Buch lesen: «The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection»

ONE

The woman was an improbable speck on the vertical cliff face. Without skills or tools to aid her, she moved awkwardly up the exposed shale layering. Her close-fitting leather jerkin and coarsely woven trousers were impregnated with gray rock dust. Like an insect, she had taken on the color of the cliff she scaled. Sweat had plastered her brown hair to the top of her skull. Intricate knots and weavings confined the length of her hair, but the wind had picked loose a few strands of it, to spiderweb it across her eyes. She rubbed her narrow face against the gray rock. Her hands were occupied.

Some long-ago cataclysm had riven this mountain, sending its green face sliding down into a heap of stone and earth at its base. Far above the woman the mountain still wore a cap of earth and greenery. But the woman climbed over bare shale. This morning she had stood in the tangled brush and young trees that sprouted from that long-ago landslide. She had peered up the slick black rock to a certain ledge more than three-quarters of the way up the mountain. She had measured herself against the task of reaching that ledge and found that it was hopeless. Then she had begun her climb.

Now her left hand clung to a tiny ledge in the shale. She cautiously took some weight on it. The ledge cracked free, clean as if chiseled, and slid down the mountain face. Ki frantically scrabbled her hand into a second crack and clung, panting, to the cliff face. She knew she was close. The ledge, little more than a dent in the cliff’s face, called to her like bloody water to a shark. She could glance narrowly over one shoulder to see the valley floor. She had left in the predawn light. She had to be near her goal. She was pressed too tightly to the rock to turn her eyes up to see. The sun shone down on the top of her head. It had climbed the skies faster than Ki had scaled the cliff. Time was slipping away from her, crumbling under her like the rotten stone she climbed.

She had climbed recklessly at first, kicking free of ledges and scrabbling for handholds she might never find. Her hatred had burned hot in her. But as the rock face became steeper and more slippery, the holds more precarious, her anger had subsided to a dull, aching emptiness. Now she clung flat to the mountain, her face pressed against its sun-warmed stone. Only death was inside her now. She could remain still for a moment, but she could not rest. With her arms raised to cling, she dared not draw a full deep breath. Every clenched muscle in her body cried out to loosen. Ki ignored them.

She scraped her left foot up the smooth shale, her softly shod toes feeling for any indentation they might cling in. They found a tiny ledge. Ki placed her toes gently on it, cautiously added the weight of her leg. It held. She pressed more weight on it, sliding her body up. Her chest and belly scraped shale, the cramp in her fingers becoming well-nigh unendurable. Her whole weight hung now on her left fingers and the toes of her left leg. Her right hand was free to crawl up the smooth shale, seeking a place to cling.

Ki blinked her eyes, trying to clear them of rock dust, stinging sweat, and a strand of hair that clung to her eyelashes. Her forehead pressed hard against the rock. The muscles in her left hand were clamped so tight she could not feel her fingers. Then her creeping hand found a ledge. Her fingers rested on it, then her whole hand. It was a good, deep hold. Ki sucked in another hissing breath. Her right hand had reached high over her head for that hold.

She put more weight on her left foot and took some of the burden on her right hand. Now her left was free to scuttle up the rock face, seeking a grip.

Her left fingers fumbled their aching way onto a ledge level with the one her right hand had found. Ki pressed down on her straining left toes to drive her body higher.

Abruptly her ankle scraped fiercely against the rock as her foot found no support. The stone had crumbled away. Ki heard the tiny splinters and shards rattle down the cliff face. Her body was falling, to bounce its way down the rocks, blood splattering from her at each impact. A sob caught in her throat as she realized that she still clung to the cliff. Both hands gripped the ledge high over her head. Her right toes still clung in their crack. Her left foot sought blindly for support, found a tiny projection to rest on.

