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

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СКАЧАТЬ had wanted to put three workers on the field; Ki had done it alone in a single day. There was a simpler answer: Cora loved her as she said, and wished her to stay for that reason only. Ki grunted as she lifted a large punker. She hoped that was not the reason. For, then Cora might never be willing to let her go. And she hungered for the road. Here in the fields, she could not dream of Sven and her children, she could not pretend them here beside her. They had belonged on her wagon, by her fire at the close of the evening. Ki grieved because she could not grieve for them. Cora knew it. She would come upon Ki, silent at some task, and give her a nudge or a shake as she passed.

      ‘Let them go,’ she would plead, a sorrowful look in her eyes. ‘We do not speak of our dead here, lest we draw them back to us from a better place. And what you are doing is worse than speaking. You clutch them to yourself. The Rite did not loose them from you, Ki. Now you must loose them on your own. Let them go, child. Begin to live your life again.’

      Then Cora would leave, hurrying to some task of her own. Ki envied her that bustle of life. She looked so purposeful, so certain of the importance of what she did. And lately she looked at Ki with more speculation in her eyes than before. Ki dreaded the moment when its purpose would be revealed. She did not wish to have anyone thinking of her, making decisions that included her. She only wanted to be on her road.

      Ki watched her hands sawing at the stem. They were thinner now than they had ever been, but just as strong. The calluses were in new places now. Ki felt as if she were drying up all over, hardening in spots where once she had been soft. She did not mind. She just wished the process would hurry up. Maybe when she was completely dried and hard she would accept this new life. She might stop wondering hopelessly why she lacked the force of will to leave.

      A shadow fell across her hands. Lars bent and took the punker from her.

      ‘Must you always work so diligently?’ he asked, laughing weakly. ‘You leave me no excuse to idle!’

      Ki made a smile for him as she rose. ‘I didn’t even hear the wagon come. We may have to make two trips with this field. It bore more heavily than the other.’

      ‘I didn’t come on the wagon,’ Lars said. For the first time Ki took note of his appearance. His blond hair was still damp and curling at the ends. His yellow shirt was of a finer weave than usual, and it bloused over clean trousers. He wore his good boots, not his rough field clogs. Ki smiled in spite of herself. He smelled like Cora’s herb water.

      ‘What occasion makes such demands on you, Lars?’ she asked teasingly. ‘You’d put to shame a Romni bridegroom. Will you ask Katya to bind back your hair this night?’

      He gave her a long-suffering look and shook his head. ‘We’ve a guest, to arrive late this night. I don’t know how you missed hearing of it. Cora sent me to fetch you. The punkers will keep. A night or two in the fields will not harm them. She knew you would want to be cleaned and freshened for the gathering.’

      Ki followed Lars as he lugged the punker over and deposited it on the top of her pile. Then she fell in beside him as they followed the cart path across the fields and back to the house. His hands swung as they strode along, once lightly brushing against Ki’s.

      ‘Who is this guest, so important that we must be scrubbed for him?’

      ‘Cora has not told you?’ Lars asked her with a sideways glance. ‘I am surprised. One that will lighten your heart a bit, I think. And, as I was the one to scold you so for your errors, I will take the happy chance of being the first to tell you good news. You took it sore-to-heart, Ki, when I told you what your Harpy emotions had taken from us. Afterwards I was disgusted with myself. What good had it served to tell you such things? And when my mother knew what I had said! She made my remorse the thicker with a number of names she had not called me since I was a thick-headed child of nine. To lay such a burden on your shoulders was not to my credit. But now we shall both be freed of guilt.’

      ‘What are you saying?’ Ki demanded. ‘Come to the point, Lars!’ She found her heart beating strangely faster. It had rested heavily on her that she had denied the family the comforts they took from their religion. Disgusting and morbid as she might find their Rites, she had no reason to snatch them away. When Ki had felt the most oppressed by the passing of Harpy shadows overhead, when she had longed most for her wagon and the freedom of the road, she had reminded herself of what she had stolen from these people. She felt she owed them. Was Lars hinting that the debt was nearly paid?

      ‘The Rite Master has come,’ he told her. ‘He has traveled far out of his road to come to us at this time of year. He makes ready the Rite of Cleansing. We shall renew our bonds with the Harpies! Do not stare at me so! I have not held back news from you. It was only a short time ago that my mother told me of his coming. No doubt you would have known also if you spoke to people instead of moping about the fields. For three days we will meditate and repent. On the fourth day he will work the Rite for us, to lift from our minds the poisons that separate us from the Harpies and to visit again their … their dead.’ Lars faltered at the last words, as if he touched too close to a wound. Ki’s face did not change.

      They walked on in silence. Lars’s hard-soled boots thudded on the packed earth of the cart track. Ki’s own softly shod feet made no sound. With the sweat of her earlier work drying on her back and neck, Ki began to feel the chill of the fall day. The light wind that blew had an edge to it. The autumn restlessness she knew of old settled on her. It stirred her like it stirred the water birds, the migrating herd animals. She had an urge to be moving, to be leaving behind the too-familiar fields here, to be leaving the Harpy-studded sky. She was thirsty for a cool newness. Soon she would return to her roads, to her old routes, go through towns where the stable folk remembered her team and called her by name. But just as her heart lifted, a darkness seemed to brush across her eyes. A Harpy had flown across the sun. A deadening doubt fell on her. She tried to shake it off. Indecision.

      She felt the sweat-caked dirt about her ankles. Her feet inside her shoes would be filthy. Dirt was under her nails, ground into her skin. The land had seized her, left its mark upon her. It would never let her go. She could not tell them no.

      Lars slipped a hand lightly under her elbow. ‘Must you look so glad at my news?’ He gave her arm a shake. ‘Look out of your eyes, Ki! For too long you have worked alone. Your eyes look only inside you.’

      Ki lifted herself away from his touch, gentling her action with a smile. ‘When this old man and his rite are through, you will all be healed of the harm I have done you. My own healing must come from another source, I fear.’

      ‘Perhaps we must find another man and another rite to heal you,’ Lars countered.

      Ki smiled, but did not understand his jest. Lars seemed to search her face and eyes for an answer to some question. They walked on, but Lars went more slowly, and finally stopped altogether. When Ki turned to face him to ask what was wrong, the strange look on his face stopped her. His eyes told her that he was going to ask something of her, something very difficult. Ki steeled herself.

      ‘Will not you make the Rite with us, Ki? No one excludes you from us but yourself. The way you spoke just now, it is plain you have no thought for joining us in purification and atonement. Yet, all would welcome you.’

      Ki shook her head slowly. Her eyes were hard. ‘I have done nothing to be purified of; I have sinned no sin to atone for.’

      ‘No, of course you haven’t. Don’t take my words to mean that. But, for you to go through it might make you feel more at ease here. Every day you go off to a task and work at it alone. It isn’t right.’

      ‘It’s what I’m used to,’ Ki broke in. She didn’t want Lars to СКАЧАТЬ