The name of the town had been Tulotef. It stood on the side of a tall hill, above a valley where a wide river ended in a curious star-shaped lake with four subsidiary stretching channels. Forest bloomed over the uplands. Distant crags, pale as winter, towered from the trees. The ways to Tulotef were limited and occult. It was, besides, a town good to itself alone. Other towns it had greeted with swords and fusillades; retaliatory armies came to have the boiling juice of almonds and olives dashed on their heads. The walls of Tulotef, sloping, slaty, crenellated, might be opened only voluntarily and only where there were gates. Those within were declared to be witches. From the highest to the lowest, all had some smattering of spells, and many, a large compendium. That was the legend. The vernacular said: When we dance in Tulotef. Which meant: Never. Then something did get into Tulotef, something did bring it down, towers, roofs, walls, gates. One summer night, there was an earth-tremor, not in itself unheard of, nor in itself disastrous. But there was, so the tale went, a fault that ran around the upper gallery of the hill on the side of which Tulotef was built. Unseen, the fault had lain in wait, weathering the sun, the snow, the wind, and all the shocks of the earth, for hundreds of years, like a dragon under water. Then came this ultimate tremor, slight in itself, which sliced through the last hair-fine joists that remained to hold the hill. Not long past midnight, when the town was loud with bells and processions and feasts for some occasion sacred to itself, the watchmen spied a vast black bird that lifted from the hilltop, spreading enormous wings.
To picture the moment was not hard. The sudden cessation of all sound, the lifted heads, raised faces, pointing hands, all in the glitter of lamps and candles, the dying notes of bells, the sparkle of ornaments and eyes. Then the gigantic thunder, the unconscionable geographic growl, as the top of the hill snapped off, disintegrated, burst. A rain of particles, boulders, rubble crashed on Tulotef. Onto the screaming faces, dainty fires. Then the inexorable tons of granite and stone and streaming earth itself, marched down the hill against the city. It was the last army. It gushed like a tidal wave against the walls and broke them, the gates and splintered them. It rolled through the town and the town was gone, its life crushed and its fires put out. And then, a huge burial mound, the town itself began to move. It slipped from its foundations, and fell away down the hill into the star-shaped lake.
Not one living thing survived.
And yet, if the legend were a fact, all had survived. In a way. Now the spot was called Ghyste Mortua, for on particular nights the dead came back to the void where Tulotef had been, some thousands of witch-gifted, hating, evil ghosts. And in the lake below, held pristine and inviolate, their linkage to the world, every link they could desire; their treasures, their bones, the bricks and mortar of their town.
They abducted the living, enticed the living, fed from them, slew them. They tore up graves, they worked spells. The very land stank of wickedness.
If any of it was true.
“I know this,” said the red-haired woman, “whoever goes that way, never comes back.”
“Rather stupid to go there, then,” remarked Myal. His hands trembled, though it was really only what he had heard before.
“Parl Dro is going there. And you.”
“Me? You’re joking. I wouldn’t be seen dead there. Oh. What I mean is—’’
“It’s a compulsion. I know. I’ve seen it before. There’s always a reason you find for yourself, an excuse—a legend to prove or disprove, a battle to engage, a poem or a song to create—but it’s the place itself, issuing a challenge. A war game. It used to call armies to fight it. Now it calls certain men. At certain times. Certain women, too.”
“You’re not–” said Myal.
“Not me.”
Myal pulled the musical instrument to him by the sling and put his arms around the wooden body.
“I knew,” she said, “he would leave today, before he knew it. And you’ll leave tomorrow. You owe him a debt, don’t you? He paid the priests for your care.”
“I owe him a knife in the ribs,” said Myal.
The woman laughed. Myal glanced at her in astonishment.
“Rest well,” she said. “Tomorrow at first light I’ll bring you a horse. Not one of the priests’ horses, but my own. I’ll set you on the way as well; I know the start of it. You’d probably find him anyhow, but to be sure. If you give the horse her head, you’ll catch up to him before tomorrow’s sunset.”
“I can’t afford a horse,” said Myal.
“I’m not selling a horse. When you reach him, you must let her graze a while, then turn her and send her back to me. She knows the way, too.”
“I can’t afford to hire a horse, either,” said Myal pompously. He held the instrument as tightly as if someone were trying to drag it away from him. His arms quivered with the tension.
“No fee, no hire. A loan.”
“What’s the snag?”
“You’re very suspicious.”
“I’ve learned to be.”
“Then unlearn it.”