Andrea K. Höst's Blog, page 5

Smuggled Touchstone Editions!

Here is some very cool news!  The Touchstone Trilogy has been republished in paperback by The Book Smugglers with scrumptious new covers by Kirbi Fagan.


Isn't that a fabulous cover?  See the others, and check out a giveaway for the whole trilogy, over at Smuggler HQ.

A Bad or Good Last Jedi? (spoilers)

I enjoyed The Last Jedi a lot, which is not to say there aren't plenty of issues with the choices made in the story.
But first some
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for those whose browsers display too much and ignore cut commands.
A lot of the blow-back I've seen about TLJ has revolved around Luke.  Both for his brief madness regarding Ben, for his subsequent self-exile on a not-nearly-as-deserted-a-world-as-it-seemed, and for his epic or not-epic end.
Luke was a nice kid, but the fact that he persuaded Vader to do a heel-face turn doesn't mean he's not going to have some difficulty when faced with a Baby Hitler issue.  Or whiny teen emo Hitler.  I can understand both the moment's temptation, and the agonised self-recrimination in the aftermath.  The self-exile leaving his sister and friend to deal with not only their grief, but the rise of the First Order is less easy to understand.  But since this was established in the first movie of this trilogy, it's not something I'm going to harp on in the second.
His end was epic and fitting, though.  That worked for me – both in facing the problem he had contributed to, and finally helping the Rebellion out a little, in a way that calls clearly back to Ben Kenobi's end.
The tonal shifts of humour inserted into very dramatic scenes were definitely jarring.  I didn't hate them, and they did make me laugh, but definitely jarring.
I think the thing that bothered me most was that there was an A story, where Important Rey goes to find Important Luke, and is deflected to Important Conflict with Important Kylo, while in the B story side-character Poe causes a series of issues, and sends side-character Finn and side-character Rose off on a futile escapade that ultimately achieves the death of most of the Rebellion.
Difficult to miss that these two storylines are rather divided by skin colour.
For the A story, I am very glad that Rey completely rejected any ruling of Empires, and that she failed to redeem Kylo.  I'm a little at a loss as to why she felt it worth trying – even if he really is struggling internally, he's still a murderous child-killer who has slaughtered many more people than Han Solo.  The death of Snoke and the epic throne room battle were very good, and the discovery that Kylo is not a good kid gone wrong, but someone who likes the idea of ruling a galaxy, worked very well for me.  I'm glad Rey is not related to anyone we know, though sad that her parents apparently 'sold' her (and confused as to what exactly she was sold into, since she didn't seem to be tied to anyone at all in her intro).
For the B story, I really liked Rose, and continue to like Finn and Poe.  I like that Poe appears to be designated as new leader of the Rebellion, though I thought the method of getting him there was awkward and contrived.  I'm also a little unsure why people don't hyperspace shatter Star Destroyers as a matter of course.
Finn was the worst-used: he's in danger of becoming a primarily comic character, which I felt a pity because he's such a likeable person.  I think that perhaps the writers don't know what to do with him – they haven't found an arc for him in the main plotline.  With Rey becoming a Jedi and Poe becoming a leader, the story attempts to make his role 'becoming an inspiration' – which I like as a purpose, if only the B plot hadn't completely deflated his heroism.
Rose is outright wonderful.  I loved her switch from fan-girl to taser-wielder.  I disliked the rapidity of the romantic arc – this is a story that progresses over a matter of hours, and is given precious little chemistry or foundation, though I wouldn't object to the romance if it had been set up a little more adroitly.
There is also a C story which seems to be 'the Rebellion is run by older women, but unfortunately they will all soon be dead'.  I didn't hate Leia's Force flight, though wish she'd been wearing some kind of pressure suit to make her survival less unlikely.  It felt like she was being rescued by the Force, rather than being in a condition to rescue herself.

So, overall, I enjoyed but neither outright loved nor hated The Last Jedi.  I'd have cut at least half an hour from it, and made the Poe-Finn-Rose mission a positive one, rather than primarily negative in result, even though the final scenes of an inspired child spared it from being a totally worthless venture.

A note on Touchstone print copies

For those who like the print books, the Touchstone Trilogy (first 3 books) will be reissued in collaboration with the lovely Book Smugglers.  This means that the current volumes will be taken down.  If you're wanting to buy the series with its current covers, be warned that I will be taking Stray and Lab Rat down this week.

Current Status

I'm writing very slowly this year (partly because I took up playing an MMO again in order to write my MMO novel, and spent rather a lot of time playing the MMO).
I don't think it's very likely I'll finish Snug Ship this year (though first quarter next year is likely).  And that will push Tangleways to the end of next year.
I am enjoying writing Snug Ship immensely, at least, though it's rather more complex than I anticipated (and at the same time has a non-typical story structure).  I'm looking forward to sharing it with you all!

Snug Ship on Book Smuggler's Kickstarter

The Book Smugglers are having a Kickstarter, and I've offered up a chance to name a (major) character in Snug Ship as one of the final hour rewards.  Hardly any time left, so jump on it if you're keen.

Worldbuilding dates and times

One of the things that writers have to keep track of is details of characters and - when you're messing with multiple worlds or other factors - dates of events.

I've been working on a spreadsheet for Snug Ship, and thought you all might be interested in a glimpse of the spreadsheet I did while writing In Arcadia.  Lining up Earth time and Muinan time involved so many errors...

Inn - Chap 6

I have been very neglectful, and left you all hanging for quite a long time.  I don't even have a good excuse - I've been distracted playing FFXIV, and with plumbing woes, and a bit of a reading binge.

Also, this isn't a very good chapter.  Very little happens action-wise - it's more focused on Vanagar being consumed by social malaise, and while she does make some progression, it's way more fun to read about epic magics.  It's a necessary progression, but I think if writing it now I'd set it during some discovery events, rather than sitting about re-iterating things we know already.



