The Windsingers by Megan Lindholm Page A

contradiction, a room of austere opulence. The dull black walls were as plain as a prison's, the air cool enough to raise the fine hair on Ki's body, but the low bedstead in one corner was strewn with the thickest shag deer hides that she had ever beheld of the peculiar brown-violet shade that commanded the highest prices. Smoothly rolled at the foot of the bed were blankets such as the Kerugi wove from the wool of their mountain sheep, but even the tiny fingers of the Kerugi could not have fashioned such a fine weave. In another corner was a wooden table, and a single backless stool of stark design. She did not recognize the wood, but it glowed mellowly, and she coveted the tall crystal flagon filled with lavender liquid that centered the table.
    'Ah,' Dresh breathed out, well satisfied. 'I haven't lost the touch, Ki. Not a bit. We are not only in her realm, but in her very bedchamber. This room speaks of Rebeke, if ever a room could, with her stark self-denial one moment, and her lascivious self-indulgence the next.'
    'Rebeke?'
    'The Windsinger that stole my parts. A power-hungry witch if ever there was one.'
    But as Dresh spoke, a double image rippled before her eyes. The room as he saw it for her remained, but she saw more - like seeing the pebbly bottom of a pool through one's own reflection. Ki saw a woman. She was tall, and her height seemed the greater for the sweeping mantle of pale green that fell from her wide shoulders to the soles of her bare feet. White anemones peeped from the grasses about her feet, and the sun glanced off the brightness of her flowing hair. 'Rebeke,' the wind whispered as it rustled through the grass and nodding flowers. But this was a woman, no Windsinger she, and as Human as Ki herself. Even as Ki puzzled, the image retreated and faded, until there was only the empty room before her eyes. Dresh was still speaking. Ki wondered if he had intended to share the vision with her.
    '... and therefore the most dangerous of them all. For her self-discipline is such that there is no act she could not force herself to, if she felt it behooved her. No act at all, no matter what pain or self-destruction it involved. I could wish it had been another that had stolen my boxes. But I doubt that any could have done it, except her.'
    'Where are your boxes?' Ki demanded. Her spine ached with tension, and with the unaccustomed burden of carrying about a head mounted on a block of stone. She did not relish standing about in the bedchamber of Dresh's enemy. Might she not return at any moment? The sooner Ki reclaimed her cargo and Dresh got them out of here, the better. She didn't wish to indulge his chatter any longer.
    'Patience!' Dresh calmly rebuked her. 'Did you suppose the Windsingers would allow us to enter, reclaim my boxes, and leave? They will be guarded. Or did you suppose that I am such a trifle as to be left about in bits? Did you think to find me stashed under the bed? No, this shall be a delicate game to play. The move is now ours. In this very lack of vigilance, I smell a keener watch than I had supposed. Do we teeter on the edge of a trap? Let us consider that.' But Ki's mind was elsewhere.
    'The rapier!' She shifted Dresh's head into the crook of one arm, with an alarming sway in vision resulting. Futilely she felt at her belt, her stomach sinking with the knowledge that the sheath would not be there. Embarrassment and despair dropped her voice to a whisper. 'I've been a great fool, Dresh. I've left the rapier behind.'
    'And your teapot and Vanilly as well!' Dresh added in mock alarm.
    'Of what use would they be to us?' Ki growled in annoyance at his frippery. 'I tell you that we are unarmed.'
    'And unlegged as well!' snorted Dresh. A teapot and your Vanilly would be at least as useful as your rapier. What do you imagine, that we shall sweep into a room of Windsingers, rapier chopping, to reclaim my body over their fallen and bloody ones? What a child! Do I look like the sort of savage that would