The Windsingers. Megan Lindholm

gave this task to me to watch me fail at it. Perhaps I have been careless, not to have seized the head with the other parts. But it was a difficult enough task to achieve what I have thus far, and beyond the skills of many. We both know Dresh well. He will not wait idly for us to come for the rest of him. Nor will he concede our possession of his body and hands. No, he will seek an opening, will expose himself with his own foolish riposte. Reduced as he is, he will fall into our hands like ripe fruit from a wind-stirred tree. We will have him, all of him, to drain of power. Then shall we summon the High Council? Shall we hand to them the prize we have won, and listen to them tell us that we should have delivered it sooner? Why, Medie? Why?’

      Medie did not smile. But the stiffness went from her body, making her taller, more graceful; her eyes looked afar and were full of the wind. Long moments drifted by before she spoke. A light breeze sprang up from nowhere and stirred her robes lovingly.

      ‘Once,’ she began softly, in a distracted voice, ‘once there was a young apprentice. We tested her. Set alone on the peak of a frozen mountain, she stood and sang. She sang first to lull the cold wind that lived there, to lay to rest its thousand icy tongues. She sang it to sleep, as no other had been able to do. Not content with that, she sang again, a calling song, to lure a breeze out of the far south. Long she sang, long beyond the patience or endurance of many to sing. But at last her wind came, warm still with the breath of flowers, to melt the snow from the mountaintop and send the waters down to where the peasants toiled in fields too dry to bear. I thought to myself then, her way is not the way of the High Council, and her power shall never be theirs.’

      Rebeke glowed. There was a tremble to her mouth and a bare sheen of wetness to her eyes. ‘Long have I watched you, Medie, trying to feel if you would be my ally in this undertaking. Is it possible the vigil has been two-sided?’

      Medie smiled. ‘I felt your eyes upon me. I have not been blind to how you have been treated. In the beginning of your singership over Dowl Valley, you labored long. You set your voice to tasks others deemed required too much effort for the results shown. You showered your peasants with the most favorable of weather, bringing them rain when their lands thirsted, spreading the pollen of their crops with the gentleness of summer’s breath, holding at bay the storms that would have battered ripening grain. The hail clouds you sent fleeing from their horizons. The valley blossomed under your care.

      ‘But what was given to you as your share for this miracle? Less of a percentage than your predecessor, who, with her threats and gales, never wrung a third as much from the farmers. When you would have let your peasants keep a surplus as a reward for faithful toil, that their children might grow up to be strong tillers of the earth instead of wilting in their cradles, you were mocked. Mocked as a Tenderheart, a Peasantweeper, for your foresightedness. And Dowl Valley was taken from you and given to another.’

      Sparks of anger flared afresh in Rebeke’s eyes. Then her shoulders slumped. Her hands trembled until she folded them together. ‘I scarcely know how to reply to you, Medie. I thought that my toil and my reasons had gone unseen, misunderstood by all. To hear you speak is as if the door I have strained against had suddenly swung open at a touch.’

      Medie crossed the room to Rebeke, taking her hands in her long cool fingers. ‘We shall act together, then. We shall only take what is ours by right of our toil and planning. We shall take up the reins of decision that have so often restrained us. Dresh shall be drained into us. Only then shall we let the High Council know of our success.’

      A brief cloud passed over Rebeke’s face. Almost she looked away from Medie’s piercing eyes. Then a new spirit seemed to straighten her body. She raised her chin. As she nodded, a glow of suppressed excitement lit her eyes.