The thin sliver of the consciousness that had once belonged to a man known as Ghost remembered that barn. Ghost had seen this body, his body, charred by that wicked Cadderly in that very barn! The evil corpse drew in some air - the action could not be called breathing where this undead thing was concerned - and dragged his blackened and shriveled body the rest of the way out of the hole. The notes of that distant, yet strangely familiar, melody continued to thrum in the back of his feeble consciousness.
Unsteadily, Ghost loped more than walked toward the structure, the memories of that horrible, fateful day coming back more fully with each stride.
Ghost had used the Gkearufu, a powerful device with magical energies directed toward the spirit world, to steal the body of the firbolg Vander, an unwilling associate. Disguised as Vander, with the strength of a giant, Ghost had then crushed his own body and had thrown it across the barn.
And then Cadderly had burned it The malignant monster looked down to his bone-skinny arms and prominent ribs, the hollow shell that somehow lived.
Cadderly had burned his body, this body! A single-minded hatred consumed the wretched creature. Ghost wanted to kill Cadderly, to kill anybody dear to the young priest, to kill anybody at all.
Ghost was at the barn then. Thoughts of Cadderly had flitted away into nothingness, replaced by an unfocused anger. The door was over to the side, but the creature understood that he did not need the door, that he had become something more than the simple material wooden planking now blocking his way. The shriveled form wavered, became insubstantial, and Ghost walked through the wall.
He heard the horse whinnying before he came fully back to the material plane, saw the poor beast standing wild-eyed, lathered in sweat. The sight pleased thellndead thing; waves of a new sensation of joy washed over Ghost as he smelled the beast's terror. The undead monster ambled over to stand before the horse, let his tongue drop out of his mouth hungrily. With all the skin burned away from the sides of the tongue, its pointy tip hung far below Ghost's blackened chin. The horse made not a sound, was too frightened to move or even to draw breath.
With a wheeze of evil anticipation, Ghost put deathly cold hands against the sides of the beast's face.
The horse fell dead.
The undead creature hissed with delight, but while Ghost felt thrilled by the kill, he did not feel sated. His hunger demanded more, could not be defeated by the death of a simple animal. Ghost moved across the barn and again walked through the wall, coming into view of the lights within the farmhouse. A shadowy shape, a human shape, moved across one of the rooms.
Ghost was at the front door, undecided as to whether to walk through the wood, tear the door apart, or simply knock and let the sheep come to the wolf. The decision was taken from the creature, though, when he looked to the side of the door, to a small pane of glass, and saw, for the first time, his own reflection.
A red glow emanated from empty eye sockets. Ghost's nose was completely gone, replaced by a blacker hole edged by ragged flaps of charred skin.
That tiny part of Ghost's consciousness that remembered the vitality of life lost all control at the sight of that hideous reflection. The monster's unearthly wail sent the barnyard animals into a frenzy and shattered the stillness of the quiet autumn night more than any violent storm ever could. There came a shuffling from inside the house, just behind the door, but the outraged monster didn't even hear it With strength far beyond that of any mortal, he drove his bony hands through the center of the door and pulled out to the sides, splintering and tearing the wood as though it were no more than a thin sheet of parchment
A man stood there, wearing the uniform of a Carradoon city guardsman and an expression of sheer horror, his mouth frozen wide in a silent scream, his eyes bugged out so far that they seemed as if they would fall from his face.
Ghost burst through the broken door and fell over him. The man's skin transformed, aged, under the creature's ghostly touch; his hair turned from raven black to white and fell out in large clumps. Finally the guardsman's voice returned, and he screamed and wailed, flailing his arms
helplessly.
Ghost ripped at him, tore at his throat until that revealing scream was no more than the gurgle of blood-filled lungs,
The creature heard a shuffle of feet, looked up from the kill to see a second man standing beyond the foyer, in a doorway at the other side of the house's small kitchen.
"By the gods," this man whispered, and he dove back into the far room and slammed the door.
With one hand, Ghost lifted the dead man and hurled him out the shattered portal, halfway across the barnyard. The undead creature floated across the floor, savoring the kill, yet hungry for more. His form wavered again, and he walked across the room and through another closed door.
The second man, also a city guardsman, stood before the wicked thing, swinging his sword frantically at the horrid monster. But the weapon never touched Ghost, slipped right through the insubstantial, ethereal mist the creature had become. The man tried to run away, but Ghost kept pace with him, walked past furniture that the man stumbled over, walked through walls to meet the terrified man on the other side of a door.
The torment went on for a long and agonizing time, the helpless man finally stumbling out into the night, losing his sword as he tumbled down the porch steps. He scrambled to his feet and ran into the dark night, ran with all speed for Carradoon, howling all the way.
