The Inn Ch. 11

[The story so far: Author Simon Kettridge gets doused by a strange rainstorm while visiting England and finds himself visiting the fantastical realm of the Phaeland Empire instead. Stuck in the setting of his most popular series of novels, he soon realizes that his presence has disturbed an important flow of events, dooming the world to destruction if he can't somehow stop the wicked arch-mage Necromanata. Simon's plan is to write a string of letters using his knowledge of the land and its people, to manipulate events and bring about Necromanata's downfall. In the course of his attempts, he finds himself falling for the lovely serving maid of the inn where he's staying, Leyna. But to his absolute surprise, "Leyna" turns out to be short for "Nataleynata" – the necromancer's long-lost daughter. Before he can figure out what to do with this information, one of his letters brings a magically cursed assassin to the inn to kill him. He narrowly avoids death, and cures the assassin, Valdazirit Cang, of her curse. But the innkeeper considers the near-murder to be the last straw in a series of troubles Simon has brewed, and throws him out. With nowhere else to go, Simon arranges to ride with Cang to the imperial capital where perhaps he can influence events more directly. Before he can leave, though, Leyna confronts him and begs him not to go.]

The Nestled Goose had a bench to one side of its front door, where people sometimes sat and smoked or waited for the arrival of a coach. I glanced over at it, then back to Leyna.

"Um ... why don't we go sit down before I start talking?"

Her fine blonde eyebrows dipped. "I thought you were talking already. About having to leave."

With my heart way up in my throat, I said, "Yeah. I'm going to switch subjects and see how it goes."

Hesitantly, she moved with me to the bench. Once we settled in, knees touching, I took her hand and threaded my fingers through hers. The vulnerable blue of her eyes set off alarm bells in my head. What exactly did I intend to say? How much was I going to tell her? How could I make her understand instead of making her think I was crazy?

"You look like a man about to tell a girl he's done with her," she said, her voice trembling and her face pale.

I shook my head. "I wouldn't even begin to know how to be done with you, Leyna."

Her brow furrowed deeper. "Then what? What's so hard about 'Yes, I'll stay,' for you to get the words out?"

"Nothing," I said.Maybe ... start vague and work your way up."What's hard is – I know things no one should be able to know, Leyna. Like the fact that Cang had that jewel in her brain." Both of us darted our eyes at the leather-clad assassin who now paced in the center of the street. "I've never met her before, and she's never told anyone about the curse of the gem. But I knew it was there, and I know a lot of other things too, and I'm worried how you'll react to the ones I need to tell you about."

She took a breath – not deep or shallow, but deliberate: worried ... and vexed. "You shouldn'tneedto tell me anything, Simon. You shouldwantto tell me. It's not for me to squeeze secrets out of you, or for you to feel obliged to give them up. If I'm not the person you care to open up your mysteries to – well, honestly, just keep them to yourself."

God, you're totally fucking this up.I shook my head and looked at the ground, trying to collect my thoughts. Deep down, I knew that the answer was pretty simple ... it just also happened to terrify me. My only real option was to take the leap and trust her.

"So ..." I said, meeting her gaze again and tightening my hold on her hand without meaning to. I forced myself to relax. "The thing is, the ones I need to tell you about aren'tmymysteries. They're yours."

Blinking, she said, "I don't have any mysteries! I'm just –"

"No, you do so, and you know it. Leyna, who's your father?"

A baffled expression came across her face. Then her eyes narrowed and she tried to pull her hand back. Rather than let go, I added my other hand to it and allowed her to pull both in closer to her abdomen. She looked down at them, then back up, fingers trembling as if she didn't know whether to let go or squeeze harder.

"Well ... I couldn't begin to guess, would I? Mama never told me, and I believed her when she said I didn't want to know. And anyway, what would he have to do with anything?"

"I know who he is," I told her softly. The pounding of my heart – driven by relief that she didn't have any idea and guilt that I would have to tell her – made it difficult to keep my voice steady. "I know who your father is."

"How could you?" she asked, blue eyes taking on a wet glimmer. "Why would you?"

