The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World by Brian Stableford Page A

normal reflex action.
    “Helen Hilversun,” she said, and added: “if your majesty pleases.”
    The ghost-king bowed his head, very slightly. He turned, then, to point to the great horn, which hung on the wall behind the throne. His diamond-eyes looked first at the horn, then at Helen, and back and forth again.
    Helen understood. Belek was under enchantment. He could not speak of the horn. There was something strange in the way he moved his eyes, and the expression on his face. Ghosts do not have a great capacity for expression, and are notorious for being unable to exercise strict control over their appearance. Belek was trying hard to indicate something, but Helen didn’t know what.
    The horn was brass, seven feet from end to end, and its mouth yawned fully three feet across. It was curved into a shallow arc, and it hung from the wall supported by two steel chains extended from brass rings welded to its body.
    Helen walked down the aisle and around the high table. It was a bit of a squeeze getting past the chairs at the end of the rank. The great hall didn’t seem so great with a crowd like this crammed into it. When she eventually stood before the horn she could see by the light of the match that two words had been graven into the metal about halfway along its length.
    They were: BLOW HARD.
    “Is that all?” muttered Helen. “All this fuss just for that. I could have guessed that.”
    She spoke aloud, temporarily unmindful of the gathered throng. Then she remembered, and turned away guiltily.
    Every glittering eye was fixed upon her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I… think I’d better go now.” She took one step. Then she hesitated.
    There was something about those glittering eyes. The ghosts looked utterly forlorn… desperate… tormented.
    Their faces suggested greater, deeper pain than mere flesh could ever know. With ghosts, this is not unusual.
    But Helen felt an urgency about the way these ghosts looked that was strange. She knew that they wanted to say something, but they couldn’t. A calculated super natural force was stopping them. Inspiration struck her.
    She walked over to the ghostly courtier who sat at the right hand of the king.
    “Excuse me,” she said. “May I borrow your chair?”
    The ghost stood up and bowed.
    It was quite a heavy chair—nothing like the throne of course, but still an impressive piece of furniture. Helen had to put the match down, jamming it into a crack where the upholstery was imperfect. Then she dragged the chair over to the wall, using both hands. She set it beneath the mouthpiece of the horn, and climbed up. She couldn’t shift the horn far, but found that she could swing the mouthpiece away from the wall sufficiently to allow her to set her mouth to it. She blew.
    Her breath was swallowed up by the horn. Nothing happened.
    She blew harder. No sound issued from the horn.
    She blew as hard as she possibly could, and still nothing happened. The horn drank her breath without the slightest difficulty.
    Helen turned back to the ghostly assembly, and said: “I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it.”
    Written on their faces was an anguish more terrible than anything Helen had ever seen. It was worse than anything her imagination could have conjured. It defied description.
    She turned to the horn again, and looked hard at the mouthpiece. It was just a circle of brass—meant for a giant’s lips and lungs, no doubt, but still only a circlet of brass. She knew that she couldn’t work any magic on the horn—that was out of the question. But perhaps…
    She didn’t mutter this spell, but spoke it loud and clear, careful of the pronunciation.
    “Breath, breath, come and blow, help me now a wind to sow; wind into the horn must flow, sound a good note, high or low.”
    Then she blew, hard.
    And harder.
    As hard as she could.
    And still harder…
    And from the mouth of the horn came the merest trace of sound—a thin, low-pitched whisper like the sound