Ghostwalker - Erik Scott De Bie [24]
"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,