Читать книгу The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Megan Lindholm - Страница 11

Morning poked gray fingers in the cuddy window, to stir Ki within the homey shelter of Sven’s blankets. Without, the sounds of early morning and the tiniest vapors of chill slipping in through the crack under the window. Within, semi-darkness and body warmth and immense comfort. Ki could hear his footsteps moving about, stirring up the embers of last night’s fire. Now he would be putting the kettle on. There was the chink of mugs, then the creak and list of the wagon as a man’s weight was put upon it. He would be moving silently so that the children would not wake. He fumbled at the door. It slid, then caught harshly on the hook Ki had latched the night before.

Ki was jerked out of fantasy to wakefulness. She rolled off the edge of the bed and landed on her feet. She saw his fingers in the crack of the door, tugging, trying to open it quietly.

‘I’m awake.’ She spoke flatly, without fear, warning him.

There was a motionless silence outside the door. Then she heard him jump lightly down from the wagon. Ki hastily refolded her blankets and pulled her boots on. She closed the door, unhooked it, and slid it open. As she climbed out onto the seat, she nearly upset a steaming mug of tea that rested there. The chill of morning hit Ki in the face. Vandien was unsuccessfully trying to coax Sigurd to the harness. The gray bared his big teeth snidely and put back his ears.

‘What do you want, man?’ Ki demanded of him as she climbed down off the wagon.

The tone of Ki’s voice froze Vandien. When he turned slowly to face her, his eyes were hooded, his mouth humorless.

‘An early start, as promised. I’ve been over this pass before in kinder weather. I tell you that in this weather we shall need every scrap of daylight we can muster for traveling if we are to reach a safe stopping place tonight. The Sisters do not let any pass easily. The longer we take, the longer we shall be in their shadows. Now I shall ask you a question. Why do you snarl at me in such a suspicious voice?’

Ki’s head was cocked, her smile thin. ‘Suspicious? Of someone who wanted to steal only one of my horses? I dislike being awakened by someone trying to enter my wagon.’

‘I was bringing you a mug of hot tea. That was all.’

Vandien’s voice had become soft and very low. His arms hung loose at his sides. Everything about his posture spoke of offended innocence. Ki would not be taken in so easily.

‘What would stir your heart to such consideration for me?’ she asked acidly.

Ki spun to keep her eyes on Vandien as he strode rapidly past her. He stooped suddenly and threw her the carefully folded shagdeer cover. It thudded solidly against Ki’s chest as she caught it. He had not tossed it gently.

‘I can’t imagine what would provoke me into relapsing into civilized behavior.’

He moved to the fire, began to kick it apart with more energy than the task called for. Ki looked about. He had stored most of her gear already, incorrectly. The shagdeer cover was still clasped to her chest. Slowly she took it to the wagon and put it inside on the sleeping platform. As she came out of the cuddy again she looked down at the mug of tea on the seat. She sat down on the seat, and sipped at the tea thoughtfully. It was already lukewarm in the chilly air. She looked down into the mug as she spoke.

‘You didn’t want anything to eat?’

Vandien stopped trampling the ashes. ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ he admitted, a bit stiffly. ‘I’ve become accustomed to eating rather infrequently lately.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘Sun’s already climbing.’

‘We’ll eat as we travel, then,’ Ki replied briskly. She hopped down from the seat, stowed her mug. She chirrupped to the team. Sigmund and Sigurd raised their heads. Sigurd snorted in disgust, but they both came ponderously to take their places. Ki moved between them surely, fastening straps become stiff with cold, warming the icy bits in her palms before slipping them into place. Vandien stood apart, watching. His one move to help had been met with a warning stamp from Sigurd.

Ki clambered onto the wagon and picked up the reins. There was a moment of awkwardness; Vandien stood on the frozen ground beside the wagon, looking up. Ki looked down into his dog-brown eyes. His curly hair hung low over his forehead and stirred slightly in the chill wind. By daylight, he was a lithe, narrow man, hardly larger than Ki herself. He did not fit her experience. In time, she might grow to like his mocking ways and unpretentious stance. But she did not want to take the time. She would take him over the pass, as she had promised last night. But no more than that. She was sick to death of having others involved in her day-to-day living. Never again would she let anyone depend on her for anything. If his knowledge of the pass could help her through it, she would consider it an even bargain.

Slowly Ki moved over on the wide plank seat. She motioned him to get up. He was scarcely settled before she released the brake and shook the reins. The wooden wheels jerked out of their frosty emplacements. The creak and sway of the wagon began.

Ki slid the door of the cuddy open behind them. ‘There’s food in the cupboard under the window. Apples, cheese, and I think a slab of salt fish.’

He moved to fetch it, touching nothing in the cuddy other than the cupboard she had indicated. He emerged from the cuddy and set the food on the seat between them. Ki waited, guiding the team, and then glanced over at him impatiently.

‘I haven’t a knife,’ he reminded her.

The wheels creaked, the wagon swayed. Ki kept her eyes on the trail ahead as she drew the short knife from her belt and passed it to him. A moment later she felt a nudge and took from him a slab of cheese on a slice of dried fish. They ate slowly. The withered apples could not completely clear the salt of the fish from their mouths. Ki reached back, snagged the wine skin, drank, and passed it to Vandien. He accepted it, drank briefly as she had, and passed it back. Ki rehooked it and shut the cuddy door. Vandien leaned back on it, stretching his booted legs before him.

‘I had almost forgotten how pleasant it could be to ride instead of walk. I shall hate to see the deep snow. You will know then, as I do, that it makes the way impassable for a wagon. You will decide to turn back then.’

‘I am going through,’ Ki asserted quietly. ‘And the wagon goes under me.’ Vandien gave a snort of what might have been amusement. Ki did not deign to reply.

The wagon-trail ground upward, twisting and dodging among stands of spruce and snaggles of alder that grew in the shelter of rocky outcroppings. Where the bare outcroppings of rock thrust tall, the trail detoured around them. Often it seemed to pass on the far side of hummocks of land instead of winding closer to the pass. Ki wondered who had made such a roundabout trail to go through the mountains. The grade was easier on the pulling team, true, but sometimes the detours of the path made little sense to her. Ki had used passes that followed the bed of a river, or sought the lowest place in a range of mountains to cross. This trail seemed to do nothing but sneak and slink across the face of the mountains. Sometimes the path seemed to run out entirely, and the team pulled the wagon over flat, lichened rocks and mossy places. Ki saw little sign of game, other than an occasional school of lichen mantas. They were only distinguishable from the gray-green lichen they consumed by their comic flutters as they moved hastily from the wagon path. In places, they coated the earth, hiding the trail.

