The Windsingers (16 page)

'Neither does she, poor pet. So she goes about paying for her mother's reputation, and makes herself lonely in the process. But you won't get a word out of her tonight. You've refused her once. She won't offer again, and take the chance of your disdain. Nor will she ever admit, by word or sign, that she made you such an offer. She's so careful, she even fools herself

'What am I to do?'

'What the teamster does every year. Go out, and waste more than half the tide looking for the chest in every wrong place. Go out there, with no idea what it looks like, or how large it is, or where it is. Splash around a lot.' A gusty sigh drained her smaller on the bench beside him. 'I'm an old woman, Vandien. Each Temple Ebb year I hope it will be the last, that this year the chest will be found. But it isn't. Likely it won't be this year, for all that you'll do your best. Go up to bed, man. Get some sleep, and be ready for tomorrow. The low tide will not be until tomorrow evening, so sleep in a bit. Good night.'

She rose, and went away, walking old. Vandien looked around to find the common room empty of customers. He was alone by the failing fire. Janie sullenly gathered mugs onto a tray at the other end of the room. Vandien rose and stretched and sent her a smile. She stared through him. He went to check his team, and then to bed.

'Enter.'

The pale azure robes swirled about her bare feet as the apprentice edged nervously into the room. She wet her pink lips, unmarked as yet by scales. Her eyes jumped from Medie to Rebeke nervously, as if uncertain who to address.

'Speak, child,' Rebeke commanded testily. 'What is the matter? Did I not set you to watching at the pools? What do you here? Has one relieved you at your post? I have given no such order.'

'If it please your Windmistresses,' lisped the girl. Beneath her cowl, her face was that of a young Human girl of perhaps thirteen years. Her voice quaked. 'I and Lizanta and Kirolee were watching at the pools. We held in our minds the shape of the aura you told us to watch for. We resolved to be alert, and to watch for it and no other. We knew we were to call at the first sign of it.' The child paused, her trained voice thickening with panic.

'Speak on, little one.' Medie's voice was kindly. 'No ill will come to you, if you have done your duty as you knew it.'

'I fear... I fear we have not done well, Windmistress. A glowing came to Kirolee's pool. She called that she had the expected intruder. But, before I could even speak, the glowing changed. Well do I know that such a thing cannot happen,' she hastily went on, even as Rebeke angrily opened her lips, 'but such it did, I swear. An aura changed. It was no longer what you had commanded us to watch for. And so I thought that Kirolee and I were mistaken, that perhaps some stray breath of ours had furled the pool and made the seeming change. So, as the singer of rank, I commanded that the watch go on, for this aura was not what we were seeking.'

'That does nothing to explain why you are here, when you should still be watching the pools.' Rebeke's cheeks glowed with embarrassment. That one of her apprentices should show herself so uncertain and unreliable in front of Medie! But Medie leaned forward as if the information the child was spilling forth were of the greatest import.

'What happened then?' she coaxed, ignoring Rebeke's rebuke.

'We went on monitoring the pools. I bade Kirolee to observe the strange aura, but not let it distract her from her duty. A time passed. Then Kirolee called out that the strange aura had changed, that it was once again that which we were watching for. This time both Lizanta and I were able to see in Kirolee's pool. She was right. But even as all three of us watched the aura changed again.'

'An aura cannot change.' Rebeke stated the fact coldly. 'It may be altered, but it cannot flicker back and forth between forms as you describe.' Even as she spoke, the little apprentice sank down onto her knees, her blue robes puddling out around her. Her eyes grew brighter with unspilled tears.

'I know that, Mistress.' She choked the words out. 'I know. But if only you could come look upon this strange aura and tell us what it means. I know I have failed in my watching. I am ashamed... and fearful.' The last words went husky and faded.

'She is only a child, Rebeke,' Medie whispered gently. 'She seems possessed of wit and courage to report to you as she has done. The blame she takes upon herself. This is a Singer of promise. Let us not be too harsh with her.'

Rebeke folded her lips tightly. The outlines of her scales shone out against her face. These apprentices were her responsibility, not Medie's. That Medie should dare to assume authority here, to tell her how to handle such a situation... But Medie was smiling gently at Rebeke. She felt her anger ebbing away. They would work well together; they tempered one another. Rebeke returned Medie's smile, and rose from her stool.

'Wipe your tears, child, and return to your post. I shall join you shortly, to inspect this changing aura. Swiftly now!'

The apprentice vanished from the room in a swirl of robes. Rebeke clicked her tongue and turned grave eyes on Medie.

