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

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СКАЧАТЬ of the revealed silver faces. They looked on what few had ever seen: the features of the Sisters, stern, uncompromising, watching their black veils drop upon the trail. Their faces were too pure to be Human, unsullied by the emotions of lesser beings. Vandien stretched appealing hands forth to them. If the wide silver eyes saw his plea, they made no sign. The black rose higher. Impossibly far away, the white snow shone invitingly. The Sisters lingered in their kiss, their eyes impassive, their hair streaming silver.

      ‘To die, while looking on such beauty,’ breathed Ki.

      Vandien picked up her hand to gain her attention. His eye flitted to the cliff edge, or where it had been. Ki understood. Better quickly than slowly. The edge was close enough that conceivably they might make it. And if they smothered along the way – did it matter where one died, on top of a wagon or crawling toward suicide?

      Ki tried to struggle to her feet, but Vandien dragged her flat again. He slithered off the wagon top and into the blackness. It was now only a hand below the level of the wagon top. She watched him go, expecting to see him founder in the stuff. But he kept his hands and legs constantly in motion, his body twitching back and forth as if he were in a fit. Like a swimming snake, she thought, and then the better image of a water-skating insect came to her mind. His constant twitchings and jerkings kept him on the surface, scuttling along, giving the black no time to grip him. She wished she could manage it. But her body was too tired, her muscles screaming, her head pounding. Vandien twitched and writhed along, moving slowly toward the edge of the trail. Ki watched him go, felt a weary gladness for him. The wagon creaked alarmingly beneath her. It slowly began to lurch. Ki longed for the will and strength to follow Vandien. He did not look back. The black rose toward her, touched her foot with soft hands.

      Ki scuttled. Terror, not strength, and the whip of panic moved her body. The top of the wagon disappeared even before she had her body completely off it. She did not look down at the stuff beneath her, but jerked and flopped along like a fish drowning in air. The black seized and released her, seized and released her, and each time it gave back the foot, the knee, the hand with greater reluctance. The air was too heavy to breathe. Ki could not get enough air into her lungs. Any trace of sound in the air was squeezed out of her ears, pushed away from her. The edge of the cliff was incredibly distant, and Vandien nearly as far. Blackness was closing in from the sides of her vision. Logic told her that her body was protesting its abuse, was retreating into unconsciousness. But a subliminal horror rose in her, told her that the blackness at the sides of her vision was the same blackness that tried to suck her down. Ki willed her body to greater effort.

      Vandien slipped over the edge. He reached it, and without a pause scuttled headfirst over the drop-off. She heard no scream as he went. The beginning of his fall was slow, for the black stuff held him, dragging him back so that it took forever for his body to tip over the edge. His legs were going down. Ki mindlessly made a final effort to catch up with him, to join him in his fall.

      His boots vanished. Ki wallowed on, alone in the black, not fighting to survive but only to choose her own method of dying. If her body must be crushed, let it be smashed on rocks and eaten by birds, not engulfed in a mindless black ooze. Her legs were slowing, refusing her frantic commands to crawl faster. She seemed to sink deeper with every move, to make no forward progress at all. She could not see the edge. Her head was too heavy, she could not hold it high enough. She had to look down on the shining black that granted her no reflection but tried to pull her down. Her nose began to bleed; she had to gulp air through her mouth. The blood from her nose fell in thick drops on the black surface, to be swallowed by it. Ki angrily snorted the blood from her nostrils and crawled on.

      The edge! Ki stared down a sheer wall of blackness that suddenly became a wall of stone and snow. Ki gave a yelp and flung her head and shoulders over the edge. She pulled her hands free, and her arms, and dangled them down to the snow, so far beyond her reach. The white valley floor, with its dark dots of brush, was as far away as the sky. The black sucked at her belly, took her feet and ankles. One more flop, one more surge, one more belly-wrench of muscle.

      She was over! She dangled, head down, but the black would not release her body. It was a controlled fall as she slid, belly against the black, feet nearly straight in the air, down the face of the sheer black wall. She looked down at the valley floor, white-mantled and horridly far away. She oozed slowly toward it. The blood from her nose choked her, and she retched as her body fought for air.

      Her wrist was gripped. She turned startled eyes to Vandien’s snow-white face. His dark eye seized her as hard as his hand. He had been shouting, but the black had eaten the sound.

      ‘Turn your body!’ he screamed in her ear, and she made out his words. ‘Turn your body while the stuff still grips you. Force your feet to come down first.’

      He was clear of the black, clinging – she knew not how – to the snow and rock that sheared off the trail. Her muscles screamed as she wrenched her too-heavy body about, forced it to bend and obey. Vandien braced her hand against the tiny ledge he had found in the cliff edge. Ki wished for her gloves as she gripped the freezing rock. The black stuff had long ago sucked them from her hands.

      Gradually her body weight came down, and her shoulders and arms twisted unnaturally as she tried to fold her body sideways. With a silent sucking, her feet came clear of the black. Ki found her body sliding in an arc. The whip of her released body cracked, and she nearly lost her precarious grip. Then she was clinging, toes and fingers, body spread, beside Vandien. She pressed her face into the cold snow and the solid rock. She licked the dampness of melting snow flavored with her blood. The cold, thin air flowed into her lungs delightfully. For a long time, it was enough to cling and breathe and wet her mouth with snow.

      ‘Ki!’ It was a shout by intention, but a whisper by effect. She turned her face to Vandien wearily. Whatever it was, she wished he would keep it to himself. She did not want to speak or think or struggle anymore. Let her cling here until her strength gave out. After that, at least it would be quick.

      ‘Watch me!’ She did, with weary eyes that only widened a little as she saw him risk his hold by trying to scramble upward. He thrust his free hand back into the vertical black wall just above the snow and rock. It gripped him. He hung by its sucking grip as he raised his other hand and thrust it in beside the first one. He braced his feet lightly against the cliff face. Ki was only mildly intrigued by his performance until he drew out one bare hand and stuck it in as far away as his outstretched arm would reach. Then he drew out his second hand, plunging it in close to the first one. His body scraped against snow and rock as he dragged it after his hands.

      ‘Come on!’ She read from his lips the words his mouth roared. Then he was doing it again – draw out a hand, stretch the arm, thrust in the hand, follow with the second hand, scrape the body along. He did not look back.

      Ki watched her hand idly as it clawed up the rock and snow and crept into the dark grip of the black stuff. She shivered as she felt her hand taken in its fingerless grasp. She swung for an instant, trusting to that black suction. Her shoulder cracked ominously as she thrust her second hand into the black wall. Her toes scrabbled against rock.

      Pull out the first hand. Dangle and reach for another hold. Her second hand was beginning to slip free as she thrust in the first one again. It was a more precarious way of moving than it had appeared. The effort of scraping her body across the rock face dragged at her hands, trying to pull them free of her gripless black hold. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. No air to breathe with, her hands stretched high. Shoulder joints threatened and warned. Ki remembered sickly how the one shoulder had once pulled free of her body’s command. Please, she begged her body. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. Gradually the blackness became more solid. It held her hands more firmly, and for a few moments that was a comfort, but then it became more difficult to thrust the venturing hand in, harder to make the black relinquish the trailing hand. When her hands were in СКАЧАТЬ