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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ She tried for a weary smile.

      ‘I am but tired, Haftor, in a peculiar way. The odors of the marsh make my eyes sting and my nose run. They make my head pound until my ears are filled with the sound of a thousand bees humming. I do not think this life suits my body. I find myself longing for the coming of the Rite Master, so that you all may make your Rite. Then I can go on my way with a good conscience.’

      Haftor looked at the empty path behind him. He stepped inside the small hut, close to Ki. His eyes were darker in the dimness of the hut’s interior. His voice was low and urgent.

      ‘Go now, Ki. Go now!’

      She stepped back from him, bewildered and frightened by his sudden intensity. He did not look completely sane, with his mouth set and eyes glowing so. She licked lips gone dry. ‘I cannot go now, Haftor, and keep my honor intact. I have given my word to Cora that I would stay. Would you have me break it?’

      ‘Yes! I would. But you, I fear, will not.’ He shook his head and cast his eyes down. The fierceness seemed to ebb away. ‘For your sake, I hope the Rite Master hurries. But he is an old man, and he will not hasten his rounds. He travels from town to town in the valley, catechizing the children and presenting them to the Harpies. As he did to me once.’ Haftor’s voice trailed away uncertainly, and he seemed lost for a moment in a memory. ‘Another month will find him with us.’

      Ki wondered what he had recalled. Had older memories haunted Haftor as memories of him haunted Ki now?

      A jolt to Ki’s ribs recalled her to the present. Vandien had stirred himself in his coverings to nudge her. Ki glanced up at the sky. No Harpy. And the sun was still high enough for them to travel yet a ways.

      ‘What’s the matter?’

      ‘Tonight’s camp.’ Vandien had settled back against the cuddy door, but he pointed a gloved hand.

      Ki looked. She saw no more than a wide place in the trail. True, the rock there overhung the trail a bit and was free of blue ice. But it was bare to the sky, a bad place to have to defend.

      ‘And if we push on past there – use up what daylight is left to us?’ Ki asked over the wind.

      Vandien shook his head slowly, not even bothering to straighten up on the seat.

      ‘A narrower, more treacherous trail ahead, one best seen in full daylight. And no place to camp for the night, unless you want to light your fire on the trail before or behind us. Here at least you may unharness the team in a level spot and let them take shelter between the wagon and the cliff. Ahead, nothing.’

      Regretfully, Ki pulled the wagon up in the wide space. She wanted to flee from the Harpy. Hopeless. It had always been hopeless. Even at a dead run on level ground, the team could not outdistance that winged death. Ki prayed for strong winds as she moved to unharness the team. A bitter smile twisted her lips. Did she think that Keeva would hear one who had forsaken the Romni ways?

      The rhythm of camp-making took over her mind. Rub the team, blanket the team, shake them out a double measure of grain. She leaned on Sigurd a moment, feeling and hearing the steady munching as his dull teeth ground the grain. The inevitability of her own death settled over her like a cloak. It seemed to make the wind muffled, to make the nasty fingers of the cold more impartial. It dulled the old fear that nibbled at the edges of her mind. It was coming for her, as she had long known it would. Now it would be soon, and the waiting would be over. Ki would be glad when the waiting was done. She was weaponless on an exposed ledge on a mountain face. Let death be mercifully swift for her. She wondered if she would struggle at all.

      A grim humor settled over Ki. It was as Haftor had said: You needed the bitter edges of life to make it real, to let you taste what was still sweet. She hugged Sigurd’s great shoulder impulsively. The beast veered away from her in surprise.

       SIX

      Vandien had already kindled a small fire between the wagon and the bare cliff face. It winked at Ki in the gathering darkness. Vandien moved among Ki’s things with sureness now, knowing where to seek for the kettle, the brewing herbs, the mugs. She started to go to the cuddy to gather the makings of the stew, then saw that he already had it beginning to bubble on the fire. She was torn between displeasure at his free ways with her possessions and relief that it would be ready to eat soon. Impulsively, she changed her pace, came up behind him silently over the snow. He poured tea steaming into a mug and turned to present it to her. ‘You’ve keen ears,’ she said. He shrugged and poured a mug of tea for himself. She watched him over the rim of her mug as she sipped. Who the hell was he? What fate had slipped him into her life, sandwiched between a late cargo and a Harpy bent on revenge? It did not seem at all fair that she must be burdened with him when there was already so much hanging over her. She watched him narrowly, seeing for the first time the precise way his hands moved as he did things, the smallness of his hands and feet that moved so economically to every task. Even in his unkempt state, there was an inborn tidiness about him that refused to be quenched.

      He took the kettle of stew from the fire. Ki followed him as he carried it to the wagon seat, and then into the cuddy. Two bowls were set out on the small table.

      ‘I saw no sense to eating in the wind,’ he explained as he poured two equal portions that left the kettle empty.

      Ki took out hard traveler’s bread from a cupboard to add to the stew in their bowls. They ate silently. Ki tried not to watch him. When the meal was finished, she pushed her bowl aside. Their body heat and the single candle had warmed the cuddy slightly. Vandien had pushed his hood back.

      As they sat silent at the small table he seemed to become more and more uncomfortably aware of Ki’s gaze. Before it, he seemed to withdraw deeper into himself, as if he could vanish by being still and silent. Ki tried to put her eyes elsewhere – on the toy horse on its shelf, on the handle of Sven’s cupboard – only to find her eyes fleeing from her past to rest on the dark little man.

      Vandien fidgeted. Reaching into his tunic pocket, under Sven’s cloak, he drew out a fine, thin piece of cord. It was creamy white and silkily smooth as he drew it over his hands. He tied the ends of it together with a small, peculiar knot and then began to loop it in an intricate pattern over his fingers. Ki found her eyes drawn away from his face and to the moving string. She watched as his fingers looped the string about themselves, built patterns that faded and melted into other patterns. He glanced across at her from under thick eyelashes. She became aware of a small smile that hovered at the corners of his mouth.

      ‘It’s a story string,’ he said in reply to her unasked question. ‘Haven’t you ever seen one before?’

      Ki shook her head, watching his fingers deftly loop and throw the string about in melting shapes. He transferred a loop from the thumb to the finger of the other hand, made a pattern of diamonds, and now a shape of rectangles. With a sudden snap of his narrow hands it was a loop of soft string again. He untied his knot and passed it to Ki for her inspection.

      ‘It seems like any other string,’ Ki observed, as she let it trail across her hands. She tugged it gently, feeling its limber strength. Vandien reached to snag it back from her loose fingers.

      ‘Where I come from … on the other side of these mountains, and then a ways north … they are taught to all the children. From this string I have learned the history of my people, the genealogy of my family and of other families that touch mine, to say nothing of the doings of many heroes.’

СКАЧАТЬ