The Windsingers Page 10

  She listened to the gentle shushing of the wind over the flowers. Her ears picked up a faint far humming like bees disturbed in a hive at night. The room behind her was silent. With a prickling sensation she realized that the only breathing in the room was her own. She swallowed her uneasiness. Weird as Dresh might be, he was her ally in this. To fear him would not help the situation. But she was glad she had found the window.

  She glanced back to the table. Tiny flecks of light swirled and danced about a red spark in the cube of darkness - like flies buzzing about offal, Ki thought. Their glow was paler, softly phosphorescent like swamp-rotted stumps. She found it disgusting. She was not sure what she looked upon, but she would not argue with her instincts. She closed her eyes to the sight. She still had not mastered the queasiness the rippling walls and floors awoke in her.

  There were other avenues of sense of explore. She flared her nostrils, drew in a deep breath. To her puzzlement, she no longer smelled the day outside the window. Only Vanilly. And more Vanilly. Beneath that, only a slight musky scent that she associated with Dresh's head. The strength of the Vanilly obscured whatever else her nose might have been able to tell her.

  Touch: through her soft boots, Ki pressed her toes down against the floor. It felt solid. She moved her feet slightly, and was unreasonably pleased with the soft rasping noise they made against the floor. Cautiously, lest she disturb Dresh and draw another reprimand from him, she moved her hand out, to brush it against the edge of the table. She jerked her fingers back. The surface of the table was yielding and sticky, like an extremely large lump of lard on a cold day. She rubbed her fingers together, but nothing clung to them.

  'Take me up again!' Dresh's command broke in upon her explorations. Cautiously she opened her eyes, and fixed them on the cube of darkness. Gingerly, as if she were about to pick up a red hot coal, she reached out for the blackness that was Dresh. Before her hand could touch him, the room around her winked, and in an instant became the room as Dresh saw it. Ki shied back violently from a hand right in front of her face. It disappeared.

  'It's your own hand, fool!' Dresh laughed.

  She reached out again, and saw her hand appear again in front of Dresh's eyes. To guide her hands down to pick up the head that saw for her required her full concentration. It left her with a heaving stomach and the germ of a headache between her brows.

  'Well, if you are finished peeking about, we shall be on our way.'

  'You know where your body is now?'

  Dresh pursed his lips slightly and then sighed in resignation. 'Of course I know where my body is. Do you know where yours is? How can you be so naive? Ki, Ki, if only I could have foreseen... but enough of that. This is no time to be lamenting what I don't have. What I do have is you. You will have to suffice, no matter how limited I find...'

  His vision streaked before her eyes, so rapidly did she thump him back onto the table and step clear of him. She folded her arms across her chest and stared with stony eyes at the cube of darkness. The spark in the center waxed horribly bright, swelling to twice its size and pulsing scarlet. Ki remained motionless, her arms clenched tightly lest her hands betray her by trembling. It was several long moments before Dresh spoke.

  'I suppose I deserved that.' The spark shrank and faded to white. 'You cannot be pleased with me as a companion, either. Come, Ki, let us make amends with one another. Help me in this venture in which I so greatly need your cooperation, and I shall put a curb upon my tongue.'

  Ki remained motionless, but she could not keep a smile from ghosting over her lips.

  'Please.' Dresh half-sighed, half-hissed the word. Ki stepped forward and took up his head. Dresh's image of the room snapped back around them.

  He cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was controlled. 'Two Windsingers watch over my parts. Yet she whom I feared most to encounter seems less of a danger now. There is someone, or something, else here. I do not know what name to put to it, and it troubles me. I fear a trap within a trap. Though they appear unaware of us, that may be dissembling. With so many unknowns, I hesitate to confront them. Yet to hold off may lose us the element of surprise, which in reality I may not possess. And the time I may survive in this state is trickling away from me.' Dresh's voice sank and he sighed. He roused himself abruptly. 'What say you, Ki?'

  She shrugged. 'Attack now. If we have the surprise, use it. If we do not, what have we to lose?'