Once, Ki thought she had lost the trail entirely. But just then Vandien raised a gaunt hand, jabbing a finger between a stand of trees and an outcropping of gray rock.

‘There are the Sisters! First glimpse you get of them.’

Ki followed the direction of his point. She had expected the Sisters to be the two tallest mountains in the range, or at least the two they would pass between. They were not. White snow shone on the mountain’s face. Their trail ran clearly across it and around. They would have a drop-off on one side of the wagon and a sheer wall of rock on the other. The mountain rose straight up from the trail’s edge, smooth and white. Where the mountain rose straightest and the drop-off on the other side was most extreme, the Sisters stood. Ki now understood the sign back at the inn.

The Sisters were a strange outcropping of black stone, jutting in relief from the smooth plane of the otherwise gray rock of the mountain. They shone smooth and dark, free of any traces of snow. They looked like the stylized, symmetrical silhouette of two long-haired Humans. The faces were patrician, royal in outline, the noses and lips of the two faces lightly touching: Sisters, greeting one another.

‘Did you see them!’ Vandien exclaimed as another stand of trees veiled them from Ki’s eyes.

Ki nodded, strangely moved at the sight. Vandien seemed to understand the rise of emotions in her. ‘Devotion. To me, they always seem to sing of selfless love. This is the only place on the trail that gives you a full view of them. Up close, they lose the resemblance and turn into plain outcroppings of black rock. But from here it’s a sight to make a minstrel weep. The first time I saw them I longed to be an artist, to capture them in some way. Then I realized they were already captured, for all time, in the best possible form. No mere Human could improve on that!’

His dark eyes snapped and glowed with intense pleasure. He flung himself back against the cuddy door. Ki could find no further words to add to his. But she had caught his spirit of admiration for the Sisters. He seemed pleased that she shared it.

By midmorning they were into shallow snow. It went from a wet layer that the horses’ hooves churned up into mud to a deeper layer that made the wagon wheels stick and slide. The team heaved at the traces, sweat showing on their gray, dappled coats as steam rose from them. Their progress slowed. There was no broken trail ahead of them. Snow blanketed it smoothly. No encouraging footprints or wagon tracks led the way. When Ki stopped the team briefly at noon, Vandien shrugged knowingly and looked at her from the corner of his eyes. She ignored him. Climbing from the wagon, she waded forward through the calf-deep snow to the team. She dried their coats with firm strokes of a piece of sheepskin. Patient Sigmund nuzzled her thankfully, but Sigurd only rolled his eyes dolorously.

‘Time to turn back?’ Vandien asked lightly as she climbed back onto the seat.

‘No. As we go higher, the snow should be drier. The wheels will stop their cursed slipping. The horses will not be working as hard. Though,’ she added, suddenly frank, ‘I will admit we are not making as good time as I had hoped for. I may not have figured correctly the amount of time we will need. The trail snakes about.’

‘Powder snow will not be as wet, but it will be deeper,’ Vandien commented sourly. ‘And, past the tree line, you will find the snow deeper than you might expect. Soil and brush give way to rock and lichen there. Nothing grows to break the drifts. But let us go on. We may as well ride in comfort as far as we can before we abandon the wagon.’

Ki glared at him. Then she unfastened the cuddy door and slid it open. When she came out she passed Vandien several sticks of smoked meat. She settled beside him once more and took up the reins. With a shake, she started the team. The twisted tough sticks of meat filled their mouths and kept Vandien from any more speech.

The broken trail fell away behind them as they wound their way up the mountain. The tall trees they had traveled between in the morning grew shorter as the day progressed. The air became colder, making the skin of Ki’s face feel stiff and strange to her. She gave the team their heads, shaking her own head at Vandien when he wanted to take the reins for her. She moved back into the cuddy. She returned shortly wearing a heavy wool cloak and fur-skinned gloves. She pulled the thick hood up about her face as she sat down. From under one arm she produced a thick shawl of undyed gray sheep’s wool. Vandien wrapped it about himself gratefully, but without comment. His own garments were worn to thinness from his sojourn in the hills. Though he had not complained, Ki had noticed his shivering. She wondered what small demon in herself made her want him to admit to feeling cold. Grudgingly, she admired the way he handled himself. He made no demands, nor offered humble thanks. For Ki, it made her giving easier. Bad enough that he had dog eyes without him dog-fawning on her.

Only stunted and twisted spruce was left of the forest now. Scrubby brush poked up hopelessly from the snow and helped to show Ki, by its absence, where the trail was supposed to run. Above them the mountains glared down whitely upon the gaily painted wagon and straining gray horses. Ki looked in vain for another glimpse of the Sisters. The twisting trail had put another hummock of earth between the wagon and its goal. Ki’s eyes watered from the brightness. When she bowed her head to rest her eyes, the cold froze the tears and stiffened her lashes. She wiped a gloved hand across them and shook the reins lightly.

Once, against the clear blue sky, she caught sight of the falling speck that was a distant hawk. She raised a furred glove to point at it. ‘I didn’t think they would hunt this high,’ she commented.

‘He seems to be an outcast,’ Vandien shrugged. ‘He’s been seen before, by other folk crossing this way. They say he hunts the pass and higher hills. The moon alone knows what he finds to hunt. Poor bastard. I doubt if he’s ever warm.’

The horses toiled on steadily. The snow was growing deeper about the wheels, but still the wheels turned and the grays pulled. Except for an occasional sigh of wind, the creak of the wagon and the blowing of the horses were the only sound and movement on the trail. Ki saw no sign of game. She pitied the lone hawk. She moved her toes inside her driving boots. A tingle of warmth came back to them. Her lips were dry, but she knew that if she licked them they would crack and bleed. Vandien gestured at the trail ahead of them. ‘We’ll have a pretty time getting your precious wagon over that!’

‘That’ was a ribbon of silver cutting across their path. The blue-shaded white of the snow was cut by its shining. It wove down from a rocky cleft to cut across their path and then twisted off until it was lost over a rise. Ki stood up on the seat, straining her eyes to see what it was. It was like a winding silver pathway that intersected their trail. She sat down again, brow wrinkled and mouth tight in puzzlement.

‘Snow-serpent track,’ Vandien answered her unspoken question. ‘Surely you’ve seen one before.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ Ki conceded. ‘But mostly around Romni fires at night, when one could discount one half of all one hears. I put them down as a fable, or a great rarity. What will it be like when we come up on it?’

