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