A face poked out of the wall, a pale mask twisted in amused contempt. A low growl came from the walls about them, and his grandfather’s old paintings shook as a tremor rolled through the inn.
“Sula! Mother!” Taran shouted from the top of the stairwell, bracing himself between wall and banister. “Where are you?”
G’han slipped past him, drawing his well-oiled sword in one fluid motion and discarding the scabbard. He brushed the two middle fingers of his left hand across the flat of the short blade and sank into that peculiar fighting stance Taran had seen him use once before, hunting ghouls in the small town of Khava. Whispering a short prayer in a singsong alien tongue, the small man burst into action.
With a short leap he was across the hall, fingers sliding from hilt to tip of his blade. As he landed in front of the phantom face, his fingers skipped from the top of the sword, acquiring a sickly green luminosity quite unlike that of the sputtering lantern hooked above them as he touched the apparition’s brow.
“Haj-nak! Iilaa Iilaa!” he shouted. “Naming the Fifth Spirit I ban you now from wood and stone! Cower not in shadows but fight me openly, maleficent shade!”
Taran watched in horror as the wall around the face swelled and splintered, fragments spraying through the air. The apparition dislimned like a fog, filling the hall. Taran could barely see G’han dancing and weaving about. A barely discernible shadow moved with him, bending in inhuman ways.
“Taran!” he heard his mother shout.
“Stay where you are!” he cried, keeping his back to the wall. “G’han’s putting steel to your ghost now! We’ll be safe soon!”
“You fool!” Latilla shouted back, nearer now in the mist. “Tell your sword-crazy foreign friend to stop hacking up the place! I can’t find Sula with him swinging that glorified knife of his around!”
G’han’s dry laughter stopped their bickering cold. “No need! I am much sorry to say Mistress Sula has found me.”
As the mist faded Taran glimpsed him dancing backward, sword held tightly behind him with his right hand while he blocked his opponent’s reckless swings with his left. After another shocked moment, he realized that the attacker was his sister. But it didn’t move like Sula, and on the face beneath her madly fluttering golden hair was the same distorted smile he had seen on the mask.
G’han’s foot slid on a smashed board and only a quick twist saved him from her flashing fists. A titter of laughter accompanied each blow.
“Sheep-shite!” Taran threw himself across the span between them in a full-bore tackle. “Leave her alone!” he screamed as he caught his twin in his arms and the two slammed into the wall, and he did not know if he meant the warning for G’han or the thing that had possessed her. A portrait of an old man in purple robes holding a large, weird-looking crab fell to the floor.
Before Sula could break free Taran straddled her, pinning both arms to the floor. “Mother, get rope! I don’t know how long I can hold on.’
They had wrestled like puppies when they were children, but he had never, even when he was running with Griff’s gang, tried to master anything that fought with the contorting, fluid energy he gripped now. And throughout the struggle she kept screaming. Taran could only be grateful he couldn’t understand the words. From the tone, it had to be something obscene. G’han stared down at her with widening eyes.
“What’s she saying?” muttered Latilla as the girl began to convulse.
“Not sure—never heard it spoken,” whispered G’han. “But I’ve seen such words in old scrolls. They come from Yenized, lady. It was an ancient empire with great magic far away.”
Taran rolled away, panting, as Latilla finished the binding and forced a piece of leather between Sula’s teeth to keep her from biting her tongue. Then she sat back on her heels and glared at G’han, who had picked up his sword and was sliding it into its sheath once more.
“Then we have a clue where the demon came from, and we know where it is now,” she said tartly. “How do you plan to get it out of my child?”
Taran’s heart sank as he realized that for the first time since he had known G’han, the little man was at a loss.
“Those of my Order are ghost-killers—” he said unhappily, setting his hand on the hilt of his sword. “The only way I know is to strike evil spirits with my blessed blade.”
“Not while it’s in my daughter, you don’t!” Latilla glared at him.
“Taran … what’s happening?”
Taran sat up, eyes widening as he realized those words had not been spoken aloud. They were in Sula’s voice, though. He looked at their prisoner and flinched from the fury in its glare. “Sula? Where are you?”
“I think I’m seeing through your eyes … . Ugh—does my body really look like that?”
Taran blinked. “Not when you’re in it. But it’s your body! Can’t you just shove the ghost aside?”
“There’s some kind of wall around it. Don’t let them kill me, Taran!”
“Taran!” His mother’s voice broke in. “Who are you talking to? Has that thing got you as well?”
“No. It’s Sula. She’s in my head somehow.”
“Oh, that is good, then!” exclaimed G’han. “Her spirit is not lost.”
Taran shuddered. He loved his sister, but he didn’t want to share his life with her.
“Good?!” Latilla snorted. “Now it’s not my home but my daughter that’s haunted! Don’t any of your fourteen spirits have a useful suggestion?”
He shook his head, frowning. “No, lady, unless—let us take the girl downstairs to the room with the cabinet. The spirit raves in Yenizedi. Maybe the cabinet came from there as well … .”
“I should have expected this,” muttered Latilla as G’han and Taran lifted Sula’s jerking body off the floor and carried her down the steps to the common room where the cabinet sat. “We all saw the manifestations, but Sula was the only one who had nightmares. I should have sent you away.” She looked from Sula’s body to Taran and back again, as if uncertain where to direct her words. “You—her, I mean. Can my daughter hear me?”
“It’s not your fault—” said Taran, and realized he did not know whether he or his sister had replied.
“Maybe not,” his mother said grimly, “but it’s surely my responsibility.”
“You have an idea, lady?” G’han sounded almost humble. “I sense that it is not only from their father that these two have inherited ability. There is power in you—”
“I know a thing or two,” Latilla said absently, rolling up her sleeves. “Listen,” she added in an undertone, “I’m not sure what will happen, but it may sound as if I’ve gone crazy, too. Don’t lose faith, either of you, whatever I may say or do.”
Sula’s body had ceased to jerk, but there was still hate in the staring eyes. With a quick twist Latilla pulled the leather from her jaws.
“Listen, you!” she snapped. “This is an inn, and anyone who stays here has to pay.” For a moment they traded glares, then she turned to G’han. “You know Yenizedi—talk to it Where did it come from, and what restitution will it pay?”
G’han frowned for a few moments, then managed a few rippling syllables that were answered by another spate of invective.
“That won’t do,” said Latilla. “threaten it with your sword.”
Taran could feel Sula’s unease, but he held still. “Mother said to trust her—do you? You’ve been here all the while I was gone—”