The house seemed to take the scoured night and embed it in the mortar of its tall, sloping walls. A new moon had risen into the sky above the lake, and the house seemed opposed to it, denying the thin scrape of its light. The house loomed over the scattering of hovels that lined the road, and as the wagons came up to it Manrie could hear an unnatural booming beneath the pavement, as if something in the ground was heaving itself against a cage.

“It’s the water in the caves,” Big Praeda said, noticing Manrie’s alarm. She was holding her namesake, the little girl half asleep, half looking at the outskirts of Raesidae with drooping eyes. No one was abroad in the night. The doors and windows were shut tight.

The wall of the pantry wagon was open, and they were perched in the opening, dangling their legs over the edge as the wagon jolted along. Behind them, Uku sat in a cleared space, his big hands steading the pots and boxes, moving between objects and seeming to know which would be upset next. As they came even with the house, Taeyaho began to sing from the roof of the sleeping wagon, his voice high and bright. Manrie felt her shoulders loosen a little. It was as if his song were creating a ward against the malevolence of the looming mansion.

The road ran right through the house’s covered portico. There were six rounded doors set in the wall, and all of them were open. Manrie could see the glint of water in the courtyard beyond. But there were no people about. “Whose house is it?” she whispered.

“The Jahnajeel,” Big Praeda told her. “The most cursed of the four cursed families.”

“Cursed in what way?”

“It depends. Each member is born into their own curse. But in some of the other families, people are born without any curse at all.”

“Cloedeya doesn’t believe in the curses.”

Big Praeda pursed her bluish lips. “That’s because Hirikai Ehwaeya is unable to savor his food. Because of the curse. But Cloedeya won’t accept it.”

“Who’s that?”

“The patriarch of one of the other families.” Big Praeda gave her a sidelong glance. “You’ve never been to Raesidae?”

Manrie shook her head. “Aizdha always talked of it. Perhaps we would have gone next year, if he had lived.”

“Well, you’re here now.”

They fell silent as the road left the portico and turned in a long curve towards the north. “Manrie, come walk with me,” Melsa called from the front of the wagon. Manrie hopped down onto the ragged road and jogged up to Melsa, who was leading the horse. “I wanted you to see the waterfall. And the standing stones.”

There was a river to their left. It had grown wide as it came to the edge of the cliffs, and it roared its way down into the water below. In the darkness, Manrie could only see the slender moonlight glinting off of the spray. North of it, large monoliths lined the river bank. As they passed them, she saw that they were carved. “The wandering people made them,” Melsa said. “And they made the storage mounds, and the barrow. They would winter here. The cliffs fall away to the west, and there is a beautiful beach. They would store what they had gathered in the summer and fish all winter. I think they must have been very happy.”

“Where did they go?”

“Further north. When the refugees from Cahntada came,” she nodded at Jahnajeel House, looming over the road to their right. “The First Families. Only they weren’t first. The wandering people had families, of course.”

“Have you ever met them? The wandering people?”

“Oh, yes. We are very like them, you know. We go where the food is, and leave when we want to.”

A thought occurred to Manrie. “Melsa, where do you bury your dead?”

The older woman fell silent. Her shoulders swung back and forth. “No one has died, Manrie,” she said. “Not yet.”

Taeyaho’s voice fell silent. Manrie could see a bridge spanning the river ahead of them, and she could see shimmering figures on it. She glanced back, and heard Big Praeda telling Uku to put up the wall of the pantry wagon. She didn’t know where Little Praeda’s blindfold had gotten to.

The road turned, and they were at the foot of the bridge. The dead of Raesidae stood upon it, as if trapped between the two banks of the river. But on the far side, Manrie could see a line of them, turning to the north and disappearing into the little valleys that ran between dark mounds of earth. The caravan came to a stop. Manrie glanced at Melsa, then made her way forward.

Cloedeya was standing in front of the sleeping wagon, facing the spirits. His hand was on the horse’s nose to calm it. Taeyaho had clamored down from the roof to stand beside him. “Should I get the disc?” Manrie whispered. “Should I lead them off the road?”

Cloedeya’s chrome-colored hair was dull in the moonlight. There was misery in his mismatched eyes. “Yes, I suppose so. But Taeyaho and I will go with you.”

“What is it?” Tafaemi’s voice called from the interior of the wagon. “Why have the wagons stopped?”

“Stay where you are,” Cloedeya said to her. Then he nodded to a spirit that was closest to the end of the bridge. “That’s Odiril Narm. I didn’t know that she had died. She always loved that chilled raspberry soup. You remember it, Taeyaho. The one that must be made from the cream of a spring cow?”

