Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee (audio ebook reader txt) 📗

bit simple. He thought she was a water spirit, lying there in hernightgown, with a wreath of flowers on her head and fish swimming about in herhair.”

“What doyou think of that, eh, Parl Ghost-Killer?”

Droremoved his hand from the cup and let the boy fill it again. The crowd had gotitself well into the informative stage, anxious to elicit a response from him.They had commenced pressing rumour and snippets of memory on him like gifts,waiting for him to crow. But the King of Swords merely sat and brooded, lettingthem heap the platter.

They wereputting great emphasis on the stresses of the girls’ two names, telling him nowhow Sidd-dayy andSill-nee hadbeen, loving and near one hour, at each other’s throats the next. Once ortwice, one sister might look at a village man, and then the other sister wouldgo wild, shrieking that such a wooing, let alone marriage, was beneath theSoban blood. When Cilny had made away with herself the previous spring, nobodyhad dropped down in a fit of surprise. When Ciddey demanded the corpse beburned not buried and the ashes delivered to her in a stone pot, not even thepriest had had much to say. The Sobans had always been a pagan tribe, amoraland unstable. Since the death of Cilny, Ciddey was rarely seen. Sometimes,someone might spot her by night, walking along the slopes below the mountain,or up in the tower window, staring out. In her pig-headed way, just like herfather, she expected the village to put food and other essentials at her gate,free of charge, its tithe to her house. With a self-deprecating amused grimace,between shame and pride, the village admitted that it did so. Nobody hadactually considered whether drowned Cilny might come back to haunt. But nowthat they did consider, they would not be amazed if she had.

Drosipped from the third cup.

Thestream-death might explain the ambience at the well, the pulse of supernaturalforce linked to water. The pot of cremated ashes was significant. It was comingtime to reward the crowd with a reaction, and then to damp their fire. As hesat, picturing the flower-wreathed water maiden stretched under the glassystream, he became aware that the musician had moved from the hearth, and wasafter all stealing closer. He slid through and into the crowd with a verypracticed ease, attracting small notice. Intrigued but not astonished, Dro keptstill.

“What doyou say, Parl Dro?” the boy in the apron asked.

“I saythere’s a ghost at the leaning house,” Dro said, virtually what he had said atthe start, but a little eddy of satisfaction drifted up. The musician,instrument across his back now, was filtering through the throng like a curl ofcolour-stained steam.

“What’llyou do?”

“Oh, Ithink I’ll go to bed. That is, if you have a room here I can use.”

Confounded,the crowd muttered. They had expected him to leap at once out through the dooragain, no doubt.

“But aren’tyou going to call on Ciddey Soban?”

“Apparentlynot,” he told them. He rose, paying no heed to the blazing chord that wasstruck in his crippled leg. The musician had halted, about a foot away, mouldedexactly between two burly labourers, just as if he had grown there from a tinyseed planted in the floor. He was only an inch or two shorter than Dro, butlightly built as a reed.

Droregarded the boy in the apron.“The room?”

“I’llshow you. What about Cilny deadalive?”

“Whatabout her?”

There wereangry murmurs now. As he began to walk through, Dro felt the new hardening andcongealing of the press around the table, not wanting to let him go thiscasually after he had worked them to such a pitch. Even in the thick of that,however, Dro was entirely conscious of the featherweight grip that delicatelyflickered out the coin bag from the inner pocket of his mantle. Dro did notglance the musician’s way. A pickpocket’s skill was not one he necessarilydespised, nor did he necessarily grudge its reward.

The boy led Dro to the stair.

“Straightup. Door to the left. Aren’t you going to do anything aboutCilny? You’re supposed to be a legend.”

The crowdsurged sulkily, not looking at Dro, like a woman who thought herself slighted.The musician was tuning the instrument again, leaning on a table, engrossed,dull gold hair falling in his eyes, innocent.

Theelderly boy assumed a sneer as he watched Dro begin the lame man’s crow-likehopping up the stair.

“Well, what a disappointment you turned out to be.”

Dropaused on the landing and turned on the boy the most dazzling and friendlysmile he was ever likely to have received. The Ghost-Killer seemed to bewaiting again. Unnerved, the boy jeered: “A real disappointment. I hope I neverhave to see a worse one.”

“Keep away from mirrors,” said Dro, “and you won’t.”

Hestepped through the left-hand sinister door.

CHAPTER TWO

An hourbefore dawn, Parl Dro was on a narrow wooden bridge above a savage river.Swollen by melted upland snow, the water crashed about the piled stone pylonsof the bridge, snapping its jaws hungrily at those who passed over. But therewas something on the bridge that was worse than the river. It had been a manonce. Now it was a fleshless, long-nailed shape, solidified by years of post-mortemmanifestation, capable of appearing solid and real as the river below. Morereal, actually, than the bridge, whose timbers were in parts rotted away. Hatehad kept it there, a hatred of all who remained alive after it had died.

Therehad been a conflict of wills since moonrise, a battle that had kept the ghostto one end of the bridge, Parl Dro at the other. Only very gradually had eachbeen able to beat a way through the other’s aphysical defences. Only verygradually had each been able to draw nearer to the other and thus to theultimate fight which would decide between them. Dro was certain that thepsychic link was to be found somewhere at the centre of the bridge, the spot atwhich the ghost generally laid hold of those who came there, biting at themwith its long teeth from which the gums had shrivelled away, clawing the organsout of their bodies. For hours, since moonrise, Parl Dro had been wrenching hisway toward that area, while trying simultaneously to hold the ghost