the freakish bay horse who was partially present, trotting around the Peres
house on ghostly hooves, its coat looking as if it reflected the flaming
whirlwind around which it circled-or was a part of it. The horse was
insubstantial, sort of. But if he could catch it, maybe he could ride it up the
back stairs.
Strat had ridden it. And the horse and Crit were both here for the same reason:
Strat.
He decided to follow the horse on its rounds and forsook the cover of jumbled
stone, remnants of the Peres’s garden wall, behind which he’d been crouching.
The heat waves emanating from that spinning horror of flame struck him with
awesome force; he could feel his eyelashes singe and his lips start to blister.
Head down, following echoing hoofbeats as much as the flickering glimpses he
could get of this “horse,” he edged along in its wake.
If the house would just bum down, like any normal fire did once a fire had
consumed its fuel, things would be so simple: he could begin mourning.
He’d thought of just considering the whole unsightly and unnatural mess as a
funeral pyre, calling for reinforcements, and making the Peres estate Strat’s
bier. They’d say the rites, play some funeral games, he’d put everything he
owned up as prize or sacrifice.
But he couldn’t do that, not until he knew for certain that Strat really was
dead, and wholly dead: not likely to be resurrected by Ischade.
For that was what he feared the most: that the necromant wouldn’t be content to
let Ace stay dead, that she’d pine for her lover and eventually call him up from