Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall by Charles Ingrid Page A

bumped him in the chest.
    "I'm glad to see you, too. Your saddle was getting heavy." Thomas dropped it. "The bad news is, you now get pegged out like a common donkey." Harley snorted in disbelief, but Thomas was true to his word before dropping back down in a hollow of dirt and sand to sleep what he could of the remaining night away.
    He could not put clarity into his dreams, but there was a sound, a hissing voice calling and it was that hiss that woke him again.
    "Thomasssss."
    His eyes had gone gummy. He got up on an elbow and rubbed at them, trying to see in the purple-gray night. The fire he'd banked before sleeping roared in a gout of flame—cool flame—and the illusion of a skull rippled in it. Cavernous eye sockets blazed orange. Thomas could see through the haunt to the rocks and scrub brush. He sat up with a yawn.
    "Gods, Gill. It's too late for antics. What do you want?" He would not look directly at the phantasm, keeping its vision in his peripheral view. The ghost of his mentor, weighed by spectral motives rather than the goodliness of natural flesh, could not be trusted.
    "Thomasssss." Like rain drops hissing on hot rocks, the specter's voice boiled up at him.
    "Gillander." Thomas kept his voice flat and neutral.
    With abruptness, the fire subsided to its banked embers, and the fleshed, if translucent, outline of an elderly man sitting cross-legged floated above it. The pants were dark, cuffs frayed, knees threadbare, the shirt light, with a ticked design, sleeves rolled to the elbow. The suspenders were bowed out, their stretch leeched away by the years. Thomas knew the figure well. But its face remained gaunt, as if the aspect of flesh was laid over it too lightly. He could see the skull dominating its expression. Fire danced deeply in the eyes. Gillander, irascible in life, loved scaring the hell out of people in death.
    "Getting careless." The ghost grinned. The teeth bared all the way to the jawbone.
    "Getting tired. What do you want from me?"
    Gillander rubbed a rawboned hand through his thin thatch of hair. It had been yellow-white when the man had been alive and taught him. Now it was nearly colorless. "Maybe I'm here to avenge the dead, boy." He pointed at the shrouded burden across the burro's back.
    "I have nothing to fear from you. I carried out the sentence on a guilty man."
    "If you really thought so, you wouldn't be here."
    "I'm satisfied he's guilty. Maybe I just want to understand why he did what he did." Thomas pulled out his canteen, took a swig of water, spat it out, then took a fresh swallow.
    Gillander made a snorting noise through a nose that had been broken three times in life. Its high, knobbed bridge gave a look of arrogance to the man. "Last time we talked, you were in search of what it meant to be human. Now you're trying to define truth?"
    "Maybe." Thomas shrugged into his groundsheet. The dirt had chilled down considerably during the night. "What's your excuse?"
    "Maybe I like finishin' a job I started. You raised these old bones by walking across them. You're strong, Thomas. You've got talents they haven't even classified yet. You've got magic. Do they know that?"
    Thomas had been drifting into looking the ghost flush in the face. He blinked now and angled his gaze back away. "It's possible some of them guess."
    "Lady, now, she ought to." The phantasm hiked up his pants cuffs. He had never worn socks with his down-at-the-heel boots and there was a flash of cadaverous green-gray skin. "You have work to do, boy. Deliver the body and git home. There're students waiting to be taught. That's your life's work. Learn and pass it on. We've got a whole civilization's worth of know-how to catch up with and pass on. You're wasting time. Use the road, Thomas."
    A cold wind touched the back of Blade's neck. "No."
    "I taught you how to move Time itself. Do it. Do what you have to do and get home."
    Thomas felt his skin prickle. This was precognition, even if it came out of a ghostly mouth. But