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

been a long brevity of malice. When the struggles inthe water had ended, Ciddey had woken as if from a nightmare. She had beenovercome by horror. With a maniacal strength she had hauled up bucket and chainonce more, the lightweight dead weight draped across it. Ciddey had flung hersister onto the paved yard. She had tried to cudgel the water from her lungs.Weeping more needless water on Cilny’s drowned face, Ciddey had sat and rockedher in her arms, confronting the ultimate loneliness of the deranged house ofSoban. But in the night, Ciddey had carried and dragged her sister’s corpse tothe stream below the mountain. Ciddey had woven her sister a wreath of yellowasphodel, but Ciddey still hoped the current would bear her sister away, out ofsight and mind. Cilny, though, being absolutely dead, sank heavily to thestream’s floor. Even the fierce spring wash of melted snow did not move her.When the men found her and brought her back to Ciddey, Ciddey shaped her miseryand her guilt into another thing. She bore Cilny’s ashes into the tower andworked witchcraft with them. She brought Cilny back to her, and cherished herdead as she had seldom done alive. Parl Dro the exorcist had sundered thatexpiation, and all the murk in Ciddey’s soul transferred itself to him. But shehad found out now, Dro was not to be punished in her stead. Only Ciddeyremained vulnerable, to be her own scapegoat. She lay on the street of GhysteMortua, and waited for nemesis.

ButParl Dro, who was not the sombre angel of divine wrath, did nothing, saidnothing.

Atlast, Ciddey lifted her head. She experienced then a strange wave of emptiness,or was it more a sense of lightness, of the weight of Cilny slipping from herneck?

“Ishall be punished,” she said with curious dignity. “Will you do it? What willhappen?”

“You’vebeen punished,” Dro said. He looked at her wearily. “You’ve punished yourself.”

“Imust suffer in hell,” she said stubbornly. But a clear hard tension was meltingfrom her face, her body.

“Thereisn’t any hell.”

“Whereshall I go, then?’

“Somewhere,”he said. “Somewhere not here.”

“Perhapsnowhere,” she said. She stood up. Suddenly, everything she had fought for, oragainst, no longer mattered to her. She did not see, but the tips of her palefingers, her long pale hair, became in that moment transparent again, as at herfirst manifestation.

“Somewhere,”Dro repeated.

“Well,”she said, “you’d know.” She stared about her. An expression of uninterestedincredulity crossed her face. “They’ve gone,” she said. “The ghosts of theGhyste.”

“They’reweak,” Dro said. “They couldn’t stand too much specific truth of this nature.Left to itself, any ghost will eventually die. It may take centuries, it stillhappens.”

Shestared at the luminous lightless revenant of the town. She even glanced atMyal.

“Whydon’t you,” she said, “go down and take the instrument and get out the toothand tread on it. I’ll tell you which bit of ivory it is.”

ButMyal only flinched aside. He walked away and leaned his forehead against one ofthe ghostly houses. He did not intimate what he thought or meant to do, but heremained, perhaps unconsciously, in earshot.

“Iamready to go away,” said Ciddey to Dro. “I’m tired. I want to. Why can’t I justleave, without the tooth being smashed?”

“Onceyou’ve availed yourself of a link, the bond’s established. You’re tethered,till it’s destroyed.”

“Youdo it,” she said imperiously.

Hesmiled. He looked old and very handsome. Like a sculpture of a man, not a man.The stain of blood on his shirt had disappeared into its blackness.

“Idon’t think so.”

“Idon’t understand,” she said. “And yet—”

“Please,”he said, an elegant, cold plea for tactful silence, which she ignored.

“You,”she said. Her eyes flamed with amazement and knowledge. “Charlatan.”

“Notquite.”

“Impostor.”

“Verywell.”

“Damnyou,” she said, “how dared you—”

“Howdared you?”

Sheshut her mouth. She smiled, her lips closed.

“Ifeel,” she said, “serene. I don’t care about you anymore. I want to go tosleep. Or won’t it be sleep? I don’t mind. Let me go away. Please, Parl Dro.”

“Myal,”Dro said, not looking at him, “go and climb the tree and fetch the instrument.”

Myalturned his head, trying to push it through the transparent wall, somehow notable to.

“Goto hell,” Myal muttered.

“Thereisn’t any hell,” said Ciddey reflexively. She laughed. It was a girl’slaughter. “Perhaps I’ll find Cilny,” she said. “She could punish me. And thenwe could be reconciled. Oh, I’m tired of being here.Can Iget the instrument and break the link?”

“Idon’t know,” Dro said.

“Ihated you,” she said. “How I hated you. My motive for coming back. But you.”

“Please,”he said again.

Sheshrugged.

“Oh,”she said. She glanced again at Myal. “Him, I suppose. I thought you’d have tofollow him into Tulotef,” she said, “because you were in love with him.”

“Iam,” said Dro, “in love with him. He’s my son.”

Threethings happened in a neat and tasteful choreography.

Thegirl widened her eyes, started to question in a gesture of hands rather thanwords; that was the first thing. Secondly, very, very slowly, Myal wrenchedhimself off the wall and began struggling toward them in a kind of brainlesslurch. The third thing negated all previous actions. It was a sound. The soundof tearing cloth. The frayed sling, all that held the heavy musical instrumentto the rough rods of the tree, parting.

Thethree incorporealities left on the ghost street were transfixed. A last,abbreviated dim wail, one single note, drifted up to them. Then the crash ofwood on jagged rock, a wild twanging of wires, scuff of stones, dull dreadfulbouncing, slamming, sliding. The soft little rush of shale, a sharp crack. Thesecond crash, total. Feathers of silence came drifting down.

Ciddeyspun like a cobweb, the skirts of her dress fanning out, forming insectilewings.

“Iwanted it,” she said. “I think I made it happen. I’m glad,” she said. She wept,not the beads of the cold fish stream, only tears. “I want to—” she said. “Iwant to—”

Thedarkness spun like a wheel, spinning her away with it. Sometimes it waspossible to comfort, to smooth the path. The going through could be calm, evenin some cases blissful, thankful.

ButDro stood and looked at the night, feeling only an intense and acrid shame, arejection of everything he had ever done in the name of his so-calledprofession.

Automatically,not really meaning to, he put up his arm to block Myal’s blow when it cameflailing for his jaw. Automatically, Dro