The Ruined City

  You hate yourself, and that is as it should be.

  The world is a better place without you.

  “Enough!” The cry wrung from his own lips woke the Magnifico Aureste. He gazed around him at a scene well illumined by moonlight. He walked a dark and gloomy wood, a place of loss and loneliness. He was barefoot and uncloaked. Evidently he had risen in his sleep and wandered from the camp. In his right hand he grasped his dagger. He was drenched in sweat, dizzy, and afire with fever. An iron band of the imagination seemed to clamp his temples. And the despair—the gigantic, killing despair of his dream—that was with him yet, deeper and darker than ever, permeating every fiber.

  The ghosts were likewise with him yet. He gasped, and passed his free hand across his eyes. He was awake, or so he believed. But those floating phantasms were all about him—Onarto, Zavilla, Moneybags Oni, and all the others, all of them with their wounds and their knowing eyes that he remembered too well. And the fever blazed in his head, while the voices spoke on and on, and the guilt devoured his heart, and the dagger in his fist ached to drink his blood.

  One stroke to atone and escape. One stroke, so easy and so right.

  But there before him was another figure, one among many, but somehow different, less ethereal of substance, not unfamiliar, and watching with a look of simple pleasure. He knew them all, and this new one was no exception. Confusion clouded his thoughts and his eyes, and it took him a moment to recognize Vinz Corvestri, who—although wronged by the Magnifico Aureste—owned no proper place among the ghosts. But perhaps he did. Perhaps he had quietly died during the night, and now legitimately claimed membership in this company.

  He had drawn very near, this happy Corvestri-figure. He was watching avidly, and he was speaking, his tones somehow unlike those of the other ghosts.

  “Do it. Do it. It is the only way.”

  Something within Aureste’s burning brain rose in rage and revolt. Some confused recognition of trickery and treachery exploded, its force driving his dagger through flesh and vitals.

  The mad moonlit world reeled. Gasping, Aureste dropped to his knees, and the dagger fell from his hand. For a time he knew nothing, understood nothing. Then, swift as a fleeing nightmare, the delirium abated. His surroundings had resumed their normal aspect. The conifers rose stately and somber; a night bird hooted nearby. The ghosts were gone, or perhaps they had never been there at all. Surely they could not have been real.

  But one remained, its solid reality unquestionable. Eyes sightlessly staring and chest soaked with blood, Vinz Corvestri lay dead on the ground before him.

  BY PAULA BRANDON

  The Traitor’s Daughter

  The Ruined City

  The Wanderers

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PAULA BRANDON is the author of The Traitor’s Daughter, The Ruined City, and The Wanderers.