by Tanith Lee
Delight had turned to a dull physical ache. He felt sick. He was afraid. Gradually, he heard the silence of the girl in the pool, and half turning, he glimpsed her. Her face was raw with rage and terror.
Out of his own terror, Myal made himself look up, beyond the legs of the horses.
They wore mail, the three men, and great cloaks, furled like wings. A murky jewel flashed on a hand or wrist. Another smouldered muddy red. Unfriendly faces made of marble and framed by unfriendly courtly wavelets of hair glared at Myal, then at the pool, the girl.
“You,” one of the men said, not looking at Myal.
“Me?” asked Myal.
“You are a fool, to go with that. Don’t you know live flesh from necrophilia?”
Myal choked. He crawled into a bush and attempted to throw up. None of them interfered with him. He heard a dim ominous exchange over his dry spasms. The three riders, some duke’s bodyguard or earl’s men from the look of them, were haranguing the girl in the pool. They called her filthy names, the word “deadalive” was mingled contemptuously among them. They did not fear her, so much was obvious. They spat on the ground, saying she was a thief. They promised her weird punishments that had to do with graves, worms, flames, wheels. And she, she shrieked back at them, her voice high as a bat’s.
Myal slumped on his side, the instrument wedged under his shoulder blade, his knees under his chin. He had some vague incentive to crawl away, to get out of the wood and up the slope, to Parl Dro. Before he could realise the ambition, one of the riders came over, leaned from the saddle, and yanked Myal back again onto open turf. The rider glared at Ciddey.
“There are punishments for those who consort with stray ghosts. The forest hereabouts is rife with bloody undead. Didn’t you know? Those who harbour them or encourage the deadalive, deserve to join them. Not gently, either. Like to know some penalties?”
“No, thank you,” said Myal politely.
“I’ll tell you anyway. There’s one school of thought which advocates slashing off the offending part—a hand, say, if you gave them a hand to hold; an ear, if you listened to them, and a tongue if you spoke to them. In your case, rather a nasty amputation, in view of what you were considering doing.”
It was so vile, it had to be a joke.
Myal laughed queasily. The men laughed, loud and long, riding around and around him, making his head spin. Then one spurred his horse straight into the pool. The animal looked fearsome as it leaped, eyes rolling, mane flying, the ivory counters of its teeth bared. As the forehoofs hit the water, the rider’s hand whirled up, gripping a cleaver of sword. Myal saw Ciddey’s white face flung back and the sword crashing down on it. He imagined the impact of skin and bone, green-cinder eyes, kissing mouth, with honed excruciating steel. Someone threw a colourless bag over his head and her scream became a long thin whistle, or a long thin wire, and ceased to matter.
He came to, lying face down in a horse’s mane, legs either side in an uncomfortable riding posture, hands securely tied under the beast’s neck.
The horse was running. Two other horses ran, one on each side. The right-hand horse had two riders, the left seemed strangely overcrowded too, but its nearer rider held the reins of Myal’s horse firmly in his fist.
Everything had ended, inevitably, in misery, mistake and injustice.
Surely when they killed the girl, they had become aware she was not a ghost? Maybe that made them more dangerous. Was it her corpse over the second horse? Supposedly, any who lived at all close to such a legend as the Ghyste, would be unreasonably wary of apparitions. Myal should have thought of that, so should Ciddey.
Ciddey....
The idea of her filled him with fright. Not because of her death by the sword, suddenly, but because—because—Could it be these madmen had been correct? Perhaps the sword was holy in some way and could effect exorcism—Myal had heard, even sung, of such things. If she had been dead.... He felt himself on the verge of passing out again, and struggled to keep hold of reality.
“Where are we going?” he asked the men, those courtly riders. The question was familiar. He had asked Dro, the morning he had had the fever, also slung over a horse, the same thing. Dro had not answered. One of the men did, in his fashion.
“It’s a surprise. Excited?”
The horse bounced over a gap in the ground. Myal slid, the instrument slammed him in the spine and the animal’s withers slammed him in the face.
He cursed the instrument with hysterical relief that it was still with him.
Everything else was horrifying and Myal was helpless. He might as well pass out again, there was nothing he could do. The colourless bag swung up once more and he rolled over into it.
“No,” someone said.
Myal’s head was wrenched around. A black fiery juice trickled into his mouth. He swallowed, gagged, swallowed. The horses were static. There was an undeniable sense of arrival. Somewhere.
Myal opened his eyes.
He could not see very far, or very much, from his sideways face-down position, but they seemed to be on some kind of bridge or causeway. Beyond lay open night, towers and turrets of forest shearing away. Forward, there was light.
One of the men bent over Myal, obscuring the limited view completely.
“No, you mustn’t faint anymore.”
“Sorry,” muttered Myal.
“We want you to ride in proudly. There’s no pride for us having caught you if you snivel and swoon and sprawl all over the horse like a bundle of washing.”