“Do we have some?” Taeyaho asked.

Cloedeya smiled sadly. “No. It’s the wrong time of year. But that’s little Nekaen Zairiset, standing just behind her. She died when I was just a boy. I remember that she loved hollyhocks. She would carry them around on their stem, and tap your head with them, as if she were blessing you.”

Manrie turned and walked back along the wagons. She slid open the door of the pantry wagon and heard Little Praeda gasp. “I’m just getting my saddlebag,” she whispered.

“Manrie, are they gone? Are the ghosts gone?”

“They will be soon, Praeda. Stay in here with the others. You’ll be safe.”

“I will come with you,” Uku said. His face swam out of the darkness, and Manrie lifted the wall higher so that he could scramble out. He handed her saddlebag to her.

“I only need the disc,” she said, and passed the bag back to Big Praeda. It was light now, with only the bestiary inside of it.

They walked back to the foot of the bridge. Manrie held the disc above her head, and the spirits lifted their faces to it. She walked forward, and her friends fell in step beside her. Uku was right behind her. She could feel the reassuring loom of his presence. The ghosts made way for them, stepping to either side of the bridge and letting them pass. It was a very wide bridge, wide enough for several houses to sit side by side on it. The river gurgled beneath it, as if innocent of the roar of the falls to their south. The dead made no sound as they fell in behind. Only the steps of the four caravaners echoed on the stone slabs.

They reached the other bank and came to a crossroads. “To the north,” Cloedeya whispered behind her, and she turned. The mounds loomed ahead of her. There were paths up their sides, long ladders abandoned beside them. The river moved placidly to their right. The moonlight was stronger here, as if the slim crescent in the sky had gathered the strength of past and future moons and was shining all of their rays down along the road. The road itself was very wide. Manrie glanced behind and saw that the spirits were walking five or six abreast. Their faces were drawn forward, their expressions concentrated on the disc that she held above her head.

They came to a final mound, and the road wound its way up it in a great spiral. When they came to the rim Manrie saw that it was a crater, and that the road wound along its edges as if it were scooping out the inside of the hill. In the center of the crater was a rise of earth, and a door was set in it. She paused before beginning the descent and looked back at the dead that ringed the hill. There were archaic figures among them, people dressed in furs and pelts, their hair plated or built into wild configurations atop their heads. Even the wandering people had found their burial place here. Until now. Why was the land rejecting them?

Down, down, along the great spiral, dirt and stone skittering under her feet, down onto the flattened basin and to the door. It was very tall. Even Uku could pass through it without bowing. It had a rope handle. Cloedeya stepped around her and grasped the handle. The door opened very suddenly when he tugged it. The smell of dank earth and decay washed out at them.

Manrie suddenly felt afraid. She turned and found Taeyaho’s eyes. “You will sing?” she asked. He nodded. He stepped to the doorway, and began. His voice was light and as clear as the crescent moon. As Manrie stepped into the darkness, she concentrated on his words. He was singing for the dead as they followed her in, filing past him.

“Here is a mother, her hands raw from the rag with which she bathed her sick son’s brow. And here is the son, lost to her, as she, soon, was lost, the fever gone from both of them. They walk together into the grave.

“Here are the five children who were lost in a boat upon the lake. They were gone for many months, and the boat was found, caught in rushes along the bank, and the little bodies were within it. They held each other in death, and gave what comfort they could. They walk together into the grave.

“Here is the miser, much hated by those who knew him, who never would allow his wife to dress herself in finery. Yet when he lay dying she sat beside him and counted all his coins. She was showing them to him, so that he might delight in them one more time. And she was telling him that they were hers, now, and that she would spend them. They walk together into the grave.”

The tunnel was dark, and Taeyaho’s voice echoed along it. It, too, spiraled downwards. A spiral within a spiral within a spiral. Perhaps the ghosts were meant to become lost in it. The thought made her afraid. But Taeyaho’s voice was strong. The melody was sweet and moved fluidly through its fluctuations. As if he had summoned the river into his song. The words became indistinct, but she felt them. Felt the lives that followed her. The people who had traveled along the river, hunting, fishing, gathering fruits and vegetables. The long summers, the moments of danger, the songs sung beside campfires at night. Generations of people who no longer remembered the Door at Hasra, or had no need for it. People who wouldn’t go back to the Previous World if they could. Manrie felt their lives, the moments of their births, their play, their laughter, their love-making, their child-bearing, the way their memories changed as they spoke them, their deaths. She thought of the birds in the mountain rookery, dancing, the air flashing with the deep blue and green of hidden feathers. A sweet taste came into her mouth, as if Cloedeya was feeding her. When the walls fell away to either side of her, and she was standing in deep, echoing darkness, she was not afraid.

