Читать книгу The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Megan Lindholm - Страница 15

She rose and went to Vandien, steadied his head against her body as she gently pushed his face back together. The cut was ragged. It would not close smoothly. She took his hand in hers, forced his fingers to open to hold the torn flesh in place. She left him sitting in the snow, staring at the body. She made her way back to the mounds of snow that marked their buried supplies. She found the brown tunic he had brought along for her, tore it into strips. It made coarse bandages. But it was not the type of wound that could be bandaged tightly shut. Ki had to be content with trying to stop the bleeding. When she was finished, one of his eyes was covered by the makeshift bandage, and he could barely open his jaws to speak. It did not not matter. There was nothing to say.

Ki’s familiar whistle and curses brought the horses back. Sigmund was steady as Ki loaded Vandien haphazardly onto his back. Vandien pulled himself up into a slump. His hands tangled in the thick mane. Ki did not bother to reload the supplies on the horses. They would pick them up with the wagon when they brought it this way.

She went to take a final look at the Harpy. She let the crumpled blue image burn itself into her mind. There were no more Harpies stalking Ki now. And no more Sven, and no more children, a small voice in her mind whispered. Ki ignored it.

A glint of silver caught her eyes. She squatted down by the body. She leaned forward, sucking her breath in harshly.

It was loose on the Harpy’s skinny forearm. A twisted bolt of lightning. Ki freed it gently from the hard blue flesh. The cunningly worked silver was smooth and cold in her hands. She knew with a sick feeling that the good folk of Harper’s Ford had found their scapegoat. The silver caught the sun as it whirled out over the deep valley, sparkled once more as it tumbled endlessly down, its flight lost in the shining white of the snow below it. She let Haftor go with it. She trudged dispiritedly over to where Vandien slumped on the horse, oblivious.

‘We are going back to the wagon,’ she told him gently. ‘There are things in the wagon I can use to make a better bandage for you.’

Vandien gave the barest nod. ‘I’ve never killed a sentient being before,’ he explained. Ki nodded.

Ki mounted Sigurd, and Sigmund fell in behind her. The grip of the cold was cracking the land. Ki felt the membranes of her nose stick together with the cold, felt the skin of her face stiffen with it. It leaked into her body where the Harpy had ripped her cloak. Ki felt oddly untouched by it. Cold was, after all, only cold. It could kill you, but that was all. And there were times when dying or living did not seem to be all that different from one another.

Last night’s winds had swept away the horses’ tracks, but it was easy enough to keep them on the ridge of ice. It ran down the center of the trail. Ki tried to think of it only as an easier way to get back to her wagon. She would think of it as an obstacle to her wagon when she had to face it. For now, she had Vandien to worry about. She reined her mind away from the Harpy images of the morning. They were dead, a long time dead, she reminded herself. Even Haftor – ugly, crazy Haftor. She could not change it. She forced her eyes to Vandien. Blood had reddened the bandages and was beginning to drip sluggishly from the side of his jaw. The tunic strips were saturated with it. His color was ghastly, his eyes too deep. Damn the man! Why had he chosen her to steal horses from?

The light burdens of Ki and Vandien did not trouble the horses. They trudged willingly through the snow. Ki’s head still gave her a jab of pain whenever she moved too suddenly. She kept the grays to a walk, for Vandien’s sake as much as her own. They made good time. Vandien had been right about that. A person on horseback would have had little trouble with this pass. Ki smiled bitterly.

A bend in the trail brought her wagon into view. Ki had never approached it from such a distance. The blue panes of the cuddy were sparkling with a layer of hoarfrost. The winds of the night had swept a light layer of snow over and around it. It looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries. As they drew nearer, she saw that the snow close to the wagon had been disturbed, and recently. A dim foreboding overshadowing her, she tried to think of ways to approach the wagon cautiously. But there was no shelter to take cover behind, no way to hide from the Sisters that loomed above them, or from whatever might be inside the wagon. A glance at Vandien made her want to hurry. He swayed visibly at every stride Sigmund made. Ki reined in her impatience. To hurry the horses now would only make it worse for him.

