“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 later, 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.
Dro wondered briefly who came here. Presumably there was a village or a town adjacent, though he had seen no sign of one piercing the forest, from the ridge above. Or maybe the town had been abandoned, encroached on by the trees, by poor living, by famine or a plague. And only the old woman remained, somehow keeping alive, though how was rather a mystery.
She thrust open the door, and motioned Dro to drag the sled and the death-tranced man inside. It was a dark room, still full of the night. It smelled of damp and the low smoky fire, and soon of the two fat-tallow candles she lit in the walls. There was a herbal smell also, and pots, buckets and urns were stacked in all directions. A bundle of rags in the corner was the bed, and here Dro was instructed to set Myal.
Sable—that was, one assumed, her name—came over and peered down at Myal, who looked as dead as any dead man Dro had ever seen, and yet was not.
“Was he skilled at trancing himself?” Sable inquired.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You knew him well?”
“No. But well enough to know that, I think.”
“It isn’t any ghost brought him to this,” said Sable. “It was a live one. Healer. Herbalist. Meet anyone like that, eh?”