She took a few steps forward, listening to the tendril of sound from Taeyaho’s voice, and set the disc down on the rocky floor. She could not see the dead, but she knew that they were all around her. She closed her eyes and stood for a moment, breathing quietly, and she felt the earth breathe with her, as if the dirt and stone wanted to fill her with what they remembered of light and fresh air.

Then she turned and followed the sound of Taeyaho’s voice back out of the cave, fleeing upwards towards it, her footsteps moving faster and faster, until the door loomed ahead of her, and she saw Uku peering in, a look of worry on his face. She fell into his arms and pressed her ear against his stomach, and felt the beating of his heart and the movement of air that touched the top of her head as he released a held breath.

Taeyaho fell silent and embraced her, and she felt Cloedeya’s arms slip around her. They stood like that for a long moment. Then Cloedeya broke away, stepped to the door, and closed it. He stood looking at her. The moonlight cast a long shadow across the basin, and only the sheen of his eyes were visible. Like ill-sorted pebbles, placed beside each other.

“We will go back to the Man on the Mountain,” he said. “We must get other discs.”

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She nodded. Then she saw a movement on the rim of the basin, and gasped. For a moment she thought that it was Raeflin, staring down at them. But the figure was too tall, and the moonlight revealed flowing garments and the fall of a veil across its face.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Cloedeya said. And then the figure was gone.

They climbed back out of the basin warily, looking for the figure. But when they stood on its rim, the landscape of raised mounds was empty of people. “Taeyaho, how did you know those things?” Manrie asked as they followed the winding road down.

“What things?”

“About the people. The dead? About the miser and the children and the fevers.” She could sense that the others were listening, waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Only I reached out my hand and touched them as they went through.”

As she had reached out to touch Aizdha in Libreigia, the night before he had died. Only that had been a dream, not a ghost. And she hadn’t been able to feel his hand.

When they came back to the bridge they found that Tafaemi had moved to the pantry wagon. Afraid to be alone, Manrie thought. But she stayed there as Cloedeya and Melsa got the horses moving, pressed into a corner beside the dry fish, having forgotten to protect her golden hair. Manrie coaxed Little Praeda out of the wagon, and they climbed the ladder and sat on top, among the pots of herbs and plants. “That’s the waterfall,” Manrie told her, pointing to the south.

“Manrie, are the ghosts really gone?”

“They’re really gone.”

“I know.”

Manrie gave a little laugh. “How do you know?”

“My robes aren’t white anymore.”

Manrie glanced down at her own robes in surprise and saw that they had returned to their shabby dust color. “Well, good. We’ll be less conspicuous.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Noticeable. Obvious. I sound like Uku.”

She laughed, and it surprised Praeda. But then Praeda laughed, too.

They didn’t turn right, towards the mounds, but continued straight at the crossroads and came to another huge house. Its stone walls were warmed by the moonlight and the sound of whinnying slipped through a large round door. It was closed and locked, but Cloedeya banged on it. Manrie and Praeda couldn’t see past the sleeping wagon, but they could hear Cloedeya’s voice, and a voice answering him, and then the wagons were moving, down a wide tunnel and into a large yard. The draft horses neighed a greeting which was met by the voices of other horses, sounding from the stables that lined the yard. People were emerging from stairways, some still in their day clothes, others mussed by sleep.

A large man strode across the yard and Cloedeya turned squarely to face him. “Cloedeya?” the man said, and sloped his head and shoulders forward, as if he wanted to bite him.

“He’s like a horse,” Praeda murmured, and Manrie could see it. The long face, the big eyes, the slight twitch to his head, as if his ears were trying to flick.

“Gaelstrup,” Cloedeya said.

“You come at night? When the spirits are walking the roads?”

“They don’t walk them anymore,” Cloedeya said. He laughed suddenly, a sharp, joyful sound. The same laugh Manrie had given, when she realized that her clothes weren’t white. “It’s true. Go and look at the bridge. They’re gone.”

“How are they gone?” Gaelstrup muttered.

“We brought a disc, from the Man on the Mountain. Its traps the ghosts. We’ve returned them to the barrow. They won’t leave there now.”

Gaelstrup turned to a stable boy. “Fetch the Patriarch,” he said. Then he turned to the draft horses, ignoring Cloedeya, as if he distrusted him and the truth could only be fully known when it was verified by a horse. He walked along the horses’ sides, running his hands over flank and shoulder, inspecting the harness lines, the collar, the blinders. Cloedeya watched with his head lowered, an uncharacteristically mulish set to his shoulders.

