Читать книгу The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Megan Lindholm - Страница 14

Ki awoke to the beginning of gray daylight. In the cool air, her memories and dreams of last night came swirling back to her, mingled to incoherence. She flinched at her own emotionalism. She pushed the covers back experimentally. The cold touched her and she slid silently from the sleeping platform to hastily pull on her outer garments. Vandien slept on, an arm flung over his face. Ki dragged the cuddy door open. It slid stiffly.

The wind had ceased in the night. Snow was blown up against the wheels of the wagon, was smeared across the wagon seat. But now all was still and calm, and the cold pressed down harder than ever. The arched sky was a far and pale blue. Empty. Ki scanned it from the cuddy door, then climbed out on the seat to stand on it and survey the whole sky. Pure it was, no clouds, no far dark wings.

She breathed in relief. Then her eyes fell on the gray huddle of horsehide in the snow, the crumpled fallen shapes. ‘Damn!’ she screamed, and leapt down to run to them. With a lunge and a snort, the horses rose, shying away from her sudden movement. Ki laughed in relief. They had been sleeping, legs folded beneath them for warmth. She called them back with gentle words and a handful of grain. They came, shy at first, then eagerly, to munch from her hands. She slid their blankets off and led them to the traces. She harnessed them quickly.

Some time in the night an iron determination had been born in her. She could be on her way, right now, to conquer this pass and take her freight through. Woe betide any Harpy that tried to bar her way. Or any man. She heaped the team’s blankets about her on the seat, wondering if it could get any colder.

The wind had erased the wagon tracks behind. Before her the trail wound across the face of the mountain, rippling with tiny low drifts. It would give the team no problems. Ki stretched, feeling her shoulders pop and crackle. She started the team. The wheels rolled almost silently, cutting their narrow grooves through the white snow. The team needed little guidance. On one side of the trail, the ground dropped away abruptly. On the other, the bare stone reared up.

Ki heard the cuddy door slide open behind her. She turned quickly to face Vandien as he emerged, blinking at the snow-brightness and rubbing his face. ‘By noon today we shall pass the Sisters,’ he said with satisfaction. He began coughing, shaking with the effort it demanded. He settled down hastily on the seat beside her, tugging at the blankets and arranging them about like a nest. When he was settled and had his breath, he pointed a hand ahead to where the trail seemed to go off into empty space. ‘Around that bend of the mountain, and we shall be able to see the Sisters. Though from this close they won’t look like anything more than a rise of black rock on the cliff face. Once we’re past the Sisters, we travel a short way more across the face of this mountain. Then the trail begins to take us around the side of the mountain, and down. I shall be glad to see the other side of this pass.’ He whistled tunelessly for a moment. ‘Hungry?’ he asked Ki suddenly.

She nodded, and he dove back into the cuddy. She could hear him opening cupboards and rummaging in drawers. Ki called back, ‘There’s cheese wrapped in cloth on the shelf above the window.’

He pushed the laden platter out onto the seat before him. He had heaped it with chunks of cheese, slices of sausage, and two pieces of hard bread. It was all cold, making it harder to chew. Ki ate absent-mindedly, one eye on her team and one on the trail ahead. The sharp curve Vandien had pointed out to her was an illusion. As they approached it, Ki found the bend was gradual, following the rounded flank of the mountain. Around the bend the snow began to grow perceptibly deeper with every turn of the wheels. Here the wind had not swept the snow from the trail but had heaped and packed it on the ledge. The grays plowed through it gamely, but Ki felt growing apprehension. All morning she had marveled at the good fortune that had given her a road clean of snow and a sky clean of Harpies. Now she decided that the Harpy knew this pass, and would wait until she was mired in snow before he struck. Ki set her teeth. She squinted her eyes against the snow’s brightness. Her face felt stiff, her nose was prickly with cold, her eyelashes clung together when she blinked. The deep cold, the heaped snow, and a Harpy overhead. Ki spurred herself with her own desperation.

The snow was the worst right now. The team could barely lift their heavy hooves clear of it to plunge into the snow ahead. With every step it grew deeper. The tall wheels began to stick and jerk, and Ki could hear the brushing of the snow as the wagon bed passed over it. Soon the wheels were sliding as much as they were rolling. The team floundered and bucked along, no longer pulling smoothly as a team but seesawing the wagon along as best they could. Ki halted them, and steam rose from their huge bodies in whirling eddies.

‘The Sisters!’ Vandien’s voice was muffled. He had pulled his hood up as far as it would go and held it mostly closed across his lower face. Ki looked up.

They loomed ahead over the trail. Soon the wagon would pass directly under them. As Vandien had said, they were no longer the two embracing women they had appeared several days ago from far down the mountainside. Now they were a slight outcropping of shiny black stone towering high over Ki’s head. The snow reached nearly to the base of them. A chill not of cold swept Ki as she looked up at them. They brooded above her, perfect in their endurance and vigilance, guarding their pass eternally. Watchfulness – that was the emotion they conjured in Ki now. None of the beauty and love she had glimpsed below shivered through her. She dreaded passing under their close scrutiny. She sensed the rightness of Vandien’s anxiety to be past them, to be going down the other side of the pass.

Ki started her team again. They had gone but a handful of paces before both horses stumbled. They recovered swiftly, but only by stepping high to get their front hooves onto a hidden ledge before them. Ki watched in some surprise as the grays struggled onto the higher ground, where the snow was shallower. The harness creaked with the unusual strain of having the team on a higher level than the wagon. Then the wheels hit with a jolt, jamming against the hidden ridge of ice under the snow. The team jerked back, nearly snapping the harness. Vandien clutched at the seat and Ki with a surprised yell.

‘Why didn’t you warn me this part of the trail was uneven?’ she snarled at him as she held in the confused team.

‘In summer, the trail through this pass is smooth and flat as a causeway. I’ve no idea what we’ve struck.’

They looked at one another for a moment, then both climbed cautiously down from the wagon and waded forward through the snow. Ki bent down to sweep and dig snow away from before the wheels. Ice. Solid ice, a ridge of it, rose in the trail. Ki frowned down at it and scanned the cliff face above them, looking for some sign of a runoff that would explain the ice. There was none. But Vandien cursed from the other side of the team.

‘Snow serpent!’ He spat sourly. ‘It must have come up from the other side of the pass, then doubled back for some reason. Probably for the express purpose of leaving this ridge here to block us. The gods spit upon my destiny.’

Ki did not answer. She considered the obstacle. Even under the snow that had masked it, it was impressive. The step up the grays had taken was as high as Ki’s knee. The horses shifted uncomfortably in the harness that dragged back and down at them.

‘We shall have to somehow chop a ramp in it, so the grays can pull the wagon up onto it.’

‘And down the other side with a jolt!’ Vandien added savagely. ‘This is the track of a big serpent, Ki. It has ruined the trail ahead of us. This rise of ice here is only the beginning. If it has slithered back and forth across the trail, we can look forward to humping up and down from here to the other side of the mountains. And if it has traveled straight, you will find that it has left a ridge of ice on one side of the trail or the other. Do you fancy riding along with one set of wheels perched up on that ridge while the other side of the wagon sticks and jerks in the deep snow?’

Ki did not reply. She waded back through the snow to the wagon to fetch the horses’ blankets and her firewood hatchet. Even her stubbornness had to recognize the ridiculously small tool she had to use for such a job. This would take time.

She unhooked the team from the wagon, leaving their harness on them. She took their blankets and her own worn ones and spread them over the horses. Best not to leave them standing in this cold unblanketed after they had worked and steamed all morning. A measure of grain bought the team’s patience. Vandien watched Ki in disbelief. Ki walked ahead of her team for a few paces until she suddenly stepped off into snow that rose to her hips. The team watched her curiously as she wallowed and fought her way back up onto the ridge. ‘And a ramp down,’ she said drily.

‘You’re mad. You’re absolutely mad, woman. You still think to force this wagon through? There, she nods! I call the gods to witness that she nods!’

Ki ignored him. She moved back, hatchet in hand, and began to kick and stomp the loose snow away from the front of the wheels. On the box, Vandien was speaking softly in a tongue she did not recognize, but the flavor of the curses still came through. She paused to admire his fluency and then went on doggedly with her task.

