The Windsingers (30 page)

Rebeke turned rebuking eyes on him. She considered him, and how he and Ki stood together, apart from the villagers. 'I did not think to find you here, Ki,' she remarked. 'But the Romni are renowned as a thickheaded folk. Perhaps that means that when you learn to respect Windsingers, you will learn it in such a way that you will never forget it.' Her cold eyes appraised Vandien. Ki shuddered. Then Rebeke smiled. 'You stand as friends stand. That man would defy me, would take from me not only the chest, but Janie as well. Does he know that you owe me, Ki? Didn't Killian hint to him that you traveled under my shadow, and only by my tolerance? But as he runs with Romni, perhaps he is as stubborn as one. I chose to let her live, Vandien. Murder is distasteful to me, but I had other options. Still, I chose to let her return to you. By that choosing, some would say I betrayed my own interests. I don't think so. But I angered some that could be mollified by this chest. I could use the chest as justification for letting Ki live. However... some other Windmistresses might see it as negligence on my part if Ki went on living and we had nothing to show for it. They might even try to remedy that.'

'Vandien does not share my debts!' Ki cried out in anger. 'Ask of me what you will for my life, but don't...'

'You have nothing I want.' Rebeke stated it flatly. And he is not really in a position to bargain. As I have said, murder is distasteful to me. Vandien may either say, We made a trade, the Windsinger and I, or he may resist me when I take the chest, and die.'

Vandien gave a harsh laugh that drew all eyes to him. 'Take it!' he croaked. 'Take it and be welcome to it. As the village will not pay me for it, why shouldn't you have it? But not as barter for Ki's life; neither of us would want to live under that burden. Consider it this way; I return the chest to the original owners, as would any honest man.'

'Asking no reward?' Rebeke marveled drily.

Vandien afforded her a courteous nod.

'Then I shall remove your team from my property.'

Rebeke circled the tangle of skeel slowly, frowning as she examined them. To the villagers she paid no more attention than she would to a flock of curious birds. After her third circuit of the skeel, she stepped back from them, massaging her narrow hands. She stared for a moment, then flicked her fingers at the chest. A cracking sparked momentarily from her fingertips. Instantly the chest glowed, moving through a dull red to blinding white in the space of two heartbeats, and as quickly fading back to its dull black. The skeel didn't even twitch.

'I don't like to be harsh,' Rebeke muttered in consternation. She folded her hands together and extended them in front of her. Her thumbs were stiffened, pointing straight at the chest. The crackling lasted longer, and three times the chest pulsed white. Rebeke lowered her hands and stared wordlessly at the motionless skeel still entwined around the chest. She gave Vandien an apologetic glance and began to raise her hands again. But the skeel began to loosen. Like melted wax they slid bonelessly down, to puddle around the chest. The blinking of a wide eye showed they were still alive, but they lay in postures skeel had never assumed before. One whiplike tongue flicked lazily out and leisurely slid back in. Yet they looked not stunned, but satiated.

Ki's eyes moved up the black chest. With heart squeezing shock, she saw the widening cracks in it. Even Rebeke's hands were clutched tightly in front of her breast. Her finely scaled lips were pinched shut. One villager cried aloud and many turned aside their faces. But Ki could not resist the awful temptation of knowing what so much had been risked for. Slowly the black pieces fell away from one another, like a flower shedding its petals.

The thing within was white, a dead white without shine or shading. It stood no taller than Sasha, but it creaked of age. And Evil, Ki thought to herself, but no, not evil, but a wisdom so far beyond Human reach that it could not seem good. Its high knobbed forehead domed above a scaled face that was noseless and lipless. Its mouth stretched as far as the hinge of its jaw. The thin sexless body crouched with its knees drawn up to its ribby chest. Folded arms rested atop the knees, almost Human, but owning too many joints, and most of them bending the wrong way. Its eyes were open, round and white. An indescribable flowing, neither bone nor hair, cascaded whitely down its back.

'What is it?' Helti demanded sickly.

Ki knew, with a jolt of recognition.

