Tangle Box by Terry Brooks

he had to. “Yes. Just as we were told.”
    “What was the response?”
    “He said he would think it over. But the wizard and the scribe are going to try to convince him not to let me stay.”
    The speaker laughed. It shifted in the gloom, a lifting of its body, a straightening of its limbs. Really, it was hard to tell what was happening, which was very disconcerting. Horris thought back again to when he had laid eyes on itfor the first time, realizing suddenly that he was already unsure of what it was he had seen. The thing that was Skat Mandu had a way of showing only part of itself, a flicker of body or limb or head (never face), a hint of color or shape. What you were left with, ultimately, was a sense of something rather than a definite image. What you were left with, inevitably, was unpleasant and harsh and repulsive.
    “Do I frighten you?” the voice asked softly. In the smoky gloom something gleamed a wicked green.
    Horris suddenly regretted coming back, thinking that perhaps Biggar had been right after all. What sort of madness was this that they had embraced in releasing the monster? It had been imprisoned in the Tangle Box, and it had tricked them into freeing it, using Biggar as channeler, Horris as conjurer, both as instruments for picking the locks that held it chained. Horris Kew understood in the most secret part of his heart that nothing he had done in creating Skat Mandu had ever really been his idea—it had all come from the
thing
in the Tangle Box, the
thing
that had been locked within the fairy mists, dispatched into exile just as they had been, and consigned to oblivion except for a fate that had brought Horris and Biggar to its unwitting rescue.
    “What are we doing here?” Biggar piped up suddenly, a frightened stiffness in his reedy voice.
    “What I tell you to do,” the voice hissed.
    Skat Mandu came out of the gloom, rising up like a cloud of smoke that had somehow coalesced into a vaguely familiar but not yet complete form. Its smell drove Horris and Biggar back a step in response, and its laugh was low and satisfied. It rippled like fetid water as it shifted about, and they could hear the hiss of its breathing in the sudden silence. It was huge and fat and dominant, and it had the feel of something ancient and terrible.
    “I am called the Gorse,” the monster whispered suddenly. “I was of the people who live within the fairy mists, one of their own until I was trapped and confined centuries ago, imprisonedin the Tangle Box for all time. I was a sorcerer of great power, and I will be so again. You will help me.”
    Horris Kew cleared his throat. “I don’t see what we can do.”
    The Gorse laughed. “I will be your eyes, Horris Kew. I see you better than you see yourself. You are angry at losing what you had in that other world, but what you want most lies here. You are frightened at what has been done to you, but the courage you lack can be supplied by me. Yes, I manipulated you. Yes, you were my cat’s paw. You will be again, you and the bird both. This is the way of things, Horris. The people of the fairy mists bound me within the Tangle Box with spells that could not be undone from within, but only from without. Someone had to speak them, and I chose you. I whispered the incantations in your mind. I guided your conjuring steps. One by one you spoke the spells of Skat Mandu. One by one you turned the keys to the locks that held me bound. When I was ready to come out, I made the bird confess that Skat Mandu was a charade so that you would be forced to flee. But your escape could only be managed by setting me free. But do not despair. It was as it should be, as it was meant to be. Fate has bound us one to the other.”
    Horris wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, but on the other hand he was intrigued in spite of himself with the possibility that there might be something in this for him. “You have a plan for us?” he asked cautiously.
    “A very attractive plan,” the