“Do they know each other?” Praeda whispered.

“They know each other’s names, at least,” Manrie replied.

Then the large man was whistling and boys were running forward from the stables. The horses were set free of their harnesses and led to a long water trough. Manrie glanced back at the tunnel they had come through. She had thought people would run to the door, throw it open, look out at a night that was empty of specters. *Why don’t they trust Cloedeya?* she wondered.

Her gaze ranged around the large courtyard. The house that surrounded it had two stories, and the second floor had a mezzanine. One wall of the courtyard was the back of a taller house, with rounded windows that opened out onto balconies above the horse yard. Another large tunnel granted access into this house, and she saw a movement in it, a face peering out. Strangely furtive, like an actor peeking from behind a theater curtain before the start of a play. She kept watch, and saw more shadows fill the tunnel.

The other caravaners had gathered around Cloedeya at the side of the sleeping wagon, and Manrie nudged Praeda, indicating that they should go down and join them. She felt that she was being watched as she turned her back on the courtyard to descend the ladder. When they joined their friends, Big Praeda had placed a protective hand on Cloedeya’s arm, and Melsa was standing in front of him, swinging her wide shoulders back and forth as if she were fanning away an unpleasant odor. Uku towered beside the wagon, his whole being concentrated on some unseen threat. Manrie glanced back and saw Tafaemi peering out of the wagon’s open side. Taeyaho had crawled into her arms and was resting his head against her generous breasts. Manrie shivered with revulsion.

There was no fanfare, but suddenly everyone knew to look at the entrance of the tunnel to the tall house. A figure emerged from it, a woman who moved in the oddest fashion. She walked with her pelvis thrust forward, her stomach and chest concave above it, and her shoulders and head bobbing brazenly, so that her upper body formed a crescent moon. There was a man walking at her side, much younger than she was, and seemingly nervous. She wasn’t touching him but she was leading him, her grasp on him as firm as if she held a chain. They were followed by two other couples, whose apparent normality only accentuated their oddity. Two bronze-haired men in their thirties, each with a wife. One wife was plain and plump, the other tall and quite beautiful.

The oddly moving woman walked right up to Cloedeya. She tilted her head to look at him but said nothing. Her young companion spoke. “The boy told us that the ghosts are gone?”

Cloedeya stared at him. “Where is the patriarch?” he asked.

The old woman snorted. The young man, annoyed, said, “I am the patriarch.”

Cloedeya looked past them, to Gaelstrup the stable master, who had fallen in at the back of the procession. “You are not Gabreev Zairiset.”

The old woman simpered. “My dear husband of many years died last autumn. This is my new husband, who has become patriarch in his place.”

Cloedeya shifted his gaze to the two men who had followed her out of the tunnel. “But you have two sons.”

“As long as I am the matriarch, my husband is the patriarch. Besides, they each have a new wife of their own and are,” she tittered, “well occupied.”

Her husband would not be distracted from his inquiry. “The ghosts are gone?” he repeated.

“They are. We have returned them to their barrow.”

An eager expression passed over the young man’s face. He glanced back at the two sons of the household, as if seeking an ally. “Alohwa, will you go and see?”

The taller of the two brothers detached himself from his plump wife with some reluctance. She clung to his arm and then stood biting her lip as he walked past the wagons and went to the tunnel that led to the outer door. All heads turned to follow him. The door was thrown open, revealing the empty road and the empty bridge, silver in the moonlight. He turned and came back to his wife. “Do the Jahnajeel know?” he asked in a muddy, adenoidal voice.

“You are the first we’ve told,” Cloedeya said.

The old woman sounded a little peel of pleasure, like the nicker of a horse. “It is good to know that old loyalties still remain, Cloedeya. You have not forgotten that you are my client.”

“But how did you do it?” her young husband asked impatiently. He was very handsome, with sharp blue eyes, but also very restless, as if he were pacing some internal cage.

“A disc. Delved from a riverbed by the Man on the Mountain, and given to Manrie here. She used another disc to return the dead of Tzurfaera to their rest.”

“Whose dead?” the old woman asked contemptuously. “Macbrau’s, or the Enrieghos’?”

“All of the dead,” Cloedeya told her.

She considered this. Then she smiled. “The Jahnajeel will be miserable.”

“Why will they be miserable?”

