Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune

The Ghost in the Phoenix Diana L. Paxson and Ian Grey

Something is rustling … wood grinds … impending pressure weighs on the air. A girl sits in her bed, knuckles white as she clutches worn sheets to her chest.

“Taran?” she whispers, as shadows shift about the room.

On the wall a mask of a face is smiling, white as ivory, painted hair twining to either side. Its eyes cast desperately about the room and perspiration beads its brow. But still—it smiles. The girl wraps the blankets around herself more tightly.

“Taran?” she whispers again, knowing even as she speaks that he is far far away. From the face on the wall comes a noise as if teeth are grinding, and then a girlish giggle.

Water leaks in beneath the windowsill. Beyond it, the girl sees fish swimming through dim sunlight filtered through endless blue. The grinding noise grows louder, and the face on the wall, still smiling, looks afraid. A body floats up to the window, unblinking, hair a corona of reddish-blond, its skin peeling and green.

“Taran!” the girl screams, “TA …”

“ … RAN!” Sula rolled upright suddenly, her heart pounding sharply. Slowly she recollected who and where she was, and when. Another nightmare, she thought angrily. Is there no end to them?

The gray light of the hour before dawn filtered through the window. She got out of bed, draping a shawl across her shoulders, and peered out. In the murk little could be seen. It didn’t matter—even the reassurance that it was only the sleeping city, and not that endless expanse under water, was enough to let her heartbeat slow.

She could still hear a faint grinding noise. She’d like to think it was simply the wind pushing against the inn, or perhaps a guest’s thunderous snoring, but after the last few weeks she knew better. An uninvited guest had come to the Phoenix, and its presence filled the inn like the stench of a dead rat in the wall. None of them knew what it was or how it had come there, but for the past month it had persistently driven out every guest her family had taken in, and she kept having the same dreams.

It was really too bad, when they had begun doing well enough to start making repairs and restoring the house to some of its former glory. The carved cabinet that stood now in the dining room, for instance, was just the thing, said her mother, to give it a touch of class. It had come from a ship that had grounded on the Seaweal reefs a few months ago. The purchase had taken a good bite out of their savings, and now there were no guests to make it up again.

Why Sula was the only one who seemed to be having the dreams, she did not know. The Presence subjected the rest of the inn’s inhabitants to waking torments—thumping at odd hours, cold spots by doors, blood seeping through the walls … . It was enough to frighten all but the most stalwart souls into a hasty departure. There was magic in her family, but until recently, she’d thought her twin brother Taran had been the only one with a sensitivity to the supernatural in her generation.

Was this some kind of sending from Taran? It seemed unlikely. When they were little they had been so close they hardly needed words. She shivered as a memory of using that silent communication to escape a squad of Dyareelans hunting for stray children tried to surface and was suppressed again. But the stresses of puberty had driven them apart, and besides, Taran was far from here. She had not expected she would miss him so.

Last spring her restless brother had signed on as a caravan guard. He had said he wanted to travel to Ranke to see their father’s homeland. Their mother said he’d just lost his head over that Rankan woman they’d rescued, but exposing Taran’s real motive for traveling had only strengthened his resolve. Would he ever return? He’d been gone less than six months, but it felt much longer.

Sula heard a creaking from the bed in the next room as her mother turned over. Soon Latilla would be up, badgering the rest of them to get on with the day. If she too had trouble sleeping she would never let them know. When the first manifestations had occurred, Latilla had announced that this was their home. They had survived the Dyareelans and a dozen other external horrors, and she was not about to let a common domestic spook scare her off now.

Holding to that thought, Sula twisted her fair hair into a knot, lit the candle that sat by her bedside, and carried it into the dark hallway, keeping her eyes averted from the pale face that smiled at her from the wall. Its tortured gaze followed her until the light of her candle was gone.

