"Fine," said Amra with clear hesitation. "I shall send one of my own."
"Excellent," Greyt shouted with a flourish of his hands. The threat past, he grinned. "Now, for the rest of you: go back to your homes and rest your heads, safe in your beds. Your hero protects you all, great and small."
If the cheers had been loud before, they erupted like a volcano now. Hundreds of eyes stared at Greyt in sheer adoration and absolute faith. He was their hero, their master, their shining knight, and he was fully in control of this situation.
Secure in his role, Greyt gave them one more smile, waved, and went back inside his manor to the cheers and shouts of devoted friends.
* * * *
Meris was waiting for him inside the entry hall. "Overdone," said the wild scout.
"Perhaps," allowed the Lord Singer. "It matters little when dealing with the sort of fools who make up frontier towns such as Quaervarr." He beckoned Meris with a wave and began walking toward his bedroom. "Walker escaped?"
"Yes."
"This upsets my plans," said Greyt. "But not irreparably. The trap failed?"
"Walker is formidable, but we had him. He only escaped with help."
"Who?" Greyt asked, though he had already guessed the answer.
"My cousin and her paramours," Meris spat. "She burst in and rescued him. Then her wretched lads covered their escape."
Greyt sighed. "Ah, Niece, Niece, you disappoint me. So obvious, so unsubtle, so... like a knight." He paused at the door to his bedroom. "I have a task for you, boy."
"I can hunt them both down tonight," offered Meris in a harsh whisper. "I need only half a dozen men—"
"No. Another task." Meris furrowed his brows in confusion and Greyt suppressed a smile. "That whore Clearwater is sending one of her lapdogs to warn Stonar of all this. The last thing we need now is our beloved Speaker returning at the head of an Argent Legion. Everything would come undone. Send your rangers into the woods—"
"Consider it done," said Meris. "I'll take care of it personally."
As soon as he realized it was still open, Greyt closed his mouth and regarded his son. That had been too easy, Meris's agreement too fast. Greyt searched the young wild scout's features, but the dusky face was unreadable. Neither could the Lord Singer read Meris's body language—except for the single hand on the sword hilt that spoke volumes.
"Yes," Greyt said, very softly. "And I promise, when you return, Walker and Arya will be yours. Just... do not delay. Silverymoon isn't a day away." The rhyme held none of its luster, and was a death sentence coming from the Lord Singer's lips.
Meris smiled but did not speak. With a curt nod, he turned and padded away.
Greyt watched him go. So Arya's tale had been true: Silverymoon was searching for lost couriers, and Meris was involved somehow. The Lord Singer wondered how this could have escaped his notice. This was a surprise, and nothing pleased Dharan Greyt less than surprises when he was not the one behind the mystery.
Greyt might have asked aloud, but he knew Talthaliel was already weighing this, having read Greyt's thoughts faster than the Lord Singer could have articulated them.
With a derisive whistle, Greyt decided to let the diviner puzzle over this dilemma. He had more important things to do, the first of which was keeping an appointment with his bed.
Greyt opened the door and stopped short in surprise. The woman sitting on his bed was facing away from him, her features shrouded in darkness, but he would recognize that silhouette anywhere.
"I did not expect to see you here," he said coolly.
"I did not think you would," said Lyetha. "I have not been in this room for many winters."
She shifted. She wore nothing beneath the white silk robe wrapped around her delicate curves. She looked so beautiful in the moonlight that Greyt's breath caught. Though he had known her over thirty years, the half-elf did not seem to have aged more than a decade. She still possessed the same youthful vibrancy that had first attracted him.
"It was not always that way," said Greyt. He slid down onto the bed next to her. "There was a time when you called this room your own." He extended his arm around her, and Lyetha did not recoil from his touch. Rather, she leaned her head against his shoulder. "I remember when first we—"
"So you will be a hero again," whispered Lyetha in a soft, hopeless voice.