Chapter Six

Zerith, with one of his better ideas, had suggested taking one of the tables outside, and they'd sat in the afternoon sun playing cards and griping about being confined to the circle of stones.  Once they'd patched the bit of roof and the shutters which the storm had damaged, there had been nothing much to do.  Most of the disassembled stable had blown away, and there no longer was a horse to put in it anyway.  Incomprehensible, being bored in Irrelath
At least Vanagar had always liked card games.  It gave her a sense of participation without actually having to work at thinking up something not boring to say in the way of small talk in a group.  And this group made quite a collection: Jaelith's friends, the two bards, two women, Merry and Karie, from Artesia and a man who said he was from Arras Island itself, returning there from Ferrance.  The bards were a little older, nearing their thirties, and the two women barely scraped past being called 'girl'.  Heron was their own age.
A couple of the mercenaries were not more than twenty-five, but they had shown no interest in joining the double card game, instead prowling about on their patrols.  The inn staff seemed depressed, the two men watching from a distance, looking as if they'd like to join in.  The older of the innkeeper's daughters, the one who did the serving, had wandered out with a couple of jugs of water and had lingered.  Her father had called her back, quick enough, just like that terrible old woman's grandson had been brought quickly to heel when he'd wandered out looking like he wanted to join in.
"Of course we should all pitch in with chores, maintaining the inn, cleaning our rooms," Jaelith said, replying to his brother's question.  "Unless you've funds to pay Hobben indefinitely, Zer?"
"Wouldn't want to be thrown out for not paying the bill here, Zerith," Rithia said, flashing him one of her amused looks.
"'Room' not 'rooms'," Zerith griped.  "Five of us in together, tripping over each other's gear all the time."
"Least you're not sleeping on the floor in the common room," Cienne pointed out.
A booted foot nudged Vanagar's leg, which she ignored, assuming the contact to be accidental.  But she was wrong.  With surprising delicacy, the boot returned, touched her ankle, ran up the inside of one leg to her knee.  Before she could stop herself, Vanagar raised wide eyes from her cards, looked across the table to where Jaelith looked back at her, and raised one corner of his mouth in a tiny smile.
"Can't bear to sleep in the same room with me?" he asked, turning to look at his brother.
"Jay, I've nothing against the sleeping, but there's other things I'd like to do which definitely don't require your presence," Zerith replied.
Karie, sitting next to Zerith, reached up and whispered something in his ear, and he grinned.
"Careful, I'll take you up on that, Karie," he warned
The boot stroked the other side of her leg and Vanagar desperately tried to decide what to do.  When Jaelith turned back, she ventured a quizzical smile, hoping this was the right way to act, not too eager, but acknowledging what he was doing, not looking as if she did not want it.  He gave a warm response, eyes crinkling at the corners.  It was a wonderful, timeless moment - only five, ten seconds long, seeing more than friendship in Jaelith's hazel eyes.
"Your deal, Heron," Zerith said impatiently, and Vanagar glanced over to see the Arras Islander directing a very meaningful look at Rithia, who was on Vanagar's right.  Rithia responded with just a hint of smoulder and Vanagar, who was not meant to be included at all, revealed her reaction by going deathly pale, then bright red.  She transferred her gaze to her lap and tried very hard not to cry, but her distress would probably be apparent to anyone who was looking.  The probing foot returned and it was all she could do not to flinch.
She risked a glance across the table, damning the heat staining her cheeks.  Heron, shuffling the cards, was still looking significantly at Rithia.  Jaelith had turned to answer some question of Cienne's.
The foot moved away and Vanagar hastily took the opportunity to shift her legs, angling them far away from Heron's reach.  She prayed that when he tried again, he would manage to encounter Rithia and not realise that he'd been touching Vanagar.  She felt physically ill, her stomach knotted into a fist, her throat and chest tight and painful, just thinking of what his reaction would be, and as for Jaelith...!  Heat washed through her again, pure shame.
Her cards had been dealt and as she picked them up she looked at Jaelith again, found him watching her with a puzzled expression.  If only she could stop blushing!  He must think her mad, gaping at him like a love-struck cow and then blushing furiously for no reason at all!  He wasn't stupid.  He mightn't know what was going on beneath the table, but seeing her smiling at him like that and then blushing idiotically...  She wanted to crawl out of sight and die, tried desperately to think of some way to get away.
"Here they come!"
Cards were instantly downed, and they turned to watch eight people making their way up the hill, carrying what looked to be a deer slung on a pole.  Vanagar's relief had nothing to do with their survival of the storm apparently unscathed, and everything to do with the fact that attention was riveted away from her burning cheeks.
"Those mercenaries are really nervous about what their Captain's going to say," Cienne was saying.
"I'd be more worried about what the ghost-layer's going to say.  Mendican's just a mercenary.  She's the one with the bells that call thunderstorms," Heron said.
"Not the mercenaries' fault, surely?" Jaelith put in.  "Ekridge held them back and it was that farmer who actually rang the bell."
"Excuses.  You watch.  I bet he'll come back looking like he's been put through a wringer."
It was the two Armitans who carried the deer, presumably on the basis of strength.  So strange to see the beautiful and distant Lady Kinrathen in that plain garb, acting as bearer while others were unencumbered.  Armitans were apparently very complex about what it was right and correct for them to do.  Still, the first thing Ritnar and Vanion did was relieve the other two of their burdens.
As Heron had predicted, the mercenary called Seinfal, after a brief exchange with his Captain, returned wearing a tight, stiff expression, very pale about the lips.  Vanagar, reminding herself of her plan to be quietly valiant, put this vow into action by bravely edging to the rear of the group when they stood.  But that was about being as far as polite from Jaelith, and nothing to do with the ghost-layer.
Like parents whose children had been naughty, the scouting party surveyed the clumps of people waiting for them at the inn's entrance, registering the unease and guilt.  Vanagar saw fading red marks on their faces, as if they had been in a fight, and wondered what had attacked them.
Kier asked something of Ritnar in that liquid language and Vanagar thought she caught the name of the horse.  Certainly, when Ritnar replied, his eyes dropping away from the bondsman, the reaction he provoked was one of arrested disbelief, then anger sternly contained, but visible all the same.  The Armitan's face became as withdrawn and distant as the mountains, and he looked to the direction Ritnar indicated as if he planned to immediately start off in chase.  A word from Lady Kinrathen stalled him, but the perfectly correct bow he gave in response was very stiff indeed.  It had been, from what small amount Vanagar knew about horseflesh, a very fine horse.  She had thought it was Lady Kinrathen's, but doubted that conclusion now.
Stehl Lacey came to the fore, and studied the card table briefly.  A red mark across one of her eyebrows gave her a marvellously rakish look.
"Well," she said.  "If you'll take the tables back inside, be patient for ten minutes or so while we attend to matters, we will give you the news of the day, which is quite complex.  It would be best if everyone was there, so we will all squeeze in."
"Come on, everyone," Jaelith said, raising his voice a little.  "You heard Ker Lacey.  We'd better move these tables."
Watching the 'leaders' heading down toward too-empty graves was much more interesting, but everyone moved, if slow and reluctant.  They'd built a rough but functional pair of steps up to the doorway, but Vanagar still managed to stumble going inside, almost dropping the end of the bench she was carrying.
Rithia, carrying the other end, raised her lip in disgust.  "Now if you'd broken your neck, Lady Graceful, it would have made sense," she said, softly spiteful as they replaced the bench along the wall they had taken it from.  Vanagar didn't respond; it wasn't worth even trying. 
Rithia shook her head, angrily.  "Tongueless idiot.  You know, given a choice between you and Jerian, not one single person here would hesitate to make the exchange.  Clumsy tag-along, why wasn't it you?!"
Vanagar stared at Rithia, shocked by the open attack, and the genuine pain which brought the hint of a sob to the end of the last sentence.  Rithia turned away with a fulminating glare, not overly pleased at having revealed herself, and making it clear that she planned for Vanagar to pay for the slip.
Two people to avoid.  Vanagar wondered how many would feel as Rithia said.  Surely not Allia?  She thought about it as the room was slowly put back in order.  She didn't really know.  If there had been a situation where Allia had had to choose between Vanagar and Jerian, which would she choose?  Vanagar didn't doubt that Rithia had been speaking complete truth for the rest of the group, but Allia was supposed to be Vanagar's friend.  Not her best friend.  Vanagar had never been anyone's best friend, and Allia and Cienne were far closer.  She did not know how Allia would choose.
No.  She did.  When she really looked at it, she really couldn't call any of these people her friends.  Close acquaintances some.  Others mere acquaintances.  She seriously doubted that any of them would introduce her as "my friend, Vanagar".
It was an interesting thought, liberating even.  They weren't her friends, they were people she knew, and she knew them a damn sight better than they knew her.
