The Ghost Sister

by Liz Williams

  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, painful 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 torment 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.

  15. Shu Gho

  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. Catand 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 s
ure 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.

  16. Eleres

  Awareness of self and place swept over me. I felt as though I'd stepped out of a long, confusing dream. Through the open doorway of the balcony the sun poured in, and a white bird wheeled across the oblong of the sky. Someone was shouting. I heard Jheru's placating tones. Someone laughed, not kindly. Someone—Sereth?—wailed in despair. This reached me. I drew the red swathe of cloth around my waist, crossed swiftly to the door, and nearly collided with someone entering. Blinded by the sudden rush of sunlight, I stepped back and was confronted in a moment of utter confusion with my own face. I gaped. I was stupefied by the loss of the bloodmind, still not fully conscious. The person wearing my features stared back at me: my own pale eyes, sharp nose, narrow mouth, the face I saw in the metal mirror every day. Then, of course, it became obvious.

  “Soray?” I said.

  “Oh, you're awake, are you?” my elder brother replied. This enlightening exchange was punctuated by a burst of argument from the balcony. I heard Sereth shrieking something, but could not seem to understand what she said.

  “… trying to drag me down with you, Morrac. We might be twins but we're not the same. We're not the same—”

  And Jheru, bewildered,” … think I know who you must be—”

  And a third voice, soft with rage,” —and who are you to criticize me, Sereth? You killed that child because you wanted to, didn't you, not because something made you do it. Don't blame the bloodmind for your own desires.”

  The argument rose to a crescendo. I pushed past my brother onto the balcony. Sereth, her face streaked with blood, was sprawling against the balcony rail. Morrac struck at her and she stumbled. Jheru grabbed at her, missed, and— stepping between them—pushed her out of reach of a further blow. She staggered, missing her footing on the wet balcony deck and fell back against the rail. Time slowed to a long and beating pulse. In a graceful roll, she went over the rail and down. She made no sound as she fell.

  I sprang to the rail to try to save her, but every movement I made seemed slow, as though the air had thickened. The light saturated everything, luminous and congealing. I could only watch her fall, the long drop from the house on the seawall cliff to the green water of the harbor far below. Sereth turned in the air as she fell through the wheeling flock of birds until, in a dazzling burst of light from the sun on the water, she was gone into the sea. I was halfway over the rail to follow, hearing a voice hoarse with despair calling her name and realizing that it was I who was shouting out, trying to summon her back. We were a good three hundred feet up, and the harbor was not deep at that point.

  There was a blurred motion beside me; Morrac, crying out incoherently, was at Jheru's throat. Jheru, snarling, clawed back and laid open my erstwhile lover's shoulder. Morrac struck out, catching him in the ribs. There was not much to choose between them; they were of a similar height and age, though Jheru was, I think, quicker. These odds were evened by the blood-slick boards; Jheru hit back, grasped Morrac by the wrist and pulled him down. The bloodmind lit Morrac's face like a fire; it was riding him and it reached out to infect Soray and me. I tried to drag them apart, Morrac countered with a kick to the groin which I blocked. I seized his arms and pulled him up. We both fell back against the railing. For a dizzying moment I saw the sea swing up below me. Then Soray hauled both of us back, shouting, “Do you want to follow her down? Is that what you want? Is it? Is it?”

  This brought Morrac to his senses. He stared at Soray, as if unbelieving.

  “Ah, she's dead,” he said, almost conversationally. He pulled away from my grip and straightened the sleeves of his jacket. Jheru, spitting blood, was rising to his feet. Soray's eyes were wide and horrified.

  “Yes,” he muttered. “She's dead, she's gone.” He leaned heavily back against the doorframe, his face slack. The dark roofs, rising up behind, were quiet in the sunlight, exhausted in the wake of the masque. The white birds of the sea called above our heads and someone, somewhere, gave a long remote cry: the eluade, the call that marks the presence of recent death.

  Four

  Outreven

  1. Mevennen

  “Outreven?” Mevennen said wonderingly, some time after Shu Gho had left for Tetherau. She had spent the last few days in a kind of waking dream, the aftermath of seizure, but now she was a little better again. Bel Zhur sat at her feet, hugging her own knees and gazing up into Mevennen's face. “But no one knows where Outreven is.”