It took all her courage to turn her head a tiny bit to see past her shoulder. There was nothing to see. There were no notches she could shift a hand to, no safer position to crab her body over to. Smooth, gray-black shale. She was pressed flat against the cliff, hands high, body stretched. There was only up and down. She tilted her eyes to peer downward. Her guts tightened inside her. That left only up. She did not stop and debate her next action. She took the deepest breath her position would allow her, sagged slightly from her handholds, and bounced her body up as she kicked free from her toeholds.

Her left hand slapped rock. Her hands jerked as they took her full body weight. She had made a gain. Her left hand was flat on the ledge top. Her right hand, wrist, and forearm rested beside it. Stinging sweat rubbed into her scraped belly and chest. Her legs and feet dangled limply.

Ki pulled. Her spread hands found no place to grip on the flat shale ledge. They began to slip back toward her. The scanty layer of rock dust, twigs, and small shale chips they displaced showered into her face. Twigs clung to her hair, dust coated her eyes. Ki choked, fought the cough that rose in her. When the spasm passed, she drew several short breaths into her laboring lungs. Her muscles screamed as she dangled, her spine twisted in her uneven reach. She imagined tendons snapping free, bones popping from their sockets. Don’t think of that. Force the aching, sweating body to stiffen and straighten. Down she pressed on her hands, refusing to let them slide any closer to the edge. Her weight hung in space, suspended by the puny leverage of her hands. It was impossible. Even if she had been rested and fresh, she could not have lifted her own weight this way. She forced her muscles to try.

Her face scraped the rock as she lifted her chin. Now her eyes pointed up instead of at smooth gray rock. She tightened her screaming belly muscles so that her bent legs and feet pressed lightly against the rock face. She clung like a spider. When her legs had the most purchase she could find, she took one short nervous breath. She frog-jerked her legs straight. The slight impetus pushed her up. She got both forearms flat on the ledge.

She heaved with her arms. A spasm of pain leaped up in her left wrist and shot to her shoulder. That was the wrist that had suddenly taken her full body weight when her right handhold had crumbled away earlier. At this new abuse, it roared a protest into her spine. Ki fought to ignore it.

Her body rose. Her eyes came up above the level of her elbows. Through sweat-stung eyes she saw the ledge. Rain had washed dust and debris onto the ledge. The wind had littered it with tiny sticks and twigs torn from the brush higher on the mountain. It was strewn with shards of black shale worn away to black sand. At first, all Ki realized was that the ledge was large enough for her whole body to rest on. Then her eyes took in its full extent. Back in one corner was a sheltered area, heaped high with sticks and branches. Behind it a heavy woven hanging stirred slightly in the breeze. The lee of the mountain protected it from the ever-present wind. Old bones and gobbets of rotting meat littered the ledge near the hanging. Ki smelled the death stench of it.

Suddenly, strength was hers. Shoulders cracking, she heaved herself up, hooked her chin, then levered her body up, catching her weight on her rib cage. She panted, then scraped more of her body over the edge. For a ghastly moment her body caught and she could pull it no further. She knew what held her back. Sven’s knife in its tooled-leather sheath was tied to her belt. The sheath had caught on the edge of the ledge. Ki strained, but the mass of her body weight was still dangling. Her flat-spread hands found no grips. Panic powered her. She jerked her body with a seallike flop, bruising her thighs as they landed on the cliff edge. She scooted forward, knees and feet coming at last to rest on the ledge. She was up.

Ki rolled onto her back and lay still. Her muscles quivered in relief. The blue sky loomed over her, the fierce white eye of the sun staring down at her. But the sun was alone in the sky. She still had time.

She rolled onto her belly, drew her protesting body into a crouch, and then stood. She glanced about herself, but quickly focused her eyes on the ground before her. To be this high sickened her stomach and whirled her head. Only an icy sense of triumph held her calm. She drew her forearm across her wet forehead, trading sweat for abrasive shale dust. Her heartbeat steadied.

