The figure descended the ramp with a brisk but soundless stride, approached the circle, and halted a few paces back from the pavement’s gleaming edge. The haunt was beautiful, wearing a lithe shape and comely humanlike features very like those of the statue that had been holding the head of a dragon. Was the beast’s head meant to represent his prey or his hidden heart, who could know? Elen saw him as a man, but she had no idea what manner of being he really was or how dangerous he might be.

She held still. Some said if you didn’t move, haunts couldn’t see you. But he saw her. Slowly, as with the sweet taste of hazard, he smiled.

5 THE HAUNT

His smile was barbed with a mix of peril, charm, and irony. Yet could a haunt even feel emotion? Surely they were caught between the fragility of the living and the permanence of the dead—if death was permanent for stone guardians, however they came about. Elder Marsilion’s disturbing story suggested it might not be.

“I recognize you.” His voice was silken, and his tone coolly amused.

“How can that be?” she asked easily. The holystone pavement protected her and Kem, and the boy was further made safe by being asleep. “You’ve never shown yourself to me, nor have you and I ever spoken.”

“Perhaps not in so many words. I have sensed your presence before this night, arriving and departing with the same fleeting touch as a bird on the wing. You are one of those who walk the land in a ceaseless cycle. What is it you are called?”

She knew better than to give her name to a haunt. “I am a deputy courier, it’s true.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said in a tone of satisfaction. “I suspect you have heard my whispers, for why else do you stand here awaiting me?”

“I have felt a presence before, it’s true. But never to see or hear, much less speak! I don’t understand how you could have felt my comings and goings. Human lives are so brief. To stone, they must seem like a speck of dust blown past by the wind, too small and ephemeral to be noticed.”

“I felt your presence because you are like me.”

An uneasiness flickered in her heart. “How do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

She shook her head, tempted to laugh but too wise to do so. Yet the pavement’s protection made her bold. “Ah, I see. You don’t know what you mean and hope to unwind some secret from my tongue. Lure me into your reach. It won’t work, not on me. Yet I wonder. Perhaps, years ago, a local man listened to a haunt and took a step too far at the wrong time.”

“Perhaps one did, although that was not my doing.”