The hatchet bit into the ice, but not deeply. The size of the chips made Ki at first despair, and then increase her speed. She heard Vandien climb off the wagon. She ventured a look at him. He glared at her ferociously, and then bent over to begin sweeping snow and ice away. They did not discuss the arrangement, but tacitly began to take turns with the hatchet. Ki chopped with it for a while, then passed it to Vandien while she cleared her chips away. While she waited for him to pass it back, she scanned the chill blue skies.

The sun was overhead when Ki hooked the team to the wagon again. The ramps they had cut were steep. The team hunched down and all but crawled on their knees as they tried to get the tall wheels started up the incline. Ki was at their heads, tugging and encouraging. Vandien went around to the rear of the wagon to add his puny strength to that of the grays. The team pulled, eyes rolling, nostrils flaring, heaving against the harness. Then Ki halted them, petting and gentling them down, and had them try again. She had lost count of their efforts when, suddenly, incredibly, the wagon moved forward. She didn’t dare let them relax, but urged them on swiftly, building up momentum so that the rear wheels stuck for only a second before they, too, came sliding and turning up the ramp. Ki halted the blowing team.

‘We’re up!’ she called. She ran to the back of the wagon to be sure it was safely up on the ridge. Vandien stood in the deep snow they had just emerged from. His arms were folded on his chest. He looked triumphant and challenging. Behind him in the snow were three sacks of salt and the remaining load of grain sacks. Ki spun, unbelieving, to stare at the back of her empty wagon. Now she understood why the last effort had seemed so easy.

‘My freight!’ she hissed, advancing on him.

‘Would be better off in your pocket. Why risk your life for this masquerade? I left two sacks of grain in the bottom of the wagon, and the firewood. It should be enough to get us through the pass. Alive.’ Vandien’s dark eyes met her angry ones squarely. Ki saw a glint of humor vying with the challenge in them. She tried to keep her eyes from flickering back to her wagon. Vandien fought a grin, lost the battle.

‘It’s still there. If I had wanted to steal it, I could have done so long ago. And I certainly wouldn’t be telling you about it now. I’ve told you before, I am not by nature a thief. But go check it, if you wish. I shan’t be offended.’

Still Ki looked at him. Damn the man!

‘I’ve no objections to pretensions until they endanger a life. And when it is my life they endanger, then I become a man of action.’ He cocked his head at her, raising his eyebrows appealingly. Ki met his look without a smile.

‘Put one more sack of grain back in. When it comes to my team, I like a large measure of safety. Shorting them would be another way to endanger your life.’ She turned on her heel.

She was already at work chipping out a down ramp when Vandien came forward again. The still-blanketed horses watched the Humans who had gouged a steep ramp in the ice. They both turned wary eyes up to the sky frequently. Vandien scowled at the passage of the sun, but Ki looked cautiously grateful for the emptiness she found overhead.

When at last the ramp was ready, Ki led the team down in just a few steps. She set the brake on the wagon, and Vandien on the seat fought to keep it on as the wagon lurched and skidded down the ramp. The snow beyond the ridge was deep, and the team floundered frantically ahead to keep from being run down by the wagon. Ki winced at the beating her team and wagon were taking. Safely down, she halted the horses to make a brief check of the wheels and axles. It was difficult to see much; the snow rose nearly to the bottom of the wagon.

Ki took the blankets off the team, and she and Vandien remounted the wagon. She shook the reins. The shadows of the team were blue on the snow. They leaned into the harness without spirit, and the wagon began to scrape forward again. With a lifting of heart, Ki found that a slight breeze stirred against her face. She prayed it was the wind rising again. She preferred heaped and drifted snow to a single Harpy sliding down the sky.

For a time, all went well. The team hugged the cliff face, where the snow seemed shallowest. By the edge of the trail the snow was heaped high, a wall that blocked Ki’s view of the drop-off. Mercifully, it cut the wind as well.

They drew closer to the Sisters, until at last the wagon was creeping past them. Ki craned her neck back, looking up at them. The cliff was too vertical and the sun was in her eyes. She could not see the top of the Sisters’ heads, let alone the top of the cliff. At a lower level, she could look up at the stone the Sisters were made from. Shiny and black, it took no reflections of light from the snow. Its smooth glisten reminded Ki of a finely polished piece of wood. She felt she could look into the depths of that shining stone.

The reins jerked in her hands, brought her mind back to her driving. Sigurd half-reared, bringing Sigmund to a forced halt. Sigurd was crowded back in the harness, his hindquarters cramped almost against the wagon. Ki looked across to Vandien. His mouth was folded tightly. He seemed to be making an effort not to speak. Ki dropped down off the wagon again to wade forward through the snow. But she did not sink as she had expected. Instead, she found herself standing nearly on a level with the bed of the wagon. What she had taken to be a higher drift of snow by the edge of the trail was actually an overlay of snow on a ridge of ice. She walked along it to where it swayed suddenly in front of Sigurd. Ki looked ahead. The ridge dominated the center of the trail now. It had channeled her team closer and closer to the cliff face, until now there was no longer a wide enough trail for the wagon to pass.

‘The serpent,’ Vandien began instructively, ‘evidently traveled down the outer edge of the path this far. But at this point, for reasons unknown to us, he decided to make his way down the center of the trail instead. If I stand on the seat’ – which he proceeded to do – ‘I can see that the hump of ice the serpent created by his passage now extends down the center of this trail as far as my eyes can see. Which isn’t far, in this fading light. One could note, in passing, that the area left to either side of the hump of ice is too narrow for a wagon. A wagon cannot get through this pass now. But a man, or a woman, on horseback could. As someone said to someone else, some days ago.’

‘Shut up!’ Ki said with savage fury. The horses jerked in surprise at the venom in her voice. She kept her back to Vandien and the team and looked wordlessly down the ruined trail. She stood on a giant hummock of ice that, as Vandien had said, writhed down the center of the trail. The wind wandered past her, stirring her garments slightly as it went. She wondered if it would rise enough to keep a Harpy out of the sky.

‘A rising wind may sweep even more snow upon us,’ Vandien said, as if he could read her thoughts. ‘The skies may be clear, but the wind will lift snow from higher areas to deposit it on us.’

‘Shut up,’ Ki repeated, but with less energy. Suddenly, she was tired, weariness clogging her brain. The shadows loomed ever darker, the Sisters more awesome. She looked at the drooping heads of her horses. She could ask no more of them today.

‘Make camp,’ Ki conceded. In the night, she would think of something. Right now, they all needed rest. She tromped back to the wagon, tugged at the horses’ blankets. Vandien remained seated on them. He looked down at her with eyes that were bleak in his white face.

‘Ki,’ he said softly, almost pleadingly. ‘We cannot camp here. We are in the shadow of the Sisters. Even pausing this long invites their displeasure. Every loremaster on the other side of the mountains has tales about this place. I told you the legends. I swear to you they are true. To stay here means death for us all.’

‘Only if we freeze to death, or if an unblanketed horse takes a chill and a cough. That’s probably how folks die here – they talk themselves to death.’

‘Ki.’ Vandien was shaking with earnestness and cold. He held his arms tight to his sides. Ki wondered if he was resisting the cold or an urge to slap her. ‘I ask you one more time …’

‘The wagon goes through,’ Ki cut in harshly. She saw his eyes widen, watched his facial muscles tighten. She pulled hard on the horse blankets, suddenly furious with him. She raised her flaring eyes to his just as his clenched fist fell from the sky. The blue lightning hit her. From far away, she heard Vandien’s fading voice: ‘What becomes of a sentinel when the need to guard is gone? What happens to a watchdog when the family moves away but leaves it chained in its kennel? Some would die of loneliness, and some would break their bonds and go their own ways. But one that knew only its watching, one that came of a line bred for eons to guard, one whose only consciousness was of the need to protect the gate – one such as that might remain, might go on guarding for centuries, long after the folk it guarded had passed into other times. Such a one might stay on. Or such a two.’