The caravan from Ranke moved slowly toward Sanctuary beneath the summer sun, dust puffing up behind it in an amber haze. Bronze bells clanked dully as the line of mules and pack ponies clopped past the bored guards who watched the Gate of Triumph. As the caravan moved off, two weary travelers separated from the steady procession of wagons to rest a moment in the shade of the city wall. The guards shouted at the urchins who scampered beneath the feet of the horses, then leaned back against the cool stone.

“So this is Sanctuary?” asked the smaller of the two. His accent earned a second look from one of the guards, but this town had seen everything at least once, and the fellow didn’t look threatening.

The second man, broad-shouldered and at least a head taller, pulled back the hood of his light cloak to reveal a face younger than his size would have suggested, and a mop of reddish hair bleached almost blond from the sun. He took a deep breath and coughed. “Yeah, smells like home.”

The smaller man looked about as his eyes adjusted to the shade. Unlike his companion, he was meticulously groomed: his black hair cut short, his skin pale and clean. His clothes were a mix of dark colors, a deep burgundy tunic and trimmed cloak giving a faint impression of wealth, despite their simplicity. Most curious were his eyes, which seemed thin, as if he had squinted too long against the desert’s glare.

“Come now, Taran,” he smiled, “it is assuredly not as bad as all that?”

Taran couldn’t help but smile back. “Sanctuary redefines the word, G’han. Trust me. One hand on your purse, another on your sword—that’s the sort of pit we’re in.”

“But it is ‘Home and Hearth,’ yes?” G’han laughed. “The place of one’s birth can never be left completely behind. Come; let us find your home. Be it amid riches or squalor, any place with a roof, a meal, and a bed would be a palace after so long on the road.”

Taking a step or two from the wall, Taran stretched. “That it would. The ‘Phoenix’ has all the amenities you mentioned, and my mother can likely tell you where to go if, through some miracle of fortune, she’s already got a full house.”

His companion laughed, and resting a hand on the larger man’s shoulder, accompanied him through the assemblage of unloading carts and milling people. “Worry not, my friend, for fortune fits G’han the Wanderer like a wellworn pair of shoes. They may look ugly, but they are snug, and even in tatters they protect the soul.”

“Sula! Were you asleep, girl? What’s wrong with you?”

Her mother’s voice jerked Sula upright and the bowl of peas she had been shelling rocked dangerously. She grabbed and felt another force shove her hand, sending the contents rattling across the floor.

“Now look what you’ve done—”

“You startled me!” Their voices clashed and Sula began to cry.

“Don’t we have enough troubles here without you mooning—” Latilla began, then stopped herself with a sigh. She had a flyswatter in her hand. “All right—I didn’t mean to startle you, but really, child—”

“I wasn’t mooning,” Sula answered sullenly. “And if I was asleep, is it any wonder, when I haven’t had any rest at night since that thing started haunting us all?”

“Nightmares?” her mother asked more quietly.

“Every night.” Sula sniffed. “There’s this face … and sometimes there’s water.” She stopped. The vision of her brother’s drowned body was a terror she dared not share. Especially with her mother.

Latilla sighed. “I’m sorry.” Something brightly iridescent buzzed by and Latilla slapped it down. “Got to do something about these things. Get enough of them to grind down for dye and we might make a few padpols,” she said absently.

“Mother, why are you standing there swatting flies when we’ve been invaded?”

“Because I can,” Latilla said simply. “Because though they may be magical, they’re real, and when you hit them, they fall down. I’ve tried to use the magic your father taught me against this haunting, but Darios, bless him, was always more interested in perfecting his own spirit than in controlling others. He knew spells for protection, and I’ve used them, or we might have worse manifestations to deal with. But that’s all I can think of to do.” She sat down with a sigh. “And whacking these—” her eye followed a spark of crimson and purple that was circling above the fallen peas, “is practically a family duty. Your grandfather invented them, after all.” She turned, frowning, as someone knocked on the front door.

“It might be a lodger—” said Sula when her mother didn’t move. Latilla’s scowl deepened.

“Maybe … maybe not. Go to the window and see.”

Sula peered through the curtain, grimacing as she recognized the fleshy shoulders and the heavy haunches encased in a pair of striped trousers.

