THE SECOND MOON HAD RISEN JUST HIGH ENOUGH OVER the windswept moors of Archaia to paint the incline a frozen silver. The ever-churning mists wrapped around shrub and stone, shreds of it moving in odd directions as if more than one air current flowed there.
Movement flashed beneath the ridge of dark stone, where the jagged rocks in silhouette made it appear that a host of demons and devils had perched. A sinewy figure worked carefully at an arched door of stone. He stepped inside and pulled the door shut, dust raining down upon his wild shock of white hair. The large man laughed, the sound high and manic. “Won’t be gittin’ in this way agin, no!” he said. “Not without ringin’ the bell.”
There was a slight hitch in his gait, an uneven measure in his knobby legs that made him seem lopsided as he passed the torches, his many shadows even more misshapen. The hall opened into his favorite room: the laboratory. His fingers clicking as he worked, the man adjusted the height of one burner’s flame, lowered another. He switched out flasks at the end of one section of tubing and drained another. Finally, the man came to the end of a very busy machine and checked the level of a deep holding cistern built right into the floor.
He cackled again and clapped. “He, heh, hee! Production’s well ahead of schedule. Grand, isn’t it?” He reached into the lowest pocket of his coat and pulled out a handful of shriveled black berries. He tossed them into his mouth, chewing vigorously enough that their juice drizzled down his lips. “Grand, indeed.”
The man left the laboratory and came to a semi-hidden door. He grabbed the nearest torch from its sconce, checked over his shoulder, and then disappeared through the door. Stairs led down and down. Fifty feet from the bottom, he could already hear their clicking and gnashing. Of course he could. The man didn’t breed them for serenity.
At last, near the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and gazed over the edges of the six massive breeding tanks. They were filled near to the brim with teeming, wriggling black shapes, hundreds of thousands of scurions. But these were special scurions. They were blind, sure, but they had other ways to sense where they were. And they were voracious.
The man came to the bottom of the stairs and looked curiously down into a hay-strewn pen where several lambs lay sleeping. “Not this one,” he muttered. “Too skinny.” He walked around the waist-high fence, wobbled a moment, and then said, “You’ll do.” He curled his long knobby fingers around a rather plump lamb’s neck. With little effort, he yanked the lamb off the ground and carried it back to the stairs.
The man snorted and cackled. Then he tossed the lamb into the vat of scurions. The teeming and snapping in the tank sprayed a mist of water into the air. The sound was something like a driving rainstorm combined with a brick of firecrackers.
“My, can they eat,” the Lurker whispered.
He scuttled the rest of the way down the steps and used his torch to light other torches all around the room. Then, he began the arduous task of opening all the pipeline valves. It took several tolls of Old Jack, but in the end, it would clear the way for his little beasties to travel great distances, deep beneath the surface of two districts.
Three strains had gone in already. This was the last one. It wouldn’t be long now, the Lurker knew. He went to the breeding tanks and, one by one, turned their wheel valves to open. Scurions flooded out into the pipeline system.
“No, it won’t be long at all.”
A melodic tinkling bell drifted down the stairs. The Lurker looked up, grumbling. “Hmph, a bit early.” He took a large blackened-metal snuff cap and went round to put out the torches. Back through the percolating laboratory and up the winding hall, he trudged, breathing more heavily than he would have liked.
The bell rang again, this time loud and shrill so close to the door. The Lurker rolled his eyes and adjusted his wire-rim glasses. Then, he swung wide the door and said, “Evening, Nephew.”
Kara pushed herself away from her grand dining table. She couldn’t possibly have eaten even a single bite from each main course she’d created. It was enough food for a small army. But she didn’t care. It was so easy to create things she’d already created once. Like cheesecake, for instance. Coop had given her tips, and her cheesecake now was just as tasty. Maybe better. And all this was guilt-free too, she remembered. No calories in the Dream counted toward the waist in the real world. Even so, she was too stuffed for cheesecake.
Kara stood and wandered once more to her favorite chair before the fire. She was about to plop down for a rest when she remembered something. Something she hadn’t realized before.
Rather than sitting, she wandered over to the door she’d “installed” the other day. There was no handle or ring presently. She fixed that and yanked the door open, or rather, she nearly pulled her arm out of socket. “Why did I make this so thick?” she grumbled. But she knew why. She remembered. That was what she noticed the lack of this time. No screams. No complaints. No crying out.
Kara reduced the thickness of the door and opened it rather easily. She stepped to the threshold of a long set of darkened stairs. She listened for a long moment and heard nothing. “Hello, down there!” she called. “You’re awful quiet lately. You are still alive, aren’t you?”
She waited. Still no answer. No movement. Nothing stirring.
The thought hit her like a bolt of lightning. But they couldn’t have escaped. They were too weak. Too delusional. The bonds too strong.
No, she realized, not an escape. He’d come for them at last.