Greyt blinked. The sweet honey of her voice was filled with bitterness. Lyetha spoke of great things for her husband, but the way she said it turned all the praise to worthless, crumbling ash.
"I have always been a hero," Greyt said with a little smile, an attempt at cheer. "You should know that, beloved." He had not even meant to say the last word, but he found, deep inside, that it was not a lie.
For the first time, Lyetha looked at him, and he saw her azure eyes gleaming into his own. She was as beautiful as he had ever seen her. Her ruby lips parted slightly and she smiled at him. She ran a silky hand down his cheek.
"It is not long until dawn," the half-elf woman said. "The moonshadows grow longest in this dark time."
"Yes." Greyt smiled. He remembered those words, the words she had spoken to him that first time they had awakened together.
He bent in and kissed her. After a long moment, she returned the kiss, releasing her robe and holding his face with both hands.
* * * *
Later they lay in each other's arms in silence and watched the sunrise out Greyt's window, rising somewhere past the Moonwood.
"Love," whispered Greyt.
Lyetha did not respond, but he could tell by her breathing she was listening.
"I know I am a hero in their eyes, the people of Quaervarr, but I care nothing for what they think." His voice wavered, but he ignored his own misgivings. "I only care what you think."
Lyetha met his eyes. "You have been very good to me, my love," she said, touching his cheek.
For a moment, Greyt could see the old fire in her sapphire eyes, and his heart felt so light.
Then she sat up and pulled her robe around her shoulders. "But you have never been a hero, and I fear you never will be," she finished.
His eyes widened and softened. She could not have stung him more with a knife.
Then she stood and walked silently away, leaving the Lord Singer to greet the morning with damp eyes.
Chapter 12
29 Tarsakh
She woke from a dream where a hauntingly beautiful melody surrounded her, bathing her in its dark warmth, like a lover draped in a black cloak…
Awareness returned to Arya gently as she relaxed in the grove, bathing in the warm dawn sunlight that pierced the clouds overhead. The grass was softer than any bed she had ever known. The breeze was cool and soothing and, despite the winter, the air felt almost warm. She was dimly aware that her armor sat stacked a couple paces to her right. Clad in the light garments she wore beneath, she stretched languidly.
It was only when she rolled over onto her side that Arya remembered where she was and how she had come there. She saw that Walker lay limply on his back a short distance away. His cloak pooled around him like blood and the black of his heavy collar made the exposed half of his face seem a skull.
"Torm's shield," Arya breathed. She pushed herself to her knees and crawled over to Walker. Her limbs were surprisingly sore, and she took quite some time to make it those few steps.
"Walker?" she asked. She unlaced his collar so that he could breathe and saw his face for the first time. His handsome elf-touched features were pale and clammy, and his limbs were stiff. She slapped his cheeks and listened at his lips, but there was no breath. Neither could she feel his heart beating within his chest. "Walker!"
Arya tore open the leaf-shaped clasp of his cloak and pulled the dark leather apart. He wore a much-patched cuirass of boiled leather under the cloak and she immediately unlaced the clasp at his shoulder. Her dexterous fingers, used to working with armor ties, had it free in moments, and she ripped it off to give him space to breathe. S
he was almost surprised to find that his face was not scarred.
Walker's chest, muscular and pale, was another matter. Upon his skin lay a network of crisscrossing scars from countless wounds, some minor, some serious. Standing out against his bone-white skin, four wounds in particular caught her eye. Two seemed half-healed: a shallow cut on his chest where his ribs had been crushed and a devastating scar on his upper chest, near his throat. There were two others—a gash on his shoulder and a puncture in his left arm—that were closed and seemed to be healing. The scar below his throat was the worst, a sort of wound Arya had never seen a man live through.
At first she thought the wounds had been inflicted the night before, but she did not recall seeing Walker stabbed. No, they must be old injuries. Why they still looked fresh, refusing to scar, she did not know.
Then she snapped back to reality. Arya had been around dead bodies in her time, and nothing distinguished Walker's body from a corpse.