‘Like a wall of ice cutting our path. They may be a rarity elsewhere, but they are common enough in the Sisters’ pass. That one was made by a small serpent, by the look of it. The big ones seldom come down this low. Sometimes they travel across the top of the snow, writhing along like a snake. Sometimes they travel beneath it, squirming along like a worm. The friction of their long bodies melts the snow, making a trough if they travel on top, or a ridge if they travel below. The snow receives the dampness of their passage and, as often as not, turns to ice. A big serpent can leave one as thick across as this wagon is long. But this one does not look that large. We’ll see.’

The creaking of the wagon filled in where their voices left off. Sigurd snorted once, and Sigmund echoed him. They had caught the scent of the serpent’s passage. Stale as it was, it still disturbed them. They shook their heads and thick necks, making their long manes fly. Ki slapped the reins firmly on the wide, gray backs.

When they reached the serpent track, they found it only a stride wide. The team halted at Ki’s command. Their nostrils blowing wide, the great heads tossed uneasily. Ki and Vandien both leaped lightly from the wagon and moved forward to investigate. Ki moved through the snow gingerly, with a catlike distaste for its cold and wetness. But Vandien went as one to whom its cold kiss was familiar and, if not relished, at least not to be disdained.

It was, as Vandien had described it, a low trough of solid ice that cut across the smooth snow before them. It could not be circumvented. To try to drive the wagon over it would be like taking the team and wagon over a log of equal size. Ki kicked at the low wall of ice, and a chunk flew off.

‘Not as bad as it might be,’ commented Vandien. ‘We’ll get through this one. The wagon will take us further than I had thought.’

‘It will take us down the other side of these mountains,’ Ki asserted quietly. She trudged back to the wagon. Vandien remained by the ice trough, blowing on his hands and trying in vain to keep the shawl from slipping down from the back of his neck. Ki returned with the firewood axe. She broke chunks of the serpent track away. Vandien tossed them to one side. Slivers and small hunks of ice flew whenever the axe bit, to sometimes sting the face or strike glancingly off their bodies. Vandien’s ears peeked red from his dark hair. His hands, red at first, soon grew nearly white with cold. Ki found herself sweating inside her cloak, but knew the perils of loosening it to cool herself. They both worked rapidly, without pause, but Ki still cursed to herself at the time lost. The sun was beginning to slide from the winter skies. Already the tallest peaks of the range were casting their shadows down upon the incongruously gay wagon in the snow. The chill of night would drop soon. Vandien grinned to hear Ki curse. He made no comments himself.

When the way was finally clear, Ki found herself trembling from the exertion. The cold had sapped her energy more than she had realized. It seemed a heavy task to take a moment to stroke the frost from the muzzles of the horses, a burden to return the axe to its proper place. She scaled the wagon, sat down heavily on the seat. Vandien was already there waiting on her. They dusted the snow from their leggings before it could melt and chill them more. Ki took up the reins. A creak and a jolt, and the wagon lumbered through the gap they had cleared.

The grays’ heads were drooping as they threw their weight steadily against the traces. The wagon moved more slowly than before. The wind here had been free to sculpt the snow into uneven drifts. The team faced them doggedly, already spent with the day’s labors. The sweat dried on Ki’s body. She began to shiver in spite of her woolen cloak. She chewed at her lower lip, then hastily wiped the moisture away on her glove. She looked across at Vandien. He had tucked his numbed hands between his thighs in an effort to warm them. His tired eyes were fixed bleakly on the trail before them. As far as Ki could tell, it led on endlessly into deeper snow.

‘Where, damn it!’ Ki surrendered suddenly. ‘Where is the shelter you hoped we would reach by nightfall? You said you knew a stopping place when you urged me to an early start this morning. At least give me a goal to make for. I need a marking point to measure our progress against.’

Vandien’s face was too cold to permit him a smile. It showed in his dark eyes instead. He lifted a pale hand made bloodless by the cold.

‘Do you see that line, a sort of dark place like a crack in that ridge? There is a narrow, steep-sided little canyon there, as if long ago some god had riven the mountain at that spot. The canyon itself will be shallower in snow, and within is a place, not quite a cave, but a dent in the wall. Between that dent and the wagon, folk and horses could shelter for a night and not come out of it too badly. It has been used before. There is even a supply of wood there for one who knows where to look for it.’

Ki folded her lips in vexation. In the morning turmoil she had forgotten to take firewood. No doubt, to Vandien it looked as if he rode with an utter fool. No firewood, unfamiliar with her trail, and not even aware of the beasts she might encounter. She was abashed, but to speak in her own defense would only make her appear a greater fool. She silently followed his pointing finger.

All day they had been wending their way across the mountain’s tumbled and ridged skirts. Ki made out the dark area he pointed to. It was yet far away, and off the main trail, but they would make it. She looked up at the mountain peaks that rose before them in time to see the sun slip behind them. Ki had not reckoned that, within the reach of the range’s outstretched arms, her daylight hours would be shortened. The silver of the mountains went to blackness, and the shadows reached out for the wagon with greedy hands. The colors went out of the landscape; they moved in a world of grays.

Ki cursed, then acted. She wrapped the reins loosely around the brake handle so that they would not be pulled off to drag. Then she leaped off the side of the wagon into the unbroken snow and ran up ahead of the straining beasts. At their present pace, it was only too easy. She fell in ahead of Sigmund and began to trudge along, breaking him a trail through the snow. It would be small help, she knew, but in the thickening darkness every minute would be a help. Besides, the motion warmed her and drove off the shivering she had been prey to since they chopped through the snow-serpent’s path. She started when Vandien moved suddenly up beside her, breaking a way for Sigurd. Behind them, the horses’ heads came up a notch, encouraged both by the company and the broken trail.

‘Do your people never speak before they act?’ asked Vandien sourly. ‘Sometimes a man feels a fool in your company.’

Ki raised her eyebrows. ‘Do your people never act before they speak?’ she asked acidly.

‘But, of course. When we go to steal horses.’

Ki glared across at him in the dimness. His face was solemn, but his eyes were laughing at her. Bested, Ki grinned back. It cracked her cold lower lip. She dabbed blood with the back of her glove.

A low hissing noise rose behind them, building to a crescendo and then slowly dying away. Ki pulled her hood closer about her face.

‘The wind rises. We may be caught in it before we reach shelter.’

‘No wind that,’ Vandien replied calmly. ‘Snow serpent. A larger one than made our wall today, if my ears can still judge.’

Ki quickened her pace. Her logic told her that to try to flee before such a beast in the deep snow would be purest foolishness. What chance would they have against a beast whose natural milieu was snow? Her mind raced through a catalog of her possessions, seeking an appropriate weapon. Vandien had lengthened his stride to match hers. He panted with the strain and glanced, annoyed, to see why Ki had increased their pace. Ki’s eyes met his. The whites showed all around her eyes as she returned his gaze.

