The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection

He had a straight nose that seemed to begin right between his dark, well-formed eyebrows. His mouth looked small beneath the uneven growth of beard and moustache. No doubt he usually shaved his face. His hands were neat and well-formed around his mug. They were small and callused, as if they had grown used to hard work only in adulthood. He smiled as her eyes rose again to his, as if he could read her thoughts.

‘What takes you over the mountains, Ki? You have the advantage of me. I told you a bit more under the courtesy of the knife than most strangers divulge to one another.’

He drank tea, watching her coolly over the rim. Ki shrugged casually.

‘My business. I’ve a load of salt to deliver, promised some time ago and soon to be late. And I’ve thought lately of shifting my trails. I know this side of the mountains too well. I’ve heard there’s better work for a teamster on the other side.’

‘Not much different from this side. You must be a most dedicated trader of salt, to be so determined to cross this pass in winter.’ He was not calling her a liar. Not quite.

‘So I must be,’ she conceded drily. ‘At least it keeps me from turning to thievery.’

‘Ah!’ he cried and mockingly seized at his heart as if he had been pierced by a rapier. ‘I am rebuked!’ He let his hands fall and laughed aloud. Ki unwillingly smiled in return. The man was insane. She sipped tea.

‘Tomorrow we shall be in snow. The day demands an early start.’

Vandien raised his mug in a strangely formal gesture. ‘Drink with me to an early start,’ he intoned in a mystic voice. Then he downed the cooling tea that remained in the mug.

Ki did not drink with him. She remained frozen, mug in hand. She felt as if he had moved a rock in her mind and the toad beneath it had winked one yellow eye. The warmth in her body drained down into the cold pit of her stomach. She watched him narrowly.

But when Vandien lowered his mug he did not stare at her knowingly as she had feared. Instead, he gathered a handful of dry grasses, polished clean his bowl, and shook the last few drops of tea from the mug. He held up the cleansed items for Ki to note, then set them again by the fire. He stretched. Then he dropped to all fours and crawled under the wagon.

Ki watched him, mystified. He curled up like a dog and closed his eyes.

Ki cleaned her own bowl and mug slowly and rose stiffly to put them away. She banked up the fire and moved about her wagon, putting it to rights for the night. The horses had drawn close again. She went to them, reassuring them with small tongue-clicks and gentle scratchings on their throats. Then she sought out her cuddy.

She did not kindle a light tonight. Enough starshine and firelight came through the small window. She hopped down into the cuddy and stepped to her bed. It was no more than a flat wooden platform elevated off the floor for the sake of storage beneath it. It was large enough to hold two bodies close and comfortable. It was not a sumptuous place to sleep. There was a mattress-bag stuffed full of clean straw to soften the boards beneath. For coverings, Ki had two worn woven blankets, one a dusky blue, the other a brown-gold. In a moment of abandon in Vermintown, she had spent part of Rhesus’s advance on a bed covering of shagdeer hides stitched together. The shagdeer hides were an unwarranted luxury, lush and new in their softness. Ki could strip naked and slip beneath the old woven blankets, pull the shagdeer hide over them, and be as warm as if she slept by a fire on a summer night. After the continual chill of the day, it was a tempting prospect.

But beneath the wagon was a man in a tunic gone thread-bare, who huddled and shivered like a beast. Ki sat slowly on the bed. The shagdeer hide was rich and warm. The worn blankets had little to recommend them. Their colors had faded, their nap grown worn and thin since the day she had first seen them spread smooth on a mattress of fresh hay inside a new wagon that smelled still of tree sap. When she and Sven had slept beneath these blankets, there had never been a need for a shagdeer covering. The soft touch of them as she raised them to her face was like the gentle movement of a large hand against her cheek.

Ki roughly folded the shagdeer hides. Then she crawled out of the cuddy onto the seat. She leaned over the edge of the seat and threw the bundled hides at Vandien’s shivering form. She did not wait to see his startled look or hear any words of thanks. She went back to her cuddy, sliding the small door to and fastening its seldom-used hook.