Had Walker made it to the grove alive only to die in the night? Arya remembered nothing beyond the ghostfire elemental's attack. Had she fought so hard to save Walker only to fail now? Had she lost him before she could figure out the key to this whole mystery?
Tears leaking down her cheeks, Arya knelt beside Walker and pleaded with him to wake, open his eyes, and rise up.
Then, to her surprise, he did.
Walker's eyes flickered open and he looked up at her in confusion.
"What is the matter?" he asked matter-of-factly, though worry flashed through his eyes.
Blinking with wonder, Arya thought her senses had deceived her. "Walker?"
"Of course," said the ghostwalker. "What is wrong?" He sat up with startling smoothness of movement, looking around for attackers, and Arya stumbled back, stunned.
"N-no," she stammered. "I-I just thought you were ... you were…"
"Dead," finished Walker, his voice a dry rasp. He made no move to replace his leathers. She noticed he rubbed at his silver ring, as though reassuring himself.
"Yes," whispered Arya. Remembering the tears on her cheeks, she wiped them away with an embarrassed jerk.
If Walker had noticed the tears, he made no sign.
Rising, Walker drew his sword and stalked around the clearing, peering into the shadows cast by tree branches. It was a wide grove, surrounded on all sides by towering shadowtops and firs taller than any Arya had seen before. A stream ran through it, and a few boulders were scattered around in piles. A doe and her two young stood on the other side of the grove, drinking at a small pool, paying no attention as Walker made his way within an arm's length of them, though he paid them scrupulous attention.
Alone for the moment, and without worry gripping her, Arya felt surrounded by the deepest feeling of peace she had ever known, as though this grove were a font of the primeval nature that had given birth to humankind and all races of Faerun. She had heard rangers and druids speak of the tranquility of the natural world, but she had never felt it herself. Everything seemed right, in balance... all except for the shadowy man walking toward her.
"What is it?" asked Arya, surprised at how calm her voice sounded. "What were you looking for?"
"No one," answered Walker, sitting down cross-legged before her.
It was not until he fixed her with his sapphire gaze that she realized he had not answered her question as she had asked it, but by then it did not matter.
The two sat and stared at one another, neither speaking.
Arya was not sure why, but she felt more comfortable around this man who looked so forbidding than she felt around her friends. She was peripherally aware of his cold aura, but she saw through it. In the light, his eyes shone blue and his hair was a dirty blond. His ears were slightly pointed, though not as pointed as a half-elf's. This man definitely had elf blood in his family line—perhaps even a parent who was a half-elf.
"Why have you brought me here?" she asked, without really meaning to speak.
"I do not know," said Walker.
"You don't know or you can't tell me?"
"Either," came the soft response. Walker reached for the cloak discarded at his side.
Arya caught his hand and his eyes shot to hers. She shook her head. "It's all right." She motioned to his scars. "They don't frighten me."
Walker seemed assuaged by this, but he still hesitated before he sat back, no cloak in hand. Arya had watched an inner conflict take place, she knew, but whether it was over his cloak or her hand on his wrist, she did not know.
She smiled. "You haven't been around many women before, have you?"
For just an instant, the thick aura of resolve slipped from around Walker and she caught the hint of an ironic smile.
It might have been the first real show of emotion she had perceived in him.
"No," he said. "I apologize if I seem ... distant."
"No," said Arya. "No need." She put out her hand to take his again, but he pulled it out of reach. At first she felt hurt, but then she saw the pain in his eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"Until I met you," whispered Walker. "No one had ever touched me without violence."
A wave of sadness washed over her. "No one?" she asked. "Not even your mother?"
Walker's face became stony. "I have no mother," he said. "No father." His eyes closed. "My life began fifteen years ago. The day I was murdered by Dharan Greyt." His face twisted in awful hatred for a breath, then smoothed again.
Arya sat in stunned silence.
