The Windsingers

by Megan Lindholm

  'We've always had them use horses, or mules, in the past. Sort of a tradition, you know.' Doubt was evident in the innmaster's voice. He scratched at silvery stubble on his chin.

  'Do you want a yearly tradition kept, or do you want a chest yanked out of an undersea hiding place?' Vandien asked quietly. 'When I touched hands on this agreement, there was no mention of the species I must use in the team, no questions about whether I could juggle eggs or make a scarf disappear. I thought I was being hired to perform a task, not to reenact past failures. Of course, it's entirely up to you.'

  'Now wait!' The tall man held up his large hands in appeal. 'It's not that I don't like skeel. I hear T'cheria use them regularly, plowing and hauling. But I never understood why hauling beasts would have such short legs.'

  Vandien looked down on his team. 'Better leverage,' he extemporized tersely. His own doubts nibbled at him. The tallest of the four came no higher than Vandien's hip, but Web Shell had lisped earnestly of their strength and stamina. What Vandien still could not stomach was the horrible flexings of the skeel. They were like sharks, all muscle and bend wrapped in thick hide. The one slash he had received from a tail made him wonder what their internal structure was. Could anything with bones be that flexible? But this was no time to indulge his own squeamishness. He gave a careless shrug. 'So they are built close to the ground. That's not a fault. You can sink a wagon to its hubs in mud, and these four can still pop it out. When they get their tails braced and their feet dug in and start humping, it takes a big load to resist their pull. Look at the size of those feet! They won't get mired down in muck the way horses' hooves do. No, those big flappers just spread their weight out and give them more purchase for the pull.'

  'Aren't you afraid to take them out in the water?' the old man pressed. 'You know, sometimes the tide doesn't leave the temple dry. You may be wading a bit.'

  'They're a well-trained team,' Vandien responded vaguely. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

  The tall man stared at him, weighing his words. Then he hunkered down beside the team and stared at them wordlessly. Vandien felt conspicuously tall, standing over the crouched man and the flat skeel. He resisted the urge to crouch down beside them all. He leaned on the rail and waited. He hoped he would not have to wait long. His stomach was a shrunken sack tied to the end of his gullet.

  'The woman I dealt with,' Vandien asked suddenly. 'Srolan. Is she about?'

  'In the inn,' the innmaster replied. He rose abruptly, and extended a large hand to Vandien.

  'I am Helti.'

  'Vandien.' They touched hands. Vandien had to look up into the taller man's face. He met his gaze solemnly. When the big man's face cracked in a grin, Vandien responded to it.

  'You've a bold tongue and a strong spine, even if you're not stacked much higher than a youth. Come in and eat and rest. There'll be folk that want to meet you. I expect Srolan will want another chance for words with you. And you'll want to meet the Windsinger who will be singing against you.'

  Vandien closed his mouth as soon as he realized it was open. The big man laughed. 'I figured she wouldn't have mentioned that to you, if she made a big sound over the chest and all. Srolan likes to pretend it's the old days, us against the Windsingers and all. She's old, and you mustn't... but you look empty, man, and as if you could find a use for a bed. Come on.'

  Vandien trailed Helti, trying to still his whirling mind. He had an uneasy feeling that too soon he would understand all, and that little of it would be pleasing.

  The inn boasted a railed porch, and a wooden door after the Human style. Two large rectangular windows admitted daylight through their milky panes. The wooden floor was scarred and old, made from salvaged ship planks. Wooden trestle tables and benches stood about, with guttered candles stumped in pools of their own wax. A great fireplace at one end of the room gaped, black and cold. A young boy stooped before it, shoveling the ash into a bucket. This was a clean place, by Human standards. A wide door led into the clank and steam of a kitchen. An unrailed staircase ascended to a darker upper floor.

  'Sit,' said the innmaster, with a friendly clap on Vandien's shoulder that dropped him onto the indicated bench. 'I'll be back soon enough with food and talk.'

  It was good to rest on Human-sized furniture. Vandien looked around, and was struck that the whole room was scaled exclusively to Human usage. He had heard of isolated communities populated by only one sentient species, but this was the first one he had witnessed. The inn was largely deserted at this hour, except for the boy cleaning the hearth. A sulky little miss glared at Vandien as if it were his fault that she had been sent out with a bucket and a rag to oil the table planks.