The ghost-layer had gone to her room, and came back wearing a faintly irritated expression, but dashed the expectations of the crowd by merely going to the table by the door that she had made her own already.  No-one would leave a table empty merely because Vanagar had sat there twice.  The room, when everyone finally came down, even the mean-minded old woman and her daughter and grandchildren, was far too crowded.  Stehl Lacey stood behind the bar, raised a hand, and summoned silence.
"Very well.  You have had your own adventures while we have been gone.  I think Lord Thunderer has meted out punishment sufficient to ensure that you will hesitate before turning over anyone else's room."  She nodded at the murmurs of surprise.  "You are in a circle consecrated to the Greater Gods, people.  Remember that - it is no more or less than being in Temple.  As to the bodies..."  She sighed, lifted her hands slightly.  "I have no clear answer.  Plainly they are gone, and the graves show signs of strong magic.  Where they have gone, why and how - I do not know."
"Is that all?" Arven stood up, pushing off Allia's restraining arm.  "Is that all you're going to do?  Say you don't know?  My brother's body has been stolen!!"
Stehl Lacey looked at him.  "What do you wish, child?  We will look for some clue to what has happened, we will certainly try to return your brother's body to his grave, if we do locate him.  But we must look to the living, whose concerns are more immediate.  You understand that, don't you?"
"He didn't deserve to die," Arven replied, faintly.
"Few do."  Her eyes were compassionate, and she nodded in approval as Allia rose and slipped an arm around his waist and drew him back to his seat.
"We will start, I think, with what we found today."  Vanagar listened intently as Stehl Lacey described the whistler and the five empty, windowless buildings, the glowing falls and the ravine they had followed for some distance out of the valley.  The peaches, produced on cue, looked innocuous enough for something fruiting out of season.  Stehl Lacey outlined future expeditions, which would not be limited to the scouting party, stressing that though she would not limit travel outside the circle, she did not want anyone wandering off alone or in pairs.  A minimum of five people had to be in any group, and they weren't to go out of the lake valley, especially not into the forest behind the inn, which the mages said looked to be particularly power-haunted.
"A simple rule is: if it looks strange, stay away from it.  Don't trust what you see, don't stray too far, don't play hero."
"Yessir!" Zerith muttered, two places down from Vanagar, but if Stehl Lacey heard, she didn't respond.
"Now.  The next matter."  The ex-mercenary looked uncertain, which sharpened Vanagar's drifting attention immediately.  Stehl Lacey wasn't a person who went about looking uncertain.  "Good news, in a way," she continued.  "We made a successful second attempt to communicate with someone outside of the valley, augmented Ker Pendar's link to Councillor Kemior to reach her, and through her, High Lady Aliantha.  So now our location is known."
"Why is that good news 'in a way'?" demanded Ekridge.
"It is, quite simply, good news, but from it we have learnt something... difficult."  She waved a hand for silence.  "We now have a reasonable understanding of why we have been brought here.  The High Lady informed us that at the same time that we were transported to Irrelath, most likely by the Gods themselves, the seals on the tombs of the Dancers were broken."
"'Tis the dawn of the Third Age!" called out the trapper who had gone on the scouting expedition.
For a while after that, nothing could be heard over the babble.  Vanagar didn't say anything, didn't even try to listen to the shouted questions, the fear and excitement breaking around her.  The Third Age.  The Age of Wonder.  The Dancers.
The First Age had been the Age of Knowing, when people learned the world and its limits, when those limits had been less solidly set than they were now.  They seemed to have understood the world better, back then, had written the books of learning, set the rules.  That was when the Dancers had appeared, been conquered and bound into their tomb, when prophets had spoken truth instead of gulling nonsense, and Irrelath had been more than an abandoned legend.
The Great War had brought the Age of Knowing to a close, had left a lawless shambles behind.  The signing of the Charter had established the Second Age, the one which they were in now - had been in, anyway.  The Age of Reason, some people called it.  Others called it the Charter Age.  The prophets of the First Age called it the Age of Leavening, and there were great tracts written on just what thatwas supposed to mean.  Those prophets had obligingly predicted that the Dancers would be released, and would bring with them the Age of Wonder, "where that which was Rule shall be rewritten".  They weren't very specific on what exactly would happen in the Third Age, their prophecies tending to be rambling, but a few of the notable highlights Vanagar could remember were Gods walking the Realms, a new race being created and the dead rising in light.
All that, and the Dancers as well.  There were four of them, elementals.  Heat and chill, illusion and stone.  Earth and air, fire and water.  It had not been that they had control of these elements which had frightened Vanagar, when her nurse had read her tales of the Dancers' defeat to give her nightmares.  It had been the senselessness.  They were things which appeared, alone or all four together, sweeping through an area and bringing destruction in their wake.  Burning and breaking, for no reason any could say, but that it was their nature.  One particular story which Vanagar hated was that the Dancers had been human once, had been condemned by the Gods to a bodiless, loveless existence.  They were called Dancers because the stories said that amidst the icy mists and walls of flame, solitary figures, human in form, could be seen, veiled in their power, dancing their destruction as if it brought them joy.
"All right!  All right !"  Stehl Lacey slammed a tankard hard on the bar repeatedly until everyone shut up.
"No, it is neither a joke, nor a mistake.  Nor is it all I have to tell you."  Stehl Lacey put the tankard down carefully, studied the scarring she'd added to the surface of the bar.  "High Lady Aliantha has been searching the histories for details on how the Dancers were contained previously."
"The Sorcerors of Irrelath," said Leah Romullar, the words falling out of her mouth.
"Yes.  The Sorcerors of Irrelath used a device to bring down the Dancers.  According to the High Lady's research, that device should be in Jormath, the tower visible to the south."
They were in the middle of history.  Their actions would set the course of the future.  Vanagar did not slip quite into a daydream, for she could not imagine herself heroically facing down the Dancers - that would simply be too unlikely.  But she would be there when history was made, would see this device which would save the Realms.  She felt stunned quite beyond her normal worries, listened through a haze as Stehl Lacey spoke of the barrier around the Forsaken Land and the defences they might encounter in Jormath, of the city which had once been beyond the mountain, and the smaller settlement they might have to search for, to the north, where the sorcerers had based their studies.  Bards would sing of the people who found these things.
Vanagar's pleasant distance lasted quite a long time.  She drifted upstairs, not wanting to try to join the excited conversation her friends - her acquaintances - embarked upon.  Instead she lay on her bed and dreamed of Kier, who she thought a very appropriate person to bring down the Dancers.  Dreamed of battles between good and evil.
Thinking about Jaelith eventually broke into more pleasant reflections.  She lay looking up at the ceiling.  He had chosen deliberately not to sit next to her.  There had been no mistaking that hesitation.  She remembered thinking once that if she made her feelings clear to Jaelith, she might be surprised by his reaction, might find that he did like her, perhaps had thought that she did not like him.  Another of those hopeless puppy fantasies.  It was the ones which might be true that always hurt the worst, far more than daydreaming about winning the admiration of Kier the Bondsman.
Did it matter?  She had always known Jaelith thought of her more as someone to be nice to than someone to be attracted to.  She was disappointed that he was so embarrassed by the thought of a 'clumsy tag-along' like Vanagar wanting him that he found it necessary to avoid her.  Trust Rithia to find just the right insult, to encapsulate Vanagar's own view.  She tagged along, she didn't belong, wasn't wanted.
How stupid to be in Irrelath, to be on the verge of the Age of Wonder, and to be thinking of romantic inadequacies.  Well, today seemed to be her day of resolutions: she would make another.  Along with trying to be quietly valiant, she'd stop being a clumsy tag-along.  The clumsiness would be the hard one, but if she didn't attempt the things she knew she couldn't, and paid attention to where her feet were the rest of the time, instead of those watching her, she'd at least keep her fumbles to a minimum.
One serious draw-back with not being a tag-along occurred to her.  She wanted to explore, at least a little.  If she didn't work to get herself included when the others went out, she'd not be included at all.  She didn't for a moment believe anyone would invite her along.  A pity that she didn't have any skill worth mentioning.  Her mother had taught her the process of law, not how to forage in the woods.
Well, she would solve that one somehow.  She refused to be an encumbrance on the others' explorations, refused to have her presence resented.  Perhaps, as a start, she'd make herself useful to the inn staff tomorrow.  They'd need to wash the linen and all that sort of stuff.  She'd find out who knew how to gather nuts and mushrooms or whatever they'd be doing, and she'd offer herself as a student.  She'd help people who didn't think of her as a tongueless idiot, she'd be Vanagar and she'd like herself, regardless of anyone else's opinion.
Making a real point out of avoiding past acquaintances would be useless.  If, by some miracle, they did ask her to go exploring, naturally she'd go along.
If.