"I wield powers beyond your world. You cannot understand." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Having never died, that is."
"How do you know a priest has never raised me from the grave?" asked Arya with a raised eyebrow and a tiny smile.
"The same way you know I have not known many women," said Walker. "I can tell by looking at you."
Arya conceded the point. "If not parents, then who taught you these powers?"
"My teacher is not as important as her teachings. I feel the pulse of the earth, the power in every leaf, rock, and tree. It is not the vibrant life, but the opposite, the spiritual energy of the dead. You cannot see the spirits around you, but they are there. I see them at all times—even now, in this very grove, all around us. Dozens."
"The souls of the dead? Ghosts?" Arya's face went pale as she looked around the grove in vain. She could see nothing but the forest—even the doe and her fawns had bounded away.
"Not ghosts," explained Walker. His voice sounded almost clear. "The departed are not fully departed. They wait for something to be resolved—unfinished business. Just as I have unfinished business with Dharan Greyt."
The comparison sent a chill through Arya.
The noon sky darkened as the clouds that had merely been lurking before asserted their presence over the sun.
"Rarely, I find wraiths, specters, haunts—all things men call the undead," Walker continued. "These are not the same spirits that surround us, but dead people, fully formed in spirit. They grow jealous of the living and malevolent. These spirits avoid such as I, for they have no new secrets to tell, no new horrors to show us that we do not know. But the other spirits—they are always there."
Arya shivered. "And these monsters ... surround us all the time?"
Walker's eyes flicked back to her and he shook his head. "They are not monsters. The spirits that surround us—spirits most cannot see, even with magic—are mere figments of departed souls. They are tiny echoes of those who have lived, loved, hated, and died. They exist so long as someone lives to remember them, so long as someone listens to their whispers, and so long as someone looks for them." He smiled wistfully. "As I do."
Arya's heart fluttered at that smile. Describing the mysterious spirits as though they were his children, Walker seemed almost happy. She felt her body grow warm all over.
Hardly aware that she was doing it until she had done it, she reached out and placed her hands over Walker's ears, pulled his face to hers, and pressed their lips together.
/> At first, Walker sat in stunned shock, then the kiss took on a mind of its own.
Then he seemed to remember himself and pushed her away. Arya fell back onto the ground and gasped, finally aware of what she had done. Her cheeks flooding with heat, she grinned sheepishly and stammered an apology.
"I'm-I'm sorry, I didn't—"
He wrapped strong arms around her and pressed his lips against hers, and she lost herself in that embrace. For a sweet moment, as he held her, she felt safe and secure for possibly the first time in her life.
And for just one thrilling moment, she felt exactly where she was meant to be.
As though realizing what he was doing, he broke the kiss and scrambled away. She sat there for a breath, held in the lingering sensation of his lips, before her senses returned.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"No," said Walker. "I cannot."
Arya sat back, weighing him with her eyes. Walker made no move, except to look away into the darkening sky. His words had been simple, short, and seemingly empty, but expressed a pain that tore at her heart.
"Will you do something for me?"
"Perhaps," replied Walker.
"Sing."
* * * *
The druid courier paused on her mare, furrowing her brow.
There was nothing unusual about the road, at least nothing she could see. The sun was shining and a stream trickled water down a side path. The wind was not overly cold today—it was, perhaps, the first warm spell Quaervarr had known in a long time.
"No worries, girl," Peletara said to her mount in the druidic tongue. "Just thought I heard something, that's all."
The chestnut mare snorted.
A crossbow bolt flew out of the boughs of a tree farther up the road, driving into one of the horse's eyes. The mare, killed instantly, fell, trapping the startled druid beneath her. The huge weight fell on her leg, snapping it, and Peletara gasped in pain. She looked all around for her attacker, struggling to draw her sickle.
A black boot stepped on her hand.
She looked up, following the length of black breeches to a mottled green and gray cloak that had, until just then, blended in perfectly with the trees.
The Fighters: Ghostwalker Page 16