'They are taking them too young these days, and putting them into blue before they are even women grown. Do they think we shall become an army, to subdue the world by numbers alone? Greed. It is greed, Medie, that will be our downfall. It will bring the final uprising, unless such as we can check it. Well, I shall go and see to the child's pool. I shall make her punishment a mild one, as you suggest. But we must remember that a strong will is born only of strong restraints. Spirit as fine as hers can be spoiled by too light a hand as well as too firm. Keep watch for me; I shall return shortly, after I have laid their fears to rest. A changing aura. Too young, too young...'

Still shaking her high cowled head, Rebeke left the room. Medie remained perched on her stool, seeming to listen to some inaudible sound. Then, eyes full of wariness, she slipped from the stool and hurried over to the small enamelled casket on its black table. Her eyes devoured it as she weighed her decision. One more glance at the door. Her long dark fingers flickered over the colored stones in their settings. She was deft and sure in her touches.

But the casket remained closed. Medie stood for an instant, letting one finger tap thoughtfully upon the box. Then a thin smile stretched her scaled lips. More slowly, with deliberate pressure, her fingers probed the casket. She sighed. The lustrous black lid loosened and rose in her hands. She set it carefully aside. Wariness froze her.

She stared at the linen wrapping carelessly bunched over the casket's contents. It was not right. Someone had been here before her. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. Rebeke had not wanted her to open this casket. Was it because she had already opened it herself? How many veils, Medie wondered, must she lift before she beheld the true Rebeke? Beneath the many shells of deception and wariness, was there a Windsinger at all? Her guilt at opening the box vanished in the light of Rebeke's deception of her. Unhesitatingly, she twitched aside the linen wrapping. She stared down upon the wizard's folded hands joined to their block of white stone veined with red and black.

In cool curiosity, Medie touched them. They were cold, the long tapered fingers stiffly unyielding to her gentle pressure, but not with the stiffness of death. She tapped an envious finger on the black stone set in the simple ring. She longed for it, but longed with the knowledge that such things must be taken correctly, if they are to be taken at all.

'So she has you at last, Dresh. But not as she once would have wished it. I wonder if you ever supposed it would come to this. None of us did. I wonder if she will have the spirit to carry this thing through. She thinks she has the will. But there's a deal of space between the dream and the deed.'

Janie pulled her eyes back from the horizon and gave him a disdainful look. She made no reply. Vandien abandoned his attempt at conversation and contented himself with observing.

He sat on the fishy floorboards in the bottom of a double-ended dory. The brisk wind licked his face, making the scar tighten with the cold. It did not hurt - yet. He appreciated the heavy cloth of the smock and trousers and the extra material that held the warmth against his body. Janie had furnished the knit wool cap that snugged his curls to his head and covered his ears. Janie's blue-grey smock and trousers made her eyes show their true color. A cap of grey wool proved oddly flattering to her. Her high cheekbones were touched red by the wind. Her blond hair escaped from the cap to wave loose against her shoulders. She wore loose soft boots, shorter than his. Vandien remembered what Berni had said about boots last night. 'No one hereabouts wears boots like yours. What if you fell into deep water in those? They'd fill with water and drag you down before you kicked them free. Loose enough to slip out of, and soled to grip the deck without scarring it; that's what you need hereabouts. Helti! Better look to boots for our teamster before tomorrow's tide!'

The dory rode like a seagull. It was clean, with not a string of dried gut or a scale to show its use. Rainlady was burned into her name-plank. Janie stood in the center of her, looking toward her goal. The long oars dipped and rose steadily. She pushed on the oars, lifted them clear of the water, drew them back to her chest, sank the oars into the water and pushed again. Vandien marvelled at it. He did not volunteer to take a turn at it. He was sure he could find other ways to make a fool of himself soon enough. And yet she made it look easy; the motion was all in one piece, without jerks or hesitations. He should have suspected those muscles in her shoulders, he realized, remembering the easy way she had handled the large buckets of water. Her mouth was set in a grave line. She would speak when she was ready.

Janie had awakened him in the dark, shaking him roughly by the shoulder so that there could be no mistaking her intention in coming to his room at such a time. He had stumbled about in the dark, for she had brought no candle and would not let him light one. 'Meet me by the back door!' she had commanded him as soon as she was sure he was fully awake. She had left him to dress and puzzle in the dark.

The inn was silent as he came down the stairs. The only light in the common room came from the dying embers in the fireplace. He found the great door unlatched; it opened to his cautious push.

Janie waited by the back door. She shushed his questions, pushing the wool cap into his hands. Then she had led him away into the darkness, although the smell of dawn was on the air. 'I wanted to catch this tide,' was all she would say. 'And I like to be up and about when the rest of the village sleeps still.' He had followed her to where her dory was tied to a sagging little dock. 'Sit flat on the deck!' she had commanded him in a hiss. 'Rainlady rides high and light with such a small load. She'll be lively enough for me to handle without your leaning over the side.' Vandien had sat, and been as silent as his companion.

