The Old Gods Awaken by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

IX

After a moment or two I had my breath back I sat up and then Reuben Manco sat up too.

"Let's take a minute or so to get rid of the shakes," he said. "We can talk about the next step and what we may have to face. John, you saved my life. I won't forget it, not if I die tonight or if I live to be a hundred and ten."

"Go ahead and forget it right now, Chief," I said back. "You saved my own life down below yonder, when you killed that big old boar pig that was a-fixing to kill me."

"No." He shook his black hair in the moonlight. "You could have escaped. Standing where you did, you kept his attention so that I could strike him from the side. But when I fell down there I couldn't ever have come out if you hadn't pulled me out." He grinned at me. "My brother," he said.

I got up on my feet and looked at that sloping way with the trees on it "What's a-waiting there?" I wondered out loud.

"That's what we must find out," said Reuben Manco, as he stood up beside me. "So far, we've made our way past two of the promised perils. There should be five more to get away from. They'll be set there for us."

He took a step or two. "Come on, John," he said.

So we headed along together, under the pouring glow of that moon up yonder.

Up the slope we went. Reuben Manco pointed out the way we had to go through the trees. It wasn't a hard path in that kind of bright night, more so because Reuben Manco remembered so well where he was a-heading. On the far side, the way flattened out some. It was open there, with a big growth of plants, almost like a garden.

From what I could see of them, they were mullein stalks, grown up close together and the most of them I'd ever seen together in one place. They hiked themselves up in spikes as high as my knee or higher. Their leaves were soft-looking, hairy. To me it was like as if they come close round my legs as I walked. They sort of rubbed there, like cats that wanted to be petted. It was like as if they whispered to me. I looked down at them. They seemed all of a sudden to go dark and gloomy. That was because of a rag of cloud that went a-sailing across the sky, then flew off again to let the light come strongish down.

All I'd ever heard for a certain fact about the mullein was an old story, how if you stomped down a stalk of it to point to the home of the one you loved, it would grow up strong again if she was true to you. I'd never felt called on to try that trick, because I'd never wondered myself about Evadare. Other than that tale, I'd never heard tell if

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