  And that was all. No sign of Srolan, unless... Vandien craned and leaned to get a glimpse of a small table set in the shadow of the staircase. Someone in robes sat there, but she was taller than he remembered Srolan. He had nearly thought of an excuse to rise and get a better look at her when Helti came back, bearing a tray.

  'Cook's choice!' Helti announced as he unburdened himself with a clank.

  The meal was predictable. Fish cakes seasoned with seaweed, a thick chowder (no doubt containing whatever had been netted last night) and a tankard of bitter ale. Vandien set it out before himself, as Helti produced small fresh-baked loaves wrapped in a clean cloth. The smell of the food made Vandien giddy. Helti must have read his face, for he gave a ringing laugh.

  'You eat, I'll talk,' he offered, and Vandien needed no further invitation. Steam from the hot fish cakes scalded his uncaring fingers. The crusty brown crust broke open to flaky white fish inside. Vandien took a bite to keep his jaws busy while he stirred up the dregs of the chowder to let it cool. Cubes of cara root swirled past keeping company with shucked limpets, mussels, and less identifiable shapes. His spoon clacked against shells in the bottom of the bowl.

  'Srolan.' Helti shook his head. 'She's probably gone upstairs. Won't stay in the same room with the likes of her,' and he tossed his head at the robed figure at the shadowed table. 'I shouldn't have let Srolan go out this year. It's a youngster's job, the walking of roads until a fit teamster's found. But she insisted, and I was not the man to say no to her... She's a granny to half the village, and aunty to the rest. Who's to tell her she mayn't go? So off she went, and though I knew she saw Temple Ebb differently from the rest of us, I didn't think she'd mislead you. She's old. Even older than you might guess. I hope you won't be holding a grief against her?'

  Vandien swallowed. He took a breath, feeling the food in his belly beginning to warm him. Slowly he broke one of the warm loaves, smelling the homey smell as it rose from the bread. 'Tell me why I should be grieved, and then I'll be able to decide.'

  Helti looked uncomfortable. His eyes reminded Vandien of fish darting about in a tide pool, seeking escape. 'Temple Ebb, you see, has been... since I was a boy, it's been a time of merriment, a time for sweet cakes and the best of fall's harvest from Bitters' farmers. The fisherfolk forget for a time how bitter cold it's going to be, fishing all winter. It's a time for forgetting the realities of work, to lose yourself in a spectacle, whether it's a counting mule or doves from a cup. The big finish is to watch someone else get as wet and work as hard as we expect to do all winter.' Helti paused and Vandien nodded, chewing. He watched the big man shift awkwardly on the bench. But he left the speaking to Helti as he took a welcome draft of the cold ale.

  'Let me tell you how we see it. Sure, there's a legend of the Windsingers' chest, buried in the muck of the temple. But the idea of someone hauling it up is just spiced sugar on the top of the cake. It's the pageantry of it, the drama of a teamster up to his armpits in icy water and waves, trying for that chest while the Windsinger stands on the hill above, her blue robes blowing in her own gale, and does her best to keep him from it. One old rhymester that came among us called it the ancient battle of man against the elements of wind and water : wrote a whole school of verses about it. He's the one that told us it's really the pageantry of it that we lov
e. Likely you'll hear his song in this very room this evening, if Collie's fixed his harp yet.'

  Vandien found himself nodding. He was just as glad that Ki was not here to grin at him across the table and be so damn right. He continued to eat, but the food no longer had flavor. So it was all to be a farce, and he was the hired clown. Yet, 'Srolan offered me a very large fee, in more than coin,' he said softly.

  'Oh, yes!' Helti chimed in anxiously. 'And it's sincere! If, that is, you bring up the chest itself. Srolan would never offer more than she was in power to bestow. The village council is always generous with the pot it sets aside for the festival teamster. Probably because it's never had to pay any of it out.' Helti hesitated a moment. 'They usually reimburse me for the teamster's keep. The rest they use up on the Midwinter Fest. They don't mind contributing to their own fun,' he confided.

