The Windsingers (14 page)

Rolling from bed, he lifted the window shutter for a look. Late afternoon greeted him. He looked down on his team, still huddled peacefully. He resolved to check their lines before nightfall, to be sure they would withstand any nocturnal tugging. Letting his eyes wander farther, he looked over the low dwellings of False Harbor. Holiday banners fluttered from cottage windows. A puppeteer had set up a booth in the street. Children too young to fish were standing about it. Shouts of laughter rose at regular intervals. Vandien smiled at the sound.

The tide was going out. He stood holding the shutter open, watching the slow retreat of the waves. It was so deceptive, the rise and fall. Each nibbling wave seemed to fall on the shore and lap up to the same height as the preceding one, but already the high tide line was clearly visible, a tracery of small flotsam, shells and seaweed stranded across the sands in a wavery line. Later tonight, he knew, most of the old village would stand exposed. The broken house walls would rise from the sea like the decayed teeth of some monstrous beast. The tide's full retreat would be under moonlight, and would expose almost all of the old settlement. But not the temple. The temple had been closest to the sea, standing between the ocean and the village. When the land sank, the temple had gone deepest and taken all its secrets with it. Had any Windsingers drowned along with that mysterious chest? No one had ever mentioned that to Vandien.

There were boats in sight, some beaching, some heading out to sea. There were flat-bottomed scows prowling in the shallows, and double-ended dories that would venture into deeper water and fish the true sea. Close in, Vandien saw youngsters in makeshift vessels or on rafts. Armed with sharpened sticks of driftwood, they lazed silently along, waiting for some sea creature on the bottom to betray itself with a ripple of fin or a twitch of claws. Then the sharp spear would plunge down, and sometimes return with skewered bounty. The wind was chill on Vandien's face, and he could imagine the iciness of the water. Yet the youngsters were barefoot and shirtless, or nearly so. 'Oh, for the youthful ability to ignore the weather,' Vandien sighed to himself.

He used a towel to wedge the shutter ajar. It gave a dim light to the room as he fumbled his way into the unfamiliar garments. He must remember to ask for candles. The brown smock was loose on him, sewn for a man wider of shoulder and taller than he. He belted it at the waist with his own belt. The extra bulk of unneeded cloth was annoying, but the clean soft smock felt good against his skin. The trousers tied at the waist with a drawstring. They were also too long, but Vandien found their unaccustomed looseness pleasant. He had no doubt that he struck a comic figure. Well, let them laugh. The rest of the village might as well get their money's worth, if not Srolan. He looked about for his boots, but they were not where he had dropped them. He found them by the door, their mud scraped away and the wrinkled leather freshly oiled. Srolan or Janie? he wondered, and shook his head over his own unwariness. What other visits had he slept through? Luckily he had nothing worth stealing. He pushed his feet into his boots, tucking excess trousers into them.

The common room below was a noisier, busier place than it had been in the morning. Vandien paused a moment on the stairs. The fisherfolk below were taking their ease in most energetic ways. The sound boomed like surf, the voices rising and falling in waves crested with laughter. Most of them were garbed to match Vandien, but in brighter colors. One woman big with child was robed for comfort, but the rest dressed like their men, in smocks and trousers. Their hand motions were extravagant as they talked, big hands thrown back, mouths wide with laughter. They were large folk for the most part, making Vandien feel like a youth. Smells of drink and hot chowder rose to him. The big fireplace roared now. Benches had been pulled up before it, and folk sprawled on them, their boots smoking in front of the blazing logs.

Vandien's quick spirit soared with their good humor and easy laughter. The fellowship below was as appetizing as the food, and more heartening. His earlier melancholy evaporated before the warmth of it.

'Vandien!' Helti roared it out, and the din stilled for an instant. 'Here's our teamster, and looking more that part now. Come on down, man! Make him a place at the fire, there! Janie! Fetch a bowl of the kettle's best, and a mug of the coldest!'

Vandien's boots rang on the stairs as he descended. The talk picked up, not quite as loud as before, but it was a comfortable sound. Fisherfolk moved aside to let him through, with affable nods. For every eye that clung to his scar, Vandien saw a hand or a leg or a face as marred as his own. His scar might be a little more prominent than most, but a missing finger or a hook-torn arm was little to these people. He felt acceptance, and, if anything marked him as an outsider in this crowd, it was his slighter stature and girth. He eased down on the bench like a boat moving into its berth. Janie put the hot bowl into his hands almost before he was settled, and set the mug on the bench beside him. He took the chance to send a smile and a look into her eyes. To his surprise, a blush rosed her cheeks and she scowled at him. She fled back to the kitchen.

He nodded to introductions too multitudinous to note. Vandien was at his best in dealing with folk; he was as skilled as a stray cat in moving into a warm place by the fire and making himself agreeable. He could remember too many times when his hopes of a meal and a bed had hinged upon how affable folk found him. He felt no cynicism about this; among his folk it was the oldest and most basic idea of hospitality. In his own land, the man with a tale to tell, a smiling face, and a listening ear was never turned away empty.

And that was the trick of it, as Vandien had long known. A tale or two of a stranger's travels were welcome new meat in a village where the doings of one's neighbors were not all that different from one's own. But even more welcomed by folk in isolated villages was the chance to tell their own tales to new ears. Vandien listened, his eyes bright, his lips curving in appreciation of the story. Before the chowder was gone, he had heard of their catch for the day, and the week before. He had commiserated with Red, who had inadvertently netted a creature too large for his boat, and lost not only nets but part of his rigging. He knew that Sara's baby was expected before the next moon, and that the child's future luck as a fisherman would be foretold by what catch the afterbirth lured into the nets. Berni was crouched on the floor before him, sketching on the boards with a bit of charcoal taken from the fire as she argued with Helti about exactly where Dea and her crew had gone down in the big storm just before festival, five years ago.