Vandien’s voice faded to a far-off apologetic murmur. Deep waters closed over Ki. She sank. The deep warm waters, full of familiar horrors, swirled about her. She knew these ugly memories well; it was like a grisly homecoming. Ki glided. She had dreamed these dreams before. She knew it. In some other time and place she had been trapped here. But now she knew how to escape. She only had to open her eyes. Just open her eyes. But her head hurt, and she was dizzy, and it seemed to Ki that her eyes were already open. She fell deeper into blackness, into timeless dark. And in the darkness she found her closed eyes, and at last wrenched them open …

Ki awoke to blackness. It was not yet time to rise. The rest of the house slept still. She lay quiet in her bed, staring with relief at the small patch of stars her open window framed. She shifted on her damp bedding and reluctantly explored the dreams that had sent her into such a sweat. They were senseless fragments now, dreams of terror and guilt. Nils had been watching her. She could not see him, but she had felt his eyes, felt his hands trying to force her back. She had thrown him off and run away from him, past black-flapping curtains. She ran down a long, dark corridor that led through a series of doors, slamming the doors behind her as she ran. Then she passed through the last door and slammed it, and she was suddenly again at the foot of the Harpies’ cliff.

Once again she climbed the cliff, though Cora clung tightly to her legs, weeping and begging her not to do so. Ki kicked her loose, to watch her bounce and break down the rock face. Ki laughed aloud at the sight and her laugh was a Harpy’s whistle. She reached the aerie, saw again the fire, the bursting eggs. But from the eggs flowed, not unborn Harpies, but Sven and Rissa and Lars, in curled miniature form, wet with blood and fluids. Ki was too horrified to touch the cold, wet little bodies. They squirmed in the liquids and shell fragments and expired before her with small, gasping cries. Ki had killed them all. The mother Harpy appeared, to sit on a ledge above Ki and weep, in Ki’s voice, for their passing. Ki tried to cry out that she was sorry, so sorry, but from her throat came only the whistling laughter. And through it all she heard Nils’s footsteps and heavy breathing as he searched for her in the dark passageway. He did not find her. When Ki had felt him getting closer, when she had heard him opening the final door, she awakened herself. In her awakening she took a sorry little triumph.

Ki rose from her bed, drawing on clothes haphazardly, scuffing her bare feet into her worn boots. A fierceness burned inside her. A premonition weighted her, refused to be denied. The old man was danger, mortal danger to Ki. The sooner she was away from him, the better. She moved about the room, gathering her clothes and small possessions. She dumped them on the rumpled bed, bundled them together. Haftor was right. She had to go now. Not knowing what drove her, unable to find a basis for her presentiment of danger, she made her preparations.

She slipped down the darkened hallway. She passed the ceremonial bedroom where she had slept the night of the Rite. From within came the querulous sounds of the old man mumbling in his sleep. Ki bared her teeth to his sounds in the darkness. She gained the common room and left it, shutting the heavy door softly behind her.

The barn was in darkness. Ki barked her shins on something made of wood, stumbled, and went on. In the dark she climbed her wagon, entered the cuddy. She found the nub of a candle beside her tinder box on its shelf. She dumped her bundle on the sleeping platform to strike her light. With movements that were both frantic and deliberate, she began to set her cuddy to rights. She moved dust, shook blankets out, opened drawers and crocks and bins to see what supplies were still good. There were no weevils in her meal, but her tea herbs were dried to flavorless crumbs. Ki discarded them. There was no meat nor dried roots, no salt fish, no honey, no lard, no cheese … Ki’s heart quailed as she mentally listed what she had not. Her head began to ache, her ears to hum. With an almost physical wrench, she shook off her fears and indecision. She was going. She would manage, somehow.

The cuddy seen to as best she could, Ki moved on. The harness had stiffened from the months of disuse. Ki oiled it heavily. Another dollop of grease for each wheel. A check of pins and axles. A fierce joy welled up in Ki at how swiftly she completed each well-remembered chore. She tried to frame words in her mind to make a farewell to Cora. Her affection for the old woman had not dimmed; but Ki could no longer condone her revival of the Harpy customs. She hoped that Cora would understand, and that Haftor would be as good as his word about supplying her with fresh provisions.

The grayness of dawn was beginning to turn to blue autumn skies when Ki returned to the house. She had checked her team. They were fatter than usual, rested by months that had not demanded daily work of them. But they had come to Ki willingly enough, seeming as anxious as she to resume their life on the road.

Rufus stepped from the doorway as Ki approached, blocking her from entering. She regarded him coolly as he stared at her. His eyes flitted over her insultingly. He glanced back the way she had come as if expecting to see someone leaving.

‘Your hair is pulling free of your widow’s knots,’ he observed snidely.

Ki touched it self-consciously. ‘I had given no thought to it this morning.’ She stepped forward to enter the house, but Rufus did not step aside.

‘Perhaps Ki herself also pulls free of her widowhood,’ he said insinuatingly. ‘I had heard the Romni were brief about their mourning.’

‘So they might appear,’ Ki replied, choosing the pronoun deliberately. ‘There is no set time to the period of mourning. They know that grief is not measured in days.’

Rufus belched thoughtfully. ‘They are strangely lacking in many rites, are they not? No fixed length of time for mourning, no courtship ceremonies, no rites to precede a man and woman coupling …’

Ki interrupted, eyes narrowed. ‘Your folk have no mourning period at all, except for your Rite of Loosening.’

‘By it, there is no death, and therefore no need for mourning,’ Rufus replied evenly. ‘Usually.’ He twisted the word into Ki like a knife blade. He stepped aside then, to thump down the porch and across the yard. Ki looked after him. She was possessed of a mighty anger toward him. But she had no time to satisfy it. Her sensation of danger squeezed her.

She went to her emptied room to smooth and re-knot the hair Rufus had so pointedly commented on. She frowned to herself as she pulled it tight. So Rufus thought she had spent her night with Haftor. From chilling politeness he had advanced to familiar contempt. Ki shrugged. Let him think whatever he wanted. She would soon be free of it all. She refused to dwell on it. Mentally she composed herself, stiffening her spirit for her battle with Cora. She expected it to be nothing less. As her resolve deepened, her spirits rose. She would make her break cleanly and honorably. Cora, she suspected, would prefer it so also.

Ki began to hear the familiar stirrings of the household through the walls. Only now were they rousing. Rufus had been the early riser. Others slept late, past the sun’s rising. Ki took a final deep breath and headed for the common room.

Cora was sitting alone at the table, a steaming mug before her. Ki watched her sip at the gruellike grain soup in the mug. It stirred no appetite in Ki. Ki looked forward to purchasing more brewing herbs, to making her own hot aromatic teas in the morning by her fireside. She drew strength from the image as she took a chair opposite Cora at the table.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Cora asked politely. Her face was still soft with sleep. She took another long sip of the soup.

‘No,’ Ki answered bluntly. She wished an end to courteous words that said nothing. Like a Harpy, she wished to rip to the meat of her discontent. But Cora seemed not to have heard her tone.

‘Nor I. The house was thick with dreams. They should have been pleasant ones, as Nils instructed us. Yet, a dark current seemed to flow through the night and pulled all my dreams and thoughts into its murky waters. I am uneasy. My mind tells me that there is an important matter that I have not attended to, a need I have overlooked. But I can call to mind no detail that I have not seen to. It makes me feel old, so old.’

‘Perhaps I can help you bring it to mind,’ Ki said mercilessly. ‘It has never left my mind, all these weary days. Cora, you are close to your reconciliation. I wish to be released.’

Cora set down her mug, appearing to notice Ki at the table for the first time. ‘Close, but not finished. You remember our bargain.’

‘I do. I remember it as much as I regret it. I have spent this morning readying my wagon. I wish to leave.’

‘Ah. And where will you go?’

‘Back to my life.’ Ki watched the old woman’s face closely. It did not change. But her bird-bright eyes remained fixed on Ki’s green ones, as if probing for secrets.

‘And who will go with you?’ she encouraged.

‘NO ONE!’ Ki exploded. ‘Why must we dance and tiptoe about this? What mean all these questions? I wish to leave, Cora, to be on my road again.’

Cora was unruffled. ‘I had hoped that you might find something, or perhaps someone, to hold you here. That has not happened?’

‘No. Nothing. And no one.’ Ki did not try to hide her distaste for the subject.

