The Ghost Sister (28 page)

“It doesn't bother me,” I said.

There was an uneasy laugh. “It bothers me.” Jheru said.

“Then why do you take it?”

“Because—because it's the only thing that shuts it out. Do you understand, Eleres?” He spoke more harshly than I had ever heard him do; he sounded like Morrac.

“Shuts what out?” I asked obtusely, but I already knew. Out at the funeral ground the world had seemed so immense, like another living presence. I'd almost felt it turn and look at me as a predator might: a long, inhuman stare, considering where the weak spot might lie. It seemed that it sang to me:
leave it all behind, come to the wild, come down to blood and killing and death …
The call of the world was like the call that a huntress makes, to lure in prey, but I knew that it was nothing more than my own split self, at war. I shook my head, to clear it, and for the first time, I realized that deep within my heart I almost envied Mevennen, that she could not sense the world always looking over her shoulder.

It was still warm; the air was scented with dust, tea brewing in an anteroom, smoke drifting up from the town, desire in the air. I turned words around in my mind and couldn't utter a single one. At last, I said, “Look, it's getting late. The masque will be starting soon. Come upstairs, help me celebrate.” After the masques, you don't remember much and what memories there are soon fade. I liked to make love more consciously, and to choose.

The evening sky glowed green behind the slats, but the room still bore the warmth of the day. As I had done so
many times, with so many lovers, I lit a lamp and the light itself was a pale greenness in the shadows. The light caught a strand of smoke, spiraling upward between us. My movement dispersed it, sending it swilling about the room. I sat on the floor by the armchair and after a long moment, Jheru's fingers wound into my hair.

“It doesn't matter what you do,” I said.

“Doesn't it?”

I turned. Jheru leaned back in the chair, his eyes a little glazed. But he was at least looking at me.

“Sometimes I am … less myself, with ethien.”

“Perhaps it makes you more yourself.”

“That worries me, too,” Jheru muttered. I edged up onto the side of the chair and put my arm around his loose shoulders. Jheru whispered something which I did not hear, and shifted to make room for me. The wellwater eyes were clouded, with desire or the drug, or perhaps both. I slipped my hand inside the dark shirt and slid it upward until it rested against smooth skin. The tattooed tongue of the bird which coiled across the skin was faintly rough underneath my fingertips, of a different texture to the surrounding flesh. I could trace it with my fingers, following it round until I abandoned it and pinched the nipple until its softness stiffened. Jheru whispered something else that I did not hear. I withdrew my hand, pulled the drawstring of his shirt open, bent my head to the exposed breast, licked the dark skin as far as the throat. Jheru's skin tasted slightly bitter, the taste of the drug exuded through the skin. It numbed my tongue, not unpleasantly. By the time my tongue reached the curve of his jaw, I was lying across Jheru's stirring body.

He shifted lazily, then sat up, saying hoarsely, “Come to bed.”

I stripped off my clothes and lay back on the thin sheet. Jheru, naked now, curled sinuously against me, his tongue lapping at my throat. We kissed, his long tongue wet and
delicate in my mouth, the taste of the drug spreading through me. His skin was as soft as feathers, his nails sharp against my flesh. The drug made Jheru passive; I straddled his elegant body, bending so that my hair brushed throat and shoulder. I was lost in movement then, and when I came to orgasm it seemed to go on for a long time, leaving pleasure behind and passing into emptiness. I remember the slack, beautiful face beneath me, eyes darkened by the ethien. We remained there, myself lying by Jheru's side, listening to his rasping breathing, and later on the weather broke, cracking blue-green lightning behind the shuttered membrane of my eyes and sending the sudden heavy rain hammering over the slats of the roof.

I dozed uneasily, disturbed by the storm that circled the town, running down the coast to a distant roar, but spiraling back once more, trapped by the cliff wall of the Otrade. The thunder and rain that accompanied it came intermittently and with it a breath of freshness, but between the gusts the air lay heavy and warm. I rose to open the window and look out into the storm. The night skies were lit by Elowen, racing behind tattered clouds, the slice of moon eaten away into a lacy filament. The air was full of dampness. Along the steep side of the house, a second window had been opened. Someone cried out, perhaps Sereth, disturbed by the passage of the storm. My senses were pounding in my head. I dressed, and went outside.