A young man with a cloth-wrapped harp came pushing up to the fire. Collie, Vandien guessed. His face and hands were still red with chill from his fishing. He had a large square face, and square hands to match it, with thick stumpy fingers that gave no hint of the music in them. But when he took the cover from the harp and began to test the strings, Berni and Helti stopped their arguing and all the common room drew closer to the hearth.

Collie wet his chapped lips and looked around with a smile at the silence he had caused. He looked to Vandien, and Vandien conceded all attention to him. Smiling, he plucked a few notes on the harp and looked about him questioningly.

'Not that one!' Helti decided. 'Too sad for the night before Temple Ebb. Give us something with a merrier tune.'

Collie's sandy brows danced with mischief as he plucked out another set of notes. 'Collie! There's children still up and about!' Red was scandalized. 'Save a tune like that for later in the night, when the small ones are off to sleep!'

'He speaks with his harp,' said a soft voice by Vandien's ear. He looked round to find Janie had wrangled a place at his shoulder. 'All the village laughed when his father traded half a season's catch for that harp, and gave it to a simpleton. But once the boy mastered it, no man in the village had a sweeter voice.'

Vandien nodded silently, hearing both stories in the tone of her voice. Janie was not only telling him how Collie had gained a voice, but in all innocence had told also where her heart longed to be welcomed.

Collie looked askance to the room. With a shrug of his shoulder and an upturned hand he asked what they would hear.

'Give us the net menders' song!' called a voice Vandien knew. He glanced up to where Srolan sat on the stairs. She was above the level of the flickering candles. Her face and form were a maid's in the semi-darkness. Vandien wondered how long she had sat there, looking down on them, watching the interplay of the village without being seen. Collie's fingers were already drawing out the notes of the melody. The surging voices of the fisherfolk followed his fingers. The chorus was a simple one. Before the song was done, Vandien was shouting it out with the rest. Stamping boots kept the time.

'That's one we haven't sung in a good long while,' Helti observed into the silence after the song.

'And it puts me in mind of another one!' called a grizzled old man in the corner. 'Can't remember its proper name, but Collie should know the tune. It's the one that begins, Moon follows my wake and silvers my nets...

'The Candlefish Moon!' Srolan's voice came dropping from the upper dimness.

'That's it!' the old man exclaimed, and Collie put his fingers to his harp strings. This song most of the younger folk listened to, joining in as soon as they knew the refrain. The words were in Common, but in archaic forms to fit the rhyme. An old song, Vandien guessed, and so seldom sung that the younger folk did not know the words. It was a courting song, too, that had many of the oldsters looking at one another with youthful eyes, while Janie's voice came from behind Vandien to sing the refrain with heartfelt sweetness. He stole a look in her direction, but she never noticed. Her eyes were on young Collie.

Collie did not let that song die completely, but used its ending notes to lead into another. The old man in the corner grinned delightedly as he recognized it, and he led the others into the words. Again the turnings of the words betrayed the age of the song. It was a stirring ballad of an earlier time, when the Humans of this village had disputed their fishing ground with T'cherians from across the bay, and won. Vandien sensed about him a quickening of spirit. The old folk were caught up in singing of this past glory. The younger folk listened or hummed along in wonder. Vandien glanced up the staircase. Srolan was all but invisible. After the battle song, there was another, this one sad, a lament of the folk who returned from fishing to find their village sunken, their kin gone. A bonding was taking place here; Vandien felt it on an instinctive level. Was the old man in league with Srolan? Were they working together to turn the villagers' minds back to the past? Some eyes were moist at the end of that song, and Collie let the last notes die to silence.

Helti himself was quiet as he moved through the throng with a tray of cold mugs for the newcomers, while Janie dispensed cold bitter ale from an immense pitcher. There was little talk, most of it muted. Kinship. That was what thrummed throughout the room. It was more than friends and a warm fire on a cold night. Vandien could almost touch the unity of the village. Berni suddenly looked up from her idle sketchings on the floor to say, 'Collie. Play the Temple Bell Song.'

A hushed expectancy settled in the room. Collie sat still for a moment, his lax fingers numbing his harp strings. Vandien did not look up at the darkened staircase. He did not need to see Srolan to know her triumph. She had primed them, and perhaps the old man had helped. But now village feeling was running high and free, on its own, as unstoppable as a river in flood.

Collie's fingers swept into the music. No one sang. Vandien heard the deep plucked notes like temple bells ringing slow and mournful behind an intricate weaving of somber melody that grieved too deep for words to flow. The candles seemed to burn more slowly as he played, and the mourning seemed to ebb and flow as endlessly as the tides. Then first one voice and then another began to rise. And Vandien could not understand the words at all, but both old and young sang them well and with feeling. He knew he was listening to a tongue so old it was no longer spoken, the vestige of whatever language had been spoken here when the village sank. Common was a good enough tongue for everyday dealings, but like many another folk, they had turned back to their native tongue to sing of a sorrow too deep for words, too personal for outsiders to share.

It was a long piece of music, not the usual tavern ballad of eight or ten verses, nor a courting song with three or four verses and a sweet refrain. This song was a tapestry, composed of sections where the harp grieved alone, and then was joined by Human voices, that tapered away and left the harp sobbing alone again. The singers were intent as they sang, rapt when they listened. Vandien marked that no mug was raised to slake a dry throat, no one tossed more wood into the blaze, even though it had begun to wane. He found himself drawn into it almost as strongly as the villagers. He did not feel restive as he listened, despite his ignorance of the words. There was a power to this song, an emotion that was almost racial. The song tapped their ancestry, swirled them all back to a time when grief was fresh as a bleeding slash. It was all so hopeless, so very hopeless.