  Dresh's voice was bittersweet. 'Only my body and your life, my dear. But those are also the only things we stand to gain. Onward, then. Ki, as a child, did you ever play at jump-points?'

  Ki frowned slightly. Like a dim echo there came to her mind the image of an old tree-stump in a clearing by a river. Dark-eyed Romni children danced about it. A slender young boy crouched on top of it. Suddenly he leaped into the air. 'West!' cried one of the other children at the very moment that his jump peaked. With a lithe twist the flying boy jerked his body to the west, to land cleanly within a square scratched on the dirt to the west of the stump. With a grin, he leaped back onto the top of the stump, his dark hair blowing about his face. He crouched again, and again the circle of children danced around the stump. The boy leaped, and 'South!'...

  'I remember the game, wizard,' Ki replied. 'But it is at least a score of years since I last played it. I always lost, as I recall. The Romni used it, I believe, to train the youngsters so that they might be ready to learn the leaping and tumbling tricks that would bring them pennies at the fair. What of it?'

  Dresh's eyes and Ki's vision roved about the blank black walls. 'It is not only the Romni who train their children so, Dresh muttered to himself. 'Indeed, one of the mysteries of the Romni is where they first learned of the exercise. What we play at here, Ki, is jump-points on a grand scale. Where do you suppose the next chamber is connected? We shall not know until we leave this one. If your reflexes are not sharp enough to let us gain it, we will find ourselves falling through the cold dark that lies between the worlds.'

  'And onto the chickens,' Ki replied disgustedly. She was weary of his wizardry dramatics.

  'What?'

  'The window,' Ki spoke curtly. 'If we went, for instance, out the window, we might fall through the endless void and land on the chickens.'

  'The window...' His voice trailed off in consternation. Then the Dresh vision of the room winked out. Ki found it replaced with a seeing identical to her own. Dresh's vision riveted itself to the window. 'I scarcely can believe it.' His voice was hushed. 'Closer, Ki. Can it be the same one?'

  Ki obligingly advanced to the window. Dresh's brief scanning of the room had made her aware of one fact. There was no door. The window was the only possible exit.

  She felt her hand lift, to run lightly across the rough wood of the window sill. Someone used her nails to pick at the coarse grain of the wood. 'Stop it!' she hissed at Dresh.

  'A moment,' he muttered, ignoring her anger at his casual use of her body. She watched her hand pass through the window, felt it engulfed in a cold and treacly substance. Dresh abandoned control of it, and Ki jerked it back. She felt an unreasonable urge to go and wash.

  'It's the same frame,' he said aloud, musingly. 'And she has created the old view. I never suspected Rebeke of such rank sentimentality. Interesting. And surprisingly touching. But not a way out, Ki. We could no more leave through that window than ask directions of a portrait. It's a created image, nothing more.'

  'Then there's no door?' She wiped her hand down the front of her tunic, then returned it to share the burden of the head. She shifted Dresh to rest on the cant of her hip, trying to ignore the stomach-wrenching sway in perspective. The damn head was getting heavier every minute. Her shoulders ached.

  With a blink, Dresh returned them to his interpretation of the room. Ki saw the bed and table restored to his imaging, but no sign of the window. Dresh picked up her consternation.

  'Because Rebeke does not care for the casual visitor to see it. It takes a bit of doing to make a thing visible on this pla
ne, but invisible if viewed with the wrong attitude. More than a bit of doing. She must value it greatly to expend the time and effort. Touching.' He repeated the word, and then jerked his voice away from the thought, as if fearful. 'Doors. No, Ki, the problem is not that there is no door, but that there are too many exits. We may depart this chamber at any point, walls, ceiling or floor. We may assume that at some point, or points, it adjoins other chambers. At other points, it is probably close enough to permit a leap to another chamber. At all other points, there is nothing but otherness.'

  'How do we know where to leave?'

  Ki felt the bob as Dresh's head shrugged. 'Pick a wall, Ki. Your guess in this matter is as good as mine.'

