As if to mock his words, a sudden breeze gusted up from the river. A prickle of fear stirred Ki's hair. She scrabbled to her feet, snatched up the hands on their block of stone, and tucked the head on her arm. The body lumbered after her as she ran to her wagon.
The hands she set within the cuddy on her bed, the head on the plank driver's seat. The body had to be tugged and hoisted awkwardly onto the box. It all but tumbled into her cuddy. She shuddered as she watched it push the hands over and casually usurp her bed.
'Now get that team hitched! Forget the rest of it; there isn't time! Cut the picket ropes, don't bother to untie them! Ki!'
She ignored Dresh's useless directions and commands as she jostled her horses into place. Buckles and straps resisted her weary hands.
'Ki, the wind magic will be upon us in moments! I have no strength to stave them off! Leave those trinkets and let us be off!' If the head had possessed a set of lungs to power it, it would have been roaring. But Ki turned a deaf ear as she scooped up her kettle and mugs, to tumble them pell-mell into the dish chest strapped to the side of the wagon.
'Trinkets to you,' she explained breathlessly as she vaulted up onto the sea. 'But for me the trappings of my life. I will not abandon them. Get up, you two!'
The last she called to her team. The greys lunged against the traces as another gust of wind buffeted the side of the wagon. Clouds swirled up from nowhere to obscure the blue skies. The wagon bounced and rocked as Ki forced the team back to the main trail. From the roots and potholes, she tried to pretend, but she knew it was the gusting wind hitting the square side panels of the top-heavy Romni wagon.
'Put me within!' Dresh's voice finally broke through the rush of the wind and reached Ki's ears. She glanced over, to see that the head on its stone had slid dangerously close to the edge of the seat. One more jolt would have sent him over the side. With one hand on the reins, Ki reached out to slide the head back to her side.
'Have you no fondness for the open road on a fine day like this, Dresh?' she asked innocently. 'After all, the show is in your honor.' The gusting wind seemed to switch directions every minute. Ki's hair streamed across her face, whipping her eyes. The horses plunged against their harnesses, fighting the sudden windstorm. The sky had greyed; morning was twilight.
'If we meet someone on the road, the show will be in your honor!' Dresh shouted breathlessly above the roar. 'I suppose you prefer to be stoned to death as a witch rather than feel the wrath of the Windsinger?'
'Neither has much appeal,' Ki admitted. She pulled in her team long enough to slide open her cuddy door and place Dresh within, none too gently. As she shut the door on his complaint and took up the reins, a bitter smile touched her mouth. This was what too much association with wizardry did to one. She had not even considered how peculiar it would be to meet a lone teamster with the head of a wizard on the seat beside her.
A spattering of yellow-green leaves ripped early from the trees recalled her to her danger. She called to the team and they picked up their pace.
She forded the river recklessly, not trying to pick the best path but the quickest. The team plunged into the grey rush of water. The tall wheels jounced over rounded river stones. The great hooves slipped and nearly floundered. The wind whipped water white against the wagon, and flung it up into her face. It drenched her, and suddenly the wind was icy against her, reddening her hands and making her body tight with chill.
On the far side of the river, the trail became wider and straightened itself. The team heaved and strained to haul the heavy wagon up the slippery bank. It seemed to take an age, and once they were up on the trail again, Ki dared not halt to let them breathe. She longed to whip them up into a full gallop, to carom down the trail, away from this accursed forest and river and the magic it seemed to invite. The wind battered and threatened her. She forced herself to calmness. Her ponderous beasts could not maintain a gallop long; it made no sense to burn their strength that way.
A peculiar high-pitched note mixed with the wind. It was not at all similar to air moving through trees. Suddenly her team showed no inclination to settle into their usual plodding pace. Ki watched the four ears flicking about nervously. The incessant wind continued to rattle the wagon as they jolted over the little-used trail.
