The Ghost Sister (32 page)

At last we came to the place where the flying boat was supposed to lie, according to Shu. I wasn't really expecting to find anything there, but the boat lay in plain view: a strange thing, all glossy wet curves and folds like the skin of the small creatures which live in ponds.

Morrac stopped dead. “What,” he said, “is
that?
”

“It is a boat,” I told him. “Ghosts use it to travel from place to place.” I have to admit that I was rather enjoying my unaccustomed supernatural authority. “As will we.”

“You're not serious. I've no intention of going anywhere near that thing.”

“Then stay behind.”

“Eleres …” he said uncertainly. I didn't answer. Shu was walking around the boat, and she was frowning again. I walked across to join her, and could not resist reaching out and putting my hand cautiously on the boat's side. It felt warm, but not like metal that had lain in the sun. Gently, Shu moved my hand away.

“I shouldn't have touched it,” I said.

But she murmured, “That's the problem, Eleres. You shouldn't be able to.”

“Why not?”

“Because this boat has a defense of its own. Or had, anyway. You shouldn't be able to get near it; it should deflect you. But something's happened. Wait here.”

She pressed her own hand against the side of the boat, and an opening folded back. It looked damp and organic within, like a plant of some kind. I'd never seen anything like it before. I glanced at Morrac, who was hovering on the edges of the little plateau.

“What's it doing?” he called.

“I don't know.”

“Come away, Eleres. Leave it.”

“No,” I murmured, looking up at the curved side of the boat. “Not if it can take me to find Mevennen.”

“What does your sister have to do with this?” he asked blankly.

“She went with the ghosts. Remember her note?”

“Eleres, that was just some fantasy, that's all. Your sister's mad,” he said, but he did not sound too sure.

Shu reappeared, and her face was full of dismay. “It isn't working,” she said. She sounded almost as though she couldn't believe her own words.

“Why? What's wrong with it?”

“I don't know. I can't get anything to respond—the controls, anything. It's just
dead.
”

I helped her down and she stood wiping her hands mechanically on her torn jacket, her face weary and defeated.

“Eleres, you don't know how important this is. I have to get back. My companions—they're doing something that could affect everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone on this planet, perhaps. I don't know.”

“I don't understand,” I told her in alarm.

“It'll take a long time to explain, and we don't
have
time.”

“Can't you talk to your companions?”

“No, I keep trying but there's no response. I don't even know where they are.”

“Are you sure there's nothing you can do with the boat?”

“I told you, I don't even know what's wrong with it!”

“I know nothing about these things, but you said it had its own defense. Maybe the town defense had some effect on it.”

Shu stared at me. “That's not such a bad suggestion … I'm sure it affects the communication device. Maybe the fields interacted, somehow.” She rubbed a dusty hand over her eyes. “I've
got
to get back. But it's a hell of a long way— beyond the mountains, on the edge of the Great Eastern Waste.”

“You'd have to cross the Gulf of Temmerar, or go around it … There are supposed to be ways through the mountains, but very few people have ever gone there,” I said. “And it's a dangerous place. Is this the only boat your people have?”

“No. We brought two of them with us. I think my companions have taken the other one.” She frowned. “I was supposed to keep in regular contact. I don't know why they haven't come looking for me.”

“Maybe once we reach the high ground and we're well away from the defense lines, you might be able to speak to your companions,” I suggested. I understood very little of
the ghosts'ways, but they seemed to be affected by the defenses, just as we were.

“Very well,” Shu said reluctantly. “Let me have one more try with the boat, first.”

I waited with Morrac while she vanished inside the curves of the boat. He was very quiet, for once. He stood watching the boat, narrow-eyed. At last he said, “How long have you been involved with such things, Eleres?”

“Long enough.”

“These dealings with ghosts could do nothing to help Sereth, though.”

“No,” I said shortly. “We had you to contend with for that.”

Shu stepped out of the boat, and shook her head.

“There's nothing you can do?” I said, but it was not a question I needed to ask.

She sighed. “Better start walking,” was all that she said.

