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“Did you see him?”
    “See who?”
    “A pygmy. He was albino.”
    “They’re all albino, I think,” said Brand. “They just dye themselves different colors.”
    “Did you see him?”
    “No.”
    “But you heard us talking?”
    “I heard you talking, sure,” said Brand. “But I never heard the other half of the conversation. I thought you might be sleepwalking.”
    She shook her head. “I think I saw a ghost.”
    “Really?”
    “Don’t sound so skeptical,” she said. “You’ve been to the Sea of Wine. You know that souls survive death.”
    “I don’t doubt the existence of ghosts,” said Brand. “But I’ve never met one. I have, on the other hand, met sleepwalkers. And crazy people.”
    “I’m neither.”
    “Just throwing out some theories.” He stretched his back and yawned. “What time is it?”
    “Time for us to dig,” said Sorrow, heading back to her tent.
    “Can’t we wait until dawn?”
    “You can go back to sleep if you wish. I’ve got things to do.”
    “Like what?”
    “For starters, I’ve got to move this boulder.”
    “What? Why?”
    “Because I’m pretty sure the pygmy just walked into it.”
    “You think it’s hollow?”
    “I don’t know. But it occurs to me if it really did roll down the mountain and came to rest here, it’s probably sitting on top of more graves. Maybe no treasure hunters have ever dug here. With a house-sized rock on top of them, on this high ground, maybe these graves have been protected from rain. Maybe the skeletons haven’t rotted.”
    “That’s a lot of maybes. While you strike me as a person who generally gets what she wants, I highly doubt that golem of yours is strong enough to move this boulder.”
    “I have more tricks up my sleeve than mere brute force,” she said, looking back at him as she reached her tent.
    “Fine,” he said, scratching his head. “You can show me your tricks in daylight. Right now, I’m going back to... to...”
    His voice faded off as he stared at her. She followed his gaze and realized he was staring at her feet.
    “Are you... are you wearing...”
    “These aren’t boots,” she said. “I think... I think I might be turning into a dragon. I’m hoping I can find something in one of these graves that will help me avoid that. Perhaps you can grasp my sense of urgency.”
    “I see,” said Brand. He nodded, then headed back toward his tent. “Let me grab my shovel.”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    CLATTER
     
     
    A S B RAND WENT to wake Bigsby, Sorrow ran her hands along the boulder. The surface was heavily weathered and cracked. Vines had dug deep into crevices in the rock. Sorrow closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the stone. She took a deep breath and calmly expanded her senses. Since tapping into Rott’s power, she’d been more aware of the decay that surrounded her. She’d noticed it first when she’d returned to the Freewind from the Great Sea Above. The second she’d stepped onto the ship, she’d felt the torn and broken wood fibers in the timbers beneath her feet and been keenly aware that the ship was doomed.
    Worse, when she’d looked at Gale Romer, the ship’s captain, she’d been able to see that Gale was dying. Not in an immediate, urgent sense, but Gale was well along the path of her inevitable fate. Gale was only forty, robust and active, strengthened by life at sea, but Sorrow’s new awareness had focused on the woman’s gray hairs and weathered skin. It was as if she could watch Gale’s life slowly but inexorably seeping away.
    Save for dealing with Eddy, she’d barely used her powers since returning to the material world. Her hyper-awareness of the creeping decay had faded. But it was time to summon that sense once more. Just as humans didn’t last forever, this imposing mound of stone before her was on a one way trip toward becoming sand. She spread her arms across the rock and could feel the veins of weakness that radiated through the seemingly solid surface.
    She