“It’s Rol … I assume we’re not at home?”

What was that pig’s ass doing here? They had met the man shortly after Taran left, when Latilla was looking for bargains to refurbish the house. Even then, Sula had thought him a slimy-character.

Latilla sighed. “No—I’ll have to face him sometime. Stay here and finish the peas.”

Sula heard the front door open and then a murmur of voices. Her mother did not sound happy. With a sigh of her own she pushed back her chair and moved softly down the hall.

“Yes, of course I will pay you!” she heard Latilla say as she eased open the door from the passage to the entryway. “All I am asking is a short extension.”

From the front Rol was no more prepossessing than he had been from behind, his muscular frame run now to fat, and his dark hair stringy above unshaven jowls. He dabbled in a number of things, serving as a go-between for those who still aspired to respectability and Sanctuary’s underworld.

“Now there’s no need to look so fierce at me, darlin’, though yer a fine sight when angry, for sure. Haven’t I been a good friend to ye, after all?”

Sula stilled. She hadn’t realized that her mother still owed him.

“Even among friends, financial dealings should be kept on a business footing,” Latilla said more quietly. “I would not be any more beholden to you.”

Well thank goodness for that! thought Sula. She started to close the door. There had been times when she feared that her mother might be taken in by Rol’s florid compliments. Sometimes older women could be … vulnerable.

“Ye know that I would be more than a friend, Tilla me dear, but what am I to do?” Rol took a step closer. “If it’s business only that’s between us, I must have somethin’—I have creditors of my own, you see!”

That, thought Sula glumly, would not surprise me at all. Rol had the reputation of being involved in a variety of shady dealings, and a sore on his tongue that looked like a krrf ulcer to her. For all she knew, the man was dealing in that drug, or even in opah. If so, it was suppliers, not creditors, that he was worried about paying. Not very forgiving people, from what she had heard. Taran, with all his contacts among the street gangs, would have known. She stifled a spurt of very familiar anger at him for leaving them with no man in the house but her uncle Alfi, whose own encounter with the Dyareelans had left him crippled both in body and in mind.

“You can take back that cabinet you sold me,” Latilla said unhappily. Sula, remembering her mother’s delight in its intricate carvings, could understand why. She was the limner’s daughter, after all, and the cabinet, like all the wonders that had come off that strange ship, had a beauty of a kind no one in Sanctuary had ever seen.

“Ah … no,” responded Rol. He took a step closer. “The silver clink of soldats, that’s what me creditors want to hear … .”

“Then you’ll have to seek it elsewhere. The rest of what you gave me went for nails and lumber. I can hardly tear the house apart to give them back to you!”

“Nay—the house is worth more in one piece, both to you and to me,” Rol said softly. “There’s moneylenders who’d give a goodly sum with the Phoenix for security.”

“No!” Her mother’s exclamation brought Sula, fists clenched, into the room.

“But if ye were to wed me, it might not be needful … . They’d know I could pay them, once business gets a bit better here …” Rol laid a beefy hand on her shoulder. “Ye know I love ye, Tilla darlin’. Won’t ye turn to me?”

“You take your hands off her!” Sula’s voice squeaked, but she continued to advance.

“Just like yer mother, ain’t ye?” Rol let go of Latilla and looked Sula up and down with a leer that would have made her blush if she had not already been flushed with rage. “But I like a girl with spirit!”

Sula felt her skin crawl and wondered what he liked such girls for . . . She shut her lips against the retort that trembled there as Latilla gripped her arm.

“I’ll have to think—” Latilla said, her voice shaking with what Rol might take as fear. “It’s a big decision. I can’t answer sensibly right now!”

“Well now, that’s just what I’m askin’ for. I’ll give ye a night, Latilla, to choose the sensible thing!” The ulcer on his tongue winked red as he grinned.

“Faugh!” exclaimed Sula as the door slammed behind him. “That man makes me want to fumigate the room and scrub the floor!”

