They all expected to have to wade in the water, but, as they followed the path, the tarn veered unnaturally away toward higher ground.
It was a relief to have that thick ceiling of dead branches between them and that black thing. Flat stone chimes were tied to those branches, and hung motionless and hushed in the dull air. There were no birds, no sounds at all except for some faint insect noises. The tepid air was pungent with dead leaves, moldy earth, stagnant water. There was no snow.
The clearest way took them around to the east side of the mound, overgrown with trees and dense brush that rattled. Neither Teuser nor the donkey would set foot on it, so they tied the donkey and left the dog.
The mound was covered in stone circles, only about a foot across, hidden everywhere among the brush. At the first turn in the slender path that led up toward the top, the opening appeared. It was a black hole about halfway up the mound, and a deadening flatness fell on them the moment they set eyes on it. The hole was round, and punched into the dead hulk of the mound like a worm hole in an apple. They all knew at once that it was the way in. They all knew at once that the black kite overhead had emerged from it, was tethered to it, and in communication with it. Nicostratus gazed at the pit, the tips of his front teeth rattling against each other, and suddenly Tullus was shouting, sprinting awkwardly back down the path, and sounding through his shouts came wild barking and the shrill screams of the donkey, and Nicostratus remembered the animals, and Libo’s horses.
Tullus was barrelling toward the source of the screams, whipping his cloak around his right arm and fumbling his small shield around with his left. He drew his sica and left the path, crashing down through the bracken. Otson flew after him, his bow in his hand. Nicostratus stayed on the path and followed it around — there was Teuser, barking, the whites of its eyes showing all around the iris. Nicostratus turned, but Teuser snatched his cloak in his jaws and held on, tugging him back. Nicostratus saw the donkey, lying on its side, legs thrashing in dead leaves, disappearing into the trees.
Otson appeared first, above him, and stopped, open mouthed, seeing what Nicostratus could not see from where he stood. Tullus lumbered heavily past Otson, saw what he saw, and kept going, his shield held out before him, raising his sica. Nicostratus ripped free of Teuser’s jaws and, with a sick impotence, closed in on the noise.
The donkey lurched and tumbled out of the brush before him, screeching and screeching, Nicostratus saw what had attacked it, and a howl that began in the pit of his stomach rose effortlessly up through his body to his throat. An enormous length, like a centipede as big as a fallen log, was softly weaving in silhouette through the trees, spangled with the ugly diamonds of corrupted sunlight shining through the dead branches. The thing swayed with a seeking, flexing mobility, fondling the ground with its stubs. A shaft from Otson’s bow flitted across the light. He couldn’t tell if the thing was hit or not, but the surprise freed him from his trance and he stumbled away, clutching his face, turning again to see Tullus closing with the thing, feinting with his small shield and brandishing his sica. Nicostratus could not muster the strength to beg Tullus not to get near it, not to touch the thing. Otson shot at it again, and the thing writhed like a flabby insect.
Tullus darted in then, bringing his sica down over the top of his shield. The thing reared up and seemed almost as if it were trying to embrace Tullus, then the sica darted at the body. The thing warbled, and flashed away, a weightless ribbon of shadow, vanishing into the densest part of the brush. Tullus stormed after it, charging, stopping, charging again, leading with his shield. Nicostratus was gibbering when Otson came over to him.
“Asellius,” he groaned. “Asellius! Asellius!”
The donkey stopped screeching. Tullus had cut its throat.
For a time, Nicostratus was out of his mind. He would turn his head now this way, toward the carcass of the donkey, seeing the bore-holes in its body, evenly spaced and round, and hideously bloodless, then recoil… then turn his head again. Otson tried throwing Nicostratus’ torn cloak over his head, but Nicostratus flailed at it in a paroxysm of fright. Then his madness abruptly left him.
The daylight was fading.
The sun was still in the sky, and yet a sooty, granular darkness was dimming the air, as if a vast insect swarm were creeping across the sky. It was like a swarm, too, in that it seemed to be living, aware, ravenously searching. That kite — it was calling that swarm to itself. Numbly, Nicostratus followed Otson into the trees. It was, he saw, the only place to go. Somehow they all knew they were liable to be seen out in the open, that something was coming, a gathering presence. Teuser was with them, and he was silent.
They were nearly at the top of the mound when Nicostratus thought he heard a whisper, almost behind him. He whipped his head around and saw nothing, but he knew something was approaching up the path. They all did.
They were being herded up the mound, toward the pit. While he feared what was coming behind them, Nicostratus knew that the pit was no refuge and that going down there would be the worst thing that could conceivably happen to him.
That swarming darkness dimmed the air like an impending storm, and seemed to arrange itself in the vicinity of the kite. Soon they would be groping along the path, and that foulness behind them was rising like flood water. Suddenly, Otson grabbed them both, each by a free arm, and then they all saw the tiny man, a dwarf, wrapped in rags, waving to them from between the trees.
They looked at each other. The dwarf was beckoning them frantically, retreating by fits and starts. He would wave, then point toward the ground, at something they couldn’t see behind some trees and heaped stones. After a few moments, he darted out of sight.
As fantastic a figure as this little creature might have been, seen under other circumstances, now its gestures and attitude expressed a humanity that drew them like a beacon. They blundered after the dwarf as passively as men in a dream, and found him standing just within an open burrow mouth beneath a big tree, camouflaged between two enormous projecting roots and a sort of makeshift blind of dead leaves. The dwarf was muffled up to his imploring, panic-brightened eyes, and waved at them again before scuttling inside. He seemed to have only one arm.
Tullus would go first, Otson last. Teuser had already darted past them all and into the burrow.
Nicostratus crawled on his belly after Tullus. Fading sunlight filtered into the burrow through small gaps among the heaped rocks that comprised part of the ceiling. The space inside was gamy with an acrid sickroom smell. Otson slithered in behind Nicostratus, and they huddled in silence against the wall of packed dirt, directly by the opening. The dwarf compressed himself into a tangle of exposed roots above them all.
A humming shiver rose up the mound. As they listened, the sound of wings descended to meet it. The burrow became a bubble of space in a torrent of unrecognizeable noise, an eerie, groaning hum that wailed and plunged like alien grief. The wind rose outside, and in the midst of that terrible sound came a discordant clatter of flat stone chimes and the eager clacking of dead branches together.
The mound shuddered. Otson had the despairing impression that it might be rising in the air. To Nicostratus, it seemed as if something enormous had landed on it, nearby. They were not alone on the mound, but the noise of the wind, the humming, the clamor in the trees, was like concentrated isolation. They were cut off from any world. A palpable weight seemed to batten on them, the near proximity of something massive.
The humming noise faded very slowly, like an army marching away. The tumult outside ceased more rapidly. With a wild feeling of relief they saw the daylight begin to brighten.