"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-"
He wrapped strong arms around her and pressed his lips against hers, and she lost herself in that embrace. For a sweet moment, as he held her, she felt safe and secure for possibly the first time in her life.
And for just one thrilling moment, she felt exactly where she was meant to be.
As though realizing what he was doing, he broke the kiss and scrambled away. She sat there for a breath, held in the lingering sensation of his lips, before her senses returned.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"No," said Walker. "I cannot."
Arya sat back, weighing him with her eyes. Walker made no move, except to look away into the darkening sky. His words had been simple, short, and seemingly empty, but expressed a pain that tore at her heart.
"Will you do something for me?"
"Perhaps," replied Walker.
"Sing."
The druid courier paused on her mare, furrowing her brow.
There was nothing unusual about the road, at least nothing she could see. The sun was shining and a stream trickled water down a side path. The wind was not overly cold today-it was, perhaps, the first warm spell Quaervarr had known in a long time.
"No worries, girl," Peletara said to her mount in the druidic tongue. "Just thought I heard something, that's all."
The chestnut mare snorted.
A crossbow bolt flew out of the boughs of a tree farther up the road, driving into one of the horse's eyes. The mare, killed instantly, fell, trapping the startled druid beneath her. The huge weight fell on her leg, snapping it, and Peletara gasped in pain. She looked all around for her attacker, struggling to draw her sickle.
A black boot stepped on her hand.
She looked up, following the length of black breeches to a mottled green and gray cloak that had, until just then, blended in perfectly with the trees.
Peletara recognized him.
"Lord…" she said. "Lord Meris?"
He smiled. Even as his sword scraped out of its scabbard, the attacker bent down and traced a finger down her cheek.
The touch of death.
Walker stiffened, as though something had gouged him. Arya reached out, but he shook his head.
With a troubled look, Walker turned to her.
"What?"
"Sing for me," she repeated.
Walker hesitated. Then he shook his head. "My song was ended," he said. "Fifteen years ago."
When he was distracted, Arya kissed him. She pressed her lips against his cold mouth, kissing him gently at first, then in passion and hunger. She could feel the heat that lurked beneath his icy lips, felt it begging for release.