by Pat Murphy
A thunder of wings from the pigeons wheeling overhead, the scent of a charcoal fire—damp, dismal smell in the early morning—drifting from a chimney. The slate roof was cold beneath Tarsia’s bare feet and the wind from the north cut through her thin shirt. In one hand she clutched the damp shirt she had taken from a rooftop clothesline.
She was listening.
She had heard a sound—not the rattle of the latch of the door to the roof. Not the pigeons. Perhaps only the wind?
There again: a rumbling like drumbeats and a wild sweet whistling like pipes in a parade. From behind a cloud swept the chariot of the Lady of the Wind. She brought the sunshine with her. She wore a silver crescent moon on her forehead and a golden sun shone on her breast. Ash-gray hair floated behind her like a cape. Four lean hounds—winds of the North, South, East, and West ran laughing through the sky at her side.
The Lady looked down at Tarsia with wise eyes, smiled, and held out her hand. Tarsia reached out to touch her.
Tarsia’s head ached and her feet were cold. She opened her eyes into darkness, leaving behind the bright dream of a memory that had never been. Tarsia had watched the caravan that carried tribute to the Lady leave the city, heading north, but she had never seen the Lady.
The hand with which Tarsia had clung to the edge was sore and stiff; when she touched it to her lips, it tasted of blood. She lay half-in and half-out of a cold stream that tugged at her feet, as it flowed past.
She could not go back, only forward. She felt her way slowly, always keeping her hand on the wall and always sniffing the air in hopes of scenting dust and horses—city smells. She heard a rumbling sound ahead that reminded her of cartwheels on cobblestones, and she quickened her pace.
The tunnel opened into a cavern—a natural formation in the rock of the earth. Patches of fungus on the walls glowed golden, casting a light dimmer than that of the moon.
The giant who lay in the center of the cavern was snoring with a rumbling like cartwheels. He slept in a cradle of rock, molded around him, it seemed, by the movements of his body. The air that blew past the giant, coming from the darkness beyond, carried the scents of grass and of freedom.
A giant blocked her way and she was only a small thief.
She had never stolen from the house of the wizard or the stall of the herb-seller. She knew only the small spells that helped her break the protection of a household.
The giant had an enormous face—broad and earth colored. He shifted in his sleep and Tarsia saw the chain on his ankle, bound to a bolt in the floor. The links were as thick as her leg; the rusted lock, the size of her head. She wondered who had imprisoned him and what he had done to deserve it. She tried to estimate the length of the chain and judged it long enough to allow him to catch anyone trying to sneak past.
The shifting breeze ruffled his hair and the rumbling stopped. Nostrils flared as he sampled the air. “I smell you,” he said slowly. “I know your scent, witch. What do you want with me now?” He spoke as if he knew her.
Tarsia did not move. One hand rested on the rock wall; one hand uselessly clutched her knife. The giant’s eyes searched the shadows and found her.
“Ah,” he said. “The same eyes, the same hair, the same scent—not the witch, but the witch’s daughter.” He grinned and Tarsia did not like the look in his eyes. “You were a long time in coming.”
“I’m no one’s daughter,” she said. Giants and witches she had no place in this. Her mother? She had no mother.
“I’m just a poor thief from the city. And I want to get back.”
“You can’t get past me unless you free me, witch’s daughter,” he said.
“Free you?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How? Break the chain?”
The giant scowled. “A drop of your blood on the lock will free me. You must know that.” His voice was unbelieving.
“How can you hope to win your mother’s throne when you don’t even know—”
“Who is my mother?” she interrupted, her voice brittle.
“You don’t know.” He grinned and his voice took on the sly tone she had heard from strong men who did not often have to be clever. “Free me and I’ll tell you.” He pulled his legs under him into an awkward crouch, his head bumping the cavern’s ceiling. “Just one drop of blood and I’ll let you go past. Even if the blood does not free me, I’ll let you go.”
