to me. I might take offense.'
Arya was appalled. The lady knight made it a point not to stand on ceremony, but Meris's complete discourtesy made her gape.
Derst stepped up beside Arya. 'Have a care how you address the good lady knight, Goodman,' he said. His words were civil, but when spoken with that whiplike tongue they carried a thinly veiled threat. 'She might take offense at your uncultured tongue.'
Meris's smoldering eyes shot to the rapier-thin knight. His nose turned up. 'Silence, boy,' he said, even though Derst had clearly seen a couple more winters than had Meris. Greyt's son was probably about the same age as Arya. 'Can't you see the wench and I were having a conversation?'
All three started.
Meris continued speaking to Derst. 'Your face displeases me. Begone, before I have to show you out myself.'
'That is no way to talk to a knight,' Bars growled. He looked at Derst and shrugged. 'Well, I can see the argument, but he is a knight, after all, and that's no way to speak in front of a lady.' Meris lifted his brow.
'Aye, so apologize, orc-spawn,' Derst snapped.
Meris looked at him incredulously for a moment, blinked, and laid him low with a right hook. The thin knight staggered back, stunned. Bars lumbered in with a swinging left, but Meris ducked and slammed an elbow into the big man's great belly.
Bars gave a great 'Oof!' and staggered, bending over Meris, who had dropped low.
Meris had his foot behind the big man's ankle and stood up abruptly, throwing Bars to the ground. Next to him, Arya had disappeared, and a charging Derst was in her place. The wiry knight threw a left hook feint, which Meris ignored, and a right fist thrust, which he ducked. Meris bent, put his shoulder into Derst's stomach, and threw the thin man over him.
'Bastard,' Derst gasped as he landed in a roll and reached for a knife.
'You called?' Meris mocked. In response, the thin man's face scrunched.
Bars rose, but Meris shoved him down with his left hand, keeping his eyes on the thin man. Meris's hand went to his sword hilt.
There, it found the point of a long sword hovering at his groin.
Putting his hands out wide, Meris slowly turned. Arya had drawn her sword and was standing just within slashing range.
'Enough of this,' she said. Her eyes were deadly. 'Cousin, I was truly sorry to have offended you, but I take back my apology now.'
Meris rolled his eyes at the sword pointing at his belly and looked up at her with a sarcastic frown. 'You can't be serious, Cousin,' he said contemptuously. 'You side with these fools? They are no better than stupid sheep, and that makes you no better than a shepherdess.'
'At least a shepherdess has some dignity,' Arya snapped back. 'Unlike you, Cousin.'
'Until one takes it from her,' Meris said without missing a beat. Ignoring Arya's sword, he wiped himself free of invisible dust and brushed past her. The two knights gave him angry stares as he strode away, his white cape swirling behind him, driven up by the haste of his walk.
They watched him slam the inner door behind his heels.
'Well,' Derst said, wiping the blood from his nose. 'At least you don't take after that side of the family, Arya.'
Under any other circumstances, Arya might have replied wryly that she wasn't even related to that side of the family, but the encounter with Meris had unnerved her.
That cold hatred, pent up behind walls of calm…
Arya had faced many enemies, but none who frightened her so. She saw through his every movement, heard the bitterness in his voice, and knew that he was utterly coldblooded. Meris was the personification of the injustice the Knights in Silver stood against.
'Arya?' a voice said behind her, startling her from her reverie. 'Are you well?'
'Aye?' She turned and looked into Bars's concerned eyes. As she did so, she realized with a flash that passing such a judgment was unfair. She did not, after all, know Meris. Perhaps he was just temperamental, or abrasive. It hardly justified labeling him…
'I'm sorry, you were saying?' she forced herself to ask.
He smiled weakly. 'Let us be gone,' he said, rubbing his solid belly with a slight wince. 'That bastard's hit made me stomach queasy. And when the demons stop playing in there, I'm going to be hungry.'
'You shouldn't have had so much wine, mayhap then you wouldn't whine so much,' Derst quipped with a wry grin.
'If we don't get moving, maybe I'll just have to eat you,' Bars said.
Arya smiled and was about to add to that, but Derst was already nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 5
26 Tarsakh
Legs crossed and body stripped to the waist, Walker sat peacefully in the forest glade singing the last, bittersweet lines of a song. His ruined voice-like blood flowing through broken glass-mingled with the warm breezes blowing north.
A chilly brook swirled and danced by his feet, flowing from a waterfall that poured over a fallen shadowtop. The sun was setting, painting the forest canopy with emerald light and seeming to set the reddish bark of the firs afire. The snow had melted from the trees already, and not just because of the druidic charm that kept the grove warm. Spring was approaching, and while the snow would not completely disappear until the summer months, the air was warm.
Walker hardly noticed. He did not see the beauty either, for his eyes did not see the world around him.
The shadowy world he walked in his mind was one of ghosts. Colors were so dim that the world seemed painted in shades of gray, and outlines were indistinct. It was difficult for even an experienced ghostwalker to judge where the ground ended and the trees began. A normal mortal would be completely lost, disoriented, and terrified. On the border of material existence, he walked slowly, taking his time and watching. He saw memories of the past as easily as the present. At times, he could not even tell them apart.
He lay on his back, blood spurting from his mouth with every labored breath. Laughing faces… cruel faces hovered above him. Some faces he recognized, and some he did not.
Walker remembered his first visits to the ghost world, when he had been young-one of the first memories he could recall. He had been terrified and had shone so brightly that he had been swarmed with ghosts. His guide had warned him it would happen, but that had not been preparation enough. He would never forget his terror.
Since then, his glow had dulled, even as the shock of entry faded. Now, Walker was coolly accustomed to the bleak landscape of the Ethereal and the Shadow beyond it. It was dark, true, but the ghost world had never held evil: only peace, and his task.
Face calm as it blurred in the Ethereal, Walker took a taste of the peace that surrounded him. Today, almost fifteen years after his first visit, the ghost world was more familiar to him than the living world.
He sensed a presence and turned. A hulking warrior raised its axe to slash at him.
Drex spat upon him. His woodsman's axe gleamed. His growl was that of a beast.
Walker shook his head. Drex was dead. A glimpse of his spirit, that was all he saw.
Ghosts hovered all around him, spirits of those who had passed away: rangers, humanoid creatures who had wandered into the forest and died, and adventurers slain by the forest's dangers. The souls, barely aware and wandering, were the remnants of humans and all those races akin to them-orcs, goblins, and even dwarves. Some spirits, pleasant and dancing around, were those of elves and the fey, rare and joyous things that took comfort in their perpetual, ethereal existence. Many were servants of the Seldarine, but a few tragic ones, the only ones to whom Walker paid any mind, wandered around, unsure of their purpose and without a patron.
The strength of a spirit's passion dictated the vibrancy of its shade, and some seemed truly alive before him.
