I thought at first that she watched those singularly jagged looking mountains, and then I realized that her gaze was limited to a point nearer at hand. As far as I could see nothing moved out in that open valley since the deer had fled at Gruu’s attack. Not even a bird crossed the night sky.
Still I would ask no questions, but ate stolidly, chewing the meat with that relish which comes best when one has not tasted such for too long a time. Gruu lay at ease on the other side of the fire, his eyes near closed, though he still licked now and then at one paw. If anything moved beyond he had no interest in it.
The dark came very quickly after the sun had vanished, that last striping of the sky overspread by dark clouds. I thought a storm might be on the way and wondered if we would not better search for cover—even so limited shelter as that stand of trees from which we had brought our wood. I was about to say that when I saw Gathea’s whole body go tense. At the same time Gruu’s head came up, his eyes went wide as he, too, stared outward—and westward—into the twilight.
There was no singing, no weaving of silver shadows this night. What came upon us did not entice, it hunted on soft feet—if it had feet at all—moving in over the open plain. Gruu’s hair stiffened along his spine. He no longer lay at ease, but drew his limbs under him as if he prepared for a crouch to spring. His lips wrinkled but his snarl did not sound aloud.
I do not know what my companions saw, but in my eyes it was as if sections of the shadows split one from the other, fluttering, some even rising from the ground as if they leapt upward and landed on the earth again, unable to take to the air as they desired to do. They were only darker blots against the twilight, which came so quickly. However, it was plain that they came, in their queer leaping way, closer to our fire, and never had I felt so naked and defenseless.
In truth I had drawn my sword—though what use that might be against these formless, half-floating things, which appeared to well up from the grass-covered earth itself, might be I could not sensibly say. However, my action brought for the first time quiet words from my companion.
“Well done. Cold iron is sometimes a defense, even though one cannot use directly its point, or sharpened blade. I do not know what these are—save they are not of the Light—” And the way she said “Light” made me realize that what she spoke of was not a matter of seeing but of feeling—true as weighed against false.
Gathea reached out and laced fingers around the wand she had set in the earth, though she did not pull it free of the soil, rather waited, even as I did, holding my sword hilt. The dark looked very thick to me. I could no longer distinguish movement by eye. Only, in a queer way, new to me and frightening (had I allowed it to be so), I sensed that outside our star-girt circle there was that which paced menacingly, strove to press forward, and was denied.
What did reach us first was a kind of hunger backed by confidence, as if what slunk beyond was as competent as Gruu in bringing down whatever it had cornered. Then impatience followed, as it met a resistance it could not master—surprise, growing anger that anything dared to stand against it. I knew it was there, I could have turned my head at any moment to face it, as it—or them—made the round of our protected campsite. Still I had no idea what form these besiegers took, nor how dangerous they might be.
Once more I was startled, as, into the outer edge of the firelight there flashed for an instant a hand—or was it a claw?—withered, yellowish flesh stretched tightly across bone. It could have been either, as I sighted it only for an instant before it jerked back. The sight of it aroused all my instinctive fear for, unlike the silvery singers of the night before, this clearly advertised its evil by its very look.
Gathea pulled the wand from the earth with one easy movement. She dropped the far tip to point to the star angle directly before her where she had sprinkled the blood and placed the broken bits of dead leaf of herbage. At the same time she spoke, not to me, but commandingly, in words I could not understand.
There was movement from the spot to which she had pointed. It seemed to me that the ground itself began to spin, shooting upward part of its substance. As she began to sing, louder and faster, so did the whirling become a twirl of movement, a pillar of flying dust particles growing solid.
Then there crouched in the point of the star a figure which in a crude way was human. At least it had two legs, two arms, a trunk of body, a round ball of head perched thereupon, though it was such a thing as a child might fashion out of mud in play, crudely done. When it stood erect, Gathea brought down her wand in a sharp slap against the earth and uttered a single loud cry.
That thing which had come out of the ground ambled forward, stumping on feet which were clumsy and ill shaped. However, it was able to keep erect and move with more speed than I would have believed that such an ill-wrought body could show.
“Quick!” Gathea looked now to me for the first time. “Your knife—cold steel—to secure the doorway—” Her wand twitched across the ground to indicate where that must go.
I unsheathed my knife. Still keeping my other hand fast on sword hilt, I tossed the shorter blade as if I played some scoring game. It thudded true and stood quivering, hilt uppermost, set well into the earth at the very spot which that shambling figure had just left to go into the dark.
Gathea now seemed to listen—and I did likewise, finding myself even keeping my own breathing as noiseless and shallow as I could so that I might hear better. No night bird called; there was nothing to trouble the silence beyond our circle. But I sensed that that which had earlier tried our defenses was gone—if only for a space.
The girl did not relax. Taking my cue from her, I did not either. The cat at last gave a sigh and blinked. But if Gruu was satisfied my companion was not.
“Not yet—” It was as if she admonished herself, refused the comfort of believing that her sorcery was successful.
“What you made—” I felt that I could go no longer without asking at least some of the questions nagging at me—“did it lead away what waited out there?”
She nodded. “For a while it may play the quarry for those—but it may not last long. Listen!”
Perhaps this was what she had been waiting for. There rang through the night, echoing as if we were in some great cavern and not under a cloud-filled sky, a cry, a wailing, so filled with malice and the promise of evil anger to come, as to bring me to my feet, sword point out, ready to fight, though I could not see what enemy had sounded that call of fury.
“Do not, for your life,” the girl said, “go beyond the circle. It will return—and fooled once, it will be twice as ireful.”
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Not a thing which can be brought down by that,” she nodded to my sword, “though steel is rightfully its bane. But only as a defense not a weapon for use. I do not think that it can be sent on a second fruitless hunt. As to what it truly is—I cannot put any name to it. I did not even know it might come. My precautions were taken because this is a strange land and we had spilled blood. Blood is life—it draws the Dark Ones where they are to be found.”
“You used it to seal us in.”
“As I said, blood is life, from it can be conjured counterfeits, though those would not move or have being in the day. They, too, draw from the dark. Now—”
Her wand came up once more, pointing even as did my sword. Those things which prowled were back, weaving back and forth where we could not see—only feel them. Twice claw-hands swung in at the edge of the star point where my dagger stood, only to jerk back again. But they could not pass and I felt raised against me the growing heat of an anger as hot in my mind as the fire was upon my body. That emotion pressed, sought, battled to reach us with a dark and ugly hunger flowing as a high warning of what we might expect should it win inward.