Inn - Chap 5

This is where the story switches from mysterious to grand epic...



Chapter Five
"What is that?!"
For all the skills of mercenaries, mages, Armitans and Charter Hands, it was the slow-speaking trapper called Peta Meason who saw it first.  Everyone followed her pointing finger and froze.
The first hour of the journey had been entirely uneventful.  Wildlife seemed to be relatively scarce, but otherwise there had been nothing about travelling through Irrelath to mark it out from wilderness in any of the Realms.  Then this.
It floated about two feet from the ground, a hand-sized ball of pale purple light with a fluttering pulse at its centre that reminded Shan of a beating heart.  The trapper had already readied a knife, Harl Mendican nocked an arrow to the bow he carried slung over one shoulder, and there was a simultaneous ringing as the sword-bearers readied weapons for attack.  The ball just hovered there, not quite stationary.
"Well, it's magic, I can tell you that," the female mage said.
"Is it some sort of ghost?" Stehl Lacey asked, glancing at Shan, who shrugged.
"Not any sort I've ever seen or heard of," she replied.  "Ghosts generally resemble what they were before death.  Unless that's a dead purple ball, it's not a ghost."
"So do we run from it, talk to it, or try to run it through?" Mendican asked.
"Talk to it?"
"You never know."
"Mmph."  Stehl Lacey looked to the mages, who gazed unresponsively back.  "It doesn't seem to be hostile.  So long as it..."
The ball began to sing.  Or perhaps whistle was a better term, since it was a breathless cry without words, climbing up and down in pitch, scraping the ends of nerves.  Shan had time in plenty to ponder verb choice, since she could do little else.  Something in that cry, shivering weird, made it impossible for her to move.  Even drawing breath became an effort.
Helplessly Shan watched as the purple ball bobbed closer, but the greatest effort of will could not break her free of that noise.  Stehl Lacey was unfortunate in being nearest.  Her face was set in stone, grey eyes following the progress of the light.  It hovered like a bizarre butterfly, then lit upon her shoulder.
Shan stumbled forward as the singing stopped, there was a flash of amethyst light, and then the glowing ball shot off among the trees, darting erratically with all the speed it had previously failed to display.  Stehl Lacey fell to her knees.
"Ker Lacey?"  Lady Kinrathen was at the ex-mercenary's side in a heartbeat.  "Are you injured?"
Stehl Lacey shook her head slowly, then checked herself over as if to make sure.  "No," she said, sounding relieved.  She stood carefully.  "Tired, as if I had run a mile, but no more.  I'll wait a while, in future, before I decide whether a creature seems hostile or not."
"We will rest for a few minutes," Lady Kinrathen said, commandingly, voice brooking no argument.  Stehl Lacey did not attempt to argue, just looked around, and sat on a lichen-encrusted log that lay half in the water.
"I guess that goes down on the list of things to avoid," Harl Mendican said, shaking his head.  "If anyone has a name they'd care to give it?"
"Whistlers," said Shan, Peta Meason and Stehl Lacey, in unison.  They laughed briefly.  Mendican grinned back.
"Wonderful.  Whistling, paralysing balls of light that suck up human energy.  Least it doesn't take a whole lot.  The thing had us dead to rights, but being its lunch doesn't seem to be fatal."
"Depends on whether that was a big whistler or a little whistler," Shan pointed out.  "Did it seem to anyone else that it was larger when it left than when we first saw it?"
This was not a popular observation, but no-one disagreed.  They wandered about, taking a good long look out over the lake, getting a feel of the area from the new angle.  It was a beautiful place.  Eventually they headed on, more alert than before, yet oddly equally more relaxed, having finally had the magical attack they had been expecting.  Harl Mendican dropped back to walk beside Shan, and she turned to him enquiringly.  He smiled engagingly.
"So, how does one get into the ghost-laying business?"
"Thinking of a change of career?"
"Never know when a second craft could come in handy."
"Just so."  No hint of irony in her tone.  "Well, ghost-layers generally train up an apprentice to replace them.  There's only four ghost-layers at the moment, and they're very discerning, so I shouldn't lay your hopes too deeply."
"Really?  What qualities does a ghost-layer look for when choosing an apprentice?"
"Helps not to be afraid of ghosts."
"That would useful."  He studied her a moment.  "How old were you, when you started training?  I assume you're out of your apprenticeship?"
She nodded.  "I was eight."  He looked startled, so she shrugged.  "It's a family profession.  My mother, her father and his mother were all ghost-layers.  It involves a lot of travel, so my mother took me with her, and I pestered her into taking me actually on-site a little earlier than she'd probably intended."  She smiled at the memory of her first real 'live' ghost.
"Guess I'd be starting a little late, huh?"
Shan lifted an equivocal hand, attention more on the trees around them, on the gentle slope of the bank.  "Nardle, the senior ghost-layer, is training someone almost as old as he is.  And almost as eccentric.  The main requirement, actually, is a complete lack of mage talent."
"Ah.  That lets me out."  He looked at her curiously.  "Seems an odd requirement, though.  You'd think being a mage would help, not hinder."
"Oh it does.  Spirits are very attracted to mages and we use a lot of magic sending them on.  The problem is, they like minor mages so much they keep trying to possess them, which they don't seem to be able to do with someone of no talent.  And while a powerful mage is generally able to fend them off, an unfortunate percentage of mages who have had a great deal to do with the death-gate, come back as revenants.  They don't want to face death and they know how to avoid it.  That's the major reason ghost-laying is so firmly controlled by the Charter."
"I still can't fit you with my image of a ghost-layer."
This provoked only a noncommittal smile.  Shan hadn't decided whether to respond to Harl Mendican's overtures with anything more than vague friendship.  He was an attractive man - not precisely handsome, but his lean, observant face drew her and she liked the way he had been dealing with the situation they had all found themselves in.  It would be pleasant to have him in her bed when the day grew dark and cold, and his direct gaze and quick smile told her that he would join her willingly if she encouraged his flirtation.
Tempted, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but did not allow him to catch her looking at him.  If there were no prospect of more than a warm night, perhaps, but this man was now, in a sense, her comrade-in-arms.  Bedding him would not be followed by regretful farewells in the morning, but the likelihood of weeks and months in each other's company.  Years even, if they could not cross the Stone Plain.  Fifty-odd people, falling in and out of each other's beds from lack of other choices; trysting, separating, squabbling jealously, marrying.  Or dying before they had the chance.
They saw another startling creature - it truly looked like a grey, winged house-cat - but only at a distance, and made good progress as the sun climbed higher.  They rarely had to detour away from the bank, and never for far.  Green grassy slopes all the way.  Then a stream.
The white buildings they had seen were only a minute or two's walk on the far side.  They stopped at the point where the stream opened out into the lake, trying to peer through the concealing swathes of willow.  Odd-shaped buildings, blockish with each of the upper corners sliced off at a steep angle, as if someone had made preliminary cuts for carving them into points.  Very clean lines, their whiteness unmarred by grime.
"No sign of life, but they're in good repair," observed Stehl Lacey.  She turned her attention to the stream, which looked waist-deep, but was not flowing swiftly.  "The water's normal here," she added, pointing out a thing Shan had already noticed - that the stream was not the same still darkness as the lake.
"Swim or go upstream?" Mendican asked, dabbling fingers in the water and trailing liquid that showed no tendency to glow.  Shan gazed at the inn across the lake, looking extremely shabby against its backdrop of high mountains, and hoped they wouldn't have to swim.  It wasn't cold in the sunlight, but being wet wouldn't make matters any better, and they were a long way from dry clothes.
"Upstream for a while," Stehl Lacey decided, considering the forest which thickened and rose away from the lake.
It was a quick detour.  Barely thirty feet along were two boulders which squeezed the stream between them, and it was easy to leap across.  Shan had just made the jump when she felt an echo in the light bag she had slung across her back.  The air throbbed as the true tolling reached them and she whirled, astonished and disbelieving, to stare back at the inn, only partly visible above the tree-tops from their location.  Three deep notes, followed by a strangled fourth.  She could only gape, for once shocked out of her habit of composure.
A blotch of darkness opened in the blue autumn sky, writhed and twisted and spread at insane speed above the inn.  She saw a bolt flash down, and winced at the thunder that reached them the next second.
"What is it?!" Stehl Lacey yelled, grabbing one of her arms as a wind as sudden as the storm seemed to suck their words away and inwards to the hilltop and the consecrated circle of stones, struck by another bolt of lightning as they watched.  A funnel like a wind-twist, but in reverse, channelling into the sky, a giant inhalation.
"My bells!" Shan yelled, but the wind snatched her words, and she flung up a hand as something - leaves, twigs torn from a tree - slapped her in the face.  The clouds curled into fists, already above them.  Stehl Lacey, who could not hear her words through the gale, yelled something back, gestured forcefully in the direction of the white buildings they had spent two hours or more walking to, and staggered forward, buffeted to a drunken parody of running.
Shan spared only half a glance to make certain the two Armitans, last in line, had made it across the stream.  Willow-wands turned to whips, branding her face, and she lost her sense of direction briefly in a circle of lashing green.  She managed to gauge the direction of the wind, ran out into the open, splashed through the shallow edge of the lake - filling her boots with freezing water - and ran along the bank of the lake, spotting the others only a short distance ahead.  They dashed between a gateless gap in a low, scalloped wall and through the doorway of the nearest structure, which tapered like the building itself, narrower at the top than the base.
Shan could hear the rain behind her, the wind reversing direction ahead of the downpour, pushing her forward, practically lifting her off her feet and throwing her through the entrance.
Stumbling embarrassingly into Lady Kinrathen, Shan gasped for breath, back tensed for the blow of cold water.  But the room was warm and still, and she took her next breath, then turned to stare outside, reminded oddly of her first occasion to look upon the lake.  She couldn't see it this time, though the water's edge was not more than fifteen feet away.  Lightning still struck, but even the thunder was muted here, the black sky and solid wall of rain could well have been a landscape painting.  They were contained beyond the doorway, not gusting even a cool breeze through that empty, tapering rectangle.
Lady Kinrathen reached her hand through the doorway, and had it struck downward by the force of the falling water.  Drawing it back, she shook cold drops to the floor.  They stood a good two, three minutes in silence, staring out at the dark fury of the storm.
The tall bondsman shifted, the movement drawing Lady Kinrathen's attention away from the storm's mesmeric power. 
"Enough of this," the Armitan woman said, and turned to study the room they had entered, which spread itself mute and stark before them, offering no answers.
"You know more of this than we," Kinrathen stated, her survey of the room concluding with a long consideration of Shan.  "What can you tell us?"  Her tone lacked accusation, but there was caution in the stance of all who waited for Shan's reply.
"Someone's been playing with my gear," Shan said calmly, though disbelief lingered in her voice.  "Usually people are less than eager to fool with a ghost-layer's kit, but you never can account for stupidity, I suppose."
"Your bag made the noise first," said the trapper, her slow voice enunciating each word like the sentence of a High Justice.
