told!'

The giant bent, shaded his white eyes against the light of the bauble, and peered at the companions. 'Are you really trembling?' he asked in an anxious voice. 'You're not doing it just to be obliging?'

Gurgi, meantime, had ventured to lift his hands from his face, but the sight of the creature towering above him made him clap them back again and set him to wailing louder than ever. Prince Rhun, however, recovering from his first shock, studied the monster with great curiosity. 'I say, this is the first I've seen anyone with toadstools growing in his beard,' he remarked. 'Did he do it on purpose or did it just happen that way?'

'If that's the Glew we know,' said the bard, 'he's changed remarkably.'

The giant's pale eyes widened. What would have been a smile on a face of ordinary size became a grin that stretched longer than Taran's arm. Glew blinked and stooped closer.

'You've heard of me then?' he asked eagerly.

'Indeed we have,' put in Rhun. 'It's amazing, but we thought Llyan…'

'Prince Rhun!' Taran warned.

Glew, for the moment, seemed to have no wish to harm them. Instead, evidently pleased by the consternation he had wrought among the companions, he was looking down at them with an expression of satisfaction all the more intense because it was so large. But until he had learned more of this strange creature, Taran had deemed it wiser to say nothing of their search.

'Llyan?' Glew quickly asked. 'What do you know of Llyan?'

Since Rhun had already spoken, Taran had no choice but to admit the companions had stumbled upon Glew's hut. Disclosing no more than he had to, Taran told of finding the recipes for the potions. Whether Glew would take kindly to strangers rummaging among his possessions, Taran did not know; to his relief, the giant showed less concern about that than he did for the fate of the mountain cat.

'Oh, Llyan!' cried Glew. 'If only she were here. Anything to keep me company!' At this he buried his face in his hands and the cavern echoed with his sobs.

'Now, now,' said Fflewddur, 'don't take on so. You're lucky you weren't gobbled up.'

'Gobbled?' sniffed Glew, raising his head. 'Better if I had been! Any doom rather than this miserable cavern. There's bats, you know. They've always terrified me, swooping and squeaking in that nasty way they have. Crawly white worms come popping their heads out of the rocks and stare at you. And spidery things! And things that are just? just things They're the worst. It's enough to curdle your blood, I tell you! The other day, if I may call it day for all the difference it makes down here…'

The giant bent forward. His voice dropped to a roaring whisper, and he appeared eager to recount these happenings at great length.

'Glew,' Taran interrupted, 'we pity your plight, but I beg you, show us a way, out of the cavern.'

Glew rocked his huge, scraggly head from side to side. 'Way out? I've never stopped looking for one. There isn't any. Not for me, at least.'

'There must be,' insisted Taran. 'How did you find your way into the cave in the first place? Please, show us.'

'Find my way?' replied Glexv. 'I should hardly call it a question of finding. It was Llyan's fault. If only she hadn't broken from her cage the one time my potion was working so well. She chased me out of my hut. Ungrateful of her, but I forgive her. I still had the flask in my hand. Oh, how I wish I'd thrown the wretched potion away! I ran as fast as I could, with Llyan after me.' Glew patted his forehead with a trembling hand and blinked sorrowfully. 'I've never run so fast and so far in my life,' he said. 'I still dream of it, when I'm not dreaming of worse. Finally, I found a cave and into it I went.

'I hadn't a moment to spare,' continued Glew, sighing heavily. 'I swallowed the potion. Now that I've had time to think it over, I realize I shouldn't have. But it had made Llyan so much bigger, I thought it would do the same for me, so I might have a chance against her. And so it did,' he added. 'In fact, it worked so quickly I nearly broke my crown on the ceiling of the cafe. And I kept on growing. I had to squeeze along as fast as I could, going farther and farther downward always looking for bigger chambers, until I ended here. By then, alas, no passage was wide enough to let me out.

'I've thought a great deal about it since that unhappy day. I often look back on it,' Glew went on. He half closed his eyes and peered into the distance, lost in his own recollections. 'I wonder now,' he murmured, 'I wonder now if…'

'Fflewddur,' Taran whispered in the bard's ear, 'is there no way we can make him stop talking and show us one of the passages? Or should we try to slip by him and find it ourselves?'

'I don't know,' answered Fflewddur. 'From all the giants I've seen? yes, well, the truth of it is I've never seen any myself, though I've heard enough of them. Glew seems rather, how shall I say it, small! I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but he was a feeble little fellow to begin with and now he's a feeble little giant! And very likely a coward. I'm sure we could fight him, if we could reach him. Our biggest risk would be getting stepped on and squashed.'

'I'm truly sorry for him,' Taran began, 'but I don't know how we can help him, and we dare not delay our search.'

'You're not listening!' cried Glew, who had been talking on at some length before realizing he was talking mainly to himself. 'Yes, it's the same thing all over again,' he sobbed. 'Even if I'm a giant, no one pays me any mind! Oh, I can tell you there are giants that would crack your bones and squeeze you until your eyes popped. You'd listen to them, you can be sure. But not Glew! Oh, it makes no difference about him, giant or no! Glew the giant, mewed up in a wretched cave and who's to care? Who's even to see?'

'Now look here,' answered Fflewddur with some impatience, for the giant had begun to sob and splash the