  'I see.' Vandien stirred his chowder aimlessly. His belly still hungered, but suddenly eating seemed too much of an effort. There was no real chance of lifting his scar, nor even of turning a profit. A man who put less value on the touch of his hand would leave now, not even make the attempt. But he had touched hands on this. While the opinion of others mattered very little to Vandien, he would not tarnish his own opinion of himself. So he had given his word that he would make a public fool of himself. That was how it was, then. If it must be done, he might as well do it with good grace.

  Helti was amazed and a little alarmed as he watched the teamster's melancholy face light with a sardonic grin. Trust Srolan to find one like him. Vandien raised his mug and drained it, returning it to the table with a thump. Helti in turn lifted it and waved it at the boy, who stopped scraping ashes and clinkers to take it for refilling.

  'Any other little revelations about this task you would rare to enlighten me with?' Vandien inquired genially.

  'No. No. Unless, well, perhaps you would like to meet the Windsinger you'll be opposing. I mean, no sense in going into this thing with hard feelings. You two are the village's guests during Temple Ebb. It's not like she picked you to defeat; you just happened to be the one this year.'

  'Precisely. No hard feelings, good fellowship all round, and here's to you, my competitor!' The boy had returned with the mug and Vandien raised it again.

  'Exactly.' Helti was not totally reassured. Vandien's words were sporting enough. But the merry lilt had sharp edges. Still and all, it was too late to find another teamster. Helti made a silent resolution that next time he would send someone else to find a teamster. This fellow promised no sport or show at all. Worse, his capacity for food and drink seemed limitless. A poor bargain, but too late to change now. He tried to mellow the teamster's mood. 'They've sent us a fine Windsinger this year. Not like in early years, when I've heard that the Windsingers took the whole festival poorly, and turned gales and storms on the village for weeks afterward. No, they've come to see it for what it is, a bit of pageantry, a break from this workaday world. Quite a merry little one they've sent us this year! She plans to stay right here in the inn with us, just as if she were folks. Not much past being an apprentice, by the color of her robes, and so fine-scaled that you'd swear she still wore her own skin. She can blow up a fine wind though. A sweeter-tempered Windsinger you've never had to do with. Last eve she was making breezes for the children's kites, so that even the youngest ones could get one flying. Now that's a new one to us; most have been courteous enough, but acted more like they were tolerating the festival. This one seems bound to enjoy it as much as we. Picture this; here we were, last night, all gathered about the fire of an evening, beginning to do a bit of singing. Festival has a lot of songs, it being an old holiday, and we were tuning up a bit on them. We had got into it pretty fair, more loud than tuneful, you understand, for singing is not a thing we do that often. We had just got to the middle of the chorus, mugs beating out the time, when we hear a voice join in that we know isn't one of the village folk. High and clear like a bird taken to Human tongue. Everyone stops their singing, and looks about, and there she is, on the stairway. It gets all silent, you can imagine how we are, thinking, how long has she been there, how much has she heard - for some of the old songs aren't too kindly spoken of the Windsingers. But what does she do? She finishes out the chorus alone, and gives us a smile and comes on down. Bring me a mug of your best! she calls out, just like she was folks, and I'll sing you one you've not heard before, even though it's about your own village. We call it The Village That Plows The Sea. And in she starts, singing to an old tune, but set so high that no one in the village could have matched one note of it. And it is about False Harbor, and how we harvest fish from the sea, and it makes a joke of it, saying we plow the waves at Temple Ebb, seeking for what is not there.'

  'I don't get it,' Vandien put in slowly, his low voice a marked contrast to the innkeeper's amazed and jocular one.

  'Why, you know! We send out a man with a team, and he slashes and turns through the waves, like a farmer turning up furrows to plant a crop, and we harvest a crop of fish from the sea... but I'm just telling you in words, you have to hear it all done in rhyme, with the words turned to mean two things at once and...'

  'No.' Vandien's voice was as soft as ever, but cut right through Helti's flow of words. 'That much is obvious, even to me. What means the part about plowing for what is not there?'

  'Srolan!' Helti hissed the name out in frustrated rebuke. 'You make me feel bad, young man. Has she not told you that the Windsingers have always denied there is anything to be found in the temple? They send the storms, they tell us, only because such as we should not be desecrating their fallen temples with our curiosity.'