He seemed to feel her eyes on him. He gave her a one-eyed glance. ‘It is only the pain, and the horror,’ he explained. ‘The wound itself is not that grievous.’

Ki looked long at the red stain that began at Sigmund’s withers and crept partway down his dappled shoulder. Another slow drip fell, to deepen the color and enlarge the patch.

A short distance from the wagon Ki halted and slid from Sigurd’s back. ‘Wait here,’ she commanded him needlessly. ‘I want to check the wagon first.’

‘It has stood long in the shadow of the Sisters,’ Vandien replied gravely.

‘I don’t think they made the tracks around it,’ Ki snorted and set off through the snow. The wind seemed more chill away from the moving warmth of the horse. She was awakened to how the huge body had warmed her legs and thighs, of how she had profited from his rising body heat. It was as if she had shed another cloak. She pulled her own cloak closer together where it had torn.

The wagon was dead. The frost was thick on its panels. Swept snow had covered the singletree and heavy harness straps that were stretched out before it. The tops of the tall wheels were frosted with snow. Lines of snow clung to the wagon wherever it had found the tiniest purchase. Nothing alive waited in that wagon, Ki felt sure. She stopped by the first impressions in the snow and felt relief at her own foolishness. The Harpy had called here first, only to find his prey had fled. With a pang, Ki realized that but for the team’s presence the Harpy might easily have passed them by where they slept under the snow. She smiled hopelessly at the thought. It made as much sense to her as any other reaction.

The cuddy door was frozen shut. Ki hammered it loose with repeated blows of her fist, until suddenly it slid a small distance, and then scraped all the way open. She whistled to the team, and the horses came on at their usual methodical pace, bringing Vandien only incidentally.

She was rummaging within her cupboard for supplies when she felt the wagon give. Vandien’s bandaged face appeared at the cuddy door.

‘I didn’t think you could manage that alone,’ she greeted him.

‘It couldn’t be as bad as it looks,’ he replied. She took his arm as he climbed in, and he sat down on the straw mattress gratefully.

He watched her tear a finely woven green gown into strips. ‘You may as well rest here for a few moments,’ she suggested, moving to the door. ‘I’m going to make a fire and melt some water. I have no salve or unguents to treat such a cut, but at least we can wash it out. A Harpy’s talons usually carry all sorts of filth. Those who survive the wound often die of an infection.’ Her hand went to the side of her own face as she remembered gratefully Rifa’s soothing oils and gentle hands. But her wounds had been scratches compared to Vandien’s slash. And Rifa and her healing powers were a dream and a memory away.

Ki frowned at the dimming light as she emerged from the cuddy. The sky had remained clear, but somehow the snowy pass seemed darker to her now. A trick, perhaps, of the dark shiny rock looming over the wagon in startling contrast to the snow – or of eyes that had grown accustomed to the cuddy’s dim interior and now faced snow again.

The fire was not easily kindled. The snow seemed to melt and quench it every time Ki thought she had it started. The wood itself seemed impregnated with ice crystals and loath to take the flame. But at last the orange flames blossomed freely, and Ki set her blackened kettle packed full of snow to heat.

Vandien lay still as a dropped doll. Ki stood over the mattress, looking down on him. His face was small and lopsided under the red and brown bandage. ‘I’ll have to take this one off so we can do a better job.’

He nodded. His eye was distant but clear. Her awkward knots had caked with moisture and blood. They were frozen. The damp bandage was a stiff mush of ice-blood on his jaw. Vandien twitched as Ki slid the blade of her knife carefully beneath the layers and sawed through the cloth. It parted raggedly before the sharp blade. Ki laid the parted bandages back gently from his face. The blood had smeared around the wound. The flesh had slipped, and the cut hung open. Ki set her teeth at the thought of touching it. She felt an echo of the anguish she had felt when she stood over the bodies of Sven and the children The closer she was to their pain, the hotter burned her own. Blood had leaked around the eye closest to the wound, to congeal there. The eye was caked shut with it. Vandien read her face as if it were a mirror, and went pale. He closed his other eye.