He laughed lightly, without malice. ‘No need for alarm, Ki. That serpent came upon us, caught our scent, and fled. They have no interest in us. They feed only on the snow itself, gathering the nutrients it offers before they return it to the earth as an icy wall to thwart travelers. Some say that in summer they burrow into the earth itself. They need be of no more concern to us than large earthworms would be to a gardener. Their only threat is in the trails they leave behind them.’

Ki expelled a long, ragged sigh. Her pace slowed. Anger edged her voice. ‘You might have mentioned that when we were chopping through the trail back there. Or when the subject of snow serpents first arose. It would have saved me much worry.’

‘And you might have asked. It would have cost you only a small bit of pride. Of that abundance you carry, you can afford to part with a little. You have never been through this pass before, have you?’

Ki clamped her jaw, not trusting herself to reply. The sudden blaze of anger she felt for this arrogant little man warmed her. She resumed her swifter pace. Vandien matched her, refusing to show how it strained him.

‘Fools. By the Hawk, I am under a plague of fools and cowards,’ Vandien said conversationally. ‘The cowards that turn their wagons back, and the fool that forces hers through. You know nothing, then, of the Sisters and their ways?’

‘Don’t teach me my trade, man. I am a teamster. What can you tell me? There is a path that goes, and I will follow it. I have been through worse passes, ones that make this trail look like a crack in a farmer’s furrow. My team and I met them and surpassed them. We will conquer the Sisters as well.’

Vandien marched on silently in the gathering darkness. Ki glanced at him but could make out nothing of his features except for his straight nose. He had pulled the shawl up so that it hooded his face and fell about his shoulders.

‘No one “conquers” the Sisters,’ he said quietly. ‘We may elude them, or make ourselves unobtrusive. But we shall not “conquer” them. There are tales of the Sisters. Beauty is not always kind.’ He spoke calmly, but there was a hard control in his voice. ‘But tales are best saved to be told about a fire, with hot food before one.’

‘And blankets to hide our heads under when the scary parts come,’ Ki scoffed shortly. His tone irritated her. Its mystery reminded her of a local guide who had taken her, for one minted coin, through the high temples in Kratan. He had told her horrendous tales of priestesses that mated with snakes, and the scaliness of their offspring. Afterwards, he had tried to sell her the mummified scaly finger of such an infant. Ki had been disgusted, as she was now. What did this Vandien take her for, a fool? Small wonder. What would Ki call a teamster who found herself in an unknown pass in winter snow without a supply of firewood?

They slogged on through the snow. It packed and caked on Ki’s leggings and melted on her thighs. Once a trickle of melted snow found its way down inside her boot, sliding like a finger of ice down her leg. As she walked she flexed and unflexed her toes. They would slip to numbness, and then return to stinging pain as she moved them. But as long as they hurt, they were still hers. She breathed through a fold of her hood, trying not to pull the icy air directly into her lungs. A little frosty patch built up before her lips from the moisture of her breath: It was another irritation for her. As the last light fled, the cold seeped in deeper and deeper about them. It was a palpable thing, fingering their garments and slipping in wherever it found an opening. At the wrist, at the back of the neck, at the small of the back – it was like icy forefingers prodding nerves.

Vandien veered sharply left. Ki flanked him. Then she realized that for some time she had been simply following his lead, not even trying to make out the trail before them. It humiliated her; but she swallowed it, knowing there was no way she could make that out to be his fault. He did know this pass; that much he had proved. And if he found them shelter for the night from this beastly cold, then he would have earned any help she could give him to get across the pass.

It was full dark now. Sigurd was letting his displeasure be known with noisy snorts. It was time to stop for the night. No one could know where they were going in this blackness. But Vandien moved on steadily, and Ki matched him. Her weary eyes, the lashes rimed with frost, could make out little of her surroundings. Gradually the walls of a little arroyo were closing in around them. The snow became shallower, as if they were wading out of a lake. It was only about their ankles when Vandien abruptly stopped.

‘This is the place. Circle the wagon about so that it cuts off the wind from the mouth.’

Ki nodded dumbly and obeyed. Weariness flowed through her more sluggishly than her own chilled blood. In darkness she halted the team. She had to bare her hands to the cold to unharness the drooping horses. The buckles clung to her bare fingers. Vandien had disappeared. Ki could spare no thought for him. She had her team to care for. In spite of cold and weariness, she meticulously rubbed down the horses, drying away sweat and damp from their hides. She blanketed them with their own blankets. A trip to her cuddy, and she reinforced their blankets with her two worn ones. It posed a problem for her, but they had earned the extra warmth.

She heard the mutter of Vandien’s voice and the sounds of frozen wood-chunks hitting against one another. Sparks blossomed in the darkness in a shower. Ki’s sandy eyes sought out that area as she shook out a generous measure of grain for the team. She heard a muffled curse from the spark place, and finally a tiny, ruddy glow lit the silhouette of a man’s sheltering hands. Ki returned the sack of grain to the back of her wagon.

The flames of the fire were leaping now. Its spreading light marked out the new boundaries of the world; the edge of the wagon and the curving wall of stone and ice that closed it in. The team shed its natural fear of the fire to draw closer to its tiny warmth. Ki drew near herself, staring into its flickering depths. Vandien put on another ice-rimed log. It sizzled and smoked, and then caught. Resin began to pop and crackle. The sudden warmth made the chill mask of skin on Ki’s face ache. She held out her hands, warming them without removing her gloves. The warmth did not penetrate to her feet. They remained remote parts of her body, her toes small chunks of ice in the ends of her boots.

‘We cannot rest yet. If we stop moving now, we will freeze before we start again.’ It was Vandien’s voice, unutterably weary and miserable. Ki shook her aching head. He was right.

‘I know. There’s no need to remind me. I’ve been this cold and tired before, and I’ll likely be this cold and tired again,’ she informed him. She knew she was being unfair. There was a reason for it, but she was too tired to search her mind for what it was. At least her irritability warmed her a little. Vandien seemed to understand her frame of mind, for he ignored her words. Without replying, he began to open the dish chest, taking out the kettle and packing it with snow. He handled it with the palms of his hands, awkwardly, as if he were fingerless. The skin of his face was stretched yellow over his cheekbones and forehead. Frost spiked his beard.

A window seemed to open in Ki’s mind. Her heart smote her for her thoughtlessness, for putting the privacy of her grief before a man’s life. She moved swiftly, allowing herself no time for memories or regrets. She climbed stiffly up the wheel. The cuddy door moved stiffly in its tracks. She sought in the darkness. There was his smell again, and the familiar feel of garments washed and mended by her hands a thousand times. She turned off her memories, ignored the voice that whispered betrayal.

