She licked her lips, and stared at the lamp flame for a moment. "If you're afraid of him, he can turn that fear against you_he can make it so overwhelming that_that it becomes something the human body just can't deal with. The heart races until it just gives up, he chases you until you drop dead of exhaustion, that kind of thing. Maybe some people don't die_maybe most of them don't die, they just run mad in this wilderness until they die of thirst or starve, or wild beasts get them."
"Th-that's v-v-very c-c-comforting," he said with heavy irony.
"But the point is that if you aren't afraid of him, he can't hurt you," she insisted. "Or if you interest him, he won't use that weapon of his! Rune wasn't completely terrified of him_and she interested him. So she was able to stand up to him. I don't know why we can't!"
Kestrel shook his head. "Wh-who s-s-said w-we aren't af-f-fraid of h-him?" he muttered. "N-n-not m-m-me."
She chuckled, as if he had made a joke. "Jonny, do you think I would have suggested this if you weren't a Master Bard in your own right? Think a minute! Rune managed to entertain this Ghost before she was even trained_when she was just a little better than a common traveling musician like all those people back in the Waymeet. Just think for a moment what we might be able to find out from him! Jonny, you're going to be the best thing he's heard in_well, since he got stuck up there!"
The only thing he was vain about was his talent and his ability as a musician. He began to soften as she appealed to that vanity.
"I think we can do this with no danger," she said, persuasively. "I think you could do this all alone, but with two of us there, we can keep from getting too exhausted."
Finally, the stubborn line of his jaw softened, and he sighed. "You r-r-really want t-t-to d-do th-this, d-don't you?"
"Yes," she replied, firmly. "I do. Call it_a sort of test. I want to measure myself against the same standards as the best musicians I know. This is one of them."
He shook his head. "All r-r-right," he replied.
"Th-this m-makes m-more s-sense than wh-what you d-did back in W-Westhaven, anyw-w-way."
And as she led the horses up to the top of Skull Hill, she was left to wonder_
What in heaven's name did he mean by that?
Gwyna was just as glad that Jonny was not as familiar with Rune's history as she was. It had not been easy to convince him to go along with her scheme, but her appeal to his only point of pride had turned the trick. If he had known as much about the Ghost as she did_he might not have agreed even under a threat to their lives.
Robin knew she had a distinct advantage over Kestrel; she had heard Rune tell the story of the Skull Hill Ghost in detail, several times. Jonny had only heard the song. She knew pretty much what to expect, and when to expect it; she knew all there was that Rune had been able to put into words about the effect the Ghost had on people. She had paid very close attention to that story each time Rune had told it, because even before she had ever met Jonny or had learned that she, too, had the gift of Bardic Magic at her disposal, she had intended to come to Skull Hill one day.
Not just because she was determined to prove_if only to herself_that what Rune could do, she could duplicate. No, that was the easy answer, the one she thought Jonny would best understand.
Robin had spent her life in the pursuit of answers for the questions that plagued her. The story of the Ghost had created more questions for her than answers, and had powerfully aroused her curiosity. What was this spirit, anyway? The impression she'd gotten from Rune was that it was not, and never had been, human. So what was it? Was it really a spirit at all, or something more like an Elf, except that it was both more limited and more powerful? If it was a spirit, then why was a spirit bound to Skull Hill? And if it was the spirit of some creature that had not been human when alive, then what had brought a nonhuman creature here, to the heart of a human kingdom, and what had bound its spirit here after death?
And why was it killing people with fear? Rune's story made it very clear that the Ghost was deliberately trying to murder his victims; the deaths that had occurred were as a result of the Ghost's deliberate use of his powers to kill. By that definition it was a murderer.
But the fact that he_it_had also let Rune "buy" her way free with her music implied that the Ghost could spare people when it chose to do so. The things it had said implied that it was not free to leave. Those implications only opened up a horde of questions so far as Robin was concerned.
Before she had ever met Jonny, curiosity had driven her to do things and go places when nothing else would have. Questions would burn inside her until they found an answer. Talaysen often said it was her greatest strength and her greatest weakness, and she didn't see any reason to disagree. But her curiosity had gotten her information that might never have come into the hands of the Free Bards or the Gypsies otherwise, and many times, that information had been important to their survival.
This time both intuition and curiosity had combined forces. This is important, that was the message she was getting from both. She didn't get many "hunches," and she tried hard to follow them whenever she did; they were right more often than they were wrong.
She kept the lantern over her head to keep her eyes from becoming dazzled by the light, and led the horses up the untidy, long-neglected track It wasn't as overgrown as she would have expected, though; no bushes or trees, only weeds, and those looked sickly and were no taller than her calf, even after a summer's worth of growth. She knew what that meant; there was a road underneath this track, one of the Old Roads, the ones no one knew how to build anymore. If she got out a shovel and dug, she knew she would hit the hard surface of one of the roadways that dated back to the Cataclysm; it would be a lightless black substance, like stone but yielding, like tar but much harder. Nothing could grow through it; that was why there was nothing growing on this track but short weeds. The earth and loam that had covered this road couldn't be more than an inch or so thick; just enough for grass and weeds to take root in. There would be no cracks or imperfections in it, unless she came to a place where an earthquake had split it, or the edge of a Cataclysm-boundary, where it would be cut off as if by a giant knife.