We climbed higher into the mountains. When evening came, I lit a small blaze, to keep out the chill, and we ate in silence. Scrupulously, I gave Shu a larger portion of the rations: it seemed easier to treat her as though she were real and she gave me a grateful, embarrassed glance. I expected Morrac to object, but he said nothing. It had grown very cold, a welcome change to me after the stifling heat of the town. Shu rolled herself up in a light covering of some kind that seemed to unfold out of nothing, and was almost instantly asleep. I settled back against the rock wall, drew my sword to rest upon my knees, and wrapped myself in my coat.

Morrac came to lie beside me, uninvited, and I listened to his breathing deepen. At last he rolled over to embrace me in his sleep and we lay like this, back to front. I was glad of his warmth but I slept fitfully. Voices drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes clear snatches of conversation, as if overheard. I remember hearing two men talking inTaittic, very clearly, as if the words had covered the thousands of
miles from Attury, jumped the mountains and buried themselves in my ear. Somewhere around midnight, the wind rose, tearing at the ground and blurring the stars over the Otrade. I glanced up at the edge of Snakeback, rising in darkness. Nothing moved, only the slow progression of the stars across the sky, until the gray light of the rising sun drove them from the day.

The next day was cooler still, whether due to the waning of summer or to the higher climate of the mountains. The morning air was a cold breath against my skin. At the edge of the small plateau the earth was scuffed, freshly disturbed, and yet I had heard nothing. The air held a rank, pungent odor, spice and carrion, a human smell. Suspiciously, Shu sniffed the air.

“What's that?” she asked. “Animals?”

“Landwalker or road's children.”
Jheru
, I thought with a spark of hope.

“Someone was here during the night?” she whispered. I saw her shiver.

“Don't worry,” I said. “They'll leave us alone, unless they're very hungry.” As soon as the words were out my mouth, it struck me that this might have been a little tactless. Shu stared at me.

“Well, that's very reassuring,” she remarked dryly. Morrac and I scouted around, but could find no one, and so, cautiously, we moved on.

It was a barren land, golden with lichen, and the earth was dusty. The rocks grew tall around me and the wind blew dust into my face so that I covered my mouth with my collar. Morrac and Shu too were coughing. I smelled water and blood and the warmth of living things, and then that familiar pungent odor again, carrion and rotten skins and the prickle of eyes on my back.

Morrac said, very low, “They haunt the hills. Do you think your friend Jheru's gone to them?”

“I don't know—” but the thought gave me added hope.

The going was rough, this high in the mountains, and I helped the ghost over the steeper places. We made our way slowly, trying to locate a path among the splintered shards of rock. The light passed early and we found ourselves walking through a great curtain of cloud, trailing down from the heights. We had climbed so high that there was already snow on the ground. Toward sunset, the cloud lifted and the wall of the Otrade appeared behind us, touched with rose by the dying sunlight. The light glittered across the snow, running red over spills of ice and vanishing into the hazy air. Above us, high on the cliffs, I saw a house. It was a squat stone tower, the walls glowing a little in the sudden sunlight.

“Look,” Shu said hopefully, chafing her cold hands. “There's a place up there.”

“We could claim hospitality for the night, perhaps,” Morrac agreed.

I did not know the people in this part of the world, although they should be closely enough related to us not to be wholly hostile. I started to walk toward the side of the cliff, seeking a path, but then it seemed as though a great black shadow rose out of the snow and a hollow note rang through the air. For a moment, my vision darkened and when it cleared I was on my knees in the snow. Morrac was helping me up, his face blank with incomprehension and dismay.

“What happened?” Shu gasped.

“Some kind of defenses. Dark energy, underneath the ground.”

The sun went in, and the day was abruptly gone.

“I know this place now,” Morrac said in a whisper. “Satra Dasaya. The winter home of the ai Staren. They say they came from the forests north of Darramada, and that they breed only with one another or those they catch. That house is built on a night line, a dead road.” Shu was gazing at him in horror. He paused, and shivered. “It's said they hunt for pleasure.” This was not a place to walk beyond
dark. Hastily, we set off through the snow, heading west, disregarding the falling mist. I did not think that anyone followed.