The little fire burned valiantly. The kettle water was not boiling but was hot to Ki’s wary fingertip. She lifted it from the fire, to carry it cautiously to the wagon. The shadow of the Sisters loomed over her, darkening the trail. Ki noted with annoyance that the team had moved off and were farther from the wagon than she liked them to stray. It was no matter. A shake of grain upon the snow and a whistle would bring them back. But not just now. She had Vandien to tend to first, and she was weary. Every step she took seemed an effort. Her feet were weights at the ends of her legs. She thought longingly of sleep. Vandien would have to rest for a while after she had finished with him. She tried to tempt herself with the thought of hot tea and a kettle of soup. But it seemed a pallid attraction next to the sweet forgetfulness of sleep.

One green rag she soaked in the warm water to gently sponge the blood away. His eye was revealed, closed but still sound in its socket. Washing the blood from his face did not make the slash look any less angry. Steeling herself to the necessity, Ki held the cut open as she trickled a little of the warm water into it. It seemed that as much blood as water washed out of it for her efforts. Vandien scowled and tried to lift his head from the wet bedding. He opened his eyes to look at the red puddle and promptly closed them again.

‘More water than blood,’ Ki assured him, hoping he would believe her. She wasn’t really certain of it. ‘And a free-bleeding wound cleanses itself. So the Romni teach.’

‘And the moon keeps track of our sins. They teach that, too,’ Vandien replied grumpily.

Ki held the cut delicately closed, the skin lined up in its original place. The thinner cloth of the gown was a better bandage, easier to wrap firmly and tie in tighter knots.

‘The Romni would have shaved around the wound, too, but I have no tools for that.’

‘Don’t fret about it. I have no courage to let you try.’ Vandien started to sit up, but fell back heavily. ‘My head feels so heavy. All of me feels heavy.’

‘Loss of blood makes you weak. And killing another thinking being makes the soul sick inside you. I know. You may as well rest. I’ll make some hot food.’

She left him, sliding the cuddy door shut behind her. The shadow of the Sisters overcast them deeply now. The glitter was lost from the snow. Ki looked up at the blackness that loomed over them and longed suddenly for their beauty to reach her as it once had. But all she sensed was their watching.

The fire had gone out in a puddle of black water. Ki moved on leaden feet to the back of the wagon to get the last of the wood. They would miss it tonight, but she felt she must have some hot food to put some strength back into them, to give her the energy to attack the problem of the ice ridge. The last sack of grain lay in the back of the wagon beside the pitiful pile of wood. She might as well do that, too. It was an effort to pull the heavy sack to her, to tug it open and spill a feed of grain upon the snow. She looked up, whistling for the team. They were nowhere in sight. Their passage through the snow was plain. They had headed back toward the campsite and the dead Harpy. Ki cursed their sudden whim and set out to retrieve them. They would never hear her pathetic little whistle now that they were around the bend of the mountain. And once they reached the two sacks of grain at the camp site, they would have no inclination to return.

She forced her leaden feet to jog trot through the broken snow. They moved slowly, but their strides were long. Ki panted as she tried to catch up. The thud of her own feet echoed painfully in the side of her head, and the cold poked at her through the rent in her cloak. Damn the man and the horses scheme to get his jewels safely to his home. And damn her heavy head that wanted to nod off her neck, and her heavy feet that seemed to gather snow and weight at every step. And damn the Sisters, who could cloud the daylight with their shadows.

By the time Ki had reached the bend in the mountain, she had catalogued and damned every adverse condition in her life. It was a small satisfaction, but it seemed to warm her a little. And the grays, looking almost a dappled black in contrast to the snow, had on another whim stopped just around the bend of the trail. They set their ears back at her language, and disapproved when she tried to drive them back toward the wagon. Sigurd remained impassive to her halter-tuggings and slappings of his immense rump. It was only by mounting the more placid Sigmund and taking Sigurd in tow that she was able to get them moving back toward the wagon. Sigurd came sulkily, dragging his heavy hooves through the snow and snorting disdainfully at the bovine spirit of his larger and stronger partner.

But round the bend of the hill, Sigmund, too, came to a halt. His ears pitched forward with interest, but he would not take another step. Ki was a jigging monkey on his back, for all the good it did her. Tears of rage stung her eyes and froze on her lashes. She stared longingly at her wagon, thinking of the firewood that rested inside its shadowed box.