“Even if it does not free you?” she asked warily.
“You doubt yourself so much?” He shrugged. “Even so.”
She stepped forward, wary and ready to dart back to the passage. With her eyes on the crouching giant she nicked the scrape on her hand so that the blood flowed fresh and a drop fell onto the rusted lock. She backed away. The giant’s eyes were fixed on the lock and on the smoke that rose from the lock, swirling around the chain.
She reached the far side of the cavern while the giant watched the lock, and from that safety she called out sharply, “Who is the witch who bound you here, giant? Keep your part of the bargain. Who—?”
“There!” the giant said. With a triumphant movement, the giant tugged the chain and the lock fell free.
“Who is the witch?” Tarsia called again.
“Thank you for your help, witch’s daughter.” He stepped past her, into the darkness where the ceiling rose higher.
“I will go now to playa part in bringing the prophecies to ass.”
“But who is my mother?” she shouted. “You said you would tell me.”
He grinned back over his shoulder. “Who would be strong enough to chain a son of the earth? No one but the Lady of the Wind.” He stepped away into the darkness.
“What?” Tarsia shouted in disbelief, but her voice echoed back to her. She could hear the giant striding away in the darkness and her mind was filled with the thunder of wings, with the baying of four lean hounds. She ran after the giant, knowing that she could not catch him but running in spite of that knowledge. The scent of fresh air and growing things grew stronger as she ran. “Wait,” she called, but the giant was gone.
The air smelled of newly turned earth. She ran toward a bright light—sunlight of late afternoon. She could see the marks left by the giant’s fingers where he had torn the rock aside and pushed his way out. His feet had ripped dark holes in the soft grass and the prints led down the rolling hills to the river that sparkled in the distance. She thought that she could see a splash in the river—tiny and far away—which could have been a giant splashing as he swam.
Sometimes stumbling, sometimes sliding in the grass, she ran down the hills, following the footprints. Ran until her legs slowed without her willing it. She trudged along the riverbank as the shadows grew longer. She was heading north. The mountains lay to the north, and the Lady’s court was in the mountains.
The light was failing when she stopped to rest. She sat down just for a moment. No more than that. Shivering in the chill twilight, she tumbled into a darkness deeper than the tunnels beneath the city.
A scent of a charcoal fire—damp dismal scent in the early morning—but Tarsia did not stand on the cold slate of the roof. The wind that carried the scent of smoke blew back her hair and the sound of wings was all around her.
She stood at the Lady’s side in the chariot and the four hounds of the wind ran beside them. Far below, she saw the gray slate rooftop and the fluttering clothes on the line. Far below, the ancient towers of the city, the crumbling walls, the booths and stalls of the marketplace.
“This is your proper place, my daughter,” the Lady said, her voice as soft as the summer breeze blowing through the towers. “Above the world at my side.” The Lady took Tarsia’s hand and the pain faded away.
Tarsia heard a rumbling—like the sound of cartwheels on a cobbled street. Far below, she saw the towers shake and a broad, earth-colored face glared up at them. Shaking off the dust of the hole from which he had emerged, the giant climbed to the top of the city wall in a few steps. He seemed larger than he had beneath the earth. He stood on
top of the old stone tower and reached toward them.
Tarsia cried out—fearful that the giant would catch them and drag them back to the earth. Back down to the smoke and the dust.
The scent of smoke was real. Tarsia could feel the damp grass of the riverbank beneath her, but she was warm. A cloth that smelled faintly of horse lay over her.
She forced her eyes open. A riverbank in early morning mist sparkling on the grass; a white horse grazing; smoke drifting from a small fire; a thin, brown-haired man dressed in travel-stained green watching her. “You’re awake,” he said. “How do you feel?”
Her head ached. She struggled to a sitting position, clutching the green cape that had served as her cover around her. Wary, used to the ways of the city, she mumbled, “I’ll live.”
