The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Megan Lindholm
about. Holland’s head was bowed, tears streaming from beneath her closed lashes. Kurt and Edward remained on the edge of the crowd, baffled by the discord among their elders, afraid to go to either father or mother. Lydia would not meet Ki’s eyes. Lars had turned his face from the scene. Many looked at her with eyes that focused all blame upon her. Cora looked at Ki, love and hurt and anger blended in a glance that pierced Ki like a sword. Worst of all, perhaps, was Rufus, who met her gaze squarely with empathy. Rufus stiffened himself in her sight and spoke, deliberately breaking Nils’s spell.
‘Fetch a shovel for me, Ki. And bring one for yourself. Let us together bury the bull that would have sired calves for us, sturdy ones that would not die in the spring of the shudders, but would have grown to hearty cows that give birth easily and live many a year. Help me bury my dreams, Ki. As deeply as you buried yours.’
‘Rufus has barred himself from our ceremonies! He is cast out among us, to be one of us only by his Human nature, never again to enlarge his spirits with his Harpy brethren.’
Ki wondered if anyone else heard the frantic note in the old man’s voice. The elocutionary tones, his imperial stance among them, the hands that pointed accusingly and gestured commandingly; it was not enough to completely overcome the emotion of Rufus’s simple words. A few began to drift away from the scene. Ki could feel them slipping out of control, avoiding the unpleasantness, but not swayed to the old man’s words.
‘In the names of your dead!’ The people stopped moving, turned to Nils again. His eyes were starting from his head. His raised hands trembled. All were silent. Nils’s eyes worked steadily around the circle, pausing on each face. Some shifted uncomfortably as they met that gaze. Holland looked at him with hungry eyes. Marna bowed her head before it. Haftor returned it boldly, defiantly. The old man continued to extend his scrutiny of the crowd, avoiding only Rufus and Ki. He finished by looking deeply into Cora’s eyes. She seemed to lose flesh and shrink in on herself as he looked. ‘I have walked through your dreams and found you wanting. The poison in you has worked deeper than I feared. If you had a hand that was diseased with rot, would not you cut it from your body? Is not the blighted plant pulled from the field and burned, lest it spread its disease? Do you not remove the afflicted animal from the pens, to be killed and burned lest you lose your whole flock? So must I do now. And those of you who are sound and well must be brave, to endure the knife that cuts away the oozing limb, the brand that cauterizes the festering wound.’ Nils’s eyes stabbed out.
‘Lydia!’ he accused. She started, gave a half sob. Her thin hands rose to the front of her smock, clung there like tiny animals seeking refuge. ‘Leave our circle. Your pride and selfish independence have doomed you. Be alone, then! So, your dreams have told me, is your wish. Take no more counsel from your parents. They are lost to you. Go to your home and think on that!’
Dazed and shaken, Lydia stumbled away from the group. Ki glared at Nils. Like a wolf, he had cut out the weakest of the herd first. Lydia’s staggering feet stumbled over the tufts of meadow grass. Her hands clung to her throat.
‘Haftor!’ Marna gasped as her brother raised his head. He gave her shoulder a quick and gentle squeeze, an odd half-smile on his face. Nils scowled. ‘You grin, do you? You smirk at the poison that sours your soul? Of small importance to you is your sister’s pain at this sundering! You are little better than an animal in your desire to follow only your own will. Go!’
Haftor gently freed himself from Marna’s hand that clung to his arm. He set her hand gently aside from him. Head up, he strode from the group to catch up with Lydia and gravely take her arm. Her head fell onto his shoulder, and he took the weight of her body. He did not look back.
‘Kurt!’
Cora gave a gasp of agony. Holland cried aloud. But the boy stood straight and defiant, as if to mime Haftor’s example. Rufus turned slow, amazed eyes to his boy who suddenly stood as a man.
