Necroscope 4: Deadspeak Read Online Free Page B

trees around the base of the outcrop had been felled, all shrubs and undergrowth cleared away; at its summit, a cairn of heavy stones stood like a small tower or chimney, pointing to the mountains.
    And up there, seated on the bare rock at the foot of the cairn, working with a knife at a shard of stone which he held in his lap—a young man: Szgany! He was intent upon his work, seeing nothing but the stone in his hands. He gazed down across a distance of little more than one hundred feet—gazed seemingly head on, so that the women of the village must surely be central to his circle of vision—but if he saw them he gave no sign. And indeed it was plain that he did not see them, only the stone which he worked. And even at that distance, clearly there was something … not quite right with him.
    “But what’s he doing up there?” the younger of the two inquired in a hoarse whisper. “He’s very handsome, and yet… strange. And anyway, isn’t this a forbidden place? My Hzak tells me that the great stone of the cairn is a very special stone, and that —”
    Shhh! the other once again cautioned her, a finger to her lips. “Don’t disturb him. They don’t take kindly to being spied upon, the Szgany. Not that this one will hear us anyway. Still… best to be careful.”
    “He won’t hear us, you say? Then why are we talking in whispers? No, I know why we’re whispering: because this is a private place, like a shrine. Almost holy.”
    “Un holy!” the other corrected her. “As to why he won’t notice us—why, just look at him up there! His skin’s not so much dark as slate-grey, sickly, dying. Eyes deep-sunken, burning. Obsessed with that stone he’s carving. He’s been called, can’t you see? He’s mazed, hypnotized—doomed!”
    Even as the last word left her lips, so the man on the rock stood up, took up his stone and ground it firmly into position on the rim of the cairn. It sat there side by side with many dozens of others, like a brick in the topmost tier of a wall, and anyone having seen the ritual of the carving would know that each single stone of that cairn was marked in some weird, meaningful way. The younger woman opened her mouth to say something, but her friend at once anticipated her question:
    “His name,” she said. “He carved his name and his dates, if he knows them. Like all the other names and dates carved up there. Like all the others gone before him. That rude stone is his headstone, which makes the cairn itself a graveyard!”
    Now the young Gypsy was craning his neck, looking up, up at the mountains. He stood frozen in that position for long moments, as if waiting for something. And high in the grey-blue sky a small dark blot of cloud drifted across the face of the sun. At that the eldest of the two women gave a start; she herself had become almost hypnotized, stalled there and without the will to move on. But as the sun was eclipsed and shadows fell everywhere, she grabbed the other’s elbow and turned her face away. “Come,” she gasped, suddenly breathless, “let’s be gone from here. Our men will be worried. Especially if they know there are Gypsies about.”
    They hurried through the shadows of the trees, found the track, soon began to see the first wooden houses on Halmagiu’s outskirts, where the forest thinned down to nothing. But even as they stepped out from the trees into a dusty lane and their heartbeats slowed a little, so they heard a sound from behind and above and far, far beyond.
    Not quite midday in Halmagiu; the sun coming out from behind a small, stray cloud; the first days of true winter still some seven or eight weeks away—but every soul who heard that sound took it as a wintry omen anyway. Aye, and some took it for more than that.
    It was the mournful voice of a wolf echoing down from the mountains, calling as wolves have called for a thousand, thousand years and more. The two women paused, clutched their baskets, held their breath and listened.