The woven hanging made small popping sounds as it rippled in the wind. Ki stared at it, letting her anger rise inside her. She waited for it to possess her, to give her purpose and drive. ‘As I found mine, so you shall find yours,’ she promised. She strode toward the hanging. A hard stick rolled beneath her foot. Ki glanced down. A bone, brownish-gray, with tatters of sinew still attached to it. Ki set her teeth. She moved past the ceremonial nest by the entrance, a tradition with Harpy folk. That much of their custom was well known. But beyond the hanging, Ki would be venturing into territory no living Human had ever reemerged from. Her hand crept down to check the knife that swung at her waist. Sven’s knife, not Ki’s. His blood still stained the sheath. She snorted the carrion odor of the ledge from her nostrils. Stealthily she pushed the hanging aside. The interior of the aerie den was in semi-darkness. Ki felt her heart hammering in her throat, a pulse pounding in her ears. She stepped within, letting the hanging fall behind her.

The den had been hewn into the cliff. The marks of tools still scarred the stone. A dish lamp, its tiny flame aflicker with the wind of Ki’s entrance, rested in a niche in the wall. Other niches and carved ledges held various possessions: a set of brass chiming gongs; a wooden carving of a diving Harpy, talons outstretched before her; a jumble of silver and ivory ornaments; stone working tools; and various other objects, too foreign to Ki’s experience for her to identify. Ki drifted past them. In a near corner of the room a shallow indentation in the shale held a bed of straw covered over with thick weavings and luxurious furs. Empty. Ki turned her eyes from it. She did not seek plunder or a place to rest. She took the small lamp from its niche and nudged the wick longer out of the oil so that the flame burned higher and cast a better light. She moved forward across the uneven stone floor. It was meticulously clean; no bones or scraps of meat were scattered here. It was the lair of civilized, sentient creatures. Ki set her teeth and clutched her grim purpose as tightly as she clutched the haft of Sven’s knife. She passed a loom with a half-worked tapestry upon it; when finished, it would show a scene of Harpies mating in flight. Beyond the loom was a screen, painted a deep blue with the summer stars white upon it. Beyond the screen was that which Ki sought.

The second indentation in the shale floor was larger than the first. The straw that filled it was yellow, smelling of freshly mown fields. The weavings that covered the straw were dyed in various shades of blue. A single fur of some great white beast was spread over the weavings. Ki lifted the corner, feeling the weight of the thick hide, the softness of the white fur. A thought crawled across her mind – what creature had once worn this skin? She dismissed it. She was here on her own quest. Her fist closed tightly on the corner of the fur. With a shoulder-wrenching jerk, she ripped the hide from the bed. She hissed in satisfaction.

Three eggs. Any one of them would have filled Ki’s arms and been a burden to carry. The shells of the eggs were a dark mottled brown. Individual blue weavings nestled about each one, sheltering it from contact with the others. Their shells had become leathery with their nearness to hatching. They would probably part with a splatter at a blow from Ki’s fist. But she slowly drew from its sheath Sven’s knife. She came close to the eggs, put one knee upon their mattress of weavings and straw. It gave softly with her weight. One egg rolled a quarter turn toward her.

Something brushed Ki’s head. She sprang back from the contact. She looked up, lifting the lamp for more light. Bobbing and floating from her movement, the brightly painted wooden shapes swung on fine strings from their wooden support. Tiny Harpies, painstakingly carved and painted, whirled in a miniature flock over Ki’s head. They circled round and round, like birds coming down to feed. Their bright wings were spread, their dull, turtle-beak mouths were carved open as if they were shrieking and whistling for joy. Their eyes had been touched with gilt to give them the gold color characteristic of a Harpy’s liquid eyes. Ki watched them bob and circle. They were a child’s toy.

The impact of the thought set her shaking. A child’s toy, like a string puppet or a little wooden horse with wheels upon its feet. A toy for a thinking, growing being. Ki looked at Sven’s knife in her hand and at the eggs on their bedding. The egg nearest her gave a sudden pulse of life, then was still again. Like a baby’s kick.

