“I know,� Lars replied gently. “If that was all there was to it, Ki, we could all forgive.�
He pulled a long stem of grass up and rolled it thoughtfully between his fingers. The wind touched his hair with gentle fingers, pressed his shirt softly against his chest.
“Mother feels it most. She is the most devout in the family, the one closest to the old rituals. The ablutions and prayers the rest of us omit or forget, she still observes. The doctrines we have set aside as superstition, she clings to. That is why it was worst for her. You held a cruel mirror to her faith, Ki. You were strong of spirit, stronger than she. When she tried to turn you gently away, to bring your mind back from that long hill, you fought her and kept us there. Some felt last night that it was deliberate; that you wanted to force us to see Harpies as you see them. With hatred, disgust, fear. When we share the liquor of the Rite, we must feel what you feel. You showed it to us, hideously scrambled, now revealed, now hidden, all flavored with your emotions. It took all Cora’s strength to drag us back. You drained her. She keeps her bed still, from weakness. And Rufus,� he went on, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Rufus feels it, not as blasphemy, but as shame, a blot upon the family honor. Those two take it hardest. But none of us will ever recover fully from it.�
Lars shifted uneasily and began to rise. Ki put out a hand to detain him. He looked at her, puzzled.
“I did not mean for you to see it at all. I let you think the horse had killed them last night when we talked on the wagon. I knew nothing of this drink of yours, this bizarre sharing, as you call it. I never meant for any of you to know the Harpies had done it.�
“We, who know Harpies, could have faced that if you had told us of it. We would not have demanded to see, to poke our fingers in your sores. You walk too lightly among us, Ki, never leaning, never trusting us to understand. One would almost believe that you doubted our love for you.“
Ki bowed her head to his rebuke. Should she deny the truth of his words? She had wanted Sven. She had gone after him with every means that seventeen years of life on a road wagon had given her. If Aethan, her father, had still been alive, perhaps she could have been dissuaded. But Ki had wanted Sven. To have him, she had to take on his family as well, with all the strange trappings of kinship. Doubly strange to Ki was his culture, for she had never known family other than Aethan or customs other than the Romni, which Aethan sporadically adhered to. And once she had Sven she had kept herself apart. She had taken Sven away, to her lifestyle. And now, because of her aloofness, in her ignorance, she had hurt them all.
Lars took her silence and downcast eyes as dismissal. Once more he began to rise. Ki wished she could let him go. Her head felt as if a bowstring had been stretched between her temples. It was tight, and getting tighter, humming all the while. She longed for silence and sleep. But she had to know it all. Ki caught his loose sleeve, pulling him back down beside her. She forced him to meet her eyes.
“Don’t stop, Lars. If you think you have explained it to me, you haven’t. You have told me how I bungled your Rite last night. I am shamed by the hurts I gave you all, however unintentional. But how have I blasphemed your religion? You say you all know what Harpies are. How they kill, how they feed. I did try not to show you that. The confusion in the images you speak—believe me, Lars, I was trying to turn us from the remembering. Do you believe I would willingly relive that, for any rite?�
After a moment, Lars began to shake his head slowly. “I suppose not. I can believe it when you plead ignorance. Sven was almost an outcast among us for the way he flouted our beliefs. I see he dismissed them completely when he went away with you. They meant little enough to him when he was here. He never once made tribute to the Harpies, not even after our father died. Mother felt that keenly.�
Sparks flashed in Ki’s green eyes at the mention of tribute. But still she shook her head at Lars. “You must go on. Begin it as if you were explaining your beliefs to a child. I begin to feel currents I had not imagined. I am heavy within with a foreboding that whatever I did last night was grievous beyond words. Speak to me as if I had never been told anything of your religion. You shall not be far wrong.“
“It grows worse,� Lars groaned. “What many saw as malice was total ignorance. If only it was to do over.�
“It isn’t,� Ki replied impatiently. “It can never be undone. So, at least let me know the fullness of what I did.�
Lars pulled at his face with a large hand. When he tipped his chin up, the sun glinted on the downy hairs beginning on his face. His beard would be like Sven’s—late in coming and silky against a woman’s face. Lars met Ki’s eyes and began abruptly.
“In times gone by, this place was not called Harper’s Ford. Time has eroded its name to that. It was Harpy’s Ford, the only place to cross the river for many miles in either direction; there were no bridges then. Harpies knew that as well as Humans. It made their hunting easier. You have seen the platforms raised on pilings in the river, near the crossing? People wishing to cross the river undisturbed would leave offerings of dead beasts there, to buy the Harpies off their children. They and their families could cross in peace while the Harpies fed. There would be no sudden rush of wings, no childish screams above the sound of the rushing water…� Lars’s voice trailed off. He rubbed at his eyes wearily. “There, Ki, see how your visions have infected me? Before last night, never would I have spoken that way of Harpies. But that was how it began. Or so they say.