The expression on the old woman’s face grew firmer. ‘Ki. You will not be pleased by what I must say. It is for your own good. I bind you here until I judge that we have been reconciled with the Harpies. There is something here for you, although you will not open your stubborn eyes and see it. It is in the work you do so well, and the way you do it. I know that you were meant to be one of us. I feel it. Sven made you my daughter, and I intend that you shall remain so. If you will only have a little patience, Ki.’

Ki rose, her face pale, her eyes terrible. The walls of the room seemed to whirl, to close in about her. She could not find breath to speak, and she felt the walls of her resistance to Cora melt like fog. The threads of her logical reasons for leaving slipped from her fingers.

‘Let her go! She is poison to you! Nay, I spoke too gently! Drive her out, stone her forth from the valley! Her soul is a dark and terrible place, full of secrets she will not bare, even in sleep! And you would waste another son upon her?’

Ki and Cora both jerked about to face Nils. This morning he walked like the old man he was. His face was as haggard, as if he had not slept at all. When he reached the table, he placed his fists on the edge of it, knuckles down. He leaned heavily on it, his accusing glance flashing from Ki to Cora and back again.

‘She has no wish to be one of you! She left the Kishi fruit untouched on the table, scorning our gift of togetherness! But she had taken of the liquor of the Rite of Loosening, so she could not close her mind to me entirely. It was a sinister place, of foul deeds and fouler ambitions. Things too hideous for me to think of, she has done! And her poison has spread among you. Your own sons I could not reach, Cora! Few among your family came willingly to my healing of dreams. Holland came eagerly, like a hurt child seeking to be comforted. Lydia fought like a wild thing, slipping away from me even as I thought I had her. The dark man and his sinister …’

‘Haftor and Marna,’ murmured Cora.

‘Marna came, but without joy, like a beast to harness. Haftor seized his dreams from my control and twisted them, seeking every chance to turn them inside out and examine the ugly seams. He is a strong, wild spirit, Cora. He remembers things I thought we had cleansed him of, things best forgotten. He is another one best put aside from your household.’

Cora’s hand went to her mouth, shaking her head, her eyes stricken.

‘Do not refuse me, Cora! You summoned me here, did you not, to put things to rights? And even you are not unscathed! Joined as you were to this corrupt creature during that travesty of a rite, you have taken the most of her dark spirits! You too, Cora, were closed to me. You know you were! You stood before a dark place in your mind, a place Ki had put there, and you denied me entrance, even as you would not go in yourself!’

Cora might have replied to his words, Ki might have let herself go and struck him, but from outside the house came the sounds of Rufus’s hoarse yells. The words were unintelligible, but the tone of them made Ki and Cora leap up. Ki raced to the door and flung it open. Cora came behind her, Nils on her heels.

From all directions, people were coming – from the barns and cottages, from the fields, all hurrying toward the far corner of the pasture. Ki set off at a run. Holland set down a bucket of milk and a basket of eggs to scuttle from the barn yard and through the pasture. Cora moved faster than her old legs wanted to. Nils hurried after her.

Ki pushed her way through a cluster of people to where Rufus stood red-faced and angry. At his feet was a blood-spattered heap of bones, hide, and tattered meat.

‘Harpies!’ he was roaring, over and over. Cora reached his elbow. ‘A decade of breeding went into that bull! Now look at him! Damn them! Damn them!’ A wild pulse leaped and hammered on his left temple. His fists were clenched at his sides, his dark hair pulled wild and unruly from his hair binding. His chest heaved.

Holland stared at him in horror, going even whiter at his blasphemy. Ki was silent, in her eyes a green reflection of Rufus’s anger and hatred. Their eyes met across the carcass. A jolt of understanding passed between them.

Cora slapped him. Her old hand whipped across his cheek and mouth, making a loud popping sound in the astonished silence. Lars, coming across the field, winced at the sound, but Nils was nodding his head, looking as if he ached to deliver the same blow to Ki’s savage face.

It did not move Rufus. It did not budge his head on its neck of standing muscles and veins. The white handprint stood out on his impassioned face. A little blood edged out of his mouth where his lips had been cut against his teeth. Rufus shook his head slowly at her. Anger still reigned in his eyes, but his voice was cold.

‘Do you think you can make me sorry for my words, Mother?’ He nudged the heaped carcass at his feet. He voiced aloud the comparison that was in everyone’s mind. ‘They left more of Sven and the babies than they did of my bull!’ Again that brief eye-to-eye joining of Rufus and Ki. Cora seized his arm, shook it, but his body remained immobile. More folk were coming – young Kurt, with smaller Edward galloping behind him like a colt; Lydia, coming with flour on her hands up to her elbows, dust on her smock where she had wiped her hands – the whole family.

‘You have brought this upon yourselves!’ Nils’s voice rang out over them. Shorter he was than all of them, but he seemed to stand above them as he lectured them all in a patriarchal tone.

‘Your blasphemy has severed you from your Harpies, leaving them hungering for the tribute you were unfit to bring! Last night they smelled the stench of your evil thoughts, the depraved dreams you dreamed, when you should have dreamed of sharing and gratitude for the Harpies. Whence comes your anger, Rufus? Is it not a false pride? You would have kept back the best bull for yourself, when it was meet that he be offered to the Harpies! You have no right to anger. They have but claimed their just due! Look within your hearts and be ashamed! You are full of selfishness, forgetful of your dead and your duties to your ancestors and the Harpies. You are far, far from the reconciliation you seek. Your thoughts are evil within you, your minds infected with the poison Ki has spread here! Yes, Ki, I name you by name. Look about you! Do you rejoice in the wickedness you have done, the sorrow you have created?’

Unwillingly, Ki looked about. Holland’s head was bowed, tears streaming from beneath her closed lashes. Kurt and Edward remained on the edge of the crowd, baffled by the discord among their elders, afraid to go to either father or mother. Lydia would not meet Ki’s eyes. Lars had turned his face from the scene. Many looked at her with eyes that focused all blame upon her. Cora looked at Ki, love and hurt and anger blended in a glance that pierced Ki like a sword. Worst of all, perhaps, was Rufus, who met her gaze squarely with empathy. Rufus stiffened himself in her sight and spoke, deliberately breaking Nils’s spell.

‘Fetch a shovel for me, Ki. And bring one for yourself. Let us together bury the bull that would have sired calves for us, sturdy ones that would not die in the spring of the shudders, but would have grown to hearty cows that give birth easily and live many a year. Help me bury my dreams, Ki. As deeply as you buried yours.’

‘Rufus has barred himself from our ceremonies! He is cast out among us, to be one of us only by his Human nature, never again to enlarge his spirits with his Harpy brethren.’

Ki wondered if anyone else heard the frantic note in the old man’s voice. The elocutionary tones, his imperial stance among them, the hands that pointed accusingly and gestured commandingly; it was not enough to completely overcome the emotion of Rufus’s simple words. A few began to drift away from the scene. Ki could feel them slipping out of control, avoiding the unpleasantness, but not swayed to the old man’s words.

‘In the names of your dead!’ The people stopped moving, turned to Nils again. His eyes were starting from his head. His raised hands trembled. All were silent. Nils’s eyes worked steadily around the circle, pausing on each face. Some shifted uncomfortably as they met that gaze. Holland looked at him with hungry eyes. Marna bowed her head before it. Haftor returned it boldly, defiantly. The old man continued to extend his scrutiny of the crowd, avoiding only Rufus and Ki. He finished by looking deeply into Cora’s eyes. She seemed to lose flesh and shrink in on herself as he looked. ‘I have walked through your dreams and found you wanting. The poison in you has worked deeper than I feared. If you had a hand that was diseased with rot, would not you cut it from your body? Is not the blighted plant pulled from the field and burned, lest it spread its disease? Do you not remove the afflicted animal from the pens, to be killed and burned lest you lose your whole flock? So must I do now. And those of you who are sound and well must be brave, to endure the knife that cuts away the oozing limb, the brand that cauterizes the festering wound.’ Nils’s eyes stabbed out.

‘Lydia!’ he accused. She started, gave a half sob. Her thin hands rose to the front of her smock, clung there like tiny animals seeking refuge. ‘Leave our circle. Your pride and selfish independence have doomed you. Be alone, then! So, your dreams have told me, is your wish. Take no more counsel from your parents. They are lost to you. Go to your home and think on that!’

