Kill the Dead(28)

It was an illusion, the fish. She was even more a witch, dead, than she had been alive. She fashioned such forms to intimidate him. When she perceived he was not intimidated, the fish, the trickle of blood, even the swirl of the ghostly stream evaporated.

She hung there, still smiling vilely at him. Then her smile went away, and she too slid away, back and back and back, as the inescapable force of Dro’s will pushed her.

She opened her mouth in a soundless cry, and lifted her hands again. Her nails were already very long. She fought him, but he was used to such fighting, and she was not. He thrust her all the way to the wall, seeming to press her, like a phosphorescent imprint, into the whitewash. Her hair blew or fanned out like a misty colourless sunburst–moonburst–on the bricks. He held her pinned like that, and then, never taking his eyes from her, he fastened one pitiless hand over Myal’s throat, squeezing the windpipe until, gagging and choking, the musician flailed into consciousness.

Dro unfastened the stranglehold. Myal croaked a number of expletives and accusations. Dro cut him short, dragging Myal’s head around by the hair toward the wall.

“Look.”

Myal froze, petrified, rigid as a stone in Dro’s grip.

“What–what is it?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Ciddey—it’s Cidd—”

“Don’t keep naming her. She has enough of a hold on you as it is. How do you feel?”

“I feel sick.” A ludicrous note of reproach crept into Myal’s voice. “I haven’t been well.”

“You’ll be less well if she goes on feeding off you.”

“Feeding–”

“She’s using your life energy to supplement her own. Can’t you feel it?”

“I... Something. I feel terrible.”

Dro let him fall back on the mattress. Dro never once let his own eyes slip from the apparition, stapled like a moth to the wall. Even as he spoke, three quarters of his mind and a great deal of his strength were being utilised to keep her as far from her life source, Myal, as possible. To prevent her, also, from flight. For she might come to see that flight was her only current ploy.

“What did you bring with you, Myal,” Dro said, “from the stream?”

“What?”

“The stream where she died. You took something from her body. A lock of hair, a ribbon–something.”

“No.”

“Don’t conceal it. It’s her link. Look at her. She’ll kill you, one way or another. Either persuade you to die to appease her jealousy of your life. Or draw your life out of you, moment by moment.”

“I think,” said Myal. He coughed. “I think I brought one of her shoes. I don’t know why. I forgot I had. They were cloth, very small. I trod on one on the bank. I was already getting sick. Didn’t know what I was...”

“Where?”

“The instrument. Where is it? Somebody must have put it somewhere.”

“It’s there by the bed. Reach over and hand it to me.”

“I can’t. I’m too weak to move.”

“You’ll move.”

“All right—I’ll—try—”

Myal floundered around. His arms were trembling so much he could hardly get hold of the sling, but he managed it, and lugged the grotesquery of wood and strings onto the mattress. To touch it steadied him. But the shoe, crumpled together, had been shoved into the opening over the sound box, and through into the hole of the instrument. Invisible. He could not remember doing this. Yet, somehow, he could....

Still not looking at him, Dro tore the shoe out of Myal’s hand.

“Whatever happens now, stay where you are, and stay quiet.”

“What’s liable to happen?”

Myal cringed and shot a glance at the blocked door. But his head swam. He flopped on his face, hiding his eyes.

Parl Dro stood midway between the bed and the door. He dropped the little shoe on the ground. The sole had cracked where Myal had palmed it into a ball. Pathetic, desolate little shoe.

Dro took the tinder from his shirt and struck a flame. At the rasp of flint and fire, Myal burrowed more deeply in the bolster. Dro stooped, awkward from the crippled leg, and set the shoe alight, bracing himself as he did so for the ghost’s dying frenzy. Which did not come.

As the flame fluttered around the shoe, destroyed it, and expired on the flags, Dro stared at what was left of Ciddey Soban, plastered, insectile and beautiful, on the wall. She never moved. With vast extinguished eyes, she gazed at him. And then she melted like frost. And she was gone.