“We have certainly not called upon you in vain,” Blaize said quickly. “My teachers seek information which only ancestors can give. They are strangers in this country and seek to better the lot of the common people.”
“The common people! Faugh!” the rotund ghost said. “I am the Sorcerer d’Autrois, and I know of my own serfs that their lot should not be bettered—they must be kept in their place!”
A scream of anger pierced the air and another ghost streaked toward the first, snapping to a halt and yelling into his face, nose to nose. He wore rough tunic and hose and was considerably younger than the sorcerer. “Never should they submit to your yoke, villain! Now after death you know the truth—that you, too, are common, or that all of us are noble!”
“One might almost say that death has made you all equal,” Gar interjected.
“Be still, foolish human!” the sorcerer thundered.
“No, speak, for you pronounce good sense!” The serf turned, bending down toward Gar. “Equal in death we are indeed, for what little magic one ghost can do, any other ghost can do, too! Fools that we were, not to see that we were equal in life, too.”
“You were never my equal in life!” the sorcerer bellowed. “You had not a tenth of my power, not a hundredth!”
“No, but we were a thousand to your one!” The serf turned on him again. “If we had ceased to fear death and marched on you together, you would not have had a tenth of our power, and we would have hauled you out of your mansion to your death!”
“Spoken like the craven knave you are! You would never have dared death, for you knew the ghosts would eat your soul!”
“Yes, you made us tremble with that lie,” the serf said with a nasty smile, “but we all know the truth of it now, don’t we?”
“I do not!” Blaize cried. “Tell me, tell!”
“Do not!” the sorcerer ordered. “You know that is forbidden to the living!”
“Forbidden by whom?” the serf sneered, and turned to Blaize. “Know that it is not the ghost who devours the human’s soul, lad, but—”
With a roar of anger, the sorcerer’s ghost plunged into the serf’s. Shouting and screaming filled the clearing as the amorphous glowing blob that was the two together heaved and twisted and bulged.
“Stop that now! Stop!” shouted another voice, and a fourth echoed it, “Stop!”
Two ghosts plunged into the melee from either side, actually into the glowing cloud itself, doubling its size. The amorphous form pinched in the center, its two halves drawing apart and settling into the forms of serf and sorcerer again, glaring at each other and spitting insults—but in front of each and blocking it from its enemy was a ghost in hooded tunic and hose, a bow and quiver on his back, a dagger at his belt, each firmly forbidding its prisoner to fight.
“Really, now!” said the sorcerer’s restrainer, “you’re setting a horrible example for our descendants!”
“No descendants of mine, you common fool!” roared the sorcerer.
“Come now, cousin, we’re all common here,” the guard said. “Aren’t we, Conn?”
“All equal in death,” Conn agreed, and gave the sorcerer a wolfish grin. “Shall I shoot an arrow into you to prove it?” The sorcerer shuddered but still tried to bluster. “You are common fellows—woods runners!”
“Outlaws we are.” Ranulf shrugged. “For me, it was the greenwood or the ruined city with its madmen and twisted outcasts. I chose the forest.”
“City lunatic or forest outlaw, it’s all the same!” the sorcerer spat. “You’re bandits and should be hauled to the gallows!”
“Why, so I was,” Conn told him, “and if you had been the lord who ordered it, I would make a pincushion of you, then follow as you recovered and pull out my darts, the better to fill you with them again. Ranulf, now, there was no gallows for him. A keeper sprang from ambush and put a sword through his heart, didn’t he, Ranulf?”
“That he did,” the other outlaw answered, “but I bear him no ill will for it. After all, I had laid an ambush for him the day before.”
Blaize stared, his face tragic. “I had thought there was peace in the grave!”
“Oh, there is,” Conn told him, “but we’re not exactly in our graves, are we?”
“I’m sure our souls are peaceful,” Ranulf said, “filled with bliss and delighting in the glory due those who were downtrodden during life—but we aren’t those souls, only shadows of minds.”
“Be still, you fool!” the sorcerer shouted.
“Fool?” Conn asked “Well, I was a fool once—a jester until my magician lord ordered my true love to his bed. I came to amuse him as he disrobed and drew a dagger from my bauble to plunge into his heart. Then I ran to the greenwood with my lass, but his ghost followed and learned by accident what happened when he ran upon a sword made of cold steel.” Conn shook his head, remembering. “It blasted my arm to a lifeless lump for a day and more.”
“Grounding out electrical charges?” Gar said, eye gleaming. “Very interesting.”
“Electrical?” Another ghost shot forward to hover over Gar. “What manner of man are you who knows of electricity?”
Gar looked the phantom up and down. It wore a tall pointed hat and long robe; even in the pale glowing cream color of its substance, he could make out stars and moons and signs of the zodiac. “What manner of man should know it? A magician.”
“Throw a fireball, if you are,” the ghost challenged.
Blaize turned to Gar with a sinking stomach. “Don’t tell them you are a fire-caster!”
“Am I?” Gar asked mildly. He gazed off into the night for a minute, then causally raised his hand and swung it toward the ghost. As his hand arced downward, fire seemed to gather in his palm, then spring off his fingertips straight toward the spectral magician. The phantom shrieked and disappeared. The fireball shot onward; the ghosts screamed and leaped aside from it. It struck against the face of the cliff in a shower of sparks and vanished.
“Yes, I suppose that’s part of what I am,” Gar conceded. Blaize looked up at him, shaken. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“Quite a bit,” Gar said. “Just ask Alea.”
“No, we’ll ask you instead.” Conn floated away from his serf and glowered down at Gar. “The lad says he called us here at your request. What do you want of us?”
“Yes, what?” Ranulf drifted over, too. “Ask!”
“Well enough, then,” Gar said, unruffled. “What are you made of?”
Several ghosts gasped in shock and several muttered about rudeness, but Conn only grinned. “What are you made of, mortal? If you can tell us that, maybe we can tell you our substance.”
“A bargain,” Gar said. “I’m made of protoplasm, mostly in the form of muscle, blood, bone, and sinew. And you?”
Conn lost his grin. “Like that, is it? Well, we’re made of ectoplasm, my lad—ectoplasm, and a fine stuff it is.”
“Fine indeed,” Gar agreed. “What is it?”
The ghosts were all silent for a minute, glancing from one to another, clearly nonplussed. Then the sorcerer blustered, “It’s not for a mere mortal to know what ectoplasm is!”
An order from him was all the incentive Conn needed. “Not for us to know, either,” he said with a roguish smile. “It’s a mortal word, don’t you know—one our ancestors brought from the stars, if the old legend is true, and I’ve met some ghosts who swear it is, because they claim they came from old Terror herself—or so they say. If it was anything like they tell it, a terror it was, and no wonder they wanted to leave it.”
“Terra it is, and a wonder in its own way,” Gar answered. “Still, there must be something you can tell me about the way your substance behaves.”
The ghosts exchanged glances. “Well, now,” said the serf, “why would we be telling it to a ghost leader like your lad here?”