From his high nook, Brian watched
them.
"Where is he, Billy?" Alan called. "Tell me, godfuckit!"
Billy looked down from him perch with his sad, hollow eyes -- had he
been forgetting to eat again? -- and shook his head.
They took to the tunnels. Even with the flashlight, Marci couldn't match
him for speed. He could feel the tunnels through the soles of his boots,
he could smell them, he could pick them apart by the quality of their
echoes. He moved fast, dragging Marci along with his good hand while she
cranked the flashlight as hard as she could. He heard her panting,
triangulated their location from the way that the shallow noises
reflected off the walls.
When they found Davey at last, it was in the golem's cave, on the other
side of the mountain. He was hunkered down in a corner, while the golems
moved around him slowly, avoiding him like he was a boulder or a
stalagmite that had sprung up in the night. Their stony heads turned to
regard Marci and Adam as they came upon them, their luminous eyes
lighting on them for a moment and then moving on. It was an eloquent
statement for them: *This is the business of the mountain and his
sons. We will not intervene.*
There were more golems than Alan could remember seeing at once, six,
maybe seven. The golems made more of their kind from the clay they found
at the riverbank whenever they cared to or needed to, and allowed their
number to dwindle when the need or want had passed by the simple
expedient of deconstructing one of their own back to the clay it had
come from.
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