“Are you volunteering?” Latilla asked with a tired smile. Just now she looked every year her age.

Sula shook her head. “Come back to the kitchen. I’ll make you a pot of tea.”

The pot was just coming to a boil when they heard the front door bang open and the thump of footsteps.

“Has that shite come back again?” Latilla reached for the heavy frying pan, but Sula rose to her feet, a wordless recognition, one that brought hope thrilling through her veins.

“No—” she whispered as it distilled to knowledge and a new voice echoed from the hall.

“Mother, where are you? I’ve brought you a customer. Do you have any room?”

“It’s Taran! He’s come home!”

Taran shook his head, torn between consternation and laughter. Of all the Sanctuary sights G’han might have asked to see once his bags had been stowed in the firstfloor front room, he wouldn’t have expected that pit of pits, the Vulgar Unicorn.

“But, friend Taran, it is you yourself who has inspired me …” G’han had chided when Taran had tried to argue. “You have been telling me stories about this place for lo these many months. cannot withhold my curiosity …”

Thus, before rest and bed they’d made their way through the Maze to this place. The minstrel who was singing some endless ballad about a man from Shemhaza was new, but Stick the barkeep looked as if he had not been off-duty since before Taran left town, and the clientele were the same unsavory sweepings he remembered, eyeing him with a familiar predatory gleam. He tried to tell himself that he had survived for nearly half a year on the roads surely he could make it through his first night back in town. But his gut did not believe it.

Not a half day back into Sanctuary and I’m going to die … Taran thought to himself, smiling stupidly as he watched G’han laughing across the table at some joke one of their “new friends” had made.

“Oh, but it’s true …” chuckled G’han to a scruffy man in his middle years with a bald pate, but infested with curly grayish-black hair everywhere else. “I am an adept of sorts. Oh, not as flashy as those Blue Stars you tell me of, but we do have some talent for magic.”

“I thought yours was a Warrior’s Order?” Taran asked when his friend paused to drink more ale.

G’han shook his head, “No, no, one should not assume a sword and a skilled hand for its use doom one to war. It is a tool of my trade, little more.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?” drawled the goon, who had named himself Khut, Taran thought, though he had drunk just enough so that he was not quite sure.

“I hunt demons,” G’han said cheerfully.

“Shite, but only a fool’d be doin’ that!”

“Oh, but it’s true—demons, spirits, ghouls … It is a sideline to my true calling, but it keeps me supplied with food and ale.” G’han drank again.

“Well then,” laughed Khut, “you’ve come to the right place—Sanctuary may be a poor city, but she’s rich with work for one such as you.” The older man pushed himself up, swayed for a moment, and then swaggered toward the door.

“If there’s a back way,” murmured Taran, “perhaps we should use it.”

“Nonsense, my friend,” laughed G’han.”The people here seem friendly enough. Why, look at that poor misshapen creature at the far table. Even he seems to have a kind and gentle disposition.”

“Oh yes, if you think well of a pervert dwarf whose favorite pastime is to expose himself to every girl at every tavern and inn that’s fool enough to let him in …” Taran growled.

“You’ve encountered him before, I see.”

“He flashed his ‘dragon’ at my sister Sula once.” Taran turned away.

“She is your twin, yes? Interesting girl—” G’han threw up his hands in mock defense as Taran rounded on him. “No, no, I do not attack maidens. I mean what I say—there is a gift in her I think, but hidden. Even she does not know … .”

Taran eyed him uneasily. He had thought he knew the man, but he thought he knew his sister as well. He wasn’t sure whether the idea that G’han might court her or that Sula might have magic disturbed him more.

“So, what did you do to this ‘dragon-flourisher,’ eh?” G’han said then.

“I wanted to kill him, or at least pummel him a bit—gathered Griff and the rest of the gang I hung out with back then, but Griff talked us all out of it. Word has it he’s a lackey for some zombie magician living outside of town, and Griff figured messing with him would get us skinned alive—”

G’han sat back, a smile playing faintly on his lips.

