The Ghost Sister Read Online Free PDF

sleep on a bed that was too soft, when you're used to a harder mattress. Eventually I must have dropped off. I dreamed fitfully of Mevennen: shadowy dreams filled with horror and blood, in which I walked through an endless maze of streets, searching for my sister. There was no one else to be seen and the stones of the buildings around me were darkened and soot-stained, as if a fire had raged through them. The air smelled dead and cold, but worst of all, my usual senses had gone. I could not feel the water that ran beneath the streets, nor sense the energy lines under the land. Nothing made sense any more. I was entirely separate from the world, just as effectively as if I had been struck deaf and blind. I had become a ghost.
    A presence drifted out of nowhere and I heard a voice in my ear:
This, at last, is Outreven.
And I woke with a start, to find that it was just after dawn. Shivering, I rose and washed my face in cold water, rinsing the dream away and persuad-ing myself that I was human still. Then I went from my room. The house was quiet and I wandered out into the damp courtyard. Beyond the gate, a light mist hung over the river valley. Past the northern wall, a narrow winding path led down the cliff face to the river and I took this, carefully stepping sideways on the slippery stone. I did not want to face anyone until I had shaken the dream away.
    The name echoed in my head:
Outreven.
First place of all—the birthplace, they called it, though no one knew why. The word didn't even mean anything, not in any language I knew.
    “
Yes, and I
'
ve been to Outreven
,” northerners would say sarcastically, in response to being spun some fantastic tale. Presumably it had been some ancient settlement out in the wastes somewhere, and only the name remained as the setting for all the legends and stories: myths have to happen somewhere, after all. I knew all the legends. Like all of us, I'd spent my adult life listening in the firelit nights as someone whispered the old tales—not only ofYr En Lai and his lover but others, too: the flying boats; the halls that sang to themselves; the first
satahrach
of all who had come from another star, who stole new bodies for himself and lived for a thousand years. Luta's favorite tale had been the one about the demons Mora and Ei, who had quarreled with their elders and sought refuge in the mountains of a moon; she'd told it so often that it had become my favorite story, too … The future cannot be seen; it stretches behind us and we can only catch glimpses of it over our shoulders, but the past lies before us. As I gazed with my mind's eye out across its expanse, Outreven remained too distant, lying over the horizon of time, a good place for legends. But after my dream, even in the sunlight, the thought of it still made me shiver.
    By the time that I reached the edge of the water, the mist had lifted and the day lay pale before me. The track led down onto the sand flats, shining in the morning light, dappled by the shallow, running water. I walked along the rivershore. The air above the river was full of birds and the flocks rose up in a flurry as I neared. From downriver flew ailets, sailing pearl-winged on the summer wind, close enough for me to see the long silvery eye and the webbed feet tucked beneath the feathers as the birds turned to catch the breeze. The pair floated down the estuary and out of sight; the third shortly followed, a younger bird still bearing its gray infant down. They reminded me of Sereth.
    I crouched at the edge of the river and spent a patient hour catching sandfish; my bloodmind senses tracked them as they glided under the mud. When I had finished, the light on the estuary was rising, illuminating water and air with a flaming haze. Already I could see reflections broken into crimson fragments across the rippling water as the sun rose over the nearby hills. Soon it would become too bright to see properly. I put the sandfish, each hooked through the soft brain,