Garek dropped his head. Dark hair fell over his brow, hiding those bright eyes from Tomasz.
“You arrived the night of the hunt,” he continued. “After Oj Pavel reminded me to salt the threshold. I’d already placed a bowl of milk, and run ash over the frame, and you—you did not enter until I asked for your help.”
“I could not.”
“But the next night, you walked right in and?—”
“You invited me.” Garek raised his head, and Tomasz jolted at the sight. His pupils had shrunk to tiny pricks, swallowed by molten silver bleeding beyond the bounds of his iris. “The wind blew me to your doorstep in search of a quarry, and you invited me in. Night after night, you poured me gorza and let me touch–let me touch you.” He reached for Tomasz’s face, hissing when he flinched and turned away. “Tomasz.”
The crack of heartbreak in Garek’s voice was as loud as the broken branches that had fallen on the overhang. The branches that had crushed?—
“No.” Tomasz jumped to his feet. Panic drove him away, across the tavern. But he did not look, could not look at the ruins of the body beneath the ice and beam. The weather-worn bones that none had cleared away. At the body that was his, but how could it be his when he was here? He could touch and be touched. He could find release and solace in the arms of a traveler who came night after night. “This cannot—I cannot be?—”
“Stay, Tomasz.” Garek rose with a spin, riding coat snapping with the movement. His eyes burned like a thousand will-o’-wisps. “Do not leave, do not run.Gods, I beg of you, do not run.”
“And if I do?”
“No one salted your threshold.” Garek approached slowly, hands held out with his palms pressing the air, as thoughTomasz were a mad beast coiled to strike. “There are no wards, and the winds pushed me to your door.”
“What are you saying?” Tomasz’s heel caught a bone—his bone. Oh, gods, his bones, his body. How long had they lain there? How long had he been unable to see?—and he tripped. Garek jolted closer, and Tomasz threw out an arm. “Stay back!”
He stopped abruptly, hands still raised. “Do not step through that door, Tomasz.”
“Why?” he begged. “What happens if I do?”
Garek’s eyes burned brighter in response. A wind kicked up around him, tearing the edges of his coat and whipping hair across his face.
“What areyou?”
“I am death on fleet heels,” he answered, grim as the bones at Tomasz’s feet. “And I am cursed to ride for quarry.”
His voice echoed off the walls, wrapping around Tomasz like a shawl, and he knew. Gods above, he knew and the horror of it, of this night, of his body forgotten at the threshold, spurned him into action.
Garek’s eyes, so bright and alarming, widened ever more as he realized what Tomasz was about to do.
“No!” he bellowed.
And Tomasz ran.
Six
The tomb of ice and timber did not stop him. Tomasz was dead. A ghost forgotten by the village. What were walls to a haunting?
He ran across the threshold and down the front walk, skidding onto the well-traveled road mere feet from his front door.
Curiosity turned his head, and Tomasz screamed his horror at the ruins of his tavern. Crushed beneath a tumult of rotted, snow-covered trees, broken timber and mottled thatch gave the barest suggestion of the building that had once proudly stood at the crossroads.
The fierce winds from that night raged through his memory, the terrible howls from the mountains, and the awful crack of branches above.
His temple throbbed. One skull-splitting, knee-quaking pulse of pain, blurring his vision and blinding him to the ruins of his tavern and the fallen trees. Until all he saw were two molten orbs floating in the dark.
“Please, Tomasz.” Garek’s voice traveled on the wind.
Tomasz did not wait for more. Following ghostly instincts, he broke into a sprint. Never winded, never suffering the cramps or aches he would have if he were alive.
The knowledge sped him faster, and he entered the village, slowing only when he came upon the market square without passing through the gate.
The gate, which would have been closed after sundown.