He continued watching her. “You’re a long way from anywhere in particular. Where are you going?” His accent matched that of traders from the South who had sometimes visited the city.
She twisted to look behind her at the hills. She could not see the city, and she wondered how far she had come in the winding tunnels. “I came from the city,” she said.
“I’m going away from the city.” More alert now, Tarsia studied the white horse. It looked well fed. The saddle that lay beside the animal was travel worn, but she could tell that it was once of first quality. The cloak that covered her was finely woven of soft wool. A lute wrapped in similar cloth leaned against the saddle.
“I’m a minstrel,” the man said. “I’m traveling north.”
Tarsia nodded, thinking that when a person volunteered information it was generally false. No minstrel could afford a saddle like that one. She looked up into his brown eyes—noting in passing the gold ring on his hand. She knew she could trust him as a fellow thief. As far as she could trust a thief. She was not sure how far that was, because she had always preferred to work alone.
“I was planning to head north too,” she said. “If you take me with you, I can help you out. I can build a fire that doesn’t smoke …” She looked at the smoldering fire and let her words trail off. She knew she looked small and helpless in the cloak and she hoped that her face was pale and smudged with dirt.
“I suppose I can’t very well leave you here,” he said, sounding a little annoyed. “I’ll take you as far as the next town.”
She got to her feet slowly, taking care to appear weak.
But she made herself useful—poking the fire so that the sticks flamed. She toasted the bread that the minstrel pulled from his pack and melted cheese on thick slices.
She helped him saddle the white horse. On a pretext of adjusting the saddlebags, she slipped her hand inside and found a money pouch. Swiftly, she palmed one, two, three coins—and slyly transferred them to her own pocket for later examination. Even if he only took her to the next town, she would profit by the association.
As they traveled alongside the river, she rode behind him on the horse. “How far north are you going?”
“To the mountains,” he said and began to pick a tune on his lute.
“To the court of the Lady of the Wind,” she guessed, then suppressed a smile when he frowned. Where else would a minstrel go in the mountains? She amended mentally; where else would a thief go? “Could I come with you?”
“Why?”
She shrugged as if reasons were not important. “I’ve never been to a court before. I’ve heard the Lady is very beautiful.”
The minstrel shook his head. “Beautiful, but wicked.”
“I can pay my way,” Tarsia said, wondering if he would recognize the look of his own coins.
But he shook his head again and the tune he was playing changed, mellowing to music that she remembered from her childhood. She could not remember the words except for the refrain about the beautiful Lady and the four lean wind hounds at her side. The Lady was the sister to the sun and daughter of the moon.
When the minstrel sang the refrain, it had a sneering, cynical tone. The lyrics were about how the Lady had bound the spirits of the Earth, the Water, and the Fire, how she had captured the four winds and bound them in her tower, about how the world would be unhappy until the four winds were free.
“That isn’t the way that I remember the song,” Tarsia said when the minstrel finished.
He shrugged. “In my country, we pay the Lady no tribute. Our lands have been dry and our crops have been poor for five long years. We do not love the Lady.”
Tarsia remembered the parade that was held each year in the Lady’s honor when the tribute was sent. The city was noted for its silverwork, and each year, the best that the artisans had produced was sent to the mountain court. And the winds blew through the towers and brought rain for the farmers around the city walls.
Last year, at the end of a day of picking the pockets of parade spectators, Tarsia had climbed the city wall and watched from above the gate while the caravan headed north, winding between farmers’ huts and green fields.
On her high perch, she had been chilled by the wind but glad to be above the crowd. The last horse in the caravan had carried a silver statuette of the Lady gazing into the distance with one hand resting on the head of a hound. Tarsia had felt a kinship with the Lady then—alone and proud, above the world.
“Why don’t you pay tribute?” she asked the minstrel. “Are you too poor?”
“Too proud,” he said. “Our king will not allow it.”