Morning showed in the face of the water before it touched the sky. The oily darkness of the waves gave way to a silvery greyness, and then the sun was edging up over a watery horizon. 'Holiday. Whole village will be sleeping in after last night. We've the sea to ourselves, for a while.' Janie told him that, and seemed to think it was all he needed to know.

Vandien was content to watch her manage the boat. He glanced back once to see how far they had come. Not as far as he had thought, and yet the distance seemed much greater than if he had been looking back over a road on solid land. The insubstantial terrain of the sea lent its strength to the distance. Vandien suddenly felt that shore was a tremendous distance away. The dancing dory seemed a temperamental thing to trust his life to; it was no more than a few lapped planks, bowed and fastened together. It rode the waves joyfully, rising to show them the world, and then sliding down to diminish their horizons. Vandien would have preferred a more sedate vessel. 'Like riding on a gull,' he told himself, and found the image of webbed feet propelling the boat more likely than the rigid oars rising and falling in unison.

The rhythm was broken. Janie stood still, letting the oars trail in the water. 'This is where it starts to drop off. We're over the old village. It was built on the gentle slope at the foot of the hill. The temple was built out on the spit. Some say that at high tide the sea surrounded the temple, and that at low you could walk to it across the sand spit. But that was all a long time ago. No one can say how it truly was. All that is certain is that when the village sank, the temple sank even deeper. At least one tide a month will bare part of the village, but only the lowest tide of the year reveals the top of the temple. Only one year in three has a tide low enough to make salvage possible.'

Vandien was silent. Janie seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He didn't. If she was going to talk, he would let her. He sensed that she would welcome an excuse not to talk. No matter what he said, that angry face would darken and put all his words in the worst possible light. He would not ask her why she had brought him out here. He just met her grey eyes solemnly and waited.

But not even silence could placate her. Having decided to speak, the words boiled out of her, merciless and scalding. 'You asked a question last night, teamster. It was never answered. Instead, you listened to the village scoff at me. When they were through, you didn't bother to seek for any other answers. What did they tell you after I left? That my mother was a drunk, like her parents before her? That she would say anything, do anything for a drink? Well, teamster, that's true. But two things she left to me: Rainlady, who belonged to my father before the sea took him, and a story. The story she never told for a drink. The only story she saved for me.'

She paused. Her color was high, her cheeks bright with more than wind's kiss. To agree with her would be just as bad as to contradict her. So Vandien waited.

'My grandfather told it to her,' she went on a bit more calmly. 'He was a very old man, and some said he was wandering in his mind when he told it. Others said he would never be sober again. So they didn't bother to listen, except for my mother. That's why they all know of the tale, without knowing the details. I have never told it to anyone. Let them live in ignorance. I won't stand up and let them call me a fool over what I cannot prove. That was what I always said to myself. That is how I'd keep it until I die, except for...' Janie sighed. She suddenly broke the thread of her talk.

'There is one person in the village you can believe. Srolan. She's old and crazy, but not so crazy that she doesn't know the truth. I've never known her to break faith with anyone. She...' Janie suddenly looked at Vandien, really looked at him. In her eyes he saw sympathy and understanding beyond her years, the kind that is only taught by cruelty endured. 'She told me why you came to do this thing. No one else knows, but Srolan and I. The village council knows of the money she offered. It doesn't worry them, for they don't expect to pay it. But Srolan told me why you truly came; to have the scar lifted from your face. She said that, if you are a man that can see she is sincere when she offers to do what most would deem impossible, if you can look at her and are wise enough to see that she would not offer what she cannot deliver, then you are a man that will hear my tale and know the truth of it. She did not ask me to tell it to her. She knew I would have been able to say no to that. All she said was, Try him yourself, and left me to sleep on that.'

Vandien looked at her quietly. The chill wind outlined the scar across his face it was a stiffness he was always aware of in cold weather. The colder the wind, the more insistent the old wound became, beginning merely as a dull ache. In the coldest weather, in times of blowing snow, the scar pressed between his eyes and down the side of his nose with a pain that was nearly as sharp as a burn, but constant. If he spent any time in the cold, it pulled at his whole face. Ki knew of the pain, but did not suspect the extent of it. He no longer complained about it. He had not mentioned it since the evening he had lain in the wagon, giddy with agony, while she prepared a steaming compress for it. She had been careless as she leaned over him to arrange it on his face. He had looked up into green eyes full of guilt, mirroring his pain. He had been shamed, for he was not a man to manipulate others with emotions. The next day he had ridden through the snow all day, and never mentioned that his eyes were separated by a line of fire. Ki never heard or saw his pain again.

