Chapter 12 | Part 5

Lamplight showed between the Scholar’s Rest’s blue shutters. Above the door hung a painted book, its open pages streaked with rain.

Maris stood across the street.

The pressure behind her eyes had become a steady throb.

She turned toward the southern gate. A cart rattled past, heading out; she could still follow it.

But she had left towns before. The visions had followed her into barns, ditches, beds she had paid for and never slept in.

And the headache showed no sign of easing.

Maris crossed the street.

Inside, the common room smelled of stew and wet wool.

Travelers bent over their dinners. One was scraping the bottom of a bowl with his bread.

“Can I help you?” a serving woman asked.

“I’m looking for Xandor.”

The woman glanced toward the stairs.

“Upstairs. Second door. He’s with visitors.”

Visitors.

Maris almost asked who.

Then didn’t.

The pressure in her skull strengthened when she looked toward the stairs.

She could hear spoons against bowls and a man coughing beside the fire. Above it all came a sound she felt behind her eyes, drowning out the room without growing louder.

“Wonderful,” she muttered.

The serving woman raised an eyebrow.

“Long day.”

“Looks like it.”

Maris put one foot on the stairs.

Then stopped.

If someone upstairs called this a gift, she would make him look at the mud on her clothes.

First she needed the pressure to stop.

Then she could ask about the hand in the water.

She climbed.

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