Dazed and shaken, Lydia stumbled away from the group. Ki glared at Nils. Like a wolf, he had cut out the weakest of the herd first. Lydia’s staggering feet stumbled over the tufts of meadow grass. Her hands clung to her throat.

‘Haftor!’ Marna gasped as her brother raised his head. He gave her shoulder a quick and gentle squeeze, an odd half-smile on his face. Nils scowled. ‘You grin, do you? You smirk at the poison that sours your soul? Of small importance to you is your sister’s pain at this sundering! You are little better than an animal in your desire to follow only your own will. Go!’

Haftor gently freed himself from Marna’s hand that clung to his arm. He set her hand gently aside from him. Head up, he strode from the group to catch up with Lydia and gravely take her arm. Her head fell onto his shoulder, and he took the weight of her body. He did not look back.

‘Kurt!’

Cora gave a gasp of agony. Holland cried aloud. But the boy stood straight and defiant, as if to mime Haftor’s example. Rufus turned slow, amazed eyes to his boy who suddenly stood as a man.

‘You are young, boy!’ Nils scoffed at his brave show. ‘No one would suspect it from your face, but I have seen the evil in your dreams. You follow your father. You love your flocks and herds as he does, evilly, as if they were your children instead of mere beasts. When you looked on the dead bull, the flames of your anger flared and blossomed. You love your father and hate the Harpies. Go.’

Bravely, Kurt stepped away from the group. He took a hand of paces. Then his squared shoulders began to tremble. Rufus, his hands red with the blood of his bull, looked as if his heart were breaking for his child. Kurt turned. Tears had begun a shining path down his face.

‘I am sorry, Mother. But only for how it pains you.’ He spoke softly, but his voice carried. Rufus stepped past the carcass of the bull, crossed to his son. His voice carried too. ‘Come, son. Today we shall bury our dreams with a shovel, you and I.’

Holland crumpled sobbing to the earth. But she did not follow. Small Edward clung to her, afraid. Cora’s mouth opened. She croaked once, but it was no word she made. Old hands trembling, she reached out to the departing men. She took a tottering step. Nils seized both her outstretched hands.

‘Do not be weak now, Cora. The Harpies wish you to rejoin them. Have not they already come of their own will to take a tribute from your holdings? Their hidden ears hear our voiceless cries, our distress at separation. Purify your mind. Let go of that which holds you back. Open your mind to me, that I may lance that boil of poison you hide.’

No one moved. Nils stared deep into the tortured woman’s eyes. She stared back at him, a bird gazing at a snake. Panic was on her face. All the hair on Ki’s body prickled up. She felt the danger swirl about her, begin to coalesce. No! she cried wordlessly and, knowing not how she did it, joined her strength to Cora’s. They stood together before the black door that Nils sought to open. Ki felt his eyes bore into her own; unseen hands plucked at her will. The buzzing in her ears drowned out all sound. Cora’s will began to slip away, to melt like fog in the sun. From deep in Ki’s throat rose an animal sound. Her hands hooked into claws. Ki stepped forward swiftly, silently.

Suddenly Cora was gone. Her will had disappeared and taken with it the black door she guarded. Ki recoiled, as stunned as if she had walked into a solid wall. She opened her eyes, surprised to realize that she had closed them, to find that she had not moved at all. Cora was a crumpled heap at Nils’s feet. Casually, he let go of her hands, let them fall as if they were pieces of wood.

‘The poison runs too deep in her,’ he intoned. ‘She will hide in death before she lets it go. Cora is set apart from us.’

Nils walked away. The crowd swayed uncertainly, then flowed after him, milling a moment before they parted to go around Cora’s body. Ki found herself on her knees beside Cora. She wanted to kill Nils, but found she could spare no time for it right now. Cora’s lips were purpling; they puffed in and out with every breath. Ki took one of the cold wrinkled hands. She held it to her cheek. The fingers bent stiffly against her face. Cora was gone, not here. Ki screamed soundlessly, wordlessly, and dove in after her.

She knew not what she did, nor how she did it. A terrible presentiment told her where to seek for Cora. She was behind the last door, the black door at the end of the corridor in Ki’s mind. Cora had found at last the despoiled aerie, the dead Harpies. Ki seized her, dragged her away.

It was the deep, warm waters again that Ki swam through. She towed Cora, who did not care to come, who dangled from her hands like a stillborn kitten. Ki fought their way up, past the ugly swirling images, past the dead Harpies that repeated themselves in endless postures, each more ungainly than the last. Ki pushed aside Sven’s ravaged body, shouldered away the ruined, crumpled Harpy at the base of the cliff. The wreckage of her children bobbled past her, eyes empty over bloody cheek holes. Ki floundered on. But the water was deep and endless. There was no surface to swim to, no exit that Ki could find.

Someone pinched her savagely, slapped her a blow that rocked her head. Ki cried out in anger and pain. She sprang up at Lars. A rough shove sent her sprawling onto the still wet grass. Lars gathered up his mother’s faintly stirring body.

‘Sometimes only pain can help you come back,’ he said briefly. He staggered to his feet, Cora drooping from his arms. Ki looked about her in confusion. No one else was in the field. Ki was shaking with sudden cold, alone, so alone. The morning sounds pressed in on her ears with incredible clarity. She heard the clank of a dropped shovel. She turned to see Rufus and Kurt coming at a run from the barn, their abandoned tools on the ground behind them.

‘You two must have an affinity for joining. Usually a feat such as that takes much liquor from the Harpies.’ Ki dragged herself to her feet, stumbled after Lars who was talking as he walked. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if you two were ever completely parted after the Rite.’

‘The others have gone.’

‘You have been gone yourself for more than a little while. I thought you both had gone forever. Nils has taken the others away for meditation, fasting, and purification. Only we outcasts are left.’

‘We.’ Ki felt the word gingerly.

Lars wrinkled his mouth at the word. It turned into a small, tired smile. Rufus met them, took his mother from Lars’s arms. They hurried to the house. Ki, forgotten now, came slowly behind them. She was drained of all strength. She felt she could drop down onto the dew-wet grass and sleep eternally. Yet within her there leapt up a sudden spark, an alertness. She was awake. She felt a sudden urge to explore every part of her mind, as she might feel her body for broken limbs after a bad fall. She was complete again, once more in full control. No will ruled her but her own. The indecision that had plagued her for the last few months, the feeling of numbness, was fled. Cora. Ki mouthed the word silently. Ki had not realized it. She wondered if Cora had, if she had used it. Too late to worry about it now. She stumbled to the barn, to her wagon, to her cuddy, and into her bed. Sleep seized her.

Kurt had not dared to enter the cuddy. Instead, he had banged loudly on the door of it, communicating his urgency with his frenzied battering. Ki stumbled across the cuddy to slide the door open. His face was white in the light of the candle he bore.

‘Grandma wants you. She says you must come now.’

He would have scuttled away, candle and all, if Ki had not seized him by the shoulder. He shrank from her touch, and Ki realized with an ache what a strange and menacing spirit she must seem to him. Even now, when he was an outcast as she was, still he flinched from her touch. She did not release him. She would not let him be afraid of her any longer.

‘Don’t go too fast,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I’ll fall in the dark.’

He turned wide eyes up to her. Then he guided her out of the barn and across the dark yard.

Ki was nearly to the door of the house before the reality of the night seized her. She had slept the whole day away. The big house was unnaturally quiet. She entered the common room, to find it, too, in semi-darkness. Its great hearth fire had burnt out.

‘They haven’t come back,’ Kurt murmured as she looked about in surprise. Ki squeezed his shoulder gently, meaning to reassure and comfort him. He nearly dropped the candle.

Cora’s room was lit with tall white tapers. Death candles, Ki thought. Cora’s gaunt hands were claws on the bedding. Her hair was awry, her lips still too dark. But her eyes opened as Ki came in. They were still bright, bird-black. The body might fail, but not the mind. She gestured at her sons feebly as they stood, one to either side of her bed.

‘Rufus. To the field and fetch Ki’s team. Quickly.’ Her voice was a cracked whisper, but full of command. ‘Lars. Take Kurt. Open the barn, and help make the wagon ready for the team. Use no lights! And watch that Sigurd! He’s still as fractious as when he was a colt. Keep silent!’

