behind a mask of ice. 'My perversion? Have you forgotten that it was I who taught you your own perverse powers? I who returned you to life when you should be dead? If anything, we share the same corruption.'
She waved at Arya, where she stood at Walker's side with her sword and shield up, but Gylther'yel addressed Walker.
'You favor the living, though you and I belong in the cult of the dead. Rhyn, you disappoint me. I had thought your mind broader than that of a mere human.'
'This is my choice,' said Walker.
'You merely confirm my over-estimation of your intellect,' said Gylther'yel. 'Humans cannot choose. Lyetha could not choose between Dharan Greyt and Tarm Thardeyn until circumstance forced her hand. Dharan Greyt could not choose between weeping for the love he had lost and vengeance against the man-and the boy-who had stolen her, until I called to him fifteen years ago. Meris Wayfarer could not choose between fear of his father and vengeance, until I ordered him to slay his father… and you, his brother.'
She laughed. 'Even your little pet there, Arya Venkyr, cannot choose between justice and her heart.' She turned her attention on the knight, who bristled at her words. 'How do you justify yourself, Nightingale of Everlund, loving a man who espouses the very darkness and murder you deny? Walker, the avenger, the assassin? Vengeance is not justice, and Walker is nothing if not a vengeful god.'
Arya's mouth moved, as though to argue with the ghost druid, but she found she could not. She turned her head, shamed.
Gylther'yel smiled. Then she turned back to Walker.
'And you cannot choose between loyalties,' she said. 'Loyalty to she who raised you from a child, and loyalty to she who would carry your child, she whom you love.' The ghost druid spat the last word.
There it was. Walker knew the words to be true. His resolution wavered and faltered, stolen by the damning accusation. Desperately, Walker opened his mouth to argue.
'Do not attempt to deny it,' she added, interrupting Walker's words. 'I sense the conflict within you, the struggle to raise your blade. You cannot choose. You claim to dwell in darkness, Rhyn Greyt, you claim resolve and unwavering resolution, but you dwell in ambivalence only.'
'You betrayed me,' said Walker as he lifted the shatterspike and pointed it toward the ghost druid. His resolution had wavered, but now anger replaced it-a long-simmering rage that had been galvanized by the sound of his blood name. 'I was your guardian-and you betrayed me. I have no choice but to-'
Gylther'yel laughed aloud. 'And so you allow me to make your choice for you, once again,' she said. 'Young fool. You have never 'chosen,' all your life-all has been as I have directed, all as I have planned. I created your vengeance, so that you would wipe the truth away. I delayed you these fifteen years so that your foes would not recognize you as the boy they had killed and reveal the truth. The weak-willed Meris was the final test-of your abilities and your loyalties-and you have passed that test. I have made you my willing tool, my dark falcon, my hunting wolf, who claims independence and cannot sense the leash that binds him to me.'
It sounded so preposterous-had not Gylther'yel been the one stopping his vengeance? Had not she tried to kill him with Meris, first in the forest, then in Quaervarr? But something inside Walker, something buried in the depths of his heart, knew-hoped-it to be true.
'Why? How could you do this to me?' asked Walker through clenched teeth.
Gylther'yel assumed a hurt expression.
'Everything I have done, I have done for love of you,' she said. 'To strengthen you. To raise the god of ghosts you have become, Son.'
'Son?' asked Walker in complete astonishment. In his heart, though, he felt that she spoke the truth. Or, rather, he prayed with every fiber of his being that she spoke the truth.
The shatterspike shook in his trembling hand and he fell to his knees. The emotions he had kept long suppressed were surfacing with terrible force. Gylther'yel was right-even as she had betrayed him, he had known that his reins belonged to her. As he thought back to every argument, he realized that she had manipulated him into his course. Gylther'yel, the stern, distant mother, controlled his every action with an iron hand and velvet words.
'Walker?' Arya asked, reaching out to comfort him. Gylther'yel's eyes flicked to her, and she extended a clawed hand toward the knight.
Sudden tremors tore through the grove and threw Arya to the ground. A hulking claw of earth erupted from the ground and caught her between its five fingers. The knight screamed and struggled, but the fingers-each as thick as her body-were too strong. The claw closed around her and held her aloft, even as Gylther'yel closed her hand halfway and smiled.
The ghostwalker, stunned at the ghost druid's attack, had just leaped to his feet when a ring of fire surrounded him, cutting him off from Arya. He slashed at the flames with his shatterspike, and the tip of the blade glowed red with heat.
'Walker!' screamed Arya. 'Don't give up! Don't give in to-' Her words were cut off in a screech of pain as Gylther'yel closed her hand tighter and the claws closed around Arya's body. The vines that bound the unconscious Amra Clearwater reached up and began whipping at the knight, tearing at her metal armor and exposed skin.
Walker instantly retreated into etherealness, meaning to leap through the flames and attack, but Gylther'yel's fire burned just as brightly there. Walker cursed himself for a fool-of course the ghost druid's magic pierced the veil between worlds. Such was the nature of the netherworld powers they shared.
Fighting the helpless rage that clawed at his heart, Walker turned back to Gylther'yel and held his sword low to the ground.
Why? he asked, and the words flowed from his mind, but, in his sinking heart, he knew the answer. She had lied. This was an attempt to delay him, not to express any real love. Gylther'yel had indeed sent Meris to kill him. Her words had startled him, and he had fallen into her trap.
Gylther'yel wove her hands in another casting, and the wall of fire began to close around Walker. Once again, and for the last time, I make your choice for you, she said in his head. You have the choice to die, the choice I denied you fifteen years ago, and I choose that you will take it now.
He had been a fool to trust in Gylther'yel, a fool to listen to her coaxing words. Meris had not been a test-he had been Gylther'yel's attempt to slay her errant guardian. It had all been a trick, a trap designed to stab at his deepest desire-the desire for another.
It was so welcoming, so easy to fall into the embrace of a mother, or a father, or even a lover, and to let his choices be determined by another. So easy…
And now he would pay the price for his dependence, his lack of self-worth, a fault that had been buried beneath years of darkness, vengeance, and hatred. All of his life was coming to an end, all of his strength was unraveling.
The ghostwalker knew himself defeated.
Wriggling, ignoring the crushing pain that threatened to shatter her limbs, Arya finally managed to pull her blade free. She brought the borrowed Quaervarr steel down on the earthen hand, sending sparks and shards flying. Though her arm soon went numb from the ringing vibrations her swings caused, she sent a spider web of cracks across the thumb of the hand.
Suddenly a soul-wrenching cry that broke into a high-pitched wail shattered her concentration. The scream split the boundaries of life and death and jarred her very soul.
Walker's scream.
Panicked, Arya looked over at the ghost druid and ghostwalker and her breath caught. Walker had vanished, but somehow she could feel him there. Even now, she knew he fought beyond her physical sight, but not beyond the range of her heart.
Nor, she realized, beyond the range of her voice.
Though she could not see him, his ghostsight would allow him to see-and more importantly hear-her.
'Rhyn Thardeyn!' she cried. 'Rhyn Thardeyn! I believe in you, Rhyn! I believe in you!'
As she shouted those words, words that did not even break Gylther'yel's concentration, she brought her sword down on the stone finger with one last mighty blow. The blade was terribly notched and bent but it held for