The narrow passages, so quiet and somnolent during the day, were massing with people who had ventured out after the storm. The energy of the town's defense sang beneath our feet, the ground seemed to burn. Around me, the tide of my people ran: beauty everywhere, their eyes lambent in the darkness, pale silver, water blue, an empty gold. They were dressed in brocade, velvet, silk; dark greens, indigo, crimson, night-black, and amethyst. I saw a tall man in sea-colored robes, eyes glowing behind the face of a bird; a woman naked beneath a pattern of paint, her misty hair falling to
her jeweled ankles. Above me, thronging the summer balconies and verandas of the town, people watched, garments rustling, whispering in a susurrus of anticipation that ran through the streets, borne on the incense wind. The passages drifted with smoke from the fires; the scent of the flowers which hung down from the balconies; the perfume of desire.

Throughout the following night and day, I ran the city, blindly pursuing a sudden and familiar presence. I didn't know who it was that I sought, but the awareness of desire drew me on through the smoky streets. Hands pulling gently at my clothes, people pressed against me, the blood-mind rising as the summer tide swelled. The air was full of messages and I was constantly distracted, pulled this way and that by fragmented demands: death and desire and anger, all borne on the growing tide of the masque. And whenever I crossed a waterline I could feel it in the air, as though I stepped into a sudden cloud of freshness.

Images rise up from memory's well:
I am in a courtyard, strange to me, lying back in a woman
'
s arms while she feeds me something that tastes of blood. Her claws run over my flesh, pain
ful and exquisite. I am briefly aware of a brazier on a balcony, its metal door open to reveal the red coals within, and someone throws in a vial of mestic or maybe ethien, which explodes and releases a cloud of sweetness. I remember the sun coming up through a bank of mist in the morning, standing beside a man urinating from the side of the wharf, he smiles at me and we are both perfectly aware of who we are: wishing one another good morning before the soul sails up to engulf thought of place and future. Much later, a great moon hangs over the crenellated roofs and gables, so close that its dry seas, its mountains, and the dead city, Seramadratatre, from where the demon lovers Ei and Mora come, are all clear before the sight. The moon
'
s chewed face is pale. I see a bright coal cross the face of the moon, perhaps a spirit boat within the ancient tidal air of Mondhile, and I think again: do they know? Do they tor
ment us because we are still primitive, savages, slaves, changing to
erous brain? Ungrateful to the returning dead, who try to educate and change, trick and compel?
I thought then, before clarity slipped from me, that I would never know. It did not occur to me that I would be one of the only ones to find out.

Only rarely, as you my reader will know, are we permitted to be our old selves. For us, it is the long dream, the feral days, into which we most long to fall, but consciousness holds us back. As the hunt, so the masque. And as with the hunt, so I remember little; the curse upon us, that we can barely recall what we most fear, and what we most enjoy.

At last I saw it ahead of me: a band of dark red cloth wound about someone's brow and there was the bitter familiar taste of metal in my mouth as I hunted him down. All the signs were carried on the betraying breeze: the harsh scent of iron, an underlying languor, pleasure's memory of a warm mouth, sharp nails, and the fall of hair soft as animal's fur against my shoulder. A name came to mind and drifted away again:
Morrac.
He was moving fast and I followed, then suddenly he was gone. I stopped, searching for the traces, and finding him again I turned in my tracks and went after him.

I was standing at the corner of a street, inhaling the odor of burning wood and the sea as the light fell from the sky. The trace of him ran through the evening air, almost visible, the tartness of blood. It drew me out of open space into confinement: dark wood and stone, familiarity and anxiety, all angles. I followed the scent upward and passed through an empty gap. Momentarily I was jolted from the blood-mind into consciousness. There were two people on the bed. Sereth's head lay on her twin's shoulder and her long hair spilled across his skin. I stepped forward, back into the world's embrace, and Morrac reached up to draw me down to him and everything I wanted.

So the hours of the masque passed. Toward the end, the bloodmind desires faded and died. I found myself naked among the covers of a strange bed, my body satiated and aching, with the disturbing memory of a face hovering over me, smiling, familiar, the pale hair concealed by a crimson band. Memory flooded back: Morrac's smile, a sinuous body against me, hands clasped around my waist, nuzzling at my throat, and Sereth soft against my back.