"The same way I know about Cang's gem. The same way I knew Eesia was priestess of the Second Temple of Scale. The point is, I know. And your mother was right – it isn't somethingyouwant to know, Leyna. That's why talking about it is a need-to and not a want-to. The truth may upset you or hurt you, and I would never hurt you by choice. You have to believe that, all right?"

She sat there – beautiful, shaking, tears starting at the corners of her eyes. Then she nodded and said, almost below her breath, "I do."

"Okay," I said, releasing one hand so I could put an arm around her and draw her close. She responded immediately by wrapping me in a hug and burying her face against my chest. I felt her breath through the fabric of my shirt, and felt the tremors in her form quiet with each warm exhalation. Brushing her cheek and her soft, blonde hair with my palm and fingers, I dove in. "Here goes, then. The letters I've been writing – I guess you've figured out by now there's something big and dangerous about them?"

Leyna nodded but didn't say anything. It occurred to me that her intelligence and curiosity must have made her wonder what was going on weeks ago, and that she'd restrained herself and trusted me rather than prying. The thought made me squeeze her a hair tighter.

"Northeast of Phaeland," I explained, "there's a land that's been barren and desolate a hundred and fifty years."

"The Fell Reaches," she said, looking up. "I've heard tales a few times, from the really far travelers."

"Right. There was a war, and a curse from the gods, and the place became all but uninhabitable. A few scattered valleys here and there escaped the blight, but mostly it's a land of ruins and poisoned earth and abandoned towns and cities. At least, that's all it was until about twenty or thirty years ago, when a man went to try and reclaim the place."

"A wizard?" she asked. "They say it's all dark magic and desecration, don't they? He'd have to be a fool's fool to try, if he didn't have his own magic to fight it off."

"Or," I said, "he'd need to be tied to the dark arts himself."

She swallowed. "You're not saying my father ..."

"I'm sorry, but yeah. That's exactly what I'm saying. He's a sorcerer, a very powerful and bad one named Necromanata. He spent years in the Fell Reaches rebuilding an ancient castle and raising a staff of undead servants, and then he began researching how to create not just a few zombies or ghouls at a time, but a whole army of them. He's got it figured out now, and I've been trying to get my letters to the right people to stop him."

For a moment, she just looked at me, wide-eyed. And then, right on schedule, she said, "Simon, you're for certain right about one thing – how in the world could you know all this?"

Well, you see, I just made it all up.

I hate to break it to you, but you and everybody else in this world are just figments of my imagination.

Back in the real world, I was sitting around one day trying to settle on what kind of story to write ...

Every thought that came into my head sounded worse. And then, as I sat there at a complete loss for words, Leyna came to my rescue by asking, brows furrowed, "Are you some kind of oracle?"

I opened my mouth to say "no" – then shut it again, because I realized that I honestly didn't know the answer.Who's to say you're not?Aside from the idea being total lunacy, I didn't have any counterarguments.

"Maybe," I said, trying to get my head around it. "I don't really know. I've told you I write stories, where I'm from? Well, some of the stories are about Juliette – the woman who dropped me off when I first came to town. And some of them are about Septra's Children in the Swamps of Dor. And one of them was about Valdazirit Cang. I thought I was making them all up. But when I arrived in Phaeland and met Juliette, it became pretty clear something very strange was going on. So ... huh. Maybe the whole time I thought I was imagining these colorful stories, it really was some kind of foretelling – gods or spirits planting the ideas in my head."

It sounded ridiculous to me. But Leyna nodded seriously as though it made complete sense.

Well of course it makes complete sense to her. Gods and oracles and shit like that are real here. Novelists who earn a living off mass-market paperbacks and ebooks are the inconceivable balderdash in this world.Part of my brain felt guilty that the idea just played on her ignorance and superstition and gave me a convenient out.Except that it's not ignorance or superstition – it's her real, actual knowledge of what this place is really, actually like. And maybe you're dismissing the idea because if it's right, then you haven't spent the last ten years reaping the fruits of your own imagination, but just hacked out a bunch of words around stuff poked into your head supernaturally across the planes of existence.

The longer I sat there, the more I had to admit that it made as much sense as the idea that I'd somehow brought an entire world into existence just by writing some books.And it would explain why you've done such a crap job with these letters,I told myself.You're obviously not half as clever as you thought you were.

