The Ghost Sister (27 page)

“Luta judged that she wouldn't return until the autumn, at least. That's several weeks away; there's still time. You're not well enough to travel just yet.” I didn't want to tell her that Mevennen seemed to have been kidnapped by ghosts, even if they might be well-meaning ones, but the sight of Sereth sitting before me gave me hope. If she really was healing, then perhaps the ghost hadn't lied to me after all, and perhaps I could go to find my sister. Masque or no masque, I could leave Sereth here to recover, and go with the ghost—but as I began to plan, Sereth sat heavily on the side of the bed and took my named hand in her good one.

“Eleres,” she whispered. “Will you promise me something? If anything should—happen to me, will you be there to see my daughter home?”

“Nothing's going to happen to you, Ser. What are you talking about?”

“Do you remember when we were on the road to the tower and we met the
mehedin?
He told me a destiny to do with my daughter, with death, and I didn't understand it. But I dreamed of it, all night and today, too—over and over again. And it frightens me.”

“He could have been talking about anything and you know it. He could have been talking about …” I hesitated. “About the child who died.”

“No,” she said. Her hand tightened around mine. “No, he wasn't. I can feel it …”

“Maybe he was talking about you, Sereth—about the poisoning. But you didn't die, did you?”

Her eyes widened, staring beyond my shoulder, and it was as though I were looking at a stranger. This gaunt woman, staring at shadows, was not the self-confident, assured cousin I'd always known.

“Do you promise?” she whispered urgently. “To be there when my daughter comes home to Aidi Mordha?”

To quiet her, I said, “Yes. Yes, of course I promise. And now you really should rest.” I rose from the bed, and she let me settle the covers around her.

“I'll talk to you later,” she said, as if apologizing.

I kissed her, and left her to sleep. It seemed she was cured, and I had a promise to the ghost to keep.

Shu felt as though she'd come round rather than woken up. A heavy tightness of headache was wrapped like a band around her brain. She ran the medkit scanner over herself and found evidence of slight neurological trauma. She wasn't sure if she'd interpreted the results correctly, but it seemed that stepping through that forcefield, or whatever it was, had not done her a whole lot of good. And she was still stuck here in this damned house. As she was sitting on the edge of the bed, however, Eleres came through the door.

“How's Sereth?” Shu asked urgently.

“She's better. The fever's gone and she's conscious.” He glanced down at his hands. “I made you a promise. You said you wanted to leave.”

“Can we go? Now?” Hastily, Shu began to gather her things.

He nodded. “We can go.”

Shu found herself flinching as they stepped through the gate, but nothing happened. The first thing she did was to try the communicator and, to her delight, it was working again. She was pretty sure, now, that the forcefield was responsible for its malfunction. But Shu soon found that, though she could communicate with the camp, no one replied. There was a message waiting for her, to say that Bel had gone with Dia and Sylvian to the ruins to “run some tests.” She remembered that first visit, when they had been unable to communicate with the camp. It was likely that the
energy field was responsible for this, too, but Shu was not reassured. She tried to reach each of them in turn, but to no avail. Shu left urgent messages everywhere she could, telling her companions not to do anything to the generator until she got back. She told them about the dowsing, about the connection to the world. She hoped it would be enough.

Eleres stood staring at her with open curiosity as she babbled away into the communicator.

“What's
that?
” he asked, when she had finally finished speaking.

Shu detached the communicator from her wrist and held it out.

“Here. I'll show you how it works as we walk; it's very simple.”

Eleres turned the synthetic strip over in his hands, studying it curiously. “What is is?” he asked. “A charm?”

It would still have been so easy to pretend, but Shu told him the truth.

“No,” she told him wearily. “It's just a device, nothing more. Something that will enable us to speak over a distance. If you touch this” —she indicated the contact button—” and start talking, your words will be sent through the air.”

His pale eyes narrowed skeptically. “Useful,” he said at last.

“When there's somebody on the other end to receive it, yes.”