Even on fine days, he could not lose the shadow it cast over his face. Vandien was a man behind a scar, ever concealed, always distorted by his own face. Now this fair-faced child was looking at him as if she understood.

'Why do you stay in False Harbor?' he asked her suddenly.

She was startled, caught without words. Vandien wondered why he had given her the question. 'Never mind,' he said hastily. 'Just tell me your story, if you will. I think we can understand one another well enough.'

Apprehension showed on Janie's face as she pondered him. It made her grey eyes stern as her mouth went sullen. He thought she would row him back to shore. But her need to tell someone won out.

'Look over the bow,' she commanded him. 'Keep your body low in the boat; just lean your head over so you can look down. That's right. You may have to shade your eyes from the glare of the sun. Keep watching.'

Vandien saw nothing but water. He shaded his eyes and peered, but the surface of the water baffled his eyes. He saw bits of seaweed floating by. Rising bubbles like seed pearls. Then his eyes caught the trick of it. Tiny black fish wriggled beneath the surface of the water. He leaned over more, both hands cupping the sides of his face, and looked down. He could see bottom. Seaweed-covered foundations stared blankly up at him. Off to one side, a chimney still stood as tall as a man. The rest was tumbled into a rubble, the lines softened by the sea life clinging to it.

'See the houses? Hard to imagine folk living there, eating their supper around the tables, mending their nets by the door. Keep watching.'

Janie took up her oars again. The boat glided up and down on the waves as Janie pushed it forward, and through all that motion his eyes tried to focus on the uneven bottom. He felt a moment of queasiness. He saw patches of sand rippled into ridges by the sea, and fine seaweed that trailed airily from sunken house walls. Flounder stretched flat on seaweed-mossed hearths. Clouds of fingerlings hung suspended. Crabs imitated barnacle-crusted rocks that might have been other crabs. The sea floor began to drop away.

'We'll be over the temple soon. It's harder to see, because it's deeper. But I don't like to go above it on a low tide. Things happen to boats that do that. Fishing's no good there, anyway. The fish don't collect around the temple like they do the old houses. Can you see it yet?'

Vandien glanced back at her quickly. She nodded at the water impatiently. Her hands were busy on the oars, making the small paddling motions that kept them in position. Vandien looked down again. He strained his eyes. Just before the depth of the water made all blackness, he thought he saw the outline of a wall. That was all.

'Now this is what my mother said her father said. The tale is older than you might expect. She was born very late in his life, and he told it to her when he was a very old man. Because of who her father was, my mother did not take a mate until late in her years; I was born to them long after they believed her barren. They say my sister, who came after me, was the death of her. Women that old should not bear, for though they may survive it, their health is never the same. But, old as it is, here is my grandfather's tale.' Janie cleared her throat. Her voice changed; now she recited. She began, 'This happened a long time ago, Carly. I was a fine youth, then, a fine strapping youth, and the best fisher in the fleet. Back then, we cared about our village, and we still remembered how the Windsingers had sunk it. We wanted to right that wrong, and we wanted to do it on our own. None of this hiring foreign teamsters to come in and do our dirty work. None of this looking for a stranger folk to make our revenge on those who'd done us evil. None of this dragging outsiders into our quarrels. We were a proud folk, then. Proud. And I was a fine youth then, a fine strapping youth, and the best fisher in the fleet. Maybe I was the proudest of a proud lot. But back then, we didn't count that a bad thing. When Temple Ebb would come, all the younger folk would drop their fishing for a day. No matter how good the catches had been, no matter if crab were swarming up the beaches, we dropped it all and did our duty. We'd follow the tide out as it went, so as not to lose a minute of it. As soon as the water was less then neck deep in the temple, in we'd wade. And we'd begin to search. We weren't certain just what the Windsingers had lost there. But we were determined to have it.

'I'd been out to the temple at every Temple Ebb, since I was tall enough not to drown there. Others turned back, for the Windsingers did their best to stir up a drowning storm, even in that level of water. But not I. I was out in the temple, wading in that tumbled mess, searching for whatever that little Windsinger child had lost there. Others were content to wade about a bit, poke where they'd poked every year, and go back to shore. But not me. I lifted stones, I shifted waterlogged timbers. Waves and tides move things about with a strength beyond men, and the quake that dropped the roof in and most of the walls could have buried anything. Only a fool would expect to find the Windsingers' chest sitting on the top of the rubble. And I was no fool.