The stench hit them with the next gust of wind. Sigurd screamed and plunged forward in his harness, dragging Sigmund along. Ki couldn't hold them in. She tried to keep the reins firm, to let them feel some measure of control from her, but she knew they had taken their heads. The wagon jounced and rumbled alarmingly. From within the cuddy she heard muffled curses and cries. Dresh was not enjoying this rattling. But Ki could not take her eyes from the trail or spare him a thought. It took all her skills to influence the team as they careened down the trail. She kept them, as best she could, to the middle of the path. The great hooves threw up chunks and clods of earth. Foam laced the grey backs. She prayed that they would meet no one coming from the other direction. She tried not to imagine her team colliding with another team and wagon.
But it was not a team and wagon that suddenly confronted them. It was no creature Ki could put a name to, and the source of the terrible stench. It dropped from the sky to hang before them on the unnatural wind. Its wings were like tattered sea canvas, at once in this world and some other. Its body was all claws and eyes. The plunging team reared and tried to halt, but the impetus of the wagon pushed them on. Ki heard the screech of the protesting wood as the balking team racked the wagon, and then jerked on in terror as the wagon rode up on them. The creature kited over them, giving a cry between a screech and laughter. Ki saw it fold in its gruesome wings. It dropped. It would land squarely on the backs of the panicked greys. It was twice Ki's size, with wings added on. The wind boiled about her, whipping her hair across her face, stifling her with the stink of the beast, and adding its roar to the distressed screams of the horses.
But even as the noisome creature extended its claws to land, a sudden gust of a new wind buffeted it from the side.
The perfume of the warm wind cut through the stench of the creature. It swirled against the chill wind that rattled Ki's wagon, to put her and her team in the calm eye of a storm of warmth and fragrance. The hapless sky creature was sucked up in it, thrown aloft and spun about. Its tattered wings flapped like the stained rags on a street beggar as it was flung about in the suddenly hostile wind. Ki strained to master her team and keep them on the trail. They needed no encouragement to run now, and she no longer wished to hold them in. She sent tremors of encouragement down the reins to the greys as their huge legs stretched and reached, snatching up lengths of the trail and flinging it behind them. The trees on either side of the trail were flogged clean of leaves by the battling winds, but they traveled in a tunnel of silence, moving in the eye of a storm that moved with them, sheltered by a buffer of warmth and scent.
She heard wild cries and the snapping of branches as the sky creature was mastered by the warm wind and dung to its fate in the reaching branches of the trees. Ki sensed that she moved through the midst of a great battle of wills. She felt, not protected, but possessed. These winds battled over her and her wagon, and more so over its contents. No matter who won, she could not expect mercy. Yet, hoping against hope to be claimed by neither, she urged on the team that was racing to exhaustion.
She did not feel the rain. The warm wind did not let it through to pelt her with its icy blows, but it could not prevent the rain from soaking the trail ahead, changing its hard-packed surface to slick mud. The wide hooves of the team slid and scrambled, the wagon fishtailed madly behind them. Ki wished vainly for her freight load of earth and stones in crates. The empty wagon was too light to travel at this pace over wet earth; a heavier wagon would have made it possible to control the frenzied horses. The greys raced on, the wide backs rising and falling before her frantic eyes. If one did not slip and break a leg, they would run themselves to death.
The forest began to thin. They passed two small farms in
clearings on one side of the trail and the trail grew wider and showed signs of more use. Ki and her storm of destruction had invaded the periphery of a farming area. She watched the fields crumpling under the onslaught of the storm she brought. Wind harvested the grain; cattle fell under the hail. No Humans or Dene moved outside their farmhouses. All had doubtless fled to shelter from this unnatural weather. Ki doubted that they even heard the rumbling passage of her wagon through the rumbling of the thunder that rose to confront her.
The team was slowing. Lather scraped against the leather traces and dripped down their sides. Ki heard their blowing even in the midst of the swirling winds. Her heart went out to them. They were running to their deaths and it was not even their quarrel. She could not save them.
Suddenly she felt Dresh join her vision. She could not explain how she knew that he, too, peered from her eyes, but she felt his weariness drag at her, and guessed that he sucked at her stamina as well as his own. Ki felt her anger rise, and then quail inside her as she realized the uselessness of it. She was used by him as she used her team. She did not know why he wanted her eyes, until she felt the sudden strength flood her arms. She found herself fighting her team, standing up to drag harshly at the reins. The foam at the bits went pink, and she turned them down a rutted abandoned road. Karn Hall, she immediately knew, was at the end of it. The destination of her freight was closer than she had known.