Her hatred deserted her in a dizzying rush. She tried vainly to recapture the logic of her vengeance, the anger that had sustained her. The knife fell to the floor. A sudden disgust at what she had planned to do rose in her, splattering from her gaping mouth upon the floor. The bitterness of the bile in her mouth was the bitterness of her hatred for the Harpies. She could empty her body of neither. Nor could she complete the vengeance she had come to wreak. Another gush of stinging liquid shot from her nose and mouth as the spirit of the vengeance inside her ripped at the spirit of justice that dwelt there too. Ki stood panting, her whole body quivering with the conflict inside her. Her mercy was despicable weakness; her vengeance a cowardly injustice. The eggs were before her, the knife upon the floor. It would be the work of an instant to part the shells like the rinds of sun-rotted fruit. The unborn Harpies would gush from their amnions. The translucent little wings would never stretch leathery-pinioned and wide. The silent, closed faces would never become aware, greedy, and mocking. The birdlike talons would never rend flesh, the tiny forearms would remain forever curled to the undeveloped chests.

She stooped for the knife. She would see those prebirth faces, the turtle beaks that held the lines of an idiot smile. She would look into the eyes covered with nictating membrane, evil eyes masked with cloudy innocence. Innocents. The uplifted blade fell slowly to Ki’s side again. She shook her head, tears of rage stinging her eyes. This last month she had lived a dream of vengeance, tasted it in her food, pillowed her head on its comfort. It was here before her, the act that would culminate her grief and outrage. She could not do it.

A rectangle of light fell into the den, dimming Ki’s lamp to nothing. Ki looked up dully at the silhouette in the door. It was the male. His turquoise plumage glinted in the sunlight behind him. His tall frame filled the entrance, dwarfing Ki to a half-grown child by comparison. His whirling golden eyes fixed on her as she stood before his brood, knife in hand. Ki’s own green eyes lit with an unholy joy. Here, at last, was a fulfillment she could take. The knife turned to point at the Harpy. He was beast, man-killer, child-taker, an animal to be slain, not the sentient being this den would have her believe him to be. She did not move toward him, but stood still, waiting.

From the sky he could have hurtled down upon her, talons outstretched to rend, to slam her rabbit body against the earth and eat his fill of her flesh. But they were both on the ground now, within a den that roofed them over with tons of rock. He was not a creature designed to charge across land at an enemy – but he did. His long bird legs worked like plungers as he rushed at her, his whistle of outrage filling the cave. His forearms, no bigger than Ki’s own arms, reached grasping toward her. But it was a beat of his great leathery wings that stung the knife from her hand and drove her to her knees. The lamp, with its burning wick and burden of oil, flew from her grasp.

The whip of plumage across her eyes blinded Ki. She scrabbled across the floor, seeking by touch for the weapon he had struck from her hand. The floor was hard and cold to her fingers, empty of the blade she sought. She heard his laughter burst out high above her – the evil laughter that had laced her nightmares for too long. She screamed herself, a sound that burst from her, born of agony and hatred. The deeper, piercing scream of an enraged male Harpy echoed hers. Ki sobbed, and rose weaponless from the floor, determined to at least be standing when she met him.

She was knocked to the floor again by his headlong rush as he shot past her. She lit on her shoulder and hip with a painful slam. A jab of pain leapt up in her hip, sharper than the shock to her shoulder. Her hip had slammed against the haft of the knife. She rolled, her hand closing on it, and came to her feet to meet his next rush.

