The wind died to nothing just at sunset, then picked up again after the last stars appeared. Rune took out her fiddle with benumbed fingers, and tuned it by feel, then sat on her rock and fingered every tune she knew without actually playing, to keep her fingers limber. And still nothing happened.
She was tired, cold, and her fear was fading. Her bones began to ache with the cold. It would be so easy to pack up, creep down the hill, and return to the inn claiming that she'd fiddled for the Ghost and gotten away.
The idea was very tempting.
But-that would be a lie and a cheat. She swore she'd do this; she pledged her word, and even if the villagers thought her word was worthless, that didn't make it so. If she broke her word, if she lied about what she'd done, what would that make her? As worthless as the villagers claimed she was.
Besides, they probably wouldn't believe me anyway.
The moon appeared, its cold silver light flooding over the hills and making them look as if they'd been touched with frost. She marked time while it climbed, keeping her fingers warm by tucking them in her armpits, and taking out the fiddle now and again to make sure it was still in tune. There was a great deal more life around here than there had been in the daylight-unless her presence had frightened everything away until she stopped moving. Owls hooted off in the distance, and a few early crickets sang nearby. Frogs croaked in the stream below her as bats and a nighthawk swooped through the pass, looking for flying insects. And once, a great hare loped lazily down the road, pausing in surprise at the sight of her, and standing up on his haunches to take a better look, for all the world like a white stone garden statue of the kind the Sire had in his pleasure-garden.
At the sight of him, she lost the last of her fear. He was so quizzical, so comical-it was impossible to be afraid of a place that held an animal like this.
She chuckled at him, and he took fright at the sound, whirling on his hind feet and leaping into the underbrush in a breath.
She shook her head, relaxing a little in spite of the chill. There was no Ghost, most likely, and perhaps there never had been. Perhaps the "ghost" had been no more than a particularly resourceful bandit. Perhaps-
The moon touched the highest part of her arc, marking the hour as midnight, just as the thought occurred to her. And at that moment, absolute silence descended on the hill, as if everything within hearing had been frightened into frozen immobility.
The crickets stopped chirping altogether; the owl hoots cut off. Even the wind died, leaving the midnight air filled only with a stillness that made the ears ache as they sought after the vanished sounds.
Then the wind returned with a howl and a rush, blowing her shirt flat to her body, chilling her to the bone and turning the blood in her veins to ice. It moaned, like something in pain, something dying by inches.
Then it changed, and whipped around her, twisting her garments into confusion. It swirled around her, picking up dead leaves and pelting her with them, the center of a tiny, yet angry cyclone that was somehow more frightening than the pounding lightning of the worst thunderstorm.
It lashed her with her own hair, blinded her with dust. Then it whisked away to spin on the road in front of her, twisting the leaves in a miniature whirlwind less than ten paces from her.
Her skin crawled, as if there were something watching her from the center of the wind. Malignant; that was what it felt like. As if this wind was a living thing, and it hated every creature it saw. . . .
She shook her hair out of her eyes, hugged her arms to her body and shook with cold and the prickling premonition of danger. She couldn't take her eyes off the whirlwind and the swirling leaves caught in it. The leaves-it was so strange, she could see every vein of them-
A claw of ice ran down her spine, as she realized that she could see every vein of them-because they were glowing.
She'd seen foxfire-what country child hadn't-but this was different. Each leaf glowed a distinct and leprous shade of greenish-white. And they were drawing closer together into a column in the center of the whirlwind, forming a solid, slightly irregular shape, thicker at the bottom than at the top, with a kind of cowl-like formation at the very top.
Kind of? It was a cowl; the leaves had merged into a cowled and robed figure, like a monk. But the shape beneath the robe suggested nothing remotely human, and she knew with dread that she didn't want to see the face hidden within that cowl. . . . The wind swirled the apparition's robes as it had swirled the leaves, but disturbed it not at all.
Then, suddenly, the wind died; the last of the leaves drifted to pile around the apparition's feet . . . if it had feet, and not some other appendages. The cowl turned in Rune's direction, and there was a suggestion of glowing eyes within the shadows of the hood.
A voice, an icy, whispering voice, came out of the darkness from all around her; from everywhere, yet nowhere. It could have been born of her imagination, yet Rune knew the voice was the Ghost's, and that to run was to die. Instantly, but in terror that would make dying seem to last an eternity.
"Why have you come here, stupid child?" it murmured, as fear urged her to run anyway. "Why were you waiting here? For me? Foolish child, do you not know what I am? What I could do to you?"
At least it decided to talk to me first. . . .
Rune had to swallow twice before she could speak, and even then her voice cracked and squeaked with fear.
"I've come to fiddle for you-sir?" she said, gasping for breath between each word, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.
And it's a good thing I'm not here to sing. . . .
She held out Lady Rose and her bow. "Fiddle?" the Ghost breathed, as if it couldn't believe what it had heard. "You have come to fiddle? To play mortal music? For me?"
For the first time since it had appeared, Rune began to hope she might survive this encounter. At least she'd surprised this thing. "Uh-yes. Sir? I did."
The glow beneath the hood increased, she was not imagining it. And the voice strengthened. "Why, mortal child? Why did you come here to-fiddle for me?"
She toyed with the notion of telling it that she'd done so for some noble reason, because she felt sorry for it, or that she wanted to bring it some pleasure-
But she had the feeling that it would know if she lied to it. She also had the feeling that if she lied to it, it would not be amused.
And since her life depended on keeping it amused-
So she told it the truth.
"It was on a dare, sir," she stammered. "There's these boys in the town, and they told me I was a second-rater, and-I swore I'd come up here and fiddle for you, and let you judge if I was a second-rater or a wizard with m' bow."
The cowl moved slightly, as if the creature were cocking its head a little sideways. "And why would they call you second-rate?"
"Because-because they want me to be, sir," she blurted. "If I'm second-rate they can look down on me, an'-do what they want to me-"
For some reason, the longer she spoke, the easier it became to do so, to pour out all her anger, her fear, all the bottled emotions she couldn't have told anyone before this. The spirit stayed silent, attentive through all of it, keeping its attitude of listening with interest, even sympathy. This was, by far, the most even-handed hearing she'd had from anyone. It was even easy to speak of the attack Jon and his friends had made, tears of rage and outrage stinging her eyes as she did.