Vandien was tamping down snow into the kettle, taking no more care with his fingers than if they had been lifeless sticks. His hands were white in the firelight. The veins showed blue, sinew and bones outlined.

‘Stand up,’ Ki ordered him gruffly.

He rocked slowly to his feet with motions that could have bespoken mere stiffness and fatigue, or been pure insolence. Perhaps both, Ki thought. She shook the folds of the heavy cloak out, pushed the shawl from his shoulders and settled the cloak around him. Hastily she bared her own fingers to lace and tighten the leather ties that his own stiff fingers could never manage. The cloak was hopelessly too big. When she jerked the hood up about his face, it fell far over his eyes. She bunched it about his face as best she could. Vandien stood strangely docile under her ministrations. She could feel his violent shivering, hear the chatter of his teeth. The heavy mittens were of wolf hide, lined with sheepskin. She pulled them up over his lifeless hands. They went nearly to his elbows.

‘Somewhere in the wagon there would be his sheepskin leggings,’ Ki remembered aloud as she looked down at Vandien’s thin leather ones.

‘I walked frozen all day, while you had these in the wagon?’ Vandien’s voice was indignant and bewildered.

Ki nodded slowly and raised her eyes to his. The mittens, the heavy cloak, the pale face of a stranger within them. Dark eyes looked out of Sven’s hood, flecks of anger glowing in them. The shock of the wrongness seized her, and she turned away from it. She tried to remember how Sven had looked in them. Larger, yes, but what else? The image wavered in her mind, would not come.

She spun away from Vandien to face the dark and cold. But Sven was not there either. She crouched, hunkering her body down, making herself small and separate from all things. She huddled, searching her mind for a clear image. But they all seemed blurred by time. She rummaged for emotions, for love and grief. She found only anger. Sven would have remembered the firewood. Sven would have asked ahead about safe stopping places. He should be here to do those things. But he wasn’t, and she couldn’t even see his face. She hunched forward, shivering with a cold not of snow. A heavy fur mitten was resting on her shoulder.

‘Come, get up. You’ll freeze there, and it won’t change a thing. The water for tea will be hot soon … Ki.’

He did not ask for explanations. He did not try to help her rise or comfort her. She heard the squeak of his boots against the dry snow as he returned to the fire. Ki rose slowly, feeling as if her guts were dropping back into place inside her. Her mouth was full of bitterness. She went to the cuddy, lit the small candle briefly to take out the dried meat and withered roots for stew, to search coldly in the back of Sven’s cupboard for his winter leggings.

Vandien had brewed the tea. He pushed a steaming mug of it into her hands, taking her burdens from her. He cut the meat and roots into smaller chunks than Ki did. He felt her eyes on him and made a show of returning the small knife to the dish chest. He grinned at her as he did it, a fey grin by firelight. Ki could not return it. She sipped her tea and felt the warmth slide into her body like sanity into her mind. She did not watch Vandien as he donned the leggings, but busied herself with stirring the soup. They ate hastily as soon as the meat had softened, sucking noisily at the burning liquid and scalding their tongues.

The broth burned the bitter taste from Ki’s mouth. Her shivering calmed. She felt the heat of the fire begin to seep through her boots to her feet. Vandien stacked the rest of his firewood and spread the shawl over it, making a place to sit. Ki moved to his invitation, sinking onto the lumpy seat gratefully. She could look at Vandien only as long as she looked at his face and not his garments. He sat quietly beside her, at a comfortable but companionable distance. She found he was watching her quietly. The weariness in his eyes shamed her. She moved uneasily, going to the cuddy and returning with coarse, hard bread. She broke it into a chunk for him and one for herself. She watched the struggling fire, chewing the hard bread slowly. Damn the man! What did he want of her, watching her with those martyred eyes?

‘The Sisters,’ Vandien began softly.

‘Ah! You promised me tales tonight. I had nearly forgotten.’ Ki’s tone was falsely light, bantering. He did not rise to it.

‘Beauty is seldom kind.’ Vandien spoke it like a lesson learned. ‘And the greater the beauty is, the more unkind it may be. You have seen the awesome beauty of the Sisters. It is a beauty beyond any race’s creating. Such a thing can only be natural. And yet they are remarkably regular, perfect in their symmetry. Hard they are, impossible to chip or mar, if any could find a desire to do so. They rise beside the trail that goes through the pass. In clear weather, in summer time, they are high above the path, so that a man on horseback may not touch them, even standing in the saddle. But in winter the snow rises, and with it the trail. When the trail is high, you may walk on top of the crusted snow and touch their beauty. But legend has it that they do not like to be touched by any other than themselves.’

Vandien’s eyes were masked and far away, as if walking the pass in memory. He stared into the fire, and Ki saw the outline of his face. He had pushed the hood back from it while he ate. He had a strong profile. Were he clean and shaven, and not so thin, he would not have been an ugly man. He turned his eyes from the fire to Ki, and they came alive, seeming to hold the fire he had gazed into. He seemed puzzled at her stare. He gave a slight shrug and continued.

‘I have never touched the Sisters. I have heard men brag of such a reaching, but they were not men I desired to imitate. The kiss the Sisters share is only for each other. And I think they are a jealous pair. For, in winter, the pass is not safe. There is no sign of violence, no evidence of a battle or treachery. But wagons and Humans and beasts are found crushed within the pass, beneath the shadow of the Sisters’ kiss. One crosses the pass in springtime, only to find the poor crushed bodies as if ground by a mortar and pestle. The deeper the snow is, the greater the chance of mishap. The snow has not lain this deep within the pass in many a year …’

‘Avalanche,’ murmured Ki sleepily. The drone of Vandien’s dreaming voice had lulled her to the edge of sleep. ‘Poor folk, crushed under chunks of ice and snow, to lie revealed when the snows melt. Ugly. But at least they all die together.’

‘Snow never clings to the Sisters’ faces, nor to the steep rise above them. Year after year, that wall of the pass is as bare as a knife blade. No snow settles on the Sisters. The cliffs stand bare there, year after year, while their burden of snow settles in the trail beneath the Sisters. And the trail there can be treacherous with ruts and troughs from the snow serpents passing. Human and Dene are not the only ones to use this pass. We shall have a pretty time with it.’

‘At least they die together.’ Ki was seeing the fire as if it were at the end of a long, black hallway. The image stirred vague, unsettling memories. The air inside her nose was cold, but she herself was toasty warm. Warm feet, warm belly, warm face, warm fingers, warmth coasting lazily through her. Vandien’s chin had nodded onto his chest, the floppy hood falling half across his face. Strange face, all dark eyes and bones. Strange man …

The sap in one of the logs bubbled, then exploded with a loud pop. Ki jerked her head upright. ‘Vandien! Wake up! Fools we are to doze before a dying fire in this weather. To bed now, and travel in the morning.’

