The blast—clear as a silver horn—bounced off the cliffs and echoed over the beach. For a moment the wind calmed, and then, as if in answer to his call, it gusted in his face, carrying with it the smell of salt and the echo of some great droning instrument of the deep. The sound sent a chill down his spine and raised gooseflesh on his body.
The unearthly echoes died back, and for a moment there was silence. Sir Henry could feel the quickening of his pulse and the pounding of blood in his ears. Something was coming. A wave crashed upon the beach with a frill of white seafoam and then drew back again.
From the far end of the beach, where the sand curved and disappeared and the cliffs met the sea, came a woman’s high-pitched scream of terror. Almost immediately, it was followed by the angry howl of a pack of dogs.
Holding his breath, Sir Henry waited. His right arm was bloody and bandaged, his trousers sand-caked and rolled to the knee, his shirt unbuttoned, and both cravat and jacket had been abandoned. But for the first time in his life, he had forgotten about himself—so focused was he on the fate of another.
Straining his ears until he thought his head would burst with the tension that stretched from temple to temple, he tried to listen for any new sounds on the beach. At first there were none. But finally, he thought he discerned something other than the throbbing of his blood and the blowing of the wind and the crashing of the wavelets upon the sand.
Yes! Coming toward him now from the far end of the beach was the rapid, crunching sound of someone running. He squinted. In the light of the full moon he thought he saw movement, but the bright blaze of the tree behind his back obscured his vision. He waited, heart hammering in his chest.
Yes! Yes! There it was! Someone or something was most definitely running toward him. Though he could not see what it was, churning sand flew upward, as if sprayed by invisible toes and heels as they hit the beach, flying forward in a panicked fury. Sir Henry squinted again, trying to discern the exact form of the thing. But as it came closer, he realized with a terrible chill that what arrowed toward him was not a thing at all. It was a shadow.
From the far end of the beach, those unearthly dogs howled again. Henry thought of his own hounds at the chase, mad for the scent of blood, jaws lathering, eyes wild. But the beasts that barreled toward him sounded gargantuan. They howled with deep, brutish, unearthly yowls that echoed off the cliffs and rolled out to sea. The air was full of it!
The shadow-girl whimpered in terror. Henry felt the breeze of her movement as she swept past him, saw her footprints impress upon the sand, delicate as a deer’s tracks, toes splayed, balanced on the balls of her feet. And for a moment, he saw a wavering silhouette standing between himself and the light of the blazing tree. It was a darkness—a shadow cast by nothing—and then it dove into the vacant body he had made, as if for solace and for shelter. And Henry noticed for the first time that until now his sculpture had cast no shadow of its own.
But there was no more time for thought. The hounds were pounding along the beach, their howls thick with saliva and excitement. They, too, were shadows—great looming blots of muscular darkness. Henry could feel the vibration of their weightiness as their invisible paws struck the sand, sending sharp grains flying upward. He felt them leap and he ducked and rolled—uncertain of his safety if they fell upon him—but even as they leaped into the light to fall upon the girl, the blazing tree sparked and spat and blazed to twice its size, engulfing the shadow-hounds in its blue-green rage.
Screeches of animal pain—yowling and whimpering and squealing, both as pathetic and as terrible as their fearsome, hungry barking. Rising to his knees, Sir Henry covered his ears. He could not bear it! But even as he squeezed his eyes shut, the squealing dwindled and disappeared. Finally, he felt safe enough to open his eyes again.
His lady was no longer inert clay; she was living flesh. She writhed on the beach, her smooth, bare legs shimmering in the oak’s bonfire light, her thighs and sex still gleaming with his spent seed. He could see her beautifully formed breasts with their coral-colored nipples and the cascade of her blood-red hair.
But something was wrong. She clawed up her dress to expose her belly and screeched, back arching in agony. Her belly was swelling, doming, a vertical line darkening the flesh between navel and pubis. Dumbfounded, Sir Henry’s own legs weakened. He had brought her back, yes. But he had brought her back with child. His child.
Suddenly he thought about the tales of his father’s demise and a chill froze his heart. By the blazing tree, the girl held her swollen belly with one hand and coughed into the other, emptying her newly formed lungs of sand. Tiny crabs scrabbled from between her lips, and Sir Henry saw with dawning horror that one of those tiny, almost translucent crustaceans was crawling across the web of skin stretched between the girl’s left thumb and forefinger, its tiny appendages pausing, for less than a moment, upon the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the guild.
NO! Sir Henry thought as he shook his head from side to side. He would not be replaced. Not by some bastard child he had not meant to seed, child born of a murderess, a bitch of the guild. Kane had tricked him!
Lunging forward, Sir Henry grabbed the girl by the hair and dragged her toward the encroaching tide.
“They are coming for you!” he screamed hysterically. “They are coming for you!”
Flailing and screaming, the girl fought him. She grabbed the hand entwined in her hair and hammered the sand with her feet. At the circle’s edge, she bit his injured forearm, and with a spasm and a curse he released her tresses. As she scrambled toward the fire on her hands and knees, she swept the sand, searching for a weapon. As if by providence, her fingers brushed against Sir Henry’s knife.
Braying like a mad beast, he dove at her and grabbed her by the throat. As he shook her, trying at once to break her neck and throttle her, she raised the knife as high as she could and brought it down with all her strength.
A hiss escaped from Sir Henry’s lips, a hiss which quickly rose into a wail. The sharp blade had pierced the intercostal space between his ribs, just to the right of his breastbone, skewering his lung.
With a shocked, gurgling cry, he reeled backward, his lax hands releasing his Galatea’s neck. Mouth wide, he slapped the hole in his chest, as if he either couldn’t believe the blade’s edge had been real, or thought he could stanch the blood that now flowed everywhere. But it was too late. Gasping like a fish hauled onto the beach, he fell onto his side, desperately trying to suck air. His skin turned blue and great gouts of blood poured from between his lips.
Still clutching the knife in her left hand, the girl stumbled to her feet. But as Sir Henry gasped and crawled toward her, she danced back on the pretty toes he had shaped, eluding his grasp.
From somewhere on the cliffs above, a conch shell sounded three times, and the flames of the underworld oak flared up into the night, as if eager to eat the stars. Then, as if the oaken bonfire had seeded distant flames, fifty torches flared into life. A chanting began, carried out to the sea on the swirling winds.
Ave Mara, Salve Regina, Dea sancta… thou divine controller of sky and sea and of all things… winds, rains, and tempests thou dost detain, and, at thy will, let loose… . Deservedly art thou called Mighty Mother of Gods… divine one, queen of divinities, we invoke thee…
A great glowing wave rose up out of the sea and crashed on the beach in a glitter of phosphorescence, bringing with it a spill of bones and shells and long-lost jewels dredged from the deep. And then, as if rising from the seafoam itself, came the Ancient Ones.