It did not come. As her stinging eyes focussed, Ki saw a blaze of yellow flame that illumined the whole back of the cave. The falling lamp had scattered its oil across the straw and weavings of the eggs’ nest. The lit wick had ignited it all. It roared with fire, the dry straw flaming readily. A flame licked out to catch the starry screen, to leap to the unfinished tapestry on its frame. In the midst of the burning nest the male Harpy stood like some nightmare demon rising out of hell. His tiny forearms clutched one of his eggs to his chest. The flames were roaring about him, making the leathery pinions of his wings curl and blacken with a terrible stench. He roared in hatred and agony, but the sound of his pain could not cover the dull poppings as the other two eggs burst at his feet. There was a shushing noise as the amnions temporarily quenched the flames about them; then a terrible smoke arose as the flames boiled away the liquid. Ki backed away from the scene, arms raised to blot the image from her eyes, the stench from her nose. She stumbled over the uneven floor, then was abruptly seized from behind, engulfed in plumage that became merely the door hanging as she fought her way clear of it. It fell about her as she stumbled, blinking, in the day-brightness on the ledge. She looked about her, uncomprehending. Never had she stopped to wonder how she would escape from that height when she had completed her vengeance. Now the fates had seized her revenge from her and left her with a problem: She had not died.

A screamed whistle betrayed the speck that plummeted from the sky. Ki ducked instinctively, crouching against the oncoming fury. The speck became a hawk, an eagle, and finally the unmistakable outline of a diving Harpy. Blue-green plumage and hide glinted against the paler blue sky. The cilia, like hair, blew long and turquoise behind her. She fell on Ki like an arrow from the sun.

The ledge offered Ki no shelter, no place of concealment, not even a niche to defend. She grasped her knife in both hands, raised it high and straight above her head. She did not doubt that the plunging talons would kill her with the first blow. Ki only hoped that she would feel the metal of her knife in the Harpy’s meat before she died.

The Harpy veered. Her whistle of outrage changed to a heartrending scream, so human that Ki echoed it. The Harpy opened wide her blue wings, flapping them frantically to break the speed of her dive. Ki was forgotten. The Harpy’s small bony forearms were outstretched instead to the gaunt figure that staggered from the den mouth on stalky legs. He spread wide his wings, showing the seared plumage that dropped from them to smoke on the bare ledge. His dull turtle beak was opened wide, gasping for clean air. His eyes were clouded over with a protective white membrane. As Ki gaped in horror, he dropped to his knees and rolled over, the leathery egg still clutched to his high bird chest. Even as Ki watched, his forearms jerked spasmodically and the egg fell, to split open on the ledge. The ruined infant rode the wave that should have been its birth. Before Ki’s eyes the tiny body jerked, splashed in the egg liquids, and was still.

The female Harpy landed on the ledge, fanning Ki with the wake of her outstretched wings. Her golden eyes darted from the ruined egg to the still, smoking body of her mate. Dark, foul-smelling smoke poured from the gaping aerie den.

Her leathery wings were still half spread as she whirled on Ki. ‘Gone! All gone!’ A world of loss was in the words she cried.

‘As are mine!’ Ki shrieked back. Her own grief and agony burst out afresh inside her, like an infected wound that covers itself over only to split and gush anew. The Harpy started for her; Ki rushed to meet her.

Ki was inside the range of the wide wings before she could be stunned by a blow from them. The top of Ki’s head was not as high as the top of the Harpy’s breastbone. Ki thanked whatever nameless fates had allowed her to meet the creature on the ledge instead of receiving the weight of that body in the ripping force of its talons.

The Harpy’s bony forearms and clenching hands shot out to close in Ki’s hair and jerk Ki close to her. The wide turtle beak gaped over her skull, the gust of her fetid breath enveloping Ki. Ki saw the single great taloned foot begin to rise, to claw her entrails from her. Ki did not resist the Harpy’s jerk that snatched her toward the plumaged chest. Instead, she butted her head into it with a will of her own. Ki’s left hand gripped the Harpy’s right wrist desperately. She sprang to wrap her legs suddenly about the Harpy’s high waist, curling her body up out of reach of the questing talons. Ki’s right hand, with the bare knife in it, rose and fell. The Harpy staggered under the double impact of Ki’s weight and the knife blow. The blade skittered across the Harpy’s ribs, to finally sink into her tough abdomen. Ki clung to the knife haft, tucking her chin into her chest to avoid the Harpy’s snapping beak. Ki dragged down on the knife blade with all the strength of her hatred. It bit slowly through the Harpy’s thick skin and chewed down. The great wings beat angrily against her, but Ki remained curled on the Harpy’s long belly, hugging her as tightly as a lover.

