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

body spread, beside Vandien. She pressed her face into the cold snow and the solid rock. She licked the dampness of melting snow flavored with her blood. The cold, thin air flowed into her lungs delightfully. For a long time, it was enough to cling and breathe and wet her mouth with snow.

      ‘Ki!’ It was a shout by intention, but a whisper by effect. She turned her face to Vandien wearily. Whatever it was, she wished he would keep it to himself. She did not want to speak or think or struggle anymore. Let her cling here until her strength gave out. After that, at least it would be quick.

      ‘Watch me!’ She did, with weary eyes that only widened a little as she saw him risk his hold by trying to scramble upward. He thrust his free hand back into the vertical black wall just above the snow and rock. It gripped him. He hung by its sucking grip as he raised his other hand and thrust it in beside the first one. He braced his feet lightly against the cliff face. Ki was only mildly intrigued by his performance until he drew out one bare hand and stuck it in as far away as his outstretched arm would reach. Then he drew out his second hand, plunging it in close to the first one. His body scraped against snow and rock as he dragged it after his hands.

      ‘Come on!’ She read from his lips the words his mouth roared. Then he was doing it again – draw out a hand, stretch the arm, thrust in the hand, follow with the second hand, scrape the body along. He did not look back.

      Ki watched her hand idly as it clawed up the rock and snow and crept into the dark grip of the black stuff. She shivered as she felt her hand taken in its fingerless grasp. She swung for an instant, trusting to that black suction. Her shoulder cracked ominously as she thrust her second hand into the black wall. Her toes scrabbled against rock.

      Pull out the first hand. Dangle and reach for another hold. Her second hand was beginning to slip free as she thrust in the first one again. It was a more precarious way of moving than it had appeared. The effort of scraping her body across the rock face dragged at her hands, trying to pull them free of her gripless black hold. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. No air to breathe with, her hands stretched high. Shoulder joints threatened and warned. Ki remembered sickly how the one shoulder had once pulled free of her body’s command. Please, she begged her body. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. Gradually the blackness became more solid. It held her hands more firmly, and for a few moments that was a comfort, but then it became more difficult to thrust the venturing hand in, harder to make the black relinquish the trailing hand. When her hands were in the black, they were compressed tightly, emerging from it white, the blood forced out of them. Ki folded her mouth tight and went on stoically. Her hands were cold, colder than her body that pressed and scraped across hard rock and snow. Her fingers were numb, and the black was becoming so solid that she had to batter her hand against it before it would sink in at all. The trailing hand had to be jerked free with a snapping movement. Ki felt tiny rippings in her shoulders, in the muscles of elbows and wrists, tiny snappings and poppings. Puppet strings breaking.

      She jerked a hand free, reached, slammed it against the solid wall. She drew it back farther, smashed her fist against it. It would not give. She dangled by one hand, and the hand was beginning to send her sharp messages of pain as the black crushed it. Ki squeezed her eyes shut, made a final driving blow against the wall.

      ‘It doesn’t work with rock.’ Vandien seized her knotted fist, heaved at it. She heard his body scrape and slide over snow. She could hear suddenly, she could breathe, and when she opened her eyes and looked, she saw that she had reached the end of the black wall and had, indeed, been trying to force her fist into solid rock. She jerked her screaming hand free of the black wall, entrusting her weight unthinkingly to Vandien’s grip on her wrist and forearm. He grunted as he took her weight, then, with a heave, she found the edge of the world was under her armpits. She scrambled frantically, her boots treading air, and with another heave she was up. Panic sent her body scooting further along the flat trail top. She didn’t even try to rise but slithered along. Vandien didn’t mock her. He was too busy copying her.

      They stopped to lie close together in the snow, bodies touching at shoulders and hips, heads cushioned on their arms. Ki listened to Vandien pant. Or was it her own hoarse breathing? The air came easily, the snow was cold to rest in; she was tired, and she did not wish to lift her head, but she knew she could if she tried. She was alive. She raised her head enough to gulp in a mouthful of snow. Her teeth hurt as it melted in her mouth, but she took another. She rolled her head over to one side to look into Vandien’s face.

      She studied the face so close to her own. He watched her from under half-closed lashes. What she could see of his face was drained of blood and lined with weariness. A large part of his bandage was red and wet. The snow closest to his face was melting with the red.

      ‘You look like an actor painted for a play,’ she panted. ‘White face, black beard, green and red bandage. You could be the corpse in the scene.’

      ‘Not this scene,’ Vandien grunted. They turned together to look at the solid black wall that reared up from the trail only a few steps away. Ki felt a pressure against her leg. She jerked away from it, and Sigmund, offended, snorted. Behind him, Sigurd was leisurely scratching the side of his nose against his black foreleg. They seemed mildly curious about Ki and Vandien in the snow, but not greatly interested.

      ‘My loyal beasts!’ Ki scoffed.

      ‘Smarter than you were,’ Vandien rejoined.

      They remained prostrate in the snow, breathing and resting. Ki’s body ached all over, her head throbbed, and she felt marvelous. The cool of the snow began to make itself noticed. Her hands were bare of protection, her gloves lost in that blackness. The cold pushed at her through her rent cloak. She smiled weakly at the thought of it. The Harpy of the morning seemed a lifetime away now, and of small import. She reached up wearily to pull her hood up over her head. She would have to get up soon and do something. She lay still, wondering what something she would do.

      ‘Ki!’

      She opened her eyes grudgingly. She wondered when she had closed them. The sun was far down the sky. One side of her body was cold. She pulled the covers over her more tightly and her eyes started to slide shut again. Then she realized that the covers were her own cloak and Vandien’s that he had spread to cover them both. The side of her body that shared his warmth was comfortable enough, but her feet were tingling. Time to move. She shifted.

      ‘Be still!’ Vandien hissed.

      Ki froze. His eye was dark and intent, staring from beneath his bandage that now showed a pale layer of frost over the red. His expression brooked no questions. She moved her eyes to see what he saw.

      The silver Sisters had gone gray. The black was rising, was writhing back up to them in whirling drifts and eddies, in every shade from palest gray to black. It flowed up like layers of silken webbing, veiling their beauty once more from lesser eyes. Ki took one final drink of their heartless majesty before the rising black made them again impassive stone.

      ‘They were guardians, once,’ Ki breathed.

      ‘Sssh!’ Vandien nodded slowly.

      ‘How could I fall asleep so close beside them?’

      The black on the Sisters grew darker every instant. On the trail where it had lain the wall of it was becoming lower, sinking as the black mist that formed it wafted back up to the Sisters.

      ‘We were out of their shadows,’ Vandien murmured, becoming bold enough to speak. ‘They are monstrously fair about it. Only in that one spot do they hold sway. That is why the trail, coming and going, avoids the look of their eyes, stays hidden for as long as it can. They are slow to react, I suppose. Perhaps they guarded against creatures more ponderous than we know, or perhaps they were instructed to barricade and block, not destroy. How can we know? Or maybe they did a thing that we can never comprehend at all, and the danger they present to travelers these days is coincidental. We are young on this old world, Ki.’

      ‘My wagon!’ Ki replied. She drew herself together, rose, leaving Vandien to scramble after her. The last drifts and snatches of mist were rising, flowing back into place. Ki walked unhesitating into the area they had just vacated.