Taran recognized that look, and shook his head emphatically. “No. G’han, you can’t just show up, kill a handful of ghouls, and expect a grateful mob to hand you a sack of coin! Appearances are deceiving, and even a mage’s kindness can be a curse …”

“You’ve said so before, friend Taran,” his companion murmured reassuringly, though whether he had given up that line of thought or merely filed it away until later Taran had no clue. “But why you should have such sentiments remains unclear, when I can see that it is not magecraft itself that bothers you.”

My father died because he was a mage … thought Taran, though to be sure, a great many other people had died during the Dyareelan interregnum as well. He sighed.

“Let’s just say that Sanctuary is haunted by magic … .”

Sula rinsed a porridge bowl and set it into the dish drainer to dry. She would never have expected to miss the mountain of dishes that were the usual sequel to breakfast at the inn, but it was scarcely worthwhile to heat water to wash only three bowls. There should have been two more, but by the time her brother and that strange friend of his had rolled in, dawn was breaking. Already wakened by her nightmares, she had heard them come in, and hoped that the stranger was drunk enough to sleep through any daytime disturbances.

She could hardly believe Taran was really home. She realized now that she had given up on ever seeing him again. Her grandfather had disappeared into that vast world beyond Sanctuary’s walls-he’d promised to be back in a year, but they had never heard from him again. Why should Taran fare any better? But now that he was here, his presence filled a hole in her heart she had not allowed herself to admit was there.

Stifling a yawn, she picked up the bowl and began to scrub. The backlogs of blackened pots were more than sufficient to use up the dishwater … . It wasn’t fair that Taran should be sleeping in while she had to slave out here.

“We’ll just take advantage of all this spare time to catch up on a few tasks we never could get to when the house was so full,” her mother had said. “Remember, ‘every misfortune hides an opportunity if you look it in the eye!’” And the inevitable proverb as well, Sula thought in exasperation.

There were a lot of jobs on her mother’s list, and a good number of them had been put off “Until your brother gets home.” Sula’s frown turned to a slow smile. Taran couldn’t stay in bed forever, and when he did get up, Latilla would be waiting for him … .

The temperature of the dishwater shifted suddenly to blood-warm and she jerked her hands from the basin with a cry, staring at the red liquid that filled it now.

It’s just blood, she told herself. I’ve seen it before. But the last time the dishwater had turned to gore had been three days ago, and she had hoped that whatever was haunting the inn would find some other manifestation to trouble them.

Taran woke from a dream in which his mother had set him to repaint the Phoenix Inn with a bucket of blood, and he lay for a moment, wondering why he had come home. Even his bed felt strange, smaller than he remembered and sagging in places that no longer fitted him. But the sunlight was flooding in through the window at an angle that told him the hour was well past noon.

The pounding in his temples was familiar, too, but that, he had expected. His mother made a tea that might fix the hangover, if he could persuade her to make it for him. She hadn’t seemed very pleased when he and G’han had left without even waiting for dinner the night before.

He headed down the hall, encountering G‘han, whose clothes, as usual, seemed to have been newly refurbished by some invisible minion. He grunted, half-listening as G’han continued some story about the best way to dispose of rainbow snakes, when both the tale and Taran’s attempt to make sense of it were interrupted by a scream from outside.

Taran peered through the window that lit the stair, and saw his uncle Alfi on the ground, his nose a bloody mess, while beyond him a fat, unshaven man was yelling at Latilla.

Taran flew down the stairs and out the door. Months of driving mules across the miles between here and Ranke and learning to hold his own among the caravan guards had given him muscles and a knowledge of how to use them. The world kaleidoscoped into a narrow tunnel at whose end two figures were struggling.

Latilla saw him first, her eyes widening. Her assailant, seeing her sudden distraction, turned, his jaw positioned at an angle that lined up perfectly with Taran’s incoming fist. An audible crack, and the man fell, his filthy hand loosing its prey.

Words buzzed around him, but the incessant pounding in his ears overwhelmed them. Instinct impelled his foot into the man’s rib cage as he fell.

