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Yet the living had no place here. Beyond the foothills, the mountains were more barren than the Dead Lands, with sharp and gleaming glass peaks and a road of crushed black stone that wound through obsidian canyons. Nothing grew. Rainwater formed crystalline pools and streams yet no green lined their banks. Even the constant buzzing of summer insects had fallen to an eerie silence.
Though Elina could not see the dead milling around them, she seemed to sense the strangeness of the haunt and hastened her mount along the road. Her unease deepened the farther they climbed toward the pass. She often twitched her head to the side, as if catching a glimpse of a ghost from the corner of her eye.
Then she laughed at herself, shook her head, and said aloud that what she’d seen was but the sun glinting on the glass—as if speaking those comforting words would make it true. Yet she must not have found much comfort in them, for she nudged her horse to an even faster pace.
Darkening clouds gathered overhead. Elina glanced at the sky, then ahead to where a knife-edged ridge marked the spine of the mountain range and the pass to the northern side.
“What do you think?” She patted her gelding’s neck, as if reassuring the animal, yet Warrick suspected she merely sought a connection with any living thing in this place. “Can we reach the pass by nightfall? Even if not, a full moon rises tonight. We should be able to see clearly if those clouds disperse.” Another look at the gray sky made her grimace. “Oh, but I wish to get through this place as quickly as we can. I would rather cross in two days than three…and I’d rather spend one night here than two.”
The gelding tossed his head and nickered.
Elina nodded. “We will try, then.”
Warrick grinned. One day, somehow, he would tease her about relying on her horse’s judgement. Yet he could not fault her decision. Though he felt none of the unease that Elina did, he also had no wish to spend two nights in these mountains.
They continued on. Elina put up the hood of her traveling cloak as it began to rain, a dreary drizzle that seemed disinclined to empty out the clouds overhead.
The day faded. The gray sky offered no hints of red and orange to mark the coming of night. Darkness crept in, as if every shadow opened its maw and slowly swallowed the mountains, then the heavens.
Yet not all was dark.
The number of ghosts in proximity to Warrick made his archer glow fiercely, brighter than ever before. Bright enough to light their way.
The glyph had been shining since Galoth, yet not with such intensity. In the day, the glow touched nothing at all; at night, the hint of golden light it cast upon Elina’s skin or any of her things was easily mistaken for firelight.
Now she looked about in utter confusion. She could not see Warrick or his glyph—the source of the glow—yet by the shadows it cast, clearly the light radiated from a spot alongside her. Her baffled gaze turned to the sky, as if to check whether the moon had peeked through the clouds or refracted off the glass mountain peaks to illuminate the canyon through which they traveled.
Abruptly she whipped her head to the side. Likely another ghost from the corner of her eye. Yet instead of nudging her gelding faster, she drew him to a halt and peered intently at the canyon wall.
In the dark, the sheer glass face acted as a warped and striated mirror, catching the light from his glyph…and the reflections of the ghosts near to the obsidian.
Warrick stared in astonishment. He’d never seen a ghost reflect before. Not on water, not near glass. Yet whether because of the magical nature of the light illuminating them or the haunted obsidian glass, their mirror images were visible as if they were trapped within the canyon walls.
Visible to Elina, too. She’d urged her horse closer to the obsidian cliff. Her gaze fixed on the ghost nearest to her, a delicate woman whose slitted throat was draped in emeralds.
She drew a shaky breath. “I see you.” That tremulous announcement was followed by a lifting of her chin and a firmer, “Who has wronged you?”
Just as she had heard Warrick ask the murdered woman by the bridge. Elina meant to right this one’s wrongs.
Never had he loved her more. Heart full, he drew Troll up alongside her. “That one is not worth the effort.”
Elina gave a startled cry. She looked wildly about, pulling her reins this way and that, her gelding prancing anxiously in response to her agitated movements.
Searching for a threat, Warrick pivoted Troll around. Nothing but ghosts. Then his sluggish brain caught up to what her reaction meant.
She’d heard his voice. Mayhap only as an echo from the obsidian, but it mattered not why.
