Kill the Dead(51)

The Queen of Swords, his eldritch elderly sister, was brewing more tea. The aromatic steam curled across the hovel, and vanished as if passing through the walls: the ghost of tea.

“So you’ll trance yourself without a drug, and get into Ghyste Mortua. And then you’ll destroy Ghyste Mortua,” said Sable, “like all the other ghost-killers were going to. But they never managed it, did they, eh? What’s your idea?”

“Wait and see.”

Parl Dro wondered then if she could see, past the iron, the steel, the self-denying, cynical, adamant desire to kill the dead which symbolized his existence so bleakly, see by all that to the sombre terror in his heart, lying there immovable as Myal on the bed.

Myal Lemyal did not know his body lay miles away under a sheet in a hovel. Myal’s psychic body seemed as actual to him as actuality had ever seemed, and was even plagued by the same ills of nervousness and exhaustion. But then, the town of Tulotef seemed also actual. The town, and the girl.

And the three riders who had escorted them to the gate.

In the end, these men had not beaten Myal. They had not even let him ride the horse. At the last instant, as the irrevocable gateporch leaned over them—high, wide, echoing—they had pulled him down. As he landed on the paving, the instrument catching him again an almighty thump between the shoulders, a man had leapt for the vacant saddle. Spurs dug in, the horses shrilled. In a skirl of sparks and reverberant, gate-magnified hoofbeats, the riders dashed away into the heart of the unearthly town.

Myal rose, dabbing at fresh bruises. Ciddey Soban stood nearby. She was so completely normal, and mortal, that he caught his breath again in a whirling doubt of all facts and fantasies. White, bad-tempered, her eyes blazing, she slashed the dank atmosphere in the gate with her cat’s tongue.

“Scum! Villains!” And then a host of detrimental words Myal was vaguely shocked—though not astounded—she knew.

After delivering these epithets, she stood simmering, like any spoiled noble girl who had not got the masculine treatment she supposed was her right.

It all seemed so real. The hollow gate, wide open and unguarded, yet like a score of similar town gates Myal had gone in and out of. The angry female. The soft cool vapours of night. The gauzy sounds of people and action going on in the vicinity: hoofs, feet, metalware, voices, wheels and occasional bells; a dog barked somewhere, lusty and demanding. There was even a vague smell like baking bread—

The only wrong note was the half-mooned darkness. All this clamour of an industrious town in the forenoon, carried on at midnight.

“As for you—”

Myal turned automatically. Ciddey Soban glared at him.

“Damn it,” said Myal defensively, “what was I supposed to do? You’re all ghosts.”

“Be quiet.”

He quailed at the venom in her eyes, and said, fawningly, “Well, they were—”

“You offered me your protection,” she snarled.

“Did I?”

“And you let them molest me, threaten me with a sword.”

“And you wanted to lead me into town by a ribbon.”

“That’s all you’re good for. Someone’s lapdog.”

“They’d have beaten me up, while you—”

“I’d have laughed.”

“I think,” said Myal, turning from the gateway, “I’ll just—”

“No you won’t. As a protector, you’re ridiculous, but you’re all I have. You’ll stay with me. You, and that silly stringed instrument.”

She walked in the gate. She was imperious. It would be simple to retreat, dodge away into the forest that stretched from the slope, pressed like a huge crowd against the causeway, rank on rank of bladed darkness which was trees. Simple to retreat. Or was it simple? Something which was more than the willpower of the ghost girl was enticing him toward that gate.

A sudden uncanny notion struck Myal, unformed yet menacing. He had remembered the way the riders had threatened him by the pool, stating the penalties for those who consorted with the deadalive. Of course, they had been threatening him. But the odd thing was, they had spoken many of the words as they stared at Ciddey. As if they were grinningly, nastily unsure which of the two, the girl or the musician, was the ghost.

And then again, why had they abruptly abandoned Myal to his own—or Ciddey’s—devices at the gateway? As if he did not really matter to them. The undead needed the living to feed from, was that not Parl Dro’s enduring philosophy? So why—