Andrew R. Clark
Leaves from a tarry bush scented the dry wind. At intervals the song of an insect buzzed and went silent again. Then all the night seemed to hold its breath as an uncanny sound rose into the darkness—not the call of a wolf or the shriek of lion’s prey, not a human cry.
Lost in a vast wasteland, a mound stood at the center of a broad bowl of earth. Below this making, wooden chests, filled with scrolls and locked with curses, sat in niches lining a black chamber. Under a thick blanket of dust, a wrapped figure rested on a plinth. Poking out from resinous bindings, a skeletal hand gripped the end of a chain hanging from the ceiling, the faintest luminescence climbing up it.
At the other end, a creature wreathed in flickering glow would stand guard so long as mastery flowed through the shackle. It could not leave, could not rest, could not even die. The one thing left it was feeding on anything foolish enough to come within reach.
The eerie howl rose again, lament of an imprisoned demon.
#
Smoke from a burned city receding in the distance, a young man fled inland, bad memories, perhaps, not all that pursued him. The road became a track and then a trail and soon disappeared altogether. Camping in a thicket of brush, sleep holding at a stubborn remove, he began an evening prayer. Letting the shifting breeze set the tempo, his mind eventually dissolved in the incantation.
Awakening in darkness, he held still, uncertain what had roused him. From a distance a deep‑chested moan floated over the desert, unlike anything he’d ever heard before. Again, the unearthly noise echoed through the rocky hills. Abandoning hope of more sleep, he got up, resolved to find the source of the complaint.
Following the baleful voice, watching his feet to avoid falling in the dim moonlight, he topped a low rise overlooking a wide circular hollow. At its center a mound disrupted the flat valley floor. Kneeling, listening, he waited for a sign. Atop the mound something stirred, an indistinct nimbus. A head, it seemed, lifted, scanning the darkness. He watched awhile longer before walking down into the bowl.
Halfway across he stopped. The thing on the mound was aware of him now. He seated himself on the sand, and after a few minutes of preparation, let his mind pour out of his body. Like water seeping through cracks in the rocks, he probed, feeling for a disturbance. In time the nature of the problem became apparent.
Returning to himself, rising back from the ground, he stood and walked out of the shallow basin.
#
The next day he bundled up sticks from around the thicket he’d been sheltering in. He found a stiff‑needled plant growing in a gully and collected stems from it. At sunset he picked up his loaded pack and walked back to the hollow in the hills.
Circumscribing a course around the mound, he made piles of the sticks he’d brought—one in the direction of the rising sun and another where it sets, one pointing toward the center of the Ox’s Wheel and the other at its antipole. At moonrise he put spark to the heaps of tinder. When they had burned down to embers, he tossed on the fragrant weeds. Each time he repeated the circle, he also repeated a spell, the meaning of its words lost but its purpose preserved.
Keeping vigil throughout the night, he waited to see if the force beneath the earth would move. The stars were fading when it began to slacken, the last wisps of power floating off with ashes in the morning breeze. But then fear came to him, and he wished to be away from the thing on the mound.
Back at camp he gathered up his belongings and struck out again into the wilderness. Pausing at midday, he heard a sound from the direction he’d come, one rock slipping off another. Weaving through the boulders, a large dog with a squarish head approached. It stopped, scenting the air, searching. Though now the color of dust, its long, matted hair had once been white. Heavy bones showed through loose, emaciated skin. It turned its nose into the breeze and spotted him.
The young priest slowly undid the flap of his pack, took out a piece of dried meat, and set it on a flat stone. Before departing, he also left the end of bread he’d been chewing, pouring out water from his flask, soaking it like a sponge.