The Inn Ch. 15

Beyond the coffin, her mother could be heard weeping.

"What the fuck just happened?" I asked.

Yilma Greenwarden got to her four hooved feet and stepped closer to Dwinvara.

"He undid her spell," she said.

"He what?"

"Undid her spell." Her antlers tipped with a slow shake of her head. "He took the life you conceived, along with what life of his own remained, and all of his power, and he put them into her."

Leyna sucked in a breath. "You mean - she's not dying anymore?"

At Yilma's nod, she jumped up from my arms and rushed over to her mother. "Mama! Is it real? Are you -"

But Dwinvara just curled in on herself, sobbing. Leyna knelt and put her hands to her mother's back and shoulder, and the woman only tightened in further.

"Mama ... it's not your fault ... he ..."

The words trailed off as Dwinara's hand jerked up and pushed her daughter's touch away.

Shit, I thought. That's cold.

He'd left her healed and healthy, with years ahead to agonize over what she did to him. And he'd left her Leyna, so that if she decided to kill herself out of guilt, she'd know she was hurting her daughter in another act of selfishness. How many people have died because her husband turned to necromancy trying to solve her fertility problem? And now all of that's on her.

Not knowing what I could do to help, I still felt compelled to, as Leyna sat next to her mother at a loss. Of course, I felt compelled to get my pants on first, now that saving the world no longer required me to be naked in front of my lover's mother. Hiking them up and doing the button, I watched the far blanket and the two women on it: Dwinvara, folded in on herself from angst, and Leyna, forlorn with empathy for her mother's suffering. I wasn't sure what I could say to either of them.

But as I stepped across, bare feet sticking in the island's mud, I saw the hindaur greenwarden watching them too, and the emotion I saw on her face told me exactly what was needed.

I got down on the blanket near both women, close enough to touch Dwinvara's head or shoulders, though I didn't, and close enough to put a hand on Leyna's back, which I did.

"Listen, both of you," I told them quietly. "Yilma has something to say that might help."

Leyna glanced at me, then over to the wood wizard, who blinked with surprise and hesitation.

"Do I?"

"Yes," I said. "The same thing you told Juliette Ravendark when she came with the news that your son had died in the attack on Forhnam Keep."

The words startled her - enough to shift her noticeably backward and bring one forehoof off the ground. Then she steadied and pressed her lips into a fierce, tight line. When they relaxed again, her antlers tipped with a nod. She didn't yet speak, but paced a slow, four-footed circle around us, her face far off in another place and time. Maybe something in the silence roused Dwinvara, or maybe the idea that her fellow greenwarden might be able to comfort her gave the woman enough hope to lift her head. In any case, once her tear-streaked eyes met Yilma's, the hindaur trotted in close and came down on the blanket with the rest of us.

"He was eighteen," said Yilma. "My son. Brave and foolish and hell-bent on accomplishing something great with his life."

As if drawn upward by the shared suffering of another parent, Dwinvara raised her head further, just by a hair.

"Juliette carried a story with her when she brought me the news. How many lives he'd saved, the difference he'd made. She told me she hoped it was a comfort, and also that his end had been quick." Yilma looked composed, but I knew that the way she raked a hand through her light brown hair indicated distress. "She thought that information might help. And do you know what I told her?"

Leyna's head shook plainly - her mother's, faintly.

"I said that of course I appreciated hearing it, that I needed to hear every word that I might of him. But I also admitted to her that none of it could help. The only thing that could help was what I already knew."

That brought Dwinvara up on one elbow, her brow furrowed with an uncertain plea for anything that might ease her pain.

"Yes?"

Yilma tilted her head toward the woman's daughter but kept her gaze steady.

"I said, 'If we are to live with ourselves, as parents, then the time we can spend with our children must be worth all the might-have-beens in the world.'"

Dwinvara swallowed heavily, turned her face to Leyna, and then twisted upward to pull the two of them together with a sob.

