"Clare!"
"Sorry."
"I'll try. No promises." I looked at the nearest ghost, a man with a long scraggly black beard, a filthy yellow tunic, and a yellow and brown bit of plaid material twisted around his waist as some sort of primitive kilt. "Hello. I'm Sam."
The ghost squinted at me for a minute, then said something to the man nearest him. They both laughed.
"I don't suppose you got that?" I asked Paen without taking my eyes off the ghosts. Normally I wouldn't be worried about them, since ghosts can't interact with this reality without first being grounded, but with this area so strongly steeped in the beyond, I was willing to bet it served as a grounding force.
"Actually, I did. He seems to be speaking an ancient dialect of early Gaelic."
"Oh, good. What did he say?"
"That you're splayed out like a pig about to be roasted."
I glared at the ghost as I sat up, swinging my legs off the table, making sure to keep my mind firmly enmeshed with Paen's. I was a bit woozy with the drain on my power, but I figured I had enough to get us through a brief chat. "How do I say 'up yours' in ancient, ghostly Gaelic?"
He told me. It was highly satisfying to see the ghosts' eyes widen with surprise for a moment when I repeated it, and then the lot of them burst into laughter and clapped each other on the back.
"Why do I suspect you just had me telling a dirty joke?" I asked Paen as I carefully slid off the table and moved over to stand next to him.
He grinned in response. My stomach contracted at the sight of his grin, but it soon settled back to normal as we conducted a one-sided interview of the ghosts. Paen translated for me, while I tried my best to repeat phonetically everything he said.
"Did you see a man with a monkey shoot this woman here?" we asked the ghosts.
The leader, who identified himself as a man named Uilleam, answered in the negative.
"Has there been a disturbance of any sort in the area in the last hour or so?" I asked, via Paen's help.
"Nay," Uilleam answered. "Just the mortals dancing about and making fools of themselves on the plain."
"You think he means the actors?" Clare asked, clearly fascinated.
We asked. Uilleam answered in the affirmative.
"He says they don't know what they're doing," Paen said as Uilleam and two of his buddies stumbled over each other's words to speak. "He says if those swords weren't dulled, they'd have all killed themselves days ago."
"Well, they are just actors," I said, less concerned about the quality of acting and sword choreography than I was the man who shot Clare. "I wonder why they didn't see the guy with the monkey?"
Paen listened a moment as Uilleam said something else. He smiled in response. "It sounds to me as if they've been spending their time watching the film people. You're right about one thing - they are tied to the land. They all gave their lives to defend it, and to it they are bound, acting as guardians of a sort."
"Fascinating, but not terribly helpful as far as finding out why someone wants the bird statue, or for that matter, who he was. Well, I guess we're done here - "
One of the ghosts shouted something to Uilleam, who looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned to face his men and yelled something at them.
"What's going on now?" I asked Paen in a low voice, a little bit worried about the ghosts. So far they'd been perfectly well behaved, but I was still concerned about the possibility that they might have a physical presence in our world.
"Uh-oh."
"What? What are they saying?"
"Uh-oh? What uh-oh?" Clare asked at the same time as I spoke.
An odd look of chagrin passed over Paen's face. "The suggestion has been made that they do something about the lack of sword skill being demonstrated by the actors."
"Oh no," I said, a dread feeling in the pit of my stomach. "You mean - "
Paen nodded. "Yes. They intend to show everyone how it's done."