Kill the Dead(70)

By the time Parl Dro walked over that mountain, and toward the Soban house, he had become truly the King of Swords, Death, an emperor of ghosts. And of deception. The deception of others, and of himself.

For here was a deadalive who had been trained to know every pitfall, every giveaway. He made no mistakes. The rain dampened his garments. The dust brushed over him. He paused to eat and drink. He slept. He made love. He could bleed, and scar, briefly. Though not, of course, die. He walked in agony on a whole but ruined leg, remembering only the ghoul on the bridge—yet, covering such distances—climbing rocks, and trees.... He would lever up the catch on a door rather than pass straight through it. And often, though maybe not always when there was no one by, he would manifest in daylight. He could even fool his fellow dead.

A true ghost, he had fed from the living. And he had fed from Myal. He, not Ciddey, had begun to drain him. Though presently, Dro had unconsciously recognised what he did, and tried to pull away, just as Myal, as frantically, kept after him, attracted, making excuses, snared. And then, from some well of discipline and will inside himself, Parl Dro had managed yet another feat to which ghosts did not generally apply themselves. He had ceased drawing off Myal’s living energy. Dro had begun to build a facsimile of that force instead, as with all his other extraordinary powers, within himself—a self-perpetuating flame. Even in retrospect, he was uncertain when this transfer had taken place. Like all ghosts, he obscured, at that time, his own nature from himself, as he had obscured his need of Myal before.

Myal was psychic. He had inherited that from Dro. It had enabled him to follow Dro, when Dro had truly meant not to be followed, or seen, or found. Myal had other qualities besides, qualities Dro had never had time to accumulate, and which Myal had not had the scope to develop. Myal, who could be more stupid and ineffectual than Dro could ever have dreamed of being, live or dead, had some glimmering sequin inside him, brain or spirit, that had sprung out of the soul of the world. Dro could not destroy that, whatever he might now feel about his own condition.

Some part of him had known always, of course, that he was dead. However powerful and extraordinary, still dead. He had gone after the ghost of Cilny with an unlawful dedication—the dedication of one who slays the plague victim in terror of perceiving the same symptoms in himself. The Ghyste had been a similar fixation. But now that he had confronted himself and what he was, now he knew he should be going, as Ciddey had gone at last so blithely and with such grace, shaming him—now he could not leave the world. For the link must be metamorphosed—burnt, crushed, dissolved. Dro’s link was Myal. In order to be free of his own imitation life, Dro would have to take Myal’s life. Dro would have to kill his son. It was Myal’s apparent death that had first shocked Dro back toward self-realisation. He could not face that death again, not even with his own as the result of it.

One alternative remained. To get away from Myal now and forever. For though he did not need to feed from Myal’s life force anymore, Myal was the motive, the rope that bound Dro to the world, or rather to which his deadaliveness clung. Cinnabar had grasped that fact, while not even comprehending it. Unless she had. She had thrust Myal into Ghyste Mortua as Dro’s safeguard, his mental anchor in the midst of supernatural chaos. Yes, probably she had known it was a demon lover in her bed sixteen seas deep. Just as she had known he saw Myal’s mother in her. Just as she had known it all.

Myal was sitting now, staring at the earth. He cried easily, not necessarily a flaw, though plainly he himself categorised it as such, for he attempted to hide the crying from the weird dead father at the other end of the wall.

Dro had never loved anything, anyone. Not even Silky, who had only been a part of himself, as Myal was.

“I’m sorry about the instrument,” said Dro matter-of-factly.

“Damn the instrument.” Myal cried harder, for he had loved the instrument. He tried harder to hide the crying. He tapped the wall with his long neurasthenic fingers. It did not look like a wall any more. It was a ridge of the bare hill. The building and the blank yellow lamps were gone, and the bells and wheels and hammers and songs. Maybe they had exorcised Tulotef after all. Just talked it away by a recital of cruel truths.

“I’m sorry about everything,” said Dro.

“But you told me.”

“It’s your right to know.”

“But not my right to hope anything good will ever happen.”

Parl Dro picked up a flint. Idly, but swiftly, on the ridge he scratched his name. Backwards.