2 Defiler of Tombs Read Free

and horror in their eyes.
    “It’s all right,” said Kormak. “You are safe now.”
    “Where are we?” said a girl, younger looking than the rest. She sat upright, stretched, rubbed her eyes. “I had such terrible dreams.”
    “You are awake now,” said Kormak.
    “Am I?” she asked. It was clear that she did not entirely believe him. She looked at her surroundings, and a terror crept into her eyes that might be there for the rest of her days. Kormak understood that; he had felt such fear himself sometimes, awakening in the strange dawns of his horror-haunted life.
    “You are.”
    “Are you a friend of the cold king?” she asked.
    “Who?” He kept his voice gentle.
    “The cold king. We got lost when the mists came on the hills. He found us and brought us to shelter and we slept. He talked to me in my dreams, saying he would make me a princess forever.”
    “He lied to you. He is gone now.”
    “Did you kill him?”
    “I could not kill him. He was already dead.”
    “Then what did you do to him?”
    “I sent what was in him back to the Shadow.”
    The other children were crying now. It was a good sign in its way. For them, he had been in time. At least he hoped he had. Sometimes the survivors of such rituals were altered and became worse than the things that had taken them, wolves among men. That was not his problem now. His problem was to get these children back to their families, and get them all home before something worse befell them all. And he would have to explain to the parents of one of them that their child would not be returning. The sense of his failure cut deep, one more to be added to a long list.
    “Follow me,” he told them and led them out of the deep darkness and into the still and waiting night.
     
    The others were still there, standing in the circle of salt, glaring into the gloom. Someone had got a small fire going. Kormak could smell it as he emerged from the damp cold air of the barrow. The children looked relieved as they saw their parents, and began to race forward. He ordered them to stop and be careful not to disturb the salt lines. As if learning a new game they delicately picked their way over it and found themselves in the arms of their folk. One woman stood apart and looked at him, then the barrow mouth, then back at Kormak. He shook his head. Her head fell and she started to weep silently. The man beside her stood shaking his head and trying to embrace her.
    Sir Brandon asked, “Where is little Olaf?” His voice was choked.
    Kormak shot him a warning look. The knight ignored it and repeated the question.
    “Dead,” said Kormak. He did not want to speak the boy’s real fate aloud. It was bad enough that these people had lost a child without knowing that his soul had gone to feed a monster.
    Brandon looked at Kormak. “Was it bad?”
    The Guardian shrugged. “For them, yes.”
    “That’s all you have to say?”
    “What would you have me say?”
    “Did you meet the tomb wight?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is it dead?”
    “It was always dead. It just looked otherwise.”
    “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
    “I put an end to the thing if that’s what you want to know.”
    “Simple as that?”
    Kormak nodded and wondered at the gloom that had settled on him. He felt worse now than when he faced the monster. He told himself that he had done his best, that he had got most of the children out, that there was nothing he could have done for Olaf. The boy must have been dead from the moment he had entered the final chamber of the barrow. He looked at the boy’s weeping parents and thought of his disintegrating corpse and it did not help. Failure tasted bitter in his mouth. If only he had gotten here sooner, acted faster…
    The others were looking at him now, with wonder, with gratitude and resentment. There were always some who did. His actions made them measure their own courage against his, and feel smaller. He wanted to tell them that it was not a question of