Her eyes caught on the wagon. Its box was shadowed deeply, blackly shadowed, as if the snow had turned to congealed blood. The snow about it was as black and deep as the rock of the Sisters that overshadowed it. Ki glanced again at the clear sky. The sun struck her eyes. The shadows of the Sisters lay on the wagon by their own will, not by the sun’s casting.

Ki joggled her heels against the barrel-body she straddled. Sigmund shook his head. She slid from him and went ahead on foot.

There was a dividing line, a place where white snow gave way to deep black shadow. And the shadow was deep, seemed to tell Ki’s eyes that it was a tall, standing liquid in which she must wade. She glanced up again at the sun, shaking her head in consternation. She stepped into the blackness.

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

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

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

‘Vandien!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The black stuff seemed to be rising faster. She heard the wood of the wagon groan ponderously in its grip. She gazed across the black sea to the far white of the snowy trail. She yearned, but she knew they would never make it. They would sink, smother and drown in the blackness. Crushed by the shadows of the Sisters. She turned her eyes up to the immensity above them. Vandien’s gaze followed hers. They had no further capacity for awe, they could not marvel at the beauty of the revealed silver faces. They looked on what few had ever seen: the features of the Sisters, stern, uncompromising, watching their black veils drop upon the trail. Their faces were too pure to be Human, unsullied by the emotions of lesser beings. Vandien stretched appealing hands forth to them. If the wide silver eyes saw his plea, they made no sign. The black rose higher. Impossibly far away, the white snow shone invitingly. The Sisters lingered in their kiss, their eyes impassive, their hair streaming silver.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pull out the first hand. Dangle and reach for another hold. Her second hand was beginning to slip free as she thrust in the first one again. It was a more precarious way of moving than it had appeared. The effort of scraping her body across the rock face dragged at her hands, trying to pull them free of her gripless black hold. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. No air to breathe with, her hands stretched high. Shoulder joints threatened and warned. Ki remembered sickly how the one shoulder had once pulled free of her body’s command. Please, she begged her body. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. Gradually the blackness became more solid. It held her hands more firmly, and for a few moments that was a comfort, but then it became more difficult to thrust the venturing hand in, harder to make the black relinquish the trailing hand. When her hands were in the black, they were compressed tightly, emerging from it white, the blood forced out of them. Ki folded her mouth tight and went on stoically. Her hands were cold, colder than her body that pressed and scraped across hard rock and snow. Her fingers were numb, and the black was becoming so solid that she had to batter her hand against it before it would sink in at all. The trailing hand had to be jerked free with a snapping movement. Ki felt tiny rippings in her shoulders, in the muscles of elbows and wrists, tiny snappings and poppings. Puppet strings breaking.

She jerked a hand free, reached, slammed it against the solid wall. She drew it back farther, smashed her fist against it. It would not give. She dangled by one hand, and the hand was beginning to send her sharp messages of pain as the black crushed it. Ki squeezed her eyes shut, made a final driving blow against the wall.

‘It doesn’t work with rock.’ Vandien seized her knotted fist, heaved at it. She heard his body scrape and slide over snow. She could hear suddenly, she could breathe, and when she opened her eyes and looked, she saw that she had reached the end of the black wall and had, indeed, been trying to force her fist into solid rock. She jerked her screaming hand free of the black wall, entrusting her weight unthinkingly to Vandien’s grip on her wrist and forearm. He grunted as he took her weight, then, with a heave, she found the edge of the world was under her armpits. She scrambled frantically, her boots treading air, and with another heave she was up. Panic sent her body scooting further along the flat trail top. She didn’t even try to rise but slithered along. Vandien didn’t mock her. He was too busy copying her.

They stopped to lie close together in the snow, bodies touching at shoulders and hips, heads cushioned on their arms. Ki listened to Vandien pant. Or was it her own hoarse breathing? The air came easily, the snow was cold to rest in; she was tired, and she did not wish to lift her head, but she knew she could if she tried. She was alive. She raised her head enough to gulp in a mouthful of snow. Her teeth hurt as it melted in her mouth, but she took another. She rolled her head over to one side to look into Vandien’s face.

