The company bunched to a wheezing halt on the trail, while Cazaril, Bergon, and Ferda consulted, and the usually witty dy Sould mumbled embarrassed and disturbingly muddled apologies and protests.

"Should we stop and build a fire, and try to warm him?" the royse asked in worry, staring around the desolate slopes.

Cazaril, himself standing half-bent-over, replied, "He's dazed as a man in a high fever, but he's not hot. He's seacoast-bred. I think this is not an infection, but rather a sickness that sometimes overcomes lowlanders in the heights. In either case, it will be better to care for him down out of this miserable rocky wilderness."

Ferda, eyeing him sideways, asked, "How are you doing, my lord?"

Bergon, too, frowned at him in concern.

"Nothing that stopping and sitting down here will improve. Let's push on."

They mounted again, Bergon riding near to dy Sould when the trail permitted. The sick man clung to his saddle with grim determination. Within half an hour, Foix gave a thin and breathless whoop, and pointed to the cairn of rocks that marked the Ibra-Chalion border. The company cheered, and paused briefly to add their stones. They began the descent, steeper even than the climb. Dy Sould grew no worse, reassuring Cazaril of his diagnosis. Cazaril grew no better, but then, he didn't expect to.

In the afternoon, they came over the lower lip of a barren vale and dropped into a thick pine wood. The air seemed richer here, even if only with the sharp delicious scent of the pines, and the bed of needles underfoot cushioned the horses' sore feet. The sighing trees sheltered them all from the wind's prying fingers. As they rounded a curve, Cazaril's ears picked up the muffled thump of trotting hooves from the path ahead, the first fellow traveler they had encountered all day; just one rider, though, so no danger to their number.

The rider was a grizzled man with fierce bushy eyebrows and beard, dressed in stained leathers. He hailed them and, a little to Cazaril's surprise, pulled up his shaggy horse across their path.

"I am castle warder to the Castillar dy Zavar. We saw your company coming down the vale, when the clouds broke. My lord sends me to warn you, there is a storm blowing up the valley. He invites you to shelter with him till the worst is past."

Dy Tagille greeted this offer of hospitality with delight. Bergon dropped back and lowered his voice to Cazaril. "Do you think we ought, Caz?"

"I'm not sure..." He tried to think if he'd ever heard of a Castillar dy Zavar.

Bergon glanced at his friend dy Sould, drooping over his pommel. "I'd give much to get him indoors. We are many, and armed."

Cazaril allowed, "We'd not make good speed in a blizzard, besides the risk of losing the trail."

The grizzled castle warder called out, "Suit yourselves, gentlemen, but since it's my job to collect the bodies from the ditches in this district come spring, I'd take it as a personal favor if you'd accept. The storm will blow through before morning, I'd guess."

"Well, I'm glad we at least got over the pass before this broke. Yes," decided Bergon. He raised his voice. "We thank you, sir, and do accept your lord's kind offer!"

The grizzled man saluted, and nudged his horse back down the road. A mile farther on, he wheeled to the left and led them up a fainter trail through the tall, dark pines. The path dropped, then rose steeply for a time, zigzagging. The horses' haunches bunched and surged, pushing them uphill. Away through the trees, Cazaril could hear the distant squabbling and cawing of a flock of crows, and was comforted in memory.

They broke out into the gray light upon a rocky spur. Perched on the outcrop rose a small and rather dilapidated fortress built of undressed native stone. An encouraging curl of smoke rose from its chimney.

They passed under a fieldstone arch into a courtyard paved with slates; a stable opened directly onto it, as well as a broad wooden portico over the doors leading into the main hall. Its margins were cluttered with tools, barrels, and odd trash. Curing deer hides were nailed up to the stable wall. Some tough-looking men, servants or grooms or guards or all three in this rough rural household, moved from the portico to help with the party's horses and mules. But it was the nearly half dozen new ghosts, whirling frantically about the courtyard, that opened Cazaril's eyes wide and stopped the breath in his throat.

That they were fresh, he could tell by their crisp gray outlines, still holding the forms they'd had in life: three men, a woman, and a weeping boy. The woman-shape pointed to the grizzled man. White fire streamed from her mouth, silent screams.

Cazaril jerked his horse back beside Bergon's, leaned over, and muttered, "This is a trap. Look to your weapons. Pass the word." Bergon fell back beside dy Tagille, who in turn bent to speak quietly to a pair of the party's grooms. Cazaril smiled in dissimulation, and sidled his horse over to Foix's, where he held up his hand before his mouth as if sharing a jest, and repeated the warning. Foix smiled blandly and nodded. His eyes darted around the courtyard, counting up the odds, as he leaned toward his brother.

The odds did not seem ill, but for that rangy lout up on the wooden perch beside the gate, leaning against the inner wall, a crossbow dangling, as if casually, from his hand. Except that it was cocked. Cazaril maneuvered back by Bergon, putting himself and his horse between the royse and the gate. " ‘Ware bowman," he breathed. "Duck under a mule."

The ghosts were darting from place to place about the yard, pointing out concealed men behind the barrels and tools, shadowed in the stalls, and, apparently, waiting just inside the main door. Cazaril revised his opinion of the odds. The grizzled man motioned to one of his men, and the gate swung shut behind the party. Cazaril twisted in his saddle and dug his hand into his saddlebag. His fingers touched silk, then the smooth coolness of round beads; he had not pawned Dondo's pearls in Zagosur because the price was disadvantageous there, so close to the source. He swept his hand up, drawing out the glistening rope of them in a grand gesture. As he swung the string around his head, he popped the cord with his thumb. Pearls spewed off the end of the line and bounced about the slate-paved court. The startled toughs laughed, and began to dive for them.

Cazaril dropped his arm, and shouted, "Now!"

The grizzled commander, who had apparently been just about to shout a similar order, was taken aback. Cazaril's men drew steel first, falling upon the distracted enemy. Cazaril half fell out of his saddle just before a crossbow bolt thunked into it. His horse reared and bolted, and he scrambled to pull his own sword out of its scabbard.

Foix, bless the boy, had managed to get his own crossbow quietly unshipped before the chaos of shouting men and plunging horses struck. One of the male ghosts streaked past Cazaril's inner eye, and pointed at an obscured shape dodging along the top of the portico. Cazaril tapped Foix's arm, and shouted, "Up there!" Foix cocked and whirled just as a second bowman popped up; Cazaril could swear the frantic ghost tried to guide the quarrel. It entered the bowman's right eye and dropped him instantly. Foix ducked and began recocking; the ratcheting mechanism whirred.

Cazaril, turning to seek an enemy, found one seeking him. From the main door, steel drawn, barged a startlingly familiar form: Ser dy Joal, dy Jironal's stirrup-man, whom Cazaril had last seen in Cardegoss. Cazaril raised his sword just in time to deflect dy Joal's first furious blow. His belly twinged, cramped, then knotted agonizingly as they circled briefly for advantage, and then dy Joal bore in.

The excruciating belly pain drained the strength from Cazaril's arm, almost doubling him over; he barely beat off the next attack, and counterattack was suddenly out of the question. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the female ghost curl tightly in upon herself. She—or was that a pearl?—or both united, somehow slid under dy Joal's boot. Dy Joal skidded violently and unexpectedly forward, flailing for balance. Cazaril's point rammed through his throat and lodged briefly in the bones of his neck.