“They say that the ghosts ride them.” She tittered again, and the shorter of her sons gave a low, amorous guffaw. “They sit in their house and summon the spirits as if they were summoning clients. Then their eyes go white and they scream in rapture, and they speak as if the ghosts were inside of them. Jandro and I attended one of their seances, and I will admit that I found it very frightening. But Jandro was there to reassure me.” She stroked a spavined finger up her husband’s forearm. “Everybody was coming to them, and I’m sure that they would have claimed status as the First Among Firsts, but now it seems that your little friend has restored the natural order of things.”

“Ride them?” Manrie asked. She could hear the alarm in her voice, but couldn’t explain the burst of fear that moved through her.

“So they claim. It’s quite a performance. But the curious thing is that we can see the ghosts quite clearly when they are standing on the road from the barrow or standing on the bridge. We did not see one enter House Jahnajeel before the seance began.” She tutted and waved a finger in the air, as if admonishing a small child. “The triplets are not to be trusted.” She clapped her hands together, banishing all talk of her rivals. They were big hands and distorted by arthritis, but the clap was sharp and authoritative. “And now I suppose that you will throw one of your banquets. Where were you, when we got married?”

“I am sure that my uncle prepared a wonderful feast,” Cloedeya said softly.

“Oh, him. He died two moons ago. We had to bring cooks from Yenceyan. My husband fetched them when he went to fetch my daughters-in-law. We all celebrated our nuptials together. Isn’t that nice.”

Manrie could not tell whether the woman truly thought that it was nice. She only knew that there was something about the six members of the Zairiset family that embarrassed her. As if she had seen all of them naked. She sniffed the air and realized that they all smelled like the sleeping wagon after Cloedeya, Melsa, and Big Praeda had been lying together.

Cloedeya was blinking in shock. “My uncle is dead?” he asked quietly.

“Oh yes. He cooked a tremendous meal but he wouldn’t allow anyone else to eat it. And then he died. The slaves say that a ghost appeared in his kitchen and directed his cooking. The Jahnajeel claim that they have talked to that ghost. Is it possible that they directed it? If you are looking for vengeance, look to them, Cloedeya.”

He was reeling, and Big Praeda placed an arm across his shoulders. “I thought you said that they were charlatans,” Melsa said sharply. She did not try to hide her contempt for the old woman and her sons.

“Well, yes. Probably. But we who live in this land are used to many strange things. The land is always trying to confuse us, and certainty is very hard to find. But there are things that ground us.” She pursed her lips and examined Melsa, and Manrie thought that she must know, somehow, that Cloedeya and the two older women were lovers. As if her dalliances with her young husband gave her some sort of special insight into all affairs of the bedroom.

Melsa refused to be embarrassed. “Perhaps we should go and make camp in House Jahnajeel,” she said. “We can make sure that the ghosts are really gone.”

Little Praeda gave a mew of fear. Manrie squeezed her hand to reassure her. It was the stable master who spoke in opposition to this idea. “The horses are already in their stalls,” he said gruffly, as if offended that anyone should think to interrupt a horse’s rest.

“I’m surprised you’re not breeding them,” Uku muttered. Manrie had forgotten that he was there. He was staring at the matriarch of Zairiset House with open distaste.

The matriarch responded with a high, peeling laugh. “It is true that great fecundity has come upon this house since my marriage. Alohwa and Sindri are already expecting, and Craejo and Koenbahki will be soon. Won’t you, my dears. Even I have thought, on certain mornings, that I might be able to bear once more.” She saw the dismay on their faces and laughed again. For some reason she decided to address Manrie. “Someday you, too, may know the joys of a young husband. Or should I not say that in front of your current one.”

“Current one?” Manrie asked, and then realized that she was talking about Uku.

“We are unmarried,” Uku said dryly. “Unwed. Spouseless.”

“And with a child! How you clients enjoy your freedom!”

“We are not clients. And the girl is not ours.”

“Whose is she, then?” The withered mouth rounded into an oh of feigned shock. “Yours, Cloedeya? Gotten on one of your paramours?”

“I’m mine!” Little Praeda said, and the six Zairisets laughed at her.

“Poor innocent! No one is their own. But never mind.” The old woman swung her pendulous head back to Cloedeya. “How long will you need to prepare your feast?”

He stared at her mulishly. “Tomorrow,” he said. “We have been traveling all day and through the night. We need to rest, and share a meal among ourselves. Will you allow our wagons to stay here for the night?”

“Of course, of course,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “You are our client, are you not?”

“My uncle was your client,” Cloedeya said.

She stared at him, pursing her wrinkled lips, as if deciding how to answer his challenge. “Then you agree with the child? You think you can belong to yourself alone?”

“No,” he said softly. “I belong to the caravan. We will make a meal and eat among ourselves, and tomorrow we will hold our feast.”