"Yes.  The bell caught the resonance," Shan agreed, unslung her bag, and lifted out one of the bells, bundled in soft leather.  "This is a bell of lesser summoning," she continued, displaying the familiar ebony and silver.  "It's part of a set and linked particularly to a bell of greater summoning.  This echoed when the other was used."
Stehl Lacey stepped forward to study without touching.  "I have seen a ghost-layer use the bells.  Summoning, banishing.  Not storm-raising."
"Merciful-!"  It was the female mage, who came forward now, reached fingers to very lightly stroke the silver metal.  "Summoning.  A bell of greater summoning."
"In a circle consecrated to the Greater Gods," Shan agreed, feeling tired of a sudden.  "Hopefully, Lord Thunderer will be the only one to answer."  She watched realisation settle in, even the Armitans going grey.  "Greater summoning is rarely used – I've only done so twice.  For the more powerful haunts, who are reluctant to come to this one's call, and need to be dragged by their heels.  Somehow I doubt the greater bell is strong enough to forcefully summon even a lesser god, let alone one of the greats, but I can't say that they're likely to appreciate the gesture."
She packed the bell carefully away, automatically pressing the padding further in as she did so, attention returning to the black gloom outside, which had been a sunny day five minutes ago.  Would the inn even be there, when the storm abated?  All her clothes, most of the bells, some of the discs.  Well, at least they'd found themselves a nice warm, dry place to stay.  A pity there wasn't a soft bed and a fully stocked larder to go with the obviously magical heat and preservation. 
She walked away from the others as Stehl Lacey, with a sigh, suggested they might as well use the time for lunch.  Shan touched a wall lightly but felt nothing, so she went back to the door and dragged off her wet boots.
"A floor which eats wet footprints," snorted Harl Mendican, watching her actions, and the way the muddy streaks she'd left on the floor were slowly leaching into nothingness.  "What did you do?  Run through the lake?"
"It reached out and tried to trip me," she replied, giving him a warmer smile than previously, for many men would have been extremely chary of her after seeing the mess misuse of one of her bells had caused.  She pulled off her socks, which were gritty with lake-silt.  After a moment, clutching them tightly, she held them out into the roar of water, and almost lost them.  Having arranged them neatly by the door, she followed in Mendican's wake to where the others had made a loose circle on the floor and were setting out the various edibles they had been provided.  A mix of rye and fine white bread, wedges of cheese and meat, even a couple of cold pastries.  Without flour or milk, it would be a long time before they saw this fare again.
"What shall we do if we are alone here now, Ker Lacey?" the trapper was asking, sounding very unhappy with the thought.
"We'll wait until the storm abates before even considering such possibilities, Peta," Stehl Lacey replied, watching Shan sit down.  "Do you have anything else that could be turned to mischief, Ker Pendar?"
"Back at the inn, you mean?"  Shan considered.  "They couldn't really do much with the other bells.  I've got the banisher with me, so they won't find out how annoyed Lord Thunderer might get having that used on him.  There's a few shatter and flash discs there.  They might manage to cripple one or two with those."
"Shatter discs."  Stehl Lacey gave her a dry look.  "Exactly how much magical impedimenta do you have?  Here and there."
Shan cocked her head on one side, for a moment unsmiling and very serious, for she did not like having to catalogue her belongings, though she well understood the necessity of the questions to these people.  Then she adopted a lighter air, and reeled the list off honestly enough.
"The bells.  Eight flash discs.  Four shatter.  Two light.  One magic-sense.  A bug and disease ward.  Three dispells.  A clear-sight.  An anti-poison.  A trap-net.  A path-hide.  A..."  She stopped, and felt in one of her pockets thoughtfully.
"You use those to lay ghosts?" Stehl Lacey asked, disbelievingly.
"No."  Shan shook her head to emphasise the point, and produced a disc from her pocket.  "Other than the trap-net, light and the flash discs.  The rest are used for disproving ghosts."
"Sorcerous spirits," said the male mage, the first time he'd spoken for quite a while.  He sounded amused.  "False ghosts," he explained.  "It is something I have been called upon to deal with myself.  A way to drive away occupants of desirable property, or to hide murder behind an apparently supernatural evil."
"Ah.  And a ghost-layer is sent in, threatening these plans.  Thus the shatter discs."  Stehl Lacey nodded.  "Well, it is convenient.  Will you allow us use of this small arsenal of tools, Ker Pendar?"
Shan nodded absently, still turning the disc she had selected over in her hand.  She looked across at the two mages.  "Can you work with that created by Lady Bright's school, Magisters?"  She lowered her lids slightly.  "And do you have names you prefer to be called?"
The two hoods turned slightly towards each other.  "Leathe," said the woman.
"Raithe," her companion added.  "Working with the creations of another school depends on endless factors.  What is it you wish?"
She tossed him the disc.  "Enhance that."
He took so long in studying it that the others grew tense.  Shan watched faces unobtrusively, while attention was focused on the mage.  Only the Armitans had avoided being marked by willow whips, which had left red weals on the exposed flesh of the humans.  Stehl Lacey was looking wearier than the day's exertions called for.  It would probably be good to keep an eye on her, in case the whistler's sting had more to it than a brief sapping of energy.
A pair of deep blue eyes met hers as she turned her head, belonging to the only other person not focused on the mage.  She returned the steady gaze without flinching, gave it three entire heartbeats, then passed on, but found that her hands had tightened on her knees.  Lady Kinrathen's bondsman would probably win if she tried to best him in a staring competition.  Armitans were never quick to trust and this one seemed to see more than she would like.
"It could be done," Raithe said, passed the disc to his companion.  "The storm is slackening.  If the sun shines again at midday, we will try it then."
"A message disc."  Leathe drew off both her gloves and held the disc flat between two palms.  "I see."  She handed the disc back to the other mage, and replaced the gloves.  "Yes.  The message disc is almost strong enough to break through the barrier on its own.  If we can enhance it, add our power to its own, we would be able to establish communication.  We had best decide what we wish to say - the disc will only be of use once, and we will not be able to maintain the link for more than a few minutes."
"I think this qualifies as emergency enough," Shan said.  "Though we're really only supposed to use those things if we encounter an army of undead on the march."
"A message disc."  Stehl Lacey shook her head.  "I am surprised ghost-layers are able to travel at all.  With such a hoard of valuable magery, every thief would be looking to make a profit."
Shan shrugged.  "I don't go around listing the contents of my packs very often."
"Who will we be speaking to?" the ex-mercenary asked.  "Who does the message disc link to?"
"The Charter Councillor who directs the ghost-layers - Fen Kemior."
They fell to deciding what information was important not to leave out when the link was established, tucking away their food hungrily while they listened to the storm.  Raithe had correctly judged its change in intensity.  The downpour decreased steadily over the next quarter hour, then stopped abruptly and completely.
This pleased the mages, who had been exploring the rather uninteresting confines of their shelter, and patently wanted to inspect the others to see if they proved to be more than four walls and a doorway.  They had been softly debating whether it would be possible, using the varied enchantments at the disposal of the Arcane Schools, to reproduce the effects they could observe on this simple building.
When the rain ceased, the two mages immediately stepped out into the silence left in its wake, where it seemed the only noise to be heard was the dripping trees.  They looked briefly towards the inn, which proved to be still in one piece upon the hilltop, the black clouds breaking up into shafts of light above the humble wooden structure, outlining it in gold.  It was a scene of great beauty, but Raithe and Leathe only spared themselves a moment or two of reassurance before turning their attention to the outside of the building where they had sheltered, then to the others which lay within the low scalloped wall.
There were five in all.  The same size, same four walls and one doorway, same cleanliness and warmth within.  No decoration at all, unless the tapering shape counted.  No windows, no furniture, nothing.  Certainly no inhabitants.
"These have survived from the time before Mordecai's War," Leathe observed.  "Not a particularly ornate folk, but their power must have been as immense as history reports."
"Nothing but white walls," Mendican said to Shan.  "Any furniture they had would surely have survived where wind and rain could not touch them, even if clothing and foodstuffs rotted away.  I had heard they were ascetics, but this is beyond my expectations."
"Could we put these to use, if it became necessary?" Stehl Lacey asked the mages.  "Is there any suggestion that it would be dangerous to set up a camp in these structures?"
"Nothing declares itself to be inimical," Leathe replied ambiguously.
Shan did not trust such an inviting place.  She wandered, found herself beside Lady Kinrathen, and said: "Warmth and shelter, yet no animals have taken advantage of the accommodation.  Perhaps they resent being cleaned up after."
The Armitan looked amused.  "That could well be a factor.  To mark a scent and then have it removed - but I agree.  It is not a promising sign."  She glanced at her bondsman.  "Perhaps we could experiment on another occasion, Kier.  Reventh's senses are far more acute."
There was a barely perceptible hesitation, then the tall bondsman inclined his head.  "As you say, my liege."
Shan, interested by the exchange, wandered off again, stopping to ostensibly examine the entrance of the nearest dwelling, but mainly to eavesdrop when Lady Kinrathen continued, in her own tongue: "In these circumstances, it would mean little to release you some days early, Kier."
There was a deadly little pause, which prompted Shan to walk past the doorway she was inspecting.  He had not appreciated that suggestion.  She could tell without even looking.
"My word is my bond, liege," he replied finally, ice cold.
Wandering on, avoiding the puddles that spotted the area and any chance of getting involved in the Armitans' arguments, she selected one of the smallest bells in her possession from her bag, part of a set of twelve identical bells, most back at the inn.  She was relieved that the inn and bells were still there to return to.  Carefully removing the wadding, she stroked the smooth rim of the bell, which was barely a finger-length in height, then placed it in the centre of the floor of the building roughly in the middle of the compound.
"Very pretty," Mendican said, watching her from out in the sunshine.  "And?"
She handed him another of the tiny bells in response, walked several feet away.
"Ring it."
A clear, crystalline tinkle, which provoked a muffled response from Shan's pack.  "The key bell will sound when one of the attuned is struck, and the attuned strike of their own accord in the presence of spirit life."
"Noisy lot, you ghost-layers."  He handed her back the bell, fingers brushing across the palm of her hand.  She packed it away as if she hadn't noticed.  He was going to be hard to resist, this Harl Mendican.  He reminded her of the invitation his eyes had made, but did not push when she failed to respond.
"We will attempt the communication," announced Raithe.  "Away from here."  The two shadow mages walked off without another word, and they trailed after them, Shan matching paces with the trapper, mind turning impatiently away from both her own pleasures and the dangers of Irrelath.  She was a Charter Hand, had been returning from a mission of great delicacy when all this happened.  Her most important assignment to date.  Ghostly visitations had been falsified, just as Raithe had said, but this false haunting had been arranged specifically so Shan could head into Jutland - a Charter Hand behind a guise few would even begin to suspect, for all that both groups were controlled from Arras Island.  No-one associated ghost-layers with the unknown Hands of Charter law who the Council's Chair, High Lady Aliantha, dispatched to discover the truths from among falsehoods, to bring down those who broke Charter law.