Rufus went, but Lars lingered, eyes full of worry.

‘Mother, you are ill yet, and weak. Cannot this wait? Do you cast Ki out in the dark of night? She was sister to us, and daughter to you …’

‘Fool!’ Cora broke in. She gasped for a breath, and her color became worse. ‘I have barely enough strength for what I must do, and you wish to complicate it with talk. Long before you discovered her worth, I loved and valued Ki. And though she may not recognize it, no one’s love has been truer through these days. Go, Lars. Take Kurt. My words are not for your ears.’

They went reluctantly. Ki and Cora listened for the scuff of their footsteps to fade. Cora drew together her strength. Ki moved closer to the bedside and picked up one of Cora’s hands. Cold, still.

‘No time,’ Cora sighed, pulling her fingers free of Ki’s. ‘You must leave tonight and travel swiftly. Get over the mountains. I have heard the Harpies don’t go there. Soon they will know who killed the mother, who dropped the torch in the nest. The male will demand revenge. Neither Harpy nor Human in the valley will deny it to him. You will be hunted. You have so little time to escape.’

‘How will they know?’ Ki pressed.

‘As I finally knew.’ Cora coughed without energy. ‘They, too, know without knowing. It was why I could not make them accept you. I hid it from myself, refused to see what you had shown me. I told myself those wild images were what you might do if I did not keep you here, safe, beside me. But the real knowledge was there, closing me off from the Harpies. I will make no reconciliation with them. If I did, I would be your betrayer. I could not hide the knowledge from them. Their minds are strong, stronger than Nils’s. No one keeps secrets from the Harpies. Ki, if I know, there are others that know. I was closest to you that night. I receive the strongest images. But Marna was there, and Holland, and little Edward. In all innocence, they will condemn you to death when next they offer tribute to the Harpies. There is no way to stop it from happening.’

Cora paused, giving Ki time to sort the sense from her breathless words. She took each breath with effort, released each with a sigh.

‘After I leave,’ Ki asked reluctantly, ‘what will happen here?’

‘You mean with the Harpies?’ Cora asked. ‘I do not think they will be harsh with us. They will demand greater tribute. They will make no reprisals, I think. They would not harm Rufus, or Lars, or I, for then who would remain to tend the lands that grow the cattle? Reprisals they reserve for those who leave, or those who speak openly against them. Such as Sven. Such as my brother.’

Ki reeled with the impact of Cora’s words. ‘Haftor knows that?’ she asked incredulously.

‘He was there,’ Cora replied with an effort. ‘Just a boy at the time. Turned his mind for a while – he didn’t speak for the longest time – but I brought him back from it. It has given him a strangeness. And when you came, with your tidings, well, there’s the knowledge in him somewhere, trying to get out. I hope it never does.’

‘So do I,’ breathed Ki. She leaned down, put her arms about Cora.

‘I shall miss the strength I took from you,’ Cora admitted softly. Gently, she pushed Ki away. ‘In the cupboard,’ she said awkwardly.

‘What?’

‘The money, for Sven’s lands. You must take it.’

Ki straightened, looked down on Cora bemusedly. Then she crossed to the cupboard and opened it. The colt-hide sack was heavy. It clinked. Ki turned back to Cora.

‘I accept your money for the lands, Cora. You have paid me for it honorably. In the past I have refused the love you offered me, Cora. Now I take it, too, with thanks. And you, in return, must accept mine.’ Ki raised the bag, kissed it ceremoniously. She dropped it on the foot of Cora’s bed. She smiled at the foolishness of the situation. Cora’s bird-bright eyes were wet. Ki nodded her head to her and left the room.

Her goodbyes to Lars and Refus were short and uncomfortable. There was too much to say. It could not be cut to fit into words. Eyes said much that tongues could not form. Rufus hugged her shyly, but Lars’s embrace was fierce and hard to break from. Ki scrambled onto the seat of her wagon, refusing to see how Lars wept. She slapped the reins hard on the grays’ backs. The night received Ki and closed behind her. When she looked back, not a light showed in the home that had been Sven’s.

The road was silent about her, no lights showing in the smaller cottages that she passed. But as her team came abreast of Marna’s, a small figure darted in front of it, holding aloft a flickering candle dim as a firefly. Ki pulled the team up short.

‘Haftor!’ called Kurt’s voice softly, and the door of the cottage opened. ‘She’s here!’ Kurt said, and then the candle was pinched out, and Kurt darted off into darkness.

Haftor stood limned a moment in the lamplight, framed in the door of Marna’s house. Ki sat silent on the wagon. She heard a light footfall behind Haftor and glimpsed Lydia, pale as a spirit as she moved listless to his side, carrying a bulky sack. Haftor took it from her, saying soft words that did not carry to Ki’s ears. He pushed her gently back into the cottage, closing the door behind her. He came swiftly, to pass up to Ki the bundle of provisions. She took them without thanks, opening her cuddy door and setting them within.

All words were inadequate. Ki felt she must leave so much unfinished. She climbed down slowly from the seat to stand before him. ‘I am sorry we make our ending like this,’ she faltered.

Haftor’s eyes were like dark, cold river rocks. He trapped her hands in his, holding them so tightly it hurt.

‘This is no ending, Ki. You can’t run away from it that easily. Cora will not be able to contain such a secret as she holds. You killed those Harpies. That’s a debt paid only with blood. Neither time nor distance will heal it. Harpies don’t give up on blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them. A life must be given.’

Haftor’s eyes had gone deep and mad in the semilight. Ki tried to step back from him, feeling menaced by his words and the way he growled them. Should he choose to try and kill her, Ki knew she could find no spirit to resist him. He had known, then. As Cora had.

He read the fear in her eyes, understood the way she shrank from him. He released her hands. ‘They don’t know yet. They cannot put the pieces together as I did. To kill a Harpy for vengeance is too foreign an idea to them. They see the pieces, but cannot comprehend the whole. But Nils will. By morning he will know, and there will be no stopping him. He will want your blood himself. If the Harpies do not find you, Nils, or another like him, will. So do not tarry.’

He turned to her wagon, surprised her by climbing up the wheel before her. He took up the reins, slapped them against the team. The team started at his unaccustomed hand and stepped out as swiftly as beasts their size could.

‘The roads will be watched, by men in the trees and Harpies in the air. So I will show you a way forgotten, branched over by forest growth and so foul and pitted that all think no wagon may pass there. It will take you long to travel that way. But no one will watch for you there.’

Haftor hurried the horses, bidding Ki sternly to be silent that he might listen. Ki opened her mouth in alarm when he suddenly turned the team off the road and into a morass. Their hooves sank and made sucking noises as they struggled. A shallow layer of moving water overlay the mud and reeds the team plowed through. The wagon jolted off the solid roadbed and into the mush. The wheels sank. Haftor slapped the reins hard down on the horses. The grays hunched and humped against their traces. Ki’s heart sank with her wagon wheels.

‘Pull, damn you!’ hissed Haftor in a carrying whisper. Their heads went down, their front legs bent, and the team went nearly to their knees. The wagon moved. In sporadic jerks and tugs, the wagon lurched through the mire and onto coarse gravel and then up over deep moss and scrub brush. It was uphill briefly over a slight rise, and then they were descending, and Ki looked down a dark avenue of trees. Tall grass and brush swept the bottom of the wagon. Tall trees had overgrown the unused road and arched over it, sheltering it from the night sky.

‘It’s going to be bad traveling,’ Haftor warned her as he pulled the team in. ‘There may be logs down across the road further on. You’ll just have to chop them and use the team to pull them aside. I know that a stream crosses it in one place. It shouldn’t give you too much of a problem.’

He hugged her fiercely and kissed the side of her face roughly. His silver wrist-piece caught for a moment in her hair. Before she could recover from her surprise, he untangled himself and leapt from the wagon. He gave Sigurd a slap on the rump before he stepped aside, and the spooked horse surged forward in his harness.

The road had been as bad as Haftor had said it would be. The provisions he had given her had run out before she reached a true road again. But she had left that evil trail at last, of that she was sure – she remembered emerging from the forest onto a wide, sunlit road – and she wondered at the darkness about her now, and the terrible jerking and swaying.

