followers and mates into the hills now, just at the point when summer was turning into autumn, they’d be lost to Mahijith’s estates. They might even die. Bees that swarmed out of season often died.
In the spring, Skreetchu would have been prepared with new hives and tools-smoke and instruments-to capture the queen, to create a new hive and increase production, and there would be more honey for the master’s stores. Now, however, not only would they lose the nascent colony, but the honey production from the mother hive would be halved for the season.
The pitch of the swarm rose, shrilling in the autumn air, and the cloud started to move. Individuals broke apart and rejoined, but the center of the mass remained compact. The new queen was somewhere in the middle.
He kept the crystal inside a crude box he had hacked out of a chunk of wood that fell from the pile by the fireplace in the cold of winter, knowing the punishment would be dire if he lost the magical trinket. If he could track the swarm and capture the queen, he could use it to return her to one of the empty hives.
Should he follow them now, or let Skreetchu know what had happened? He risked a beating either way.
The Boy made up his mind. He drew a deep breath and ran, leaving Mahijith’s estate behind him, following the black cloud of bees into the reddening sky.
Hewn blocks carved with worn runes lay scattered, half-buried in the sandy soil. A lizard ran across the rough surface, pausing with its tail lying half in the depression made by an ancient sigil. It lowered its blue-sheen belly to the hot surface of the stone and up again.
Before it, between the rocks that were tumbled carelessly across the sand, the air began to shiver. As if someone had cast a stone into the still surface of a pond, ripples formed and spread from a turbulent center located a man’s height from the grassy sand. Like glass heated and pulled this way and that in a glassblower’s kiln, the air took transparent shape.
The only witness was the lizard, which pushed up and down a few more times, flicked a pale pink tongue, and vanished in a quick scuttle between the slabs of stone.
In the still heat, the column of air warped and flexed. There was a smoky smell like green sticks burning. Slowly the ripples took on a humanoid shape, as if a figure made of glass moved underwater, all but invisible in its transparency.
Something small and yellow-brown buzzed heavy-bodied through the air, making a lazy circle around the coalescing transparent figure. Then came another, and another, until a dozen bees were making their drowsy sound between the ruins.
The Boy stopped, catching his breath, bent with his hands on his thighs. He reached down to pull a burr from the hem of his leggings and paused. On the ground by his boot a disoriented bee crawled, falling from one thick blade of grass and crawling up another. Bigger, more elongated than a worker, it was a drone, dying after a mating flight.
They couldn’t be far. He plucked the burr away and started off again in an efficient jog-trot, instinct telling him to follow the faint breath of a breeze that freshened the unseasonable evening warmth. His foot almost turned against a half-buried stone block, too regular to be natural. There must have been buildings here once, long before Lord Mahijith and his ilk had laid claim to the Durpar lowlands. He scanned the landscape constantly for the blur of the swarm, aware he had ventured farther from Skreetchu’s domain than he ever remembered having done before. The tall grass thinned here, and the soil looked to be mixed with sand. What had stood here, and what happened to the builders? Had a town grown here once, and died over time like an out-of-season swarm? Or had a conquering race like Mahijith’s destroyed them?
There! Was that the flicker of the black cloud, vanishing behind the crest of the next hill? He hurried ahead and saw that the bosom of the hill hid a hollow, as if some giant had scooped an enormous handful of the sandy earth out of its side, leaving a gentle depression large enough to hold a manor and its grounds. The Boy could hear the consistent hum, louder and louder as he approached the lip of the hollow.
If they had settled to rest, or to spend the night, in some foliage in the hollow, he had a chance. He probed his pocket, feeling the rough surface of the box inside.
His first impression was that some elemental horror, a story told to frighten children around the fire in the dead of winter, had risen from the ruins of a cursed habitation. A primal bolt of fear, ice-cold, shot through his bowels. A tall humanoid stood just below him, featureless save for a vague indentation where its eyes should have been. Although the figure was still as stone, its black and tawny flesh was moving, like a goat’s carcass alive with maggots, and he felt a prickle over his own skin in response.
It stood as a supplicant, facing the setting sun with arms upraised as if in appeal. The lumps at the ends of the outstretched limbs looked like hands from which the fingers had corroded and fallen away. As he watched, a golden brown mass of the thing’s skin fell to the ground in a clump and fell apart. It disintegrated into many small bodies, some crawling over the grass that grew between the squared-off stones and some flying back to rejoin the hideously quivering mockery.
Then he heard the hum and drew in a great gulp of the warm, summer air. It was only the bees lighting on a statue. The scattered stones were the ruins of a temple where once a deity had stood, depicted in stone, arms spread to receive its worshipers. Or perhaps a great house stood here, with the image of an ancestor preserved in granite, now covered with the questing swarm.
Feeling foolish, he scrambled over the lip of the hollow and picked his way over the tumbled stones that had once made a wall. The bees’ buzzing grew louder, and he gently waved aside a few that flew around his face. He knew he was safe. It was rare for a swarm to sting an intruder, so long as one moved slowly and unthreateningly. It wasn’t until they’d found a home to defend that they’d be dangerous. In front of the bee-encrusted statue he paused, smelling the honey-scented tang of the insect mass, searching the quivering, moving surface for the long- bodied queen. The statue was a head taller than he. The Boy looked up into where its featureless face should have been.
There was a quiver as two handfuls of bees fell away. From the blunt-featured face, two eyes blinked open and looked at the horizon. They blinked again and looked down at the Boy. Round eyes with golden yellow irises and a black, black center looked down at him, reflecting two tiny images of the reddened sun. No other part of the statue moved.
The Boy opened his mouth to scream, but only a harsh whistling sound came out. He felt as if a blow of Skreetchu’s baton had struck his ribs, knocking away his air. He wanted to scramble away, but he felt as if his limbs had frozen in place.
The Boy had nightmares like this-nightmares of goblins and worse chasing him, close enough so he could see their leering faces and yellowed teeth, and him unable to move, or moving unnaturally slowly, knowing in a few seconds he’d be seized and devoured. Drenched in sweat, he’d wake, sitting bolt upright on the thin pallet he was allotted in the stables.
But this was no dream, and he wouldn’t wake. A bee-covered arm reached up before he could move, and a strong hand grasped him about the throat. He grabbed at the arm, feeling a few bees crushed beneath his fingers and the dull shock as his hand was stung. This time he managed to scream, a shrilling cry that rang in his ears. He tried to yell again, but no sound came.
As if reacting to his scream, the bees sprang away from the figure, swirling up and away like a thick mist. The Boy’s neck was still clasped in a firm grip as the statue’s head turned to watch the bees as they spread out so one could see them as individuals instead of a solid mass. They merged into a solid black column, then dissipated again, vanishing over the edge of the hollow.
I’ll never catch the queen now, thought the Boy, despite his terror. The figure turned back to look at him, and the Boy would have screamed again had the pressure on his throat not increased, choking off his cry. He felt a warm trickle against the inside of his leg as he lost control of his bladder.
Yellow eyes in a fierce face stared into his own. The figure’s head was furred, with deep black stripes across the burned orange and stark white of its cheek, chin, and muzzle. Stiff, wirelike whiskers jutted beneath the flattened, flaring nose of a predator, and the feline-split upper lip quivered in a snarl, exposing thick ivory fangs.
