Tosummon the final strength to rip the plank away and come at that link, broughta new dimension of horror and strain, which sent a whirling piercing nauseathrough him, body and soul. Nevertheless, he felt his hand grab hold of thewood, the muscles of arm and shoulder activated as if by remote and magicalcontrol. He tore up the plank, and his fingers thrust through the soft rotbeneath and touched the single bone embedded there. It had belonged to theghost, when the ghost had been a man, mislaid on the bridge when the ghost hadviolently died there. Through the concrete essence of that bone, the ghost,unwilling to depart, had kept its hideous link with the condition of life. Ahundred persons had since died because of it. It had exulted in their screamsof terror and agony. It would have killed the rest of the world if it could.Now it was as approximate to extinction, or at least to metamorphosis, as ParlDro’s two hands were approximate to each other. For one hand now held the bone,and the other the small but lethal vise which would crush that bone into athousand meaningless splinters.
Butin those instants, when all Dro’s considerable powers had been focused on securingthe link, the deadalive thing had found the space to win through.
Evenas Dro raised the bone toward the jaws of the vise, the ghost was on him. Madecorporeal by its long pseudo-existence, it had the energy to drag him down andto fling him over.
Droheard the clamour of shattered timbers far off, at the same time as thunderpassed through his skull. He realized dimly, as a storm of water spat in hiseyes, that the ghost had smashed him bodily through the rotten struts of thebridge. Now he hung upside down, but still miraculously caught by knees andcalves in the wood above. His body rocked against one of the stony pylons fromthe gush of the river, which every fourth breath or so went over his head,blinding him and causing him to swallow its fluid. He somehow had not lost thebone, for he could feel it embedded in his hand, but the vise was gone; he hadlet go of it in the shock of falling.
Itseemed a year, but it was less than a minute before he came to understand thebrittle texture of the bone, the hard surface of the pylon against which theriver was ramming him over and over again. His head was full of choked water,his very brain seemed full of it, and the drumming of his own blood. He swunglike a dead crow from a post, into and out of pain, unconsciousness anddrowning, but he still remembered enough to start to hammer the brittle psychicbone against the stone of the pylon.
Ridiculously,stunned, he had forgotten about the creature he was fighting. When the blade ofa new torture went through his left leg, he stupidly wondered if it was broken.
Thedead who lived, like the mirror image, right hand in reverse, tended to attackleftward or sinister. Which made the hearts of men very vulnerable to them. Itoccurred to Dro quite abruptly that the ghost had fastened its teeth and nailsinto the calf of his left leg, ripping and gnawing at him.
Knowledgeof the true facts of the pain made it unbearable. He began to utter strangelong-drawn hoarse hymns of agony. Through these, the ghost kept up its labourupon his flesh, and he, mindless and screaming, clubbed the bone again andagain into the stones of the pylon, his hand with it, till both were gaudy withblood.
Thebone splintered suddenly, but the agony in his leg did not go away. He thoughtthe ghoul still gnawed on him long after he had destroyed it. And long afterthe men had carried him away from the bridge, with a white sun scalding in hiseyes, he thought so.
Andquite often, as now, he would think so again, living through the sequence in theprecise recurring format of a dream.
Atone time it would have taken him an hour or more, sweating and shivering, torecover from this dream. Now recovery was swift. A minute: less. The onlycurious result was an impulse to reach down and touch his calf, as if to makesure it was still attached to him. But that was quickly over. Familiarityagain. Contempt again. In any case, the crack of window showed a pale blue lakelying placidly in the middle of the village, between the eastern roofs, whichwas not a lake but the initiation of sunrise.
Nothingand no one but he seemed to be stirring at the inn. He utilized what facilitiesit had to offer, including the flat, iron-tasting water tapped from a cask inthe room below, and another piece of burned loaf. He had left a handful ofmoney, enough to cover his account generously, lying on the mattress where theghoul had gnawed him in his sleep. Dro was no shorter of cash than he hadanticipated. What the minstrel-thief had stolen from him with such artistry wasa bag of smooth pebble clinkers. Nor would he be the first pickpocket to beedified by such a haul from Parl Dro’s ill-omened black mantle.
Outside,a scatter of birds were whistling and piping to entice the sun. The lake hadmounted higher and overtopped the roofs without spilling. A water rose wasunfolding in the bottom of it.
Drowalked up the main street toward the steel-blue road. At one point, where analley ran off into a yard with a public well, some women were gossiping inhushed voices over their buckets. He meant to be seen, and they saw him, andpointed him out needlessly to each other. A young one, with lily skin, staredat him, then blushed and looked away.
Hewas glad to have been noticed. It would save him the business of advertisinghis
