"What was all that about?" Soterius questioned.
The innkeeper shrugged. "We're a natural place for them to stop if they're looking for fugitives," he said, with a sideways glance to his wife that gave Tris the impression the innkeeper was purposefully answering only part of Soterius's question.
"Whatever your reason, thank you," Tris said, as Soterius moved to the common room door, glanced out and signaled an all clear.
"With them gone, you're welcome to stay the night," the tavern master offered nervously.
Tris looked to Harrtuck, who shrugged. "Might be safest," the armsman mused, stroking his chin as if the newly shaven whiskers remained. "We know the guards have already been here. So there's no reason for them to come back. And there's nowhere else close tonight."
Tris looked back to the innkeeper. "We are grateful for your hospitality."
"One thing I don't understand," Carroway remarked as the innkeeper began to lead them from the kitchen. "If there's no one upstairs, who was making all the racket?"
The innkeeper froze, then exchanged a worried glance with the squat cook. Finally, as if resigned to losing his guests one way or the other, the haggard man turned. "There's nothing human up there, no," he admitted slowly. "But there's a ghost with a fearsome temper that has ruined this inn, and me with it," he lamented, and at that, he sagged against the wall and covered his face with his hands.
"I won this inn fair and square in a card game last summer's feast," he went on miserably. "Should have known nothing good could come that way. Found out that the haunting started just before that, driving out the travelers, breaking up the crockery, making it hard for a body to sleep, if you know what I mean." He sighed. "Driven us to the brink of ruin," he continued. "Every night, same thing. Sounds like an army tearing the place apart upstairs, but when I go up to look, nothing's been touched. Don't even bother any more. Then it moves to the common room, playing tricks, like the lute tonight, and your friend's ale." He shrugged. "Likes to bother the girls in the kitchen, too." He sighed. "There's naught can help except a Summoner, and there's been no Summoner in Margolan since Bava K'aa went to the Lady."
Dejectedly, the innkeeper led them to their rooms. "It's always like this," the innkeeper lamented. "Cold as a tomb. Hard to keep a lantern lit. But no one's ever seen anything, just heard footsteps and bumps."
As the innkeeper talked, Tris strained to look into the darkness. His heart pounded, though he felt no fear in the presence of the spirit, just a rise of the blood in anticipation of the contact. He peered down the hallway, and frowned. Near the end, he saw a faint glow, like sunlight catching a mist. He took a step toward it, and the glow started to fade. On instinct, Tris closed his eyes and called out in his mind to the haze.
You there! Stand fast!
The glow hesitated, then grew brighter. Emboldened, Tris reached out his hand, his eyes still closed. Show yourself! We mean you no harm.
Gradually, the mist coalesced, Caking on shape without mass until at last an outline of a man stood before them. Behind Tris, the cook gasped, and the innkeeper muttered a curse, making it clear that the specter was visible to all. Tris studied the silent shape. It was a young man, perhaps a few seasons older than himself, with the strong, rangy build of a plowman and the homespun clothes of a farmer. But what struck Tris most was the anger that radiated from the revenant, in face and stance and feel.
"Good sir," Tris said carefully, daring to open his eyes. The spirit stood as real before him as it had taken shape in his mind. "We bid you peace," he said with a gesture of welcome. "Why do you harm this inn?"
At first, Tris could hear nothing as the specter began to speak. Closing his eyes to concentrate once more, Tris strained to hear, and began to make out the voice, as if from a great distance. "—just last planting season," the spirit was saying. "I had a bag of coins, all that my family owned, to buy two cows at market. Out back," the spirit recounted, with a gesture behind him, "a brigand overtook me." The shade's hand went to its ghostly throat. "He slit my throat and took my coins and dumped me in the woods. I want my coins back," he stated simply. "And a stone raised over my body."
"Sweet Mother and Childe," the innkeeper gasped behind Tris. There was a soft thud, and Tris guessed that either the cook or the serving wench had fainted.
Tris took another step toward the spirit, and moved slowly to take four coins from the purse at his belt, money from the first tavern. "If the boy took these back to your family, they would buy your cows and more beside," Tris offered, holding the coins on his outstretched hand toward the spirit. "And my companions and I can raise a cairn in the woods, if you like." He paused. "If we do that, will you rest and not trouble this good man any longer?"
The spirit hesitated as if he were considering the bargain, then slowly nodded. "It is a good offer," he said, nodding. "I will rest."
Tris gestured for the boy to come forward, and to his credit, though trembling, the lad did as he was told. Tris bid the spirit give directions to his family's home, and had the boy repeat them. "At daybreak, as soon as it is safe for the boy to travel, he will take the coins where you bid," Tris said evenly, and once more, the spirit nodded.
"Now," Tris said, gesturing behind him for the others to begin descending the stairs, "will you show us where you lie, so that we can give you peace?"
The spirit winked out. "Where did he go?" the innkeeper gasped, backing toward the stairs.
"Out back, I suppose," Carroway guessed. He shrugged as the others turned to stare at him. "Well, he hardly needs to use the stairs!"
Sure enough, when the group reached the back of the inn, the spirit stood waiting for them at the edge of the woods. Motioning his companions to join him, Tris led the others after the ghost, who stopped just a few feet from the path. The shade pointed, and Tris took several steps to the right until the ghost nodded in satisfaction.
"Give me a hand," Tris said, bending to lift a stone the size of a melon that lay nearby. His foot kicked at something partially hidden beneath the leaves, and in the dappled moonlight, he glimpsed the yellow-white of a weathered bone. Gently, Tris laid the stone over it and turned to accept another from Carroway. Within a quarter hour, they had built a small cairn, and Tris made over it the sign of the Goddess. He looked back to the spirit. The anger was gone from the young man's stance, a wistful expression on his plain features.
"Go to your rest in peace, good sir," Tris said solemnly, raising one hand, palm outstretched.
The ghost began to fade, growing dimmer and dimmer until it was once more nothing but mist, and then the mist itself was lost in the moonlight.
Tris stared after the apparition, feeling a mix of satisfaction at having been able to free the ghost's spirit, and chagrin that it had been witnessed so openly.
"I'll go see to the horses," Soterius said, turning away. Tris frowned as he watched his friend stride off, but Harrtuck stepped closer and laid a hand on Tris's arm.
"Don't worry about him," Harrtuck rasped. "Like as not, it'll take him a bit to think this all through. After all," the armsman said with a chuckle, "we soldiers don't have much trust in mages. Me, I'd rather trust in cold, hard steel than a lot of mumbo jumbo." He paused. "Until now." Tris stared after Soterius. What in the name of the Four Faces is happening to me? he wondered, feeling an uneasy mixture of pride and fear. Calling hand fire, lighting candles without a reed, doing a little hedge magic, that's one thing. Being Grandmother's mage heir, controlling the kind of power she had, that just can't be true! And if it is true, if Carroway's right, if I'm a Summoner, a mage—by the Lady, what does that mean? But before he could think further, Carroway plucked at his sleeve.