“How about taking a walk with me while we talk over this ghost problem?” Cal suggested. “If I’m going to do as Loruk suggested and keep the spiders fed, I’ll need more cheese. Walk with me to the market?”

“Sure,” Laria said. “It’d be good to get a bit of air.”

They headed out together. Cal popped his head into the Emporium to let Max know that he’d be back shortly, then he and Laria headed up Sandweaver Street toward Market Square.

“Tell me what you think about the ghost issue,” Cal said. “I’ve told you all I know; what do you make of it? Why does Sark’s ghost still haunt the shop? How do we help the ghost to get free of the building?”

Laria sighed. “It works like this, Cal. When a person dies and their spirit doesn’t transition properly out of their body, a ghost is created. By ghost we mean any kind of physical manifestation that retains an individual identity of some kind. An incomplete transition usually happens when a person doesn’t know that they’ve died, and that happens most often when the death comes unexpectedly. In that situation, a spirit can hang about a location or a person that was important in life, not knowing why they’re doing so. After a time, they either manifest as a ghost, or they dissipate. If they manifest as a ghost, they’re usually bound to the place or person that they’re haunting by some specific memory or association.”

“And what’s the role of a necromancer in that situation?” Cal asked.

“Well, it’s going to be twofold - on the one hand, we can free a spirit that’s been trapped, helping them to move on from the place they’ve been stuck. On the other hand, a necromancer can also bind a spirit so that they don’t dissipate. Some people request the service of necromancers - they don’t want to dissipate, so they ask to be bound at the point of death so that they become independent creatures. Mortex, for example, or your friend Biddle down at the dockland wholesaler, are wraiths, creatures that are the result of necromantic binding. But your neighbor, Sark, sounds like a ghost who has become bound to the building for some reason, and forgotten nearly everything.”

“He did seem to remember some things,” Cal mused. “He said that he’d not lived in the building for a long time, but that he had occupied it. That would suggest that he did know that he was a ghost, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose it would,” Laria said. “That’s unusual, but it can happen. I think I want to meet this neighbor of yours. He sounds like an interesting character, if nothing else.”

They turned into Market Square. The plaza was busy with people, mostly here to buy the fresh goods that came in daily from the farmlands. Some were just here to browse, and there were some stall-holders who sold goods other than food - clothing, jewelry, magical trinkets, books. The smell of cooking and of fresh coffee came from the stalls of vendors selling snacks.

Cal made his way to a cheese seller that he knew and purchased a generous quantity of soft cheese. He was tempted to take a look around, but time was passing and Laria would need to get back to the docks and catch her boat soon, so they headed back.

After dropping the cheese off in the workshop, they went out to the back court again.

“I have an hour,” Laria said, “but then I’ll need to get down to the docks and catch my ship. Let’s see if we can talk to Sark.”

“He did say he’d be happy to have more visitors,” Cal said.

Laria snorted. “That’s very odd,” she said. “Come on, let’s see what we can do, then.”

They went up to the back door of Sark’s shop and Cal placed his hand against the door as he’d done before. Again, the door handle turned of its own accord and the door swung inward, revealing the same gloomy interior as Max and Cal had seen on their previous visit.

“Here we go,” Laria said. She took a deep breath and stepped in.

Cal followed, a little reluctantly. He was aware of the strange, otherworldly sensation that permeated the shop. It settled over him, thick as a smothering blanket.

“Just as I thought,” Laria said. “There’s a bit of an atmosphere in here, do you feel it?”

“The feeling of distance from the normal world?” Cal asked. “Yeah, I feel it. It’s almost overwhelming.”

“It’s a time differential between the perception of the ghost that fills the place, and the real world outside. I think he’s been here for a long time. How did you get to see him?”

“I tried to touch the scrolls in the front of the shop,” Cal said. “He’s a bit protective of them.”

“I’d rather not distress him if I can avoid it,” she said quietly, “but I’ll probably have to at least a bit. By the way, what’s upstairs?”

“I didn’t go upstairs,” Cal said.

