He gazed down the dark length of the caravan, fighting the shivers crawling up his spine, trying to compose himself enough to say something that didn’t sound absurd. He couldn’t. “You seem astonished,” Aydin remarked. “Of course I’m astonished! What else would I be?” Rowan heard the husky crack in his voice and for once didn’t care. Aydin shrugged, a languid ripple quite unlike the gesture Rowan thought of as “a shrug.” “You’ve never heard of a ghost? Your language has the word—there must be a concept to match.” Of course he had heard of ghosts. But ghosts weren’t here—they were denizens of the deadlands. Only in rare dreams did Somos open a connection to allow the dead and the living to make contact. But how did he know that? Rowan hadn’t had an especially religious upbringing. His parents had maintained a shrine to Heska, god of music, in their home at Five Oaks—a shrine, he thought with a stab of uneasy guilt, he should set up himself in the caravan—and on their summer travels they would make a small offering to the local deity when occasion demanded.
