Kill the Dead(63)

“Enjoying yourself?”

As before, Myal nearly overbalanced. He whirled around with a yell of startled vexation and of relief. Parl Dro stood under one of the yellow lamps, still as if carved. As on the hill, there had been no discernible prologue to his arrival.

“You like giving me heart failure, don’t you,” said Myal.

“Not particularly. It’s too easy.”

“Well, you’re here.”

“So I am. Now what do we do?”

“I—don’t know,” said Myal slowly. “I think we just wait. Something’s going to turn up.”

“Yes, something’s bound to do that.” Dro looked away over the slope to the muddled writhing of the procession. “You realise your psychic abilities,” said Dro, “undisciplined and infantile as they are, have persuaded you to precipitate a crisis.”

“Oh, don’t give me that.”

“I’m afraid that’s exactly what I have given you.”

The procession was spooling up into an alleyway. Myal was suddenly reminded of a flock of sheep, and let out a crow of laughter. The duke-earl of Tulotef, and all his ghoulish court, were coming this way. Insubstantial or not. Harmful or not. Certainly, a crisis.

On the road, they would pass by the inn where Myal and Ciddey had lain together. Maybe that was significant He had noted the inn sign jutting out across the street between the roofs quite some way down. And though he could not see it, the girl would still be trapping the unicorn by its horn and the mailed warrior slashing off the unicorn’s head. A castration symbol? Or maybe a simple omen. Myal turned back to Dro.

“I think Ciddey’s with the procession. If so, she’s said something about you to their ruler here—about your line of work. You said Tulotef was weak, but how weak is Tulotef s weak? They could kill you, could they?”

“Unless I was here in astral shape only, as you are. As I originally planned to be. As you dissuaded me from being, did you not?”

“I’m sorry. I thought—you said—”

“They don’t kill. Not randomly any more. They haven’t the energy left to do it, and there’s no true incentive. Except with an exorcist. That hate goes as deep with the deadalive as fear of the deadalive goes with most humans.”

Myal choked down presumably imaginary nausea, and said, “Get going. Run.”

“Run? You forget I’m a cripple,” said Dro very graciously.

“Well hobble then. I’ll stall them.”

“With what? Handstands? Communal singing?”

“I’ll think of something. They can’t hurt me. Can they?”

“Probably not. I wouldn’t swear to it, under the circumstances.”

“I know you’ve got a death wish,” said Myal coldly. “Any kind of murderer has. But don’t indulge it here and now. Go on.”

“While you bravely fight them off. That’s what it will come to.”

“Go.”

“Have you ever fought the deadalive?”

“Will you—”

Parl Dro stood like an emperor, watching the tide of death sweep around corners, between walls, up steps. Myal shouted at him, then muttered, then ceased communication of any sort. He too watched, with a fundamental sinking of his non-present vitals, until the crimson spectres of Tulotef s priesthood brimmed up into the street, directly in front of him. Priests, a choir, even the carriages had somehow negotiated the route. Then everything folded aside, and a wedge of mailed riders came pushing through.

Myal saw through all of them. Not literally, since they appeared solid enough; their insubstantiality proclaimed itself in other, more insidious ways. Yet his eyes seemed to pierce them all, like any unknown mob, seeking and resting themselves on a single familiar face, which obviously was Ciddey’s.

White as some wicked flower, she sat on a horse which a man in mail had been leading. His face was a blank, as if set there ready to be sketched in with emotion, personality. All their faces were the same. Except for hers.

There was also a man riding close at her side, clothed in an oddly far-off glitter. He must be the duke. Ciddey, not taking her eyes from Myal, made a small gesture to this man, deferring to him. Yet the duke of Tulotef hung there, somehow creditable only because Ciddey included him in her awareness.

And it was Ciddey who spoke.

“Hallo, traitor,” she said to Myal. And then she called him a very foul name. Although Myal had been on the receiving end of it countless times, it unnerved him especially, coming from her kissable lips. But her eyes had gone past him. They had fixed on Parl Dro. “Lord duke,” said Ciddey, “the man in black is the man I told you of. The murderer. He killed my sister virtually in front of me. My darling sister, all I had in the world. I swore to have justice from him. I dedicated myself to it. I came all these miles to your town and your court to ask it.”