The Inn Ch. 15

[Here we are, then. The last chapter. I'd like to thank everyone for sticking with me this whole time ... I know the installments haven't always posted as regularly as readers would have liked. There are plenty more places to take these characters, so I'm not saying this is the end forever, but the story I envisioned comes to its dramatic conclusion here. Hopefully that conclusion is a satisfying one and will tide you over until I find the time to return to Phaeland.

The story so far: (Let's see how quickly I can sum up the preceding 100,000 words.) Fantasy writer. Trip to England. Heirloom fountain pen received as a gift - turns out to be magical. A sudden storm. Simon finds himself in the world of his novels. A steamy encounter with the main heroine, Juliette Ravendark. Then - realization that his presence has doomed Juliette and her adventuring companions, leaving no one to stop the evil wizard Necromanata. Certain doom at the hands of an undead army if Simon can't figure something out. A series of letters to various highly placed persons. Every attempt at summoning help, foiled by unexpected chaos and disaster. A beautiful serving maid/prostitute named Leyna whom Simon falls in love with. Sudden realization that Leyna is Necromanata's daughter. A journey through the swamp to find the coffin of Leyna's mother, buried long ago with Necromanata's stolen power source. The coffin opens. The body inside wakes.]

*****

Leyna screamed and leapt back from the coffin, crashing into me and nearly spilling us both into the mud. I grabbed her and wrapped her up in my arms - I'd like to say because I was calmer, but really, I had no more control over myself than she did. I just caught her out of pure reflex and then held her in place because my brain had frozen. It probably shouldn't have surprised me that the body would come to life - the Mistress of the Bog had told us she wasn't resting - but it did anyway. So I just stood there with my girlfriend struggling and freaking in my arms.

You kind of expect that if someone's eyes pop open after you take the lid off their casket, they'll follow up by sitting ramrod straight and turning to you to hiss, or eerily floating to their feet. But as Leyna settled from frantic to merely trembling, her mother rolled weakly onto one side and pried herself up so one elbow hung over the coffin wall. Once there, she looked at us, her breath rapid and shallow as if the effort taxed her to her limit.

"Oh, my little treasure." Her welling eyes fixed on Leyna and Leyna alone. Yilma and I and the entirety of Beadle's Bog might as well have not existed. The words - or maybe just the sound of her voice - rushed through her daughter like a wave. I could feel it: grief and raw need bursting Leyna's panic apart. She elbowed loose from my grasp and pitched forward to seize hold of the woman in the coffin, crying incoherently as the pale but clearly living hands settled to her shoulders and back.

"Shh," said Dwinvara, one hand smoothing Leyna's hair and the other holding tight around her. "It's all right, darling. I'm sorry - so sorry for leaving you."

Panting, Leyna struggled for words. "What - you were dead, but -"

"No, not dead. I was stopped."

My peripheral vision caught Yilma Greenwarden nodding - mostly by the sway of her antlers. When I glanced over, her expression said the words made sense to her.

"Stopped?" Leyna pulled back enough to look her mother in the face. "What does that mean?"

Sadly, she put a hand to Leyna's cheek. "Stopped. Held in place. Not moving forward to my death. And now I've done even worse than leaving you all those years ago, because I see hope in your eyes, and it is not deserved. I stopped myself one day short of death, in case anyone came looking for this."

Her eyes flicked down to the brooch.

"One day short? You mean - you're not ..."

"I'm sorry. I'm dying now, just as I was the last time you saw me, when you were a little girl. My beautiful little girl, and now a woman, and grown -"

"No," Leyna cried, gripping her fiercely. "No, you can't be here and talking and - you can't go again."

The older woman's head shook. "It isn't my choice to make. Not anymore."

"Why not? I don't understand."

Yilma spoke up. "She's a greenwarden, like I am. We have our ways of checking the tides of life and death, but we are also bound by oaths and balances."

"Greenw -? No, that's got all the sense of fish fur. You're not a magician - I never saw you work a bit of magic my whole life."

"That's because I used it all up, or almost all of it, having you."

Leyna's hands trailed loose from her mother's shoulders. She sat back.

"Me?"

Dwinvara nodded and sighed. Leaning forward against her knees, she told us her story.

