The animals took a great deal of persuading, but eventually all of them crossed into that other landscape. A new silence received them on the other side. The air did not move. They passed solitary standing stones with dubious, almost living shapes, and the sun seemed to be plunging toward the horizon more rapidly than it ought to. Nicostratus looked at his own hands in its sickening glare, and saw his own flesh grey as lead and the veins and arteries a curiously pronounced green.
That black thing in the sky watched them come. It shed a polluting radiance. Whenever he looked at it, a sharp aversion lanced Nicostratus’ eyes and brain, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from repeating the experience. They discovered what lay directly beneath the thing after they’d climbed a while. It was a colossal mound which loomed from out of a dense crowd of dead trees whose roots were hidden within a shallow tarn. The top rose high above them, but they looked down at the tarn, which seemed to cling to the ground, a little sideways. But now the glare from that black thing was intolerable up close and they hurried to gain the cover of the trees.
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, an
d 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.
But the situation had changed. Although there were now distinct shafts of light streaking the burrow, that sense of weight had not departed with the noise.
The men looked at each other.
“Let’s go,” Tullus croaked.
The dwarf watched as Tullus, then Otson left. Nicostratus gestured to him to go next, but the dwarf only stared. Finally, Nicostratus pulled him down and thrust him through the burrow mouth, shoving him ahead. They would go together. He would bring this miserable creature with him back to town.
Once outside, he took the dwarf in his arms and, carrying him, followed the other men. The woods around him were as still as a painting. The sense of weight seemed to be centered on the pit above them, or to depend from the kite, and they hastened down the off the mound through the trees. Otson looked all about him as he went, looking for Teuser. The dog was nowhere to be seen. They were leaving, but they had no real idea what they were doing.
There was a greyish movement off the path. Tullus made an abrupt rasping sound in his throat. He flashed into the gloom the next instant, something grey, narrow and murmuring was descending, or stretching out, from the treetops…
Then, as if he’d blundered against some unseen obstacle, Nicostratus fell, and slid on one side along the ground. He was dragged all the way down to the base of the mound in a cascade of dead leaves, grating to a halt nearly where the trees gave out. There was no sound at all and the air was still when he rose, and he was not ready to call Tullus or Otson. He was not alone, because he had not released his grip on the dwarf. The rags had come loose and fallen away from its legs. The dwarf had neither feet, nor knees. The dwarf, Nicostratus realized, had not been born a dwarf. Unmistakably, both legs had been amputated well above the knee. Sandals stuffed with rags were imperfectly bound to the stumps, and he had been trying to keep up with them on those “feet.”
The dwarf was crawling, with its one arm, back toward the trees, helpless to prevent the rags from being dragged off his body. Nicostratus tried to gather him up again. The dwarf resisted, then his eyes suddenly went wide, staring. His eyebrows lifted, and then Nicostratus could feel the little body begin to heave in his hands. It convulsed. Soft, voiceless huffs came from the hidden mouth. The dwarf was laughing, silently, at him. He looked up into Nicostratus’ eyes then, reached out with the stub that was all that remained of his index finger and tapped the talisman from Emesa that Nicostratus was wearing around his neck.
Nicostratus set the dwarf down and snatched away the shredded remains of a quaestor’s toga that had concealed the face that now laughed at him, with sheared, toothless gums and the stub of a tongue, still pointing at the talisman he had brought west with him from Syria.
Somehow, he had hold of Nicostratus’ knife, and, still coughing voiceless laughter and staring at Nicostratus, he threw aside his rags and plunged the knife wildly into his own body again and again and again. Nicostratus shouted and lunged forward to prevent him, then froze when he saw the exposed body honeycombed with slippery pockets. Each one sprouted a wet black filament. The dwarf drove the knife urgently into his pulpy body, eyes popping, sweat running down his face, desperately probing with the blade for the spring of his own life. Then at last came a rill of thin, stinking blood, and he slumped forward, spasming.
The spasms did not cease. The ruin of that familiar face turned toward him again and the lips moved in a futile attempt to speak. At once with a strangled cry Nicostratus sprang up with a heavy stone between his hands and pounded with it wildly at the skull. It was like ramming at a stone with another stone. The body fluttered against the ground. It did not stop suffering. Nicostratus stared until something gave way inside himself. Then he ran from the thing he knew was somehow still Caelius Rufus.