The winds clashed more furiously than ever. Twice the desperate icy onslaught broke through to Ki, once hard enough to fling her back against the cuddy door. The circumference of the storm eye shrank. The greys felt the icy blast on their muzzles. Ki heard the rattle of hailstones in the empty back of her wagon. Ki guessed that by now Dresh was exhausted. Now what? Ki did not want to wonder.
A bend in the rutted path, and Karn Hall loomed before her like a broken tooth in a mossy skull. Its white stone was stained greenish with neglect; the stone window sills in the upper tower were crumbling away. Its courtyard was overgrown with grasses and low brush, and trees clustered close to its walls. Their limbs did not stir. No gale buffeted them. Like a sudden plunge into quiet water, the team gained the magic circle that surrounded those walls. The wind and storm died behind them. Suddenly Ki was given the strength to rein in the team. They were too weary to fight her will. They slowed, trotted brokenly, then halted, their great heads drooping to trembling knees. Ki let the wet reins fall from her welted hands. She shook as badly as her team. Folding her body, she let her tousled head rest on her drawn-up knees. Blessed, blessed silence embraced her. Not even the sound of the storm that still raged outside the circle would reach her here.
When she finally lifted her head and looked about, she saw the waning storm moving off in defeat. The trees of Karn Hall still stood tall, but outside Dresh's sphere of influence the trees were wretched, battered things, weeping leaves in the wake of the holocaust. Ki thought she scented a trace of fragrance in the air. Before she could identify it, it was gone.
Ki dismounted shakily. Her stiff fingers could scarcely work the buckles on the heavy harness. The leather was warm and wet, the metal slick with lather. She let it drop away from the exhausted team. The greys did not move.
A muffled thudding reached her ears. She stumbled back to her wagon, struggled up onto the seat and slid the cuddy door open. It was the body, thudding one of its stony arm ends against the door. The head lay on the floor where it had fallen during their mad flight. A leak of blood snaked from one aristocratic nostril. Dresh's eyes were dull in his grey face.
'Tell the folk in the house to fetch me in,' he whispered. The tip of his tongue ventured over his dry lips. She noted a chip off the corner of his mounting block had crumbled on her cuddy floor.
'No need, Master!' Ki was too weary to jump at Bird-eyes' voice coming from behind her. She moved out of the old woman's way as she shouldered herself into the cuddy. Ki dropped gracelessly from the wagon to the ground. She opened her mouth to warn off the stable hand that was approaching her team with rubbing rags, but the normally fractious Sigurd was standing quiet under his ministering touch.
'And that is the strangest wizardry I have seen yet!' Ki murmured to herself. The door of the hall had been left ajar. She wandered over to it, glancing back to her wagon, where several serving men had materialized and were lifting Dresh's various parts down, under the sharp-tongued supervision of old Bird-eyes. Normally the sight of strangers swarming over her wagon would have enraged her. Now she felt only relief.
Through the open door of the hall, a bright fire burning in a huge hearth beckoned. She stepped into the cool dark of the entry hall, and through the second lofty door into the welcoming chamber. A low table laden with food and drink was surrounded by soft pillows and finely tanned skins. It drew her like a candle draws a moth. Ki sank down onto the soft cushions and poured wine for herself into a glass of cut crystal. She sipped at it and felt warmth flood her weary body. How long since she had last slept? For just a moment, she closed her eyes and let her head sag onto the cushions.
'And there she has slept, like a dirty stray dog, in the middle of the best room, since yesterday afternoon! Master, she acted as if. . .'
Ki did not hear the sotto voce reply. She opened her eyes and lifted her heavy head to see voluminous black skirts whipping out of sight around a corner. Dresh stood alone in the doorway. He looked peculiarly tall to her, with his head atop his body. He smiled mockingly at her as he raised his hands, rubbed his wrists lightly, and then waggled his fingers at her. 'All in working order!'
'So I see.' Ki struggled to a sitting position and tried to gather her scattered thoughts. 'Is my team all right?'