She studied the face so close to her own. He watched her from under half-closed lashes. What she could see of his face was drained of blood and lined with weariness. A large part of his bandage was red and wet. The snow closest to his face was melting with the red.

‘You look like an actor painted for a play,’ she panted. ‘White face, black beard, green and red bandage. You could be the corpse in the scene.’

‘Not this scene,’ Vandien grunted. They turned together to look at the solid black wall that reared up from the trail only a few steps away. Ki felt a pressure against her leg. She jerked away from it, and Sigmund, offended, snorted. Behind him, Sigurd was leisurely scratching the side of his nose against his black foreleg. They seemed mildly curious about Ki and Vandien in the snow, but not greatly interested.

‘My loyal beasts!’ Ki scoffed.

‘Smarter than you were,’ Vandien rejoined.

They remained prostrate in the snow, breathing and resting. Ki’s body ached all over, her head throbbed, and she felt marvelous. The cool of the snow began to make itself noticed. Her hands were bare of protection, her gloves lost in that blackness. The cold pushed at her through her rent cloak. She smiled weakly at the thought of it. The Harpy of the morning seemed a lifetime away now, and of small import. She reached up wearily to pull her hood up over her head. She would have to get up soon and do something. She lay still, wondering what something she would do.

‘Ki!’

She opened her eyes grudgingly. She wondered when she had closed them. The sun was far down the sky. One side of her body was cold. She pulled the covers over her more tightly and her eyes started to slide shut again. Then she realized that the covers were her own cloak and Vandien’s that he had spread to cover them both. The side of her body that shared his warmth was comfortable enough, but her feet were tingling. Time to move. She shifted.

‘Be still!’ Vandien hissed.

Ki froze. His eye was dark and intent, staring from beneath his bandage that now showed a pale layer of frost over the red. His expression brooked no questions. She moved her eyes to see what he saw.

The silver Sisters had gone gray. The black was rising, was writhing back up to them in whirling drifts and eddies, in every shade from palest gray to black. It flowed up like layers of silken webbing, veiling their beauty once more from lesser eyes. Ki took one final drink of their heartless majesty before the rising black made them again impassive stone.

‘They were guardians, once,’ Ki breathed.

‘Sssh!’ Vandien nodded slowly.

‘How could I fall asleep so close beside them?’

The black on the Sisters grew darker every instant. On the trail where it had lain the wall of it was becoming lower, sinking as the black mist that formed it wafted back up to the Sisters.

‘We were out of their shadows,’ Vandien murmured, becoming bold enough to speak. ‘They are monstrously fair about it. Only in that one spot do they hold sway. That is why the trail, coming and going, avoids the look of their eyes, stays hidden for as long as it can. They are slow to react, I suppose. Perhaps they guarded against creatures more ponderous than we know, or perhaps they were instructed to barricade and block, not destroy. How can we know? Or maybe they did a thing that we can never comprehend at all, and the danger they present to travelers these days is coincidental. We are young on this old world, Ki.’

‘My wagon!’ Ki replied. She drew herself together, rose, leaving Vandien to scramble after her. The last drifts and snatches of mist were rising, flowing back into place. Ki walked unhesitating into the area they had just vacated. She had to step down off the layer of snow and ice where she and Vandien had napped to tread the bare rock of the trail, exposed flat and smooth where the black had been.

Ki had once seen a Romni wagon that had slid and rolled off a mountain path made treacherous by spring runoff. She had marveled at the clean snapping of the heavy wood, great horses thrown about like puppies, at the litter of small debris strewn down the side of the cliff like bits of bright paper. But never had she seen wood crushed, the fibers compressed together so tightly that they crumbled away from one another afterwards. Her wagon had been crushed and smeared across the stone like a bright insect smashed on a window pane.

Here and there her eyes picked out the details her mind did not want to know: the woeful head of a wooden horse, intact, but its body crumbled away; a rag of bright curtain; flat, crumpled copper that had been a kettle; straw crumbled to chaff; a single bright flower painted on a board that had survived.