  Ki's mouth went dry. 'Some wizard,' she muttered. 'Even the crossroads wizards that tell fortunes profess to see through walls.' Dresh did not deign to respond. Instead, he sent their gaze roaming slowly over the walls.

  'Were this your chamber, Ki, and you had set out the furniture thusly, where would the door be?'

  Ki pursed her lips at the shrewdness of this method.

  'Not too near my bed. I should want it across the room from where I slept, that if one entered, he would have some space to cross before he could take me unawares. My way would be to enter, advance to the table there, and then across to my bed. Let us take the space in the wall across from the bed and in line with the table.'

  Dresh grunted. 'Why not? Although all you and Rebeke have in common is your sex, in this matter you may have some insight. To the wall, then.'

  'To the wall, Ki!' Dresh repeated an instant later. With a start Ki realized she had been waiting to follow Dresh's lead. Shaking her head at her lapse, she moved to the spot she had chosen.

  'For a few moments, I must leave you to your own eyes, Ki. This will take full thought on my part. So, if you will excuse me...'

  The black stone walls blinked out. Again she saw the boundaries of the chamber as shifting opaque curtains. A ripple passed over them, like a wave disturbing the surface of a tide pool. Ki watched it flow past. Another took its place, rippling past. She watched it flow. For a dizzying moment, she pictured herself as inside a piece of fluted glassware that slowly rotated around her. Another ripple passed. She resisted the temptation to stretch out her hand and see if she could feel the disturbance of the wall's surface. Another ripple approached. When it was directly in front of her, Dresh's command to exit struck her. It came as no spoken word or shared thought, but as a physical compulsion to leap, mental spurs applied to her body. Ki leapt.

  They passed through the wall as if through a veil of warm water. Shimmering points of light appeared like dew sparkling on the quill tips of an angry porcupine. Ki gasped in terror, but no breath entered or left her lungs. She felt she hung frozen in darkness. The wizard's head was a lifeless stone in her arms. The points of light plucked at her eyes, each one demanding to be focused on, only to retreat into distance when Ki tried to seize it with her eyes. Her hair stirred about her face in an unfelt breeze.

  She fell, she flew, she sank like a stone. Then, with a silent click, she stopped. There was no thought, no breath, no tickling of consciousness nor fear. It was deeper than peace and easier than death. But Ki did not wonder at it. Ki did nothing at all, and did not even know it.

  TEN

  The world was changing from deep blues and blacks to greys and muted colors. Vandien knuckled at his sandy eyes with his free hand. With the other he kept a firm grip on the braided leather that ran to the heavy metal circle joining the four skeels' harnesses. He wove along behind them, insisting that they stay on the road. The beasts made repeated efforts to scuttle off into the rocks and underbrush. They were ready for sleep. Vandien headed them off.His mouth was dry and full of dust. He felt like his spine was gradually pounding its way up through his brain. Soon it would emerge from the top of his skull. He gritted his teeth against it.

  The night winds had smelled of the sea. As Vandien crested the final hill, he saw why. The downward path was steep before him, and gullied by rains; the gentle hillocks and dales of yesterday had vanished in the night. Bony grey boulders pushed out of the earth's flesh and a few wind-twisted trees dared to poke up their gaunt branches. The trail he followed now had been laboriously cut down and across the face of a cliff. Below him, Vandien could see the flat green and small houses of the village of False Harbor. Beyond it was the sea.

  No fishing vessels moored at anchor by this village. The black beaches were empty. Through the water, Vandien could see the wave-rubbled shapes of houses and sheds that had gone down into the sea in the same great quake that had split the cliff and taken down the Windsingers' temple. Their stone foundations remained, green with seaweed and dotted with barnacles. The temple itself would be farther out, closest to where the bottom suddenly dropped away and the water darkened to blue-black. Only the lowest of low tides would bare the temple, although the old village foundations might be exposed a dozen times a year. Only one tide in several years would leave the temple bared for plucking. Tomorrow would bring him that tide.