* * *

Your father and I both wanted children - very much. But a sickness had left me barren, in my early days as a greenwarden. I had the skill and the magic to prevent it killing me, but not to undo its damage, which shriveled everything inside me needed to conceive a babe. Natam said from the start, before we ever married, that the world had plenty of children for us to give one a home without bearing it ourselves. I knew it was true ... yet, however I tried to console myself with the idea of those children already in need, I hungered within me to create life. "We're wizards," I told him. "We don't need to be in a hurry. Maybe there's something, a spell or a rite that I haven't found yet." He simmered with impatience, but he swallowed it because he loved me more than anything he'd ever touched.

Days and months and years of searching left us both frustrated, each in our own way. I sensed the strain in Natam, felt the distance when I encountered a gleam of possibility in my research and withdrew into obsessed experiments and study. Desperate, and neglected, my husband turned to lines of inquiry that wouldn't occur to me. If the needed parts had died inside me, then perhaps the magic of death and undeath might hold an answer. I took heart when he told me that he was working on a solution even as I was. And when it occasionally nagged at me that he would not discuss his ideas, I ignored my worries instead of confronting them.

And at some point, something changed. The space between us opened wider and wider. Natam became withdrawn, secretive. The vigor and strength of his body ebbed until one day I saw what a shell he had become and I knew I was destroying us both. But that moment of understanding only occurred because I had discovered something, a hint, a possibility. And when I rushed to him to share it, my hope gave me the clarity to see - but not the clarity to stop myself, as I should have. "This will be my last attempt," I swore. "If it leads to nothing, I will turn back to him and we'll find some needful child or children and bring them into our lives and be happy."

But it didn't lead to nothing. It led to a way, and a way with a terrible price. I - that need in me, that hunger in me, and the exhaustion of working days on end, and the cold that had come to dwell where our love had once been heated and vibrant - it all left me in a state beyond reason. I should have kept to my oath. I should have shut that discovery away and never brought it out again. But I was weak and at my wits' end and full of anguish. So I went to him with it.

"I've found something that will work," I told him. And I explained. How we could funnel our magic into a spell to heal me - our magic and a portion of our lives. If we both gave equally of ourselves, it would work. We could have a child - many children. And then we would have thirty years to enjoy them. Thirty years before the spell took the rest of our lives as its cost.

Natam was furious. He led me to his workshop and he showed me this jewel. "I have learned secrets of life beyond life," he said. "I can have you, and you can have me, forever. And you want me to give you up? After only thirty years? When the world flows over with orphans and foundlings that we could have our pick of? And we'd lose our magic in the process? It's madness!"

Of course, any greenwarden would be struck mute with horror at the darknesses he had probed in making that gem. I told him I had lost him, that he was a stranger to me. And at that, he broke down and begged me to return to him, to find our passion again, together. "You want us to put aside our magic?" he said. "Fine. Let us put aside magic for tonight, and be man and woman. And in the morning we can talk again and find a path forward."

I shuddered to do it, but I agreed. And the whole night moved forward as a demon's dream. Every touch of his passion felt like a caress from the grave. Not only had I lost him, but I saw in his eyes that he would never let me go. I sensed in his aura that his power had outstripped mine beyond any chance that I could defeat it. He would keep me from having the child I wanted in order to keep me for himself.

So ... I was his woman for one last night, and then while he slept, I took his gem and fled.

I left him a note and nothing else. It said that if he ever tried to find me, I would destroy the gem and leave him powerless. And once I had found a place far away, I felt his seed still within me, and I - I did what he would never let me do. I made my womb a vessel. Poured all the magic that I had into that nest of life. And then I bled years off of my own mortal span until I had given up enough of them to make my withered garden bloom again and produce what I needed.

And then I had you. And you were so perfect, and precious, and my time with you was going to be so short, that I could not let myself feel regret. I had to be for you the joy you were for me, because you deserved it, and you would not have me for long.

* * *

By the time the story finished, Leyna was fucking bawling - face in her hands, whole body shaking. And I was down on my knees with her, holding her, with a big fat knot in my throat and my cheeks wet from more than just swamp mist. Even Yilma Greenwarden looked shaken.