She did not shed her dusty clothing, but crawled up on the platform and spread the worn blankets over her lap. Her hands rose in the darkness to loosen for the night her widow’s knots. The touch of them on her fingers brought to mind the echo of Vandien’s strange words. She sat still in the darkness, her hair loose upon her shoulders, remembering …

Ki had been long on her road to Harper’s Ford. She had sent word ahead of her coming and of the sad tidings she must bring them. She would be expected. Yet, as she caught her first glimpse of the long meadows and apple trees that fronted the familiar road, her heart quailed within her. Could she not go on past quietly, her team clopping softly in the night, raising small puffs of dust with every step of their feathered hooves? She had sent them word of their loss. There was really nothing further she could offer them. How could she comfort them, who could not comfort herself? She was tired of her own emotions. Since Sven had passed she had been strung like the strings of a Harp tree, and every breeze had seemed to play upon her. There was nothing left in her of anger or pride or gladness. Her quick laugh and sudden tongue had been stilled. Her wits had grown dull with no Sven to whet them. Every emotion in her was stilled, forgotten, like a city when the sea takes it back.

Or so she thought as she raised her eyes for one look at the twisted apple tree that had been a trysting place for them. Her eyes froze. A young man stood there, his hair pale in the evening light. A farmer’s smock hung nearly to his knees. His light hair hung long and loose to his shoulders, as befitted a man unspoken for. Ki’s tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as he lifted one arm in greeting. In a dream, she stopped the horses. Sven came across the meadow to her, silently, moving through the tall grasses in the graceful stride she knew so well. She dared not speak, lest she break the spell. She did not care how this could be. Just let him keep coming closer. As he drew near, the trueness of his features did not alter. He did not fade nor float as a ghost should; she heard the brush of the grasses against his striding legs.

‘Ki!’

Her heart fell. That tenor voice was not Sven’s but that of Lars. Lars, the youngest brother, as like to Sven as ever.

She sagged back against the cuddy door. Her shaking heart fell to her stomach. Neither spoke as Lars mounted the wheel and seated himself on the seat beside her.

‘Shall I drive?’ he offered softly.

Ki shook her head. She stirred the reins, and the team pulled. She could think of no words to say to him. Once more a desert possessed her heart. The pain would be new to Lars. Yet the months of bearing the pain alone had taught Ki no ways to quell it.

‘Poor sister Ki. I had cold words ready for you for not letting us know sooner. I forget them now. If a time of healing has still left you looking thus …’ Lars let the thought trail off. The wagon creaked beneath them. The horses’ hooves went on clopping in the dust. Lars leaned back heavily against the cuddy door. Ki felt his body sway with the wagon. Irritably, he hunched forward to gather and lift his long hair from the back of his neck. He wiped the sweat away with his sleeve. Ki smiled at the gesture. He was the image of Sven before he was a man.

‘I remember how he hated having his hair down on his neck. He used to tease and say that was the only reason he had come to an agreement with me: so that I would bind his hair back with a thong as befitted a taken man.’

Lars nodded sourly. ‘It’s a foolish custom, but one mother will not hear of parting with. I almost wish I were a boy again, with my hair cropped short. It’s to my shoulders already, and keeps on growing.’

‘It will soon stop, by itself,’ Ki said comfortingly. ‘But if it is such an irritation to you, you could always find a woman to take you and bind it back.’

Lars’s shoulders thumped against the cuddy door as he threw himself back in disgust. ‘You, too eh? I feel like a yearling at a stock fair. Rufus reminds me of my “duty.” Mother must have Katya over to help wind the wool, to put shingles on the barn, to aid with the spring calving. Strange. Up to last year, I was help enough for her when such things needed doing. Now she must have the two of us – and no more, mind you.’

Ki chuckled. She knew they were both keeping their minds from a darker subject. She knew it, and worked at it.

‘So your mother plots against you, with the aid of your older brother. What of this Katya? Can she be so distasteful that you must resist?’

‘Katya.’ Lars rolled his eyes up. ‘Katya is plump and pretty, and as exciting as corn bread. Already she has the look of a farming woman. Hips that could birth a nation, shoulders that could take an ox’s yoke, hands to steer a plow, breasts to nurse a brood.’

‘Sounds daunting,’ Ki murmured.

‘Daunting. That’s the word for her. We grew up as friends, you know, liking one another well enough. She has grown to be a solid, pleasant woman – a woman to go fishing with, or hoe with in the fields. But not a woman I would choose as a mate and partner. I have never desired her that way.’