It was the swaying that was making her sick. She opened her eyes a little, only to see whiteness rushing past her face far below. She was cold and monstrously uncomfortable; she could not locate her arms or determine what had become of her hands. She had no memory of where she was or what she was doing. The white stuff below her rose suddenly, to strike her in the face with coldness. Snow! She reared back her head as far as she could and let out a strangled cry. Presently, the swaying stopped. With the cessation of the motion, she could separate her body from her discomfort. Her thighs, belly, and chest were pressed heavily to something warm, solid, and living. Her head hung down lower than the rest of her body. That accounted for the throbbing sensation in her face. That much was obvious. The circumstances of the rest of the situation eluded her.

She heard snow crunch behind her. Someone seized her firmly by the hips and pulled until her feet hit the ground. Her hands were loosely but securely bound behind her. She found with the sudden change in position that she was dizzy, too dizzy to stand. She swayed to one side and was caught by strong hands, steadied, with her face nestled against rough cloth.

‘Sven?’ she questioned blindly, disoriented totally in time and space.

‘No, Vandien. I’m sorry, Ki, but it was necessary. I didn’t want to do it, but you left me no choice. How’s your head?’

It hurt. It made no sense, but it hurt. She tried to raise a hand to touch the throbbing place, but was reminded that her hands were still bound.

‘Untie me.’

She felt Vandien shake his head. She was still leaning into his cloak, talking to his chest. It was humiliating, but she knew without his support she would fall.

‘First we talk, then we untie. I want to be sure you understand my reasons and don’t try to kill me.’

‘What did you hit me with?’

‘Not that it matters, but a rock. Back at the time when you were sitting on my chest, looking as if you might arrange my transport into the next world, my hand came upon it. It’s been in my pocket since then. Ki, believe me, I hoped never to have a use for it. But you are a stubborn person, the stubbornest I have ever encountered.’

‘What happened? What are you doing with me?’

‘After I hit you, I put you on Sigurd. He has little love for me, I fear, and did his best to stomp me until he realized he could not stomp me without stomping you. The ridge of ice helped; I was above him. Sigmund is a more reasonable beast. Besides, both of them were hampered by their harness. Once I had supplies loaded, I cut us loose from the wagon and got them moving. We have made good time.’ He paused, waiting, but Ki said nothing. ‘I could have left you there, you know. It would have been far easier for me. But I didn’t. I intend to get you out of this pass alive. I feel that by doing that I will have paid back what I owe you. Even if I do it against your will. Now.’

Dimly, she felt his hands fumbling at her wrists. A thin cord dropped away into the snow. Vandien bent and retrieved his story string. Her hands and arms tingled strangely as she brought them up and rubbed at her wrists.

As soon as she felt she could do so without falling, she pushed away from his chest and stood upright. She touched the side of her head gently, still eyeing Vandien resentfully. There was a swollen lump, but no blood. Still, just to touch it made her feel sick and woozy. Vandien reached out a hand to steady her as she swayed, but she pushed it away and rested a hand on Sigurd’s great shoulder instead. Sigurd reached his head back curiously, a shade of reproach in his eyes. She patted him reassuringly.

‘They are curious beasts to ride. Willing, but broad enough to split a man in two. Just getting onto Sigmund’s back without sliding down the other side took a bit of doing. Even from the ice ridge.’

‘I’m going back for my wagon.’

‘Don’t be an ass, Ki. It’s nightfall already, and your wagon is hours behind us over the worst part of the trail. And it is in the shadow of the Sisters. Besides, I still have my rock. Come, make the best of it, as I did when I had you over me with a knife. Do you need a boost to mount?’

‘Without my freight, I have no reason to wish to see the other side of this pass.’

‘Ah, your freight. A moment.’ Vandien opened his cloak to the cold, fished inside his shirt. He produced the leather pouch and pressed it into Ki’s hand. ‘It’s all there, if you wish to check. I would have put it in your own shirt, but I was afraid it would drop down into the snow. Your riding posture wasn’t all it could have been.’

Ki clutched her pouch to her chest and leaned her face into Sigurd’s warm coat. He shifted, perplexed by her behavior, but did not veer away from her weight. She was silent. Behind her in the snow Vandien moved uneasily. The smile he had attempted faded from his face. She peeked back at him under her arm. He looked vaguely ashamed, but mostly weary. Last night she had thought of killing him. Today he had bashed her on the head, abandoned her wagon, and made poor jokes about it afterwards. She should have been wishing she had killed him. She found that she only wanted to make him understand.

‘Rom was the name of Sven’s great black horse. Rom came scarcely to Sigurd’s shoulder, but he was a stallion and bullied my grays unmercifully. Sven and I used to laugh about it at night by our fire.’

Vandien stepped closer to her to catch her muffled words, but made no move to touch her.

‘The grays were Sven’s gift to me, and the wagon built by his own hands for our purposes. Within that wagon I first knew Sven as a man. Two children I birthed within it, with Sven’s great hands to steady me through it. We made our lives as the Romni do, but we were not of them. Sometimes he rode Rom next to the wagon, singing as he rode with a voice like the wind. And sometimes he would put his small daughter on the saddle in front of him, and our son would cling behind him. Then they would tease me for my team’s slowness, and race far ahead of the wagon, out of my sight for minutes, and then galloped back, shrieking and laughing to me to hurry up, that there were new lands to see just beyond the next turning. Have a care for your wagon, old snail woman!’ he called to me as they galloped past me in the trail of Khaddam past Vermintown. They all three were laughing, and their pale hair streamed behind them and tangled together. They went up a rise and over a hill. I watched them go together.’

The silence grew, stretched, and blended with the cold. Vandien cleared his throat. ‘They never came back?’

‘I found the pieces of them when I topped the rise. Just the pieces, and they were only meat in the sun, Vandien, only meat in the sun. It was the work of two Harpies.’ She turned sick eyes on him, waiting to see if his face changed. But his eyes were closed. Ki swallowed. ‘I tracked them, Vandien. I climbed up to their aerie. One I killed outright, myself, and by accident,’ Ki’s voice rose higher, ‘I burned the nest and eggs and scarred the male for life. I put an end to all of them. But it didn’t help! Mine were still only meat in the sun.’ She choked, and it sounded to Vandien like the death of all laughter. ‘I buried a big black horse and a man and two children in a hole no bigger than the seat of the wagon. Harpies do not leave much when they feed, Vandien. “Have a care for your wagon, old snail woman,” he used to say. I carry my home with me. I’m going back for my wagon.’

She grasped Sigurd’s mane and tried to pull herself up. Her body refused. Vandien took her shoulders, turned her gently.

‘Tomorrow, then. When we have light. The wind is rising again, and the horses are done in. You stay here. I can tramp out a place in the snow between the cliff face and the ridge of that cursed serpent. We’ll be all right.’

Ki had not the strength to argue. She did not even watch him. She looked about, but there was little to see in the dimming light. Her wagon was far back, out of sight around some bend or wrinkle in the mountain’s face. She couldn’t see the Sisters either. The eternal cliff face reared up on one side of her; she and the horses stood on the serpent’s ridge; and down the other side cascaded the mountain. Far down in the valley there were darker specks that might have been brush pushing up through the snow. The light was nearly gone. There was no color to anything.

She turned her sore head slowly. It throbbed, and any sudden movement was like a hammer blow. Vandien was unloading the horses. Sigmund had let him take off the sack of grain he carried and the oddly shaped bundles that Vandien had made of the worn blankets. But Sigurd was feeling spiteful. His big yellow teeth closed swiftly and harmlessly on the cloth of Sven’s cloak.

‘Sigurd!’ Ki rebuked him instinctively. His head dropped, abashed, and he subjected himself to Vandien’s touch. Vandien did not appear to notice Ki’s intervening. She became aware of his monologue, scarcely louder than the shushing wind.

