Chapter 12 | Part 5

The inn was warm and crowded and utterly ordinary.

Maris stood just inside the doorway, letting her eyes adjust. Tables filled the common room, occupied by merchants, travelers, locals finishing their evening meals. A fire burned in the large hearth. Serving girls moved through the crowd with practiced efficiency.

No one looked at her. No one reacted to her presence. She was just another traveler in a town full of them.

Find Xandor. Tell him what you saw.

She could still leave. Turn around, walk out the door, find another inn, another town, another life. The visions would follow, but she could run from them for a while longer. She’d done it before.

The stable image flickered through her mind. Boat. Water. Hand slipping under.

At least drowning in someone else’s black water was new.

The thought surprised a bitter laugh out of her. Dark humor—her oldest companion, the one thing the visions couldn’t take. When everything else failed, she could always find something absurd in her own suffering.

“Can I help you?”

A serving girl had appeared at her elbow, young and efficient and slightly impatient. Maris realized she’d been standing in the doorway like an idiot for too long.

“I’m looking for someone called Xandor.”

The girl’s expression shifted—subtle, but visible. Recognition. Wariness. “He’s in the back corner. The old man with the plants.”

Plants?

Maris followed the girl’s gesture and found him immediately. An elderly man sat alone at a corner table, surrounded by—yes, plants. Small pots lined the table’s edge, containing herbs and flowers and things she didn’t recognize. He was murmuring to them as she watched, adjusting leaves with gentle fingers.

She crossed the room. The pull in her chest was stronger now, almost painful, like a hook behind her ribs dragging her forward. The closer she got to the old man, the more the stable image pressed against her mind.

Boat. Water. Hand.

“Xandor?”

He looked up. His eyes were pale, almost colorless, and they found her face with an accuracy that suggested he’d been expecting her.

“Ah,” he said. “You’re the one who’s been screaming.”

“I haven’t—”

“Not out loud.” He gestured to the chair across from him. “Sit. You’ve had a difficult day, and it’s not over yet.”

Maris sat. Up close, she could see that his plants were arranged in a pattern—some kind of ritual configuration she didn’t recognize. His hands, when they returned to adjusting leaves, moved with the certainty of long practice.

“Something sent a man to find me,” she said. “A beggar. He told me to come here, to tell you what I saw.”

“Something.” Xandor smiled slightly. “That’s one way to describe it. What did you see?”

The stable image rose unbidden. She didn’t try to stop it this time.

“A boat. Small, barely big enough for two. Black water—not dark, black, like oil that breathes. Things moving underneath. And a hand.” She heard her own voice go flat, distant. “Grey-dark skin. Long fingers. Reaching up, trying to hold on. Slipping under.”

Xandor’s hands had stopped moving.

“The nightmare sea,” he said quietly. “You saw someone crossing the nightmare sea.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“Among other things. A barrier between here and somewhere else. A place that shouldn’t be crossed.” His pale eyes studied her. “You’re a seer. Omencraft.”

“I see things I don’t ask to see. I don’t know what craft is involved.”

“The craft of receiving.” Xandor resumed his work with the plants. “Most people’s minds are closed. Yours is open—whether you want it to be or not. You receive what others broadcast.”

“The vision felt like a broadcast.”

“It was. Something happened—is happening—and it created a signal strong enough to reach across great distance.” He paused. “The person you saw drowning. Did they survive?”

Maris tried to recall. The vision always ended the same way—the hand slipping under, the black water closing over it. But she’d never seen what came after.

“I don’t know.”

“Interesting.” Xandor picked up one of his plants, turned it toward the light. “Usually the signal stops when the subject dies. If you’re still receiving, they may still be alive.”

The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made her stomach twist.

“Why am I seeing this? Why does it matter to me?”

“Because something wants you to.” Xandor set the plant down carefully. “There’s an artifact here in Riverhold. It’s been broadcasting for days—calling to things, drawing attention, making itself known. Your vision may be connected to it, or it may be something else entirely. Either way, you’ve been pulled into a pattern larger than yourself.”

Maris felt the pull in her chest intensify. Artifact. Broadcasting. Connected.

“I could leave,” she said. “Walk away. Find somewhere the signal doesn’t reach.”

“You could try.” Xandor’s voice was gentle. “But you’ve ignored visions before, haven’t you? You know what happens.”

She did. The visions got stronger. More frequent, more insistent. They invaded her dreams, her waking hours, every quiet moment she tried to claim for herself. Running only made them worse.

“So I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. But I can’t tell you where this path leads. That’s not my gift.” He looked at her directly. “What I can tell you is that someone drowned in black water, and you’re one of the few people in this world who saw it. That means something.”

The hand slipping under. Grey-dark fingers grasping at nothing.

“I don’t want this,” Maris said quietly.

“I know.” Xandor’s voice was gentle, which made it worse. “None of us do. But here we are.”

The fire crackled. The common room murmured with conversation. And Maris Hale made her choice.

“Tell me about the artifact.”

End of Chapter 12.5 —> 12.6: The Grass Where She Fell: The Arrival