Dresh frowned lightly, as if he found her concern for mere beasts inappropriate at this moment. But he replied, 'They are resting as comfortably as you have been, and no great harm to them. I regret I had to force such speed out of them, but they have taken no permanent damage from it.'
'I suspected you had a hand in their new-found stamina. As to damage...' Ki remembered her manners and calmed her voice. 'Thank you for the hospitality you have shown my team and me.'
'You are more than welcome. And was I right?'
'About what?'
'That I am a well-made man, when I am in one piece.'
His voice was confident. He smiled his contagious smile, which was more attractive with his head atop his body. She was suddenly aware that he was a well-made man. The sleeveless brown jerkin trimmed in gold set off his olive skin and his smooth arms. His belly was flat, without apparent effort or binding; his hips were of a flattering narrowness.
She kept her voice casual. 'As well-made as many I have seen.'
'Thank you!' he responded imperturbably. He crossed the room with an easy stride, to drop down on the cushions beside her. He leaned his elbow on the low table beside hers and brought his grey eyes close to her green ones.
'There is a lovely chamber upstairs, with a tub of steaming water in it. There are perfumed oils to choose from, and two trunks full of soft gowns of many colors, trimmed in Kerugi lace. You could bathe and change, and return to dine with me here. Time enough after dinner to settle our, ah, accounts.' Fascinated, she watched his small even teeth nibble at the wedge of cheese he plucked from the table. The bath was tempting. Despite her sleep, her body was still weary. Hot water would soothe her bruised and aching muscles. She owed herself a little time to relax after the trials of the last few days... was it only days?
'I'd like to, Dresh, but I've an appointment to keep,' she remembered belatedly. 'I'm to meet someone in False Harbor tomorrow or the next day.'
'Let him wait,' Dresh suggested. 'You're already late, you know. Or do you? Do you realize just how much time our little detour took? By late tonight, I imagine Vandien will be up to his nose in cold water, trying to fish up that chest. Not that I have the faintest hope of his doing so. Still, it seemed an amusing idea at the time, and who knows?'
Ki straightened up from the cushions. Her stomach roiled with drea
d. 'What had you to do with Vandien's errand in False Harbor?'
'Me?' Dresh smiled smugly. 'Why, who do you think steered Srolan to him? Who but Dresh could have told her what bait to hook him on? One glance at Vandien, and I knew what he would risk all for: the lifting of that scar from his face. It was so obvious to me, and yet she would never have thought of it.' Ki was silent, staring at him with wide eyes. Dresh grinned, delighted at amazing her so. 'You'd never guessed it? How could you not see it? Have you not seen him sitting thus, his hand held before his face?' Dresh fell into a posture Ki knew well. Thus did Vandien sit, thumb at the side of his jaw, his index finger stretched beside his nose to touch the center of his forehead, his other fingers curled before his mouth. It was a pose he adopted when deep in thought, or exceptionally tired, the way another man might rest his chin on his fists. It had never before occurred to her that the gesture also covered most of the scar down his face. But now it did. It was more than she could bear to see Dresh's sly grin around his hand as he struck the pose.
'Stop that!' she growled.
Dresh flung himself back against the cushions with a laugh. 'I knew it the first time I saw him. I spotted him as soon as he came to Dyal, and I knew you would not be far behind. I had, ah, shall we say, arranged for an errand to bring you there. Why Ki, you may ask? A friend pronounced you the soul of discretion and recommended you; something to do with a sealed book that you transported for him some years back, under rather tricky circumstances. So, favors being owed, Ki was given a cargo of beans that would bring her to Dyal. But there was the matter of this Vandien. He was an unknown in my equation. I could not tolerate that. He could be a thief or worse. So, I arranged for him to be busy elsewhere, and made certain that you would be receptive to a generous offer for a simple task. More than half my skill as a wizard, Ki, comes from my being able to have people do as I wish them to, all the while believing that they are following their own best judgment. So, whilst we were about our little detour, Vandien aimed his steps to False Harbor, in the hopes of being rid of that scar. I doubt not that he'll do his damnedest tomorrow to drag up that mythical chest. But that need not concern us. For now, let us... Ki!'
The Windsingers Page 20
