“I didn’t mean to—” The thicket drew my gaze and what I saw there silenced me. Beyond the wild buckthorn hedge lay a clearing with more of the carven stones arranged in a circle. At the center of the circle, a hill bulged from the ground. It was perhaps fifteen feet long and half that wide, and its rounded back stood taller than the tops of the stones. A barrow mound. Rook had been talking about a different danger entirely.
A flap and flutter of wings sounded in the stillness. A croak, and then another. I looked up. An entire flock of shiny-eyed ravens roosted in the trees above us, watching, waiting.
A dozen ravens for death. What about a score—a hundred—more?
“You thought his name,” Rook said, after a pause. “You’re thinking it even now.”
I dragged my attention back to him; I knew dread gripped every inch of my expression.
He didn’t seem angry with me. His expression was neutral, a layer of ice under which fearsome currents raced unseen. I wished he’d looked angry. This was worse. It meant that whatever was about to happen was so awful he couldn’t afford to waste time feeling anything at all.
“Prepare to ride,” he said, stepping back.
Just as it had when he’d transformed the night before, a wind gusted through the trees carrying forth a whirlwind of leaves. I braced myself for his shape to shift as soon as it struck. But this time the wind died as it approached, and the leaves wafted uselessly the last few feet, scattering around his boots. Rook scowled. He stood straighter, and soon another, stronger wind roared up from the depths of the forest. But it too petered out before it reached him.
The barrow mound drew my gaze again and again. All those ancient stones, all of them facing inward, like wardens standing guard over a prisoner. For millennia they had watched it, unable to look away.
By now the heat felt oppressive. A faint smell of putrefaction hung in the air. One of the ravens gave a single, grating call, harsh as a saw rasping against metal.
“Why can’t you change?” I asked, without ever taking my eyes from the mound.
Rook dismissed his latest attempt at transformation with a flick of his hand, though a defiant glint shone in his eyes and he looked none the worse for wear.
“This place won’t allow me to. It appears we have stumbled upon the resting place of a Barrow Lord.”
Well, that was that. I wasn’t waiting around to introduce myself to something called a Barrow Lord, capitalized. I gathered up my skirts, preparing to run. Then something about the way he’d said “appears” caught up with me. “Oh, god. This is the first time you’ve come across one, isn’t it.”
“They are seldom encountered,” he said grudgingly. Noticing my stance, he added, “No, do not flee. It is already awake beneath the earth—it knows we are here. It cannot be outrun, and would only overtake us with our backs turned. This time, we stand and fight.” His gaze flicked to me again. “Or rather, I do, while you do your best to stay out of the way.”
He’d dispatched a thane with a single sword thrust. He’d called destroying the Wild Hunt’s hounds child’s play. But that knowledge was cold comfort with an entire flock of ravens roosting over my head, and the fact that this time, Rook had been willing to retreat without a word of complaint.
“What is a Barrow Lord, exactly?” I asked.
“In this matter, you might prefer ignorance.”
“Believe me, I never do.”
“If you insist,” he said, reluctant. “Most fairy beasts rise with a single mortal’s bones lending them life.” I nodded; I had known as much already. “Barrow Lords are aberrations—each one a mass of remains, entangled with one another in death. They are tormented creatures, enraged, at odds with themselves. We do not nurture their growth. They quicken on their own, in places where the mortals of ages past buried victims of war or plague.”
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.