She did not scream; she did not speak. Vandien’s boots scuffed on the rock as he strode up to her. He took her upper arm to lead her away, but she shrugged him off. Only her eyes were alive as they flickered and danced over the wreckage. She began to tremble. It started as a shivering and increased in tempo until Vandien wondered if she would convulse in a fit. She prowled shaking among the wreckage of her life.

Vandien observed her. She moved slowly, stooping to pick up a treasured fragment. She cradled it against her body for a few steps, then dropped it to pick up some other remnant. She seemed to choose them at random: a scrap of leather, the handle of a mug, a rag of bright fabric. She clutched and discarded each in turn. She moved aimlessly through the rubble, keeping nothing of what she gathered, impervious to the cold that made her hands white and red. Finally, she let a little fur boot tumble from her hand. She watched it fall. Her trembling passed.

‘It will be night soon. We have no more time to waste here.’ Her tone almost implied that Vandien had kept her standing about. With a purposeful stride, she crossed the rocky trail to climb up the packed snow and ice. ‘It will be dark soon,’ she called back to Vandien. Her trembling had ceased. She made a grab for Sigurd’s head, and he swung it willfully away from her. She slapped him sharply on the shoulder and made a second, more successful grab. She was looking up the hill of his rolling, dappled shoulder when Vandien came up behind her.

‘Boost?’

‘Then, how will you get up on Sigmund? You look like you feel worse than I do.’

‘I wouldn’t claim that distinction. Ki, I am sorry for the things that have come to pass.’

‘Are you? I wish I could be. I wish I could feel anything about them.’

He caught her leg, threw her up on Sigurd’s back. She rode over to Sigmund, snagged him, and led the more docile animal back to stand on the snow beside the ice ridge. Vandien launched himself at the broad back, nearly overshot onto his face, then scrambled into position. They headed the horses around the curve of the mountain and back down the trail. The wind blew stinging ice crystals into their faces. Ki rode with her hands tucked under her thighs for warmth, letting Sigurd follow his nose.

They would have passed their supplies in the darkness but for the body of the Harpy. It stuck up, too large and angular a shape to be completely covered by the blowing snow. Ki reined in beside it, looking down without pity on the scarred features, the ruined body. For the first time, she realized how much damage the fire had done to him. Thick scar tissue stretched on his chest, and she saw that the fingers of his small forearms were curled permanently into fists.

‘What kept him going?’ she wondered to herself.

‘Hate.’ Vandien spoke from the darkness beside her. ‘What will keep you going now that he’s dead?’

Ki was silent for long moments. She listened to the silence of a night broken only by stirring wind, a shifting horse, Vandien’s breathing. What was left to her? She had no man or children to cherish; she had no Harpy to fear and hate; no wagon to shelter and preserve her grief in; no friends to return to. She felt peculiarly emptied. The debris of her life once more sifted through her hands. She raised her hand to a bulge that still nestled inside her shirt.

‘I have my freight to deliver.’

Vandien laughed low and unpleasantly. ‘I wondered when it would dawn on you. It will be a surprised client that receives it! Need I recommend to you that you go armed?’

Ki gave him a peculiar look. ‘Armed?’

Vandien shook his head at her. ‘Still she trusts. Do you believe that it was fate that decided to give that Harpy another chance at you? Was it fate that sent you through this particular remote pass on a fool’s errand, with a handful of trinket gems as cargo?’

Ki’s eyes caught what little light there was. Vandien recoiled from that look. ‘Be careful how you speak of Rhesus!’ she warned. ‘I have dealt with him for many years. I know him.’

‘Perhaps. But I know gems,’ Vandien returned coldly. ‘I have handled some in my time, enough to know fine from poor. And what you have in that pouch would do more credit to a tinker’s tray than to a lady’s wrist. Two are flawed, one is badly cut, and the other two of little value – not enough to be worth sending someone through this pass in a wagon.’

‘He gave me a good advance against their delivery,’ Ki replied stoutly.

‘No doubt he could afford it if someone else was footing the bill. And would the advance seem so large if he never expected to have to pay the rest of it?’