'It's a Windsinger!' shrieked Dresh. He leaped up from his crouch by a table near the door. Pushing back his hood, he let a cube of brown chalk drop from his hand. 'And the thrice-damned thing is mine!'

'Dresh!' Rebeke mouthed the words, but no sound came. She did not move. A brownish glow came from the earthrune carefully chalked on the floor. Dread rose in Ki as she knew that Rebeke could not move, had fallen to Dresh's power. Ki remembered how he had bent her will. Sickness rose in her as she imagined how he would twist Rebeke. Ki had been but a casual entertainment for him. The spurs of retaliation would goad him on with Rebeke. Always Ki had dreaded and despised Windsingers. Those feelings weren't gone. She feared Rebeke and shuddered at how Janie had been seduced away from her own Humanity. But sympathy squirmed within her, overturning old loyalties. Vandien shot her a questioning look as she eased away from him. Her sideways movement was lost in the stir of folk edging forward in fascination to stare at the revealed image.

'Look at it!' Dresh gloated. He stepped past Rebeke to put greedy hands on it. Rebeke cringed as if his questing fingers violated her personally. 'You see what hasn't been seen on this world for so many generations that it is now a legend; a true Windsinger. This is not some transformed Human or T'cheria or Dene, but a Windsinger hatched and grown. Not a statue of one! This is what they did with their dead, folding them neatly and tucking them away in chests. No temple, that building, but a mausoleum unbelievably old.'

The village folk dangled on his words, mesmerized by what he said. Ki slipped slowly through the crowd.

Dresh smiled at his audience. 'See how she flinches at my words! This is what the Windsingers wouldn't have you know; that they are shams, chameleons who have taken the shapes and powers of an older race. Control of the winds was never given to them; they seized it! And how? By a process as gruesome and twisted as themselves. This body can be ground to a powder, and ingested through nostril and mouth. Then the changes begin. Imagine the small girls, stolen from their homes, who are fed a secret measure of this filth with their food. Once the transmutation has begun, there is no stopping it. The children never have a choice!'

No tears flowed on Rebeke's face, but it was twisted in agony. Her eyes denied what Dresh was saying, but her lips were silent: Dresh smiled at her pain.

'Do you know why they want this so badly? It is this. They have no lack of this powder of Windsinger, for the race was multitudinous, and their burial places, though hidden in inaccessible places, are said to be many. But few of the bodies are intact, and none of them are as perfect as this one. That they need. For, while the powder starts the transmutation, the brain must guide it. The would-be Windsinger must focus her mind on the shape her body is to become, to guide it through the change. The closer she can approach the true shape of a Windsinger, the more power she will wield. But when their temple sank, the last true body sank with it. That quake was not the act of the Windsingers, as you believe, but the very vengeance of the Moon herself, angered that the Windsingers would take to themselves the powers she had trusted to that ancient race only. For many generations of Windsingers now, there has been no guiding image for the younger singers to grow by. They've had to pattern themselves on the older Windsingers, straying even farther from the true form. Their power is slowly dwindling because of it. This corpse would have let them recapture it. But it has fallen to me.' Dresh put his full attention on Rebeke. He leaned close to her without touching her. 'To me, Rebeke. Did you hope to match me? You were close, when you snatched my body. But you let me go! And when I dangled my puppets before you, you had eyes only for them. You watched a scarred fool and a Romni teamster dance, while their master walked up behind you. It's funny, isn't it? You see the humor, I'm sure. Smile for me, sweet one.'

Dresh's brows knit lightly in concentration. A smile crawled onto Rebeke's face and squirmed there, mocking the revulsion in her eyes. A gasp of awe rippled through the fisherfolk and then a sprinkling of cruel laughter.

Heads turned to the opening door. Janie was framed in it, the blackness of night her backdrop. The thin light of the candles touched her confused visage, outlined the sleepy face of little Sasha who stood bundled before her. 'No!' she moaned at the helplessness in Rebeke's eyes.

'Traitors!' someone cried. The crowd surged forward.

'Run!' roared Vandien, pushing a bench into the crowd nearest him.

