The Windsingers (23 page)

Jagged black walls cupped the orange sky of the dying sun. As much of the temple had fallen within the walls as outside them; huge stones nosed up from the swirling waters. The voice of the water was amplified here as the sea breathed in and out through the temple door. Vandien felt it tug at him with each passage. The temple stretched before him, immense and sullen, glory fallen on hard times. Bas-relief figures had paced those walls once, but most of their heads had crumpled away with the upper walls. Their gilt adornment had peeled and fled, remaining only as traces in the corner of a mouth, or an unshed tear at the angle of an eye. No barnacle or sea plant had ventured within the temple. The retreating waves left the black walls bare. The tumbled stones could have hidden a thousand chests from a hundred searchers. A fool's errand.

Feeling with his toes, Vandien edged up four steps. Pushing his foot forward, he found a flat floor beneath him. The water reached only to the bottom of his ribs. Either he was at the top of the steps or on a small landing. His motionless team was invisible under the water. He had ceased to wonder if they needed air. Those big feet would paddle them up to the surface if they wanted a breath. For now, the less bother they were to him, the better.

He slipped the coil of rope from his shoulders and stooped to knot one end of it to the center ring of the harness. The skeel had settled. He intended to explore the temple, and he did not wish to have the reins fouled on hidden stones. The skeel remained still as he stepped away from them. Slowly he paid out the grey line as he clambered and sloshed to the southwest corner of the temple. It had nothing to recommend it except Janie's story; one stone-jumbled corner of the temple looked much like the other to Vandien. The water eased in and out of the temple, but the level continued to gradually fall. The submerged floor of the temple was littered with pieces of stone ranging in size from the ones that barked his shins to the ones he had to clamber over. He went slowly, testing his footing. If there were steps up into the temple, then Janie's tale of a chamber below was probably true and he had no wish to suddenly plunge down into it. But the stone underfoot was as sound as the stubborn walls.

The light on the water was wrong. He could see nothing through it. Everything within the walls of the temple shone with the same wet blackness. Time leaked away as he moved slowly through the temple, prodding the floor with his toes, and occasionally stooping beneath the cold water to try his fingers against objects he encountered. He found many rocks, some more or less rectangular in shape and feeling, to his shod feet and chilled hands, much like metal chests. Three times he raised such objects, only to find a square rock as his reward. How many times had this temple been searched since the days of Janie's grandfather? How many times had stones been raised and dropped? Whatever the old man had found here could have been buried even deeper by the searchers that followed. In the corners of the temple, sand and smoothed pebbles had been heaped by the endless dance of the waves. The chest could be buried there, the metal gnawed away by the salt water, and whatever treasure it held, scattered. It was a hopeless task. And the light was failing.

The water was only waist deep now. Vandien climbed out of it for a moment, and sat on a pile of leaning stones jutting up from the water. Their hard cold surface was no comfort to his chilled body. The skin of his hands and fingers stood up in tender ridges. Calluses made harder yellowed patches on his hands. Within the sodden boots, his feet were tender and sore. The constant immersion had softened his skin until the least abrasion felt like a how. He could not count how many times his toes had rapped against immovable stones beneath the surface. The weight of his woolen clothes sagged on him. Vandien's spirit, shored up all day by black humor, sank into the depths of the cold water.

A voice rose in a paean of loneliness. Higher than bird song, purer than the wind's whistling, it soared into the greying sky and hung there. The note stretched, breathlessly, impossible, filling all the sky with sound. It called forth the stars that suddenly shone there. Night cupped the world beneath its hand. The temple walls Were a starless blackness against the speckled sky. Then the voice fell suddenly, sliding down the scale, swirling music through the night sky. The wind began to rise. Higher, the voice now went, higher, and the winds followed it, rushing up to match its pristine flight. Then Killian let her voice fall again and the winds dashed down with the weight of dropped stones.