The High Lady did not use the Hands to judiciously remove those who opposed her, despite what gossip said.  That talk was a result of the secrecy which surrounded the activities and identities of Aliantha's Hands.  The tales spread about the Hand's skills and achievements produced a mixture of awe and suspicious fear.  Children wanted to be Charter Hands when they grew up, but they were also told that Aliantha's Hands would catch them if they were naughty.  Shan smiled.  She was fortunate in her family's occupations.  It cut down on the things she feared.
The message disc was a useful emergency tool for either profession.  Shan had never used it as a ghost-layer, but there had been a time two years ago when she had activated a disc to warn of an assassination plot she had discovered quite by accident.  A past victory.  And today's ignominious failure.  The letter she had concealed in her belongings would settle the issue which threatened to disrupt the Convocation.  It would do no good in Irrelath, and it mattered little that this mess was none of Shan's making.  She composed herself quietly as the two mages, having made a long and boring business out of enhancing the message disc, finally activated it and lowered their hands.
High Lady Aliantha was of the Vensi School, her power earned through Lady Bright's grace.  In the high sunlight of an autumn day at noon the disc melted away to a cloud of mist, thickened and deepened, gold white with a centre of bottomless dark.  Shan, oddly, did not doubt that they would succeed in making contact, but she heard Stehl Lacey sigh in soft relief as the image of a woman with snatches of a study visible behind her, looked up and out at Shan.  Fen Kemior, made over in proportions half her true size, her short bobbed white hair tousled, dark piercing eyes red-rimmed, as if she had not slept.  She seemed to take in all at a glance - Stehl Lacey, the two Armitans, Harl Mendican and the trapper, Peta.  Shan at the fore of this group.  It was unlikely that she could see the mages, cross-legged on the ground.
"Wait," she snapped out, and turned away from the link, leaving a reasonable view of an office piled with old tomes, and a fairly disconcerted group of displaced travellers.  Then she was visible again, appearing behind a much smaller woman whose precise features, beneath a crown of golden braids, were also weary.  High Lady Aliantha, who surveyed the view she had through the link, then inclined her head politely to the two Armitans.
"Kormien Ryerstahl, Vidare Kinrathen," she murmured, then turned her attention to Shan.  "There is little time in our current crisis, Shanataire Pendar.  What do you have to report?"
Shan passed by the questions which rose to her lips about any 'current crisis' and did not react to the identity of Lady Kinrathen's bondsman.  The High Lady had commanded she report, and it was a command to be obeyed without equivocation.
"Some three hours after sunset yesterday," she began, clear and concise, "the inn Cob and Signet in Kandalay was transported to Irrelath.  Two fatalities.  We arrived in a circle fully consecrated to the Greater Gods.  I would make an assumption that they summoned us.  We have met no sentient inhabitants, have made only the first efforts at exploration.
"Occupants of the inn include," she glanced briefly over her shoulder at a bondsman of higher rank than his liege, "Lady Kinrathen and entourage, Magisters Owen and Est Tregair, Duchess Relien's sons and their party, Ker Stehl Lacey, a Spictish merchant named Ekridge and mercenary attachments, some twenty others.  Few supplies.  The circle offers us some warding protection, and we are well beyond the Stone Plain."
Fen Kemior's expression, in the background of the scene, was one of comical disbelief, and she seemed so overcome she had to put a hand out to the back of a chair to hold herself upright.  The High Lady took Shan's well-pared report without blinking, then said: "Excellent!  Tell me, are you within sight of a tower?  It should be on the southern face of a small mountain."
"Some two days' travel distant, my Lady."  Shan felt those at her back shift in confusion, and hoped that an explanation would be quickly forthcoming before her curiosity broke through her professional mask.  How had she known?
"The Gods have provided, then."  The small intense woman who headed the Charter Council, and was perhaps the most powerful person in the Realms, sagged imperceptibly with relief, but it was only a momentary thing.  High Lady Aliantha was not one to show weakness.  "Owen is with you?  Is he there?"
"I am here, Aliantha.  I cannot hold this link open much longer."  The shadow mage spoke calmly, and Shan was glad she had not named him wrongly. 
The High Lady did not waste time searching for the source of the mage's voice.  "Good.  Listen well then, all of you.  Three hours beyond sunset, yesterday evening, a man named Endymion Thorlak broke the seals of the Dancers' tomb."  She nodded as they reacted with appropriate shock, a little chorus of indrawn breaths.  "It was with the aid of the Sorcerers of Irrelath that the Dancers were imprisoned, those long centuries ago.  We have been searching, ever since Arras Island shook with the passage of the Dancers, for a way to bring down Irrelath's shields, to cross the Stone Plain and bring back the device that was used to contain the Dancers in the first place.  Obviously this is to be your role.
"Thorlak has been operating in the Realms for some time, fomenting trouble simply for the sake of it, it seems.  What bargain he struck with the Dancers I cannot guess, but after sowing destruction across the Island, they bore him off, have scattered to the winds."
Shan felt a painful twinge at these words.  Her home.  No, she wouldn't think of it.
"High Lady," Lady Kinrathen interrupted, after a glance at her bondsman, who was looking wide-eyed.  "What casualties..."
"None among those you refer to," the High Lady replied smoothly.  So the Kormier of the Armaithe Lands, and her party, had not been injured.  But what of any of the other rulers who had been gathering on Arras Island?  The Convocation was the worst time for this to happen, had doubtless been specifically chosen, though it was strange that there had not been a day or two's wait, until the meeting of the Charter Councillors was underway, and all the rulers were like to be there.
"The Third Age rises when the Dancers soar," said the trapper, sounding short of breath.
"So legend goes," Lady Aliantha agreed.  "We will not breathe word of your location beyond this room, since it is best the Dancers do not know to head to Irrelath to try to stop you.  We will continue our efforts to bring down the shields and enchantments of the Stone Plain, in case it is of aid to you, and to fool any who watch.  For your task, as we have been researching Irrelath long through the night, I can offer you what little information we have garnered."  She glanced at her companion.  "Fen, fetch the best of the maps."
"This is the Dawn of the Age of Wonders," continued the trapper, as if Aliantha had never spoken.  She fell to her knees behind Shan.
"This will be the Dawn of an Age of Darkness, if you do not succeed," the High Lady said, unmoved by the demonstration.  "The Tower is named Jormath - Snow Tear.  It is the treasure-house of old Irrelath, was used by Mordecai as a palace when he sought to rule.  What protections it might have against thieves we can only guess at, though there is much to suggest that it is shielded against entry, even as the land is.  This...," she moved back to allow an aging and yellowed map to be opened before the link, touching a particular point, "shows the location of Jormath.  In the plain to the south was the city of Lemaine.  The Sorcerers of Irrelath had their largest settlement somewhere to the north, and there were many small retreats scattered about."
"The link is about to go, Aliantha," Owen Tregair called.
"Then I wish you good luck, for you are the best hope for the Dancers' defeat.  Remember this!  The Dancers are kin to the Greater Gods.  The Great Ones' motives are never clear cut.  Tr-!"
Aliantha's image shimmered and winked out, leaving a stunned group to look at each other in silence.  The mages replaced their gloves, and stood.
"As if it wasn't going to be hard enough," Stehl Lacey said glumly, finally breaking the silence.  She studied those about her, eyes lingering on the man who the High Lady had revealed as Kier Ryerstahl, the son of the sister of the Korlendar of the Armaithe Lands - a word which was something on the lines of High Queen, ruling over the Tarkans, who were dukes of a sort, with absolute authority over their duchies.  Shan's mother had claimed 'clan chieftan' was a better explanation for the Tarkans, back when the Armitans could change shape, and grouped themselves according to the beast they could change to.  There was doubtless a complex reason, laden with honour-debt, as to why the nephew of the High Queen of the Armaithe Lands had given bondsman's oath to a mere vidare, Charter Councillor or not, but Shan doubted anyone would have the nerve to ask the Armitans what exactly it was.  Stehl Lacey's curiosity over the matter probably wasn't enough for her to make waves beneath the delicate ship she was steering.
"Magister..." She had passed on to the two mages, another revelation to most.  "As one of the Three, it would seem your word holds greatest weight.  What would you suggest?"
"Finish circling the lake," the male mage replied, shortly.  He took several steps west along the bank, then paused and looked back at Shan.  "You asked our names, when you knew them."
"I wanted to see what you would say, Magister," she replied, calmly.
He nodded, accepting this as explanation enough.  "We shall continue to be known as Raithe and Leathe.  There is no need nor reason to make others free with our identities."
"Many would find it an odd coincidence, Magister," Lady Kinrathen said, voice a cool challenge.
"No coincidence, Vidare.  I have been following you since Kondetterlan."  He raised a gloved hand as the two Armitans stiffened.  "It was a precautionary measure.  With the state of tension in the east especially, it seemed wisest to act swiftly and discreetly when word of a planned assassination reached Council ears."
"Explain that, if you please, Magister."
"A scrawled note, warning that it was to be arranged that you did not reach Arras Island.  Est and I were at hand.  It has not been overly difficult to watch without revealing ourselves."  He glanced back to Shan.  "I would like to know how you divined our identities."
"I had been told Est Tregair bit her fingernails," Shan said, and smiled because she thought this a funny thing to be discussing when they had just been told that the Dancers had been freed into the Realms.  "There is little otherwise to give you away, other than your obvious power, for how many could come so close to breaking through the barrier around Irrelath?"
The two magi bowed their heads over thisbut did not comment further on Shan's uncloaking of them, or a small bad habit giving them away.
They did not discuss the Dancers as they travelled on, either, though the High Lady's words obviously weighed heavily on everyone's minds, locking all into thoughtful silence.  The journey was uneventful, most difficulty coming when they encountered another stream halfway along the west bank, an outlet for the lake forming a series of small cascades in the shadow of two mountains.  Something watched them as they detoured along the stream searching for an easy crossing, but it scurried away in a shower of pebbles when their attention focused upon it, and they pressed on cautiously, taking a good twenty minutes to cross the stream, travelling outside the valley and feeling oddly threatened when they did so.
Even food was talked about more, since their entire return journey seemed likely to pot only a heavy-breasted wood pigeon brought down by a rather marvellous piece of work with a throwing knife by Lady Kinrathen.  Then, when they were practically in shouting distance of their hill, and progress was slowed as Peta began setting out the series of snares she had brought with her, they almost literally stumbled over a young doe whose attention was taken up by a stalky peach tree laden with succulent golden globes, mostly on branches high out of reach.  Harl's arrow found the helpfully exposed throat and they made short business of stringing the carcass along a suitable branch to be carried back, as well as gathering all the peaches they could reach.
Peta Meason's point that peaches fruited in spring, not autumn, produced a long pause, but still makeshift bags were filled with firm, fuzzy fruit when they passed through the last stand of trees and began to climb the hill to the inn which was now, most unfortunately, home.

