The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Megan Lindholm

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СКАЧАТЬ down from the wagon. Ki hastily refolded her blankets and pulled her boots on. She closed the door, unhooked it, and slid it open. As she climbed out onto the seat, she nearly upset a steaming mug of tea that rested there. The chill of morning hit Ki in the face. Vandien was unsuccessfully trying to coax Sigurd to the harness. The gray bared his big teeth snidely and put back his ears.

      ‘What do you want, man?’ Ki demanded of him as she climbed down off the wagon.

      The tone of Ki’s voice froze Vandien. When he turned slowly to face her, his eyes were hooded, his mouth humorless.

      ‘An early start, as promised. I’ve been over this pass before in kinder weather. I tell you that in this weather we shall need every scrap of daylight we can muster for traveling if we are to reach a safe stopping place tonight. The Sisters do not let any pass easily. The longer we take, the longer we shall be in their shadows. Now I shall ask you a question. Why do you snarl at me in such a suspicious voice?’

      Ki’s head was cocked, her smile thin. ‘Suspicious? Of someone who wanted to steal only one of my horses? I dislike being awakened by someone trying to enter my wagon.’

      ‘I was bringing you a mug of hot tea. That was all.’

      Vandien’s voice had become soft and very low. His arms hung loose at his sides. Everything about his posture spoke of offended innocence. Ki would not be taken in so easily.

      ‘What would stir your heart to such consideration for me?’ she asked acidly.

      Ki spun to keep her eyes on Vandien as he strode rapidly past her. He stooped suddenly and threw her the carefully folded shagdeer cover. It thudded solidly against Ki’s chest as she caught it. He had not tossed it gently.

      ‘I can’t imagine what would provoke me into relapsing into civilized behavior.’

      He moved to the fire, began to kick it apart with more energy than the task called for. Ki looked about. He had stored most of her gear already, incorrectly. The shagdeer cover was still clasped to her chest. Slowly she took it to the wagon and put it inside on the sleeping platform. As she came out of the cuddy again she looked down at the mug of tea on the seat. She sat down on the seat, and sipped at the tea thoughtfully. It was already lukewarm in the chilly air. She looked down into the mug as she spoke.

      ‘You didn’t want anything to eat?’

      Vandien stopped trampling the ashes. ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ he admitted, a bit stiffly. ‘I’ve become accustomed to eating rather infrequently lately.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘Sun’s already climbing.’

      ‘We’ll eat as we travel, then,’ Ki replied briskly. She hopped down from the seat, stowed her mug. She chirrupped to the team. Sigmund and Sigurd raised their heads. Sigurd snorted in disgust, but they both came ponderously to take their places. Ki moved between them surely, fastening straps become stiff with cold, warming the icy bits in her palms before slipping them into place. Vandien stood apart, watching. His one move to help had been met with a warning stamp from Sigurd.

      Ki clambered onto the wagon and picked up the reins. There was a moment of awkwardness; Vandien stood on the frozen ground beside the wagon, looking up. Ki looked down into his dog-brown eyes. His curly hair hung low over his forehead and stirred slightly in the chill wind. By daylight, he was a lithe, narrow man, hardly larger than Ki herself. He did not fit her experience. In time, she might grow to like his mocking ways and unpretentious stance. But she did not want to take the time. She would take him over the pass, as she had promised last night. But no more than that. She was sick to death of having others involved in her day-to-day living. Never again would she let anyone depend on her for anything. If his knowledge of the pass could help her through it, she would consider it an even bargain.

      Slowly Ki moved over on the wide plank seat. She motioned him to get up. He was scarcely settled before she released the brake and shook the reins. The wooden wheels jerked out of their frosty emplacements. The creak and sway of the wagon began.

      Ki slid the door of the cuddy open behind them. ‘There’s food in the cupboard under the window. Apples, cheese, and I think a slab of salt fish.’

      He moved to fetch it, touching nothing in the cuddy other than the cupboard she had indicated. He emerged from the cuddy and set the food on the seat between them. Ki waited, guiding the team, and then glanced over at him impatiently.

      ‘I haven’t a knife,’ he reminded her.

      The wheels creaked, the wagon swayed. Ki kept her eyes on the trail ahead as she drew the short knife from her belt and passed it to him. A moment later she felt a nudge and took from him a slab of cheese on a slice of dried fish. They ate slowly. The withered apples could not completely clear the salt of the fish from their mouths. Ki reached back, snagged the wine skin, drank, and passed it to Vandien. He accepted it, drank briefly as she had, and passed it back. Ki rehooked it and shut the cuddy door. Vandien leaned back on it, stretching his booted legs before him.

      ‘I had almost forgotten how pleasant it could be to ride instead of walk. I shall hate to see the deep snow. You will know then, as I do, that it makes the way impassable for a wagon. You will decide to turn back then.’

      ‘I am going through,’ Ki asserted quietly. ‘And the wagon goes under me.’ Vandien gave a snort of what might have been amusement. Ki did not deign to reply.

      The wagon-trail ground upward, twisting and dodging among stands of spruce and snaggles of alder that grew in the shelter of rocky outcroppings. Where the bare outcroppings of rock thrust tall, the trail detoured around them. Often it seemed to pass on the far side of hummocks of land instead of winding closer to the pass. Ki wondered who had made such a roundabout trail to go through the mountains. The grade was easier on the pulling team, true, but sometimes the detours of the path made little sense to her. Ki had used passes that followed the bed of a river, or sought the lowest place in a range of mountains to cross. This trail seemed to do nothing but sneak and slink across the face of the mountains. Sometimes the path seemed to run out entirely, and the team pulled the wagon over flat, lichened rocks and mossy places. Ki saw little sign of game, other than an occasional school of lichen mantas. They were only distinguishable from the gray-green lichen they consumed by their comic flutters as they moved hastily from the wagon path. In places, they coated the earth, hiding the trail.

      Once, Ki thought she had lost the trail entirely. But just then Vandien raised a gaunt hand, jabbing a finger between a stand of trees and an outcropping of gray rock.

      ‘There are the Sisters! First glimpse you get of them.’

      Ki followed the direction of his point. She had expected the Sisters to be the two tallest mountains in the range, or at least the two they would pass between. They were not. White snow shone on the mountain’s face. Their trail ran clearly across it and around. They would have a drop-off on one side of the wagon and a sheer wall of rock on the other. The mountain rose straight up from the trail’s edge, smooth and white. Where the mountain rose straightest and the drop-off on the other side was most extreme, the Sisters stood. Ki now understood the sign back at the inn.

      The Sisters were a strange outcropping of black stone, jutting in relief from the smooth plane of the otherwise gray rock of the mountain. They shone smooth and dark, free of any traces of snow. They looked like the stylized, symmetrical silhouette of two long-haired Humans. The faces were patrician, royal in outline, the noses and lips of the two faces lightly touching: Sisters, greeting one another.

      ‘Did you see them!’ Vandien exclaimed as another stand of trees veiled them from Ki’s eyes.

      Ki СКАЧАТЬ