Narvik stroked the curls back from her high forehead.
"And me most of all," he promised.
Laura Anne Gilman
She closed the spellbook carefully in the faint glow of dawn, letting her body slump until her head rested on the book itself, her pale brown hair spilling over the book's leather binding and across the scarred and pitted worktable. It was done. She had worked her magic, for good or ill, and it was done. The presence which had so haunted her was dispersed, the cottage free from any influence save her own. It had taken all of her strength to complete this night's work. All she wanted to do, all she could do now, was sleep.
"Marise."
The sound was a barest whisper, a voice harsh from disuse, but it jerked her out of her doze, knocking aside the stool she was sitting on, forcing her to her feet and turning her towards the door. A tall figure stood there, his face, indeed all details of him, in shadow. Marise squinted, trying to see who it was. She hoped, as she passed a hand over her eyes, that he did not come to her with an emergency. At this moment, she could not have mustered a spell to save her own life. And with that thought came another—was he a danger to her? She could not think of any who would wish her ill, and yet...
Her body failed her, and she swayed with exhaustion. The stranger was at her side, capable hands lifting her at knee and shoulder, bearing her to the wide rush bed shoved against the far wall.
"You must rest. Then we will talk," he said, settling her on the bed and adjusting the quilted coverlet under her chin. She reached up to touch the side of his lace, and gasped as sudden familiarity washed over—through—her.
"You!"
She struggled to rise, but he passed one cool hand over her forehead and she fell back against the bed, close to passing out. As she drifted into the darkness, she heard him say, "There will be time enough for questions, my lady. Questions, and perhaps even answers."
There were sounds in her cottage. Marise lay still and tried to identify them. The scritch of the broom against bare wood floor. The hissing of a fire. The rolling bubble of water boiling. The low rumble of a deep voice. Humming. Someone—a male—was sweeping her floor. Humming. How odd. She laughed at the absurdity of it, and the humming stopped.
Sitting up in her bed, Marise looked at the man she had called from death as he leaned on the broom and looked back at her. He was slender without being thin, tall, older than she, yet with the carriage of a younger man. His eyes and hair were brown against pale skin, but somehow when she looked left rather than right his eyes seemed more green than brown; his hair showed red highlights.
"It worked," she said to the room. She hadn't been sure. The first spell had been simple, something she had performed many times—murder victims still angry, young people unwilling to accept their fate. It wasn't easy, but the result was never in doubt. But the second spell had frightened her. The original receipt called for putting a lost spirit into a body, his or another's. But Marise could obtain no body, and so had improvised. Casting an appraising glance over her guest, she nodded in satisfaction. Perhaps she should improvise more often!
"What is your name?" she asked, swinging her feet over the side of the bed and standing up. She did not miss the slight hesitation, or the frown that crossed his brow before he replied, "I don't know."
One narrow eyebrow rose, and she shrugged. Perhaps the shock of returning to flesh had wiped his memory. That would be a disappointment. Marise had hoped to discover who he was, and what his spirit had been doing here in the wizard's cottage.
Perhaps the wizard had killed him? No. From all she had heard from her neighbors, Aginard had been a gentle soul, stubborn but kind, with a passive nature. Not one to be a murderer. And this stranger in front of her wasn't, she thought with not a little regret, the wizard himself. Even a created body would bear the impression of the soul's former housing. Aginard had been an older man, full of gray hairs and creases. This man in front of her had neither, although there was a certain tenseness about his narrow face that indicated years lived in hard places.
"Well, don't worry yourself over it." She kept her voice calm. "It may come back, and it may not. Do you remember anything else?"
He frowned again in thought, as though the action disturbed him. "I remember being here, eating a meal. Only the table was over there," he pointed, "and the bed was there."
Marise nodded. Those were changes she had made upon moving in. "Anything else?"
He made a face, more at himself than at her. "You're asking if I remember how I died."
She shrugged, crossing in front of him to take the water off the fire and pour it into an earthenware mug, adding a spoon of lemongrass to it and putting it aside to steep. Sitting on the bench, she studied him. "And do you?"
He sighed, resuming his sweeping more as a way to occupy his body than to clean the stained floor. "I remember an argument. Fighting. Shouting. I was very angry, then I was in pain. Then... there was more pain, and it was over. Then nothing until you came."
"And last night?"
"More pain. Almost unbearable. An intense heat overwhelming me. And then I was here, and I knew your name but not my own." He looked at her from under dark lashes, his expression shy. "I thought you might be able to help me remember."