Vandien straightened himself slowly, rubbing and pulling at his face. He moved to the fire, stacking on two more logs close over its dying flame to feed the embers during the night. ‘We’ll load the rest of the wood and take it with us. Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ agreed Ki. She rose stiffly and moved about the camp, stowing gear with a tidiness born of long habit.

The door to the cuddy complained as Ki jerked it along its groove. Inside, all was still and cold. She let her eyes become accustomed to the dark. A faint, ruddy glow from the fire came in through the small window. It was enough. On the straw-stuffed mattress was the shagdeer hide cover. She had given the other blankets to the horses. Ki leaned out the cuddy door. Vandien was crouched by the fire, arranging it to his satisfaction. His face was pinched with the cold and his days of privation. The labors of the last few hours had told on him cruelly, much more so than on Ki, who came to the snows fresh from warmer lands. She studied him for a silent moment, knowing he could see nothing of her face or eyes as she peered at him from the dark cuddy.

‘Vandien!’ He looked up at her, and she motioned to him to come. She moved back into the cuddy and shook out the shagdeer cover over the whole platform. She felt the creak and give of the wagon as he climbed up on the seat. She looked up to find him peering inquiringly in the door.

‘Wipe your feet before you come in,’ she cautioned him. ‘The cuddy is tight and will hold most of our warmth. We don’t want snow melting in here.’

He hesitated awkwardly. He came down into the cuddy as cautiously as if he expected the floor to give way beneath him. He slammed his head against the ceiling, then crouched to clear it. He stood still, silently looking about. The man and the children had left their marks on the cuddy, and Ki had taken pains not to erase them. His face changed subtly as his eyes took in Lars’s puppet, a tiny pair of soft leather shoes that dangled from a peg. He moved back slowly toward the cuddy door.

‘I shall be fine sleeping under the wagon. I’d have the fire.’

‘Don’t be a fool. Once you went to sleep there you would never wake up, to check the fire or anything else. Shake out the cloak and leggings and hang them on those pegs.’

She did not watch to see if he obeyed her. She dusted the snow out of her outer clothing and hung them up. She moved around him to slide the cuddy door shut. Vandien eyed her as she cut off his retreat. The fading light from the fire made a tiny square on the ceiling of the cuddy. And still Vandien stood awkwardly in the center of the cramped cuddy.

‘We may be crowded sharing the platform, but the body heat will be worth it.’ Actually, as Ki well knew, the platform could hold two very comfortably. She waited for Vandien to make one of his acid comments. But he did not.

‘I could sleep on the floor here,’ he offered. ‘If I rolled up in the cloak, I would be fine.’

Ki moved past him without a word to climb up on the platform and crawl under the shagdeer cover. She settled, feeling the cold mattress close about her body. It was colder than she had expected. ‘You’d better bring both cloaks with you,’ she said imperturbably. ‘We’ll need them to be comfortable.’

She watched him in the dark as he took both cloaks off the pegs. He shook them out and let them settle over Ki and the shagdeer cover. Moving gingerly, he edged himself up onto the bed and eased under the hides. He ended by lying on his back so he faced slightly away from her. The round of his shoulder was but half a hand-span from her own. The platform had not been designed for privacy. Ki could feel the heat of him seep across that small space to touch her familiarly. She was both repelled and unwillingly warmed by it. She heard the small sounds of his settling: the crack of knee joints, a clearing of throat, the crackling of the straw as he snuggled his body into it. His breathing steadied in the silence. She listened to it in the dark, holding herself still and silent.

‘Sleep well.’ His voice startled her, coming from so close beside her and so unexpectedly. She jumped, and then tried to pretend that she had been settling herself.

‘We’ll make an early start.’ She was unwilling to let his remark hang in the silence.

‘Yes.’ Ki lay staring up in the darkness as Vandien watched the wall of the cuddy. Each was unwilling to be the first one to sleep. Ki could hear faintly the crackling of the fire outside the wagon. One of the horses stamped and shifted. The bed began to warm her. Almost warm enough to sleep comfortably. She let her legs stretch and relax. The dark pressed on her eyes. She closed them to shut it out.

She only realized she had slept when she opened her eyes sometime later to darkness. She was not certain what had awakened her. She remained motionless, listening to the stillness, searching for some sound that might have disturbed her. As long as she lay still, she was warm. She knew that to shift might open some small crack in her covering, let the cold air seep in to touch her.

Gradually, Vandien came into her awareness. In sleep they had shifted, gravitating toward each other’s warmth. Vandien had rolled over to face her, his body curling toward her. His head had lolled forward, to rest heavily against her shoulder. It was the tickling of his dark, dense curls against her face that had brought her to wakefulness. She smelled his smells, the acridness of his sweat and the fern-sweetness of his hair, like crushed herbs – so different from her own man’s soft blondness and smell of leather and oil. But the leaning weight of Vandien against her brought him into reality for her, made Vandien a whole person, not one of those shadows with which she had consorted for so long. He pressed against her solidly, breaking into the sealed world she had defended. The world twisted about her, and Vandien, sleeping here beside her, breathing so slowly, was the reality – and Sven became the shadowy being beckoning to her from some other world. Her mind struggled with the tangling images.

In rebellion, she shut her eyes, closed out Vandien’s nearness. Sven was hers. She would not forget Sven and her children. She would never let them go. She groped for their images in her mind, but it was Lars she summoned up. Lars, brother to Sven, looking up at Ki where she perched in the limbs of the twisted old apple tree …

‘I thought I might find you here,’ Lars said.

‘Please go away,’ Ki pleaded softly.

Last night’s ritual had drained her. When she had awakened at last, it had been late in the day. She had dressed in her own dusty garments, feeling angry and displaced. Here was no quiet privacy of washing herself in a stream, of making her solitary cup of tea and facing the day. Here she must dress in dirty clothing and face a room full of people before she could even cleanse herself. Her head ached abominably and her ears still hummed.

Armed with her anger, she had entered the common room. It was empty. Cora’s wooden table, cleared of all traces of last night’s appalling feast, was in its usual place against the wall. The fireplace stood cold and empty. Last night might never have happened.

Ki had been free to go to her wagon and change into her clean brown shift. She had checked her team only to find them grazing contentedly in the pasture. She had crossed the pasture and walked through a narrow belt of trees, to the apple trees and meadow that fronted on the road. She had been sitting in the tree, careful to keep her mind as empty as the road she watched. Now here was Lars, to bring it all up again.

