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

sauntered along the tables, tore off a wing of roast chicken,took up a brimming mug of yellow cider.

“Really, my son,” they remonstrated, “guests do not eat in therefectory.”

“This was paid for, wasn’t it,” Myal demanded, frowning at them,“by my friend Parl? Before he had to go on ahead of me. Pass me that loaf. Andthe salt.”

He caught a glimpse of himself in a polished ewer. He had movedabruptly into one of his handsome phases. His hair was burnished, his featureswere chiselled. He looked just like the prince he had always known he reallywas. That man with the strap—how could that thing have been the genetic father of Myal?

Myal lounged in a chair. He had some ham, ordered a bath. He stolethree purses out of two habits.

In the middle of the night, happily bleary from a soak in hotwater and a liver soaked in cider, he wandered back across the compound for thepurposes of nature. Then, with a sense of his own ridiculous generosity, hereturned the purses, though not exactly into their owners’ pockets. He threwthem instead nimbly on the compost heap, at its jammiest section.

He woke feeling virtuous and well. Even the cider had not gonesour on him.

He took the instrument, went to the well, drew some water andsplashed around in the bucket for a while. When he looked up, the sky waslifting into light, and the red-haired woman stood at the gate. He knew hername by then. He had asked one of the priests. The priest had been shocked.Simply saying a woman’s name had seemed to shock him.

She came across the compound, and gave Myal an apple. Theimmemorial symbol did not alarm him. It would have, if it had not been her. Heate the apple, enjoying it, though the Gray Duke’s daughter had once insistedhe and she simultaneously devour an apple hung by cord from a rafter. It hadbeen a rough enterprise. Their teeth had clashed once or twice and he had beenafraid of being bitten. It was a forfeit. Whoever ate least of the apple lost.Myal lost. If he had won, the punishment would actually have been the same.

But he was at ease with Cinnabar. She must admire him very much,but apparently chastely, wanting nothing.

Outside the compound, a roan mare stood docilely. He had notridden in months, years, but the mare had a tender pretty face. He liked her atonce, and shared the last of the apple with her lovingly.

When he was mounted, the instrument on his shoulders, Cinnabarshowed him a bag of provisions tied to one side of the saddle.

“You can keep that. But send my horse back to me.”

“Of course I will,” he said very sincerely.

Cinnabar took his hand and placed in it an amazing little claydog. It looked so realistic, Myal laughed. It was still faintly warm from thefiring. He gazed at Cinnabar, and swallowed. Whenever anyone gave him anything,truly gave it, he was emotionally, almost agonisingly, touched.

“Go on,” she said. She was crying slightly, and smiling at him.Myal, also crying a little and grinning foolishly, nodded several times, andtapped the mare.

She took off at a mercurial gallop that surprised and almostunseated him.

After he got used tothe savage galloping of the roan mare and they were far from the village, Myalrecalled Cinnabar had offered him no directions. That he had found Dropreviously was evidence of Myal’s brilliant powers of deduction. But now he ranblind, or the horse did. Then it occurred to him that Cinnabar had told himthat the horse knew the road. When he considered it, their direction seemedcorrect, for they plunged toward the rising sun.

At first, there were tracks running parallel along the loop of theriver, then veering away.

Low hills flowed up from the land to the left. On the right handthe river plain spread into limitless distances, shining transparently in theyoung morning, through a soft powder of mist.

Then a wood swept down on horse and rider. River and hills andtracks were gone.

Leaves whipped by. Birds flirted across Myal’s face. The horseslowed, and began to pick her way at a fast delicate trot.

Myal was struck by a picture of himself.

He brought the instrument around on its sling and rested it on hischest. The rough material of the sling, the scrawls of paint on the wood andthe uneven chips of ivory sunk in it excited him with a still, reassuringexcitement. The bite of the wires into the old calluses on his fingers filledhim with a wild pure wave of peace. He improvised, using the strings only, adance for the horse.

Sometimes he marvelled when he thought about the complexity of theinstrument. It was so simple to him, yet who else on earth would ever be ableto play it? Two only that he knew of, its inventor, and the strap-brandishingfather—who had never properly mastered it. Myal watched hisfingers curiously. The secret lay in some mysterious affinity betweenprediction, inner ear and action. Each touch on any string of one neck suppliednot only a note, but the pressure to tune in the note on the opposite neck—which supplied, vice versa, its own note and simultaneouspressure for the first note. When the reed was blown, the fingers that causedthese pressures, coincidentally stopped the various holes, activating in turnother notes. But how could one man carry three or more opposing harmonies, allinterrelating, dependent upon each other, in his brain at once. In fact, whenMyal played the entire assemblage of the instrument at once, six or seven oreven eight lines of melody could emanate from it, chords, descants andcontrapuntal fugues.

The mare liked the music.

Sunlight rained through the leaves.

He stayed in the saddle until they came out of the wood on a rockyslope up in the air.

A huge landscape sprawled away on all sides. He was high enough toobserve the strange natural quarterings of the land, divided like a board gameby dim smoke lines of trees, the slashes of ravines, troughs of valleys. Theriver, a last partition, spilled to the south, slender as a tear. There were noroads that Myal could see. Dismounted, he peered down the craggy slope.

“Lost the way yet?”