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

she could not seem to catch hold of it, could not even seem to feelit. Then her senses came clear, and she clung to a mane, and to a booted leg.Looking up, she recognised after all the face of one of the bravos from thewood.

“Sir,”she called, “I beg you. Please listen to me.”

Theman looked down, and gradually seemed to see her, as if he revived from astrange insomniac sleep. But if he remembered their former dealings he gave nosignal. He tried to thrust her away.

“Sir,”she wailed, “I’m well-born. I need to speak to your lord. I must warn him. He’s in danger.”

“Ohyes,” said the mailed rider. A red jewel dazzled gruesomely, as it had besidethe pool when he had lifted the broadsword to slash at her. As it had when thesword had somehow, miraculously, done her no harm. “They all say that. Let mespeak to the lord, they say. Just five minutes. We have penalties forobstruction here.”

Insanely,clinging to the horse and to his leg, she was being pulled backward, borne awaywith the procession. The rider had stopped trying to dislodge her. He leered ather.

“Youdon’t understand. Someone’s coming to your town. He’s a murderer. He’ll kill usall.”

“Upyou come,” said the rider, and hauled her onto the saddle in front of him. Hehad done that last time, too. Did he really not recall? “I might kill himfirst,” he said.

“Yes,”she said, “I’d like that.”

“Whatelse do you like?”

“Letme speak to your master.”

“You’rea newcomer. You can’t speak to the duke.”

“I’mCiddey. Don’t you recall me?”

“Thisis Tulotef. I can’t recall every girl I’ve nodded to on the street.”

Itwas curious. The man seemed to have grown more positive, more human, the moreshe talked to him. And the riders around her were also less indefinite. Theywere laughing together now, or staring about, with hauteur. The horses snorted.Even the bells sounded more intense. Ciddey tried to turn her head, but therider cuffed her. A sentence rose to her lips, and she could no longer deny it,though she shied from its meaning as she said it.

“Theman who is coming here. His name is Parl Dro. Have you ever been told what—a ghost-killeris?”

Anextraordinary thing happened. She had spoken softly, yet her words seemed tointensify as they left her mouth. They blossomed, spread, enveloped the street,hitting the walls of the houses, the stunned sky, like frightened birds thrownfrom an opened cage. And all at once, the unhaltable procession had halted. Itappeared to petrify. The riders sitting bolt upright, the horses’ heads rearedforward. The choir of boys’ voices died away just as the bells fell quiet, asif a wind had dropped.

Ciddeytrembled, or she felt she did. And then, behind her, that man with the tapestryface coming unstitched spoke aloud.

“Bringher here to me.”

Ciddey’srider turned his horse smartly and shouldered back through the stylisedtableau. No one looked at them. If an eye blinked, a tassel fluttered, a beadgleamed, she might only have imagined it. There was no noise in all the town.

Theduke of Tulotef sat and gazed at her.

“Whoare you?”

“ASoban. Ciddey Soban.”

“I’venever heard the name.”

Shewas suddenly icy cold, and lonely, lonely. Among strangers, without friends.There was no one to turn to after all.

“Iwanted to warn you. A traveller is coming who is—”

“Yes,”said the duke. He was like a rag doll. His face was all undone now, and heseemed ready to unravel from head to toe, and be rolled up into some otherdimension.

Shewanted to go home. She wanted not to be afraid, or in search of vengeance. Nolonger a heroine. She wanted obscurity, loss of identity, peace. She wanted ananswer to some question she did not understand how to ask. But Myal—Myal andParl Dro—

“Youmust destroy him. You’ve got the power. There are enough of you,” she saidbitterly, not really sure what she was bitter about, or talking about. “It’syou or him. He’s very accomplished at his trade. I’ve watched him at work. I know.”

Thisman, this duke, had ruled in Tulotef on the night the hill fell on him.

Whenshe drowned, he had already been returning to this place for centuries. Shelowered her eyes. She tasted water, then ashes. She said again, “Destroy him.”

Whenthe sun had gone and the dead town began to come back it did not look quite asit had. The stone streets were less absolute. The tops of the towers werecloudy and the scalloping of the roofs below seemed bathed in a soft lake fog.For, of course, the lake had returned also, filling up its basin and itschannels, as though the world bled water. Yet even the lake was subtly altered,as if it had frozen over in the late summer dusk, become a sheet of luminous,motionless ice. Myal observed these things and their difference to him almostimpatiently. He felt an odd relaxation, because everything had become a farce.He, alive yet a spirit, standing in a ghost town with a real wooden instrumenton his shoulder, the other shoulder resting on the corner of a phantom housethat felt quite real also. In such a situation, either madness or sublimeindifference would result His temperament had automatically chosen the latter.So he leaned there, and watched the endless procession swim by down in thestreets below, and even entertained the notion of improvising a melodiccounterpoint to the bells and the songs, but somehow he never got as far asbringing the instrument forward where his fingers could reach the strings.

Onan opposite wall there was some scribbled graffiti. Myal’s limited educationmade him dismiss the fact he could not read it. Then he realised he could notread it because it was written mirror fashion, back to front.

Hewas waiting for Parl Dro—initially, with glib certainty, which masked a vagueunease. After about half an hour, with a nervous agitation that masked alarm,rage and a curious unaccountable anguish.

Myalwas not sure why he had demanded Dro’s appearance in Tulotef. The argument hehad given was dramatic and inane—proof. Proof of what, and who wanted it? No, Myal wasconscious that he had merely been forcing the issue. And that, as from the verystart of their acquaintance, if such it could be called, Myal had felt afoolish magnetism to Dro, one way