Probably at first she had convinced her brutish man that he was responsible. He would have turned to her now and then, as if to the beerskin or home cooking. Eventually, after her death, and as the child grew, the showman would have seen certain things. The light build which was hers, but the height which was neither hers nor his, the hair which was her colour but a tone or so darker, the eyes which went sometimes black. The face, too, which by curious turns became piercingly good-looking. And the genius, which came out in music with a talent the showman had never possessed. Myal. Parl Dro’s seed. Seed which had grown into an embryo, a child, a boy, a man. Something, nevertheless, which Dro had left behind in the mortal world. Myal, his son: the link.
On the plane where the two entities of Parl Dro fought each other, ghost-killer with ghost, there was no time. But in the world, time passed. And as it passed, so Myal, growing into adulthood, became a link which, more and more strongly, called Dro back to life. In the end, the deadalive Dro had won. Then the calling was reversed. He called to Myal blindly, seeing, if it could be described even as “seeing,” only the link. Myal, who was psychic, and joined also by kinship, reacted to that tug, not knowing it. Still not knowing, he wandered back from the south, into those woods and over that mountain. He went by his father’s decayed and crumbled bones, and naturally did not know that either. He wandered into the valley village and waited, unknowing, for Dro to win the final victory, and come back through the gate to apparent mortality. And Dro, galvanised by Myal’s physical proximity, roused. In stasis, he was the same age as at the instant of death, thinking the events of twenty-six-odd years before had happened two or three days ago. Accordingly, he sought the wagon in the wood and failed to find it, and next he resumed his interrupted—how interrupted!—journey over the mountain.
By the time Parl Dro walked over that mountain, and toward the Soban house, he had become truly the King of Swords, Death, an emperor of ghosts. And of deception. The deception of others, and of himself.
For here was a deadalive who had been trained to know every pitfall, every giveaway. He made no mistakes. The rain dampened his garments. The dust brushed over him. He paused to eat and drink. He slept. He made love. He could bleed, and scar, briefly. Though not, of course, die. He walked in agony on a whole but ruined leg, remembering only the ghoul on the bridge—yet, covering such distances—climbing rocks, and trees.... He would lever up the catch on a door rather than pass straight through it. And often, though maybe not always when there was no one by, he would manifest in daylight. He could even fool his fellow dead.
A true ghost, he had fed from the living. And he had fed from Myal. He, not Ciddey, had begun to drain him. Though presently, Dro had unconsciously recognised what he did, and tried to pull away, just as Myal, as frantically, kept after him, attracted, making excuses, snared. And then, from some well of discipline and will inside himself, Parl Dro had managed yet another feat to which ghosts did not generally apply themselves. He had ceased drawing off Myal’s living energy. Dro had begun to build a facsimile of that force instead, as with all his other extraordinary powers, within himself—a self-perpetuating flame. Even in retrospect, he was uncertain when this transfer had taken place. Like all ghosts, he obscured, at that time, his own nature from himself, as he had obscured his need of Myal before.