Never Trust a Dead Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

have been his second choice after rescue. Did spirits glow? The light was just distinct enough to give him his bearings, to show him that whatever was approaching was coming from deeper within the burial cavern.
    The light came around a corner.
    After a full day of total blackness, the brightness hurt, and he threw his hands up to cover his eyes, hoping if it was an angel, it wouldn't be offended, and if it was a ghost ... He was very much hoping it wasn't a ghost.
    He peeked out from between his fingers.
    A figure dressed in black approached, its head covered by a hood. One hand was outstretched, and the light wasn't a torch after all, although it was much too bright for a candle flame. It took Selwyn several long heartbeats to realize the ball of light hovered over the outstretched palm, not attached to anything. The figure's other hand held a corner of the hood up over the lower portion of its face.
    Not hiding, Selwyn realized. Protecting its nose.
    Surely an angel that was set to accompany dead souls to the afterlife should be used to the smell of death. And—Selwyn forced himself to be reasonable—so should dead spirits that walked the earth.
    The figure had stopped. It was standing directly in front of him, looking down at where he crouched on the floor among all those long-dead and not-so-long-dead bodies.
    The hand holding the hood dropped, revealing a long strand of white hair and the face of an old woman. This old woman said, "Truly you look terrible and smell worse. But whoever buried you obviously knows nothing about dead people."
    Which didn't sound like something either angel or ghost would say.
    He swallowed convulsively, though there was absolutely no moisture in his mouth. "Are you—" He had to stop, his throat constricted by thirst and terror.
    "Carefully now." The old woman raised a warning finger to demand his attention. "Ask something foolish, and I
will
have to smack you on the side of the head." She emphasized this, as though they'd already discussed it.
    His voice creaking with dryness, Selwyn asked, "Do you warn me beforehand what questions are foolish?"
    Apparently not. And apparently that was one of them. She smacked him on the side of the head.
    "Ouch."
    "Well, I warned you," she said.
    He decided not to risk asking her anything else. He would have backed away, if there was any place to back away to. All he could do was huddle miserably on the floor.
    "Foolish questions," the old woman explained, "are things like 'Am I dead?' or 'Are you dead?' or 'Are you a ghost?'"
    They all sounded like reasonable questions to him.
    Perhaps she could see he thought so, for she looked prepared to smack him again.
    To distract her, he asked, though it hurt his throat to speak, "What if I asked you then: 'Who, or what, are you?' I'm not asking who or what you are," he hastened to add. "I'm asking: 'Would it be a foolish question to ask you: Who or what are you?'"
    It took her a few moments to work that out In the end, she smacked him again, but he saw it coming and ducked, so she only clipped his ear.
    "That was for the 'What are you?' part What could I possibly be, in a place such as this, with a light such as this, seeking something from the dead?"
    Selwyn gulped, although she was right It was obvious. She was a witch.
    The old woman continued. "But I didn't smack you for asking
who
I am, for there's no way you could know that. My name is Elswyth." She hit him again.
    "What was that for?"
    "That was for not asking for water, which you obviously are in desperate need of." She set the glowing light on her head—or, rather, a handspan above her head—and unfastened what he had thought was her humped back. It was, in truth, a pack. The light dipped to follow her as she sat down on the floor, more limber than he would have guessed from her age. She searched through the bag and pulled out a wineskin, which she handed to him. It held water, musty and warm and more wonderful than anything. The inside of his throat