Inn - Chap 4

I think, on a current writing, I'd make the farmers less unreasonable.




Chapter Four
"I don't know about you, but I'm going to give myself a proper wash," Rithia said, leaning against one of the walls with a sigh, the shadow of the eaves making a diagonal line across her face.  She flicked a sweat-soaked strand of hair from her forehead, and wrinkled her nose at Cienne.  "Those two Armitans weren't even breathing hard.  I feel quite overmatched."
"Really?" Cienne grinned, raising an eyebrow in the way Vanagar could not reproduce.
"Well, in the fitness stakes, at any rate," Rithia replied, giving her lithe body an unashamedly sensuous wriggle.  "Jester's Cap, I wish I was going on that scouting expedition!"
"Don't we all," put in Jaelith, putting down the pair of buckets he was carrying, sloshing water in little glowing waterfalls.  All the empty beer kegs and other containers the inn-keeper could find had been filled, including a simply massive barrel in the kitchen which had taken absolutely forever.  These last bucket-loads were to distribute from room to room.  "If we have to be dropped in the middle of Irrelath, it seems a pity that we're supposed to sit safely inside this circle and not go look at anything."
"Safely?" Keevan echoed.  "How safe is it, really?  Did you see the Armitans getting rid of that horse's corpse, this morning?  The wolves had been at it, and it was inside the circle."
"Hostile intent," Rithia replied, as if that explained everything.  "You don't feel hostile towards dead meat, Keevan."
"Couldn't they have set up a better ward?  I know there's varieties which will keep everything out."
"And all of us in," Rithia said, dryly.  "This one's not perfect, sure, but neither do those mages have to maintain it, or put it up or down every time we want to go out.  Besides, would you risk offending the Greater Gods by marking their ward down as inadequate and putting up your own?"
"There they are!" Zerith interrupted, a note of excited triumph in his voice.  Hurriedly everybody followed the line of his pointing finger, and Vanagar, no less eager, soon located two figures standing side by side in a break in the trees, apparently looking back at the inn on the hill.  A third joined them and she thought, by height alone, that it must be Kier.  She had heard Lady Kinrathen call him that.  Kier.  He was her bondsman.
"They're making good time, almost halfway there already.  They'll be at those buildings before midday."  Jaelith rose on his toes, as if he thought that would help him see better.  "The lake curves around to the west, so they'll be longer getting back."
The figures moved away from the lake's edge and though they craned for some time to come, did not reappear.
"Why'd that black-haired woman get to go?" griped Zerith.  "She wasn't even carrying a weapon."
"That's what you get for not coming down early enough, Zer.  You miss out on all the gossip," joked his brother.
"Well, you're the one who didn't wake me!"
"Revenge for a night of snoring."
"I do not snore," Zerith said, firm, but not rising to his brother's bait.  "What gossip?"
"Ever wanted to see a ghost-layer, Zer?" Cienne asked, flicking his arm lightly.  "Seems that what she is.  Doesn't fit the image, to be sure."
"A ghost-layer?!!  You're kidding me!"
"I saw a ghost-layer once," Rithia mused.  "He looked like he never washed, practically foamed at the mouth.  Do you think she could be lying?"
"Why would she?" Vanagar asked, picking up her buckets abruptly and taking them inside, nearly tripping climbing up the drop at the door and cursing herself for the typical clumsiness.  Couldn't even make a good exit.
Giving one bucket to the inn-keeper, she took the other upstairs, shut herself firmly into the room she shared and locked the door.  The others could just wait if they wanted to come in.  Then she sat on the bed and stared down at dark liquid.  A bucket full of magic.
Vanagar was not at all sure why she was suddenly in such a foul mood.  It had something to do with Rithia knowing at least as much about magic as she did; something to do with the fact that no-one had congratulated her on spotting the oddness in the water, hadn't called her 'sharp-eyes' like they had the ghost-layer; something to do with that cool, calm woman's inclusion in the scouting party.  She didn't think she disliked the ghost-layer like she did Rithia, but something of the same jealousy rose up.  The woman was so much what Vanagar wanted to be.  Not a beautiful attention-grabber like Rithia, but a competent, self-assured, quietly good-looking person who was special.  Who was invited on scouting trips, and didn't look frightened when odd things happened, and had people treat her like she was someone, not just part of the background.
Her mother had lectured her on more than one occasion about self-pity and jealousy.  "Be who you are, Vanagar, and care less about who other people are."  But her mother was another of those people Vanagar could only helplessly envy and vainly try to emulate.  Respected and powerful, handsome and graceful.  Vanagar was her father's child, all long-boned and lean, but without her father's fire to enhance her plain features.  A great gawk, clumsy of tongue and body, without an opinion worth putting forward.
She took a long draught in defiance of the many comments that tiresome old woman had made about drinking 'cursed water', then found a washcloth in her gear and bathed herself thoroughly, dressed in fresh clothing and wondered what they would do about laundry.
"We're too privileged a lot," she murmured to herself, not abandoning her mood, but making an effort to move past it.  "It was the prices Hobben was charging – folk like Zerith and Rithia don't do laundry, or tan skins, or whatever else we'll end up doing.  Lords and Ladies.  Babes in the Wood."
Unlocking the door, she made her way cautiously downstairs, not wanting to be questioned on why she'd gone off like that, morosely reflecting that it wasn't as if anyone had come after her to see if she was all right.  She looked around at the empty common room, thinking that it was the first time she'd seen it without occupants.  They were all outside in the sun, watching the last of the bucket-carriers trail up the hill, or trying to glimpse the scouting party.  Or shut in their rooms sulking.
Deciding she didn't want to rejoin her friends, Vanagar strode back and forth a moment, then deliberately went behind the bar, since it was a place she would not usually have dreamed of trespassing into.  Here was the register, tucked away from its usual pride of place, stains and crumpled pages showing the reason why.  Vanagar opened it curiously, and found her own name, Vanagar Neeson, scribbled hurriedly.  She'd taken more care in the previous two inns, because it had been a novelty, but she'd been distracted when they'd signed in here, mainly because Zerith had been having a 'discussion' with the inn-keeper over the extortionate charge for their rooms.  That would be the last money he'd see for a while, she thought with satisfaction, then checked herself, and let sympathy rise for Jomny Hobben.  His entire livelihood and family dumped into the middle of Irrelath.  At least, if and when Vanagar left, she wouldn't be forced to leave all her possessions behind.
Vanagar hated feeling sorry for herself, and when she was, she usually thought of someone in a worse situation.  Her problem was, she really wasn't much like the person she dreamed about being, wasn't - she searched for the correct word - quietly valiant.  Someone who did not seek glory, but simply tried to get things done as they should - the opposite of Zerith, and not very much like Vanagar, who always thought about how other people would react to the things she did.  Well then.  Although she knew it would be impossible for her to stop thinking about how other people would react, she could at least try to be the person she wanted to be.  She wouldn't be do-nothing, say-nothing Vanagar, but nor would she go the other way and make a complete fool of herself, trying to slay dragons or something.  No, she would make herself useful.  She would do what she knew she could manage, would no longer try to speak when she didn't have anything to say, any more than she'd keep quiet when she actually did have something to contribute.
Determined to get herself out of her mood, to start being something other than a spectator, but not wanting to go back to the others, who would only exacerbate her feeling of failure, she slipped through the kitchen.  The staff had been joined by a couple of the guests in preparing a carefully rationed midday meal.  Vanagar would offer to help, but she was the world's worst cook.  No, there had to be something she could do to help which wouldn't end up with an inedible lunch.
Taking the back door, she followed the steady banging noises, interrupted by a creaking and sharp curses in the Armitan tongue.  Funny how you could always tell it was an oath, no matter the language.  Cautiously rounding the stable, taking care to avoid stepping in the dried blood, Vanagar hesitated, watching the two remaining Armitans, and one of their guardswomen, trying to disassemble the outer wall of the stable.  They noticed her immediately, stopped and looked at her, and she felt herself flush crimson, but plastered a faint, brave smile on her face.
"I'm no hand at carpentry," she said, in a small, but determinedly even voice, "but if you need help I'd be glad to hold up a wall or something."
There was a brief, deadly little pause which shrivelled the spark of courage that had prompted her gesture into a small, shamed kernel, but then the male Armitan gave her the slightest of smiles in return, and inclined his head.  "We thank you for your offer, Ker."  He gave the heavy hammer in his hand, one of the small supply of tools the inn-keeper had actually not been keeping in his cellar, a disgusted look.  "We are, I fear, no experts in the field ourselves, and need all the help we can find."
"Oh!  How stupid of me!" Vanagar exclaimed, and hurried to make herself clear before they decided she was giddy in the head.  "Cienne - one of my friends - her family are architects.  She knows...well, more than me about building, at least.  I'll go get her."
She hurried off, immediately asking herself, as she did so, why in the world she was going to deliberately put herself into the background again.  But fetching Cienne was still a useful, if small contribution.  As long as Rithia didn't turn out to be a master carpenter, she'd let herself feel that she was doing the right thing.
"Cienne," she said, trying to emulate the ghost-layer's coolness and not come galloping up all excited and foolish.  "The Armitans are pulling down the stable and I told them that you might be able to help, given that you've at least an association with builders.  Will you?"
After a startled moment, Cienne nodded.  "Why not?"
"That'll pass the day," Jaelith murmured, and took hold of Keevan's arm firmly as he drew breath to speak.  "Seems a good idea to me."
Abandoning their buckets, they all trooped around the side of the inn and Cienne, after ascertaining exactly what they were planning to do, told the Armitans how to do all manner of interesting things, like the best way to knock a board loose while retaining a relatively straight nail, and which parts of the stable they could move without disassembling completely.  Vanagar saw her prediction come true, and was relegated completely to the sideline, with no-one even thinking to ask her how she had come to be talking to the Armitans.  Her burst of bravery slid into the past, unnoticed, and she nursed an odd mixture of hurt and satisfaction.
The two Armitans were called Ritnar Elmaran and Vanion Lanstea, the guardswoman with them was Margara Fenseer.  They didn't exactly become chatty - were exceedingly formal, in fact - but with names attached they seemed more like people and even Keevan stopped being hostile after a while, especially when Ritnar lifted an end of the heavy cross-beam with one hand and developed this amused and sleepy expression when it took Jaelith and Zerith both to lift the other end.
"Jerian!!!  Jerro?!"
Everyone started at the cries, and nearly lost grip on the section of wall they had been raising.  It was hurriedly lowered before most everyone dashed towards Arvan's cries.  They found him, dark eyes wild, clawing at the stones of his brother's grave.
"Arvan!" Jaelith said, hurrying to help Allia restrain their friend.  "What are you doing?  Let Jerian rest in peace."
"But he's not there!" Arvan replied, struggling as a great sob wracked his body.  "He's not there!"
Nor was he.  The pile of stones they had so carefully collected and laid over Jerian Panwood's body the previous night now hid only grass.  Investigation of the cook's grave, which appeared undisturbed, revealed the same.  The corpses of the dead had gone.
"We buried him alive!  He wasn't dead!  He wasn't dead!" Arvan cried, his voice growing ever higher, his breath gulping in and out in great gasps.  Allia, to everyone's surprise, drew back a hand and slapped him firmly.
"Arvan.  Stop this.  You know as well as I that he was dead."
