by Lynn Abbey
“If you put a little muscle on,” said Little Minx, pressing tighter.
“And started dressing like a real man,” said Big Minx, pressing tighter still.
Crushed between the two women, Heliz thought, I’m in hell. But given a choice, it is one of the more pleasant hells.
The Ghost in the Phoenix
Diana L. Paxson and Ian Grey
Something is rustling … wood grinds … impending pressure weighs on the air. A girl sits in her bed, knuckles white as she clutches worn sheets to her chest.
“Taran?” she whispers, as shadows shift about the room.
On the wall a mask of a face is smiling, white as ivory, painted hair twining to either side. Its eyes cast desperately about the room and perspiration beads its brow. But still—it smiles. The girl wraps the blankets around herself more tightly.
“Taran?” she whispers again, knowing even as she speaks that he is far far away. From the face on the wall comes a noise as if teeth are grinding, and then a girlish giggle.
Water leaks in beneath the windowsill. Beyond it, the girl sees fish swimming through dim sunlight filtered through endless blue. The grinding noise grows louder, and the face on the wall, still smiling, looks afraid. A body floats up to the window, unblinking, hair a corona of reddish-blond, its skin peeling and green.
“Taran!” the girl screams, “TA …”
“ … RAN!” Sula rolled upright suddenly, her heart pounding sharply. Slowly she recollected who and where she was, and when. Another nightmare, she thought angrily. Is there no end to them?
The gray light of the hour before dawn filtered through the window. She got out of bed, draping a shawl across her shoulders, and peered out. In the murk little could be seen. It didn’t matter—even the reassurance that it was only the sleeping city, and not that endless expanse under water, was enough to let her heartbeat slow.
She could still hear a faint grinding noise. She’d like to think it was simply the wind pushing against the inn, or perhaps a guest’s thunderous snoring, but after the last few weeks she knew better. An uninvited guest had come to the Phoenix, and its presence filled the inn like the stench of a dead rat in the wall. None of them knew what it was or how it had come there, but for the past month it had persistently driven out every guest her family had taken in, and she kept having the same dreams.
It was really too bad, when they had begun doing well enough to start making repairs and restoring the house to some of its former glory. The carved cabinet that stood now in the dining room, for instance, was just the thing, said her mother, to give it a touch of class. It had come from a ship that had grounded on the Seaweal reefs a few months ago. The purchase had taken a good bite out of their savings, and now there were no guests to make it up again.
Why Sula was the only one who seemed to be having the dreams, she did not know. The Presence subjected the rest of the inn’s inhabitants to waking torments—thumping at odd hours, cold spots by doors, blood seeping through the walls … . It was enough to frighten all but the most stalwart souls into a hasty departure. There was magic in her family, but until recently, she’d thought her twin brother Taran had been the only one with a sensitivity to the supernatural in her generation.
Was this some kind of sending from Taran? It seemed unlikely. When they were little they had been so close they hardly needed words. She shivered as a memory of using that silent communication to escape a squad of Dyareelans hunting for stray children tried to surface and was suppressed again. But the stresses of puberty had driven them apart, and besides, Taran was far from here. She had not expected she would miss him so.
Last spring her restless brother had signed on as a caravan guard. He had said he wanted to travel to Ranke to see their father’s homeland. Their mother said he’d just lost his head over that Rankan woman they’d rescued, but exposing Taran’s real motive for traveling had only strengthened his resolve. Would he ever return? He’d been gone less than six months, but it felt much longer.
Sula heard a creaking from the bed in the next room as her mother turned over. Soon Latilla would be up, badgering the rest of them to get on with the day. If she too had trouble sleeping she would never let them know. When the first manifestations had occurred, Latilla had announced that this was their home. They had survived the Dyareelans and a dozen other external horrors, and she was not about to let a common domestic spook scare her off now.
Holding to that thought, Sula twisted her fair hair into a knot, lit the candle that sat by her bedside, and carried it into the dark hallway, keeping her eyes averted from the pale face that smiled at her from the wall. Its tortured gaze followed her until the light of her candle was gone.
