Walker did not dispute the point. He had been waiting in the grove for Gylther'yel to return, and he had known what she would say.
Indeed, two nights past, he replied in the same ghostly tongue. The pale bird grew larger, its wings became arms, and its beaked face grew into smooth elf features. The dancer Torlic has joined the woodsman Drex in death. Lord Greyt knows they were not isolated attacks. He will quaver in terror.
He breathed out and allowed his body to return to the Material world. Vibrancy returned to his surroundings. The grass became green in place of dead gray, and the trees waved soft needles, not skeletal limbs. All around him, he saw soft life where before had lurked only death.
A dubious elf face awaited him. The ghost druid stood, a deep gray cloak wrapped around her bare golden flesh-Gylther'yel disdained excessive clothing when she ran or flew through the woods in wildshape. 'Terror?' Gylther'yel said without mirth. 'I hardly think two murders in the night will inspire terror.'
Walker shrugged, as if to demonstrate that it did not truly matter.
Gylther'yel's face was impassive, but her eyes burned.
'You have not come here to upbraid me,' he said. 'There is something else.'
A hint of a smile played on her golden face.
Walker narrowed his eyes. He knew enough to be wary when Gylther'yel was angered. 'Where have you been these last days?' he asked carefully.
'Where you should have been,' the druid said. 'Watching over my woods.'
Walker's brows furrowed. He knew of her spies-almost every bird and forest animal within miles. They watched for her, and she did little. Unless…
'What does that mean?' he asked.
'I have decided my student needs a lesson in inspiring terror,' she said coldly. 'Three miles east of here, hunters come for you.' She held up a ragged piece of leather that bore the Whistling Stag sigil of Quaervarr. 'I will teach them the penalty for trespassing into my woods.'
'Who are they?' Walker asked, reaching for the cloth.
The sun elf shook her head. She dropped the torn bit to the ground. 'I have spent the last fifteen years teaching you to avoid such irrelevant questions,' Gylther'yel said.
The sun elf grew and her face extended. She fell to all fours as her limbs shortened and she grew the sleek fur of a ghostly, golden fox. As her body shifted into that of the animal, Gylther'yel faded out of his physical sight and into the Ethereal.
The ghostly fox flashed him a fanged grin and bounded off into the trees, heading east. Walker turned to run after her, but then he remembered the discarded leather scrap.
Tentatively, for he knew the pain that this could bring, he stooped low and picked it up between gloved fingers. It was a ragged piece, torn from the hauberk of a suit of hunting leathers. Slowly, gently, Walker drew his black leather glove off, revealing a pale, long-fingered hand.
Hesitantly, he rested his fingers on the leather in his other hand and closed his eyes. Images flowed into him then, along with an emotional swell that blew the breath from his body. The psychic resonance of the piece carried whisperings of memories and visions, hopes and fears. He hated this power, which would manifest whenever his bare fingers touched something not his own, but it was necessary at times.
A round-faced woman, cheeks rosy from the morning chill… two little boys, playing at rangers and orcs with wooden swords…
Sweat dripped down Walker's forehead and his body burned with phantom pain, but he gritted his teeth and held on. The resonance was not strong, but it could overwhelm him if he lost control.
A soldier, not heroic but strong of heart…
The visions faded as Walker dropped the leather to the ground.
He dived into shadows, racing his mistress. Leaping along in the Shadow Fringe, Walker ran faster than any mere mortal could. Ghosts flitted past his peripheral vision and reached out imploring arms to slow him, but Walker was firm in his cause. He gripped the hilt of his shatterspike and prayed he would not need it.
The distance was not great, covered in almost no time through the shadows, but it was only by luck that he found the hunters. Under a darkening sky, with clouds rolling across the sun, the shadows were dissipating, but he could make it. Walker leaped to a shadow near a giant of a man he had fought before. Then he dispelled his shadowalk and stepped out within a sword's length of the captain.
'Leave these woods now,' Walker warned.
' 'Ware!' Unddreth shouted. A mighty warhammer came around at Walker. 'He's here!'
The ghostwalker ducked the swing and stepped inside Unddreth's reach. He grasped the hammer arm in both hands and stared into the genasi's eyes with the full weight of his gaze. 'Fools,' he said. 'You must leave now.'
Unddreth strained against the grip but could not break it. He puffed himself up as large as he could, refusing to be intimidated. Walker swore inwardly.
'Let the captain go!' came a shout from behind him.
A dozen guards were all around Walker, swords drawn and crossbows trained on his face.
Walker ignored the threat. 'Leave now,' he reiterated. 'You do not understand.'
Unddreth grimaced, his arms straining. 'You are under arrest, by order of Lord Singer Dharan Greyt, by the power vested in me by the Silver Marches Confederation-' he rumbled.
'You must leave, or you will surely die,' Walker replied. Clouds were gathering overhead and thunder rolled. 'The Ghostly Lady is coming.'
'A legend,' Unddreth said. 'In the name of High Lady Alustriel and the Silver Marches, I place you under arrest-'
Walker interrupted him again. 'I see you are a good and honorable man. If you are concerned for the lives of your men, you will leave.' Suddenly, the ground beneath Walker's feet became porous and soft, losing its consistency until it was as thin as quicksand.
'No,' he rasped as he sank down. 'Gylther'yel! No!'
One of the crossbowmen started and shot a bolt at him, which Walker instinctively batted aside with his steel bracer. 'Men of Quaervarr, run-'
Before he could croak out more of the warning, the earth swallowed up his face and he could see and speak no more.
Then the heavens rained fire.
Trapped in a womb of dirt, Walker could barely move his limbs. He could only imagine what was transpiring above him. More than that, he could feel, rather than see, death. He would have taken on ghostly form and leaped up through the earth, but Gylther'yel had woven an ethereal net over him. She knew his powers only too well.
Thus, his options exhausted, Walker took a gulp of trapped air and began wriggling, then digging upward, hoping against hope he would arrive in time.
Finally, his reaching fingers struck air and he hauled himself out of the hole in the ground.
The scene that greeted him was one of fury and devastation. Mist mingled with smoke in the glade, blurring his vision. The grasses and trees were singed as by an inferno, and the few standing guards were limping and pulling at icy shards embedded in their flesh. Several of the men were struggling against the limbs of trees, which had reached out to ensnare them. Ghosts of the dead and groans of the dying surrounded him.
Walker counted six living guardsmen, and the captain. Unddreth swiped his hammer at a pack of ghostly wolves that had encircled him, their eyes gleaming with malevolence. The rest of the men had been reduced to cinders or frozen into blackened statues. All killed… destroyed by nature's wrath.
As Walker watched, a bolt of lightning streaked out of the clouds and struck Unddreth directly, throwing him down. The genasi, dazed, struggled to beat off the wolves as they swarmed him. Even as he punched one aside, another wolf leaped atop him and grabbed his arm in its jaws.
Walker leaped to his defense, his sword slashing back and forth, cutting through ghost wolf after ghost wolf.