The water around Vandien boiled, tipped with white in the darkness. The line to his team grew taut in his hand. It slid through his water-wrinkled fingers. He tightened his grip but the rope burned through his palms. He rose, feet braced, both hands gripping the line that was, despite all his efforts, ripping through his fingers. Then, like a breaking axle jolt, the knot at the end of the line caught behind his fists. He was jerked from his pile of rocks, dragged floundering through the water. His body caught between two upthrusting rocks. Vandien dragged himself to his feet, fighting the line, and braced himself against the two stones. The line tightened in his grip, seeming to stretch with the tension. His hands burned, his shoulder gave a creak of protest. Vandien's teeth were bared and he would not loosen his hold. Let the rope break, or his hands be jerked loose from his body, but no one would say he had let go.

As suddenly as the line had pulled, it went slack. He fell backwards in the water, catching himself before he went under again. Black and silver shone the watery temple in the starlight. The voice sang on.

Wind blew his soaked hair from his face. Vandien struggled through the choppy waters within the temple. Spume flew up whenever the water dashed against a rock. The salt stung his eyes, leaked into his tightly closed mouth. His scar shrank and pulled at his face. The old pain of it began to eat into his flesh and send spasms of agony into the bones of his skull. And still the Windsinger sang, never pausing even for a breath, rising impossibly high and raining down in streamers of pure sound. It whipped the wind to frenzy, and the wind battered the waves to froth. The cold came.

This was no chill of autumn, but the full slash of winter's claws, brought down from the moon's cold heart. Vandien shuddered before that attack. He was blinded by the salt spray flung into his face. The wind buffeted him, filling his ears with a roaring that could not drown out the silver notes of that distant singer. Vandien leaned on a rock, sucking in air between clenched teeth.

'Vandien!'

A woman's voice called his name through the howl of wind and hymn of Windsinger. More than that he could not tell. Hope surged up in him as rapidly as it had fallen. He squinted his eyes through the dark and storm.

'Ki! Over here! Ki!' He stood up on his rock, waving his hands, reckless of his balance. 'My damn team's bolted, but I've got a line on them. They're somewhere in this mess.' He leaped down from the rock without waiting for her reply, and began winding up the line. It was a struggle to follow its twining course between the rocks in the darkness, but he'd be damned if he'd let her see just how out of control the situation was.

Wood scraped against stone. A dark lantern was partially unshielded; its yellow light guttered brightly in the darkness. Janie sat on a crude driftwood raft, the lantern firmly fastened to its center. Her drenched clothes showed that she had pushed the raft out to the temple through the ebbing tides. She rested on it now, one hand hooked on an outcropping of rock. Her eyes were stony as the walls of the temple, and as cold. Her fair hair was a colorless flame blowing about her face. The lantern illuminated little besides her. She shouted to be heard.

'I thought you deserved at least an audience of one, for your sincerity.' She paused. 'The others are too well into their drinking and singing, you know. Killian has stirred up too much of a storm to make it entertaining to watch you. Only a handful turned out last year to watch the teamster. Perhaps in a few more years teamster will be an honorary title given to whatever minstrel or clown they can find to entertain on festival night.' She stared down at his face. His curls had given up their spring and lay dank against his skull and neck. Chill reddened his face except for the scar like a white brand. His clothes hung sopping from his narrow frame. His eyes were dark pits, his mouth a flat line.

'In truth, I had forgotten to expect an audience,' he said.

'Yet you sounded glad when first you answered my call. I thought for a moment that you had found the chest.'

'I thought you were someone else. A friend of mine who had said she would try to come and help me with this task.'

'Well, I don't suppose you would name me as your friend, but I have come to help you.'

'Janie. That isn't what I meant.'

'Explain later.' She cut him off roughly. 'The singer's in full voice now, and we haven't much time until the tide turns. Hard to believe that's little Killian up there, isn't it? Who would have suspected lungs like that in her dainty form?'

'There are many shades to the word friend, Janie.'