The caravan from Ranke moved slowly toward Sanctuary beneath the summer sun, dust puffing up behind it in an amber haze. Bronze bells clanked dully as the line of mules and pack ponies clopped past the bored guards who watched the Gate of Triumph. As the caravan moved off, two weary travelers separated from the steady procession of wagons to rest a moment in the shade of the city wall. The guards shouted at the urchins who scampered beneath the feet of the horses, then leaned back against the cool stone.
“So this is Sanctuary?” asked the smaller of the two. His accent earned a second look from one of the guards, but this town had seen everything at least once, and the fellow didn’t look threatening.
The second man, broad-shouldered and at least a head taller, pulled back the hood of his light cloak to reveal a face younger than his size would have suggested, and a mop of reddish hair bleached almost blond from the sun. He took a deep breath and coughed. “Yeah, smells like home.”
The smaller man looked about as his eyes adjusted to the shade. Unlike his companion, he was meticulously groomed: his black hair cut short, his skin pale and clean. His clothes were a mix of dark colors, a deep burgundy tunic and trimmed cloak giving a faint impression of wealth, despite their simplicity. Most curious were his eyes, which seemed thin, as if he had squinted too long against the desert’s glare.
“Come now, Taran,” he smiled, “it is assuredly not as bad as all that?”
Taran couldn’t help but smile back. “Sanctuary redefines the word, G’han. Trust me. One hand on your purse, another on your sword—that’s the sort of pit we’re in.”
“But it is ‘Home and Hearth,’ yes?” G’han laughed. “The place of one’s birth can never be left completely behind. Come; let us find your home. Be it amid riches or squalor, any place with a roof, a meal, and a bed would be a palace after so long on the road.”
Taking a step or two from the wall, Taran stretched. “That it would. The ‘Phoenix’ has all the amenities you mentioned, and my mother can likely tell you where to go if, through some miracle of fortune, she’s already got a full house.”
His companion laughed, and resting a hand on the larger man’s shoulder, accompanied him through the assemblage of unloading carts and milling people. “Worry not, my friend, for fortune fits G’han the Wanderer like a wellworn pair of shoes. They may look ugly, but they are snug, and even in tatters they protect the soul.”
“Sula! Were you asleep, girl? What’s wrong with you?”
Her mother’s voice jerked Sula upright and the bowl of peas she had been shelling rocked dangerously. She grabbed and felt another force shove her hand, sending the contents rattling across the floor.
“Now look what you’ve done—”
“You startled me!” Their voices clashed and Sula began to cry.
“Don’t we have enough troubles here without you mooning—” Latilla began, then stopped herself with a sigh. She had a flyswatter in her hand. “All right—I didn’t mean to startle you, but really, child—”
“I wasn’t mooning,” Sula answered sullenly. “And if I was asleep, is it any wonder, when I haven’t had any rest at night since that thing started haunting us all?”
“Nightmares?” her mother asked more quietly.
“Every night.” Sula sniffed. “There’s this f
ace … and sometimes there’s water.” She stopped. The vision of her brother’s drowned body was a terror she dared not share. Especially with her mother.
Latilla sighed. “I’m sorry.” Something brightly iridescent buzzed by and Latilla slapped it down. “Got to do something about these things. Get enough of them to grind down for dye and we might make a few padpols,” she said absently.
“Mother, why are you standing there swatting flies when we’ve been invaded?”
“Because I can,” Latilla said simply. “Because though they may be magical, they’re real, and when you hit them, they fall down. I’ve tried to use the magic your father taught me against this haunting, but Darios, bless him, was always more interested in perfecting his own spirit than in controlling others. He knew spells for protection, and I’ve used them, or we might have worse manifestations to deal with. But that’s all I can think of to do.” She sat down with a sigh. “And whacking these—” her eye followed a spark of crimson and purple that was circling above the fallen peas, “is practically a family duty. Your grandfather invented them, after all.” She turned, frowning, as someone knocked on the front door.
