As if hearing itself spoken about, the mound quivered. Soil shifted and tumbled to the ground. A grotesque sound emanated from within: the damp sucking of something moist coming apart deep below the earth. Whatever this thing was, it was bigger than a thane. Bigger than all the hounds combined.
Rook unsheathed his sword and strode toward the mound, projecting a casual ease and confidence that struck me as being as fake as his glamour. Whether he was wearing it for my benefit or his own, I couldn’t guess.
As soon as he reached the stone circle’s outer edge, the mound heaved in earnest. It bulged first in one place and then another like a larva attempting to split its cocoon. Carrion beetles poured from the earth in rivulets, along with some sort of dribbling fluid. The stench of wet decay struck me like a punch to the gut. Helplessly, I doubled over and retched.
One last straining swell, and the mound disgorged its contents. A lopsided form burst forth, slumping over Rook at twice his height, lumps of dirt cascading off its sides. No illusion softened this monstrosity. It had the correct number of appendages in more or less the expected places, but that was all I could say in its favor. Its flesh was the skin of a decomposing log, riddled with disease and fungus. Its head, a hollow bark cave with two empty sockets from which a pair of mushroom clusters grew, wiggling about on long stalks with a life of their own. Right away the stalks twisted simultaneously, pointing the mushrooms’ caps down at Rook. Eyes. Those were its eyes.
Pressure built at the back of my skull. In the distance, or behind a closed door, voices argued. A little girl sobbed. Impatiently, someone scolded her. A man bellowed in wordless agony. The Barrow Lord gave a convulsive ripple, almost overbalancing itself. Its frame was bearlike, but its front legs—its arms, I found myself thinking—were overlong, and it struggled to maintain its drooping upright stance. It was trying to make itself human again, I realized, in the only way it could.
Rook’s sword flashed, opening a slice along the beast’s underbelly. Its putrid skin split without effort. He stepped back just in time to avoid the slippery cascade of fungus that spilled from the wound, halting one neat inch from the tips of his boots.
The voices stopped. Then they all screamed in unison. The Barrow Lord’s arm lashed out, scoring the statue in front of which Rook had stood a split second earlier, spraying chips of stone and moss. It slashed at him again and again, senseless and unpredictable in its maddened violence, forcing him to retreat beyond its reach. His back touched the hedge, and he began circling it, his steps easy, a cat circling a hound unafraid.
It shambled after him, lunging clumsily over the standing stones. Rook was trying to draw it away from me. But as soon as I had that thought the little girl’s voice called out, strident, and the Barrow Lord paused. In a sudden, wet contraction, the mushrooms rolled backward to look at me instead. I stumbled back blindly. I heard the groan and crash of trees toppling, my gaze fixed only on the horror hurtling in my direction—it was so rotten pieces of its body peeled away as it ran, dislodged by the concussive force of its stride.
Rook appeared between us. His sword flashed once, twice. The arm the Barrow Lord had raised to cut me down exploded porously on the forest floor. Beetles swarmed in the cavity left behind. Missing a limb, its unbalanced weight dragged it backward, and it collapsed against a pair of the carven stones, skin rupturing, pushing the monuments aslant.
For a moment I thought Rook had won. The fall had left the beast in ruins. Mucus glistened, seeped from the wreckage of its hide. But already it struggled back upright, wet fungus-slimed roots slopping out of its stump to form a new arm. Its head weaved from side to side, dripping. The voices consulted one another in an agitated murmur.
Rook adjusted his grip on his sword as he stalked back into the fray, crushing debris beneath his heels. Out flashed the blade. Chunks of wood flew. He could go on like this for days, chipping away at the monster without rest. If it hadn’t been for the need to keep me alive, I suspected, the Barrow Lord wouldn’t have posed much of a threat to him at all.
Something grabbed my ankle.
I looked down.
A human skeleton, held together with vegetable sinew, had clawed free from the Barrow Lord’s severed limb. Shuddering nightmarishly, it flung its other hand up to seize my skirt in its bony fingers. Tumorous mushrooms bulged between its ribs, forced its jaw ajar. It clutched at me, dragging itself higher grip by hard-won grip. Closer than all the other voices, a woman sobbed and pleaded.
“I can’t help you,” I whispered, turned inside out and shaken empty by horror. “I can’t . . .”