The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Megan Lindholm

hastily, as if possessed of a great impartial hunger. No one was savoring the carefully prepared dishes. They could have been eating cold congealed porridge, with each one assigned to consume a certain amount. Haftor had taken Rufus’s chair, beside Ki, and was eating in the same bizarre manner. He seemed to feel her eyes on him. He looked up at her. Fascination warred with disgust. Watching her face, he chewed rapidly and swallowed. His dark eyes were deep glacial blue.

      ‘What happened?’ Even as she spoke, Ki was aware of how inane she sounded. She felt as if she had been abruptly awakened from a deep and dream-filled sleep, to be plunged into the middle of this strange activity.

      Haftor ran his tongue around inside his mouth and decided to speak. ‘What happened, Ki, is that my aunt and cousins were disturbed by how long it took for news of Sven’s death to reach them. In their haste, they called the Rite immediately. They put someone in a position to do a lot of people a lot of harm … and she did. Some are saying from malice toward us. Some, like Lars, are pleading it was ignorance.’

      Haftor savagely forked up a piece of meat. Ki remained staring at him, chilled by the wrath of his words, cut by the coldness of his manner. He paused, the mouthful suspended on his fork.

      ‘Eat!’ he commanded her, jabbing his own loaded fork in the direction of her plate. Ki looked down. She found with surprise that someone had heaped high the plate before her. ‘The more and the faster you eat, the better. It will melt away the effects of the liquor, break all the links between us.’ Haftor looked about the table, at the people gobbling large mouthfuls of food. ‘This is parody,’ he growled. ‘Sven was a man among us, a good man. To see people at his Rite eat this way, to chase away the moment of sharing, rather than to savor it.’ He shook his head, baffled, and turned his attention back to his plate.

      Ki ate methodically, moving food as if she were forking hay. She tried to fit the pieces into her head so that they made a sensible pattern. She knew better than to try to ask questions of Haftor at this juncture.

      This was to have been a sharing, this Rite of Loosening. A dim understanding came to her. She had gone back to Sven’s death time, and they had come with her. This was their lessening of grief. She would have to answer no endless, awkward questions, speak no details best forgotten. They had seen it all, as she had, and shared it. And had she let them? She did not know. She had tried not to, that she remembered. She had tried to spare them the grim and grisly details, the scene that would reveal their Harpy godlings as carrion crows. And had she, or hadn’t she? Did they hate her because she had revealed the Harpy’s nature to them? Or were they angry because she had refused to share Sven’s moment of death with them?

      The dining dragged on interminably. There was no conversation near her, and the tone of that farther down the table made Ki glad she could not pick out the words. But Lars could hear them. She watched the apologetic way he moved his hands, the many times he bowed his head to a rebuke. Rufus reappeared. He was stonily silent as he heaped two plates high with food and stalked back to his mother’s room with them. What could have happened to Cora to make her leave her table when guests were present? Too many questions.

      Ki looked about the table. Slices of dripping fresh meat heaped on platters; colorful chopped and spiced fruits; bright vegetables in wide bowls. Sawdust and ashes in her mouth, gravel in her throat.

      Guests began to stand, to step away from the table. People were leaving in groups of twos and threes. An exhausted Lars was accepting their farewells. His face was gray. No one bade goodbye to Ki. Lars would have been grateful for a similar silence. It was a disturbed, disgruntled group of people that were leaving. Heedless of manners, Ki rested her elbows on the table and cradled her face in her hands.

      A touch on her shoulder. She looked up quickly. Haftor’s dark eyes were haunted now, an uneven flush on his face. He looked almost drunk to Ki but did not smell of wine. He looked down into the face she turned up to his. When he spoke, it seemed he formed the words with difficulty.

      ‘You did not merit the harshness of my words. I realize it now, and in a few days the others will as well. Few of them know you at all; that makes it harder. Ignorance, not malice. A will stronger than any of us, even Cora. It doesn’t undo the damage to know that, but it makes the wound throb a little less hot. If any are to be called to fault, it should be Rufus and Cora. They should not have permitted you to lead us, even with Cora as guide. They should not have been so anxious to have the Rite so soon. They should have versed you better in our customs. But I think you know how Cora is. To know they had died months ago made her all the more anxious to loose them properly as soon as she could. I’ll try not to hold it against you, Ki. But people here tonight were frightened badly and feel cheated of their Rite. Some will wish you had never returned to Harper’s Ford.’

      Ki bowed her head. This was probably as close as she would get to kind words from anyone tonight. Like a child, she wanted to shriek out to the departing guests that it was not her fault, that she didn’t mean to do it. Haftor seemed to read her thoughts, for he patted her shoulder awkwardly before he moved away from her.

      Ki remained motionless, caring little what anyone thought of her behavior now. The mutter of voices was less. She heard the door close firmly. Silence fell. Ki sat listening to it and waiting for the humming in her ears to cease as well. A log fell suddenly in the fireplace. Footsteps, and the chink of gathered crockery. Lars was stacking the plates on the table. Ki rose disspiritedly to help him.

      She picked up two plates, eyed the food remaining on them, and set them down uncertainly. She pushed her seven small cups into a cluster and gathered the ones from the next place setting. She paused, and set them down. She did not know how to do this, and she could not make her mind go logically. If only the humming would stop. She felt overwhelmed by even this simple task. She did not know how to clean up after a meal of twenty-some people. She longed to be crouched by her night fire, wiping out her single cup, polishing clean her wooden bowl with a bit of hard bread. She wanted to be alone again with her grief.

      Her head began to throb with a dull pounding. Her eyes were sandy and dry, her mouth thick. Weariness fell on her like a dark, heavy blanket. She raised her cold hands to her hot face. Footsteps came behind her.

      ‘If you don’t mind, Lars, I shall go to my wagon and sleep. Leave the mess. I’ll help you clear it in the morning.’

      ‘I think we must have words first, you and I, about what you did here tonight.’

      Ki jerked about to face Rufus. His voice had been cold, his face was stern. But even he recoiled from the emptiness in Ki’s eyes. He composed himself quickly. ‘It’s a little late for remorse, Ki. You did your damage very completely.’

      Ki stood looking into his short, wide face. He had his mother’s dark hair. Only his eyes had a look like Sven’s, but Sven’s had never been so cold. Ki did not try to speak. To this man she could never explain anything.

      ‘Let her go, Rufus. Can’t you see she’s completely exhausted? Your words had better wait for tomorrow when your head is cooler and Mother is better. This night has rattled our family to the core. Let’s not complete it with a rift.’ As Rufus glared at his youngest brother’s impertience, Lars turned to Ki.

      ‘Go to bed. Not in your wagon, like a stranger, but under our roof, as is right. There is a lot of healing for all of us to do. Let us begin it tonight.’

      Ki went as if reprieved, forgetting even to take a candle. In the darkness of the room, she let her body drop onto the bed. She willed herself to the blackness of sleep. But when it came, it plunged her back into the deep, warm waters. The same images drifted past her slowly, and the humming became the far-off whistle of an endlessly hunting Harpy.

      Ki’s fingers tucked up the last strands of hair into the mourner’s knots she still wore. She wondered if Vandien was already asleep beneath the wagon, rolled up in her shagdeer cover. The echo of his words still disturbed her. She shook her head slowly, feeling her knotted hair brush against the back of her neck. She thought she had put those memories aside, buried them deep. Sven’s family and its customs were no longer any concern of hers. The damage she had done them had been inadvertent. She had never meant them harm, but had only wanted to shelter