Dro spoke carefully and steadily, watching Myal. Myal could not always meet the older man’s gaze. There were about fifteen years between them in age, but it felt like a century. It felt like a hurt, a wound that had never healed and never would.
Tulotef had appeared strong and whole to Myal because he had expected it to be, and because he himself was no longer inside the fleshly envelope of mundane human life. The streets, the crowds, the great procession; the man he had robbed, the innkeeper, the bed—even the three riders and their horses in the wood—everything had been there, but where he, and for that matter dead Ciddey, had seen facts there had been only echoes.
“It’s the stories that are strong, that have got stronger, even as Ghyste Mortua itself has decayed. The stories Cinnabar believed, after her man started playing with magic and ran off with someone else. The stories you hear told all over this end of the country. Yes, the ghosts have got more irrepressible year by year—in legend. In reality, they’re just a few papers left blowing about in the woods, and on the hill.”
Dro told Myal about Sable in the forest, living so near the Ghyste.
“She frequently sees the ghosts of the Ghyste. They’ve grown solid. She anticipated seeing them even by day. But that was because she reckoned on seeing them that way. Or wanted to, and imagined it, for all I know. The giveaway was that she lived close enough to have been easy prey, if they could take her. In the tales, Tulotef abducts any live human in the vicinity to feed off his energy. Cinnabar’s belief again. And mine, long ago, when I studiously learned how to project my spirit out of my body, in order to come in safely at their gate. No. They’re harmless now to the living. The only victim they can seize on is someone who couldn’t be a victim at all, someone in the same state as themselves. Or near it. Ciddey, or you.”
“But,” said Myal.
He fell silent, remembering how the persons in the town had sometimes been there, sometimes not. Remembering the aimless repetitive activities. Even the three bullies in the wood, who had dragged him from the pool, had seemed to appear out of nowhere. And their grisly jibes about necrophilia between mortal and deadalive, their turning from Ciddey to him and back again—as if the two new ghosts were so fresh, so vital by comparison, the riders might be mistaking one, or both, for the genuinely living.
“But,” said Myal again, “you thought, or you wouldn’t have come here—”
“When I started out, I had good reason to credit a malevolent, sorcerous ghost town at the peak of its powers. Then, to reach here became a compulsion. It was a place I had to get to. But I’ve suspected, over the past days of travelling, what I might find.”
“Didn’t sound like it.”
“No.”
“So what will you do?”
“Let it finish dying on its own. It already practically has.”
“That doesn’t sound like a ghost-killer talking.”
“It isn’t, anymore.”
Myal went cold. He was not sure why. He stared at Dro, and now Dro smiled and looked away.
“So you needn’t worry about the only real ghost left here. I mean Ciddey,” said Dro. “I’m afraid her sister didn’t escape my vengeful headlong zeal. Which is maybe just as well. But Ciddey... she can be your problem.”
“Thank you. You said she’d feed off me.”
“Maybe she won’t. I’ve realised something. It doesn’t always happen that way, or not permanently. She’s already manifested out of your vicinity, in Cinnabar’s village street. When Ciddey’s strong enough, she may always be able to maintain herself, without—” Dro broke off.
“This isn’t you talking,” Myal said.
Dro stood up again and walked off. Myal got up and followed. Halfway back along the natural brick dancing floor, Dro turned.
“Why don’t you go and write your damned song?”
“Or, put it another way, get lost.”
“What a talent you’re developing for words, Myal Lemyal.”
“It’s being with you,” Myal snapped back. “It rubs off. I’ll start limping next.”