“But times pass, and simple customs become more ornate. Harpies would sometimes be waiting on the platforms when folk arrived there to leave tribute. They began to have words with one another. My people began to discover the many peculiar talents of the Harpies. It became a religion. I know you do not believe it, Ki, but they are higher beings than we. You see their cruelty and believe it debases them. But it is not cruel for a man to slaughter his heifer, nor for a Harpy to take a man. It is the order of things.�
Ki shot to her feet, but as quickly Lars shot up a hand to seize her. He held her wrist, hard but not tight. With gentle insistence he pulled her back down beside him. She could find no words, but he read all in the quiver of her mouth and her quickened breath.
“Do not be angry, Ki. You would like to strike me for my words or, barring that, to run away from them. Bear this in mind. Sven was my brother, not only your man. And still I must say these things to you. We give the Harpies meat in tribute. In return, we get… many things. The drink last night was a secretion they provide. It makes a link between Humans, and strengthens that between Human and Harpy.“
Ki turned her head away from him. Her belly churned in disgust. She twisted her wrist slightly, and Lars released it. But he spoke on stoically.
“After a death, especially after a good Rite of Loosening, they let us… this is so hard to explain unless one has experienced it. Let me make it more personal. If I took a lamb down to the platform and cut its throat, a Harpy would come. And while it fed I would spend time with my father. We would talk together, I could ask him advice, or speak of times we had together. The Harpy would open for me the door between the worlds. Or would have, until last night.�
Ki felt a dim presentiment.
“You cut us off from the Harpies last night, Ki. Every person there, from that old man, a great-great-uncle, to that little girl, a cousin of several degrees. You gave us no useful memories of Sven or the children. We have no way to recall them when we go to the Harpies. They are gone to us, truly dead. My mother will never see her middle son again. I will never see my brother… Dead. Now we know what other folk mean by that word. It is a knowledge we were happier without.�
“And?� Ki insisted after a stretch of silence. Lars looked at her with anguish in his eyes.
“I
hate the saying of these words to you. Rufus would have come, but I stopped him. For if you must be condemned in this way, I would be the one to do it. I try to make the words come gently, to lift from you the weight of them. But it was a grievous blow you dealt last night, and now you must see the wound.
“When I say you cut us off from the Harpies, I mean that we now must face a period of loneliness. None of us may see them at all, for a time, until meditation and atonement have purged from our souls the emotions you put there. For some of us it will take long. Others, such as the little girl, I hope, will soon forget and be healed. But until I can be sure I have cleansed my mind of your feelings I may not go to the Harpies to seek my father or my grandparents. Horror, disgust, hatred for what the Harpy does—those things would cut me off from that converse. I, perhaps, could live with that. As could Rufus and some of the others. But my mother is another matter. No one knows how often she goes to make a sacrifice and see again my father. It takes its toll on the sheep pens, and often I see the anger in Rufus’s eyes when he finds the best ewe, the plumpest lamb, gone. But we say nothing. Mother is old, and the old cling more tightly to the rituals. You can surmise what you have done to her. For the first time since my father died, he is really dead to her. Gone. She can not summon him, can not lean on his strength. The emotions you have placed in us for Harpies have cut us off from this magic. Last night some said, in the heat of their anger, that you had reslain for us all our dead. That because Sven and the children are dead to you, you made all our dead truly dead for us.“
Ki raised her head wearily. There were no traces of tears on her face. All her sorrow was contained in her eyes. It seemed to Lars that no amount of tears could ever wash away the misery he saw there.
“Can you tell me that is all?� Ki asked dully. “Can there be more injury I have done to you, all unwittingly?�
“The Rite of Loosening,� Lars said slowly, as if the words clung to his unwilling tongue, “Mother sets great store by it. By the Rite the souls of the dead are freed to enter a paradise, a world of a higher order. Unloosed souls must wander this world homeless and lonely, cold and crying. Last night she wept long for Sven and the little ones, condemned to such loneliness and fear.�
“There can be no mending this,� Ki said.
“The mending will be very slow,� Lars conceded. “You’ve done us grievous ill.� He took her hand, trying to take the ache from his words.
“No mending,� Ki repeated. “A wound such as this leaves a scar long after it heals.� Gently she drew her hand from his. “I think it best that I go. Think me not a coward, Lars. If staying to apologize would better the situation, I would. But staying here I shall be a shame to Rufus, a torment to your mother. I think I should be on my road, leaving you to heal yourselves.�
Lars cast his eyes down quickly. He raised his hand to his mouth and then spoke softly. “I thought you might see it so. Rufus will not be pleased, nor my mother. They are very concerned about appearances. For myself, I have a graver concern than that. My people, Ki—they are not used to abuse from outsiders. They have been damaged. They will want revenge. They will look for a scapegoat, someone to center their anger on, to bear the brunt of the Harpies’ displeasure. And the Harpies will be displeased. While we dare not go to them with tribute they will not feed as well. We are one of the larger families in the valley and by far the most generous with the winged ones. They will miss our tribute. I wish you could stay, Ki. I would like you to live here among us, in peace. But who could promise that? My mind ignores the cries of my heart. It tells me that you must go, tonight, in secret. Tell no one of your plans. Travel swiftly, go to Carroin. The roads that lead there are level and wide; you will make good time. Stop for nothing. Leave the supplying of your wagon to me. I shall do it today, in stealth. Too many eyes will be on you. Tell no one: not Rufus, not Cora!“
Lars rose slowly from the ground. Ki remained sitting, her heart beating slowly and painfully. Her mind whirled. She did not wish to leave in stealth, to slink away like a shamed child. She wanted to redeem herself in their eyes, to make them see that she had wished them no harm.