“It might be a lodger—” said Sula when her mother didn’t move. Latilla’s scowl deepened.
“Maybe … maybe not. Go to the window and see.”
Sula peered through the curtain, grimacing as she recognized the fleshy shoulders and the heavy haunches encased in a pair of striped trousers.
“It’s Rol … I assume we’re not at home?”
What was that pig’s ass doing here? They had met the man shortly after Taran left, when Latilla was looking for bargains to refurbish the house. Even then, Sula had thought him a slimy-character.
Latilla sighed. “No—I’ll have to face him sometime. Stay here and finish the peas.”
Sula heard the front door open and then a murmur of voices. Her mother did not sound happy. With a sigh of her own she pushed back her chair and moved softly down the hall.
“Yes, of course I will pay you!” she heard Latilla say as she eased open the door from the passage to the entryway. “All I am asking is a short extension.”
From the front Rol was no more prepossessing than he had been from behind, his muscular frame run now to fat, and his dark hair stringy above unshaven jowls. He dabbled in a number of things, serving as a go-between for those who still aspired to respectability and Sanctuary’s underworld.
“Now there’s no need to look so fierce at me, darlin’, though yer a fine sight when angry, for sure. Haven’t I been a good friend to ye, after all?”
Sula stilled. She hadn’t realized that her mother still owed him.
“Even among friends, financial dealings should be kept on a business footing,” Latilla said more quietly. “I would not be any more beholden to you.”
Well thank goodness for that! thought Sula. She started to close the door. There had been times when she feared that her mother might be taken in by Rol’s florid compliments. Sometimes older women could be … vulnerable.
“Ye know that I would be more than a friend, Tilla me dear, but what am I to do?” Rol took a step closer. “If it’s business only that’s between us, I must have somethin’—I have creditors of my own, you see!”
That, thought Sula glumly, would not surprise me at all. Rol had the reputation of being involved in a variety of shady dealings, and a sore on his tongue that looked like a krrf ulcer to her. For all she knew, the man was dealing in that drug, or even in opah. If so, it was suppliers, not creditors, that he was worried about paying. Not very forgiving people, from what she had heard. Taran, with all his contacts among the street gangs, would have known. She stifled a spurt of very familiar anger at him for leaving them with no man in the house but her uncle Alfi, whose own encounter with the Dyareelans had left him crippled both in body and in mind.
“You can take back that cabinet you sold me,” Latilla said unhappily. Sula, remembering her mother’s delight in its intricate carvings, could understand why. She was the limner’s daughter, after all, and the cabinet, like all the wonders that had come off that strange ship, had a beauty of a kind no one in Sanctuary had ever seen.
“Ah … no,” responded Rol. He took a step closer. “The silver clink of soldats, that’s what me creditors want to hear … .”
“Then you’ll have to seek it elsewhere. The rest of what you gave me went for nails and lumber. I can hardly tear the house apart to give them back to you!”
“Nay—the house is worth more in one piece, both to you and to me,” Rol said softly. “There’s moneylenders who’d give a goodly sum with the Phoenix for security.”
“No!” Her mother’s exclamation brought Sula, fists clenched, into the room.
“But if ye were to wed me, it might not be needful … . They’d know I could pay them, once business gets a bit better here …” Rol laid a beefy hand on her shoulder. “Ye know I love ye, Tilla darlin’. Won’t ye turn to me?”
“You take your hands off her!” Sula’s voice squeaked, but she continued to advance.
“Just like yer mother, ain’t ye?” Rol let go of Latilla and looked Sula up and down with a leer that would have made her blush if she had not already been flushed with rage. “But I like a girl with spirit!”
Sula felt her skin crawl and wondered what he liked such girls for . . . She shut her lips against the retort that trembled there as Latilla gripped her arm.
“I’ll have to think—” Latilla said, her voice shaking with what Rol might take as fear. “It’s a big decision. I can’t answer sensibly right now!”
