Kill the Dead(36)

Then a cold sighing came over the ravine, and stars scattered along Parl Dro’s spine.

Very slowly, he turned his head, looking beyond the firelight and the freckling leaves of the poplars.

Under the oak on the hill the far side of the gully, glowing a little, like a fungus, shadow-eyed, smiling, still as a stone, sat Ciddey Soban.

Dro got to his feet. She was looking exactly at him, and now, mostly unmoving, she merely followed him with a serpentine turning of her head. She was scarcely transparent any more. Only one limb of the tree showed faintly through the drift of her skirt. Her skin, her hair, were quite opaque. Unlike her sister, this one was strong.

He walked, not fast, along the ravine side, toward Myal’s music.

Presently he came to a boulder and saw Myal Lemyal lying against it, sound asleep, and playing the instrument in his sleep.

Dro kicked him in the side. Myal grunted softly, his hands falling over each other and back to the strings, playing on. Dro leaned and slapped him hard across the jaw. The music sheered off, and Myal threw himself into a sitting position, plainly terrified.

“I haven’t done anything,” he cried, barely awake, the automatic protest of a hundred wrongful, and rightful, apprehensions and beatings.

“Look across the ravine. Then tell me you haven’t done anything.”

Myal started to look, and then would not “What is it?”

“You asked me that on the previous occasion. The answer is the same as then.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Myal, refusing to look.

Dro leaned down to him again, quiet and very dangerous.

“Whether you believe it or not, she’s used you. You summoned her with the song. I take it it’s a song you composed for her. Now, tell me what else you stole from her corpse.”

“Nothing!”

“You insist I search you?”

Myal slithered away backwards along the ground.

“Leave me alone. I tell you, I didn’t bring anything, just her shoe–and you burned that.”

“You didn’t remember the shoe at first. Think.”

“I am thinking. There isn’t anything.”

“There has to be something. She’s there. She needs a link to be there.”

“Well, I haven’t got anything.”

“Back away any farther,” said Dro, “and you’ll fall down the ravine.”

Myal halted himself. He was about a foot from the brink. He hauled himself farther in and, warily watching Dro, stood up.

“I still know I haven’t got anything else of hers.”

“Then you picked something up without knowing it.”

Myal looked as though he might glance across the ravine, but he switched his back to it again.

“Why did she wait till dark?”

“They need the darkness. It’s the only canvas they can draw their liars’ pictures on. Daylight is for truth.”

“I’ve heard of ghosts being seen by daylight.” Dro ignored this. Ridiculously, inappropriately, with death just across the ravine, Myal insisted, “Well, I have."

“It’s dark now,” Dro said, “and she’s there.”

“Is she really?”

“Look for yourself.”

“No, I’ll take your word for it. I’m scared. I didn’t bring anything but the shoe. I haven’t...”

“We’ll argue it out later.” Dro shifted as if searching for a firmer place to stand. “Tell me, are you right-or left-handed?”

“Both,” said Myal. ‘To play that thing, you have to be.”

“She,” said Dro, “was left-handed, what I recall of her, as any witch is inclined to train herself to be. That song you played her, have you got it straight in your head?”

“You don’t want me to play it? You said—”

“I want you to play it. Backwards.”

“What?”

“You heard. Can you do it?”

“No,” Myal raised the instrument and studied it. “Maybe.”

“Try.”

“What happens if I succeed?”

“You get a prize. Her kind are more superstitious even than the living. Reflection, inversion of any sort, might get a response. If it works, she’ll go away. Start.”

Myal coughed nervously. He settled the instrument. Dro stared across the ravine.