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-'
