Megan Lindholm - The Windsingers

As she waited for her kettle to come to a boil, she took alternate bites of sausage and bread. She stared at the rough wooden crate at her feet. Through the crack, the stones on the enamelled box winked at her seductively. She put a measure of tea in the kettle and removed it from the fire. Her thoughts were tangled as she took an earthenware mug from her camp chest. She seated herself on the chest, poured her tea, and took a tentative sip. With a shrug, she picked up her knife. In a businesslike manner, she hunched over to pry open the rest of the rough wooden crate. The enamel box came free. She was going to have to pay full price for this misadventure. At least she would satisfy her own curiosity.

The last shard of splintery yellow wood dropped away. Ki filled her lap with the enamelled box. Turning it about, she found one plain side. She decided it was the bottom and oriented the box that way. Opening it was the problem now. There were no hinges, nor any discernible catch. Possibly it was hidden in the pattern of stones. Ki moved her hands lightly over the box, feeling for loose stones. None of those either.

She set the box down on the camp chest beside her. Sipping hot tea, she pondered. Was she being wise to even try to open it? But a stubbornness came over her. She would see what was inside it; dammit, she had paid for that much in nuisance already. She returned the box to her lap and took up her knife again.

A peculiar prickling sensation began in the fingers of her right hand. The knife fell from her lax fingers. The prickling raced up her arm. Coldness overtook Ki’s heart as she watched her arm drop away from the box, to dangle from her shoulder. A poison on the stones, she realized, and was surprised at her own cool logic. She waited with dread for the numbness to spread.

But her fingers suddenly flexed and stretched of their own volition. Her hand rose to rest once more on the box. One finger settled on a red stone. Ki did not even feel the touch as it pressed gently down on it. A white stone next to the red suddenly glowed. Ki watched a finger quickly cover it. A blue stone flashed, and her thumb settled on it. The stones seemed to seize the ends of her fingers. Her arm rose, and with it, the cover of the box. Her arm set down the five-sided cover gently, and returned to unwind swiftly a linen wrapping from whatever rested on the platform that had been the base of the enamel box. Her hand tucked the linen wrapping into the empty top of the box. Her hand came back to settle gently in her lap. The tingling returned for a moment, then left it again. Ki stared at her fingers for a long breath, then gingerly flexed them. Her hand was hers again.

Ki let out a long shuddering breath. Night pressed closer, to hover blackest over the pitiful light of her small fire. She licked her dry lips, and let her eyes be drawn back to the contents of the enamel box. It was a carved head. She set it carefully on the box beside her. Leaning back, she tilted her head to admire it.

The squat pedestal of the bust was a block of porous black stone, veined with red. Ki wondered briefly at the use of such a coarse stone as the base for such a creation. For a head as lifelike as this deserved a pedestal of crystal, a mounting of gold. In both carving and coloring, it mimicked life.

What stone was this, with a glow like warm flesh? What artist had produced the grey overcast that suggested the pallor of death? Straight black hair was combed flat to the head, to show the aristocratic shape of the skull. The eyes, pale grey, were slightly open, almost sleepily, beneath fine black brows. The nose was straight and strong above a mouth sensually full. It smiled at her, lips parted to reveal small even white teeth.

‘You’ve made a fine botch of a simple job, Ki,’ it said suddenly. The head twisted about on the block as if to limber up neck muscles stiff from confinement. ‘I expected some problems, but I confess this is a catastrophe beyond my wildest imaginings. Where are you going?’

At the first words, Ki had frozen. As the head continued to speak, she had scrambled to her feet and begun to back out of the fire’s circle of light.

‘What can you do, Ki? Abandon me, your wagon and team, and flee into the woods? It wouldn’t free you of those who gave you the responsibility for my journey. It certainly wouldn’t do me any good. Although I retain some small powers in this diminished state, I would be vastly more comfortable with my own body beneath me, and my own hands at the ends of my arms. the body and hands, I might add, that you have so carelessly lost.’

Ki remained on the edge of the firelight. Every hair on her body was acrawl with dread. Yet she knew that face and voice if only she could place them. And she had to bow to the logic of his words, even in the weird circumstances in which he uttered them. Perhaps especially in those circumstances. She stared at him, unable to flee and unwilling to return.

‘Oh, come,’ he resumed condescendingly. ‘At least have some manners! I would greatly appreciate a sip of your tea. My bodily wants in this state are few, but the mouth does become dry. Surely you won’t let me, uh, sit here alone all evening.’

Ki straightened her shoulders and advanced with a bravado she did not feel. She picked up her mug. With hands that trembled only slightly, she held its rim to the head’s lips. He sipped. Ki set down her mug, and retreated to the other side of the fire.

‘That’s better,’ the head sighed. A little of the greyness seemed to leave his face. ‘But perhaps I am forgetting my manners as well. I am Dresh, lately a power of Dyal, soon to be, I hope, a power of Bitters. If, that is, you can live up to the terms of our bargain. You’ve made a fine mess of it so far. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘I realize that I was given a cargo I would not have chosen to carry, had I known its true nature!’ Ki snapped. She drowned her fear in anger. ‘And I remember your face now. You were the drunken tinker that stirred up the tavern at Dyal with your wild political cant about the Windsingers. You urged the farmers and weavers to rebel openly, to burn their crops and wool in the field before they paid tribute to the Windsingers. And when the brawl started, you left me to pay the damage!’

As Ki spoke to him, Dresh let his face slide into the tinker’s drunken scowl. His eyelids drooped, his cheeks sagged, he let his mouth dangle open. Then with a wink he straightened his features to handsomeness and grinned at her. Had the atmosphere been different, and the head atop a body, Ki might have warmed to that grin. But now it only fueled her anger.

‘Someone wants you, Dresh. Someone wants you badly enough to pay gold for wind spells. Such magic is not cheap. Whoever wants you has the wealth to buy his desires. And if he wants you all that badly, I do not think he will take kindly to my interference. You hired me as a teamster, not as a bodyguard.’

‘…to do all within my power to see that my freight reaches its destination safely.” And signed, not just with your name, but also with your status as a freeborn, and the attestation that your loyalty is only to yourself. That bit of braggadocio has bound you to me even more tightly than I could have engineered. And,’ a lifted eyebrow stemmed Ki’s outburst, ‘you may wish to consider this. You fear you have earned the enmity of certain wealthy and perhaps powerful persons who wish to do me harm. You have. The Windsingers. Themselves. Abandoning me here will not lessen their dislike of you. As you well know, they have never been overly fond of Romni. They will see your conveying of me from Dyal to here as an act of defiance, of open rebellion. So you may as well plot further with me as to how to restore myself. At least then you will be under my not inconsiderable protection.’