Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee (beach read book txt) 📕

close to Myal as ants on honey. They gaped and gasped, and heldtheir breaths and squeaked. As they were thrashed with Myal, and seduced withMyal, and chased with Myal. As they cowered and thieved and played music andmade love and lay in the corners of prisons with Myal.

Asthe dark day thickened and declined, they sagged feebly all about the sick bed,almost dead of second-hand living.

Thena break came in the western overcast, and a ray of low amber sun sheeredthrough a window. Exactly on this cue, Myal’s tidal fever smashed itself topieces on some high and fiery shore. With a sudden sigh, he dropped still anddumb on the mattress, every muscle relaxed, his breathing soft and rhythmic asa low quiet song. A song without words.

Thebrothers shook themselves dolefully. They praised a higher authority, indisappointed voices, for the traveller’s cure. All but one, duty-bound toremain, hurried away.

Thelast priest dozed, dreaming of dinner, which gradually became dinner in theCold Earl’s hall. A naughty girl on a black horse cantered up the room,throwing flowers and fruits to the diners. When she reached the priest, shethrew a furious jailer, brandishing a leather belt, into his lap.

Thepriest woke with a start.

Itwas dark, the sun down and the windows deep blue. He was about to rise andlight the candles when he felt again the extraordinary sensation of a separatelive entity on his knee. Not a brutish jailer, certainly, it was too light. Hechuckled to himself, thinking one of the puppies had strayed into the hostel.He put out his hand gently to pat the beast–and encountered a cool scalyflapping.

Witha yelp, the priest started up, overturning his chair. As he did so, a beam oflight, falling across the room from the half-open door and the refectory beyondthe compound, caught a vague pale swirling in the area of the traveller’s bed.It was rather like smoke, more like water, and in the midst of it somethingslowly turned and floated.

Thepriest felt a horrible drawing sensation like faintness, and he became icycold.

Somehowhe tottered to the door and out of it. He had no thought for his patient,indeed few thoughts at all until he staggered into the lamp-lit refectory.

The innwas filling up with evening trade. The Ghost-Killer was seated on a bench in acorner. He had eaten frugally half an hour before sunset. The flask of wine wastwo-thirds full and stoppered. He was drinking water when the two priestshurried in.

Everyonelooked. Though all the priests drank heartily, they did not do it in the sinfulpublic house.

Moreinteresting yet was the way the brothers rushed immediately to the stranger inthe black mantle.

“Answerme,” cried the fatter of the two priests–both were reasonably fat– “Are you theman we reckon you to be?”

“Let’sstart again,” said Dro lazily. “Who do you think I am?”

“Oneof those lawless and unholy–” rattled off the lesser fat priest.

Theother swiped him, “Be quiet, you fool.” He added to Dro: “We reckon you to beone skilled in the exorcism of undead spirits.”

Drowatched them.

“Andso?”

Thefatter priest contained his dignity. “And so, we require your services, myson.”

Theroom eyed them, ears pinned back. Even the row of cats, perched on the beerbarrels, listened, wide-eyed.

“Thefact is, my son,” said the lesser fat priest, unbending from his distaste, “we’reprobably mistaken, but–”

“Butwe’ve had a strange occurrence in the hostelry where your friend is beingnursed. We feel that you owe us some responsibility, my son.”

“Iconcede,” said Dro, “that one of you may have got out over the wall some night.But to accept both of you as fathers would be biologically unsound. Besides, Ithink the woman misled you. Try a little arithmetic. I’d say I was unlikely tobe the son of either of you, unless you conducted a courtship prior to thewomb.”

Theroom in general made a little explosive crowing noise. Both priests changed colour.The lesser snapped,

“He’sa rogue and a devil. Leave him alone. The idiot brother in the hostel was halfasleep. Here we are, letting ourselves and our habit be insulted, just becausesome imbecile dreamed there was a live fish in his lap.” He flung about,glaring at the room and its inadequately suppressed laughter. He jumped whenParl Dro walked past him and out of the door.

Scramblingthe same way, the two priests observed Dro crossing the street by the steppingstones and going around the wall and through into the compound. They hurriedafter him. In groups, drinkers from the inn began to follow, halting however atthe compound gate.

Thatstretch of street, and the space before the religious building and itssubsidiary architecture, grew bright and cheery with struck tinders, drink andshouted inquiry. Crowd attracted crowd. A hundred persons soon blocked thethoroughfare. Priests swarmed like cream bees back and forth, ordering thecrowd, as they struggled through it, into temporary areas of silence. No directinformation was supplied, but fragment by fragment the tale grew. There was aghost in the hostel.

Thepriests kept their distance from the hostel door, staying actually outside thecompound, as the crowd had done. Parl Dro had paused in the compound ofnecessity, since the brotherhood had nervously barricaded the hostel door withlogs, posts and baskets—as if a ghost would normally fear to pass straightthrough such domestic trivia. Dro tossed and thrust these items aside, thencrashed open the door, crashing it shut again as soon as he was inside.

Thehostel was black now, with black starless cavities of windows. Picking up thepriest’s toppled chair, Dro slung it against the door timbers, a barricade witha new purpose—to keep any other live thing out.

Theroom was cold and dripping—dank as someone’s dungeon.

Atfirst, there was nothing else, except that the racket of the swelling crowd inthe street seemed unduly muffled and far away.

Dro’seyes dilated to pierce the gloom. Soon, he was seeing well, via the cat-sightof the extra seventh sense. He did not touch the candles or the tinder box. Nowand then a dart of light from the host of tinders outside would streak over thewall. But slowly, the brightness of these darts grew dull. Then he began tohear the melodious winnowing of sound, the sound of the stream below themountain. Cilny’s stream. And Ciddey’s.

Myal,whom the priests had courageously abandoned–more, trapped inside with theunknown terror–had remained