Crunch! stated Taran’s fists as the man made the mistake of getting up again.

“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.

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—”

“Yes …” came Sula’s slow reply. “I do. But I’m afraid”

“That makes two of us—” He returned his attention to G’han.

The sword gleamed oddly in the oil lamp’s flickering light. Taran’s breath caught as it came to hover above Sula’s throat and G’han spoke again. This time the response came more slowly.

“He is a Yenized sorcerer. An Enlibrite wizard cursed the ship eight hundred years ago. The spell took him by surprise, but when it wore out he was ready, and in the moment when the ship returned to time and his body turned to dust he transferred his spirit into—that cabinet—” G‘han looked at it with new appreciation. Then the spirit spoke again.

G‘han’s face darkened and as he translated once more the sword dipped until its edge brushed the smooth skin. “He says that when I banished him from wood and stone he was free to find a new home, and the girl was closest. He says,” G’han added distastefully, “‘She was a good choice. This girl’s body is young and sweet. I will enjoy my new life as a sorceress …’” The words trailed off into manic laughter that echoed around the room.

“How dare he! No—don’t interfere!” screamed Sula as Taran started forward.

“Not if you don’t have a body—” observed Latilla, frowning as the sorcerer spoke once more.

“He says you won’t kill your daughter—” said G’han.

“But that’s not Sula,” Latilla answered him. “She wasn’t much use when she was in her body, and her body without her is no use to me at all. You don’t seriously expect us to unbind you, do you?” She addressed the sorcerer directly. “Even if you won’t speak our language I can see that you understand me,” she added as the girl’s features spasmed. Uneasily the eyes followed her as she paced up and down.

“Yes—” she said to the others, “I think the thing to do is to make this body so uncomfortable that he’ll want to leave it. And if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always your sword … .”

“No, not the peppers! Please, no more … .”

Even from the kitchen, Taran could hear his sister’s voice quite clearly. So could she. They had never imagined their mother could be quite so … inventive, even though she’d done no permanent damage to Sula’s body, so far. He was unpleasantly reminded of the potions Latilla used to force down him when he was sick. He’d been half convinced she meant to poison him.

She was making progress, though. The ghost had admitted he could speak Ilsigi. He had become accustomed to being lonely, but he had forgotten how to bear physical pain. And the girl’s body was a prison as well as a refuge, in which the spells G’han had cast on his bonds kept him from working his sorceries.

The ghost had already tried to bribe them with the gold in the cabinet’s secret drawer. Only this afternoon, that would have solved their problems, but the stakes were higher now.

“But if you banish me I will go mad!” came the cry. Taran raised an eyebrow. Outside, dawn was breaking. Was the ghost breaking as well?

“Go back in there—”said Sula. “I want to see.”

“It does sound as if he’s giving up,” Taran agreed. But when he opened the door, what he heard was a girl’s hopeless weeping. “Sula, keep talking to me so I know you’re here—” he murmured, “or I’m the one who’ll go mad.”

Latilla looked down at the limp body with the burning eyes. “No madder man you were,” she said persuasively. “The cabinet kept you safe before—you can dwell there again. Isn’t that better than drifting without place or name?”

“I can’t …” the ghost gasped. “The spell only worked for that moment when we were outside time and between the worlds.”

There was a short silence, and for the first time Taran glimpsed defeat in his mother’s eyes.

“Taran … it’s not going to work … I’m sorry. I know you can’t carry me forever. I’ll go … .”

“Don’t you dare!” whispered Taran as he felt her presence begin to withdraw. “I can get used to it. Sula, you have to stay!”

They both stiffened at the sound of G’han’s dry laugh.

“I am the Master of Fourteen Spirits, and the first of them toys with time like a toddler his blocks. With such gifts I can carve a way into Paradise and scar a sliver of time for you to slip through. Taran, come hold up our friend, and you—” He addressed the ghost, “Leap out of that body and go back where you belong!”

