Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online

pot which held her ashes, he began to exert his will on her. He began to drag her, willing or not, into the room.
His spine and the roots of his hair registered her arrival before his eyes did. But in less than half a minute, he could see her quite plainly too.
Frail and blonde she was, mostly transparent. No, she was not a very strong deadalive. She wore the clothing of her death hour, which was quite usual, the long flimsy nightgown the villagers had described, though for some reason the wreath of flowers was absent. Then, in the way of ghosts, unexpectedly and piteously, she touched him—by folding her arms shyly about herself. It was the modesty of a very young girl who had never slept with a man, and discovered herself alone with one in her nightwear. Nor was it contrived: he was fairly sure of that. He said to her gently, “Don’t be afraid, Cilny. Do you know who I am?”
Her voice was hardly more than a rustle, dry papers or blown leaves.
“Ciddey told me of a man, a lame man in black”
“What did she say?”
“That you’d kill me.”
“Cilny,” he said quietly, “how can I kill you? You’re already dead.”
“No,” she cried in her rustling voice. Panic made it stronger, “No—no—” She stared at him. “Ciddey woke me. I was asleep and she woke me.”
“She shouldn’t have awoken you. You should have woken in your own time and gone on your own way, to the place you have to go to.”
“No. I’ll stay here. I want my sister. I want Ciddey.”
He did not wish to be rough with her. Sometimes it was possible to comfort, to smooth the path. The going through could be calm, even some cases blissful, thankful. But this one would plead and whimper at him. He was steeled to the hurt, but to prolong the hurt for her would be no sort of kindness.
He took a step towards the pot of ashes, and then the ghost-girl shrieked.
The shriek had attained a dumbfounding strength. It thrilled through the room, through his ears, through stone. He knew Ciddey would have heard it.
Dro lunged towards the jar. To reach it, he had to go right by the ghost, partly through her. A debilitating chill sank over him as he did so. But he paid no attention to it. He kneeled and wrenched off the cover of the jar and threw it away. She came all about him in that moment, a white gale, a pale insect whipping him with frantic opalescent wings. Primeval horror strangled him, swarming over his skin. He could smell only the grave, and phosphorescent worms crawled across his eyes. He wanted—needed—to lash out, beat her insubstantiality away, run yelling from the room—well-known sensations he was accustomed to controlling.
Vaguely, beyond it all, he heard a door flung open lower in the tower.
Her ashes were Cilny’s link to mortal life.
The link had always to be destroyed, or at least altered. The means were as various as the links themselves. The bone must be smashed, air mingled with its fragments. The scarf, the glove must be charred in fire, flames mingled with the cloth. Change was the key.
The ashes lay far down in the stone pot. He could see them, even through the whirlwind of pallor and dark. He unhooked the flask of white brandy from his belt and pulled the cork. Luckily, it did not take very much to render Myal Lemyal drunk. There was enough left for the enterprise.
Dro poured the libation with a careful steady hand, covering all the floor of the jar. There was a brief smoke, as if from acid.
Suddenly the swirling nightmare dispersed from about him. It was as if a great noise had fallen silent.
He stood up slowly, and looking around him saw Cilny’s face staring at him, huge-eyed, desperate, but it was the doll in the chair. Cilny was gone.
She had not cried out again. Perhaps she could not summon the power. Or perhaps, at the very last, she had seen beyond the gate, seen that the land she must journey to was unknown, alien, yet not terrible after all, not to be feared.
For a second, Parl Dro felt weak and drained to the