§122 House Shopping

Taylor

Every time Taylor went to sleep, Simon appeared and put him to work in the narrow crawlspace between life and death. At first, he only watched while Simon did his job. Taylor followed Death's minion like the intern that he was, watching carefully, asking questions, and learning. Simon was a decent teacher, even if his every word was coated in oozy disdain.

Most souls didn't need any help passing on. People died, C'cora opened the well, and the souls went in. Simple. That was the usual way of things. Occasionally, souls needed guidance. Usually, they were people who were killed so suddenly that they didn't know they were dead. It didn't take much to send them on: a kind thought, a little push, a moment of kindness. Rarely, a soul wouldn't move on because they couldn't see the gate. Simon explained that these souls had suffered damage. When asked what could damage a soul, Simon answered with an extra helping of sneer, saying he would give Taylor dangerous knowledge after the sun died and the planet froze over.

The lost souls were easy to manage, even the blind ones, and Taylor soon found himself in charge of fetching them whenever he was on duty. It was just as well that Simon foisted that work onto him. He was kinder than Simon and achieved the same results.

Some souls were dangerous, and Simon handled them while Taylor watched from a safe distance. They clung to a semblance of life in different ways. Some stalked the liminal borderland, preying on other lost and loose souls. Taylor was horrified to discover that one soul could consume another. A few became strong enough to resist the well's pull when C'cora opened it right next to them.

"This is what happens when desire lasts longer than life," Simon said in his slow, oozing way of speaking. "The hunger never ends. You mortals sing songs about eternal love as if it's a good thing. Take a good, long look." Simon held one such specimen in place for Taylor to examine with his limited acuity. The soul seemed like a twisted version of a spider: too many legs, too many eyes, and a toothy maw. The clarity lasted but a moment before his teacher tossed it into the well. "Lady Death will straighten that one out. It is beyond our help." 

With practice, Taylor's perception of souls improved. As he walked between life and death, Taylor perceived them as being made of light. Most didn't have a distinct shape, but were slowly shifting blobs of luminescence. Simon was made entirely of soul, and, day by day, he sharpened by degrees into a vaguely humanoid form. It would take weeks, perhaps months, of further effort to see his instructor as he should be seen.

Taylor began to perceive souls in the living world, too, in Aarden and Twilight, but he didn't see them with his eyes. Instead, he dimly perceived the souls entwined with living flesh as if with a different organ, one he hadn't known he possessed. It was the same as learning to sense mana: it was unreliable, dim, and vague. Only extensive practice would bring them into focus.

After his first two weeks on "night patrol," as he thought of it, Taylor went to Celosia to look at houses. Chambers and Ophelia had scoured the city for suitable properties and winnowed the selection down to the best candidates. While Ophelia went to Mount Snowdon to argue with dwarves (she never used the word "negotiate" when she spoke about that particular race), Chambers stayed behind to guide Taylor to the several houses that would fit his family's needs.

They needed a property with enough land to keep Tristan and close to the edge of town, so Kasper could roam. It should be large enough for everyone, with extra room for Cecilia to visit overnight, and a little space for entertaining. They required a carriage house. Taylor was especially concerned that the main house have a deep foundation, or else a stone wall surrounding the entire property. Either would afford him an anchor point for extensive wards on the property.

One candidate property backed onto the river that ran through Celosia, in a mostly arcaic neighborhood, upstream from the Academy. It stood on a slight rise surrounded by three acres of land. It was a grander house than Taylor had planned, but he appreciated the space.

"It's haunted," Chambers told him.

"Of course it is."

"They've had priests come in at least five times, that the city knows about, and try to exorcize the ghost. But it always comes back."

"Well. That part's more interesting."

"Ophelia dug that out of the records. We thought that, as the Divine Envoy, you might succeed where the church failed. But if it's too much trouble, we still have half the list to look at."

Before entering, Taylor wrapped Chambers in holy protections from the church's repertoire of spells until she glowed with a golden aura. Her eyes welled with tears, and she turned away from him to discreetly dab at them with a handkerchief. Uncomfortable, Taylor pretended not to see. He could not understand why a few protections would affect her so, but the waterworks didn't seem to signal grief, so he chose not to pry.

The house was a smallish mansion, slightly larger than the country manor where Taylor grew up, with updated mana wire for lights and appliances, and other conveniences. The roof needed maintenance, but the foundation was sound and ran deep – yet it had never been carved with wards. In many respects, it was perfect, if one could overlook the fact that previous owners had abandoned the property in fear for their lives.

Taylor ventured into the basement and the subbasement, expecting to find a crypt or ancient burial plot. Like many old cities, Celosia stood on the foundations of an older city. But the deepest layers were only rock and dirt, without the faintest hint of ill-tempered spirits, undead, or bodies buried illicitly.

"Young Master, are you well?" Chambers called down from the hatch that led into the sub-basement.

"I'm fine," he called back, and found his way to the ladder leading back to her. He climbed it, preceded by motes of light. "Whatever haunts this place isn't down there."

"Your clothes, Young Master! You're filthy!" She held out a hand to haul him up and brushed away the worst of the dirt he'd picked up. The woman was startlingly strong, but that shouldn't have surprised him. Chambers worked hard for her living.

"Is there any place better than this on your list?"

"There is no comparison, sir. There are some buildings in Arctown for a similar price, but they're small, and we'd have to board Tristan elsewhere. And Ophelia says you might have difficulties working defenses into them, because they share walls with other buildings. There are two smaller estates available nearby, within a mile of the river, with enough space for Tristan and near forests where Kasper can wander. They don't have the same grand potential, but they aren't haunted either.

