“Aside from my training,” Jarvela said. “I can only remember
that you always asked for more ghost stories. I discount my training as
important to you. So we must be ghost hunting.”
“Do not be so quick to dismiss yourself,” Kyouki said,
looking sidelong at Jarvela. “You are right, though. We are ghost hunting. A
specific ghost. We have almost found him.”
The next morning they started early. Unlike every other day
since Jarvela had joined company with Kyouki, the Oswemend seemed to have a
clear idea which way to go. They continued southward along the scrubby edge of
the desert. Gradually, hills grew and slowed their horses. For a day no further
adventure beset them.
The next dawn burned hotter than any Jarvela had ever felt.
He shed many layers of clothing before they started and still dripped with
sweat before an hour had passed. The hills grew hotter and drier as they went
south. Large, sandy rocks began sticking up from the ground, becoming larger as
they went. After not many hours there was more rock than hills. The wind formed
rocks swept up taller and taller. Soon their rode wove around tall rock
formations.
Wind grew through the rocks. The sparse sand whipped up.
Jarvela wrapped a cloth around his mouth to protect his breath. The going got
more difficult every mile—the wind threw around more grit and the ground was
always stonier. Jarvela did not want to believe that some ill will set against
them. He had trouble disbelieving it. A dry voice laughed or cursed in the
wind, raising the hairs on his neck. The first few times he heard it he thought
he imagined it, spiraling through the coarse dust into his face. It sounded so
faintly and seldom that he thought it a brush of wind. The sound of the voice
grew louder, clearer, frequenter, till Jarvela could only believe it. The
laughter sounded scornful and ironic—the curses as bitter as the grit in the
wind blowing in his face.
The sand blowing around had grown so thick Jarvela saw a few
feet ahead of him and no further. He had no clear idea of the terrain anymore,
except that the ground had become dry stone. Kyouki still seemed to know where
he wanted to go. He rode a little ahead of Jarvela, his head bowed and wrapped
in his black silk hood. The cruel voice in the wind drew him on through the
sand. He had found his ghost, Jarvela supposed.
Though the wind developed no change, Jarvela became vaguely
aware through the closening of the air and the tightening of the rushing sound
that they had ridden into a canyon. Jarvela felt they had been riding in it for
some time—perhaps two miles. The walls swooped closer around them so that what
little sunlight strangled through the gritty wind turned dim and red. The
horses didn’t like the wind and sand. They wanted to turn back. The voice in
the wind scared them the more. It had become shouting with a renewed vigor.
The walls of the canyon narrowed to nearly a cave for a
hundred feet. They whooshed out again suddenly and they rode into a wide place
in the canyon. The sand had been thinning for a while. Through it Jarvela could
see vague shapes in the distance. The walls of the sandstone canyon, windswept and
winding, stood tall and a uniform yellow-red from the ground up shaped like a
very slow creek bed eroded with very fast wind. The[1] far wall was
featureless except for a pale X shape chained to the wall thirty feet off the
ground.
“A man,” Jarvela shouted, bending near Kyouki’s protected
head.
“Very nearly,” Kyouki said. If Jarvela could have seen his
face he would have guessed Kyouki smiled.
“Your ghost?”
“Yes—the wretched creature,” Kyouki said. The familiar,
rasping laugh in the wind broke forth again, louder than ever.
Taking a pickaxe they had brought with them, Kyouki, using
his own special nimbleness, climbed slowly up the cliff face to the X of a pale
man hanging from the walls. Kyouki found a narrow ledge under the chains and
just managed to keep his feet enough to strike the chains securing the man’s
feet a few good blows. Jarvela watched, feeling loathe to release this person,
so securely hanged from chains in such an unwholesome place. His voice made
Jarvela nervous. And some other ill feeling hung about the place, though
Jarvela could just be jumpy from riding in the hard wind in the canyon for so
long. Besides, the pale man could not be trussed so roughly for being a safe
person. A hazard and no mistake.
Kyouki managed to dislodge the chains securing the man from
the cliff till only on chain kept the pale man’s left arm attached to the wall.
Through an improbable feat of balance and strength Kyouki held the pale man by
the one chain left, climbed to where it was attached to the wall, and dislodged
it as well. He kept a hold of the chain and climbed down the cliff. On the
ground Kyouki wrapped his own cloak around the man, who could almost not stand.
They walked back to Jarvela and the horses, Kyouki supporting the other, who
still dragged his chains.
“Let’s find someplace to get out of this wind,” Kyouki
shouted at Jarvela. Jarvela tried and failed to get a good look at the
newcomer. He kept the hood of Kyouki’s cloak over his face. Aside from being a
man as large as Jarvela, broader than Kyouki, and pale, Jarvela could see very
little of him.
A little further along the canyon they found a deep crevice
which afforded protection from the wind. It was deep enough and wide enough to
get the horses inside. Still they had enough space to sit on the canyon floor
near the opening. Jarvela had a good look of the pale man, who sat against a
wall in the alcove.
He smiled. It looked genuine enough. Anything cheerful in it
had the taint of being formed by a purple and bruised mouth in a wax-white
face, his skin chapped and cracked from maybe years hanging in the sand-swept
canyon. The chains around his limbs had been welded together. Whoever put him
up there wanted to keep him there.
“What crime deserves this punishment?” Jarvela asked.
“He is guilty of no crime,” Kyouki said. “Though the name
may mean nothing to you, this is Iskander Younes. He was hidden here because
some people are embarrassed by his existence. He reminds them of certain
secrets they’d rather hide. I think he wants to tell you about it.” Kyouki fell
silent while the quiet laugh of Younes mumbled from him.
“Aye, no crime but loyalty,” Younes said. “This was the body
of Iskander Younes, a loyal soldier, who swore fealty to a lord and a lord bade
him do, so Iskander Younes did as he was bidden. There died Iskander Younes,
but not his end. Nay, for here is he still. And not the same. Nay, respawned,
the first of an ill breed.” Younes giggled. “They hid him away—dangerous he is,
certain. More dangerous still being present than being he. Iskander Younes is a
secret clue of a bad decision. As the master yon suggests, Iskander Younes
reminds them what they meant to hide. They don’t much like that.”
“Damn,” Kyouki muttered, standing just behind Jarvela’s
shoulder. Jarvela glanced back. Kyouki’s eyebrows lowered, his eyes stern.
“I’ve made a grave error. I hoped he’d be more stable than this.”
Younes looked past Jarvela at Kyouki. Laughing, Younes waved
a chained hand to Kyouki. “Iskander Younes is free. The tidy man—oh ho, so prim
and clean at every edge—has his price, no doubt. Perhaps Iskander Younes will
see it in his power to repay this mild kindness extended to him. Name your
warrant, tidy man.”
“Join with me, Younes,” Kyouki said, stepping around
Jarvela. “Join with me and we will rebuild a place for our kind.”
The pale face of Younes looked suddenly tense. His eyes
widened and his mouth fell agape. “You are not like Iskander Younes. Not by an
ounce of flesh nor a turn of phrase. How could you even suppose?”
“I know better what you are than you know,” Kyouki said,
lowering his voice. He sounded like he had recently become uncertain of it.
Continued on February 3...
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