"So ... you wrote stories aboutme?" Leyna asked. I couldn't tell if the idea tickled or alarmed her.

"Not exactly," I said. "I wrote a whole book about Necromanata's plans and how he was defeated, but all I really knew about his daughter was her name – and I didn't recognize that as you until I saw it spelled out on the first page of your play."

She nodded. "I guess you might have been put off from the start if you knew I was the spawn of some gruesome warlock."

"No." With a thumb and finger, I tipped her chin back up. "I don't think there's much about you that could ever put me off, Leyna."

Her lip squirmed as if unsure whether to smile or frown. Then she glanced over at Cang and got back to the subject. "But you didn't tell me any of this before, and you're telling me now, and you said it's because youneedto. So why do you need to?"

"Because you might be the only person who can save the world."

She gave an involuntary snort and pushed at my chest with her fingers. "Honestly, Simon, this can't be the time for joking."

"I'm not joking," I said, meeting her eyes as seriously as I could, to show I meant it. "Years ago, Necromanata concentrated all his power into single magical focus. If it's ever destroyed, his magic and everything he's created will go with it."

"Why would he do that? Sounds a bit stupid, if you ask me."

Goddamnit.That was actually one of the main reasons I abandonedNecromanata's Daughterbefore it got out of the planning stages. I couldn't come up with any plausible motive for an arch-mage to render himself so vulnerable.

"I guess the gods or spirits didn't think it was important to tell me that part," I said. "The point is, somehow, Necromanata's daughter – Nataleynata –you– will end up with the thing, and it can either be used to destroy his power or to bring him back from the dead if he's ever killed."

"Oh. I guess that's why he did it then – so he'd be safe from death."

I laughed and blinked. "You may be better at this story-writing stuff than I am."

"Bosh," she said, rolling her eyes dismissively. "But you think it's going to drop in my lap somehow?"

"Or it's been there all along," I replied. "Did your mother leave you anything – a little figurine or totem or symbol? It would be relatively small, able to fit in a pocket, and made of something sturdy and hard to break."

She shook her head. "I have the Elterawisse book. Everything else – she sold it all before she died, to pay Burgham for watching after me." Her voice caught a little. "Even her clothes. She kept ... one nice dress to be buried in, and the rest ..."

The emotion in her face and tone washed me full of sympathy. I could hear how much she'd loved her mother, how heartbroken she'd been to lose her. Seeing her hurt bothered me almost as much as the possibility that Necromanata's power focus had been sold off and disappeared years ago. I reached for her to pull her close – but she stopped me with one raised hand.

"Her brooch," she said, looking up with surprise in her eyes. Overlapping both thumbs and forefingers, she made an oval about as large as my belt buckle. "Silver, with a dark, flat gem in it, big as that. She made me promise I'd see she was buried with it, and that struck me odd. She never wore the thing, just kept it in a box. Simon, do you think ..."

What else could it be?But instead of exciting me, the news stuck an icicle of dread into my stomach. Leyna must have seen what I was thinking in my face, because she raised a hand to her mouth, staring me in the eyes.

"Oh," she said, letting the hand drop just a few inches. "Oh, Simon, you don't mean we have to ..."

I looked away, gritting my teeth, trying to think. How could I ask her to dig up her own mother's corpse? Or even just to let me do it on my own?

"No," I said. "No, I'll figure something else out. Someone else I can write to or have Cang contact for –"

Her hand on my arm stopped me. I looked up at her eyes, serious and bright and suddenly strong.

Be truthful with me,they said. And their blue perfection settled something within me.

"Theremightbe some other way," I said, giving her the honesty she deserved. "There might be, but I don't know what it is. And if your mother's brooch is the power locus, then it's all we need, all by itself. None of my letters comes close. However awful it would be, going into her grave to search it ... if we pass up the opportunity, it'll basically be leaving the whole world at risk just to spare your feelings. And as important as your feelings are to me –" I squeezed her hand for emphasis. "– it's a lot more important for me to know that you're going to live."

Leyna nodded and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her head turned to the northeast, past the edge of town, toward some far distance.

