Page 127 of A Trade of Blood

Tauri reached into his pack, pulled out a strip of treated parchment, and dipped it into the waters.

Instantly, it turned orange.

We looked at each other, breathing hard in our helms.

“I must know more,” he said in a strangled voice.

“We know where it came from,” I said. “Is that not enough?”

“No. I must know. I have suspicions, but I…Imustknow, Din.” He took his lantern and began to walk about the stone rim of the lake.

The farther we walked, the stronger the ripples became. Still we saw no hint of light. There was just the stone wall beside us, the stone statues above us, and the vast, black stone well rising above all, sealed at its top by the works of the Khanum from days beyond memory.

Then I heard Tauri whisper, “I hear something. It’s just beyond!”

He raised his lamp, and together we looked.

We looked for a long time, waiting for our eyes to adjust.

Then we saw them.

Some dozen figures stood by the lake. They wielded long, dark poles and were stirring the depths of the waters, like puntsmen piloting boats through shallow canals. They were churning the waters, moving them back and forth, back and forth, their movements aligning perfectly to a unified rhythm, as if this was all a well-practiced performance, completed here in total darkness at the bottom of the world.

And they were dead. Clearly so. Their flesh was gray and black, and horribly desiccated, shriveled to little more than bone and ligament in places—and yet their skulls and eyes and faces, if they had them at all, were lost in a great, blooming crown of fungus, the enormous stalks reaching up some ten span in height. The fungal stalks swayed as they moved, as if dancing with them, reveling in the dark, still air of this dark, still, forgotten place.

“Oh, by hell,” whispered Tauri. “Oh, by Sanctum…”

“How is this so?” I heard myself saying. “How…”

“The fungus keeps the dead in service,” murmured Tauri. “That we knew. But for how long? How long?”

He spoke those last two words a little too loudly, and they echoed in the deep.

Then came new movement across the waters.

There was a figure sitting at the back, one we’d not yet seen: a still, silent, gray thing, crouched over some instrument, its crown of stalks rising above them. It came to life, reached forward, and made a movement, as if artfully plucking the strings of a harp, though I could not spy it in the shadows.

Tones filtered through the darkness, high and strange and unearthly. I had never heard their like in all my life.

Upon hearing this, one of the water-stirrers froze. Then, with slow, creaky movements, it set down its pole, picked up a stone cup from the rubble, and filled it with dark waters. Then it began to walk down the stone rim to us, its movements stately and regal, like a priest performing a seasonal rite.

“Tauri,” I said, my voice shaking, “it comes to us now.”

Tauri’s voice shook even more as he answered: “Din. Look down. Look down, right now.”

I did as he asked. He was holding his lamp just above the surface of the dark water. There, just five span below the cloudy waters, was a vast pile of bones, so great that it sank away from us like sand along the bottom of the deeps. And from the shape of them—from the many skulls, with so many eye sockets and crooked teeth—they were all of human make.

The scrape of the thing’s feet on the ground as it walked to us. A dribbling of water as its cup spilled.

“Tauri!” I whispered hoarsely. “We must go!”

Together we fled back the way we came, and slipped into that tunnel and crawled on into the darkness. Though as I crawled, I could have sworn I heard the scrape of dried, dead flesh upon stone behind us, as if the thing still sought us out, laboring to deliver its cup to our lips.

—

We exited intothe rubble, panting and exhausted. Neither of us could speak aloud of what we’d witnessed. Like much of this place, like the forest itself, it defeated us. We could no more discuss it than a swallow could know all the winds of the skies.

We began our long trek back through the rubble to Burav’s abandoned cabin. Somewhere along the way I found myself laughing hysterically, unable to keep the cackling from my lips.