Chapter 504 — The Mass Grave

Though he could not say just what was wrong, the hauler's instincts told him something uncanny was here. The feeling unsettled him, and dimly reminded him of the rumors that had been passing among the haulers of late...

They said ghouls were abroad in the night... that flesh-devouring monsters stirred in the dark earth... that the bodies in the mass graves seemed to be dwindling for no reason... that corpses awaiting burial vanished again and again without cause...

In the cold wind of late autumn, the hauler could not help but shudder. He felt that something malevolent was stirring beneath his very feet—though he could not see it, the thing seemed already to have seen him.

He was no transcendent, but he was a hauler who had dealt with the dead half his life, and a rather devout follower of the Blood God besides. He knew he possessed a certain intuition other men lacked, and that intuition had, in years past, more than once saved him from the attacks of evil spirits.

He began to edge backward, carefully, moving as gently and naturally as he could, doing his best not to show his alarm.

But all at once a faint rustling reached his ears, and with that rustling he saw, down in the mass grave, clods of turf and earth beginning to tremble—and several burlap-wrapped human shapes—ones he had thrown in three days ago—were writhing in the most unnatural way.

The hauler's eyes went wide. He saw plainly a number of vine-like things sprouting suddenly from the soil and piercing those corpses; then the earth rippled like water and swallowed the bodies down into the darkness...

A vast terror swept over him. At last he could not help but cry out—and after that one cry, he turned and ran.

But the strange sweet fragrance filling the air welled up once more, stronger than before, and in that sudden sweetness the hauler Taka's mind swam, and then he sank into a long and fathomless dream.

Vine-like things crept out from between the soil and the blades of grass and coiled themselves around the corpse-dragger's limbs; amid a low gurgling and a rustling, the earth rippled like water and drew him down, inch by inch, into the ground.

The cold wind of late autumn swept across the plain, across the deserted pit of unmarked graves. All was still here, as though nothing had happened at all.

A moment later a sudden gale tore across the plain, whirling up great drifts of fallen leaves from no one knew where, and out of that eddying fall of leaves a woman appeared, clad in the long green robes of a priest.

Beiyila frowned at the place where the corpse-dragger had been swallowed by the earth, and gave a faint sigh. "Poor devil..."

"That mourning bonfire of yours caught his eye," came a blurred, low voice from deep in the earth, threaded through with a rustling as of something gliding to and fro. "I am curious as to what manner of person could be worth a hierarch kindling a bonfire on the Festival of Souls' Rest... Or do you, like those common folk, believe in the returning of the dead?"

"Hierarch Hidon, remember why you were punished and sent here to gather biomass, and be content with the task that is yours."

"Ha... you must be the most tedious woman in the world..."

A muffled, indistinct muttering rose from underground; then the voice began to sink, and the rustling of movement dwindled with it. Whoever it was seemed to have gone back down into the deeper soil.

Beiyila stood quietly where she was for a while, as if turning something over in her mind, and only after several minutes of stillness did she set her feet in motion. Beneath the long skirt of her priestly robes, "legs" woven of countless roots and vines squirmed and carried her to the heap of bonfire that had already burned itself out.

A single death's-herald chrysanthemum, in full bloom, had fallen among the embers.

"I do not care what it is that dwells inside that shell of yours... you will not be able to thwart this plan.

"Humanity will endure forever, even in defiance of the gods."