‘I can’t just go away, Ki. I wish I could. It’s time some of it was said, anyway.’

‘Some of what?’ Ki asked angrily. ‘I don’t even understand what happened last night, but somehow everyone holds me responsible for it. Maybe you should start there, by explaining that to me.’

‘Maybe I should,’ Lars conceded wearily. He stood, arms folded, as Ki dropped down from the tree. A little self-consciously, he seated himself on the grass. Ki reluctantly joined him.

‘Last night was not your fault. In a sense, none of it was your fault. You are not one of us – I do not mean that unkindly. But you were not raised in our ways, and you have never chosen to learn them. The Rite of Loosening – did Sven never speak of it to you?’

Ki shook her head. ‘We had our minds upon living, not dying. It was obscene for Sven to die. Obscene!’

Lars nodded. ‘It was. And you showed that obscenity to us, in every detail.’

‘And what should I have showed you?’ Ki asked bitterly. ‘You harped on me about sharing my sorrow. Having tasted the cup, do you turn your face from it?’

‘You do not understand.’ Lars pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, then forced his hands to fold themselves and rest quietly in his lap. ‘A woman raised in our ways would have shown us her man and her children racing away on the horse. She would have shown us, as you did, their wild beauty as they went, hair streaming, voices trailing laughter behind them as they galloped up the hill. Then she would have told us that they never came back from their ride. This is our custom in the case of a violent death; not to reveal it in all its hideousness. And she would have saved for us a cup to end on – a healing, loosening cup. With the last cup she would have given us, as a gift, a memory of them she cherished. A moment, perhaps, of a child seen sleeping by firelight. When my father died, the gift my mother gave us was an image of him as a young man, muscles bared as he raised the first roof beams of our home. It is a gift I cherish still, the glimpse of my father as I would otherwise never have seen him. Thus, it is called the Rite of Loosening, Ki. We let them go. We set our dead free, and in place of mourning we offer to our friends a quiet moment of our happiness with the one who is gone.’

Lars fell silent. Ki cast her eyes about, abashed. She spoke huskily. ‘I suppose that could make it a very beautiful thing, this Rite of yours. But it was never explained to me. All you told me was that I must share his death with you. Do you wonder that I waited so long before I came to you? I will be honest. But for my oath to Sven at our agreement, I would have let my road take me past here.’

‘I know,’ Lars replied gently. ‘If that was all there was to it, Ki, we could all forgive.’

He pulled a long stem of grass up and rolled it thoughtfully between his fingers. The wind touched his hair with gentle fingers, pressed his shirt softly against his chest.

‘Mother feels it most. She is the most devout in the family, the one closest to the old rituals. The ablutions and prayers the rest of us omit or forget, she still observes. The doctrines we have set aside as superstition, she clings to. That is why it was worst for her. You held a cruel mirror to her faith, Ki. You were strong of spirit, stronger than she. When she tried to turn you gently away, to bring your mind back from that long hill, you fought her and kept us there. Some felt last night that it was deliberate; that you wanted to force us to see Harpies as you see them. With hatred, disgust, fear. When we share the liquor of the Rite, we must feel what you feel. You showed it to us, hideously scrambled, now revealed, now hidden, all flavored with your emotions. It took all Cora’s strength to drag us back. You drained her. She keeps her bed still, from weakness. And Rufus,’ he went on, his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘Rufus feels it, not as blasphemy, but as shame, a blot upon the family honor. Those two take it hardest. But none of us will ever recover fully from it.’

Lars shifted uneasily and began to rise. Ki put out a hand to detain him. He looked at her, puzzled.

‘I did not mean for you to see it at all. I let you think the horse had killed them last night when we talked on the wagon. I knew nothing of this drink of yours, this bizarre sharing, as you call it. I never meant for any of you to know the Harpies had done it.’

‘We, who know Harpies, could have faced that if you had told us of it. We would not have demanded to see, to poke our fingers in your sores. You walk too lightly among us, Ki, never leaning, never trusting us to understand. One would almost believe that you doubted our love for you.’

Ki bowed her head to his rebuke. Should she deny the truth of his words? She had wanted Sven. She had gone after him with every means that seventeen years of life on a road wagon had given her. If Aethan, her father, had still been alive, perhaps she could have been dissuaded. But Ki had wanted Sven. To have him, she had to take on his family as well, with all the strange trappings of kinship. Doubly strange to Ki was his culture, for she had never known family other than Aethan or customs other than the Romni, which Aethan sporadically adhered to. And once she had Sven she had kept herself apart. She had taken Sven away, to her lifestyle. And now, because of her aloofness, in her ignorance, she had hurt them all.

Lars took her silence and downcast eyes as dismissal. Once more he began to rise. Ki wished she could let him go. Her head felt as if a bowstring had been stretched between her temples. It was tight, and getting tighter, humming all the while. She longed for silence and sleep. But she had to know it all. Ki caught his loose sleeve, pulling him back down beside her. She forced him to meet her eyes.

‘Don’t stop, Lars. If you think you have explained it to me, you haven’t. You have told me how I bungled your Rite last night. I am shamed by the hurts I gave you all, however unintentional. But how have I blasphemed your religion? You say you all know what Harpies are. How they kill, how they feed. I did try not to show you that. The confusion in the images you speak – believe me, Lars, I was trying to turn us from the remembering. Do you believe I would willingly relive that, for any rite?’

After a moment, Lars began to shake his head slowly. ‘I suppose not. I can believe it when you plead ignorance. Sven was almost an outcast among us for the way he flouted our beliefs. I see he dismissed them completely when he went away with you. They meant little enough to him when he was here. He never once made tribute to the Harpies, not even after our father died. Mother felt that keenly.’

Sparks flashed in Ki’s green eyes at the mention of tribute. But still she shook her head at Lars. ‘You must go on. Begin it as if you were explaining your beliefs to a child. I begin to feel currents I had not imagined. I am heavy within with a foreboding that whatever I did last night was grievous beyond words. Speak to me as if I had never been told anything of your religion. You shall not be far wrong.’

‘It grows worse,’ Lars groaned. ‘What many saw as malice was total ignorance. If only it was to do over.’

‘It isn’t,’ Ki replied impatiently. ‘It can never be undone. So, at least let me know the fullness of what I did.’

Lars pulled at his face with a large hand. When he tipped his chin up, the sun glinted on the downy hairs beginning on his face. His beard would be like Sven’s – late in coming and silky against a woman’s face. Lars met Ki’s eyes and began abruptly.