‘Then keep your hair loose upon your shoulders, Lars. It becomes you so. Soon enough a woman will find you and come to bind it back for you.’

‘I hope she begins looking soon,’ Lars grumbled softly.

Evening was cooling the world. Night scents were beginning to rise. Through the trees on either side of the road Ki could make out the dim lights of small houses. Those were the homes of Sven’s kinspeople, those related by blood or tied by their oaths to the family. These were the people who would demand of Ki their Rite of Loosening. Landholders all, they would come with their farmers’ eyes and earth-worker hands to ask of Ki what had become of their Sven. A cold feeling twisted inside her. She did not want to lie.

Ki turned tired eyes to the night sky. She tortured herself. If she narrowed her eyes and did not look at Lars too directly, she could pretend. Many evenings Sven would tie his horse to the tail of the wagon, to trail along. He would clamber up on the box beside her. The children would be drowsing in the cuddy as they talked in low voices and watched for a good stopping place. Some evenings they didn’t speak at all. The sound of slow hooves and the wagon’s creaking was all the conversation they required. Those were long, companionable evenings, with Sven’s shoulder gently bumping against Ki’s as she drove.

‘How did it happen?’ Again, Lars broke Ki’s spell.

She hesitated. She tried to find words for it. It must be a tale he would believe. It must be a tale they would all accept. A thousand times Ki had imagined herself at this moment, when one of Sven’s people would ask that question. She did not want to lie. She did not think she could.

The words came to her brokenly, sounding strangely distant to her own ears. She might have been speaking of a famine in a far-off country, or blighted fields on the other side of the mountains. ‘They … Sven took the children. Young Lars was big enough to sit behind him and cling to his shirt. His little legs stuck out. He couldn’t wrap them around that big horse. Little Rissa he put before him. She thought it great fun to be up so high on that big black horse. You never saw that beast of Sven’s, Lars. A full stallion, and given to sudden, unpredictable tempers. I had advised him against such a horse, but you know how he was. He loved its spirit and the chance to measure his will and spirit against that of the horse. Usually it was not a fight between them; it was a trying, a challenge between two high-spirited animals. But sometimes … stubborn, stubborn man.’

True, every word of it. As far as she had taken the tale. Ki let the silence lengthen. She had pointed Lars onto a false trail. She hoped his mind would take it up. Silently she begged Sven to forgive her for laying their deaths on his judgement in horses. When Lars did not speak, Ki knew he was trying to spare her. He thought he knew the way of it. Good. She broke the silence for him.

‘I would warn you, Lars. I know nothing of this Rite of yours. I fear I shall bring shame on myself before the family.’

Lars snorted. In happier times it would have been the beginning of his forgiving laugh. ‘You have always worried overmuch about offending us, Ki. We know you are not of us. Cora, my mother, will guide you through. And Rufus, too, will be at your side to help you if needed. Do not be offended. It is not often done this way, but it can be, especially in cases where the sole survivor of a family is a small child. The Rite Master has approved it.’

‘To your Rites I am myself a child. I take no offense.’

‘Did Sven never speak to you of our customs?’ Lars ventured.

‘Sometimes. But we spoke little of death customs. Sven involved himself with life. He did say … Lars, you may think me crude to ask this in such a way, at such a time. Your mother worships Harpies?’

Ki’s words had sounded steady and calm. Only her heart shook in her body. She longed for Lars to deny it, to laugh at her for believing Sven’s tall tales. Then she could relax, could share with them the truth of Sven’s death.

Lars spread his large hands upon his knees. ‘It must sound strange to you. And Sven would make it more so, with his jibes and mocking ways. It is not worship we give them, Ki. We know they are not gods. They are mortal beings like ourselves but, unlike us, they have a closer link to, well, to the Ultimate. Fate works more directly upon them. They hold the keys to the doors between the worlds. They have a knowledge denied to us, and abilities …’

‘… abilities born of those other worlds. I know the phrases, Lars. Sven told me that your mother sacrificed a bullock to the Harpies on the eve of our formal agreement, and a yearling each time I gave birth. You are right – it seems outlandish to me: To me they are carrion-eaters, preying on herds and flocks, taking savagely, mocking, cruel …’