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

Thoughhe dreaded it, Parl Dro now had his own confession to make.

“Youcan’t, you couldn’t be my rotten father. Unless you started very young. Isuppose you could have. I was too scared to—there was never any opportunity—no, I was too scared. A carter’s wife seduced me when I was twenty. Twenty. She was the first. I wasgrateful. You must have been at it when you were fourteen. Or less. And with amature woman. That doesn’t seem very salubrious. Did it with her andstrolled—sorry, hobbled—off and left her. Left her with mydrunken pig of a father—only he wasn’t. No wonder he hated me. Whenever hethumped me, he was thumping you. I don’t blame him. I’d like to smash your headin. Father.Travelling ghost-killer. Can do clever tricks with knives. You’ll have to teachme that one. Padding, metal plate, fake blood. Or is it the knife that’s thetrick, the blade bends or something? You really will have to teach me, Daddy.You owe me something. If it’s even true.”

“Its true.”

“WellI’ve only got your word for it. And either way, what’s your word worth? I’velost the only thing that was any use,” said Myal. “It’s down the slope, inpieces.”

“Whereyou originally tried to throw it to save me from Ciddey and Tulotef,” said Dro.“I realised then, you’d have to be told.”

“Idon’t want to hear anything else,” Myal said.

“And,frankly, I don’t want to tell you anything else,” Dro answered.

“Great.We’ll keep it that way.”

Myalgot up. His head bowed forward, eyes on the ground, he strode away, long faststrides that Dro’s crippled leg should have some trouble competing with. Andthen Parl Dro was standing directly in front of him. Myal pulled up, eyesswimming.

“What—howdid you manage that?”

“Thesame way I managed the knife. The same way I got from Sable’s hovel in theforest to this hill in less than a minute.”

“Youtranced yourself, after all,” said Myal. “You’re here in the astral, just likeI am.”

“There’sa low wall behind you. Sit on it.”

Myalretreated a step, and the wall caught the backs of his knees. He sat, notentirely meaning to. “All right.”

“Now,”said Dro, “if you can keep quiet, I’ll explain. Despite the fact I may not wantto, and you may not want to hear.”

Myalgripped his hands together, and stared at them trembling.

“Whydo it, then?”

Drodid not reply. He sat on the wall half a yard away and presently began to speakin a low still voice that did not hurry or slur a single word.

ParlDro, from the age of seventeen a practicing exorcist, had turned forty when hewalked into the wood below the mountain in the dusk, and found a woman withSilky’s golden hair, a woman who was Silky, still alive and maturedto an age that was just a few years less than his own. He had not loved her,but he had found her. And she, responding to some resonance of that finding, orto the simple hunger of her own sparse existence, had come to meet him on theinevitable road. The outcome might have been anything, a parting, or acontinuance. But the outcome had not been permitted to create itself, it hadbeen forced by the arrival of the showman with the drunkard’s face and bellyand the inappropriately stylish musician’s hands. He had been away that night,bargaining for the unique musical instrument which that other drunkard, Soban,had offered him. The showman had meant to bed in a brothel, but in the end theprice of drink, and the price of the instrument, had taken all his cash. Withthe prize in a leather sack, he careered home, all the while wondering if he hadbeen a fool, to his wagon and his wife. And discovered someone had called inthe night. “Come on, I don’t care,” the showman had said. Maybe in thosemoments, with the philosophical detachment of liquor, he did not. But soberingand caring caught him up. He climbed into the wagon then and selected a weapon.It was actually a meat cleaver. He got back on the horse and went after ParlDro, up the mountain, tracking him by pure animal instinct born of hate. Andwhen he reached Dro, the showman swung the cleaver with an unerring intuition,attacking the weakest point, Dro’s crippled leg. The razor-like blade shearedstraight through flesh, sinew and bone, as it was its job to do. The leg wassevered just below the knee.

ParlDro did not know it, knew only agony. He fell away from his assailant, and in asudden panic, the assailant let him go. He turned his horse and fled and soonenough had the wagon on the road again, driving back into the south country.The gold-haired woman, whom he had struck unconscious as his very first deed,before even going for the cleaver, regained her senses in that moving wagon. Bythen the blood and the weapon had been tidied. She assumed her man’s vengeancehad been visited on her alone, or had wished to assume so.

Onthe mountain, having rolled into the narrow channel, Parl Dro lay until hisintelligence went out in pain and blood loss. And after awhile, he bled todeath. Unequivocally. Completely. He was dead.

Hehad come to think, when he lived, that he understood almost all a man couldlearn of the foibles, motivations, methods and devices of the deadalive. Howthey were jealous of the living, returned for retribution, sucked energy fromthose who loved them—particularly kindred—hid their wounds usually from othersand themselves, or, very occasionally flaunted those wounds to inspire terrorand guilt. That rain did not moisten their garments, which were always those ofthe hour of their deaths. That they came by night, because the darkness aidedin masking the flaws of their physical disguise, but also because theirsuperstition made them chary, unless abnormally strong and self-assured, of thebrilliancy of the sun. All those things he had known. They had been helpful.But most of all Tulotef had helped. Not only because it had been his goal onthe day he died— Ghyste Mortua, that essential pilgrimage of so manyghost-killers, the ghost town of ghosts who pillaged mortals—but because, alongwith a motive for return, it had insured that he