When Taylor fled Midway, his initial plan was to set up a house in some remote place where they couldn't be found. But that would be hard on his servants, who couldn't even go shopping for daily necessities without either long carriage rides or bothering their master for rapid transportation. Hiding in the Other Place was impossible because it drove Kasper into a panic. 

Reluctantly, Taylor had concluded that the best and safest way to live was to advertise his existence instead of hiding it. People were more likely to inform him of suspicious activity if they considered him important. In time, he would have his wizard outpost on Mount Uroda, surrounded by his own people. But he also needed a city home, close to merchants, libraries, and crafters. He already had a sister and a trusted merchant in Celosia, and the city had an excellent academy where he could get his certificate. And, since he was going to spend at least one full term there, he might as well make Celosia his urban base.

The land he stood on would make an excellent city estate – if he could eliminate the haunt. There were several monsters that could be mistaken for ghosts, including non-corporeal spirits from Twilight that crossed over into Aarden accidentally. If threatened, any of them could be dangerous. If what "haunted" the estate was a monster instead of some kind of ghost, then it would explain why exorcism didn't work.

Next, he investigated the carriage house, with similar results. Taylor segmented the property into smaller blocks and examined each one in turn, walking back and forth while he let his senses sink deep into the ground, searching for any abnormality. He had to do this anyway, if he was going to build defenses on it, so he let Chambers draw a rough map and keep a running account of what he found.

The property wasn't always a mansion. Long ago, it had been rows of joined dwellings with walls of cut block stone sintered together by magic, an ancient technique still in use. Many of the walls remained upright, underground, filled in with river silt. A flood could have wiped out the previous settlement, or the entire river may have changed course. They might have been deliberately targeted in an attack. Whatever the cause, the ancient row houses had, at some point, been subject to a great flow of mud and debris that wrecked some buildings and filled others. Much later, new people had arrived and sought to build their mansion in the same area, now comfortably above the river's high water mark. Given that they used some of the ancient walls as the new mansion's foundation, they weren't entirely unaware that the place had a history.

Taylor found what he was looking for in a section of property nearest to the river, where the buried buildings were slightly larger and most of the walls had collapsed. Chambers felt nothing, protected as she was, but Taylor felt shivers of cold fear and agitated mana as he neared the source of the haunting. Something was buried there, buried deeper than even the foundations of the lost settlement under his feet.

The next day, Taylor bought the property with a great deal of confidence that, at the very least, he could contain the haunting entity.

The current owner was a wealthy arc who dealt in such estates. When the purchasers gave up on the property, the same merchant took mercy on them and repurchased the land from them, albeit at a substantial discount. The same trader had sold the property seventeen times in the last fifteen decades, and had the gall to wish Taylor every happiness in his new purchase while fully expecting him to flee the property in terror. Likewise, Taylor felt no need to tell the seller he'd found the haunt's origins and sequestered it with an advanced spell from the Giving Church's repertoire.

Taylor waited a few days for Dwergbank to clear all aspects of the transaction before bringing Kasper, Cook, and Blake to Celosia.

They couldn't move in right away, so Taylor rented a suite at a good arcaic hotel until he had finished dealing with the haunt. On their first visit to the house, Taylor dropped off all the crates he'd been carrying since they left Midway, while Kasper ran all over the grounds and rolled around in the overgrown garden in back. Neighbors stirred themselves enough to meet the curious new owner and his household, and wandered onto the property as if he'd declared an open house. Cook and Chamber's response was to unpack the kitchenware and serving dishes, and make an event out of it. Blake erected a large statue of Moya, the goddess of hospitality, in the entryway, and chose a light, sparkling wine for the occasion. Taylor's new neighbors clustered around him, glasses in one hand, canapeés in the other. There were forty visitors in all, a mix of arcs, dwarves, and beastkin, with a few humans mixed in for good measure.

"We had a pool going on how long it'd take for someone to buy this place again." The neighbor was a dwarf, about Taylor's height, wide and muscular like most of his race. He stood next to his wife, whose sideburns were formed into luxe curls. The other neighbors glanced away guiltily. "I lost. I thought it would be another decade before someone took the place."

Taylor gestured at the property with one lazy hand. "It suits my purposes. Who won the bet?"

"I did," said another dwarf, a young woman in the uniform of Celosia Academy. "I said a human would buy it up within three years."

"And what's the current pool on how soon I'll leave?" The assembly looked uncomfortable while Taylor smirked at them from behind his mask.

"The betting hasn't started yet," the student said impishly, "we wanted to meet the new victim first. The stakes are a double eagle."

"If I were to bet on permanent residence, would a year of occupation suffice? I won't be in residence myself for all that time, but someone will occupy the place full-time."

There was a stirring of interest, but the neighbors undoubtedly felt strange about betting against him to his face.

"I'll add an aurochs to your pot, just for the privilege of taking your money a year from now."

An arc with thinning blonde curls perked up. "I'll take those odds! And I'll give you twelve weeks before you run screaming from this place. But," he warned, "the clock doesn't start until you start living here. No cheating by visiting during the day and sleeping in a cozy hotel at night."

"Marvelous! Any other takers?"

"I mean no disrespect," said the first dwarf, "but I only give you five weeks. And Gilda there holds the pot. She works at Dwergbank, and they have oaths about this kind of thing. She can't run off with the money."

"Why would I?" said Gilda. She eyed Taylor up and down, measuring him against his Dwergbank file. "I put my bet at one week shy of a year. I doubt this one will be chased away by some ghost, but there's a chance that something else will take him away. And besides, I love a small bet now and then."

By evening's end, all the room had placed their bets, and the pot stood at a thousand dori. On average, they didn't expect him to last five months.

It wasn't until Taylor returned to the hotel that he realized he had forgotten an important matter: He was supposed to notify the governor whenever he visited Celosia. He wondered how that august personage would react to the news that he was setting up a residence in the provincial capital.