As Taran heaved up his sister’s body, G’han settled into his odd, balanced stance once more. For a moment everyone was absolutely still. Then the sword flared, sending a flicker of dawn-light across the interior of the cabinet and leaving a glowing wake behind it that outlined a passage into shadow.

“Now go!” snarled Latilla. “Or his next stroke will pass through that pretty neck!”

Taran felt Sula sag in his arms as with a fading howl the ghost obeyed.

G’han slammed shut the cabinet’s doors and slashed a sigil across the wood to bind it. Carefully, Taran laid his sister’s limp body down. Her fair skin was blotched and her hair straggled around her face. Her breast rose and fell with her shallow breathing, but Taran did not need to look into her empty eyes to know that no one was home. In his own mind he still felt Sula’s fear.

“She must return to that body,” said G’han. “It can exist on its own for a little while, but without a spirit, soon it will begin to fail.”

“Sula—it’s all right. He’s gone. Go back into your body now,” said Latilla, but Taran shook his head.

“He pushed her out. She doesn’t know how to return.”

“Ah—then there is one thing left for me to do.” Latilla had never seemed so tired, so old. “I bore you two in my womb, and welcomed your spirits,” she said then. “Maybe what you need is for me to hold you again. Lie down, Taran, and take her in your arms. Lay your heads in my lap, and I will sing to you … .”

Even yesterday Taran would have balked, but the hours in which he had shared Sula’s mind had changed him. He put his arms around her body as he would have held his own. There was a comfort in his mother’s soft lap, and a healing in the lullaby she sang, that took him back to the days in which he and his sister and his mother had all been one. Exhaustion overwhelmed him then and his eyes closed.

When Sula woke, morning light was pouring into the room. She was lying on the floor of the dining room with a pillow under her head and a blanket over her, and she hurt everywhere. For a moment she could not imagine how she came there. Clearing sight showed her brother curled up beside her and her mother asleep at the table with her head pillowed on her arms. Only G’han was still awake, sitting cross-legged by the door like a sculpture of some exotic god.

“What happened to me?”

“Oh, many things—maybe your mother should tell—” G’han began, but his next words were drowned out by a sudden thunder of knocking at the front door.

“You open up in there, Latilla, or we’ll break it down! Don’t think yer son can save you this time. My men’ll break him as well!”

“It’s Rol!” gasped Sula as the others sat up. “He’ll kill us! He’ll take the house—”

“No he won‘t—” With clothes awry and hair askew, Latilla looked like a harridan, but a fey light danced in her eyes. “I can pay him, remember?” She scooped half of the gold pieces that lay scattered on the table into a leather bag and tossed it in her hand. “All I owe him, and—” Her gaze paused at the cabinet and she smiled. “I can return his merchandise as well. Taran, G’han—pick up that thing, and follow me.”

Though every movement was an agony, Sula managed to get to her feet and follow them. Apparently the sight of G’han’s sword had been enough to gain Latilla a hearing, and the gold worked a miraculous cure on Rol’s lacerated pride.

“Ah well, me darlin’, this is another story—” He beamed up at her. “There’s no need to be giving back yer furniture too—”

“When two have been as ‘involved’ as we, the break should be a clean one,” Latilla said sweetly. “I’ll not keep in my house so much as a memory of you.” She motioned to Taran and G’han, who manhandled the cabinet down the steps and thrust it into the arms of the two hulking brutes Rol had brought to protect him.

They managed to get back into the house and close the door before they started laughing.

“But what happened?” wondered Sula. “Why did she give the cabinet away?”

“That’s not all she gave him! Wait till he gets the cabinet home and that sorcerer’s ghost starts popping out of the walls!” Taran replied.

Sula stopped short as she remembered that neither of them had spoken aloud. She could see her brother’s gray eyes rounding in wonder as he realized it, too. But aching muscles provided assurance that her spirit was firmly seated in her body. I never meant this to happen, she thought. Will Taran hate me?

But he looked stunned, not angry. Sula offered a tentative smile. This was going to take some getting used to, but at least she was no longer alone.