  'Is there, or is there not, a chest I am to bring up?' Vandien demanded in a flinty voice.

  'There is not.'

  The voice from behind his shoulder was silky soft, pure and strong with years of training. Vandien turned to it slowly, refusing to be startled. Few could approach him without his hearing, but she had.

  'Windsinger Killian,' Held breathed deferentially. 'I hope our frank speech has not irritated you. The man was hired knowing little of our customs and what we truly expected of him. I was only...'

  'Peace, innmaster. Why should I take offense at the truth? Your name, teamster?'

  Vandien looked up at her and held his name in his mouth. Her height was not impressive. She had more than half a head over Vandien, but most of it was cowl. What had been her forehead when she was Human would have been on a height with his own. She was slender in pale blue robes that fell to cover even the tips of her toes. But they bared her face and hands and wrists to Vandien's quick eyes. Finely scaled she was, the scales only beginning to be edged with a bluish tinge. It could have been a flawlessly applied cosmetic, but it was not. Her fingernails were already turning to a heavier layer of horny scale, the eyelashes and eyebrows long fled from her face, even her lips were masked in scales of a slightly rosier hue. She was a Windsinger, and Vandien had been warned all of his life not to gift one of such power with his own name. He was mute.

  'He is Vandien,' Helti broke in as the silence became awkward. 'Pray, seat yourself, Windsinger Killian. Shall I send for something from the kitchen for you?'

  Vandien had lowered his dark eyes. Now he picked up his mug and looked boldly at the Windsinger over its rim. He took down half of it. Helti was becoming more and more agitated every moment, but Vandien cared little; Helti had made free with his name, now let him swallow discomfort and choke on it.

  But Killian appeared not to notice any awkwardness as she seated herself beside Helti. Her tall cowl bobbed gracefully to her movements, like the soft crest of a wading bird. But for that cowl she could have been a prudishly swathed young woman. Her grey eyes, so Human, looked into Vandien's with the charming frankness of an innocent girl. And yet, he reminded himself, she was neither innocent nor Human. Not anymore.

  'And does your teamster speak?' Killian teased.

  'When he has words to say,' Vandien countered.

  'And have you nothing to say to me,
who will oppose you tomorrow?' Her eyes smiled at Helti's, past Vandien, as if he were a difficult child and Helti the doting parent.

  'I think not,' Vandien rasped.

  'A pity. I had so looked forward to meeting my competitor, and seeing if he was worthy of opposing my skills. So silent you are, I think you cowed already. Will you slip away in the night, Vandien, before we have a chance to try one another?'

  'Will you?'

  'Um. You think that would make your task easier? That if there were no wind whistling about you, you could splash about to your heart's content and find something in the old temple? Were it not that our temples, old or new, are consecrated only for us, I would be tempted to let you try.'

  'Now, now!' Helti intervened anxiously. He rose and pressed a heavy hand on Vandien's shoulder. 'You've no call to be so bitter of tongue, young man. It's true, you were misled about your task. I'm sorry that was so. But take it with a good spirit, as befits a man of honor. Buck up, and make the best of it! Is it so hard a thing, to face two days of free food and drink, a clean warm room with soft blankets, and whatever else you can think to ask for? It's true you don't stand to gain much in coin, but surely Srolan told you how we treat our teamster guest. Would you have a new cloak? A pair of boots? Ask for it, and it's yours. You'll see we're not a niggardly folk when it comes to our guests. Perhaps you've been tricked into this part, but it need not be a bad thing for you. Think what you're to ask of us, and warm your heart a little. And, Windsinger Killian, begging your pardon, but I hope you won't be taking our teamster's sour words too hard. A long and weary way he has come, dry of throat and hungry, thinking of gold for his purse, only to have his dreams turned to fish chowder and boots. It's enough to sour any man. Likely he's just a bit tired. A hot bath and a bed is what you need, man. Now isn't that so?' The big hand on Vandien's shoulder tightened suggestively. It did not leave his shoulder as he rose, but subtly helped him to his feet and steered him to the stairs. 'You'll see. It will set all to rights with you. You'll face tomorrow with a grin on your face and a new spirit.'