After gasping for a few more breaths, Arvan nodded, and looked about him, his eyes clearer than they had been since he'd realised Jerian's lack of movement meant more than a brief loss of consciousness.  "Yes.  He's dead.  Someone's...taken his body?"
"Ger, Van, look around.  See if there's any sign of who's been here," ordered one of the mercenaries, gesturing to his fellows.
"Seinfal.  What goes on here?"  It was the merchant leader, expression reassuringly commanding.
"Someone, or something, has taken the bodies, Ker Ekridge," the mercenary replied.
"The stones weren't even disturbed," Jaelith put in.
"Like they melted into nothing," agreed one of the noisy farmers, who had been lounging in the sun, watching them attempting to reconstruct the stable with many a sly smirk.  He wasn't smiling now.
"No animal tracks," said one of the mercenaries to the one called Seinfal.  "Though the area's pretty well tramped.  Can't make much out."
"They've been raised!  Raised from the dead!"  This was the other farmer, who Vanagar vaguely remembered being called Bol.  He made a gesture to ward off evil.  "That ghost-layer's behind this, mark my words!"
Disbelievingly, Vanagar shook her head, but no-one noticed.
"Why would she do that?" Rithia asked, echoing Vanagar's own words, the ones she could not find the voice to say, now that it was important to do so.
"Why does a ghost-layer do anything?  She consorts with the dead!"  The man's face took on a curious mixture of excitement and horror.  "'Tis unnatural!"
"It is a bit of a coincidence," Zerith said slowly.  "A ghost-layer and disappearing corpses."
"Zer!" Jaelith said sharply.
"Well, they didn't just get up and walk away by themselves.  Who else but a ghost-layer...?"
"You forget, we are in Irrelath," said Ritnar, reminding everyone there of the Armitans' presence.  During past disputes, the Armitans had stayed well out of the arguments.
"Just so," said Ekridge.  "Speculation will gain us nothing.  When the ghost-layer returns, you may be sure that she will be questioned.  Until then, go back within the circle, all of you.  Seinfal, I want a regular patrol of the perimeter from now on.  A watch at the door simply isn't enough.  For now, take one of your men and go over the entire hill, look for any clue."  He paused, looked over the more than thirty people who had gathered about the graves, trailing up the hill to more cautious watchers by the inn's slowly swinging sign.  The wind was picking up again, but was only cool, not numbingly chilly.  "The rest of us will search the inn, though I don't think it likely the bodies will be there."
"We'll do the ghost-layer's room first, while she's not around to put a hex on us!" said one of the farmers, with enthusiasm.  "C'mon Bol.  We won't let her get away with this."
Vanagar's opinion of Ekridge plummeted when he didn't object, but instead stayed his mercenaries with a gesture.  "Best let them get it over with," he said, softly.  "You never know, they might be right."  He followed them up the hill at a less eager pace, taking the majority of the crowd with him.
"Why are they always so ready to find someone to blame?" Vanagar asked, helplessly, watching even Zerith, Keevan and Rithia following the tide.  "What do they hope to achieve?"
"A very annoyed ghost-layer," Jaelith replied, grimly, taking her arm.  "Come on, we better try and stop them from breaking anything."
There had been a time when Vanagar had been convinced that Jaelith cared about her, more than in the vague way he cared about everyone.  Those sympathetic attempts to include her in the conversation had not annoyed her at the start, and she had read deep meaning into times like now, when he took her arm, or met her eyes to underline a joke they both appreciated.
All that uncertainty.  That had only been a year or so ago.  It seemed like an aeon.
Vanagar pulled her elbow unconsciously out of Jaelith's grip as they found the passageway ahead too blocked.  The ghost-layer's room seemed to be just past the stairs.  Vanagar had thought that door led to a cupboard.
"Look," came one of the mercenaries' voices, raised a little in anger.  "You can see as well as I there's no bodies in here.  There's no need to go through her belongings."
"Haven't you ever heard of the Hand of Glory, soldier boy?" one of the farmers replied, accompanied by the sound of a bag being shaken out, soft noises of cloth falling to the ground.  "Doesn't necessarily have to be a whole body, does it?"
"They're mad," Jaelith said, darkly.
"Can't we do something to stop them?" Allia asked.
"Eh!  This one's locked!  Give me y'knife, Bol."
"Look you, enough's enough!  Give that bag here!"
"Whatsa matter, soldier boy?  You got something to hide?"  There was the sound of scuffling, then a brief series of muffled thumps, and some slight murmuring from those who could actually see into the room.
"Bells!  Nothing but bells!"  The disappointment was clear in the man's voice.
"Broken too.  Not a peep out of them."
"Take the stuffing out, numbskull.  Fetch a nice price, these." 
There was an exclamation of disgust from the mercenary.  "Put it down and get out, you...!"
The noise shocked through the entire inn; one, two, three deep shivering claps that reverberated through wood and bone and flesh almost painfully.  It was not a noise a hand-held bell should make.  This was the tolling of a temple-bell, giving tongue to news of death.  It was an ache in the heart, a cry of mourning, a call to the lost.
People screamed, man and woman alike.  Vanagar was not sure she did not do so herself as she stumbled backwards, away from that noise.  The bell tolled again as it clattered to the floor and was answered by a crackling boom that left the very air stunned into silence. 
Seeing the Armitans, who had been standing disapprovingly at the corridor's entrance, run suddenly toward the door, Vanagar automatically followed, more than a little glad for an excuse to get as far away from the bell as possible.  Outside, the horse reared, almost striking the guardswoman who had been stationed as guard beside it, but no-one really cared enough to watch, staring up at the sky, at the whirling black vortex of clouds that had appeared over the inn, sucking light out of the sky.  A maelstrom of darkness growing larger and larger, spinning tentacles of cloud out across the valley.
A bolt of lightning arced down, accompanied simultaneously by a deafening clap of thunder that made the entire inn shudder.  Vanagar saw it strike one of the consecrated stones, but could see little else, her world obscured by a line of white across her vision, all noise dimmed as her ears struggled to recover.  Someone pushed her aside and she stumbled into a wall, held it for support and peered through weeping eyes, trying to make out what was happening now, registering only the thud of hooves before the next clap of thunder.
"They'll never hold him!" someone muttered - or yelled - by her.
"The Gods have mercy!" someone shrieked, loud even to Vanagar's deafened ears.  Blinking seemed to help her eyes.  She could see dim images, though every time she lowered her eyelids she found the bolt of lightning imprinted there.  Straining to see, she spotted the horse a short way down the hill, still inside the circle, the two Armitans clinging to its halter, attempting to hold it by sheer strength of arm.  But then lightning struck again, leaving the air crackling with ozone, and with a desperate surge the gelding flung the Armitans off, dashing wildly down the hillside towards the forest which lay east and south of the hill.  Vanion started after it, stopped, turned back and helped Ritnar to his feet.  They were heading back when the rain came, a sheer vertical wall of water that hit Vanagar like a solid blow.  She staggered, immediately chilled, and joined the others in stumbling through the door.
"What do we do?" someone was crying.  "What do we do?"
Vanagar blinked through her lightning-blasted eyes at a room full of terrified people, pale faces which flinched with each blast of thunder.
"It's a storm," Jaelith answered, sounding like his throat was dry.  "We batten down, same as any other, and hope for the best.  We brought this on ourselves."  He glanced around, face still angry.  The building shook, but didn't seem in immediate danger of falling down or blowing away.  "Allia, Van, go get dry then come help me clean up the mess that was made.  Maybe the rest of you could contrive to secure the doors and windows, and not break into the shadow mages' belongings in the process."
He stalked off, angrier than Vanagar had ever seen him.  Silently she followed Allia, off to change clothing a second time that day, before returning to a tiny, dark and cramped room.  With the inn shuddering the way it was, creaking and groaning beneath the background roar of the storm, Vanagar did not want to do more than curl under a blanket and wait until things stopped being quite so terrifying.
But she was being brave, she remembered, as she had been in speaking to the Armitans.  If no-one was going to recognise that fact, well, at least she'd not feel such a useless idiot.  Mother was always saying it was how you felt about yourself which was important.
"Allia, see if you could find us a light," she suggested, eyeing the innocuous-looking silver bell, not much bigger than one of the tankards they had been drinking out of, lying abandoned on the floor.  An ebony handle, with a complex geometric design etched into the metal of the bell.
"Doesn't look possible," Jaelith murmured, approaching the bell with caution equal to a man attempting to creep up on a wildcat.  He stooped, picked up a drift of white fluff, raw cotton or something, and glanced back to the door where his brother had appeared.  "The Gods spare us if I accidentally set the thing off again," he said, easing his fingers into the hollow of the bell and trapping the clapper.  Nothing happened, so he let out a sign of relief and began stuffing the cotton.
There were a dozen bells scattered on the floor, falling out of wrappings of soft leather.  All were smaller than the bell that had brought the storm shaking the inn so violently, but Vanagar still did not want to touch them.  She forced herself to do so, tightening the wrappings about them and lining them in a row on the bed.  She could feel the power in them, and belatedly recognised the power that had rocked her when the bell had rung.  One, part of a set of identical bells smaller than her fingers, had been squashed flat.  She did not wrap this one, like a guilty secret, but laid it out on its square of leather, a crime displayed.  Last in the line of a row of lumpy parcels on the bed, decreasing in size.  She looked away, and saw a glimmer of blue on the floor as Allia appeared with a light.
Reaching down, she picked up a mass of shimmering softness, a dress made of panels of glimmering black and blue silk enhanced with curlicues of black embroidery, subdued, elegant and entirely beautiful.  A dirty boot-print marred the bodice like a bruise.
"I feel so ashamed," Allia whispered.  "We didn't do anything, but..."
"But we didn't try hard enough to stop them, either," Jaelith replied, still angry.  He wrapped the last bell in leather, and placed it with the others.
Rithia had taken the dress from Vanagar, shaking her head as if she'd found a treasure of art desecrated.  "I'll clean this myself," she said.  "Silk of this quality is so finicky.  How does she travel with it, without crumpling it beyond recovery?"
Vanagar could have told her that the dress had a strong enchantment woven into it, but kept silent, busying herself with gathering more scattered clothing, none so fine as that dress, but a few other pieces to belie the plain shirt and trousers the ghost-layer had been wearing.  She folded them neatly onto the bed as Jaelith collected a scattering of other items, including a bag of white disks like the one the ghost-layer had set to glowing the previous night.
"These are magic, aren't they?" he asked, passing one to his brother.
"I think half the things in here must be," Vanagar said hastily, before Zerith accidentally activated the disc.  "Best take care of setting anything else off."
For once she didn't receive a slighting comment in reply, but then the value of her opinions would hardly be foremost on people's minds, not when the inn kept shaking with the force of the rain, and every so often, less frequently it seemed to her, thunder split the air.  Zerith handed the disc back to his brother.
"What a mess," he said.  "Guess the storm will make the scouting party's day, too."
And they still did not know what had happened to Jerian and the cook's bodies.  Vanagar shook her head, and picked up a heavy leather satchel, the lock of which had been broken open.  Hopefully the ghost-layer would be as even-tempered as she looked.

Concept image for one of my covers

I think I shared a rough image a while ago of the rough layout I wanted for Caszandra.  Today I found the image I drew when commissioning Stray.  I sure placed a lot of importance on the backpack!  When I was a kid all backpacks were heavily annotated in this fashion...