Part 23

"What's that mean?"

Neither the name nor the title meant anything to David. Thule nodded slowly, looking somewhat disappointed.

"You would not have heard of us. Not here. 'Pilgrim' means that I have traveled far. I visit the holy places of my order, seeking enlightenment and earning the right to be called Missionary. And then Priest... or Prophet."

"What's THAT mean?" David repeated.

"It... matters not," Thule sighed. "The Path of the Rune... my travels... took me far north of the wasteland that surrounds this place. There, I had a dream. I have long had the..." Thule considered his words carefully. "...the gift of foresight. Or FAR sight. The Lord of the Rune speaks to me in dreams, and I saw a vision of a great evil to the south, at the heart of a great wasteland. The vision drove me from the Path. I came here, compelled to know the truth of what I had seen."

"So you came here to dig up bodies?"

"No! Well... yes. The Lord of the Rune does not speak clearly to me. I am not yet worthy of the gift of true prophecy, but what I saw... A mountain that screamed with many voices. And a great gathering of people prostrating themselves before a wall of darkness. Only, it wasn't a wall. It was... something else... a vast emptiness, with a great evil peering out across it from somewhere far away. I saw no faces, nor could I tell what words issued from the mountain. But I... sensed... that they were names. Or one name, perhaps. The name of the great darkness. But I couldn't hear it! There were too many voices, I-"

Thule shook himself slightly. For a moment he had been lost inside himself... and for that same moment, David had been lost as well.

A screaming mountain? A wall of darkness?

That was a GREAT ghost story! Only David didn't get the sense that it was just a story. And the idea of voices and darkness seemed too familiar.

"I left that place," Thule continued. "I left the Path, and traveled south. I learned of your town. I learned many things... none of which I liked. The Lord of the Rune kept me, and guided me. I began to suspect what must be happening here. I learned of the place you call the Hill, with its two graveyards... one for the remembered, and one for the forgotten. It was the forgotten that cried out in my vision. I knew I had to go to them. I found the place where they lay, and I dug... and I found this..."

Thule held up the tiny skull. He looked at it, then at David, then at the skull once more.

"It is a child, no older than you" he announced. "All of them... all of them are children."