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

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СКАЧАТЬ she must wade. She glanced up again at the sun, shaking her head in consternation. She stepped into the blackness.

      Eerie. She stood, one foot atop a flat black lake of shining, eternal depth that did not reflect her. As Ki watched, her foot sank slowly into its surface. The black stuff pressed heavily about it, squeezing it tightly, like no mud that she had ever struggled through. In dismay, she tried to snatch her foot back. It came slowly and only with great effort. But her foot came out clean, undamped, no trace of clinging black. Ki stood again on hard ice beneath snow.

      She looked to her wagon. The black sea had engulfed most of the tall wheels, lapped motionlessly about the bottom of the box. It had buried and quenched her fire, had covered the harness that lay before the wagon. And still the level rose.

      ‘Vandien!’ She roared the name with all the power in her lungs. The black stuff swallowed up the sound, reduced her shout to a whimper. Ki’s breath came raggedly. She heard motion behind her, saw the horses wisely retreating around the corner of the mountain trail. She wondered what they knew, and how.

      ‘Vandien!’

      Her scream was a whisper in the night. She imagined him asleep, his head heavy on the mattress, his body drained of blood and strength. He would die in the shadows of the Sisters, crushed as the legends had warned. She could not save him. She could not save anybody, not Sven or her children, or even ugly Haftor, and not Vandien. To venture out on that black stuff was foolish heroics. Her death would be an empty gesture, like bandaging a corpse. No one would expect it of her, not even Vandien. She watched the blackness lap higher. It would be like putting socks on a frozen foot, as insane as … as fighting a Harpy with a piece of harness.

      She wanted to run, but could not. Each time her foot touched down, the black stuff caught at it. Her whole body was heavy to her, her hands were weights that swung at the ends of her arms; her head, too heavy, wobbled on her neck. Even the air she tried to suck into her lungs seemed thicker, rancid somehow. There was no stir of wind. The black stuff made no sucking noises as it grudgingly released her feet. No noise existed on its black plane. And it was rising, visibly rising. Even as she watched, another spoke of the tall wheel was swallowed. It lapped, it climbed. And her feet dragged in it, threatened to spill her face-first into it. She grew heavier with every step, her arms dragged down from her shoulders; her chin kept dropping to her chest. Crawl, crawl, pleaded her body, but Ki saw herself horizontal on that blackness, never rising again.

      At last her hands clutched the sides of the wagon. She clung to its wood like a drowning swimmer working her way along a steep bank.

      ‘Vandien!’ she gasped, the words falling heavily to the blackness, scarcely reaching even her own ears. There was no reply.

      She fell on her knees onto the wagon seat, scrambled to open the cuddy door. Impossibly, the blackness was rising up inside the wagon as well. There was not enough space to clamber into the cuddy and stand. The black stuff was nearly level with the bottom of the cuddy door and rising as Ki watched. Soon it would reach the sleeping platform. ‘Vandien!’ she screamed. He stirred faintly and failed to raise his bandaged head.

      ‘Tired,’ he mumbled complainingly. ‘Feel weak.’ He closed his dark eye again. Ki’s hand sank deep in the muck, her fingers disappearing in it immediately. The black gripped her, squeezed her hand like a well-met friend. With a half-sob, she snatched her hand back. It came out clean, with a shoulder-wrenching effort. Her breath jerked in and out of her body. She would scuttle across the top of it, swiftly, not give herself a chance to sink. She would do it now. She would do it this instant. The black rose a little higher, crept over the edge of the seat plank. Ki’s cry strangled in her throat.

      She would have done as well trying to scuttle across the top of a lake. Under her full body weight, her hands sank wrist-deep, to be pulled out ponderously. There was no purchase to drag her knees and legs out of the stuff. With a wail of hopelessness, she launched herself forward, her full body length. Her hands fell on the edge of the mattress, gripped its straw-stuffed cloth. She could not drag herself to it. She could not pull it toward her. Everything was sinking, was held in the blackness.

      The light in the cuddy went dimmer. Ki glanced in alarm at the tiny window, then back at the cuddy door. The seat was covered. Every moment the space between the top of the door and the blackness grew narrower. The blackness was rising up around her legs, holding them as tightly as leather boots as it lapped against her thighs.

      ‘Vandien!’ she screamed the name, and the sound seemed to reach him. His eyes opened a little. The strain on her back was terrific. She wanted to drop belly-first in the blackness. The weight of her body seemed to increase every moment. ‘The shadows of the Sisters, Vandien. We have to get out of here! You aren’t weak, it’s the shadows. Come on, man, damn you!’

      The mention of the Sisters seemed to prick him. The dark eye came alive, looked about him. Panic ignited there.

      ‘We have to get out of here!’ he exclaimed. The words barely brushed Ki’s ears. A hysterical giggle burst out of her at the inadequacy of his statement.

      He rolled onto his belly as if it took all his strength simply to shift his body. He stared at the narrow hatch that remained of the cuddy door. Ki knew that her legs were nearly completely encased in the stuff. His dark eye widened in terror.

      ‘Forgive me, Ki,’ he said, or so his soft words seemed to be. He reared his body up on his knees and fell forward on top of her. Her face plunged into the airless, lightless, sensationless blackness. Horror snapped her neck muscles, and her head jerked up. Vandien was slithering over the top of her, was using her body as a bridge to the buried plank seat of the wagon. One of his booted feet scraped across her back. With a heavy spring off her, he was free. He was kneeling on the plank, in the black stuff, but not sinking deeper.

      She could not crane her neck to see him. She heard no more movement. Panic, anger, outrage at his treachery energized her. The black stuff had seized her belly, but her hands had kept their hold on the straw mattress. With the strength that comes only with death-terror, she pulled up. But even as her chest came free of the blackness, a strong jerk pulled her down into the muck again. Her hands snapped free of their precarious grip.

      ‘Don’t fight me!’ The voice came from a world away. Then the grip on her ankles became the grip of hands, not blackness. She felt the solid, homey scuff of wood seat-plank beneath her toes. She tried to help, but her body was impossibly heavy. Thick as the black stuff seemed to be, she did not gain any when she pushed against it with her hands. She felt Vandien put his full body weight on her calves that now rested on the seat, and grab her hips and jerk upward. In reaction, her chin hit the black and was gripped by it. Her belly muscles convulsed in horror at its touch. The buck broke her chest and shoulders free, and then Vandien’s arms were around her waist, helping her to draw her arms and hands out of it. The back of her head hit the top of the cuddy door as she was jerked through it.

      There was no time for gasping, for rest, for thanks. Already the black lapped about their hips as they knelt on the hidden seat. Vandien’s face was white with exertion beneath his stained bandage turban. Wordlessly, he staggered upright, to stand on the seat and drag himself up onto the roof of the cuddy. Ki had scrambled up to lie full-length beside him before he could offer help. Side by side, they panted like dogs, watching with dull eyes the black tide that rose around them. Ki desperately needed to rest, but there was no time.

      The black stuff seemed to be rising faster. She heard the wood of the wagon groan ponderously in its grip. She gazed across the black sea to the far white of the snowy trail. She yearned, but she knew they would never make it. They would sink, smother and drown in the blackness. Crushed by the shadows of the Sisters. She turned her eyes up to the immensity above them. Vandien’s gaze followed hers. They had no further capacity for awe, СКАЧАТЬ