“Well now, that’s just what I’m askin’ for. I’ll give ye a night, Latilla, to choose the sensible thing!” The ulcer on his tongue winked red as he grinned.
“Faugh!” exclaimed Sula as the door slammed behind him. “That man makes me want to fumigate the room and scrub the floor!”
“Are you volunteering?” Latilla asked with a tired smile. Just now she looked every year her age.
Sula shook her head. “Come back to the kitchen. I’ll make you a pot of tea.”
The pot was just coming to a boil when they heard the front door bang open and the thump of footsteps.
“Has that shite come back again?” Latilla reached for the heavy frying pan, but Sula rose to her feet, a wordless recognition, one that brought hope thrilling through her veins.
“No—” she whispered as it distilled to knowledge and a new voice echoed from the hall.
“Mother, where are you? I’ve brought you a customer. Do you have any room?”
“It’s Taran! He’s come home!”
Taran shook his head, torn between consternation and laughter. Of all the Sanctuary sights G’han might have asked to see once his bags had been stowed in the firstfloor front room, he wouldn’t have expected that pit of pits, the Vulgar Unicorn.
“But, friend Taran, it is you yourself who has inspired me …” G’han had chided when Taran had tried to argue. “You have been telling me stories about this place for lo these many months. cannot withhold my curiosity …”
Thus, before rest and bed they’d made their way through the Maze to this place. The minstrel who was singing some endless ballad about a man from Shemhaza was new, but Stick the barkeep looked as if he had not been off-duty since before Taran left town, and the clientele were the same unsavory sweepings he remembered, eyeing him with a familiar predatory gleam. He tried to tell himself that he had survived for nearly half a year on the roads surely he could make it through his first night back in town. But his gut did not believe it.
Not a half day back into Sanctuary and I’m going to die … Taran thought to himself, smiling stupidly as he watched G’han laughing across the table at some joke one of their “new friends” had made.
“Oh, but it’s true …” chuckled G’han to a scruffy man in his middle years with a bald pate, but infested with curly grayish-black hair everywhere else. “I am an adept of sorts. Oh, not as flashy as those Blue Stars you tell
me of, but we do have some talent for magic.”
“I thought yours was a Warrior’s Order?” Taran asked when his friend paused to drink more ale.
G’han shook his head, “No, no, one should not assume a sword and a skilled hand for its use doom one to war. It is a tool of my trade, little more.”
“And what, pray tell, is that?” drawled the goon, who had named himself Khut, Taran thought, though he had drunk just enough so that he was not quite sure.
“I hunt demons,” G’han said cheerfully.
“Shite, but only a fool’d be doin’ that!”
“Oh, but it’s true—demons, spirits, ghouls … It is a sideline to my true calling, but it keeps me supplied with food and ale.” G’han drank again.
“Well then,” laughed Khut, “you’ve come to the right place—Sanctuary may be a poor city, but she’s rich with work for one such as you.” The older man pushed himself up, swayed for a moment, and then swaggered toward the door.
“If there’s a back way,” murmured Taran, “perhaps we should use it.”
“Nonsense, my friend,” laughed G’han.”The people here seem friendly enough. Why, look at that poor misshapen creature at the far table. Even he seems to have a kind and gentle disposition.”
“Oh yes, if you think well of a pervert dwarf whose favorite pastime is to expose himself to every girl at every tavern and inn that’s fool enough to let him in …” Taran growled.
“You’ve encountered him before, I see.”
“He flashed his ‘dragon’ at my sister Sula once.” Taran turned away.
“She is your twin, yes? Interesting girl—” G’han threw up his hands in mock defense as Taran rounded on him. “No, no, I do not attack maidens. I mean what I say—there is a gift in her I think, but hidden. Even she does not know … .”
Taran eyed him uneasily. He had thought he knew the man, but he thought he knew his sister as well. He wasn’t sure whether the idea that G’han might court her or that Sula might have magic disturbed him more.
