Androck continued to fixedly stare ahead rather than acknowledge his son, his brows creasing and uncreasing in anxiety. “What do you want?” he cried. “I’m not him! Don’t call any more! Which is the way back?”

 

“I … I haven’t … oh, sweet Elementals, what is this?” whispered Sullan hoarsely. The taproom had gone silent after Androck’s shouting – some stared at the bar in confusion and horror, but only those who knew the man to be dead, for he looked as solid and real as Sullan himself.

 

“I’m not him! I’m not him! Where is the way back?” Androck shouted, his big hands grabbing a bottle from the bar and hurling it full-force across the room. Kiraleen dropped as it flew over her head, hearing it smash against a beam behind her, and stared in shock at her old friend, but his eyes were no longer fixed on any one thing, roving about wildly.

 

“Da, stop! It’s all right! We’ll –” Sullan began, grabbing at Androck’s arm and catching hold, but Androck bellowed in panic and threw his son back against the shelves, lunging down at him as he hit the floor.

 

“I’m not him! I’m not him!”

 

Kiraleen drew her shortsword from its sheath at her hip and vaulted the bar, collaring Androck from behind, trying to shock him out of his hysteria. “Stop! Stop! Look who it is!” she yelled, but saw no sign of him even hearing, and could not pull him away as much as an inch as he pounded mercilessly at Sullan. She hit him full-force across the back of the head with the pommel of her blade, but he did nothing more than flinch and hurl her painfully back …

 

As Sullan’s forequarters slammed back into the glassy shards for the dozenth time or more, Kiraleen picked herself up painfully from the floor – fearing horribly now for Sullan’s life – and cut a sharp slash across Androck’s back. He yelled again, but didn’t stop; Sullan took the punishment for it instead, smashed down twice more against the floor with frightening strength. The next one looked likely to snap Sullan’s spine.

 

So Kiraleen thrust her sword into Androck’s back.

 

She had prepared herself for blood and screaming, but neither came. Androck jerked once as the shortsword rammed home, then slid forward with a windy sigh. The sigh dragged on like a dying breeze, and like that breeze, Androck himself began to fade away: flickering first, as with the guttering of a candle, then steadily draining out of sight with the passing of his last, sustained breath.

 

Kiraleen felt her hands trembling. Bending down, she helped Sullan stagger to his feet, his back wet with blood from the glass still embedded there, his face streaked with it after Androck’s blows.

 

Sullan stiffened as she manoeuvred him over to lean forward on the bar. “Listen, Sullan,” she said softly, “if he hadn’t looked likely to kill you, I’d never –”

 

“No, Kira, look,” he replied, still hoarse and shaking, and pointed across the taproom.

 

A man stood in more or less the centre of the crammed tables and chairs – a giant of a man over six feet tall, muscled like a bull. The other patrons were watching him warily, as if wondering why he had chosen to stand.

 

“Who is he?” Kiraleen murmured.

 

“Dead,” Sullan whispered back. “He was killed here last year in a fight that got out of hand.”

 

The dead man was looking around the bar in visible interest and curiosity, clearly seeing everything in front of him – a striking contrast to Androck’s hazy panic. “Nope, I’m not him,” the giant said casually.

 

“What do you mean, ‘him’? Who’s ‘him’?” Kiraleen called out, and the dead man turned to look at her.

 

“Someone’s looking for him. I dunno,” he replied with an easy shrug. “Don’t much care, either. Can’t say I’m sorry to be here – I still owe this place a few!”

 

Still grinning, the man abruptly reached out and snatched a startled Southerner from his chair by the throat, lifting him above eye-level with horrible ease. The Southerner’s friends leaped up with a shout, but the dead man simply clenched his hand with a muted crack and then hurled their nerveless companion into their midst, wading in with fists eagerly curled.

 

A few more patrons leaped out of their seats to join the fray, swarming around the giant as grunts and yells bounced around the taproom. After a protracted, seething struggle, someone pulled a knife in the confusion, and the giant went down to a blow from behind. As the shouting gave way to shock, as it always did when such fights turned ugly, a familiar low, windy sigh escaped the fallen giant’s lips, and like Androck, he gently faded out of view.

 

Participants in and spectators of the brawl began to back away, swearing fervently to the Saint and the Maiden, but the first Southerner’s friends had all huddled around him, trying to lift him off the floor in grief as his broken neck lolled his head around.

 

Sullan straightened at the bar, painfully, and waved the men over with a numb look on his face. Kiraleen shook her head as the Southerners slowly bore their companion to the bar and laid him down there, dazed and miserable as they tried to find a trace of life in him – pointlessly, Kiraleen thought.

 

But then the prone Southerner stirred, curling his fingers and giving a soft groan. The others cried out in sharp joy as he moved, and one began to cry, taking his hand and patting it repeatedly in fear and relief.