After the storm, unable to sleep, Shu walked cautiously through the gate of Temmarec and down into the town. The air was redolent with incense and rain. Temmarec itself seethed with anticipation, but surprisingly little preparation seemed to be going on. Shu had expected the bustle that took place in her own family before one of the Solstice gatherings, gradually focusing as the day commenced, but this seemed strangely haphazard and disorganized. In the town, the steep streets were full of people parting around her like water to let her pass, and their long blank eyes stared into Shu's own, smiling, knowing. Some of them were masked, others robed, some almost naked. One man raised his hand as they went by and brushed the crown of Shu's head. Involuntarily, Shu flinched. The Mondhaith, it suddenly seemed, could see her, knew her as real, and yet did nothing.

She felt as though she'd gate-crashed someone else's party, and everyone was staring at her. The air rang with tension. Shu wondered what the release was going to be, then realized that she might already know. She turned a corner and found herself looking up at the walls ofTemmarec. She had doubled back on herself. The gate of the house was wide open and Shu found herself face to face with Eleres.

He stood looking down at her, vaguely amused. His mer-
curial eyes flickered in the lamplight. His dappled white hair was tied back at the nape, and he was wearing black and gray, which made a monochromatic contrast with hair and eyes. He looked like a negative image: black-clad and the bright eyes. He was familiar and yet she hardly recognized him. There was someone else behind his eyes: unknown, alien, withdrawn.

“Eleres?” she whispered. He reached out and drew a gentle finger down her cheek. His hand felt cool, but the tips of his nails were sharp. Then he was striding past her. Shu's abdomen felt tight and sore, as if someone had struck her. She hastened through the gate and across the courtyard, seeking the perhaps illusory sanctuary of the attic room she had claimed for her own. As she passed the door of Sereth's room, however, she heard a small, faint sound. Afraid that the girl might have taken a turn for the worse, Shu stepped quickly through the door and went over to the bed. Sereth was lying on her back, her head thrown back and her eyes closed. Her injured arm was draped elegantly above her head. She murmured something which the
lingua franca
failed to pick up, a sound that vibrated in her throat like a purr.

“Sereth?” Shu asked. Sereth's eyes snapped open, to stare unseeingly at Shu. Her lips drew back from the sharp teeth in something closer to a grimace than a smile. Startled, Shu stepped back and collided with a tall, dark figure. Then claws grazed her breast, ripping the fabric of her jacket and spinning her around. Shu caught her foot on the leg of the bed and fell heavily to the floor in a tangle of sheets. Someone snarled. Shu looked up to see a man standing over her, a length of red fabric tied around his head and his dark clothes fluttering in the seawind from the open door that led to the balcony. In the split second before he struck, Shu thought she recognized him: Morrac, Sereth's brother.

His claws raked her shoulder as she twisted aside. He stepped back, surveyed her with his head on one side.
Cat
and mouse
, thought Shu, in shock.
He
'
s playing with me.
The stun baton was upstairs with the backpack. Shu scrambled backward, still snagged in the sheets. Sereth's interested face appeared over the side of the bed. Her long hair fell around her like a veil, and she wore a faint, deranged smile. Shu backed up against the wall and looked frantically around for something she could use as a weapon, but there was nothing, and what use would it be anyway against a couple of predatory people who had the advantages of strength and speed and years?

But not conscious intelligence.
Mevennen's voice echoed in Shu's head:
Perhaps it was my fault. I moved, so Eleres saw me. I should have kept still.
Then she thought,
But why does he see me at all? I
'
m a ghost, aren
'
t I?
Shu drew a deep breath and froze, willing stillness into her shaking body, settling the
ch
'
i
in the pit of her stomach. Morrac cast around him, as though scenting the air. The frowning bewilderment on his face was almost comic. Shu drew a shallow breath into her lungs, let it out again. Morrac turned, sat down on the edge of the bed and took his sister in his arms. Slowly, sinuously, they collapsed back onto the bed. Feeling like the unwilling participant in a bedroom farce, Shu waited grimly until she was sure that Morrac's attention was engaged elsewhere, then eased down the wall and crept on her hands and knees across the floor to the door. She expected the rip of claws across her back at any moment, but nothing came. When she reached the hallway she stood shivering against the wall. The parallel grooves left by Morrac's claws stung like fire, and to her horror Shu realized that she was close to tears. Stumbling along the corridor, she made her way up to the attic room where the medkit lay. Then, her hands shaking, she took out the applicator and held it to her shoulder. It stopped the worst of the bleeding, but not the pain. Grimly, she wondered how clean Morrac's claws might be. Her shoulder burning and the hair at the nape of her neck
prickling in anticipation of attack, she sank back onto the seat and waited.