‘In times gone by, this place was not called Harper’s Ford. Time has eroded its name to that. It was Harpy’s Ford, the only place to cross the river for many miles in either direction; there were no bridges then. Harpies knew that as well as Humans. It made their hunting easier. You have seen the platforms raised on pilings in the river, near the crossing? People wishing to cross the river undisturbed would leave offerings of dead beasts there, to buy the Harpies off their children. They and their families could cross in peace while the Harpies fed. There would be no sudden rush of wings, no childish screams above the sound of the rushing water …’ Lars’s voice trailed off. He rubbed at his eyes wearily. ‘There, Ki, see how your visions have infected me? Before last night, never would I have spoken that way of Harpies. But that was how it began. Or so they say.

‘But times pass, and simple customs become more ornate. Harpies would sometimes be waiting on the platforms when folk arrived there to leave tribute. They began to have words with one another. My people began to discover the many peculiar talents of the Harpies. It became a religion. I know you do not believe it, Ki, but they are higher beings than we. You see their cruelty and believe it debases them. But it is not cruel for a man to slaughter his heifer, nor for a Harpy to take a man. It is the order of things.’

Ki shot to her feet, but as quickly Lars shot up a hand to seize her. He held her wrist, hard but not tight. With gentle insistence he pulled her back down beside him. She could find no words, but he read all in the quiver of her mouth and her quickened breath.

‘Do not be angry, Ki. You would like to strike me for my words or, barring that, to run away from them. Bear this in mind. Sven was my brother, not only your man. And still I must say these things to you. We give the Harpies meat in tribute. In return, we get … many things. The drink last night was a secretion they provide. It makes a link between Humans, and strengthens that between Human and Harpy.’

Ki turned her head away from him. Her belly churned in disgust. She twisted her wrist slightly, and Lars released it. But he spoke on stoically.

‘After a death, especially after a good Rite of Loosening, they let us … this is so hard to explain unless one has experienced it. Let me make it more personal. If I took a lamb down to the platform and cut its throat, a Harpy would come. And while it fed I would spend time with my father. We would talk together, I could ask him advice, or speak of times we had together. The Harpy would open for me the door between the worlds. Or would have, until last night.’

Ki felt a dim presentiment.

‘You cut us off from the Harpies last night, Ki. Every person there, from that old man, a great-great-uncle, to that little girl, a cousin of several degrees. You gave us no useful memories of Sven or the children. We have no way to recall them when we go to the Harpies. They are gone to us, truly dead. My mother will never see her middle son again. I will never see my brother … Dead. Now we know what other folk mean by that word. It is a knowledge we were happier without.’

‘And?’ Ki insisted after a stretch of silence. Lars looked at her with anguish in his eyes.

‘I hate the saying of these words to you. Rufus would have come, but I stopped him. For if you must be condemned in this way, I would be the one to do it. I try to make the words come gently, to lift from you the weight of them. But it was a grievous blow you dealt last night, and now you must see the wound.

‘When I say you cut us off from the Harpies, I mean that we now must face a period of loneliness. None of us may see them at all, for a time, until meditation and atonement have purged from our souls the emotions you put there. For some of us it will take long. Others, such as the little girl, I hope, will soon forget and be healed. But until I can be sure I have cleansed my mind of your feelings I may not go to the Harpies to seek my father or my grandparents. Horror, disgust, hatred for what the Harpy does – those things would cut me off from the converse. I, perhaps, could live with that. As could Rufus and some of the others. But my mother is another matter. No one knows how often she goes to make a sacrifice and see again my father. It takes its toll on the sheep pens, and often I see the anger in Rufus’s eyes when he finds the best ewe, the plumpest lamb, gone. But we say nothing. Mother is old, and the old cling more tightly to the rituals. You can surmise what you have done to her. For the first time since my father died, he is really dead to her. Gone. She cannot summon him, cannot lean on his strength. The emotions you have placed in us for Harpies have cut us off from this magic. Last night some said, in the heat of their anger, that you had re-slain for us all our dead. That because Sven and the children are dead to you, you made all our dead truly dead for us.’

Ki raised her head wearily. There were no traces of tears on her face. All her sorrow was contained in her eyes. It seemed to Lars that no amount of tears could ever wash away the misery he saw there.

‘Can you tell me that is all?’ Ki asked dully. ‘Can there be more injury I have done to you, all unwittingly?’

‘The Rite of Loosening,’ Lars said slowly, as if the words clung to his unwilling tongue, ‘Mother sets great store by it. By the Rite the souls of the dead are freed to enter a paradise, a world of a higher order. Unloosed souls must wander this world homeless and lonely, cold and crying. Last night she wept long for Sven and the little ones, condemned to such loneliness and fear.’

‘There can be no mending this,’ Ki said.

‘The mending will be very slow,’ Lars conceded. ‘You’ve done us grievous ill.’ He took her hand, trying to take the ache from his words.

‘No mending,’ Ki repeated. ‘A wound such as this leaves a scar long after it heals.’ Gently she drew her hand from his. ‘I think it best that I go. Think me not a coward, Lars. If staying to apologize would better the situation, I would. But staying here I shall be a shame to Rufus, a torment to your mother. I think I should be on my road, leaving you to heal yourselves.’

Lars cast his eyes down quickly. He raised his hand to his mouth and then spoke softly. ‘I thought you might see it so. Rufus will not be pleased, nor my mother. They are concerned about appearances. For myself, I have a graver concern than that. My people, Ki – they are not used to abuse from outsiders. They have been damaged. They will want revenge. They will look for a scapegoat, someone to center their anger on, to bear the brunt of the Harpies’ displeasure. And the Harpies will be displeased. While we dare not go to them with tribute they will not feed as well. We are one of the larger families in the valley and by far the most generous with the winged ones. They will miss our tribute. I wish you could stay, Ki. I would like you to live here among us, in peace. But who could promise that? My mind ignores the cries of my heart. It tells me that you must go, tonight, in secret. Tell no one of your plans. Travel swiftly, go to Carroin. The roads that lead there are level and wide; you will make good time. Stop for nothing. Leave the supplying of your wagon to me. I shall do it today, in stealth. Too many eyes will be on you. Tell no one: not Rufus, not Cora!’

Lars rose slowly from the ground. Ki remained sitting, her heart beating slowly and painfully. Her mind whirled. She did not wish to leave in stealth, to slink away like a shamed child. She wanted to redeem herself in their eyes, to make them see that she had wished them no harm.

‘Tell no one!’ Lars cautioned her once more. ‘Cora would try to make you stay, unmindful of any danger to herself. She would put her hospitality to her daughter by Sven above her own safety. There were many that did not approve when Sven joined you. Their tongues will wag long today.’ Then Lars left her, striding away, leaving Ki surrounded by a cold premonition of danger.