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

of a wilderness or a waste was absent. Close to, more than anything,the corpse of the lake and its vitrified channels looked like some horridamateur sculpting in river clay, set in the sun, and then magnified beyond allbelief and all reason.

Itwas a couple of hours’ climb down to the topmost shelves. Then they walkedabout there for a couple of hours, or glumly sat, staring into the abyss, notspeaking. It was like a mouth into hell, with none of hell’s hellish glamour,not even the warmth of flames.

Later,they went out along a cracked dancing floor of natural brick, observing thesticky shadows that still stuck to the river bottom. Those inadequate watershad been poisoned too. You saw the bones of fish lying thick as fallen leaves,ribbed into the petrifying mud far below. Myal noted that the forest, where ittouched the edges of the lake and its channels, was also dying. Dead treesstood nude, like fishbones grown to great heights. There were no birds, and nobeasts on the ground.

Nowherewas there any sign of the Tulotef which, the landslide behind it, had pouredaway into the lake.

Theysat on a fallen tree as the afternoon began to come, stringing out theirshadows artistically on panes of sun.

“Whereis it, then?” asked Myal. It was the first thing either of them had said,beyond occasional invective, for hours. The conversation on the hill aboveloomed over them, but they had left it there, convincingly inaccessible as thegrass, till they should climb back. Myal carried the instrument in the old way.He could no longer walk through things, as if the instrument, being solid,prevented him.

“Ifyou mean the town,” said Dro, “you’re looking at it.”

“No,I’m not. If the lake’s gone, there should be a ruin lying down there, exposed.Broken roofs and snapped vertebrae.”

“They’rethere. You can’t see them because either the weather and the water’s all butrotted them away, or they’re changing into stone along with the banks.”

“Oh.”Myal picked up a handful of loose flints, glad he could, and tossed them overinto the smear of liquid in the river. They struck with turgid little plops, orcracking sounds where they did not reach the water and rapped fish spinesinstead. The cold white crags beyond the forest stared at the blue sky. Theonly live thing seemed to be the sky. Myal did not look back at the hill wherehe had lain most of the night, with his astral body plastered to Ciddey Soban.“I deduce,” said Myal, “you’ve got some outrageously sagacious plan fordestroying them. I mean what’s left of the ruins.”

“No.”

Myalshifted, looking at Dro warily.

“Butthey’re the psychic link for Tul—for the Ghyste, aren’t they? You have todestroy them.”

“Thekey to releasing the ghost is to change the link. Metamorphosis. The bone hasto be smashed. The shoe has to be burnt.”

“Wellhow are you going to burn and smash all that?”

Drolooked back at him. He appeared older than any line in his face, andcharismatic as a gaunt black cat.

“I’mnot, Myal. I don’t have to. Most of it’s been changed already. Most of it’scrumbled or ossified. That’s sufficient. And what hasn’t, soon will. Anothercouple of winters’ snows, another hot summer, and there won’t be any link lefthere that Tulotef s collective ghost can hold on to.”

“Waita minute.”

Drogazed at him with enormous courtesy.

“Iwas up there,” said Myal. “It was real. They’re strong in—up there. A wholebusy town, and men looking as lifelike as you.”

“Oryou,” said Dro.

Myallooked slightly uncomfortable.

“Areyou going to explain?”

“Yes,I’ll explain.”

Drospoke carefully and steadily, watching Myal. Myal could not always meet theolder man’s gaze. There were about fifteen years between them in age, but itfelt like a century. It felt like a hurt, a wound that had never healed andnever would.

Tulotefhad appeared strong and whole to Myal because he had expected it to be, andbecause he himself was no longer inside the fleshly envelope of mundane humanlife. The streets, the crowds, the great procession; the man he had robbed, theinnkeeper, the bed—even the three riders and their horses in thewood—everything had been there, but where he, and for that matter dead Ciddey,had seen facts there had been only echoes.

“It’sthe stories that are strong, that have got stronger, even as Ghyste Mortuaitself has decayed. The stories Cinnabar believed, after her man startedplaying with magic and ran off with someone else. The stories you hear told allover this end of the country. Yes, the ghosts have got more irrepressible yearby year—in legend. In reality, they’re just a few papers left blowing about inthe woods, and on the hill.”

Drotold Myal about Sable in the forest, living so near the Ghyste.

“Shefrequently sees the ghosts of the Ghyste. They’ve grown solid. She anticipatedseeing them even by day. But that was because she reckoned on seeing them thatway. Or wanted to, and imagined it, for all I know. The giveaway was that shelived close enough to have been easy prey, if they could take her. In thetales, Tulotef abducts any live human in the vicinity to feed off his energy.Cinnabar’s belief again. And mine, long ago, when I studiously learned how toproject my spirit out of my body, in order to come in safely at their gate. No.They’re harmless now to the living. The only victim they can seize on issomeone who couldn’t be a victim at all, someone in the same state asthemselves. Or near it. Ciddey, or you.”

“But,”said Myal.

Hefell silent, remembering how the persons in the town had sometimes been there,sometimes not. Remembering the aimless repetitive activities. Even the threebullies in the wood, who had dragged him from the pool, had seemed to appearout of nowhere. And their grisly jibes about necrophilia between mortal anddeadalive, their turning from Ciddey to him and back again—as if the two newghosts were so fresh, so vital by comparison, the riders might be mistakingone, or both, for the genuinely living.

“But,” said Myal again, “you thought, or you wouldn’thave come here—”

“When I started out, I had good reason to credit amalevolent, sorcerous ghost town at the peak of its powers. Then, to reach herebecame a compulsion. It was a place I had to get to. But I’ve suspected, overthe past days