* * *

A few hours later, with dawn not long past, we walked back across the fields of Piperville toward the inn. It was just the three of us - Leyna, Dwinvara, and I. Once she'd guided us clear of the swamps, Yilma set off immediately on the trail of the Staff of Verdance, bearing the information I'd given her about the artifact's location. Our deal was complete, and nothing tied her to us any further. But more than that, I think she recognized the intimate need for reconnection between Leyna and her mother - which I might have some business overhearing, but to which she would simply be an eavesdropper.

Leyna told Dwinvara about her ten years alone in Piperville - Burgham's gruff protection through her adolescence, the lessons she learned from farm-folk and from travelers passing through the doors of the Nestled Goose. She talked about reading and re-reading the book of Elterawisse's plays that Dwinvara had left her, about the dream it sparked in her to write stories of her own. She briefly described coming of age, discovering how much she enjoyed dallying with handsome young men when they passed through town. And she told how those two things - her dream of writing and her carefree enjoyment of sex - came together in her plan to take up "pillow-work" and save the money she'd need to move to a city with proper theaters. The last made Dwinvara uncomfortable, and she kept trying to apologize for putting her daughter in such a position. But Leyna would have none of it.

"Mama," she said, laughing, "perhaps you've not had as much sex as I have, but it's a sorry cock indeed that I can't get myself some pleasure out of. And once I got good at it, it's a rare kind of cad that doesn't sing me my praises as he's handing over the coins afterward."

"She really does like her job," I felt obligated to put in, which earned me a scowl.

"And I suppose that's how you got your first taste of her?"

As I turned beet red and stammered, Leyna hooked her arm through mine and squeezed it, laughing.

"No, Mother," she said. "Simon would never ask or need to buy me. And it's a good thing, too, seeing as he's an absolute pauper!"

Dwinvara got that look on her face that any mother would get, finding out her daughter's boyfriend was a deadbeat.

"I'm not sure you're making a great case for me here, Leyna," I muttered.

She squeezed my arm again. "It's all right, Simon. She thinks I'm ten, remember? It'll take a bit for her to catch up and trust I can pick what's best for me."

At that, it was Dwinvara's turn to look embarrassed. "No," she told her daughter. "You always had a knack for making good choices, Leyna. Where it came from, I don't know. Not me or your father, obviously."

"Hush, Mama," Leyna scolded. "You did the right thing, tucking away that one day of life and having the brooch buried with you. And ... he did the right thing in the end too, didn't he?"

"I suppose so. In the end." With a sigh, she turned a softer look my way. "At any rate, you've likely done better than I did, picking a man."

"You'll see," Leyna said proudly, lifting on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. "It won't take much getting to know him before you see."

Just then, we crested the last hill and took in the view of Piperville, with its one street, its handful of buildings, and the Nestled Goose sitting right in the center. It looked quaint and cozy ... and homey, I found.

Like home. Not just a spot I'd temporarily fallen into, full of confusion, unsure of my reality, and loomed over by the awful threat of Necromanata's invasion. Home.

Even if I had to sleep in the hayloft.

* * *

Epilogue

We went in through the front door of the Nestled Goose because Leyna refused to hear of anything else.

"If Burgham wants me waiting his tables, he can darned certain stomach my mother and my beloved breaking their fast inside after we've just done saving the world!"

So we walked up, and I opened the door and held it for the two women, and as I followed them through, Leyna spoke out before my eyes could even adjust to the dimmer light inside.

"Simon, look! It's your friend Juliette."

My jaw dropped, and I stood there speechless, staring at Juliette Ravendark.

And not just Juliette. The largest table in the dining room had been piled high with platters of food, wine bottles, tankards and goblets - and sitting there eating and drinking of it alongside the greatest heroine in all of Phaeland were four other figures I recognized instantly, despite never having laid eyes on them.

Ymbrod, master of axes and archery, with his braided red-grey hair and beard. Pelfreyda Lightfingers, wiry, short, dark-haired, whose face you could just see plotting mischief at any given instant. Halvard the Twisted, with his bald head, thick features, and hunchback might tempt you to think him far less agile and clever than he was. And Milika Magestone, a statue of polished marble, wearing clothes and moving despite her limbs being carved of rock.

A sixth individual sat in a weary slump at the end of the table, his neat white beard propped on one hand. Try as I might, I couldn't place him from any of the books, though from his robes and a glinting amulet I guessed him some kind of wizard.

