the likes of you! I'll go fiddle for-for-'
'For who, wench?' Thom laughed, snapping his fingers at her. 'For the Sire?'
'For the Skull Hill Ghost!' she snarled without thinking. 'I reckon he'd know a good fiddler when he heard one, even if a lout like you doesn't!'
Thom threw back his head and laughed. 'From braggart t' liar in one breath!' he said derisively. 'You? Fiddle for the Ghost? Ye'd never dare set foot on Skull Hill in daylight, much less by night! Why, ye never even step outside th' building oncet the sun goes down! I bet ye're so 'fraid of the dark, ye hide yer head under the covers so's th' goblins don' git ye!'
'Liar, liar,' taunted Kaylan, wagging his finger at her. 'Little girls shouldn't lie t' their betters. Little girls should know their place. Specially when they're old 'nuff t' be big girls.' He grinned, insinuatingly. 'Specially when there's big boys as can give 'em things, an' do nice things for 'em, if they've got the wit t' be nice back.'
If she'd had any notion of backing down, those words put the idea right out of her head.
'I'll show you who's a liar!' she shouted, too angry to keep her voice down. 'I'll show you who's the better around here! I'll go tonight! Right now! Then we'll see who's the coward and who isn't!'
She dashed for the stairs, and took them two at a time, grabbed her fiddle from the shelf, and pelted down the stairs again as fast as her feet could take her without breaking her neck. She burst into the common room to see Jeoff just entering from the kitchen, alerted by the shouting. He turned around to see her hitting the bottom landing with a thud.
'Rune!' he called, holding out a cautionary hand. 'Rune, what's a-goin' on?'
'You tell him,' she spat at Kaylan, as she headed out the door, fiddle in hand, at a fast, angry walk. 'You started this, you bully-you tell him.'
By then she was out the door, and the walk had become a run, and no one of Jeoff's girth was going to be able to catch up with her. She pelted down the dirt road as hard as she could run, her fiddle case bumping against her back where she'd slung it, her heart burning within her and driving her to run even faster, as if she could outdistance the cruel taunts.
At least her parting sally should get Kaylan and his friends into a situation they'd have a hard time explaining themselves out of. Jeoff wasn't going to like losing his help for the night.
She took the road away from the village, deeper into the forested hills, slowing to a walk once she was out of sight of the inn and it looked as if there wouldn't be any immediate pursuit.
By then, her side hurt and she was winded and sticky with sweat and road dust. And by the time she reached the place where the Old Road joined the new one, she'd had ample chance to cool down and think about just how stupid she'd been.
The Old Road represented a more direct path through the hills-but one that was never taken after dark. And, more often than not, local travelers avoided it even in daylight. Hence the overgrown condition of the Old Road, the grasses sprouting in the eroded ruts, the bushes creeping up onto it a little more every year. Even though the Old Road would save the weary traveler several miles, no one took it who had the slightest chance of being on it after the sun went down.
For there was a ghost that haunted the place, a vengeful, angry ghost; one that inhabited the Skull Hill Pass. It was no legend; it had been seen reliably by the few very fortunate souls who had managed to elude his grasp by fleeing his pursuit past the running water of the stream at the foot of the hill. The new road had been built fifty years ago, or so Rune had been told, after Father Donlin went up on the hill to exorcise the Ghost, and was found up there in the morning, stone cold dead, with a look of utter terror on his face.
That, in fact, was how most of the victims were found; and no one who ever went up there at night returned alive. Those few who had escaped death had been going down the hill when the sun set, having miscalculated or suffered some mishap on the road that had delayed them past the safe hour. There had been five victims besides the Father that Rune herself knew about, and stories spoke of dozens. . . .
No one knew how long the ghost had been there, nor why he haunted and killed. Granny Beeson, Thom's grandmother, and the oldest person in the village, said he'd been there as long as she remembered.
And now Rune was walking straight up the haunted hill, into the Ghost's power. Deliberately. Seeking the Ghost out, a spirit that had killed a holy priest, as if her music had a chance of appeasing it.
With more than enough time, as she climbed the uneven, root-ridged track, to regret her impulse.
She squinted through the trees at the setting sun; she reckoned by the angle that once she reached the top of the pass, she'd have a little more than half an hour to settle herself and wait for her-host. There seemed fewer birds on this track than the other, and they all seemed to be birds of ill-omen: ravens, corbies, blackbirds, black boat-tails.
She tried to think if any of the ghost's other victims had been female. Maybe he only went after men-
But, no. Granny Beeson had said that two of the dead had been lovers running off to get married against the girls' parental wishes, so the thing killed women too.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she berated herself. If I live through this, I am never going to let my temper get me into this kind of mess again. Not ever. I swear.
But first, she was going to have to survive the rest of the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
As sunset neared, the few birds that had been about made themselves vanish into the brush, and Rune was left alone on Skull Hill without even a raven for company. It might have been her imagination, but the trees seemed a little starved up here, a strange, skeletal growth, with limbs like bony hands clawing the sky. It seemed colder up here as well-and the wind was certainly stronger, moaning softly through the trees in a way that sounded uncannily human, and doing nothing for her confidence level.
She looked around at the unpromising landscape and chose a rock, finding one with a little hollow. She spent some time pulling up some of the dry grass of last year's growth, giving the rock a kind of cushion to keep the cold away, and sat down to wait. As the crimson sun touched the top of Beacon Hill opposite her perch, and crept all- too-quickly behind it, she began to shiver, half with cold, and half with the fear she had no difficulty in admitting now that she was alone.
Of all the stupid things I've ever done, this was one of the stupidest.
It was not a particularly spectacular sunset; no clouds to catch and hold the sun's last rays. Just the red disk sinking towards and then behind the hill, the pale sky growing darker-deepening from blue to black, and all too soon; the stars coming out, brightest first, pinpoints of cold blue-white light.
The wind died to nothing just at sunset, then picked up again after the last stars appeared. Rune took out her fiddle with benumbed fingers, and tuned it by feel, then sat on her rock and fingered every tune she knew without actually playing, to keep her fingers limber. And still nothing happened.
She was tired, cold, and her fear was fading. Her bones began to ache with the cold. It would be so easy to pack up, creep down the hill, and return to the inn claiming that she'd fiddled for the Ghost and gotten away.
The idea was very tempting.
But-that would be a lie and a cheat. She swore she'd do this; she pledged her word, and even if the villagers thought her word was worthless, that didn't make it so. If she broke her word, if she lied about what she'd done, what would that make her? As worthless as the villagers claimed she was.
Besides, they probably wouldn't believe me anyway.
The moon appeared, its cold silver light flooding over the hills and making them look as if they'd been touched with frost. She marked time while it climbed, keeping her fingers warm by tucking them in her armpits, and taking out the fiddle now and again to make sure it was still in tune. There was a great deal more life around here than there had been in the daylight-unless her presence had frightened everything away until she stopped moving. Owls hooted off in the distance, and a few early crickets sang nearby. Frogs croaked in the stream below her as bats and a nighthawk swooped through the pass, looking for flying insects. And once, a great hare loped lazily down the road, pausing in surprise at the sight of her, and standing up on his haunches to take a better look, for all the world like a white stone garden statue of the kind the Sire had in his pleasure-garden.
At the sight of him, she lost the last of her fear. He was so quizzical, so comical-it was impossible to be afraid of a place that held an animal like this.
She chuckled at him, and he took fright at the sound, whirling on his hind feet and leaping into the underbrush in a breath.
She shook her head, relaxing a little in spite of the chill. There was no Ghost, most likely, and perhaps there
