‘What is it, Gilmour?’ Steven asked, nervously turning the hickory staff in his hands.
‘I don’t know. But it is watching everything we do.’
‘Can you talk with it?’
‘I plan to try.’ Searching between the young evergreens, Gilmour added irritably, ‘If we can get it to stand still for half a moment.’
‘Do you suppose it was sent here by Malagon? Like the Seron or the grettans?’
‘I don’t know.’ Gilmour moved rapidly into the trees in an effort to flush the spirit out into the open. ‘It doesn’t seem to mean us any harm… yet.’
The trees, just tall enough to block his view, would have made perfect Christmas trees for the average Colorado home, but as a grove, Steven thought, they were a confusing maze of identical clones, all conspiring to keep him at least one half step behind Gilmour as the old man hustled about. Steven rounded a corner and suddenly came upon the wraith; Gilmour was nowhere in sight.
‘Christ,’ Steven yelled and raised the staff to ward off any ghostly attack.
None came. The spirit simply hovered above the ground, its head, shoulders, upper arms and torso now clearly visible. Its extremities seemed to have been forgotten, as if hands and feet were useless in the afterlife; Steven marvelled at how its fringes appeared to dissipate like a cloud of pipe smoke on an undetected breeze. Gilmour came up behind him and Steven jumped. ‘How did you get back there?’
‘Never mind,’ the old man said as he studied the wraith with a practised eye. Steven was convinced this was not the first spirit Gilmour had ever chased through the woods.
Drawing confidence from the magician’s presence, Steven turned to study the creature more closely. One strange feature moved in and out of focus; Steven suddenly realised what he was looking at.
‘It’s a belt buckle, B-I-S! ’ Steven said excitedly, ‘I recognise it! It came from my bank, many years ago. And I know who he is – his photograph hangs in our lobby. He was one of the first tellers at the Bank of Idaho Springs.’
Barely had Steven finished speaking when the wraith vanished, breaking apart with a sense of solemnity and floating off through the rain.
They made camp in the lee of a rock formation: mean shelter, but the best they could find. All were exhausted, but with wet blankets wrapped around wet clothing, no one anticipated sleeping well. Garec was unable to get a fire started so the companions dined on cold rations.
Gilmour’s pipe still burned, though and Mark speculated on the magician’s other means of keeping his tobacco fresh and dry. Steven forced a smile as his roommate motioned towards Gilmour’s pipe; he shrugged as Mark indicated the dripping stack of tinder and sticks Garec had tried unsuccessfully to ignite.
Gilmour caught Mark’s pantomime and smiled wryly. ‘Even if I lit the tinder, the rain’s too heavy to allow any fire to keep going,’ he explained.
Emotionally and physically exhausted, no one felt like talking. In spite of the cold and wet, after nearly two avens, Garec, the last of the company still awake, finally drifted into uneasy sleep.
Steven woke with a start shortly before dawn. The rain had stopped at last and the mountain was deathly quiet. Blanketed with a heavy, humid coverlet, the dank hillside felt like the foetid interior of a freshly breached tomb. Nothing moved; Steven lay there silently staring up at unfamiliar constellations before rising slowly to a sitting position. There at the edge of their small encampment, hovered the pale, ghostly remains of Lawrence Chapman’s first employee.
Steven couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he had often gazed at the photograph in the lobby case, admiring his outlandish attire, particularly the enormous belt buckle embossed with the letters BIS. And here they were once again, this time staring at him from across the hillside.
Steven stealthily reached for the hickory staff, bracing himself for yet another battle with a monster from a netherworld that should never even have existed – but the wraith did not charge. Instead, the creature’s diffuse facial features came sharply into focus. Steven watched it; he thought it might be trying to communicate. The wraith’s lips moved silently; Steven struggled to understand.
‘Mark, wake up,’ Steven urged quietly, but Mark did not stir. ‘Garec,’ he said, poking the Ronan with the staff, but Garec slept soundly as well. ‘What’s happening?’ Steven asked, then understood. ‘You’ve done this to them.’
The wraith nodded.
Steven grew angry. ‘Leave them alone.’ He stood and drew the hickory staff up with him. ‘Leave them alone, or you’ll have to deal with me.’ Secretly, he hoped his threat would work. He had no idea whether the staff’s magic would respond to his summons again.
Ignoring him, the wraith continued its ardent effort to communicate.
Steven looked askance at the ghostly apparition. ‘Okay, I guess you’re not harming them. What are you saying? Is it Nerak?’
The nearly translucent bank teller nodded again. Then, strangely, its face blurred, as if it were looking off into the distance behind Steven. It mouthed some urgent, unknown message – and disappeared into the night.
As Steven watched the wraith fade, he heard footsteps behind him. Turning on his heels, he brought the staff up in a protective stance as he strained to see into the darkness. It was Sallax. Steven exhaled a long sigh, the pounding in his chest making it difficult to speak.
‘Sonofabitch, Sallax,’ he whispered in English, ‘you scared me.’
‘Steven?’ Sallax was surprised anyone had heard him approach. ‘Go back to sleep.’ Mark and Garec stirred sleepily, the wraith’s spell now broken; Steven assumed the spirit would not return that night. He was wide awake now, so he peeled off his wet blanket and set about trying to start a fire. Searching under the rocky shelter for anything even remotely dry to use as kindling, he wondered where Sallax had been. He summoned his courage and turned to ask, but the big Ronan had already fallen asleep.
At dawn, Garec woke and immediately started up the trail ahead of the group. ‘With this rain, any game below the tree line will have taken cover,’ he said as he adjusted his twin quivers. ‘I’ll see if I can flush something out.’ He moved off quickly before Sallax or Gilmour could stop him.
Just a few hundred paces above their camp Garec heard the sound of an animal, probably a deer, bounding through the underbrush. Sliding along the ground Garec felt like a wraith himself: invisible and deadly. His senses were strangely acute this morning – he credited hunger and fatigue. Garec kept his face down, almost in the dirt and held his breath. He didn’t want anything catching sight of his pale skin in the early light. Even a squirrel might cry out a warning and cause the deer to change direction. He and his friends needed this meat. Garec thought he could smell the animal approaching.
Exhaling slowly, he timed his leap with practised precision. As his arrow bedded itself deep into the animal’s chest he was certain he saw a look of horror pass over its face. The deer didn’t have a chance; it stumbled once, then crashed headlong into a dense thicket. It barked loudly, a death rattle, and then fell silent.
Garec felt the usual bitter mixture of exhilaration and regret. The Bringer of Death had struck again. He stood up, brushed mud and leaves from his tunic and moved towards the thicket.
The deer moved. Without thinking, Garec dropped to one knee, nocking an arrow as he did so in the fluid motion perfected when he was still a boy. He did not fire blindly into the underbrush, but waited, watching for the deer to burst from the thicket. It was impossible the animal was still alive. He had hit it squarely in the chest, driving the arrow deep into its lungs; perhaps even through its heart. Yet he could hear it blundering about.
Garec waited. His companions would be coming along the trail pretty soon and the prospect of fresh venison would surely motivate them to help him flush out the animal and kill it. The beast was quite likely to attack in a final rush of defensive adrenalin and he had no wish to face the deer’s antlers by himself.