“I... Something. I feel terrible.”
Dro let him fall back on the mattress. Dro never once let his own eyes slip from the apparition, stapled like a moth to the wall. Even as he spoke, three quarters of his mind and a great deal of his strength were being utilised to keep her as far from her life source, Myal, as possible. To prevent her, also, from flight. For she might come to see that flight was her only current ploy.
“What did you bring with you, Myal,” Dro said, “from the stream?”
“What?”
“The stream where she died. You took something from her body. A lock of hair, a ribbon–something.”
“No.”
“Don’t conceal it. It’s her link. Look at her. She’ll kill you, one way or another. Either persuade you to die to appease her jealousy of your life. Or draw your life out of you, moment by moment.”
“I think,” said Myal. He coughed. “I think I brought one of her shoes. I don’t know why. I forgot I had. They were cloth, very small. I trod on one on the bank. I was already getting sick. Didn’t know what I was...”
“Where?”
“The instrument. Where is it? Somebody must have put it somewhere.”
“It’s there by the bed. Reach over and hand it to me.”
“I can’t. I’m too weak to move.”
“You’ll move.”
“All right—I’ll—try—”
Myal floundered around. His arms were trembling so much he could hardly get hold of the sling, but he managed it, and lugged the grotesquery of wood and strings onto the mattress. To touch it steadied him. But the shoe, crumpled together, had been shoved into the opening over the sound box, and through into the hole of the instrument. Invisible. He could not remember doing this. Yet, somehow, he could....
Still not looking at him, Dro tore the shoe out of Myal’s hand.
“Whatever happens now, stay where you are, and stay quiet.”
“What’s liable to happen?”
Myal cringed and shot a glance at the blocked door. But his head swam. He flopped on his face, hiding his eyes.
Parl Dro stood midway between the bed and the door. He dropped the little shoe on the ground. The sole had cracked where Myal had palmed it into a ball. Pathetic, desolate little shoe.
Dro took the tinder from his shirt and struck a flame. At the rasp of flint and fire, Myal burrowed more deeply in the bolster. Dro stooped, awkward from the crippled leg, and set the shoe alight, bracing himself as he did so for the ghost’s dying frenzy. Which did not come.
As the flame fluttered around the shoe, destroyed it, and expired on the flags, Dro stared at what was left of Ciddey Soban, plastered, insectile and beautiful, on the wall. She never moved. With vast extinguished eyes, she gazed at him. And then she melted like frost. And she was gone.
The dungeon chill swilled instantly off the room and down some supernatural drain.
Parl Dro drew a deep breath. The familiar exhaustion clambered on his back, dragged him down. Exhaustion, and something else. Something–something–
Outside, the noise of the crowd had mounted, now the eerie barriers were gone from the air. Footsteps ran across the compound, and the door rocked to blows. There had been enough people in the street, and concentrating hard enough, to form a kind of composite pseudo seventh sense. Sufficient to guess when the exorcism was complete.
He pulled the chair away from the door.
Myal groaned. “Is it over? Whatever it was?”
“I hope it is.” Dro checked, hand on the door, appalled by what he had just said. Never before had there been any doubt.
CHAPTER SIX
The drinking party went on into the small hours.