"We can do it, of course," she said – in a steadier voice than I'd have expected. "Only there's a problem, Simon."

Turning back to me, she went on.

"Mama wouldn't be buried in the graveyard. She didn't give a reason, but she had them do the other thing – carry her off to the fens up north of town, and commit her body to the Mistress of the Bog. There's no finding her now. Not less we can summon up the spirit lady of the swamps and give her something she wants in trade."

* * *

Leyna spelled it out for me. A few miles northeast of Piperville, the land turned marshy and dank. Centuries before, the bog had threatened another town, Ulumth, steadily encroaching on its outer fields year after year. Eventually, a wicked beadle had convinced the town folk that a sacrifice must be made or the next flood would raise up the swampwaters and wash them all away. So they picked out a victim – a strong-willed, husbandless young woman who'd questioned the town elders her whole life – and they took her out to the heart of the swamp and bound her to a tree and offered her up to the wetlands in a dark ceremony. And the next spring, the rains came and the rivers rose and the marsh reached out and out all the way around the town – but it didn't touch a single farmhouse or any street in the town proper. At the end of the rains, the folk of Ulumth celebrated the beadle's wisdom and complimented themselves on their success. They waited happily and watched as the floodwaters receded ... only to find that the soil left behind had been poisoned with filth, as had all the wells and nearby streams. To a person, they had to pack up and leave.

Although they didn't do so until they'd taken the beadle out into the marsh and left him tied to a tree himself.

Ever since, the place has been called Beadle's Bog, and anyone venturing into the swamps by dark of night might, on rare occasions, see visions in the mists – the ghost of a lovely young woman wandering and tending the trees and animals of the marsh, or, at a particular clearing deep in the fens, a wailing wraith mistily bound to a great, leafless tree.

"Whatever's given up there becomes hers, they say," Leyna finished up. "Lost forever unless you can purchase her favor. I went a few times to lay flowers at the spot they eased Mama's coffin off into the mire, but I could never find it, even though I thought that trail would be marked in my head forever from all the tears I cried walking there beside her casket and then walking back empty-handed."

The image of ten-year-old Leyna in her mother's funeral procession tugged at my heart – as did the image of her going back to the edge of the wilderness alone, holding flowers and not able to find where to put them.

But the knowledge that we had to deal with a nature spirit pulled upward at least as much as those images pulled down. I couldn't help leaning in and kissing Leyna's forehead.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"It's for the way you make everything all right."

She smiled and turned red and looked puzzled all at once.

"I need to talk to Cang," I said, rising from the bench without letting go of her hand. "And after I do, she needs to hit the road – the sooner, the better. Can you get her horse and gear from the stables?"

"Yes, of course." Leyna stood up too, took a step toward the corner of the building, and then stopped. "So ...sheneeds to hit the road? You're not going with her?"

I shook my head. "I'd just be more weight on the horse, slowing her down."

Her smile turned broader and brighter, and she headed around toward the stables with an airy, almost skipping stride and several glances back at me.

As I walked toward Valdazirit Cang, I found the mercenary wearing a look of well-tried patience, so I put on an expression I hoped came across as both serious and grateful.

"Sorry about that," I said. "But I just figured something out that's a lot more important than me getting to the capital. Would you be willing to ride to Tambervale Wood instead? By yourself – I wouldn't be coming along."

She shrugged. I noticed that her outfit seemed better-adjusted and guessed that she must have been fixing the straps while Leyna and I talked.

"What's in Tambervale?" she asked. "It's out of my way, if I'm headed back to report to Duke Phurl ... but not by too far."

"All I need is for you to deliver a message to a woman named Yilma the Greenwarden. She lives in a cottage along the road just inside the wood."

Professional wariness tipped Cang's head to one side. "Alone? Is she a witch? Not that it bothers me, but I prefer to know when I'm dealing with magic."

"A greenwarden," I said. "I suppose it's a kind of witch. She's attuned to the powers of the land and whatever grows from it."

"Hmm. And the message?"

"Tell her to meet me here in Piperville if she'd like to know the location of the Staff of Verdance. If she seems doubtful, show her where I broke that gem and tell her I knew about it without a word from you. How long do you think it will take to get there?"