“Tell no one!� Lars cautioned her once more. “Cora would try to make you stay, unmindful of any danger to herself. She would put her hospitality to her daughter by Sven above her own safety. There were many that did not approve when Sven joined you. Their tongues will wag long today.� Then Lars left her, striding away, leaving Ki surrounded by a cold premonition of danger.
Five
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Cold nibbled at her spine, crept up around her to touch her, no matter how she shifted and burrowed deeper into the mattress. She opened her eyes grudgingly. Vandien was standing at the edge of the platform, rubbing his scruffy beard.
“Daylight’s here,� he said softly when she stirred. “We have to be on our way.�
Ki stretched stiffly and moved gingerly from the shelter of the shagdeer cover. Even from within the cuddy she could tell that the cold had deepened. The freezing air pressed in on the wagon like a clenching fist. She struggled hastily into her cloak. Vandien moved past her to take his from the bed and don it again.
With the cold had come a wind that whooshed past the entrance to the canyon. Their tracks from the night before were almost completely erased. The grays were huddled together between the wagon and the cliff wall. Their heads were down and their cropped tails lifted slightly in the breeze. Vandien pulled the protection of the hood further past his face.
“Damn the luck!� he spat. “A wind like this is all we need to make things worse.�
Ki looked at the sky with an expert eye. “The wind may be exactly what we do need to take the wagon through.� She smiled a dry, cryptic smile at Vandien and jumped lightly from the wagon.
Sigurd whinnied shrilly at the sight of her. They were not pleased to be unblanketed. Ki gave them a small feed of grain to cheer them while she helped Vandien load the remaining firewood. It was not a large load. Vandien spent a single log to rejuvenate last night’s fire and heat a kettle. The Humans broke their fast only with hot tea, sipping it from steaming mugs that cooled too swiftly. Camp was soon broken, Vandien gathering the equipment and Ki stowing it. The harness leather was stiff and hard to thread through buckles thickened with frost. Sigurd tossed his great head about when Ki approached him with the cold bit, then sulked when she finally succeeded in getting it between his jaws.
“We’re off,� Ki announced through lips already chilled and dried by the cold. With a creaking and snapping of wheels pulled free of ice, it was true.
Snow was shallow within the sheltering arms of the canyon. But when they emerged from the mouth it became deeper. As they turned out of the canyon, the horses’ heads were pointed into the wind, and they pulled the wagon into a deepening drift of snow. The snow itself was a fine crystalline dust that swirled and lifted on the wind. The horses lowered their heads before it. It stung Ki’s face with icy kisses. Vandien pulled his hood full forward and turned his head aside. Ki could permit herself no such luxury. Someone must use her eyes to guide the struggling team. Her face stiffened in the icy press of the wind. It blew up her sleeves, and inside her hood it circled to slide down the back of her neck. The reins grew stiff in her hands.
The grays plowed through the snow gamely. The tall wheels of the wagon sometimes stuck and slid without turning. Ki strained her eyes ahead, trying to pick out the trail in the swirling snow. All the mountainside looked amazingly alike. She nudged Vandien and shouted over the wind.
“Do you know this pass well enough to guide us through it in a storm like this?�
The hood nodded. He lifted a bundled arm to gesture that she should turn the team more to the right. Ki made the correction. The previous day they had traveled up wi
nding canyons and between foothills, moving ever so gradually toward the Sisters where they overlooked the narrow trail. Now Ki found her path moving ever closer to the upthrusting of a mountain. As she followed Vandien’s pointed directions, the team headed less and less into the wind.
The trail began to ascend again, at a steeper grade than before. It seemed to Ki that no sooner were they freed of fighting the wind than they were forced to battle an uphill grade. The wind itself did not cease, but battered the wagon broad-side now. At least it was sweeping the snow across their rocky path in shallower drifts, rather than piling it up before them.
The mountain became larger, barer, and steeper on the right side of the trail, while on the left the ground began to drop away. From a gradual slope in the morning, it became by noon a gentle hillside that rolled away from them. On the right side of the wagon the mountain began to rear up in sheer walls of bare stone that climbed vertically before they became the rugged sides of the mountain above them. The grays’ feathered hooves met bare, stony ground beneath the snow now. The wagon wheels no longer wallowed but rolled and crunched along. No sooner did the wind sweep a shallow drift of snow across their path than it eddied and swept it away again. Ki found she could follow the trail now without Vandien’s help as it was first covered, then revealed by the shifting winds.
They traveled through a country of absolutes. If it was not snow or ice they saw, then it was rock. If it was not white or gray in color, then it was black. The wagon, obscenely gay in such a setting, creaked through a country in which nothing else moved except the wind-blown snow. The mountain moved closer to the trail’s edge, until Ki knew that if she met another wagon or traveler coming from the other direction neither would have room to give way to the other. It was a possibility that she did not much fear.
Harpy's Flight Page 10