The glowing brown runes seared Ki's smearing foot. She jerked in its grip, her body twisting and snapping out of control. Blurred images scaled her brain: Vandien going down under a wave of villagers, Sasha's mouth red in a scream, Dresh's eyes wide as he spun on her, Rebeke's hands finally moving, her fingers weaving in the air before her.

'Ki.'

She opened her eyes, wondering when she had closed them. Her face itched where her cheek pressed against woven wool. Vandien looked down on her. A dark shining stream rilled from a split at the edge of his scar. When he spoke her name, she saw blood on his teeth.

Realizing her head was pillowed in his lap brought her to her senses. She sat up slowly with his help and stared around the inn.

The fisherfolk were herded to one end of the room. Those on the fringes of the group were trying to squirm into the middle. They pressed back against the wall. Helti lay in the center of the room groaning softly. Someone's feet thrust out from under a table. 'Sasha?' asked Ki, and Vandien pointed.

The child was looking up wonderingly into Rebeke's face, watching the lipless mouth that smiled down on her. The blue windrune hung glowing in the air, singeing Ki's eyes when she looked too close to it. Dresh looked smaller as he stood by the door with his hands folded between his shoulder blades. Rebeke had left him the movement of his eyes, and they darted frantically about the room, seeking an ally. No one met his eyes.

'Is she all right?' Rebeke asked.

'Are you?' Vandien passed on the question. Ki realized they spoke of her, and managed a nod.

'Good,' said Rebeke. 'We must be on our way now. There will be a storm after I leave. All would do well to stay within these walls. I'm sure you will have much to chat about. If boats are damaged, you must remember you brought it upon yourselves. It will be a wind such as has not been seen before. When it passes, not a block of our temple will be left standing for you to sniff and pillage. It should have been done long ago, but always we cherished the hope that this could be recovered. Now that we have it, there is no longer a reason to leave any sign of the temple.'

Ki stared at Rebeke as she spoke. Her features had melted and merged. Her patrician nose was now no more than a smooth swelling in the center of her face. Her fine-lipped mouth had spread across her cheeks. And there was a fluidity about her hand movements that reminded Ki of the sinuous flexings of a skeel's tail.

'It's true then!' Ki cried out. 'Janie, you must not. Think of Sasha!'

'She does think of Sasha. Sasha will be loved and cherished as never before. They will go with me.' Rebeke answered for them. 'True? As true as a rumor and a scrap of gossip when they are woven together by guesses and filtered through the mouth of a fool. To make you understand the truth would take longer than I have. Such secrets are not for Humans anyway. We will be going.' Rebeke stepped toward the door and paused. She looked again at Ki and Vandien over the white image in her arms. 'It occurs to me that I do you no favor in leaving you here. Leave now, if you wish, and the storm will not begin until your wagon reaches the top of the cliff road.'

Vandien glanced at the huddle of villagers. 'Let's go,' he suggested, hauling Ki to her feet.

'Wait!' Ki begged, hanging to his shoulder as she got her balance again. 'Rebeke! What will be done with Dresh?'

'You make me think less of you, Ki, that you even ask. But I will answer, for the courtesies that are owed between us. I will put him in a place where he will be stopped. Not killed, for I refuse his blood. I think you know where he will be. His life will pause, and the pause will stretch forever.'

Vertigo swept Ki as she remembered the airless emptiness of the void. 'Leave him!' she begged, surprising even herself. At the outrage in Rebeke's eyes, she groped for her reasons. 'He is, at least, still Human.'

Rebeke ran her eyes over the folk in the tavern. 'And this is something to be proud of?' she asked contemptuously. 'Ki, you don't know what you ask. He has started down a path that will twist him. He may keep the shape of his body, but he will be no more Human than I am. Little folk like you will feel the pressure of his heel more often than those whose skills equal his own. Will you inflict this on your own folk?'

Ki looked at Vandien and forced out the words. 'I have a selfish reason. It is said that he could lift the scar from my friend's face.'

'A lie,' Rebeke stated flatly. 'He claims more power than he has.' A curious smile crossed her immense mouth. 'I must deny you what you ask, Ki. But I shall remember the voiding of the earthrune.'