“Hmm. Okay, come with me. Let me do the talking here, Cal. This might get a bit weird.”

Laria walked into the front of Sark’s shop. There was no sign of any activity, and aside from the powerful sense of displacement from reality that they both felt, the shop didn’t feel like anything other than what it was - an old, abandoned building.

Laria stood in front of the shelves, looking at their many scrolls. She sighed, shrugged, and raised a hand toward the nearest one.

“Do not touch the scrolls!” came the distant, dry voice of the ghost of Sark. There was a sharp click and Cal and Laria both looked round to see, just as before, that the back door had closed and the tall, indistinct gray figure of Sark was standing in the space in front of the door.

“Do not touch the scrolls,” the ghost repeated.

Laria dropped her hand and turned toward the ghost. “Why not?” she asked in a neutral tone.

The ghost said nothing.

“Why do you need me to not touch the scrolls? What will happen if I do?”

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“You…” Sark said, then stopped as if searching for words. “You will have to pay for them, if you touch them.”

“That’s okay,” Laria said. “I’d like to pay for a scroll.”

Silence.

Laria spoke again, more loudly. “I’d like to purchase one of your scrolls, please.”

“Do not… the scrolls… I can’t…”

“Laria, what are you doing?” Cal said. “I thought you weren’t going to distress him?”

“It’s unavoidable,” Laria said back in a low voice. “I need to find out what’s holding him here. It’s something to do with the goods in the shop, I need to find out what it is if I’m going to help him.”

Suddenly, the ghost moved toward them with a swift hissing noise like the rush of wind in the trees. Cal leaped back and stumbled, falling hard on his backside, but Laria kept her cool. She stepped forward to meet the ghost’s onrush, her left hand raised, palm outward.

She said… something… a word that Cal heard but didn’t hear, that he perceived but couldn’t understand. There was a flash of pale light around her hand, and a crackling noise like flame.

The ghost stopped in front of Laria, and she kept her hand raised, the pale light still gleaming around her fingers.

Cal watched as the pale light from her hand became brighter, extending forward toward the body of the ghost.

“What is in the scrolls?” Laria said.

The ghost moved his mouth as if to speak, but made no sound.

“Why can’t I buy a scroll?”

Nothing.

“The scrolls are not real, are they?” she asked.

The ghost stepped back.

“There’s nothing in the scrolls, is there?”

He stepped back again.

“That’s the secret you’re protecting? That your scrolls are a scam?”

“No,” Sark said, his voice suddenly louder and clearer than it had ever been before. “The scrolls are not a scam. I never claimed they were anything but what they were.”

“What, then?” Laria said forcefully. “What keeps you here?”

As she said it, Cal saw the light from her left hand increasing in strength, flowing out toward the chest of the ghost. The light flowed into him, he seemed to be absorbing it like a sponge. Light flowed into the ghost body of Sark, and he became more solid.

As he took on more shape, apparently nourished by the light from Laria’s hand, his voice became less remote and distant.

Cal stood slowly, brushing the dust from his trousers. He stayed well back as Laria had instructed, watching to see what would happen.

“Why are you still here?” Laria demanded of the ghost.

“Because I don’t know how to leave,” the ghost admitted in a voice that was quiet but very present. “I didn’t want to die - I didn’t mean to. But it’s been so long, and I’ve just been here. At first I was so confused, and all I could remember was my scrolls. I want them to stay the way they’ve always been, so that I can hold that memory. That’s why you can’t have one. That’s why you mustn’t touch them. They need to stay the same, I don’t know why.”

“I can help you,” Laria said. “The scrolls are what is keeping you here. I can help you to get free from this shop. I can’t help you keep your memories, but I can give you a new lease of life, in a new way.”

“I don’t want to leave the world,” the ghost said urgently. “I just want to be able to be free of this building.”

“I can do that for you.”

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

The ghost hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He was already looking more real than he had done, but as soon as Laria had his agreement, he suddenly became more solid still. He changed, losing the shape of the tall, bearded man that he’d had a moment before.