‘You are young, boy!’ Nils scoffed at his brave show. ‘No one would suspect it from your face, but I have seen the evil in your dreams. You follow your father. You love your flocks and herds as he does, evilly, as if they were your children instead of mere beasts. When you looked on the dead bull, the flames of your anger flared and blossomed. You love your father and hate the Harpies. Go.’
Bravely, Kurt stepped away from the group. He took a hand of paces. Then his squared shoulders began to tremble. Rufus, his hands red with the blood of his bull, looked as if his heart were breaking for his child. Kurt turned. Tears had begun a shining path down his face.
‘I am sorry, Mother. But only for how it pains you.’ He spoke softly, but his voice carried. Rufus stepped past the carcass of the bull, crossed to his son. His voice carried too. ‘Come, son. Today we shall bury our dreams with a shovel, you and I.’
Holland crumpled sobbing to the earth. But she did not follow. Small Edward clung to her, afraid. Cora’s mouth opened. She croaked once, but it was no word she made. Old hands trembling, she reached out to the departing men. She took a tottering step. Nils seized both her outstretched hands.
‘Do not be weak now, Cora. The Harpies wish you to rejoin them. Have not they already come of their own will to take a tribute from your holdings? Their hidden ears hear our voiceless cries, our distress at separation. Purify your mind. Let go of that which holds you back. Open your mind to me, that I may lance that boil of poison you hide.’
No one moved. Nils stared deep into the tortured woman’s eyes. She stared back at him, a bird gazing at a snake. Panic was on her face. All the hair on Ki’s body prickled up. She felt the danger swirl about her, begin to coalesce. No! she cried wordlessly and, knowing not how she did it, joined her strength to Cora’s. They stood together before the black door that Nils sought to open. Ki felt his eyes bore into her own; unseen hands plucked at her will. The buzzing in her ears drowned out all sound. Cora’s will began to slip away, to melt like fog in the sun. From deep in Ki’s throat rose an animal sound. Her hands hooked into claws. Ki stepped forward swiftly, silently.
Suddenly Cora was gone. Her will had disappeared and taken with it the black door she guarded. Ki recoiled, as stunned as if she had walked into a solid wall. She opened her eyes, surprised to realize that she had closed them, to find that she had not moved at all. Cora was a crumpled heap at Nils’s feet. Casually, he let go of her hands, let them fall as if they were pieces of wood.
‘The poison runs too deep in her,’ he intoned. ‘She will hide in death before she lets it go. Cora is set apart from us.’
Nils walked away. The crowd swayed uncertainly, then flowed after him, milling a moment before they parted to go around Cora’s body. Ki found herself on her knees beside Cora. She wanted to kill Nils, but found she could spare no time for it right now. Cora’s lips were purpling; they puffed in and out with every breath. Ki took one of the cold wrinkled hands. She held it to her cheek. The fingers bent stiffly against her face. Cora was gone, not here. Ki screamed soundlessly, wordlessly, and dove in after her.
She knew not what she did, nor how she did it. A terrible presentiment told her where to seek for Cora. She was behind the last door, the black door at the end of the corridor in Ki’s mind. Cora had found at last the despoiled aerie, the dead Harpies. Ki seized her, dragged her away.
It was the deep, warm waters again that Ki swam through. She towed Cora, who did not care to come, who dangled from her hands like a stillborn kitten. Ki fought their way up, past the ugly swirling images, past the dead Harpies that repeated themselves in endless postures, each more ungainly than the last. Ki pushed aside Sven’s ravaged body, shouldered away the ruined, crumpled Harpy at the base of the cliff. The wreckage of her children bobbled past her, eyes empty over bloody cheek holes. Ki floundered on. But the water was deep and endless. There was no surface to swim to, no exit that Ki could find.
Someone pinched her savagely, slapped her a blow that rocked her head. Ki cried out in anger and pain. She sprang up at Lars. A rough shove sent her sprawling onto the still wet grass. Lars gathered up his mother’s faintly stirring body.
‘Sometimes only pain can help you come back,’ he said briefly. He staggered to his feet, Cora drooping from his arms. Ki looked about