“It’s been said of me before.” Like twilight, he seemed not to partake completely of any one thing: he might be a good man coarsened by a bad situation, or a bad man mellowed by a good situation, or just someone caught in the middle with no way out but through.

“Don’t trust me,” he added, his voice darkening. “I’d give you over in an instant if I thought it would get me what I want. Who are you?”

“I’m not telling. What do you want?”

The lazy tone worked up to an edge. “Escape from this hell of endless suffering.”

“Why are you trapped?”

His laugh scraped. “We’re all trapped. Don’t you know that yet? Wait where you are and submit when they reach you, or keep running and hiding.”

The bitterly cold air hoarsened her voice. “Those can’t be the only choices.”

“How have you evaded them for so long? Neh, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. But they’re long in looking for you. They don’t like that. They hauled me free at once. They made me what I am now.”

“What are you now, besides a ghost, if you are a ghost?”

“A coward who fears oblivion and yearns for it. I have more power than I could ever have dreamed of. I wish I could die. I want to go home, but I never will leave this land.”

“Who are you?”

For a long time he remained silent. Her fingers grew taut with cold until it hurt to bend them. Her ears were burning, and her eyes had begun to sting as though blistering from the cold.

He spoke in a whisper. “How I fear them, for they are sweet with the corruption that comes of believing they must do what is wrong in order to make things right. I was called Hari once, Harishil, the name my father gave me. Will you tell me your name?”

Marit had served as a reeve for over ten years. She’d learned to trust her instincts, and she knew in her gut that even if she might want to trust him, she must not. Anyway, what kind of person got a name from his father, not his mother? “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

Had she been able to see him, she would have guessed he smiled. “You need not apologize for what is true. I’ll have to tell them I saw you, but I’ll say I didn’t know where you were. There’s one thing you need to know. We can see into people’s hearts with our third eye and our second heart, but we are blind to each other. Remember that. It’s your only weapon against them.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Nine Guardians the gods created, according to the tale you tell in this land. I think at one time they walked in accord, but now they are at war. Two rule, and three of us submit; five are enough to hunt and destroy the four who have not yet submitted to the rule of night and sun. They will find you in the end, and if you will not submit, they will destroy you and pass your cloak to another, one more easily subdued.”