“All right,” said Dro. “I’ve seen you physically housed. I’ve told you you can get back into your body. I’ve explained Tulotef. What else do you want?”
“You think explaining is enough? Telling is enough? I want some proof.”
“What proof?”
“Wait till nightfall. Then meet me in the town. Just as you are, without any bloody trance like the one your redhead dumped me in without a may I or a shall I. Flesh and blood, a reformed ghost-killer. In Ghyste Mortua after sunset. Safe.”
Something ran over Parl Dro’s face.
“I decline.”
“You’re afraid.”
“Yes. Probably. But not of what you think.”
“I’m not thinking. My mind’s a blank.”
Dro said nothing, not even the inevitable retort.
“After sunset,” Myal repeated. He struck a pose, and did not feel foolish doing so. “If I’m still there,” he announced, “I’ve got a feeling you have to be.”
“Your magnetic personality,” said Dro. He was recovering.
“Not quite. But it occurs to me you either come after me or leave me enough help so that I can follow you, one way or another.”
“Which must mean I need you for something.”
“Right.”
“I wonder what it could possibly be.”
“Cinnabar knew.”
“Cinnabar probably supposed you were my fancy boy.”
Myal took half a step back.
“And I suppose that’s what you think it is, too.”
“What is?”
“The fact that I—I’m drawn—that I—” Myal blushed, and very painfully. He turned, scooped up another flint and hurled it at the hill of Tulotef where once the flints had crashed on uplifted faces in a deadly rain. His body lay in a hovel eight miles away, yet the astral body could still burn with embarrassment. Or seem to, feel as if it did. “I’ll see you up there in the town after sunset,” said Myal. He strode away toward the hill, leaving Dro standing still as if ossifying along with the lake, the land, the bones of the fish.
A few minutes after the sun had submerged, carelessly smudging the horizon, Ciddey Soban found herself lying in a great bed, under a raven-wing canopy, alone.
The smoke-pink shades of sunfall made no impression on the room. Dusk was identified by a solidifying of furnishings, walls, thoughts. Ciddey sat up in the tomb-cold sheets, and understood that Myal, who had been with her a moment ago—before the brief blending of day had interrupted them—was gone. And not only gone. The paranoia of her condition instantly overwhelmed her with the apprehension of bad news.
Parl Dro was in Tulotef, and Myal had gone to meet him.
Myal was Dro’s accomplice. Apprentice, maybe.
And she, lonely and lowering herself, wrapped in the warm arms of Myal, had betrayed herself to him. She had felt a sinister joy as she told him. But she had been unwise.
Stupid to think the dead were a fraternity. Myal would be loyal to his master, Dro. Even in death, Myal would stand beside Dro, against her.
Ciddey beheld her sister’s lovely childish face floating bloated in water. That was why Ciddey kept dreaming she herself was dead. Identifying herself with Cilny. Foolish. Ciddey was not dead. The well, the stream—no, she was alive. It was Myal who was dead. Myal who had made her come with him to this strange town.
The day had gone so quickly. Why could she not remember it?
Somewhere, music played on the streets, and bells began tenderly to gild the darkness. A drop of blanched almond yellow hung in the window, slid away, was replaced by another. Ciddey recalled the procession in which the town’s duke, or earl, would be riding.
Defenceless and alone, and well-born, she must appeal to him for protection. The murderer could not touch her then. Indeed, she might ask for vengeance. Dro had killed her sister. Yes, she had pursued him to exact payment for that. And now she would. She must.
She flung herself from the bed and ran through the closed door, not noticing, and down the curiously deserted stairs of the inn, on to the black-lit streets.