At the sound of her name, Juliette's head turned too quick for me to even begin to process the scene, and she leapt up with open arms and a grin.

"Simon!" she cried out. "And here I thought I'd missed you entirely! Come over and join us for a belt or two."

I wandered up to her dazedly, reminded as I got closer just how tall she was. The woman loomed over me by almost a head, a gorgeous titan in dark, sparsely scarred skin, fighting leathers, and road-dusted clothes.

"Juliette," I said, "you're supposed to be ..."

Dead.

"Ha! Sorry about that," she replied, gripping both my shoulders in a fierce shake of welcome before turning me bodily to face her companions. "Everyone, this is Simon, the fellow we all have to thank for this whole past month of troubles."

"Boo!" said Ymbrod, though he grinned and raised his tankard to me.

"Can I fling a potato at his head?" asked Pelfreyda.

"I don't understand," I said feebly. Leyna drew up behind me and put an arm around my waist, her eyes wide at the congregation of wild adventurers before us.

"Well," said Juliette, "I spent my last shilling putting you up here for a week, right?"

"Right ..."

"And my apologies for not getting back as quick as I thought, but because I'd emptied my coin purse, I couldn't take the ferry across the Elderflow, which cost me half a day riding up to the Cooperdam bridge."

"Yeah, I ..." Wait, better not tell her I know all that.

"So instead of lighting off for Sanderton that same day, Ymbrod and I hung about figuring we'd get a fresh start the next morning. And then who should show up midafternoon but our good friend Kezriken the Mileblinker!" Her long arm went out to indicate the white-bearded fellow at the end of the table, who slumped further at the attention and put his forehead to the back of that hand.

Kezriken the Mileblinker ... why does that ...

"Thanks to Kezriken and his magic ring, we zapped to Sanderton before dinnertime that same day, just in the nick to stop Pelfreyda from undertaking a very ill-considered thieving job that would have got her in a world of trouble."

Pelfreyda stuck out her tongue. "It was perfectly well considered."

Magic ring ...?

"And it let us pick up Halvard and Mikila to investigate some strange dealings Ymbrod had heard of on the far side of the Korowan Mines ..." The mines ... where they would have been killed in the Maze of Dissolving Eyes. So if Kezriken helped them skip that ...

I had a difficult time following the rest of her story and piecing together how the detour I'd caused the group had taken them in a completely different direction than the one I'd predicted.

"So that's what we've been about the past month," she finished up, giving me a slap on the back. "Wearing poor Kezriken's finger off making him overuse that ring. And what have you been up to? I'll be happy to hear you've spent the whole time waiting on me to get back for another bounce in the bedding! That's the one part of me hasn't been getting much exercise the last few weeks."

Leyna pulled me in closer to her and a bit farther from Juliette. "Simon's not been idle on that account, I'm afraid. But if you're desperate to have him, he's not beyond hiring out, these days. We might trade passage to the capital by way of your wizard friend's ring, for instance. We're thinking on settling there."

I opened my mouth to object, but Kezriken beat me to it.

"Oh, no," he said, finally showing a little energy and lifting his head and his hand - the latter revealing its ring finger a sickly yellow. "I'm done with Mileblinking for at least a week. Hid the damn ring in my room even. Makes my finger throb just having it on me at this point."

"Number three," I said. The room I'd vacated when Burgham threw me out and I had to take refuge in the stables. "That one's yours?"

He scowled suspiciously as though I might sneak off and steal it.

The exact words came back to me now, even a month after I'd written them: As fate would have it, under the mattress of the bed Simon had so recently left, there rested a magical ring of teleportation, hidden there by none other than Kezriken the Mileblinker.

I shook my head. Jesus Christ. It worked. The very first thing I tried. If I'd just specified a date - like the Mistress of the Bog had had me do - I'd have gotten hold of that ring my second day in Phaeland.

Leyna gave me a curious look. "What is it, Simon?"

"Literary irony," I said, leaning down to give her a kiss. "And the luckiest mistake of my life."

I held her a little longer, and then we sat down to eat with our fellow world-saving heroes.