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

natural scoop in the earth, a few stones to contain and conduct the heat,dry twigs for the base, those less dry set near to cook out moss or rain beforebeing added.

“You’revery good,” said Myal admiringly.

Dro litthe fire and sat, his back against a poplar trunk, his hood pushed off. Thatshadowy king’s face, gilded by flame, intimidated Myal, who stood awkwardly, asif waiting to be asked to sit down. Without warning, Dro’s glowing black eyesfixed on him. The stare was profound, hypnotic, ruthless and inimical. Myalwrithed under it, then snapped like one of the twigs.

“Sothis is the end of our beautiful friendship, is it? You really think I’m thatmuch of a dead loss, do you?”

Dro’seyes never moved, did not even blink. Just his mouth said, “I really think youare.”

“Inthat case, I’m off.” Myal added sarcastically, “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“Yourlife must be a series of departures.”

Ragingand impotent, Myal turned on his heel and walked straight into a tree.

Havingdisengaged himself, he strode away along the side of the ravine, far enough tobe out of Dro’s sight. He lay down where a boulder provided partial shelter anda partly reassuring anchor at his spine. He hugged the instrument and curledhimself together around it. The earth was growing cold and magnetically still.

He laylike that some while, feeling alone and dwarfed under the wide night, inventingcutting rejoinders to Parl Dro’s comments, blaming his own status and personfor all the ills life had showered on him.

He fellasleep and dreamed Cinnabar’s clay dog had got out of his pocket and wasbarking and frisking in the meadow, until one of its jumps broke it on a stone.Red blood flowed from the clay and Myal wept in his sleep. For comfort, hisdream hands closed on wire strings and began to play them. It was the song hehad made for Ciddey Soban.

Any compunction Parl Dro mighthave felt was inevitably tempered by the realisation that the crazy minstrelwas even now probably less than a hundred feet off. Not that Dro wasparticularly inclined to compunction. From thirteen until he was fifteen, hehad worked his way up and down various tracts of land, now as herder, now asfarmhand, now as escort for or carrier of trade goods, and he had learned hisown methods of survival. Myal Lemyal, from the look of things, had had a lifeas rough, dangerous and soul-destroying. His methods of survival were not ParlDro’s, yet they were methods and he had survived. Dro had more respect for Myal’sabilities than Myal could guess. And less time for him than even Myal’sparanoia intimated. It was not aversion exactly, but simply that Dro’ssingularity had grown to be a habit. He would break from it for a day, a night,now and then. But he was used to being companionless. Used to himself as seenonly through his own implacable eyes.

Atfifteen, when he was still capable of becoming reasonably gregarious, andexceedingly drunk, Parl Dro had accepted a bet, for a pound bag of silver, tosleep the night in a haunted barn. At the time he had done it for the cash, butalso out of a sense of cultivated contempt. Something in him had, for twoyears, been vehemently denying that night when Silky had come back to him underthe lightning-blasted apple tree. He did not believe in ghosts at fifteen.

He hadreclined on the straw and the reeds in the barn, now and then drinking from thewineskin the men had provided, vaguely lit by a hanging lamp—the bargain hadnot stipulated a vigil in the dark. Just before the sun went, his hosts hadshown him the place where the ghost came through out of nowhere. They had alsoshown Parl the cindery glove, pinned to a post in the floor. They haddiscovered the rudiments, and pointed to the glove, saying, “That’s why itcomes.” Another told how a man had once tried to destroy the glove by throwingit in a hearth fire. But as soon as the thumb began to singe, the man had feltdeathly ill. He snatched the glove from the flames before he knew what he wasdoing. Now they boasted about the deadalive revenant in the barn. They invited travellersto sleep there. The last man who had accepted the bet, they assured Parl, hadgone stark mad. Parl had nodded, smiling. He expected tricks but nothingunworldly. He lay on the straw and thought about the bag of silver, which hehad convinced himself he wanted. He ignored the sense of horror that lay overthe barn. At midnight the ghost came.

It nolonger much resembled anything human, though naturally by now it appeared solidand three-dimensional. The physical trauma of its death had stayed with it,which was unusual, and in this case, obscene, for it had been hacked to piecesby enemies. It came from thin air, shrieking with agony, its flesh in ribbons,its eyes put out.

Parl’simpulse was normal, and was to run away. Something would not let him. He foundhimself staggering to the post where the glove was pinned. And the awful,shrieking, eyeless thing came blundering after him. A moment before it collidedwith him, Parl cast the wineskin he discovered he was still holding straight upinto the hanging lamp.

Thelamp burst with a crack of glass, and fiery oil and wine splashed over thestraw. In seconds, the barn was on fire, full of light and smoke and roaring.The live dead thing had by then seized Parl, screaming and pressing him intothe terrible still-bleeding gaping of its wounds. Parl would have burned alongwith the linking glove, if somehow the extraordinary power of will that was inhim—latent, yet stronger than any power he had known he had, stronger thanmuscle or brain or the drives of hunger, sex, ambition or fear—if somehow thatpower had not sprung from him and thrust the deadalive whining and snarlingaside.

Theglove flared a few instants later, and the dreadful noises stopped. The blindedrigid face of the ghost-thing suddenly relaxed, as if its searing hurt had goneaway. It faded quietly in the smoke, and Parl Dro broke out of the barn and ranlike a dog-fox for the wood.

Helooked back when he was on higher ground,