Dwinvara was the most wrecked of us all, though. If she'd managed to bite down on her guilt the whole time she raised Leyna, it came back in spades now, closing off her throat in some parts of the story and pushing sobs out of her at others. I've never seen a more miserable face in my life than hers as she got to the end of telling us.

"I can't ask you to forgive me," she said. "And I wouldn't deserve it anyway. I was so selfish and prideful. Even now - I can say I was wrong, but I can't say I made a mistake. Because my choice created the most perfect thing I've ever seen in all the world. I'm so proud to look at you."

My arms tightened around Leyna involuntarily. I couldn't help it. Her mother's words rang so true to me - I knew I was holding perfection, and I didn't ever want to let it go.

But Leyna didn't agree. Lifting her tear-streaked face from her hands, she said, "Oh ... Mama, you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be proud at all. I'm not anything like perfect. You raised me and taught me so well, and all I did with it was turn into the town whore."

She meant it as her own failure, but her words struck Dwinvara like a slap. Anguish and horror etched themselves even deeper into the woman's haunted features. I felt awful for her. Without thinking, I took one arm from around Leyna and reached out to grasp her mother's hand.

"Don't listen to her," I said, squeezing that hand and pulling the woman's stricken eyes momentarily to my own. "You're right - she's perfect. The most perfect thing I've ever seen too, and I've seen two worlds."

Leyna wriggled as if to pull loose, but I didn't let her. "Simon ..."

"Hush," I told her. "I'm not going to let you feel bad about doing the best you could. Your mother's right, or I wouldn't love you the way I do. She deserves to be proud. You do too. You're amazing. You're talented and kind and good-hearted and caring - smart, beautiful, generous -"

"And a complete slattern," she choked out.

"So what? You're incredible at what you do. Not just in bed, but in the common room too, waiting tables, making people laugh. You brighten the world with it - just like you do with anything you try. And when you've got the money saved up, you're going to go to the capital and become a playwright and give thousands of people even greater joy than what you bring to the folk at the Nestled Goose now."

She sniffled and sat quiet in my embrace. Then her face leaned against my neck and I felt her steadying.

"I love you, Simon," she said in a tiny voice.

My hand still rested in Dwinvara's, until her thumb rubbed mine and she pushed my hand out to fold it against Leyna's back.

"Thank you," she said. "I can't tell you how ... blessed I feel, to know that she has someone who sees her, really sees her."

"Believe me," I replied, holding her daughter tighter, "if anybody should be thanking anybody, I should be thanking you."

Yilma Greenwarden cleared her throat gently before the gratitude-fest went any further.

"Loath as I am to interrupt," she said, tipping her horns to indicate the gem, "there is business here that we should discuss. Our time is limited, and Dwinvara may know things she needs to tell us, if we're to succeed."

The words gathered the dark of the swamp in around us. Leyna rested warm and soft in my arms, but the rest of my body grew deeply aware of the cold, and the coffin before us all but radiated with a graveyard chill. Reflected in the water of the lake, the half-moon above the trees made a wavering, silvery icicle that pointed directly our way.

Dwinvara gave a last regretful glance and then nodded, her face turning steely and grim.

"If you've come for the gem," she said, "it means something ill is afoot, doesn't it?"

"It does." I heard and almost felt Leyna swallow against my chest, so I waited to see if she wanted to tell any of the details to her mother. When she stayed quiet, I went on. "Your husband ... he's very close to raising a huge army of undead. He's been gathering his powers for years, and now he intends to destroy all of Phaeland with a horde of ghouls and orcs."

"Oh gods. Because of me."

No, because of me. Because I needed a bad guy for a stupid book. I didn't even come up with a motivation when I made him up. What kind of crappy storytelling is that? A major villain with no specific reason for having a fuck-the-whole-world-up chip on his shoulder? Well, it's not like Tolkien gave Sauron much of a motivation in Lord of the Rings ... good God, why the hell am I thinking about this?

I gave her a shrug. "Uh ... it might have nothing to do with you. Maybe something else happened in the last twenty years -"

"No," she said. "Even if I wasn't the spark, it's my fault for turning him away. For leaving him. The man I married would never ... not if I'd put more into our marriage than I put into my own selfish ..."

