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

“No,”he said stubbornly.

Hefollowed her up the steps and she flounced haughtily ahead of him again. Theyemerged on a platform and beheld all the town spilled down the hill, aboutthree quarters of a mile of it. There were towers, as the story said, slim andtall, with crenellated baskets of stone at their tops. Alleys wound and roofsoverlapped each other in slaty scales. Everything was lightless yet dotted byyellowish swarms of lamps, and everything was also apparent in enormous detail,as if illumined by a cool black sun of vast radiance. Beyond Tulotef, the dramaof the landscape. The star-channelled lake was opened by the moon, or by thesupernatural effulgence of the town, a plate of silver chains, flickering,winking, as if under the flare of a midsummer noon—and yet colourless. The sameoccult rays hit the blades of distant mountains which rose from the forestbeyond. White as winter they were, as described. And the forest was a blacksnow which had carpeted the rest of the earth.

Thecountry was silent as—yes, as the grave. But the grave itself banged and sangand laboured, cascades of noise flowering up from the streets below. And nowthat he looked, Myal could see a colossal procession winding through the broadlower thoroughfares. Flatly red-winged torches, the stagnant flash of brazenvessels giving off a gray-gold shine, as if in a picture, light without light.There were priests in the concourse, women in gowns of silver tissue, perhapsthe lord of the town himself. Bells rattled the night off their clappers andout of their pear-shaped sound boxes.

“I’mcold,” said Ciddey Soban.

“Areyou?”

“Yes. Won’t you play? The duke or the earl ofTulotef might hear you. You could be a court musician.”

“I’vebeen that. It didn’t suit me. I—had to leave.”

“Youweren’t good enough.”

“I was too good,” said Myal mournfully. “The onlything I can do well, and I do it too well, and everyone hates me.”

“Pleaseplay for me, Myal.”

“No.”

“I command you. I am a Soban. You’re just riffraff,a vagabond. Do it. Play!”

“Ican’t.”

“Whynot.”

“Idon’t know.”

Suddenly someone jostled Myal. He and the girl werethrust together. There was a big crowd on the platform. They had been there allthe time, unnoticed, or else they had just evolved. They were now completelyreal and three-dimensional, they even smelled human—leather, sweat, scent,wine. Their object was to view the great procession choking its way through thestreets.

“Mindyourself,” someone said to Myal.

Someoneelse trod on his foot and hurt him.

Ciddeylay shivering on his chest.

With a slow dim panic, he realised that bodiespressed in his back where the instrument should have been. He felt stupidlyacross himself for the frayed embroidered sling, and it was not there.

He must have set the instrument down and forgottento take it up. No, absurd. What then? He had only imaginedhe had brought it with him from the ridge? But he had experienced its weight.It had actually slammed into him two or three times. Why then had he replied hecould not play it?

Thecrowd seemed to exist, but had not a moment ago.

Theinstrument did not exist any longer, but had.

Ghosts’concepts. The wills and beliefs and fancies of—ghosts.

Ciddeyclung to him, pulling down his head toward her face. Jammed in the crowd, hekissed her, his mind wandering around and around behind his closed eyes.

“ParlDro will follow you,” she whispered, digging her long nails into his arms. “Andbring the instrument with him.”

“Maybe.Yes. I can’t tell.”

“Hewill.” She smiled at him like a wolf. Then, as once before, she grewappallingly defenceless. “Look after me,” she moaned.

Aheavy man leaned on Myal drunkenly. Somewhere another girl in the crowd waswhispering of a potion she had made to entice a man to come to her. Myal found,inadvertently almost, he had lifted the drunken man’s money bag from hismantle. Ghost money. What did it matter?

Theysought an inn, the way travellers might be expected to in an unknown town. Thesign was richly painted, its colours shades of pallor, brass and dragon’sblood. In the picture, a maiden held a unicorn helpless by its horn as awarrior in mail sheared off its head. Myal grimaced at it. Near the inn, theusual stream ran down the street. A cat carved of marble sat on one of thestepping stones, and Myal tried to pet it before he realised.

Mensat drinking at the inn tables. Lights burned and a fire, none of them givingglow or heat to the big room, only a hellish localised motion. An innkeepercame, and the thief paid for a room with his stolen money. Ciddey swept up thestair like a great lady. They ordered neither food nor drink. Like the lightsof Tulotef, sustenance would be phantasmagorical and unnecessary. And on thestair, Myal asked himself: “The three riders gave me a drink. Or did I imagineit? Ghost-pretend. Surely I’m hungry?” But he was not, and he knew why not. Hehad died. The dead had killed him. It hadn’t been a faint, but death. Then theyhad brought him here as a jest. And if Parl Dro came after him, Myal would haveto be properly scared, like any other ghost confronted by an adept andprofessional ghost-killer.

Ofcourse, all returning deadalive must have a link. Myal knew what his must be.The instrument. Which was very bizarre, because Ciddey—

“Don’tsuppose,” she said, as they entered the room, “that we’ll share this bed. Theincident in the wood was a game. I wouldn’t come near you normally. You canhave the chair. By rights you should sleep on the floor, dog.”

Thebed had curtains like a black crow’s wings. The narrow window stared toward thelake. The procession still glided by, two streets below. It had gone on and on,for almost two hours. Assuming, of course, it was at all possible to reckontime here. The moon had moved, however. Perhaps it was. Myal peered in thebloodless fire, and wondered why he was not gibbering with terror and despair.

“I’mcold,” said Ciddey from the large black bed. She held out to him her smallnarrow hand. He was not afraid of her, either, nor did he want her any more.But he went to her, and presently got into the bed with her. They kissed andclung, in a sad, lazy, sensual nothingness. She murmured at his ear,