Kill the Dead(14)

Sometimes Parl Dro had been paid large sums of money to perform such work as this. Other times, he had slunk in like a thief, as he did now, and sharp pebbles had struck him across the back when the task was done.

The physical aspect of the room was itself depressingly invocational.

It was a bedchamber, or had been arranged to be: A stark canopied bed, maiden narrow, with fluted white drapes. A carved chest, in which he had no doubt Cilny Soban’s garments lay carefully folded amid bags of herbs. An antique mirror of polished silver stood on the chest, and two or three old books. On the inside of the door he had closed hung some tiny charms on a thread. Some of them looked like a baby’s teeth. In a bony chair sat a child’s doll, made of wood with cannily jointed limbs. It was dressed in faded spectral white, like everything else, and had long lank hair of flaxen wool. There was a tapestry on the wall, a rug on the floor, a table with an ewer and basin, some little combs chased with imitation mother-of-pearl, and an open ivory casket with delicate beads and bangles in it.

It was a sad room, and very horrible. It provided the perfect compost from which a ghost might ferment itself and establish its false claims on an earthly existence.

In the darkest comer, something stood off the rug, on the floor. It was a slim, two-foot-high stone jar.

The moment he looked at the jar, he felt her seep into the room. She had not been there when he entered. Cilny had died in the spring, not so long ago. She might need a human presence to rouse her. But also he suspected Ciddey had warned her into hiding. Even now, she was reluctant to evolve, sensing antipathy. A desire for her company, love, even fear, she could feed on. Dro offered her none of these. Yet now, looking at the pot which held her ashes, he began to exert his will on her. He began to drag her, willing or not, into the room.

His spine and the roots of his hair registered her arrival before his eyes did. But in less than half a minute, he could see her quite plainly too.

Frail and blonde she was, mostly transparent. No, she was not a very strong deadalive. She wore the clothing of her death hour, which was quite usual, the long flimsy nightgown the villagers had described, though for some reason the wreath of flowers was absent. Then, in the way of ghosts, unexpectedly and piteously, she touched him—by folding her arms shyly about herself. It was the modesty of a very young girl who had never slept with a man, and discovered herself alone with one in her nightwear. Nor was it contrived: he was fairly sure of that. He said to her gently, “Don’t be afraid, Cilny. Do you know who I am?”

Her voice was hardly more than a rustle, dry papers or blown leaves.

“Ciddey told me of a man, a lame man in black”

“What did she say?”

“That you’d kill me.”

“Cilny,” he said quietly, “how can I kill you? You’re already dead.”

“No,” she cried in her rustling voice. Panic made it stronger, “No—no—” She stared at him. “Ciddey woke me. I was asleep and she woke me.”

“She shouldn’t have awoken you. You should have woken in your own time and gone on your own way, to the place you have to go to.”

“No. I’ll stay here. I want my sister. I want Ciddey.”

He did not wish to be rough with her. Sometimes it was possible to comfort, to smooth the path. The going through could be calm, even some cases blissful, thankful. But this one would plead and whimper at him. He was steeled to the hurt, but to prolong the hurt for her would be no sort of kindness.

He took a step towards the pot of ashes, and then the ghost-girl shrieked.

The shriek had attained a dumbfounding strength. It thrilled through the room, through his ears, through stone. He knew Ciddey would have heard it.

Dro lunged towards the jar. To reach it, he had to go right by the ghost, partly through her. A debilitating chill sank over him as he did so. But he paid no attention to it. He kneeled and wrenched off the cover of the jar and threw it away. She came all about him in that moment, a white gale, a pale insect whipping him with frantic opalescent wings. Primeval horror strangled him, swarming over his skin. He could smell only the grave, and phosphorescent worms crawled across his eyes. He wanted—needed—to lash out, beat her insubstantiality away, run yelling from the room—well-known sensations he was accustomed to controlling.

Vaguely, beyond it all, he heard a door flung open lower in the tower.

Her ashes were Cilny’s link to mortal life.

The link had always to be destroyed, or at least altered. The means were as various as the links themselves. The bone must be smashed, air mingled with its fragments. The scarf, the glove must be charred in fire, flames mingled with the cloth. Change was the key.