"They're frightened?"

"Only of life. Of too much care. Of the pull and grasp of memory." He could feel deep sadness in her words. "But I must bring all that and more to my brother."

Things moved around him now in the inconstant darkness, forms with some kind of independent existence from the grass and the hills. He could not see them, exactly, could only sense them as a man can feel when someone stands close behind him. These new forms seemed distant, almost empty, little more than wind and the impression of existence.

"These are the long dead, or perhaps the impressions those left behind when they moved on to other places." Saqri's voice seemed distant, her light scarcely more visible than the empty shapes around him. "Do not fear them-they hold no harm for you."

But he did fear them, not because they menaced him, but because they did not even seem to notice him or anything else. Were they simply shadows left behind, as Saqri said, or were they sunk so deep in death that they could not even be understood anymore by the living? It terrified him to imagine becoming such a thing some day.

"There." Saqri had moved a little closer, her swan-form faint as foxfire. "I see them-they are in the glade."

She led him into a murk of shadows that stood like trees. They were silvered ever so faintly by radiance from above, though no source was visible, as though the moon had let some of its light fall like dew before disappearing from the sky.

He saw them, then-a cluster of smeared, dully gleaming shapes that wavered as if seen through deep water or ancient glass. They were deer, or at least each bore a shining filigree upon his brow that might have been antlers. They moved restlessly as Barrick approached, but did not run.

"Do not go closer," Saqri told him. "They can smell the life on you. They may not remember it but they know it is foreign to this place."