Here and there lay pockets of fog, trapped in the deep gullies of the mountain, and we took a wrong turning somewhere, losing the path. We struggled along, trying not to miss our footing on the treacherous rocks, and eventually deemed it best to stop and make camp. When the cloud cleared, we found ourselves in an unfamiliar place, a narrow gorge winding between the russet rocks. We picked our way carefully. It is in such places that predators gather. I could not sense or smell anyone's presence, but this was not to say that no one was there. We had been passing through this narrow crevasse for some time when we rounded a corner and the rising wind dashed rain into my face, blinding me.

I felt Shu's hand on my arm, steadying me as I stumbled. I passed a hand across my eyes to clear my vision, and when I could see clearly, I found myself standing before a column of stone. This was no natural formation, although I had to look carefully to see it. The marker rose from the floor of the crevasse, a rough pillar of mauve-gray stone, bearing, very faintly, the carved whorls of signs. None was familiar to me except one: the series of dots and lines which mark the passage of birds, the migration patterns of ethiet or serai, which leave the mild lands in the autumn and head out to sea to cross the roaring world and spend the winter in the south. Even here, the world rose up to remind me; Sereth had been named for one of these birds, pale eyed and white winged. Morrac recognized the sign as well, for his face grew remote and closed.

I could not distinguish any other marking; signs change as the world changes and the patterns which this stone had shown were no longer there. Inconsequentially, I thought of the ruins which are said to scatter the face of the north; all the places deserted by the world, the meridian lines of earth energy withdrawing or changing. In response to Morrac's
questioning glance, I went down on one knee beside the base of the marker and laid my hand on the wet earth. Deep down below the rock itself I felt a current, very faint but very strong, running northward into the mountains. It was not water, but some kind of mineral, and it was continuous, without a pulse. I looked to the south, but could see nothing through the sudden rain. Above the marker, however, a series of footholds in the rock face crossed diagonally upward, and we climbed, slipping on the damp stone but at last reaching the top of a low ridge. The whole of the twilight Otrade was wreathed in cloud, moving swiftly among the peaks. Below, in the valleys of the lower slopes, mist boiled up like steam from a kettle, to be picked up by the wind and tossed streaming into the air. To the southwest, I found what I was looking for: a notch in the cliffs which ran dark against the storming sky, in line with the marker and, to the north, with an outcrop of eroded rock.

“A line of three signs,” Morrac murmured. Those who had marked these old paths knew what they were doing: drawing signs on the face of the world to help the lost. Shu's face was puzzled.

Descending the ridge, we set off to the south.

At length, the dip in the cliffs lay above us. It rose over a steep-sided basin in the cliff face, and there was a curious smell in the air, a chemical odor still strong above the freshness brought by the rain. There were gaps in the rock, steaming with what I first took to be mist, and then saw was smoke. There are such places in Eluide, where the earth opens up and vents gases and even fire. It was not a comfortable place, and only the rain made it tolerable, but it was also clear that the storm had set in for the night and that if we were to go any farther, we would be drenched.

We took refuge in a high cave up in the cliffs and it was there that we discovered the second sign of habitation in the Otrade. The cave widened out toward the back, not deeply, but enough to provide shelter, and someone had hacked out
a low bed in the rock wall. There were more of them as one went farther back into the cave, like a series of steps in the rock. This was nothing recent, for there were no signs of life, and no sense of it, either, only the underlying mineral odor. Nonetheless, we investigated the place thoroughly before we judged it safe, and then we sat down on the low ledges to wait out the rain. I do not remember falling asleep, and I do not think I dreamed. When I awoke, with Morrac curled against me, I found that the storm had blown itself out and a wind that spoke of the sea slipped through the valleys. We walked on, with the cloud-ringed summit of the Otrade behind us and the memory of Jheru, like a shadow in the unchanging silence of the mountains, running from me like water.

We camped that night in a cleft in the mountain wall. By early evening, the weather had cleared and the stars lay in a band across the sky: a great sheaf of light like grain. It had grown very cold, and I could smell snow in the air, drifting down from the high lands that rose dimly above us. We lit a fire and slept early. I lay awake for a long time, staring up at the skies and watching the stars wheel across the arc: the ember of Rhe which never leaves the northern heavens for long, the blue star Achaut which heralds snow and the little constellation of Rereth, the marshbird. They were not my stars, not yet. The constellations that rise at your birth make you what you are, so they say, and I was a winter child.