|
Garmund pushed through the brush, too eagerly wrapped in exploring the ruins to note the ease with which the vines yielded to his feet. Had he gone but a few feet to either side of his path, he would have been tangled in a deep overgrowth, untouched by any creature save maybe the squirrels and birds, for uncounted years.
The easy path ended abruptly in a screen of branches that hung in thick clusters before Garmund's face. He paused for a moment, puzzled. Had an animal made the path he had followed, it shouldn't have ended so quickly, and certainly not with this screen, which almost seemed to have been carefully draped in vines.
Garmund's excitement would not be stayed. He doggedly tugged at the branches and made an opening just large enough to allow Falco and him to pass. Garmund stepped through, and gave a sudden cry.
A round clearing stretched in front of him with a jagged stone wall at its center, curving into the remnants of a circle. Where the missing stones had fallen from the wall, they made mounds of earth and stone near the wall's base. All were thickly overgrown with the same vines.
But the ruin was not the only cause of Garmund's start. He ran to the center of the circle and pointed at the ground, where the remains of a campfire shouldered.
"Master Falco!"
The hobbit came through the screen of branches.
"Well, lad? Do you like the ruin?"
"Look! Someone has been here."
|