A small doubt uncurled inside Ki. Swiftly she catalogued her dealings with Rhesus, finding a resentment here, a bitterness there. To her, their dealings had always seemed fair, the agreed-upon price had always been paid. Now she saw that, to Rhesus, that would mean that he had never made a shrewd bargain such as he liked to strike, that he had never been able to force from Ki more than he had paid for. Such a thought might rankle with a man like that. Ki’s shoulders slumped another notch. Was there any direction that treachery could not come from?

They ate salt meat in darkness, then huddled close and impersonal on the shagdeer cover, the cloaks thrown over them. Ki closed her eyes, feigning sleep. Vandien was not deceived.

‘There is a fine wainwright in Firbanks.’

‘I don’t go that way. I have freight to deliver in Diblun.’

Vandien sighed. ‘I feared you would insist. Ki, will you take the chance for that petty vengeance, and make it a framework for your life? And then what? After the merchant, will you find who bribed him and take another revenge? Take my advice. Don’t go to Diblun at all. Let it go, and be free of it. You owe him nothing, and the right person could sell those gems for you and get you something out of this mess.’

‘I promised to deliver them. Regardless of how he has broken faith with me, I shall not break mine. And I do have questions for him. I doubt it was a Harpy, burnt and blue, that came to him and asked him to arrange my little journey. Harpies are lacking in such subtlety. To me, it smells like a Human.’

‘To track down and be avenged on.’ Ki did not reply. ‘And when that quest is settled?’ Vandien left her no time to reply. ‘Ki, have you never considered living?’

She was quiet beside him. He knew she did not sleep. He gave it up. ‘My face throbs like this – beat … beat … beat … beat … beat …’ Vandien counted out his pain. He began to reach a hand to his bandaged face, then stopped himself. ‘We have no more clean bandage material, do we?’

‘I’ll see what I can find in the morning. Vandien, I have never chosen death.’

‘Then you run remarkably close company with it, for entertainment, I suppose. Falling Harpies and bogged-down wagons put a certain edge on life. I have not been bored riding with you. But what of yourself? Shall you never take joy in anything again?’

‘I don’t know.’ They listened to the ponderous sounds of Sigmund folding his body down to the ground for the night. ‘Maybe. I don’t think I really want to. How could I?’

‘I saw a child at a fair once who bought a little cake at one of the stalls. In the jostle of the crowd, all the sugar tumbled from its top. “It’s all ruined now!” he cried, and dashed the little cake into the dirt to be trampled by the crowd.’

‘A man and two children!’ Ki’s voice trembled in outrage. ‘Not sugar on a damned sweetcake, Vandien!’

‘So, by all means, dash the rest of your life into the dirt!’ His anger matched her own.

‘And what do you suggest?’

Ki had the last word. Vandien had no answer. They settled deeper into the coverings, huddling closer to one another. The wind did not scatter snow over them tonight. It seemed to have changed direction. There was only the cold night full of icy stars that pressed down on them, keeping their bodies curled for warmth. Ki closed her eyes.

‘I could make you an offer,’ Vandien ventured cautiously, almost as if he did not wish Ki to hear him. The night held its breath, listening. ‘I could offer to never give you anything that I didn’t give freely, with no thought of repayment, without even a thought of the giving.’

Ki was silent, sleeping perhaps. Or she had not heard him. Or she did not care to answer. Or she would not.

‘And what would you ask in return, Vandien, you scrawny bit of road baggage?’ he asked himself in a strained falsetto.

‘Why, exactly the same from you, Ki,’ he resumed in his normal voice.

Silence. The stars pressed down on the earth, and Sigurd slowly followed his teammate’s example. He placed his large body close to Sigmund’s, sharing warmth.

‘Since you put it so attractively, Vandien,’ the falsetto replied, ‘I’ll have to leap at the chance. Why don’t I travel with you to Thesus? We could horrify all your relatives, and they would probably give you twice as much money as usual to make yourself scarce.’

‘Wonderful, Ki,’ Vandien resumed. ‘I dreaded the thought of walking that far alone. We’ll leave for Thesus first thing in the morning.’

‘Go to sleep, fool,’ Ki growled.

‘Now, there’s a thing we both agree on,’ Vandien mumbled.