Otson caught up with him on the path, not far from the first heap of stones.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
Nicostratus turned to look at him, puzzled. He gestured toward the west.
“Back,” he said. “Back to town.”
“I didn’t find Tullus,” Otson said. “We were separated on the mound. He attacked something. I didn’t see it. You — you were gone.”
“Tullus?”
His tone threw Otson off. There was no sense of emergency.
“Tullus,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know whether or not he’s still alive… Aren’t you coming back with me?”
“I was waiting for you,” Nicostratus said. “Now, what is this about a mound? What mound?”
Otson’s brow clouded.
“You coward!” he snarled.
Open-mouthed, Nicostratus stared at Otson. His dumbstruck expression only made Otson angrier.
“You’re coming back with me!”
He seized Nicostratus. They struggled, then Nicostratus pivoted, throwing Otson heavily to the ground.
“Have you gone mad?” Nicostratus shouted.
Otson sprang to his feet and seized him by his clothes.
“You’re coming back with me!”
“Of course I am!” Nicostratus cried. “I’ve been waiting for you!”
“Not back to town, back to the mound! To find Tullus!”
“What Tullus?! I don’t know any Tullus! You’ve gone mad!”
Again Nicostratus broke free. The two men stood facing each other on the mountainside.
“You ran!” Otson said with contempt. “You left him.”
Nicostratus began to speak.
“— Don’t deny it!” Otson cried.
“You know I would not do a thing like that. I…”
“Don’t talk to me like a sober man reasoning with his drunk friend! I was there.”
“Where?”
“On the mound!”
“What mound? I’ve seen no mound!”
“We were there, we saw it, we all saw it. We just came from there. You saw the thing, Tullus attacked it. You called it Asellius. The dog held you back but you saw it.”
Otson snatched Nicostratus’ cloak and held it up before him.
“Teuser held you back and tore your —”
The cloak had no tear in it. Otson stared at the cloak. He stared at Nicostratus, who returned his gaze levelly, even coolly. Then he noticed that the talisman from Emesa was no longer around Nicostratus’ neck, and took a few steps back.
“Where is the talisman?”
Nicostratus opened and closed his mouth. He seemed genuinely at a loss.
“So you threw it away,” Otson said. “What will you tell them when you get back?”
“That we found nothing,” Nicostratus said, sounding genuinely perplexed.
Otson flung away from him then. His mind a blank, he made his way back toward the mound on his own, ignoring Nicostratus’ voice calling, falling away behind him. The mountains seemed to fold and refold themselves around him. The path quivered and swam back and forth through frothy turf and went on too far, but he couldn’t find the next stone marker. There was a sort of bare place where the stones might have been. He kept checking to see where the sun was in the sky, but it didn’t seem to draw any closer to the high mountain horizon. He couldn’t spot the black kite anymore.
Eventually he moved out into wide open plains of grass so green it looked black beneath a sun that was still no closer to the horizon, but which seemed to h
ave drawn nearer to him, as if he were steadily walking into the image on the talisman. He had this feeling even as he crossed wide valleys, and forded broad, flat streams he didn’t know, and whose banks were lined with trees whose branches were adorned with flat stone chimes. Birds called with new voices. New tracks scored the muddy banks of the streams. The current plucked his bow off his back and swept it out of sight before he knew what was happening.
The light finally began to fail when, with aching legs and nodding head, he found himself surrounded once more by trees, and by those mountain people. They stood in between the trees like scrawny saplings, marking him silently as he went by. Silence, their eyes, and the gloom were smothering him, poisoning him. He reached for his knife, but it was already in his hand.
“Do not stop,” he told himself. “Do not let them near you. Keep going. Do not stop. Do not stop until you reach home again, where your own people wait for you.”
The Lady of Shalott
Carrie Vaughn
As far as she could remember, the Lady had never been outside the tower. She might have been born here. She assumed she had been born, but maybe not. Maybe she just appeared, her complete adult self, flowing red hair and porcelain skin, dressed in a gown of blue trimmed with gold, with no memory of anything outside these rounded walls.
All day, every day, she wove a tapestry set on a loom against the wall. She might have been weaving forever, and she didn’t know if she would ever finish. The cloth was filled with pictures: ivy climbing up an old stone wall, willows dripping into rivers, tangled rose vines, flocks of birds soaring in a blue sky. At least, she thought that was what she was making. She could only shape what her mind told her, not what she saw.
Swords v. Cthulhu Page 4