  “You've only the mur and your own feet,” Bel Zhur said. “And there's too much of the world to explore. But we have the—the flying boat. What would take you months would take us only a few hours.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “Remember the story, Mevennen? Outreven is the first place, the place where answers are to be found. We had a message, the last message ever sent from this world. We followed it, and it led us to Outreven. And we can take you there, show you what lies beneath it.”

  Mevennen though for a moment. She did not know whether she really believed in Outreven. And although her fits seemed to have gone into remission, the prospect of being cured seemed once again so unlikely and remote that she could not bring herself to believe in it. It was true that she no longer feared some terrible reprisal at the hands of the ghosts. She had learned to treat them almost as though they were real, and it was true that they had been very kind to her. She had grown to like Shu Gho and Bel, though she preserved a mutual and rather chilly respect with Dia. There was something so insistent and driven about the woman …

  But here she was again, thinking about them as though they were human. Her third day had come and gone and no one had said anything. Mevennen herself had kept quiet. She did not really want to admit to herself that things were more interesting here than at home. Here, she was treated as though she were of interest and significance, rather than just the sick sister. She dragged her mind back to the present. Flying to Outreven seemed like an insane plan, but what she found hard to resist was the thought of a trip in the boat: to see so much of the world all at once, so swiftly. She had spent so much of her adult life cooped up indoors that the prospect of venturing out was like a craving, and it was for this reason that she replied, as she had done once before, “Yes. Very well. I'll go with you.”

  “Good,” Bel said. She smiled, and reached for Mevennen's hand. “I'm glad you came here, Mevennen. I'm glad you could trust us enough to do that.” Her grip tightened. Mevennen looked down at their linked hands, and Bel reached up and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face. “You're beautiful, Mevennen.”

  “Thank you,” Mevennen said, embarrassed. No one had ever said such a thing to her before. She was a ghost. And anyway, in their family, Sereth was the beautiful one. She glanced up at Bel Zhur. The girl's eyes were fixed intently on her face.

  “Bel?”

  “You remind me of someone,” Bel Zhur whispered. “Someone I loved long ago. A woman who died.”

  “I'm so sorry,” Mevennen breathed, for Bel's eyes had filled with tears. “How—I mean, what happened?”

  Bel blinked and gazed into the distance. “Her name was Eve. She—she was like you. She saw ghosts and she was often ill. She was always speaking to the dead; I used to hear her laughing at what they'd say to her. She had dreams. My
mother tried to interpret them according to our faith, but they didn't seem to fit, somehow. I tried to understand, but I could tell she was drawing further and further away from me. We started to quarrel—or I did, anyway. And one night we had an argument. I said she was mad, that she preferred dreams and the dead to me. She wouldn't say anything … she just went outside and walked down to the beach and I ran after her, but the Weather Monitors had summoned rain and I couldn't find her. The tide brought her in next morning. She'd been caught by the sea, or walked into it. The world took her, you see.” Bel was gripping Mevennen's hand so hard that it hurt, and her face twisted.

  “Bel,” Mevennen murmured.

  “And you remind me of her …” Bel said, in a tight, tense voice. “You remind me of her so much.” She pulled away and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I just want to put things right,” she whispered.

  Mevennen said the first thing that came into her head. “Then let's find Outreven.”

  A few hours later, they were on their way. The boat quivered as it rose, and Mevennen expected to travel fast across the land as they had done before, but this time the boat continued to rise. Nervously, Mevennen peered through the window and saw an edge of wing that had not been there before, curling up like the edge of a glistening leaf. The wing shimmered into translucence and the world fell away below. She could see the whole curve of the Memmet, widening out into the estuary and the glistening sea beyond. If she looked in the other direction, she saw the folded white crests of the Attraith, twisting in a serpentine coil until they became the higher peaks of the Otrade. Much farther to the north she could see another, even higher, spine of mountains and after a moment's thought she knew that this must be Ember ai Elemnai, with the notch of Achen Pass clearly visible. Mevennen had never dreamed of seeing so far. She swallowed sudden tears.