The view from the outcropping was stunning. The village had grown to a
town, fast on its way to being a city. A million lights twinkled. The
highway cut a glistening ribbon of streetlamps through the night, a
straight line slicing the hills and curves. There were thousands of
people down there, all connected by a humming net-work -- a work of
nets, cunning knots tied in a cunning grid -- of wire and radio and
civilization.
Slowly, he looked back into the golems' cave. He remembered it as being
lined with ranks of bones, a barbarian cathedral whose arches were
decorated with ranked skulls and interlocked, tiny animal tibia. Now
those bones were scattered and broken, the ossified wainscoting rendered
gap-toothed by missing and tumbled bones.
Alan wondered how the golems had reacted when Darl had ruined their
centuries of careful work. Then, looking more closely, he realized that
the bones were dusty and grimed, cobwebbed and moldering. They'd been
lying around for a lot longer than a couple hours.
Alan crept into the cave now, eyes open, ears straining. Puffs of dust
rose with his footfalls, illuminated in the moonlight and city light
streaming in from the cave mouth. Another set of feet had crossed this
floor: small, boyish feet that took slow, arthritic steps. They'd come
in, circled the cave, and gone out again.
Alan listened for the golems and heard nothing.
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