'And none of the colors suit me. Stow it, teamster. We've work to do here. Have you found any sign of the chest?'

'None!' The wind snatched his reply away, but she read his face. 'Let me get my team in hand again,' he roared to her, and she nodded.

She sat cross-legged on the bobbing raft, watching him wind up his rope as he followed its zigzag course through the temple. Twice he had to duck under dark and heaving water to unhook the line from jagged projections. He finally reached the knot that attached it to the ring. He nearly stepped on the team huddled in a corner of the temple, not far from where he had entered.

'Now what?' he demanded of Janie. It was a comfort to roar out words at someone. She would hear him over the wind and slam of waves. It was a small vent for his frustration.

She shrugged. 'Pull some rocks over!' she yelled back.

'Start in my grandfather's corner!'

'Why not? Giddap, team.' Vandien stooped under the water and gave a coiling tail a tweak. The team sidled off and he herded them to the southwest corner. 'Pick a rock!' he invited jovially.

Janie used both hands to push the hair from her face. The salt water borne on the wind had soaked it already. Tendrils clung to her forehead and cheeks. 'That one!' She pointed to the tallest, a narrow jagged thing like a crooked finger pointing at the sky.

'Fine!' He kept a grip on the rope near the ring. The free end of the line he tossed to Janie. 'I'm the teamster,' he reminded her. 'You're the fisherwoman, and the world looks to the seafolk for sturdy knots. Make it fast to the rock you picked, and let's see what we can turn up.'

His twisted grin was not to be refused. A wry smile lit her usually sullen face and she slipped willingly from the crude raft into the chill waters. Vandien watched her settle the line in loops around the stone, throwing the line into a knot as easily as he told stories on his storystring. She threw up her hands to show she was finished and waded clear of the rock.

Vandien stepped toward the team and stooped and felt for tails. But before he found one, the rope snapped taut, stinging his hip as it burned past him. His movement had been enough to spook the team. He dodged back from the thrumming fine and threw up a forearm to shield his face. The silver grey line shimmered with the intensity of the pull. But the stone did not budge. The wind whistled past them as Killian's voice rose and fell. The cold water boiled around them as the skeel maintained a steady pull. But the stone was adamant.

'Let's try a different one!' Vandien suggested loudly.

Janie nodded with a grimace. She was plainly unimpressed with his efforts. But Vandien would not fault his beasts. The humming line attested to the steadiness of their pull. He doubted that mules or horses could do better, given these circumstances. He could not even picture Ki's great grey horses standing among these rocks; they would have no room to maneuver the bulk that made up their pull. He stepped toward his skeel, intending to prod them to stillness so Janie could unfasten her knots. Churning water told of the skeel's agitation at his approach. Before he could tap them down, he heard Janie's scream of warning.

The stone was coming. Silently it fell like a bludgeoned giant. Vandien gave a hoarse cry and tried to scramble out of its path. His frantic efforts were swallowed by the clinging sea. The water cradled him as he fell backwards. The line never went slack. The scrabbling team kept it taut as they surged away from the falling stone. Vandien saw the line pass between two standing stones before the black water closed over his head. A wall of water washed over him and pressed him down.

A hundred years later he came up out of the darkness. A searing cold wind was a blessing on his aching face as he spat and coughed and snorted. He could hear Janie screaming his name, but he had no breath to answer her. Water poured down his face from his sodden cap and hair, flooding his nose and mouth with water when he tried to suck in air. It was pitch black now, night, all trace of evening gone in the moment he had spent under the water.

His eyes found Janie's lantern first, a tossing bit of yellow light in the blackness. She crouched over it, unharmed. His team had vanished. The tall stone they had pulled down lay where he had last seen them, partially jutting from the water. He could see one loop of the rope still knotted about it.

'Janie!' he roared, and she heard him at last. The lantern light caught the wildness of her eyes as she turned to him. She jumped from her raft into the water and waded toward him. One hand, hooked into a log of the raft, towed it along behind her.