“How foolish!”
The minstrel smiled wryly. “Maybe so. The whole family is foolish, I suppose. Idealistic and stiff-necked.”
“So the people of your land will die of pride.”
He shook his head. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe something will happen.” He sighed. “I don’t know, though the king seems inclined to rely on luck. He seems to think the prophecy will come to pass.”
Tarsia frowned. “Why are you going to the Lady’s court if you don’t like her?”
“A minstrel doesn’t worry about magic and winds.” He started to play another song, as if to avoid further discussion.
The notes echoed across the slow green waters of the river and the steady beat of the horse’s hooves provided the rhythm. He sang about an undine, a river nymph who took a human lover, then betrayed him to the waters, letting the river rise to drown him.
Trees with long leaves trailed their branches in the water. The path twisted among the gnarled trunks. They wandered deeper into the shade and the river seemed to take the sunlight into itself, letting it sparkle in swirling eddies but never allowing it to escape. On the far side of the river, the bank rose in a fern-covered cliff, decked with flowers.
“Pretty country,” Tarsia said.
“Treacherous country,” said the minstrel. “If you tried climbing the cliff you’d learn that those flowers mark loose rock, ready to give beneath your hand or tumble down on you.”
At dusk, they were still in the wood and the trees all looked the same. They made camp in an inviting glen, but the tiny fire that Tarsia built seemed to cast little light.
Tarsia thought she heard rustling in the trees and once, while she was toasting bread and cheese for dinner, thought she glimpsed a flicker of white in the distance over the river. She wrapped herself in the minstrel’s extra cloak and curled up alone by the side of the fire.
For a moment she thought that she was in the cavern beneath the city: it was dark and cold. But the wind that beat against her face smelled of flowing water and growing things, and above her, she could see the stars. The Lady stood beside her, a proud, silent presence.
They had escaped the giant and Tarsia realized that the giant alone was no threat to the Lady. They dipped closer to the earth, and Tarsia could see the winding water of the river, glittering in the moonlight. She could see a tiny spot of light—her own fire—and she thought she could see the minstrel on the ground beside it. So far below.
She thought of him coming to the Lady’s court to steal and she wished she could invite him into the chariot beside her. So cold and
alone he looked, as she had felt so many times on the wall in the city of towers.
“You are above all that now,” whispered the Lady at her side. “You are the daughter of the moon, sister to the sun.”
The lapping of the water and the soft nickering of the horse woke her. The water sounded near, very near. She sat up and blinked at the sheen of moonlight on the water, just a few feet away from her. The horse stood at the limits of his tether, pulling away from the rising waters. Blinking again, Tarsia could see the slim figure of a woman dressed in white, standing in the water. At the sound of Tarsia’s movement, the woman looked at her with mournful eyes.
She held out her hands to Tarsia and water dripped from the tips of her long fingers. Moonlight shimmered on her, just as it shimmered on the water. From her delicate wrists, silver chains that seemed to be fashioned of moonlight extended to the water.
Tarsia drew her legs away from the water, stood up and backed away. The water nymph stretched out her hands and almost reached Tarsia. The young thief could hear words in the sound of the lapping water: “Come to me, touch me, touch the river.” Tarsia laid a hand on the horse, ready to vault to its back and run.
The moonlight touched a spot of darkness in the water—the minstrel’s cloak. The water was around his neck and still he slept peacefully. His cloak drifted about his shoulders, moving with the water, half tangled around the tree against which he leaned. To reach the minstrel, Tarsia would have to touch the river and approach the woman of water. But no one would know if she ran away to her mother’s court.
“Let me go, daughter of the moon,” whispered the water. The breeze that rustled the leaves by Tarsia’s head seemed to be chuckling.
“Let him go and I’ll free you,” Tarsia bargained desperately.
“But let him go first.” She did not know how to free the nymph. The watery hands reached for her and she wanted to leap onto the horse and run.
