Zalbar would have continued, but Ischade had suddenly raised a hand to her
forehe ad, massaging it as she grimaced.
“Razkuli. That’s where I’ve seen that uniform before. But he isn’t one of the
ones that I keep.”
“I don’t understand,” the Hell-Hound frowned. “Are you saying you know him?”
“He has … assisted me from time to time,” Ischade said, shrugging lightly.
“Now, what can I do to help you?”
Zalbar tried to digest what Ischade was saying, but his mind simply wasn’t up to
the implications. Finally, he abandoned his efforts and returned to his original
line of questioning.
“Could you tell me what’s going on? What did Razkuli mean when he said that he
couldn’t ‘cross over’?”
“For some reason his spirit is trapped between the realm of the living and the
realm of the dead. Something is keeping him from a peaceful rest, and he wants
you to help him on the physical plane.”
“Help him how? What is it I’m supposed to do?”
“I don’t know for sure. It could be any one of a number of things. I suppose the
only way to find out is to ask him.”
Zalbar straightened in his chair and glanced nervously around the room. “You
mean you’re going to summon the spirit? Here? Now?”
Ischade shook her head in an abrupt negative. “First of all, that’s not the way
it works. I don’t summon spirits … I send an agent or occasionally fetch them
personally. In this case, however, I think we’ll leave the spirit alone and
pursue alternate methods for obtaining the necessary information. As you’ve
probably noticed, spirits aren’t particularly eloquent or informative. Besides,