‘… left the firewood to bring the grain. So no fire, and so no tea; so I didn’t bring the tea kettle. But I took the salt meat and the dried fish and the things I thought would be precious to you: a silver hair comb, a necklace with blue stones, a clean tunic – probably all the wrong things. But we’ll get the rest tomorrow. Or die trying.’ He added the last so softly that Ki was hardly sure she had heard it. He had trampled a spot in the snow. He shook out grain for the horses, twice what Ki usually gave them. He had spread the shagdeer cover out on the snow beside the rising mountain face. He came to Ki to steer her over to it. She sat down on it obediently. Her passivity seemed to trouble him. Ki could have told him that it was only pain and weariness. But that would have taken too much effort. He could be a Harpy’s man, or even a Harpy tonight. It made no difference to her. Her strength was spent.

She refused the food he offered. She saw it distressed him and felt a vague sympathy for the guilt he felt. Ki knew guilt well. It made a sorry companion. She dropped over on the shagdeer cover, curled up. The ice ridge provided a small windbreak. The horses knew it and already had moved into its shelter. The cliff towering beside her gave Ki an illusion of shelter. She closed her eyes. She felt and heard Vandien spread the larger, heavier cloak over her. Then he was crawling under it with her, curling his body about hers, his belly to her back. ‘For the warmth,’ he whispered, but Ki couldn’t care.

The wind swirled loose snow onto them. Ki pulled her head under the shelter of the cloak. She felt the cloak atop her grow heavier with the snow, and she grew warmer with the added insulation. Ki nuzzled into sleep like a blind puppy seeking milk.

Her mind groped. She was awake now, so she must have been asleep. Sven called her. His voice came from far away. It was distant through the strange buzzing in her ears. But it was Sven. Doubt was swept from her mind. She knew every note of that beloved voice. She fought her way up out of sleep. She was puzzled by the warm dark to which she opened her eyes. She pushed the heavy cloak aside irritably. Snow fell coldly on her face and neck. She sputtered and sat up in a mound of it. The blanketed horses looked at her, ears sharp with surprise at seeing Ki emerge suddenly from a snowbank. She grinned at them and stood.

‘Ki!’ The voice was clearer now, coming closer. Sven strode toward her. The snow offered him no resistance. It did not even slow him. Little Rissa on his arm bounced happily. Lars, blue shirt flapping over his butt, was doing his best to keep up with his father’s long strides. He held tightly to one of Sven’s hands, and every now and then took a giant stride as he swung on it to gain ground.

Ki’s hands flew to her cheeks in joyous dismay. ‘Sven, where are their cloaks? The children aren’t dressed for snow!’ She tried to wade toward them. But she sank and floundered in the loose snow. It clung to her, held her back. It was easier to stand still, to let them come to her. Joy washed her, drowning all questions.

‘They’re fine!’ Sven scoffed. ‘These are tough little Romni brats, these are!’ He gave Rissa a bump, and she squeaked delightedly. Ki drank in their presence, luxuriated in the familiar sound of her daughter giggling. She wondered why she had been lonely for them so long. They had been here, all the time, waiting for her. It was simple. She stood, smiling foolishly, and Sven swung Rissa down from his arms and opened his arms to Ki. She stepped toward him.

She was slammed aside, going down into the snow, falling with the sore side of her head punched into the icy coldness. She was choking on loose snow, gagging. She wallowed up to her feet, wondering what kind of game this was. Sven had been too rough; he should know how big he was, how strong compared to her. She regained her feet, staggering slightly.

‘Sven!’ she rebuked him gently. The children were laughing. He shook his head regretfully and gave a snort of laughter. He had meant it in fun, a romp in the snow. She saw that now. She smiled her forgiveness and moved toward him.

‘KI!’ someone screamed. She didn’t turn to look. If Sven was here before her, then who else was there in the world? Then it was Ki’s turn to scream as Vandien shouldered her aside in his rush, plunging her little sheath knife into Sven’s chest.

Sven brushed him aside, unconcerned by him, and Ki saw the blood leap from Vandien’s face where Sven’s fingers touched him. She did not understand, but Sven was smiling still and beckoning her to come to him. She shook her ears, trying to rid them of buzzing. It only made the sore spot on her head hurt more. She was cold now, too. When Sven had playfully pushed her down, her cloak had ripped wide. The cold air seeped in. But Sven’s arms would be warm to enfold her.

‘Long have we waited for you, Mother!’ Lars called. His hands reached for Ki, grasped her cloak. In his eagerness, smiling, he jerked her to her knees, her cloak tearing like a rotted sack in his grip. Ki looked up at them, puzzled by their roughness. But they were smiling, ever smiling.

Suddenly Sven and the children staggered forward. Vandien had leaped onto Sven’s back from behind. Blood masked half of his face. ‘Harpy!’ he roared as he dug his fingers into Sven’s eyes. Ki cried out in alarm, sprang up to help Sven beat the madman off.

But Sven shook him off effortlessly. Vandien hit the snow, rolling and plowing it up with the momentum of his slide. Sven disdainfully pulled the little knife from his chest, let it drop into the snow. No blood flowed. Ki looked up into his face as it bent toward her, mouth-close for a kiss. There was a stench nearby, a terrible stench that faded even as Ki noticed it. Sven was so near, how could she think about a smell, even a smell that reminded her of …

‘Dead, Ki! Sven’s dead! Will you call a Harpy by his name! By the Hawk, Ki, it’s a Harpy!’

Vandien was back, staggering wildly, belaboring Sven and the children with the buckle end of a harness strap. He was weeping and shrieking in his horror. The buckle caught Sven in the mouth, but still he smiled. On the temple, and still he smiled and reached out his strong, rounded arms to take Ki into them, to draw her close to his high blue chest and gaping turtle beak that would snip off the top of her skull.

Ki screamed. She dropped to her knees and scrambled away from them. ‘Mama, Mama!’ called Rissa, but the voice was too high, too sugary in its betrayal, and that blue shirt of Lars’s had been a mangle of red rag wrapped about bloody meat when Ki had buried it beside the road; and Sven had never, never smelled like that, like carrion and old bones, tatters of meat on yellow bones. Haftor had said they would never give up and here it was again, a battered blue Harpy that staggered after her, his wings frozen half-outstretched by scar tissue, blind on one side of his face, the tissue on his chest and legs burned away like roasted meat in a hot fire shriveled to tendons, standing frozen against the high bird chest. The little arms clawed at Ki as the knife came to her hand, catching in her hair. She struggled free, her hair ripping out of the widow’s knots. ‘Sven!’ she roared, and for one second more she saw him, and it was hot agony to plunge that blade into his bare chest, so wide and fair before her. But then it was shriveled and blue, and Vandien was flailing the monstrous bird head like a thing gone mad, yelling wordlessly as he used the buckle to fling bright bits of blue flesh and chunks of pale bone and blood, red as a Human’s, spattering across the snow. The Harpy sank like a burning ship going down into white seas, its bird skull shattered. And still Vandien yelled, until suddenly he had to stop. The buckle fell lifeless to the snow. He stared at the bloody buckle as if it were a snake, his eyes wide with dismay. His body heaved as he panted in short, hard breaths of the cold air. The movements of his body dashed the blood from his face in spatters.

Ki stepped back and away from it all. The Harpy did not move. But Vandien did. He shook and wept and staggered about in the snow. Blood streamed from his face. The Harpy’s talons had opened a slash that began betweeen his eyes and ran down across the bridge of his nose, to trail off down his cheek into his beard and off the corner of his jaw. His face was ruined.

‘Ki,’ called a voice, and she looked to where Haftor lay dying in the snow. His black eyes were wide with madness; she dared not approach, no matter how his arms reached for her beseechingly. Haftor wavered, and Ki’s mind twisted as her ears buzzed louder. She saw she had been mistaken. It was Rissa, battered and scratched, but alive and reaching for her. Somehow she had survived it all, had never been dead. ‘Rissa!’ Ki whispered. She fell on her knees by the child.

‘You’ve killed me, Mama,’ Rissa whimpered pathetically.

‘No,’ moaned Ki. She reached to touch the soft little cheek. But before she could stroke the pale skin, the child faded to blue. The Harpy’s golden eye gave a final, mocking swirl and stopped. Its little blue hands fell to its chest, empty.

The great taloned legs of the Harpy gave a sudden jerk. Abruptly, the buzzing in Ki’s ears stopped. She saw, as if for the first time, the huge body sprawled dead on the snow, the horses spooked far up the trail, and Vandien sinking to his knees, eyes blind with pain and horror.