Excerpt: The Shadow Flood: Ends of the World

The inn had had busier days, but Rian felt like she was working harder now than she had then. Half the tables were full, though it was still early for dinner; there was a storm coming in tonight, and no one wanted to risk being caught out in it. People who might not otherwise have stopped at the Silver Crescent had taken the opportunity for shelter for the night when it presented itself.

“Ree! Get off your lazy ass and help your mother in the kitchen! And get the customers their drinks already.”

Her father’s shout wasn’t quite loud enough to carry out to the tables, but she heard him nonetheless. Wait on the tables and help in the kitchen both – there was only one of her!

“Where’s your brother? Edge take him...”

“I’ll find him,” Rian said, taking the excuse to hurry away. That, at least, would be easy.

She passed the door to the kitchen – it smelled wonderful and she could feel the warmth from the doorway, but if she went in there she’d never get out, and she’d be stuck working for two all night with never a chance to hunt down Ellis. And it wasn’t as if the stables were particularly cold; she didn’t even have to go outside to get there.

They did smell, though. She took a deep breath before she pushed open the door.

“Ellis!” she shouted, as soon as it shut behind her. He dropped down a ladder in front of her. “Don’t tell me you’re still seeing to the horses. There weren’t that many of them.”

“There’s a guy sitting at the third table out from the fire,” he said. “You saw him?”

“Probably,” Rian said. “Don’t know that I was paying attention, though.”

Ellis shrugged. “Long as he doesn’t see me, I’m fine. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah.” Probably better than he did, though she wasn’t as sure of that as she used to be. “You can’t hide here all night, though, we’re busy and Father’s already missed you.”

“I know, but...”

“Help in the kitchen,” Rian suggested. “No need to go in sight of the customers.”

Father would regret the missed income, but then, if this guest never saw Ellis he’d never ask if the boy’s company was for sale, and if he never asked, Father would never know he’d missed a chance to make money.

Rian opened the door back into the inn, and grabbed a tray of mugs and a pitcher as she passed the kitchen. Ellis gave her a quick smile as he ducked past her into the room.

Her father grabbed her elbow as she passed; she managed to keep from spilling anything, but only just. “Table in the middle of the room. See the lady with the white-gold hair?”

In this crowd she stood out; hair in this part of the world was invariably dark, and not many people travelled here from far off. Rian nodded.

“She’s here to see the Edge. Wants to meet a moon-witch while she’s here. Her husband passed away last year, she wants to talk to his spirit, make sure he’s happy in the afterlife, all that. I told him my youngest daughter was moon-touched.”

“Father! You know I’m not...”

He waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t need to actually read the future. Just put on a good show.”

Rian nodded. “Yes, Father.” Anyway, there were worse ways to spend an evening.

* * *

It was long after sunset when things finally slowed down. There were a few guests still lingering over their drinks, but no one wanting more food – nothing Rian’s sisters couldn’t handle. She stood in the kitchen doorway and waved to Ellis, who looked at their mother for permission before abandoning his task.

“I need help,” she told him, opening the door to the back stairs. He followed her up.

“What with?”

“One of the guests wants to have a séance. Father told her I’m moon-touched.”

“And you’re actually going to do it?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“What’s that got to do with me? I’m not going to call up ghosts for you.”

“Of course not. Father says just put on a good show. I need someone to help. You know how they always say the ghost will knock on the floor? She’s in one of the back rooms over the laundry. There’s that drop ceiling there, and I need someone small enough to crawl into it and tap on the floorboards for me.”

“Oh.” Ellis blinked. “I can do that.”

“I thought you could. I told her we’d start at midnight. I want you in place a bit before that.” She looked at the marked candle at the head of the stairs. Midnight was closer than she’d thought. “You ready?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Rian pulled open a panel by the side of the stairs. It had probably been part of a solid wall at one point, but that point had been generations ago; she didn’t know who’d first opened it up to make a hiding place above the laundry room ceiling, but it had been this way her entire life, certainly. She gave Ellis a hand in.

“Which room?” he asked.

“Six feet straight ahead, ten to the right. You should be able to hear me talking in the room.”

“Got it.” She lifted his feet past the barrier to help him the last of the way in, and replaced the wall behind him.

She hurried to her own little cubbyhole of a room to run a brush through her hair. It didn’t take much to make her look like a moon-witch, especially to someone who knew nothing about them; she had a solid moonlands look – dark hair, pale skin, grey-blue eyes. No need for makeup, that would only have detracted from the effect. She did take time to change into her nicest dress, and put a black lace shawl – formerly her grandmother’s – on over it. On second thought, she raised the shawl to cover her hair and part of her face.

Then she went down the hall and knocked on the guest’s door.

Mistress Rinella was travelling with her two daughters, both of them within a few years of Rian’s age. When they opened the door, she saw they’d already set four chairs in a circle around a table, all of them doubtless provided by her father since they weren’t part of the room’s normal furnishing.

“Have you ever spoken to the spirits before?” she asked as she stepped into the room. She passed a hand over the fire, dropping a handful of herbs on it as she did – they would smell sweet as they burned, and tinge the fire with blue. She might not know magic, but her grandmother had been a renowned herbalist, and had done her best to pass what she knew on to her granddaughters. Rian, at least, had paid attention.

There was a bit of tarrin-weed in the mix, too. It wasn’t actually illegal, and had never done any harm that Rian knew, certainly no more harm than strong drink – but the smoke might make her clients more inclined to believe her.