 

“It’s … hurting,” the Southerner said softly. “Please, make it go away … I’m not him …”

 

The man sat up, his head still hanging to one side at an impossible angle, and pushed himself off the bar, staggering for balance and shoving the others away as he stumbled for the door. Someone in the sparse tavern-crowd began to whimper, a thin, childlike sound, as the broken-necked Southerner made his unsteady way through their midst and tottered outside.

 

“This place has been cursed,” someone else loudly whispered – and suddenly a race was on for the door, though there was confusion half-way as those closest remembered that the dead Southerner might be near the door and abruptly tried to back up again. Kiraleen, Sullan and the dumbstruck Southerners simply stood and watched the chaos, unable to speak as the door was finally fumbled open.

 

The aurora still undulated silently in the small patch of sky visible through the doorway, smoky-pure wisps of light. At first glance outside, it looked as though pieces of the aurora had torn free and fluttered down to the ground: the square out front of the Bear and Stag was scattered with pale, icy shapes buffeted by the night air.

But these light-wisps had faces, wavering, filmy faces, and nebulous bodies which stubbornly migrated back to humanoid shapes each time the wind stopped tugging at them. Amongst these white shapes strayed other, more solid ones – some wandering, some shouting or screaming, some running. It was impossible to tell how many were real people and how many were those grim, solid ghosts …

 

Someone slammed the door, and the taproom was overrun by the frightened clamour of three dozen frightened people. Kiraleen slipped into a vague, automatic state as her mind tried to fit all the lightning events inside, leaving Sullan by the bar and trying without much success to calm people down.

 

“Did you see? Did you see? The square’s full of –”

 

“Like the hosts of the Twilight Lands … or the Dead Plane …”

 

“It’s the end of days! That’s what it is! The Saint save us, the world is being unmade!”

 

“Nonsense.”

 

A temporary hush fell over the tavern as the last spoke up – clearly, coolly, completely untouched by the surrounding chaos. Kiraleen left off in her efforts to try and help a fainting carter breathe, turning like the rest of the patrons as a leaderless army would look to the first raised voice.

 

It was an Elf, the only figure left seated at the further end of the room. His clothes were loose and long-sleeved, colourless grey, and his black hair was pulled back in a long tail out of his slim-featured face – but the most defining mark was the grey cloth wound securely over his eyes. He was one of the Eyeless … the only one who had not left the tavern earlier, it seemed.

 

“Those are the Dead outside, not demons,” said the Elf evenly. “You would be in no doubt whatsoever if this were the ‘end of days’.”

 

“It may as well be!” Sullan finally spoke up, his voice cracking under strain. “I can’t tell Dead from living any more! They can all walk in here and kill us without –”

 

“They might,” acquiesced the grey-clad Elf, nodding slowly. Calm radiated from him like light from a lantern, a calm that even the handful of other famously imperturbable Elves in the room did not seem to share. “Some will if they can, certainly. On the other hand, if you arm yourselves, I imagine you can deal with all but the strongest quite conventionally. – Hit them,” he clarified for the more fearful faces.

 

Sullan hardly seemed to be listening any more. “But … Da. It was Da. In here. I buried you well! Why did you come back? Why are you here? What did I do?”

 

Kiraleen grimaced at the frantic edge in the big man’s voice, silently willing him a step or two back from madness. “Let’s decide what’s to be done,” she suggested quietly, her voice only just heard above the renewed tide of cries. Once she spoke, however, most voices hushed, and all eyes trained on her attentively. “To begin with, we have to make sure that we’re safe in here. If some of us watch the room carefully for … arrivals …”

 

Most were furtively doing that already, Kiraleen realised. “We also need to arm ourselves. Anything will do – a stool, a bottle, whatever you can get, I guess.”

She glanced at the silent Eyeless. “You’ve got a sword,” she noted, eyeing the weapon strapped at his shoulder. “Maybe you could stay by the door –”

 

“I will not be staying,” he replied. The whole taproom stared at him as he softly rose and began threading his way through the jumbled stools and tables. “Whatever has brought about this summoning of the Dead is not in here.”

 

“You can’t go out there,” warned Kiraleen. “Wait until we’ve settled in safely here – as much as possible – and maybe a few more of us can go with you.”

 

The Elf’s head lifted a fraction, as though he were casting a glance ceilingward underneath the wrap of his eyes. “I do not advise it,” he replied, glided smoothly to the door, and pulled it tightly shut behind him.

 

“Damn,” whispered Kiraleen. All eyes were now turned to her – Sullan offered no leadership huddled by his bar, his face a wash of tears and blood, and his three waitresses were hunched and crying by the kitchen door.

 

“Listen …” she began, trying to shepherd her thoughts into order, but couldn’t banish the thought of the Elf walking alone through the haunted streets. Somehow the thought had juxtaposed itself with the memory of heartbroken Antayn, quietly farewelling her for the last time before he left Escon, knowing nothing of the child Kiraleen carried as he disappeared down Kirgan Road …

 

“I have to go, but I’ll be back. Be careful,” Kiraleen said quickly, reversing her intended words, and slipped outside before logic could reseat itself.