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

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      They traveled through a country of absolutes. If it was not snow or ice they saw, then it was rock. If it was not white or gray in color, then it was black. The wagon, obscenely gay in such a setting, creaked through a country in which nothing else moved except the wind-blown snow. The mountain moved closer to the trail’s edge, until Ki knew that if she met another wagon or traveler coming from the other direction neither would have room to give way to the other. It was a possibility that she did not much fear.

      It was hard to imagine spring in such a place, or anything other than snow. But here and there a patch of scabrous blue ice clung to the steep mountainside that reared above them, to show that thaws and running water were not unknown in the pass. The blue ice shimmered more brightly in the snow-paled sunlight than it should have. At last, they passed a chunk that was low enough for Ki to see plainly. The ice did not grow paler as they approached it, but bluer. Working within its depths she saw tiny, wriggling blue creatures.

      ‘Ice maggots!’ Vandien shouted over the wind as they passed narrowly under the shadow of the clinging ice. He shrugged casually as they passed, but to Ki they were new beings that both fascinated and repelled her. She did not realize the danger they presented until a great chunk of blue ice slid down the side of the mountain immediately behind them. It crashed on the path, sending rattling shards of ice bouncing off the back of the wagon. It obscured the way they had come with shattered chunks of blue ice. It would have smashed the wagon or killed the team, had they been in its path.

      ‘Little squirmers chewed it loose,’ Vandien observed without rancor. ‘This pass would be a safer one to travel were it not for the maggots and the rotten ice they make. Keep the team moving. There’s no sense in pausing, or even in looking up. If we saw a chunk coming down, there’s no place to get away from it.’

      The wind was an ever-present shushing, a nosy cold creature that nudged its way into every opening garments might provide. Sometimes it shifted about to meet the wagon with a shout and smack of head wind. Vandien looked like a huddled pile of garments on the seat. ‘You could ride within the cuddy, you know!’ Ki called to him. ‘There’s no reason we both have to endure this. I don’t need you to pick out the trail anymore.’

      Vandien shook his head, making no words. Ki was secretly glad of his company in the icy wind, but wondered why he chose to remain there. When the sun was overhead, the winds seemed to decrease in volume. The snow still swirled about the horses’ hooves, but not as strongly. The trail, too, leveled out for a space and traveled horizontally across the mountain’s face, as if taking pity on the weary team. Ki halted the wagon to let them breathe. She blanketed them as they stood in their traces. The trail was wide enough for her to walk past the team, to stroke the frost from their muzzles and share an apple between them. They managed it awkwardly around their bits, jangling as they chewed. The wind buffeted her as she climbed back onto the wagon and to its shushing sound added a whistle. Ki wondered if it were building up again. She wanted to rest the team for a while, but feared to let them stand long if the icy wind was chilling them. She entered the cuddy, closing the door behind her.

      Vandien had thrown his hood back from his face in the still cold inside the cuddy. His dark hair was tousled about his face, and the wind had burned his cheeks red above his beard. The contrast made his dark eyes seem brighter, almost shiny black. They sparked at her, and Ki returned his smile as she pushed her own hood back. There was a certain triumph to having come so far in such bitter weather. It was a heady feeling, having prevailed against the winds of the world.

      Ki hooked down a dangling sausage, used her belt knife to cut chunks of it against the small wall table. It was so cold, the meat made her teeth ache. They ate together, feeling the wind rock the wagon gently on its axles, hearing the faint whistle it made as it swept past the cuddy.

      Vandien rose abruptly, opened the cuddy door to the wind and then pointed to a speck in the sky. ‘I thought that was too pure a note to be wind song. There he is again! Hardly ever see a Harpy aloft in this kind of weather, but then, that’s a strange one. An outcast, did I tell you? Looks like he’s caught in the wind.’

      Stomach quivering, Ki looked. He was so far away, she could not tell his colors; perhaps he was a brown, she told herself, or a deep purple. Or the ghost of a blue, whispered some sneering creature from a dark corner of her mind. The Harpy hovered, not overhead, but up the trail, and very high. His wings would dip, and he would circle high on the vicious winds to come again into position. His clear whistle cut the wind.

      ‘Look how he fights that wind, Ki! Like he wants to stay over the trail. You’d think he’d realize that the wind against those cliffs is what’s throwing him around.’

      Ki did not reply. She was listening to another voice in her head, to Haftor, standing dark and menacing in starlight, holding tight to her wrist: Cora will not be able to contain such a secret. You killed those Harpies. That’s a debt paid only with blood. Neither time nor distance will heal it. Harpies don’t give up on blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them.

      Vandien glanced curiously over at Ki, wondering that she did not share his curiosity about the creature. Ki was crouched like a cat, looking out the door under Vandien’s arm. Her eyes were glued to the speck that circled and whistled.

      ‘Ki!’ She jumped at her name. ‘We had best be on our way again. There is only one shelter spot between here and the bare faces of the Sisters. If we make it tonight, we may pass the Sisters tomorrow. Two days past that and we should be coming down out of the pass. Wagon and all, just as you said.’

      Ki turned haunted eyes on him. He would never know what courage it took for her to emerge from the cuddy, to bare herself to the sky and the death that hung there. She almost hoped the Harpy would try to dive on her, to be smashed by the winds against the cliff face. But he did not. He was too wise for that. He hung, rocking in the sky. His whistles grew louder and longer in the thin air. He cried his triumph to Ki.

      Team unblanketed, Ki clambered woodenly back onto her wagon. She started her wagon rolling again. The grade was easier now; the snow and wind no longer had to be fought. The wind had suddenly switched to come from behind them. The team pulled with a will, undisturbed by the creature that whistled and cried over their heads. Had they not been foaled and grown to size in Harper’s Ford, where the shadows of Harpies swept over the pastures? Ki wished the snow would mantle her from those eyes, the wind rise and dash it from the sky. But the sky only cleared and the wind became a shushing constant. The creak of the wagon could not mask the whistling that was not wind.

      She hunched her shoulders, pulled her hood higher about her face. For one terrible instant she felt her face pucker and redden, and a part of her wondered if she would bawl in loud cries for the way destiny had caught up with her. She sobbed in a breath of the frigid air, and it braced her. Beside her, Vandien said loudly, inanely, ‘Have you ever heard the lay of the hunter Sidris, and how she went to slay the black stag with scarlet antlers?’

      Even as Ki turned bewildered eyes upon him, he opened his throat and began to sing. He had a mellow voice that wandered willfully beside the familiar tune. He sang loudly, if not well, and she did not mind his missed notes, nor the places where he hummed to cover the words he had forgotten. He drowned the Harpy’s whistle.

      The song was a ballad, evidently of his own people, put to a Common tune. He began it with a long introduction of meaningless syllables, repeated at intervals through the song. The song was long and wrenchingly romantic as it told of the hunter who followed the mystic stag and died nobly in the slaying of it. Another time Ki would have mocked the sentimental words about the two futile deaths. Now she was caught up in them. When finally the song died away and Vandien subsided into a somewhat embarrassed silence (truly, he did not have a voice for singing), Ki was surprised to find that the whistling of the Harpy had stopped.

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