“He had only a daughter,” I said. Then there was a long pregnant silence of such a quality that I looked back to find Chance’s eyes upon me, brooding and hot. “Oh, no,” I said. “I will not.”
“She’s buried nearby,” he remarked. “Almost in sight of the ruins.”
“I couldn’t do that,” I said flatly. It was true. I could not even think of raising the ghost of Tossa. It would have made me feel like a Ghoul, and I said as much.
“I didn’t say you should take her with us,” Chance said in mild reproof. “I didn’t say you should drag her around.”
I swallowed bile at the thought. Ghouls did raise certain kinds of recent dead and drag them into a kind of fearful servitude of horror, a thing which no self-respecting Necromancer would think to do. There were others who raised ghosts¾Thaumaturges, for example, or Revenants, or Bonedancers. If what old Windlow and Himaggery had told me was true, full half of all Gamesmen would have some Talent at Deadraising. Full half of all Gamesmen would share any one Talent. If so, it was not a Talent generally used in the way Ghouls and Bonedancers used it, and I felt unclean at the thought.
“No,” I said. “She died, Chance, without ever knowing she was dying. Often the dead do not know they are dead until we raise them up.” In that instant I thought of Windlow with a kind of stomach-wrenching panic, then sternly put that thought down. “The ancient dead are only dust; they have forgotten life and possess only a kind of hunger which the act of raising gives them. I do not feel thus about the ancient dead. But the newly dead¾ah, Chance, that is a different thing. With Tossa, she would know herself dead, and it would hurt her.”
The memory of Mandor’s ghost was recently with me. I was prepared to be as stubborn as necessary, but Chance only said, “Well, then we’ll have to think up some other way to find out. How about someone dead for eighty years or so?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you think you could raise an Immutable?”
“You’re thinking of Riddle’s grandfather? Riddle said he didn’t die in the ruins.”
“Riddle said a lot of things. Don’t know whether I believe him or not is all.”
So we rode along while I thought about that. Riddle was digging in Dindindaroo. He had recently found out that something lay in the ruins which he needed? Wanted? Someone else wanted? Well, which he cared enough about to go to some trouble over, put it that way. Where had he found out, and when? Perhaps on that northern journey he and I had started to make together, when he had turned off toward the east just above Betand? Or in his own land? Perhaps someone had told him? Who? Or he had found old papers?
After a time Chance interrupted this line of thought to say, “You know, these Immutables are just like the rest of us. They drink a little and they talk. Get a little jolly, they do, and they talk. Pawns travel through their land on business. You and me, we could travel there.”
Which was an answer, of course. We would need to disguise ourselves. Riddle knew me as a Necromancer only, or so I believed. Chance and I had been seen together once before in the Land of the Immutables, but only briefly. So suppose we went into that land as two pawns, traveling on business. What business? I put this to Chance.
“Well, as you left me to my own devices in that town of Xammer, boy, and without a hello, goodbye, how was your dinner. I got into a little game or two.”
“Chance!”
“Now, now. Mustn’t react hasty-like. A quiet game with honest folk is always good fun. Anyhow, I took my winnings in various small bits and pieces. A little gold, some gems, fripperies and foolishness. Thought I might turn a profit, up north.”
“So that’s what’s in your saddlebags. I thought you were heavy loaded for having no pack beast.”
He nodded to himself happily. I never knew what pleased Chance most¾winning a game of cards or dice, finding a woman who was a good cook, or locating a wine cellar put together by a master vintner. Whatever else the world offered, he would choose one or more of those three.