Kill the Dead(67)

But Parl Dro, who was not the sombre angel of divine wrath, did nothing, said nothing.

At last, Ciddey lifted her head. She experienced then a strange wave of emptiness, or was it more a sense of lightness, of the weight of Cilny slipping from her neck?

“I shall be punished,” she said with curious dignity. “Will you do it? What will happen?”

“You’ve been punished,” Dro said. He looked at her wearily. “You’ve punished yourself.”

“I must suffer in hell,” she said stubbornly. But a clear hard tension was melting from her face, her body.

“There isn’t any hell.”

“Where shall I go, then?’

“Somewhere,” he said. “Somewhere not here.”

“Perhaps nowhere,” she said. She stood up. Suddenly, everything she had fought for, or against, no longer mattered to her. She did not see, but the tips of her pale fingers, her long pale hair, became in that moment transparent again, as at her first manifestation.

“Somewhere,” Dro repeated.

“Well,” she said, “you’d know.” She stared about her. An expression of uninterested incredulity crossed her face. “They’ve gone,” she said. “The ghosts of the Ghyste.”

“They’re weak,” Dro said. “They couldn’t stand too much specific truth of this nature. Left to itself, any ghost will eventually die. It may take centuries, it still happens.”

She stared at the luminous lightless revenant of the town. She even glanced at Myal.

“Why don’t you,” she said, “go down and take the instrument and get out the tooth and tread on it. I’ll tell you which bit of ivory it is.”

But Myal only flinched aside. He walked away and leaned his forehead against one of the ghostly houses. He did not intimate what he thought or meant to do, but he remained, perhaps unconsciously, in earshot.

“I am ready to go away,” said Ciddey to Dro. “I’m tired. I want to. Why can’t I just leave, without the tooth being smashed?”

“Once you’ve availed yourself of a link, the bond’s established. You’re tethered, till it’s destroyed.”

“You do it,” she said imperiously.

He smiled. He looked old and very handsome. Like a sculpture of a man, not a man. The stain of blood on his shirt had disappeared into its blackness.

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “And yet—”

“Please,” he said, an elegant, cold plea for tactful silence, which she ignored.

“You,” she said. Her eyes flamed with amazement and knowledge. “Charlatan.”

“Not quite.”

“Impostor.”

“Very well.”

“Damn you,” she said, “how dared you—”

“How dared you?”

She shut her mouth. She smiled, her lips closed.

“I feel,” she said, “serene. I don’t care about you anymore. I want to go to sleep. Or won’t it be sleep? I don’t mind. Let me go away. Please, Parl Dro.”

“Myal,” Dro said, not looking at him, “go and climb the tree and fetch the instrument.”

Myal turned his head, trying to push it through the transparent wall, somehow not able to.

“Go to hell,” Myal muttered.

“There isn’t any hell,” said Ciddey reflexively. She laughed. It was a girl’s laughter. “Perhaps I’ll find Cilny,” she said. “She could punish me. And then we could be reconciled. Oh, I’m tired of being here. Can I get the instrument and break the link?”

“I don’t know,” Dro said.

“I hated you,” she said. “How I hated you. My motive for coming back. But you.”

“Please,” he said again.

She shrugged.

“Oh,” she said. She glanced again at Myal. “Him, I suppose. I thought you’d have to follow him into Tulotef,” she said, “because you were in love with him.”

“I am,” said Dro, “in love with him. He’s my son.”

Three things happened in a neat and tasteful choreography.

The girl widened her eyes, started to question in a gesture of hands rather than words; that was the first thing. Secondly, very, very slowly, Myal wrenched himself off the wall and began struggling toward them in a kind of brainless lurch. The third thing negated all previous actions. It was a sound. The sound of tearing cloth. The frayed sling, all that held the heavy musical instrument to the rough rods of the tree, parting.