Before Cal’s very eyes, the ghost changed. He went through a few iterations - a young man with a sword; an old, bent-backed man with a cane; a tall creature with many arms and glowing green eyes. Then, after a few moments of rapidly switching between different appearances, the ghost of Sark settled and became something recognisable.

Cal gasped in amazement. Sark had become a wraith, but he was as unlike Mortex as he was unlike Mr. Biddle. He was not grotesque or frightening like Mortex, nor was he a refined and elegant character like Biddle.

Sark had become a creature of shifting lights, green and yellow and red, with a large, spreading mesh of tendrils reaching up into the air, more like a tree than a humanoid to Cal’s eyes. Laria raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“Mr Sark?” she said politely, and a new voice came from within the shifting figure of glowing lights.

“No,” the light-creature said. “Not Sark. Never Sark. Thank you, necromancer. You have changed me. I’m free…”

The figure - if it could even be called that - moved to the door. The door opened, apparently of its own accord, and Laria and Cal rushed to look out and see what was about to happen.

The tree of lights that had been Sark emerged into the bright light of the afternoon. It flickered and flashed in the middle of the courtyard for a moment, and then rose up into the air.

“Woah, he’s really leaving!” Laria said with an amazed laugh. “I didn’t expect this!”

She and Cal stood side-by-side as the light creature floated up into the air. They stood for a long time, watching the lights get higher and higher in the air until at last there was a flicker of color deep in a bank of cloud high above, and the thing was gone.

Whatever Sark had transformed into had ascended into the sky, and Cal thought it unlikely that he would ever see or hear from the ghost again.

“What was that?” Cal asked Laria.

“It’s called an animus spirit,” LAria said. “Very rare. It’s what happens if a ghost who’s been trapped in a physical manifestation for a long time manages to refine its consciousness to a high degree before being freed. Very rare, you know, but it does happen.”

“Where will he go?”

Laria shrugged. “The gods only know,” she said. “There’s no reports of animus spirits ever returning once they’ve ascended. Very highly skilled Necromancers can sometimes compel them to stick around for a while, but it’s rare. Usually, they’re very keen to ascend, and when they do, well, that’s it. They don’t come back.”

Cal shook his head in disbelief. “That was not how I expected this to turn out,” he said.

“I’ll bet it wasn’t,” Laria said with a smile. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a gold pocket-watch on a fine silver chain.

“Ah, hey, time’s passing,” she said. “I’m tired after that effort, but I’ll have to rest on the boat. I gotta go, Cal, I’ll see you in a little while, once I’m back from my next run.”

And with that, she left.

Cal stood in the doorway of Sark’s shop, feeling more than a little confused about what to do next. He looked down at the door, which had opened when Sark had left.

Then he laughed. There was a key sticking out of the lock on the inside of the door.

Cal took the key from the lock. Then he stepped out into the courtyard, noticing that there was no sign of that unsettling, otherworldly feeling anymore. With the departure of the ghost, the strange spell - whatever it was - had gone. There was no sense of creepiness, nothing eerie about the shop at all. It just felt old, unoccupied, abandoned.

He thought for a moment, then he pulled the back door closed and turned the key in the lock. The lock was a bit stiff, but it clicked shut all the same.

Cal slipped the key into his pocket. What else could he do? He couldn’t leave the door unlocked, and there was no point locking the door and putting the key through the letterbox or something silly like that. He was the only one - apart from Laria - who knew the true state of affairs with Sark and his property.

It made sense for Cal to keep the key. With Laria’s help, he’d freed Sark’s restless spirit, but he was no closer to working out how to legitimately occupy the premises. He couldn’t exactly let on what had happened without dropping Laria in trouble - there was no way she had a license to perform the magic that had just happened.

He sighed. Just now, he had no idea how in the world to proceed. All that was clear to him was that he had made some progress on his problems. He’d take one thing at a time.

Thoughtfully, his hand around the heavy key in his pocket, he headed back into the Enchanter’s Emporium.