Leyna's hand on her forearm stopped her. "Mama. What did you tell me, all the times I broke a dish or a toy, tore my dress climbing fenceposts? 'What's done is done.' We fix what we can, and for the rest, we move on and try to do better with the next thing."

A slow nod settled Dwinvara's features from their agitation.

"I suppose so. Except that the only next thing left is for me to destroy Natam's gem, isn't it?" She glance down at her brooch, then back up to us. "I'll do it when I'm close to the end of my time ... if you want to stay and visit with me until then. You'll need to get several miles away before I break it, though."

Yilma Greenwarden frowned. "Why is that?"

"Well ... this jewel is a receptacle for arch-mage level death magic. When it breaks, it will blight a considerable area of land. If you're close, it will kill you. That's why I chose this ill-omened bog for my resting place - to put the least people at risk should I end up having to keep the gem from the wrong hands."

"Oh, no, Mama," said Leyna. "There are people here too. We ... um ... met some of them tonight, and I imagine there could be more."

Our hindaur nature-mage sounded grimmer when she spoke. "And in any event, it's a living place, Dwinvara. Surely, as a greenwarden, you wouldn't want to despoil it?"

"No, but the legends ..."

"We've been finding out that legends can be wrong," I said.

At a loss, Dwinvara leaned tiredly back against the end of her casket. "Then what do we do? I gave up all but a hint of my magic having Leyna. I can't neutralize it except by physically breaking it."

"You don't need to," said Yilma. "I think I have a means."

The way she cast her eyes at me and Leyna made me think, Oh, great. Now what?

Looking back to Dwinvara, she said. "Will you trust me to use the gem in a ritual?"

"I would, but ... I quieted Natam's locus when I first ran off with it. As long as it's in my possession, he can't sense it. But the moment anyone else interacts with it ... he'll know. And he'll use whatever magic he has to get here as fast as he can."

"How fast would that be?" the greenwarden asked.

She shrugged. "An arch-mage of necromancy ... if the need were urgent, he can move with the speed of spirits, at the very least. We'll have only a few minutes to complete whatever rite you're planning."

Yilma picked up her bag again.

"Possibly, I can do something about that as well."

* * *

Yilma produced two large, thick blankets from her satchel, tossing one to me and unfolding the other herself.

"Spread yours out on that side of the coffin," she said, "while I spread mine out here."

Leyna and I exchanged a quick look. She breathed in and shrugged, then stood. Together, we opened up the blanket and arranged it into a square about the size of a queen-size bed. On the far side of Dwinvara's casket, Yilma laid her own blanket out much the same.

"What is your thinking?" Leyna's mother asked, while her fellow wood-wizard opened up her bag again for yet more rummaging.

"To counter the magic of death takes the magic of life." The antlered deer-woman spoke almost academically, still digging in the contents of her bottomless carryall. "I haven't nearly the power of an arch-mage, but ..." Again, she glanced at me and Leyna. Her gaze dropped from eye contact with us to Leyna's midriff. "There is a life magic all women possess that may do just as well."

Because she went back to her search of the satchel, Yilma didn't see what I did - a grieved flinch of Dwinvara's features at the notion that all women could create life. Ouch, I thought. I would have expected Yilma to be a little more diplomatic about that subject, since the whole mess apparently started with Leyna's mother being ... Wait a second. We're spreading out blankets while talking fertility ...

Leyna apparently caught on even faster than I did. "Is this to do with baby making? Because I'm chock full of purity oil, and ... I don't know if ..."

Her eyes asked me what her words didn't. A baby? From us? Would you do that?

"Purity oil's easily enough countered," Yilma said. "If you are willing, I can make you receptive. Then, with the brooch lying on your belly, I can amplify the spark of conception until the dark magic cannot abide the creation of life so close to it. It will be driven back to the black voids from which it came."

"And ... I'd be pregnant, when it's done."

"Yes. Of course, there are means of driving out that too. It would be up to you."

My head should have been spinning. I'd barely known Leyna a month, and a chunk of that I'd been unconscious. Going so quickly from strangers to lovers to ...