The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Megan Lindholm
strength from the image as she took a chair opposite Cora at the table.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Cora asked politely. Her face was still soft with sleep. She took another long sip of the soup.
‘No,’ Ki answered bluntly. She wished an end to courteous words that said nothing. Like a Harpy, she wished to rip to the meat of her discontent. But Cora seemed not to have heard her tone.
‘Nor I. The house was thick with dreams. They should have been pleasant ones, as Nils instructed us. Yet, a dark current seemed to flow through the night and pulled all my dreams and thoughts into its murky waters. I am uneasy. My mind tells me that there is an important matter that I have not attended to, a need I have overlooked. But I can call to mind no detail that I have not seen to. It makes me feel old, so old.’
‘Perhaps I can help you bring it to mind,’ Ki said mercilessly. ‘It has never left my mind, all these weary days. Cora, you are close to your reconciliation. I wish to be released.’
Cora set down her mug, appearing to notice Ki at the table for the first time. ‘Close, but not finished. You remember our bargain.’
‘I do. I remember it as much as I regret it. I have spent this morning readying my wagon. I wish to leave.’
‘Ah. And where will you go?’
‘Back to my life.’ Ki watched the old woman’s face closely. It did not change. But her bird-bright eyes remained fixed on Ki’s green ones, as if probing for secrets.
‘And who will go with you?’ she encouraged.
‘NO ONE!’ Ki exploded. ‘Why must we dance and tiptoe about this? What mean all these questions? I wish to leave, Cora, to be on my road again.’
Cora was unruffled. ‘I had hoped that you might find something, or perhaps someone, to hold you here. That has not happened?’
‘No. Nothing. And no one.’ Ki did not try to hide her distaste for the subject.
The expression on the old woman’s face grew firmer. ‘Ki. You will not be pleased by what I must say. It is for your own good. I bind you here until I judge that we have been reconciled with the Harpies. There is something here for you, although you will not open your stubborn eyes and see it. It is in the work you do so well, and the way you do it. I know that you were meant to be one of us. I feel it. Sven made you my daughter, and I intend that you shall remain so. If you will only have a little patience, Ki.’
Ki rose, her face pale, her eyes terrible. The walls of the room seemed to whirl, to close in about her. She could not find breath to speak, and she felt the walls of her resistance to Cora melt like fog. The threads of her logical reasons for leaving slipped from her fingers.
‘Let her go! She is poison to you! Nay, I spoke too gently! Drive her out, stone her forth from the valley! Her soul is a dark and terrible place, full of secrets she will not bare, even in sleep! And you would waste another son upon her?’
Ki and Cora both jerked about to face Nils. This morning he walked like the old man he was. His face was as haggard, as if he had not slept at all. When he reached the table, he placed his fists on the edge of it, knuckles down. He leaned heavily on it, his accusing glance flashing from Ki to Cora and back again.
‘She has no wish to be one of you! She left the Kishi fruit untouched on the table, scorning our gift of togetherness! But she had taken of the liquor of the Rite of Loosening, so she could not close her mind to me entirely. It was a sinister place, of foul deeds and fouler ambitions. Things too hideous for me to think of, she has done! And her poison has spread among you. Your own sons I could not reach, Cora! Few among your family came willingly to my healing of dreams. Holland came eagerly, like a hurt child seeking to be comforted. Lydia fought like a wild thing, slipping away from me even as I thought I had her. The dark man and his sinister …’
‘Haftor and Marna,’ murmured Cora.
‘Marna came, but without joy, like a beast to harness. Haftor seized his dreams from my control and twisted them, seeking every chance to turn them inside out and examine the ugly seams. He is a strong, wild spirit, Cora. He remembers things I thought we had cleansed him of, things best forgotten. He is another one best put aside from your household.’
Cora’s hand went to her mouth, shaking her head, her eyes stricken.
‘Do not refuse me, Cora! You summoned me here, did you not, to put things to rights? And even you are not unscathed! Joined as you were to this corrupt creature during that travesty of a rite, you have taken the most of her dark spirits! You too, Cora, were closed to me. You know you were! You stood before a dark place in your mind, a place Ki had put there, and you denied me entrance, even as you would not go in yourself!’
Cora might have replied to his words, Ki might have let herself go and struck him, but from outside the house came the sounds of Rufus’s hoarse yells. The words were unintelligible, but the tone of them made Ki and Cora leap up. Ki raced to the door and flung it open. Cora came behind her, Nils on her heels.
From all directions, people were coming – from the barns and cottages, from the fields, all hurrying toward the far corner of the pasture. Ki set off at a run. Holland set down a bucket of milk and a basket of eggs to scuttle from the barn yard and through the pasture. Cora moved faster than her old legs wanted to. Nils hurried after her.
Ki pushed her way through a cluster of people to where Rufus stood red-faced and angry. At his feet was a blood-spattered heap of bones, hide, and tattered meat.
‘Harpies!’ he was roaring, over and over. Cora reached his elbow. ‘A decade of breeding went into that bull! Now look at him! Damn them! Damn them!’ A wild pulse leaped and hammered on his left temple. His fists were clenched at his sides, his dark hair pulled wild and unruly from his hair binding. His chest heaved.
Holland stared at him in horror, going even whiter at his blasphemy. Ki was silent, in her eyes a green reflection of Rufus’s anger and hatred. Their eyes met across the carcass. A jolt of understanding passed between them.
Cora slapped him. Her old hand whipped across his cheek and mouth, making a loud popping sound in the astonished silence. Lars, coming across the field, winced at the sound, but Nils was nodding his head, looking as if he ached to deliver the same blow to Ki’s savage face.
It did not move Rufus. It did not budge his head on its neck of standing muscles and veins. The white handprint stood out on his impassioned face. A little blood edged out of his mouth where his lips had been cut against his teeth. Rufus shook his head slowly at her. Anger still reigned in his eyes, but his voice was cold.
‘Do you think you can make me sorry for my words, Mother?’ He nudged the heaped carcass at his feet. He voiced aloud the comparison that was in everyone’s mind. ‘They left more of Sven and the babies than they did of my bull!’ Again that brief eye-to-eye joining of Rufus and Ki. Cora seized his arm, shook it, but his body remained immobile. More folk were coming – young Kurt, with smaller Edward galloping behind him like a colt; Lydia, coming with flour on her hands up to her elbows, dust on her smock where she had wiped her hands – the whole family.
‘You have brought this upon yourselves!’ Nils’s voice rang out over them. Shorter he was than all of them, but he seemed to stand above them as he lectured them all in a patriarchal tone.
‘Your blasphemy has severed you from your Harpies, leaving them hungering for the tribute you were unfit to bring! Last night they smelled the stench of your evil thoughts, the depraved dreams you dreamed, when you should have dreamed of sharing and gratitude for the Harpies. Whence comes your anger, Rufus? Is it not a false pride? You would have kept back the best bull for yourself, when it was meet that he be offered to the Harpies! You have no right to anger. They have but claimed their just due! Look within your hearts and be ashamed! You are full of selfishness, forgetful of your dead and your duties to your ancestors and the Harpies. You are far, far from the reconciliation you seek. Your thoughts are evil within you, your minds infected with the poison Ki has spread here! Yes, Ki, I name you by name. Look about you! Do you rejoice in the wickedness