The wide wings beat wider. Ki was jerked up. She squeezed her legs tightly about the Harpy’s body, refusing to be shaken off, to have her life dashed out on the rocks below – for now the ledge was gone. They were rising, then suddenly wheeling down. The hands locked in Ki’s hair rattled her head. She lost her orientation; there was no up or down. The sky rushed past her, revealed and then hidden by the beating wings. Ki buried her face against the Harpy’s body, trying to avoid the fingers that sought her eyes. Ki could not tell if they climbed or swooped. Ki dug her own nails into the leather and bone wrist of the Harpy. The Harpy drew her free hand clawing down Ki’s face.

Ki loosened the grip of one leg, drove the knee in a short jolt to the Harpy’s hard belly. The rhythm of the wings paused. Ki quickly locked her leg about the Harpy again. She pulled her knife clear of the creature, reached high, and sank the blade to its hilt in the Harpy’s chest.

A too-Human scream. The control of the flight faltered. The great wings flapped and battered the sky erratically, not checking the speed of their sudden fall. Ki and the Harpy tumbled together, locked in disaster. Ki shrieked out her final triumph and terror. The Harpy was silent, perhaps dead already, her wings beating only in after-death spasms. Sky and cliff wheeled endlessly about them. One wing tip brushed the cliff face, swinging them about and checking, for an instant, their fall. Ki tasted the Harpy’s warm blood as it spattered against her face. She clutched tightly to the tumbling body.

Suddenly, rough tree branches reached up and seized them, ripping them apart from one another.

Ki opened her eyes to evening. Idly she observed her feet and legs where they rested, higher than her head, in a tangled bush. Snapped branches above told the passage of her fall and let in the last of the day’s light. Ki lay still, looking at the moon that was beginning its nightly stroll. The Romni said the moon saw everything there was to be seen, and remembered it all. She grinned up at it foolishly. It need watch her no more. She was finished. The moon had seen all that Ki would ever do. She could think of nothing left in her life that had to be done. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, the moon was higher, looking curiously down at her through the snapped branches. Her body wanted water. Ki herself felt immune to such needs, apart from them. But her body would not go away. She listened for a long time to the nagging of her dry mouth and throat. Finally she began to stir herself. She pulled her legs free of the bush so that they fell to the ground. Her left arm seemed to be gone. Ki looked for it, found it still attached to her body. She reached over and picked up its hand and set it gently down between her breasts. She cradled it there. Slowly she rolled to her right shoulder. She waited for a jab of pain from her disjointed arm, but it was silent and numb. The Harpy’s dead eyes stared into Ki’s.

She was not an armspan away. In death she was a broken thing, a kite of paper and sticks crushed in a gust of wind. Ki looked deep into the ruined golden eyes that had gone rotten brown in death. It was a cold look. She was glad that they had fought, glad that she had had the chance to rend that flesh and scatter its blood. She wondered if the Harpy could remember her death throes in hell. A grim smile set on Ki’s face. She rolled up onto her knees, forced her shaken body to stand. For the moment, she had decided to live.

Ki read the stars that sprinkled the night sky. They had fallen far from where Ki had begun her climb, and farther still from where Ki had left her wagon and team concealed. She took her bearings, brushed hair and dried blood from her eyes, and limped off through the forest.

Gray daylight had begun to stain the sky and return color to the leaves when Ki heard the welcoming snorts of her team. They had scented her. She wanted to call out to them, but her throat was too dry. She limped toward the sounds.