“No, I can see that.”
“If you’re good, we’ll let you sit upright.”
“And when we get through the gate, you could shout and thrash about a bit,” said another, smoothly. “The notion being that you’re brave, and furious at capture. Do you see?”
“Then we’ll cuff you, beat you into submission. It’ll look fine. So will you.”
“I’d rather—” said Myal. A voice cut him short.
“I’ve a better idea,” said the voice.
He could not twist his head any farther, could not see. Then he no longer needed to.
“Well,” said the bending man, “what’s your idea, Ciddey?”
“My idea,” said the voice of Ciddey, “is that I rope him about the neck with a ribbon, and lead him in that way. You can follow.”
The men laughed. The laugh was dark and menacing.
“You’re bold, for a newcomer,” said one.
Ciddey did not laugh. She slipped from the second horse. She walked to where Myal lay, his head turned painfully to stare at her.
“What a pity, though,” she said, “I don’t seem to have a ribbon.”
Suddenly the bonds that held Myal to the horse’s neck gave way, untied or cut by one of the men. Myal lay, with his arms dangling, till one of the others pulled him upright.
“Are you bewildered, Myal Lemyal?” asked Ciddey Soban. She put her hand on his thigh. Her hand was cold as winter snow. “They didn’t kill me. It was a test. They do kill. But not—a friend.”
Then Myal looked ahead.
He saw the sloping crenellated walls, the sturdy gates, the light of lamps that overpowered the light of the stars and phantomised the moon. And far below, he made out the inner rim of a colossal water. Though from this vantage he could see only two of its starlike raying channels.
One of the men slapped him on the arm, a hard freezing slap. Myal knew it all by then. He did not need them to say to him, one by one, most courteously, “Welcome to Tulotef.”
After an interval of oblivion, Parl Dro opened his eyes.
He had told Myal to wake him after three hours, but Dro had not reckoned Myal would last so long. Dro’s inner clock roused him accordingly.
He woke silently and stilly, fully alert within seconds. Not yet moving, he let his eyes seek over the ridge. He had registered immediately that the musician was absent, but that the instrument remained, propped by a tree, trailing its sling like a frayed embroidered tail. Dro might have as
sumed Myal had stolen off for the usual private purpose of nature, save that, to Dro, the whole area seemed imperceptibly to sing and glow, as if some kind of mineral had fallen from the sky.
Presently Dro sat up, rose, walked across to the spot beside the instrument where Myal had been sitting. The grass was still flattened somewhat— not by a seated figure, but a prone one. Myal had slept at his watch as Dro had grimly predicted. Looking at it, Dro felt the familiar signals, the shift of hair on scalp and neck, the tiny ratlike beast which seemed to scuttle up his spine.
Parl Dro stood and looked toward the sea of forest that flooded the valleys below. The moon was high, but there was scarcely any wind to bring the muted sounds of the woodland up to the ridge.
Then he heard the thin clear note, like that of a bird, or even of a reed pipe, piercing acutely as a needle through the shadow and the foliage a mile below.
There was nothing else, or nothing else he heard.
The fire was almost dead. Dro killed it quickly and thoroughly with a couple of blows.
He picked up Myal’s musical instrument, held it a moment, then, unwillingly, slung it across his own shoulders. Its touch, weight, shape and aura—of another man’s inner world?—disturbed him.
Abruptly, Dro spoke one foul obscenity to the night. Then he swung himself off the ridge and onto the tricky ground that led almost vertically into the forest. Presently, in the bushes a couple of feet down the slope, he kicked against something, glanced at it, and found Myal Lemyal’s body.
He was lame, and now he carried the dead weight of a nightmarish hell-harp on one shoulder, the dead weight of a man over the other. The man, it was true, was thin and therefore light to carry. Even so, it was nothing he would have wished on himself.
Random, primitive tracks scattered through the forest, as if several balls of twine had been dropped, allowed to roll at will and then metamorphosed into pathways. The night had added a second forest to the first, having planted quick seedlings there at dusk, which rapidly shot up into tall, thick-boled trees made entirely of shadow, and which blocked every aisle and avenue.
Dro had gone by a dry watercourse, a chasm of moss and undergrowth where once there had shimmered a pool. The place shimmered still, a psychic shimmer. The cry Dro had heard on the ridge had come from this spot.
He began to follow a purely unphysical path, then. A kind of razor-edged blind brilliance only he could see.
The moon swung over and away behind him, barely noticed through the gloom and the foliage. Once a fox ran across the invisible track, narrowing its eyes, bristling with fear at the vibrations of the deadalive, which painted the tips of the grasses like fire.
Then, at last, the day began to come.
With sick relief, and with anger, Parl Dro felt the clue fading out on the ground, the air.
Ahead, the night trees planted between the real ones began to crumble and dissolve. Pink dawn sprang through instead. The world opened out into great new spaces; a blade carved the wood, and everything of night was gone, including the vile and shrilling road to Ghyste Mortua the dead had left behind them.