  How long ago had the mountain settled into the sea? Srolan said the older folk claimed it had happened in a single day. But not one spoke of it from their own life experience. It was a tale they had heard from their grandparents; how the earth had sickened and heaved in the sullen afternoon, and mountain, village and temple had been claimed by the sea. Only the folk out fishing had survived. They returned to rebuild their village on the rise of land that had been the top of the cliff and was now just above high tide line. Gone was the harbor that had sheltered their boats, leaving a shallow bay studded with rocks and snags. They renamed their village False Harbor. They fished in the old village now, in flat-bottomed scows, catching crab and eel, squagis and octopus, where once chickens had scratched and menders had crouched by nets stretched in the sun.

  One of the skeel dropped and went limp. Vandien sprang forward and pinched its tail. It roused with a squeal that made the whole team scuttle for a handful of paces. The village itself seemed quiet, though small craft worked in the shallows. As he trotted along behind his team, Vandien smoothed his dark unruly hair. With his free hand he beat the worst of the trail dust from his jerkin and trousers. He hoped he did not look as hungry as he felt.

  A painted sign was swinging in the ocean breeze, and Vandien headed toward it. The sign depicted a fish leaping over a mountain. He assumed it marked the inn; it was the only two-story structure in the village. White-washed plaster had dropped away to expose patches of mortared stone. A lone horse was tethered in front of the place. Two mules were hobbled in the side alley. Taking this hint, Vandien herded his charges into the alley. Gratefully they dropped to their bellies and began their wheezing snores. He knew they would remain somnolent during daylight unless he roused them. He knotted the rein about the hitching rail anyway. With a groan, he bent over, stretching his back out. He straightened up to find a tall man assessing him.

  The sea had left its marks on him. His eyes were between blue and grey. They looked through Vandien, as if the man had scanned so many horizons that he could no longer look at things close to him. Large weathered hands stuck out of the rolled-back sleeves of his coarse smock. Knotted wrists joined muscular forearms. One smallest finger was missing. He stood like a man who does not trust one of his legs. Thinning hair was raked back from his face. A fisherman spat out by the sea, Vandien guessed, and turned to innkeeping when he could no longer stand his watch.

  'By the scar down your face, you'd be our Temple Ebb teamster.' The tall man dropped the words as if they were coins he were loath to part with.

  Vandien didn't wince. He was accustomed to being identified by his scar. 'I am. And you'd be the innkeeper?'

  'Aye. And the festival master, this year the third time. They'll be hanging the Temple Ebb banners, as soon as they get back with the day's catch. You're to room and board at the inn. There's a nice room above, waiting for you, and a meal when you call for it.'

  'And a bath?' Vandien as
ked.

  'If you want it.' The man scowled as if Vandien were pressing an advantage. 'Festival teamster gets most of what he asks for before Temple Ebb, and, if he puts on a good show, a nice send-off afterwards. Though,' he added, looking Vandien up and down, 'the fellow we had last year may have spoiled us. Dressed all in leather and chains, he did, with a team of six of the tallest mules I've ever seen. Smart, too. The mules did counting tricks before the tide time. The teamster could bend iron bars with his bare hands. Village kept him here for three days after Temple Ebb had passed. He even knew a bawdy song or two we hadn't heard before. We'd never seen anything to match those mules of his. The inn did more business in that week than in an ordinary month.' He paused, frowning at Vandien. 'You don't do sleight of hand, or somesuch, do you?'

  Ki had warned him. A dozen snide remarks rose to Vandien's lips. He swallowed them all. 'No. I didn't realize it was a requirement of the job. I thought your village wanted to hire a team and man to remove something from a sunken temple.'

  The tall man ignored the edge in Vandien's voice.

  'You call this a team?' The man's voice was frankly skeptical.

  'I do.' Vandien answered smoothly. He reached down to stroke the scaly shoulder of the skeel nearest him. It responded by surging against its harness. Wet chopping noises came from its toothless muzzle. Vandien gave silent thanks that the creatures were nearly blind in daylight. 'He's all affection, that one,' he observed fondly as he lightly rapped his prod on its snout. The skeel withdrew its head with a sinuous bending of its spotted neck.