“Only one who played with it, and she’s dead.”
“There’s a drug can do this,” said Sable. “It turns life down low, like a lamp, just a spark left burning. And with a psychic talent, that lets the spirit out. You know what that means, ghost-killer? It means you have the ghost of a man that’s still alive.”
“All right. But how did she do it?”
“I’ll tell you how. In a minute. Got a knife?”
Dro studied her, then took out the knife and handed it to her, hilt first. The courtesy made her laugh soundlessly. Then she bent and ripped the knife along Myal Lemyal’s chest. In the dull light, it took Dro a moment to realize it was the shirt, not the man, she was quartering. With careful delicacy she picked off the leaves of cloth with the knife, not touching them with her fingers. A pocket had been torn and certain obtuse items dropped from it onto Myal’s skin: a copper coin with a hole through it, a defaced die, a coil of wire that might have had to do with the musical instrument, a little clay dog.
Dro knew the dog at once, and could not remember from where. First he pictured it tied to the wheel of a wagon. Then he saw Cinnabar in the glint of her oven, pinching the dog from clay.
Sable shifted the dog aside, using the knife. There was a faint transparent mark on Myal’s flesh where the dog had rested. The torn cloth of the pocket was damp.
Involuntarily, Dro leaned forward.
“Don’t touch,” said Sable. “The little animal’s clay, and the clay’s been made porous. The drug’s been poured inside, and then seeped out after a while, right through clay and cloth and skin. Tactile poison. Doesn’t need to be drunk, just touched. Carried over the heart, where he carried it, it did very nicely. Gradual, you understand, bit by bit—then whoof! Out like a candle, and the spirit gone away. He must have done something she didn’t like. Lady’s man, was he?”
“Not exactly. Can you wake him up?”
“Not exactly. I’ll move the clay animal and the drug will stop seeping into him. We know he’s psychic. If he’s strong enough, the spirit can try to get back. Or if he isn’t, it won’t. In any case, it’ll take days. Days and nights.”
CHAPTER NINE
The sun moved and increased its fire, and came to stream through the hovel’s open door.
Sable brewed herbal tea, which she trickled into a little iron cup and handed to Dro. There seemed to be no food in the hovel, or possibility of food outside. Not even mushrooms, let alone a chicken, a cow, apple trees or vines. Probably she lived on the tea.
As he drank it, a green sweet-sore memory passed through Parl Dro. He identified it reluctantly. Sable’s brew was like the tea Silky’s grandmother had concocted, in that spick-and-span town hovel almost thirty years in his past
They did not speak for a long while, keeping as silent and almost as quiet as Myal on the bed of rags. Matter-of-factly, Sable had stripped the musician and worked over his body, massaging with her extraordinary hands. She displayed none of the easily tickled, impotent lust of the elderly, nor much concern. Twice, she asked Dro to turn the younger man’s body. Finally, she had him placed on his back, his head slightly averted toward the right shoulder, and a ragged, not unduly filthy sheet, pulled up over him.
The sunlight, creeping like a cat, had almost reached Myal, when Dro spoke to her.
“Tell me about Ghyste Mortua.”
She looked at him, and sucked her tea.
“You know all you need to.”
“You live on the doorstep,” he said. “You’d know more.”
“The woods are full of noises by night,” she said. “Riders, horses, yellings. They don’t bother with me. I’m too old, too near the edge, the gate out. Too ugly. They don’t bother.”