“Taran!” came a distant cry.
Taran staggered as his tunnel vision cleared. A very familiar face was looking up at him, murmuring comfort, and then his mother’s arms enfolded him in a fierce and protective hug. Beyond her he glimpsed his sister, her eyes shining with a fierce approval he did not remember ever seeing there before.
The stranger’s face was now redecorated in crimson, his torn shirt spattered with the remains of the lunch he was retching up into the road. G‘han helped him up, speaking quietly. The fellow cast a quick look at Taran, his face growing pale, though whether from fear or blood loss Taran couldn’t say. The man took a step, discovered he’d developed a painful hunch, and settled for a comical shuffle down the street. Taran’s instinctive surge after him was checked by G’han.
His mother grasped his face firmly between her two hands, forcing him to look into her eyes.
“Taran! Taran! It’s all right, we’re all right! You’re home!”
He coughed as a shift in the wind brought him the uric reek of the fuller’s bleaching vat. Interested neighbors averted their eyes from his bloodshot stare.
“Breathe, boy—did they turn you into a berserker out there?!” That sounded like his mother, all right.
“Sula, help your uncle up and put him to bed,” said Latilla. “Then come back to the dining room. We have some talking to do.”
Taran let her take him by the arm and lead him back inside. The house smelled of baked bread, and those funny herbs she liked to tuck into stew—the familiar smells of home. Why, he wondered, did his skin crawl?
They had not stayed long enough for him to notice anything when they first arrived, and he had been too drunk to feel anything when they came home from the Vulgar Unicorn. But the energy of the fight had dissolved whatever insulation his hangover might have supplied. There was definitely something wrong at the Phoenix Inn.
As Latilla finished her (rather expurgated) account of who Rol was and what he had been after, Sula poured tea into mugs and handed them to the two men, eyeing her brother uncertainly. Taran had been getting into fights since they could walk, but she’d never seen him fight like that!
“But I don’t understand—” he said when his mother was done. “If you didn’t have money, how did you buy that thing?” He pointed toward the carved cabinet that stood in the corner. Latilla had placed it where the afternoon light would caress each swirling curve of the carving, and strike gold sparks from the brass studs. After a moment G’han got up to inspect it more closely.
“It’s beautiful,” Taran said then, “but why—”
“It is strange,” said G’han. “I have seen work like this before, but where … ?” He shook his head. “Where did this come from?”
“Last Sperraz the fisherfolk found a strange ship washed up out on the reefs” said Sula. G’han turned to look at her and she flushed beneath his intent stare. It wasn’t a leer; she felt as if he was trying to look into her spirit, not through her clothes.
Her mother had seen the look, too, and was surveying G’han with a frown. Sula took a breath and plunged on.
“It wasn’t Beysib or Rankan or anything anyone had ever seen. It looked old, but the stuff in the holds was fine. There were all kinds of rumors about it, but no one really knows. Anyway, it’s gone now. By the time last month’s storm washed the wreck away, the treasure-hunters had picked it pretty clean. The cabinet came from the ship. It was empty too, when Mother fell in love with it—” She smiled.
Latilla grimaced. “I bought it from Rol. It just goes to show, ‘Even good food is spoiled if a rat drags it in!’”
“True,” replied G’han, “but even the fruit of a healthy tree can hide a worm—”
Sula met Taran’s exasperated gaze and both sighed. Their mother’s proverbs were bad enough—but if she and their guest were going to compete with them, maybe both Sula and Taran should run away from home.
“All right—” Taran attempted to get the conversation back on course as G‘han took his seat again. “Why couldn’t you pay the man back? Even when times were at their worst we’ve always had someone staying here. Why are G’han and I the only ones sleeping on the second floor?”
“Ah …” Latilla sat back with a sigh. “Well, the fact is, we do have a visitor—”
“We have a ghost, who drives our paying guests away!” Sula interrupted her. She glared at her brother. “Did you have bad dreams last night, or were you too anesthetized to remember?” She stepped, sensing the change in his awareness, but before he could speak, his friend sat up with the smile of one who has discovered a silver soldat glinting in a muckpile.
“Ah! So that is it! I felt energies, whispers, in my chamber, and I did wonder if that was normal, after what you have told me of this town.”
“No. Even for Sanctuary, this kind of haunting is strange,” Latilla said tiredly. “In the old days I would have gone to a wizard for help, or to the Mage Guild, but the Irrune have forbidden all such things now.”
“Not all!” grinned G’han. “Now I know why the divine forces direct me here. I am Master of the Fourteen Spirits, a destroyer of demons, a hunter of ghouls. Whatever the nature of the being who haunts you, I will undertake to banish it in gratitude for your hospitality!”
Sula suppressed a snort as Latilla raised one eyebrow. “If you do banish it, I will certainly be grateful,” she said tartly. “If not, I hope you have money. Even after the rough welcome my son gave him, or maybe because of it, Rol isn’t going to take no for an answer for very long … .”
“Not to fear,” G’han said grandly. “You show me where the spirit resides and I will show you what I do!”
“Well, that’s just the problem,” observed Sula. “We’ve had cold spots in the hall and blood in the dishpan. Levitating tables in the guest rooms and leering pictures in the hall. Wherever it came from, it’s all over the house now.”
“In the day or the night is it most active?”
The man appeared to be impervious to her irony, and Sula began to hope that perhaps he did know what he was doing after all.
“The manifestations can occur at any time,” said Latilla.
“But every night they visit me in my dreams …” added Sula.
“So then, I lie in wait for it, like a hunter at a water hole,” said G’han.
“Not alone—” put in Taran, eyeing Sula with a worried look that made her want to cry. With relief, she thought. She and her mother had been facing this without help for too long. “I’ll watch with you.”
At half-past the midnight hour the whispering began.
Struggling in the throes of dream, Taran dimly recalled something about battling alongside an assortment of heroes and gods, up north near the wintry passes where the Nisibisi witches rained down horrendous spells that turned men’s bones to jelly. The fact that the entire war was taking place in both the kitchen and main hall of the Phoenix was immaterial, as was the struggle up the stairs, littered with dead. The Nisibisi held the top, and if Taran was ever to get the tools to fix the sign out front, he would have to lead the charge.
But now … . Now the dream had become more … real. A stranger stood next to him, wearing clothes and a hat of most peculiar design. It turned, displaying a smiling mask, its laughter deep and frightening as the groaning of timber.
Somewhere upstairs his sister Sula screamed.
Taran started awake, and was up and into the hall before he realized he was not in his bedroom. He all but tripped over G’han, as the smaller man, who had been sitting by the fire, leaped up from the hearth, sword still sheathed but ready to hand. In moments they had cleared the stairs and were spilling out onto the upper landing.