She lit a single candle from the fire, and set it in the middle of the table. “Be seated,” she said. The three women settled into their chairs, and she took the fourth, reaching out to take the girls’ hands. “The circle must remain unbroken,” she told them, trying to sound serious. “If any of you break contact, it may free violent spirits into the world.”

“Of course,” Mistress Rinella said, taking both her daughters’ hands.

“I will open the door to the other world,” she explained. “Then, should any spirits wish to speak to us, they’ll answer by rapping on the floor below our feet. Most of them can’t communicate more clearly than that – one knock for no, two for yes. Should you have any questions you wish to ask, I suggest that you think of how you might wish to phrase them so that they may be answered in so simple a form.”

The two girls nodded eagerly, and Mistress Rinella gave a serene smile. Rian closed her eyes and began chanting – it was nothing mystic, really, just a nonsense-rhyme that her mother used to sing her to sleep with. When it was done she fell silent, and sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes. She could feel one of the girls fidgeting, and forced her own hands to remain still – nothing to betray that she wasn’t in some sort of trance.

Of course, the tarrin was getting to her as well as to the guests, and staying relaxed was a lot easier than it would have been a few minutes ago. It took an effort to remember that she was supposed to be doing something, not just sitting there enjoying the lightheadedness.

“Are any spirits present?” she asked finally, opening her eyes to look around the room.

There was a single knock on the floor below.

Either Ellis’s sense of humor, or he’d misheard her. One of the girls giggled. At least they were amused; maybe she could convince them the sense of humor belonged to whatever spirit she’d called up.

Regardless, she stomped on the floor, somewhere in the vicinity of where Ellis’s head ought to have been.

“Isn’t that just like Carl,” Mistress Rinella said. “Used to be when I woke up in the night and asked if he was awake, he’d say no.”

“Of course,” Rian said. “Carl? Is that you?”

This time, Ellis answered with two knocks.

“What did you want to ask him?” Rian asked.

“Just two questions, really, and it’s only the second that really matters,” Mistress Rinella answered. “But for the first: I’m not sure how to put it in a simple enough form. I had a locket he gave me as a courting gift, and he’d taken it to be cleaned a few weeks before he passed, and I know he’d gone to pick it up, but I don’t know where he put it. I swear I’ve looked everywhere in the house.”

“List the rooms in your house, perhaps, and we’ll see if he can narrow it down for us. It wouldn’t be in the kitchen, would it?”

Two knocks.

Um.

“Would that mean that yes, it is not in the kitchen?” Rian asked to clarify. Ellis didn’t always have the best grasp of grammar, especially when it started getting confusing.

Two knocks again.

“Is it in our bedroom?” Mistress Rinella asked.

One knock.

“In his workroom?”

Again, one knock.

She listed half a dozen other rooms, all of them answered negatively. Rian supposed they all would be, since Ellis couldn’t possibly actually know where the locket was. Or could he?

“Is it in the pantry?” she asked.

This time the answer wasn’t a knock; it was spoken aloud. And not by Ellis, either, or certainly not in his own voice. “It’s in your Edge-taken closet, woman,” he said. “I tucked it in one of your empty shoe-boxes, because I knew you’d never look there. I wanted to surprise you with it for your birthday.”

“Oh!” Mistress Rinella answered, sounding quite a bit less surprised than Rian felt. “Thank you, Carl.”

“What was your second question?” Rian asked.

“Carl,” Mistress Rinella said, looking around the room as if unsure in which direction to address her words, “are you – are you happy where you are? When you passed on, did you go to a better place?”

“I am,” he answered. “I haven’t moved on from this world yet – I wanted to stay, to say goodbye to you – but I’ve seen the next world, and it is beautiful.”

“Oh,” said Mistress Rinella. “I – thank you, Carl. I love you. I’ll miss you.”

“I love you too, Maura,” he answered. “And you, Catherine and May.”

“I love you too, Daddy,” one of the girls said.

“Is there anything else you’d like to say to your father?” their mother asked. One of the girls shook her head; the other said nothing, and Rian saw a hint of a tear in the corner of her eye.

“Goodbye, Maura. Goodbye, girls.”

The fire flared – not the blue-white of the herbs Rian had added to it, but a fierce gold, reaching so high she was afraid it would ignite something. It died back down after a second, though, and she forced her grip on the girls’ hands to relax a little.

“Beware.” It wasn’t Carl’s voice this time, it was Ellis’s – though Ellis as she’d never heard him before, filled with a quiet sense of command – and dread. “Beware the void. The gathering storm will break soon. The fountain is tainted, the fountain of the world, it spews false magic. Beware the water. Beware the rain.”

The candle went out, and the fire vanished down to barely-glowing coals. Rian blinked in the sudden darkness.

It could have just been the herbs muddling her head, but she felt incredibly cold, out of all proportion to the temperature of the room.

“Is it over?” one of the girls asked, as the silence stretched.

“It’s over,” Rian said, letting go of their hands. “That was a little unexpected. I’m sorry.”

“Does that happen often?” Mistress Rinella asked. “Portents of doom interrupting your séances?”

“Truth is,” she admitted, “I don’t often have séances. If the dead want to speak to me they’ll speak, but being moon-touched – it’s not something you tell people about, in this part of the world. Especially when you’re only an innkeeper’s daughter, and don’t have the protection of one of the great houses. I’ve seen people burned alive for the suspicion of witchcraft, I’ve never told many people what I can do.”

“Oh,” Mistress Rinella said. “I’m sorry. I – I won’t tell anyone, then, if you could be in danger for this.”

“Thank you.”