Ghost could have, at any time, re materialized and torn the man apart, but somehow the creature felfthat he enjoyed this sensation, this smell of terror, even more than the actual killing. Ghost felt stronger for it, as though he had somehow fed off of the horrified man's emotions and screams.
But now it was over and the man was gone, and the other man was long dead and offered no more sport
Ghost wailed again as the thin sliver of remaining consciousness considered what he had become, considered what wretched Cadderly had created. Ghost remembered little of his past life, only that he had been among the highest paid killers in the living realm, a professional assassin, an artist of murder.
Now the creature was an undead thing, a ghost, a hollow, animated shell of evil energies.
After more than a century of being in possession of the Ghearufu, Ghost had come to consider mortal forms in a much different way than others. Twice the evil man had utilized the powers of the magical device to change bodies, killing his previous form and taking the new one as his own. And now, somehow, Ghosf s spirit, a piece of it at least, had come back to this plane. By some trick of fate, Ghost had risen from the dead.
But how? Ghost couldn't fully remember his place in the afterlife, but sensed that it was not pleasant, not at all. Images of growling shadows surrounded him; black claws raked the air before his mind's eye. What had brought him back from the grave, what compelled his spirit to walk the earth once more? The creature scanned his fingers, his toes, for some sign of the regenerative ring Ghost had once worn. But he distinctly remembered that the ring had been stolen by Cadderly.
Ghost felt a call on the wind, silent but compelling. And familiar. He turned glowing eyes up toward the distant mountains and heard the call again.
The Ghearufu,
The malignant spirit understood, remembered hearing the melody from his place of eternal punishment. The Ghearufu had called him back. By the power of the Ghearufu, Ghost walked the earth once more. At that confused, overwhelming moment, the creature couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not He looked again to his shriveled, gruesome arms and torso, wondered if he could withstand the light of day. What future awaited Ghost in such a state? What hopes could the undead thing hold?
The silent call came again.
The Gheantfyt!
It wanted Ghost back - and by its power, the creature's spirit could surely steal a new form, a living form.
In Carradoon, not so far from the farmyard, the horrified guardsman stumbled to the closed gate, screaming of ghosts, crying for his slaughtered companion. If the soldiers manning the gate held any doubts about the man's sincerity, they needed only to look into his face, a face that appeared much older than the man's thirty years.
A large contingent of men, including a priest from the Temple of Ilmater, rode out from Carradoon's gate less than an hour later, hell-bent for the farmhouse, prepared to do battle with the malignant spirit Ghost was far gone by then, sometimes walking, sometimes floating across the fields, following the call of the Gkearufit, his one chance for deliverance.
Only the cries of the nighttime animals, the terrified bleating of sheep, the frightened screech of a night owl, marked the ghost's passage.
Step Over A Dangerous line
The dawn had long since passed, but the room Cadderly entered was darkened still, shades drawn tight to the windows. The young priest moved to the bed quietly and knelt, not wanting to disturb Headmistress Pertelope's sleep. If Headmaster Avery had been Cadderly's surrogate father, then wise Pertelope had been his mother. Now, with his newfound insight into the harmonious song of Deneir, Cadderly felt that he needed Pertelope more than ever. For she, too, heard the mysterious notes of that unending song; she, too, transcended the normal boundaries of the clerical order. If Pertelope had been beside Cadderly in his discussion with Thobicus, then his reasoning would have been bolstered, and the withered dean would have been forced to accept the truth of Cadderly's insights.
But Pertelope could not be with him. She lay in her bed, deathly ill, caught in the throes of a magical enchantment gone wild. Her body had been trapped in a transformation somewhere between the smooth and soft skin of a human and the sharp-edged denticles of a shark, and now neither air nor water could satisfy the headmistress's physical needs.
Cadderly stroked her hair, more gray than he remembered it, as though Pertelope had aged. He was somewhat surprised when she opened her eyes, which still held their inquisitive luster, and managed a smile in his direction.
Cadderly strained to return that look.
"You must recover your strength," he whispered to her.
"I need you."
Pertelope smiled again, and her eyes slowly closed.
Cadderly's sigh was one of helpless resignation. He started to turn away from the bed, not wanting to tax Perte-lope's depleted strength, but the headmistress unexpectedly spoke to him.
"How went your meeting with Dean Thobicus?"
Cadderly turned back to her, surprised by the strength in that voice, and surprised also that Pertelope even knew he had met with the dean. She had not been out of her room in many days, and on the few occasions Cadderly had come to visit her, he had not mentioned his upcoming meeting.
He should have expected that she would know, though. As he considered the revelation, he reminded himself that she, too, heard the song of Deneir. She and Cadderly were intimately joined by forces far beyond what the other priests of the library could even understand, joined by a communal bathing in the river that was their god's song.