Scared of losing yet more time, Shu hurried him up through the town to the city wall. The days had been warm and the countryside was basking in this apparently shortlived summer. The thin grass was bleached almost white, and beneath it the earth had crumbled to a russet, granular dust, water-starved. The walk had Shu out of breath fairly quickly, the streets here were steep. She was usually less easily tired than this, but by the time they reached the landgate her vision was beginning to blur and she could
hear her breath wheezing in her throat. It alarmed her, and she was grateful that Eleres did not seem to notice. He seemed preoccupied, but not unhappily so. Shu knew it was a little foolish when he didn't even see her as quite real, but she found herself growing fond of him. He reminded her of her grandson Sung, another quiet boy, now long dead.

When they reached the city wall, however, they found that the town's defense was up, and singing. It seemed to Shu that she could almost see it, like a glaze over the air. The gate was closed; she remembered it as it had been only a day or so ago, with weeds growing around its edges. It had not been closed for a long time, but it was shut tight as a trap now. Eleres's head went up and he frowned, as though he had sensed something. By the gate there was a girl with a proud, watchful face, holding a sword. Eleres went over to speak to her.

“Why is it up? Are they going to let us out?” Shu asked him frantically, when he came back.

“I'm sorry,” he said wearily. “We'll have to go back to Temmarec.”

“Why?” She felt as though she were trapped in a nightmare of boxes; breaking out of one only to find herself stuck in another, larger one.

“The town's closed for the next three days. No one can come in, or out.”

“But
why
not?” Shu could hear an almost childish desperation enter her voice.

“Because there's going to be a masque. I am sorry. I knew it was coming, of course, but I didn't expect them to close the gates so soon.”

“A masque? Like a festival?” She'd heard the term
masque
before, in something Mevennen had said.

“Sort of.”

“Can't they just let me out? I'm not going to be part of the masque, after all.”

He shook his head. “It's the law. It's safer this way. In case people wander in and get hurt.”

“
Safer?
” Shu remembered then what Mevennen had said, about women becoming pregnant at masques, that they were held at the mating seasons. And she remembered the bloodmind, too. A festival, or something more? Well, she thought despairingly, she'd soon find out.

There was nothing to be done. At least she could contact camp again, and let them know what was happening. She walked numbly back down the hill with Eleres. The air smelled of dry earth and pollen from the brittle grass. Incense drifted up on the smoke and condensed in the summer air. It was all so peaceful.

“Can you sense water, under these streets?” she asked him.

“Yes. This town's full of springs and wells. I can feel it everywhere I go.” He raised his head and smiled. “It makes me feel part of this place.” For a moment, he looked unselfconsciously happy.

The bloodmind
, Shu thought again:
darkness and light.
How could they simply take away everything that made these people what they were? And she hoped again that her message would be heard, that it would not fall on deaf ears.

On the evening that the masque began, Jheru and I went up onto the dry hillside within the landwall and watched the light burn out over the sea. Sereth insisted on coming with us. She seemed restless, perhaps a legacy of her illness or maybe the change that was coming over her at the beginning of the masque, triggered by the proximity of other women. She wanted to get away from other people for a bit, she said irritably, but I would not let her go on her own.

It was very hot. Water sensitive as I am, I could hear the retreat of the last rain deep within the hillside, seeping through cracks. Up in those beginning slopes of the Otrade there was a particular place where a well lay far beneath the earth and on that baking evening, it was comforting to me to feel it below the parched soil, like a deep, untroubled eye.

And there was another comfort for me, too. I was also— no surprises there—falling in love. Jheru's kindness, a serenity which was underlain by vagueness as much as calm, his capacity for dreaming, all made me draw closer and reach out to his soothing presence. It was an odd, troubled time, a reversal of the situation in which I had been for the last four years. Now, the person I loved was the still center and events turned uneasily around me. This was so different from loving Morrac that I wondered whether, in fact, I really was in love with Jheru or was taken in by the illusion of some other emotion. I'm not sure I even really cared. I was startled to discover how relieved I felt to be free of Morrac. It's often the way. Only when a love affair is beginning to be over do you realize how miserable you have been, and for so little reason. I did not know for certain how Jheru felt about me but, strangest of all, this did not seem to matter. Not even thoughts of Mevennen and the urgency that should have accompanied them mattered. Nothing ever does, at the start of a masque.

