Windhaven

In the doorway a woman was holding a smoking taper. The old woman could see its light, a shifting yellowish blur, and she could make out the figure holding it, and another figure beside her, although their faces were lost to her. Her vision was not what it once was. Her head throbbed terribly, as it often did when she woke. It had been like that for years. She raised a soft, blue-veined hand to her forehead, and squinted. "Who is it?" she asked.

"Odera," said the woman with the taper, in a voice the old woman recognized as the healer's. "He's here, the one you asked for. Are you strong enough to see him?"

"Yes," the old woman said. "Yes." She struggled to sit up in her bed. "Come closer," she said. "I want to see you."

"Shall I stay?" Odera asked uncertainly. "Do you need me?"

"No," said the old woman. "No, I'm past healing. Just him."

Odera nodded — the old woman could make out the gesture, though the face was a blur to her — lit the oil lamps carefully with the taper, and shut the door when she left.

The other visitor pulled a straight-back wooden chair across the room, and sat down close to the bedside, where she could see him quite well. He was young. A boy, really, not even twenty, beardless, with a few pale wisps of blond hair trying to pass as a mustache on his upper lip. His hair was very pale and very curly, his eyebrows almost invisible. But he carried an instrument — a kind of rude guitar, square and with only four strings — and he began to tune it as soon as he was seated. "Would you like me to play something for you?" he asked. "Some special song?" His voice was pleasant, lilting, with just the hint of an accent.

"You are a long way from home," the old woman said.

He smiled. "How did you know?"

"Your voice," she said. "It's been years and years since I've heard a voice like that. You're from the Outer Islands, aren't you?"

"Yes," he said. "My home is a little place right at the edge of the world. You've probably never heard of it. It's called Stormhammer-the-Outermost."

"Ah," she said. "I remember it well. Eastwatch Tower, and the ruins of the one that preceded it. That bitter drink you people brew from roots. Your Landsman insisted I try some, and laughed at the expression on my face when I swallowed. He was a dwarf. I never met an uglier man, or a cleverer one."

The singer looked briefly startled. "He's been dead some thirty years," he said, "but you're right, I've heard the stories. Then you've been there?"

"Three or four times," she said, savoring his reaction. "It was many years ago, before you were born. I used to be a flyer."

"Oh," he said, "of course. I should have guessed. Seatooth is full of flyers, is it not?"

"Not really," she replied. "This is Woodwings Academy, and those here are mostly dreamers who have yet to win their wings, or teachers who have long since set theirs down. Like me. I was a teacher, until I got sick. Now I lie here and remember, mostly."

The singer touched his strings, bringing forth a bright burst of sound that faded quickly into silence. "What would you like to hear?" he asked. "There's a new song that's the rage of Stormtown." His face fell. "It's a bit bawdy, though. Maybe you wouldn't like it."

The old woman laughed. "Oh, I might, I might. You might be surprised at the things I remember. I didn't call you here to sing for me, though."

He stared at her from wide green eyes. "What?" he said, puzzled. "But they told me — I was in an inn in Stormtown, just arrived in fact, the ship from Eastern put in the day before yesterday, and suddenly this boy came up and told me a singer was needed on Seatooth."

"And you came. Left the inn. Weren't you doing well enough there?"

"Well enough," he said. "I'd never been to the Shotans before, after all, and the customers weren't deaf or miserly. But—" He stopped abruptly, panic writ large on his face.

"But you came anyway," the old woman said, "because they told you that a dying woman had asked for a singer."

He said nothing.

"Don't feel guilty," she said. "You aren't revealing any secrets. I know I'm dying. Odera and I are frank with each other. I probably should have died several years ago. My head hurts constantly, and I fear I'm going blind, and I already seem to have outlived half the world. Oh, don't misunderstand me. I don't want to die. But I don't especially want to go on like this either. I don't like the pain, or my own helplessness.

Death frightens me, but at least it will free me from the smell in this room." She saw his expression and smiled gently. "You don't have to pretend you can't smell it. I know it's there. The sick smell." She sighed.

"I prefer cleaner scents. Spices and salt water, even sweat. Wind. Storm. I still remember the smell that lightning leaves in its wake."

"There are songs I could sing," the youth said carefully. "Glad songs to lighten your mood. Funny songs, or sad ones if you prefer. It might make the pain less."