Megan Lindholm - Windsinger 02 by The Windsingers

Author:The Windsingers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-16T14:28:53+00:00

Vandien was silent. Janie seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He didn’t. If she was going to talk, he would let her. He sensed that she would welcome an excuse not to talk. No matter what he said, that angry face would darken and put all his words in the worst possible light. He would not ask her why she had brought him out here. He just met her grey eyes solemnly and waited.

But not even silence could placate her. Having decided to speak, the words boiled out of her, merciless and scalding. ‘You asked a question last night, teamster. It was never answered. Instead, you listened to the village scoff at me. When they were through, you didn’t bother to seek for any other answers. What did they tell you after I left? That my mother was a drunk, like her parents before her? That she would say anything, do anything for a drink? Well, teamster, that’s true. But two things she left to me: Rainlady, who belonged to my father before the sea took him, and a story. The story she never told for a drink.

The only story she saved for me.’

She paused. Her color was high, her cheeks bright with more than wind’s kiss. To agree with her would be just as bad as to contradict her. So Vandien waited.

‘My grandfather told it to her,’ she went on a bit more calmly. ‘He was a very old man, and some said he was wandering in his mind when he told it. Others said he would never be sober again. So they didn’t bother to listen, except for my mother. That’s why they all know of the tale, without knowing the details. I have never told it to anyone. Let them live in ignorance. I won’t stand up and let them call me a fool over what I cannot prove. That was what I always said to myself. That is how I’d keep it until I die, except for…’ Janie sighed. She suddenly broke the thread of her talk.

‘There is one person in the village you can believe. Srolan. She’s old and crazy, but not so crazy that she doesn’t know the truth. I’ve never known her to break faith with anyone. She…’ Janie suddenly looked at Vandien, really looked at him. In her eyes he saw sympathy and understanding beyond her years, the kind that is only taught by cruelty endured. ‘She told me why you came to do this thing. No one else knows, but Srolan and I. The village council knows of the money she offered. It doesn’t worry them, for they don’t expect to pay it. But Srolan told me why you truly came; to have the scar lifted from your face.

She said that, if you are a man that can see she is sincere when she offers to do what most would deem impossible, if you can look at her and are wise enough to see that she would not offer what she cannot deliver, then you are a man that will hear my tale and know the truth of it.

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