“People are starting to gather down there,” Jheru said, lazily chewing grass, blue eyes hooded against the last light of the sun. “We should go back to Temmarec.”

Sereth said in a whisper, “I wish we could stay up here.” I turned to look at her. Her gaze was downcast to the rusty earth beneath her feet and her face was mournful. I saw for the first time how much weight she had lost during her illness. We tend toward gauntness as a race, but even so her face was drawn, the skin pale to the point of translucency. Jheru was gilded by the early evening light; it lay heavily
across the dark material of his shirt like pollen and his eyes caught and held it, water clear. But it shone through Sereth until she was gone from my gaze, lost in the smoking sultry light. I blinked, and the molten light was as before.

“Sereth?” I said, and she turned to me with a kind of desperation.

“Can I talk with you alone?” she asked.

“Of course.”

We moved a little way down the hillside and Sereth said, with a deliberateness of manner that was unfamiliar to me, “I'm not looking forward to this masque.”

“No?” It surprised me; she had always loved the things that made her most herself, took her into the wildness of spirit.

“I'm afraid of what may happen. Eleres, I'm afraid I'll never go home.”

Patiently I said, “We talked about this. You've been so ill—”

“It's not just that. It started before we met the
me-hedin
… I couldn't talk to you about it. I thought I could control what I am, and it seems I cannot.” She rubbed her face with her hand, still awkward with the injury. “Do you love Jheru?” she asked abruptly.

“I am in love, yes.” I used the verb
meherech:
desire, novelty, longing. “Do I love? If I'm honest, Ser … I don't know Jheru well enough. We talk all the time, but how can you ever judge from that? What you're told and what is really true?”

“What will you do, after the masque?”

“What do you want me to do? I won't let you ride alone, if you're still not well. Where you go, I'll go. But I think you should stay here for a little while. I have to—” Remembering that I had not told her about Mevennen and the ghosts, I broke off; it seemed an unnecessary complication.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Did you think I would leave you? How selfish must you think me, Sereth.” I hadn't meant to sound so guilty. I still thought, I suppose, in terms of the three of us, Sereth, and Morrac and me. But maybe the old pattern was changing, and after all, it was true that I had been planning to do exactly that: leave Sereth, and go after my sister.

“No, I don't, no.” She shifted across and put her arms round me. Her face was twisted. The old Sereth would have told me not to be such a fool. My chin on her head, my arms around her, I thought of the promise she had asked of me, to be there when her child came home.

“Sereth,” I told her gently. “You're just on edge because of the masque. You'll enjoy yourself, you know you will. Just lose yourself in it—” But she released me abruptly.

“Oh, let's go back,” she said with irritation, and with a sudden return to her usual energy she strode away down the hillside. I stared stupidly after her.

“Well, then,” Jheru said peaceably, unfolding and brushing earth from his sleeves and trousers. By the time we reached the throng of people milling around the inner town, Sereth was nowhere to be seen. We walked to Temmarec in silence.

“Come and sit with me for a moment,” I murmured. Obligingly, Jheru settled himself beside me under the vine-laden roof of the veranda. Neither of us spoke. I was very much aware of his presence beside me, our hips almost touching. He leaned back against the pillar of the veranda, half disappearing among the curling jade leaves of the vine. I glanced at him. The blue eyes were filmed and vague. He was smiling slightly.

“Jheru? Are you all right?”

“It's only ethien,” Jheru said dismissively, after a pause.

“I didn't know you took that.”

“Not as much as I used to,” he said, “but still more than I
should, I suppose. At the funeral, I—” He broke off. “Things like that unsettle me.”

That accounted for Jheru's vagueness, I thought. Meven-nen took a lot of the sedative, to block out the call of the world; perhaps Jheru had similar reasons. I was suddenly reminded of Morrac, relentlessly drinking. I thought with a sinking heart,
How little do we know each other.