Dro cursed, the same curse as before. He eased the musician’s body off his back, and let it fall haphazardly, the musical instrument in its wake. Dro sat on a fallen tree, and slowly stretched out before him the biting, howling, shrieking torturer which his lame leg had become.
He sat and watched the forest as it flushed and brightened. Birds dived in and out of pools of light. But his agony was so huge it had temporarily deafened him, and he had not, nor could not, hear their voices.
Neither did he hear the crackling sound the sled made. Or rather, he heard it, but did not spontaneously react. When he finally convinced himself that someone was near, and he should care about the fact, he turned and found the woman standing ten feet away, the rough-made sled, loaded with branches, attached to her hands by two fraying corded ropes. The young sun hit her squarely, and she, by contrast, looked old as the hills. But, black-mantled and black-eyed, she might have been some ancient sister of his.
“Nice day,” she said, in a voice like a rusty bolt.
“Uh.”
She dropped the ends of rope and walked over.
“Not for you, though,” she said.
She kneeled, rusty as her voice, on the earth before him, reached out and clamped her two withered hands on the blazing shrieking leg. Anyone but Dro would have cried out. She said to him, just as if he had, “Keep faith. You’ll see.”
He saw. The intolerable agony cut up through guts and ribs into his throat, and went out. A slow cool warmth soaked from the old woman’s hands. She twisted and pummelled the muscles of his calf and the bones beneath. Great shocks of pain went off, and the cool warmth flowed in after them. He slumped back on the tree and started to go to sleep, but held himself just over the threshold into waking. After a long wonderful time, her hands went away. She sat on the ground, put off her hood and began to braid thin trails of dark gray hair.
“To thank you is inadequate,” he said. “What fee do you usually ask?”
She darted a look at him.
“Three thirty-penny pieces.”
He smiled slightly. She was poor. Ninety pence was wealth to her, her face gone greedy and feral thinking of it
“I don’t imagine that’s enough.”
“It’s enough. The cure won’t last.”
“I know.”
He started to get coins out of his clothes to give her. His hands moved lazily and it was difficult to count.
The leaves overhead had eyes of gold in them. He lay and looked back at them. He did not want to move ever again, and so eventually he sat up. The dull, bearable, normal pain woke in his leg. He had known it would. Though it had seemed gone forever, no healer could rid him of that. He reached over and put five thirty-pence pieces in her lap.
“All right,” she said. “That’ll do.” She stared at Myal Lemyal’s body sprawling on the grass. “Where were you taking him? Home, for burial?”
Dro recognised her dimly, part of the pattern of things. He had met representations of the virgin and the nubile woman. Here was one of the crone. Maid of Vessels, Queen of Fires, and this one, Queen of Swords. Truly, a sister.
“He isn’t,” said Dro quietly, “dead.”
“He looks it. No breathing. No drum sound in the chest.”
“His heart beats. Once every few minutes.”
“Well I never,” said the crone-queen. She got up and went to Myal, bent, creaked, kneeled and stroked his hair. “Is it a trance you’re in, baby?” she asked Myal softly. “Poor baby. Hush-a-bye.” Then she drew her hand off Myal’s hair. “Now,” she said. “Now. There’s something—”
“Ghyste Mortua,” said Dro.
“Yes, yes.” She was impatient “And you are a ghost-killer, and this one a minstrel wanting to make a song of the Ghyste and be famous. Didn’t you ever warn him? He’ll never be a success, he’s too good. Too good a musician to be famous or to be loved. He’s a genius. He’ll never be recognized in his own time. We only revere the rather good, the very good, not the best, never the best. Not until they’re safely dead, and can’t take advantage and hurt us. Never applaud a magician. For his next trick he might eat the world. Ah!” she exclaimed. “One heartbeat. Yes, I saw it in his throat. Help me put him on the sled.”
“If I left you money,” said Dro, “you might look after him, while I get on.”
“Aren’t you curious,” said the crone, “about the cause of the trance?”
“The deadalive have been feeding off him.”
“It’s more than that. Help me put him on the sled.”
Dro went by her, lifted Myal and laid him on his back on the sled, on top of the piled branches, which snapped and broke. Dro took up the instrument, and next the corded ropes. His leg complained, sour, easy to ignore.
“Which way?”
The old woman nodded. She waddled ahead of him, going south between the trees.
Ten minutes la
ter, he followed her into a clearing. The eyelets of sun fell on the ground and splashed the walls of a stone hovel. It had been in existence some decades, and the foundations had considerably subsided into the earth. Bright herbs or weeds flowered in a patch near the leaning door. A wooden post stood up there, with two hands made of weather-stained plaster clasping each other on top, probably the local sigil for a healer. Daubed eccentrically on the leaning door, difficult for him to decipher, were the words: SABLE’S HOUSE.