The Wind Singer
Praise for THE WIND SINGER
Winner of the Smarties Prize Gold Award and the Blue Peter Book Award
‘This is a truly extraordinary book that will haunt you’
Daily Telegraph
‘Positively surreal imagery, a fast-moving adventure and a cutting satire all in one. An original and striking read’
Melvin Burgess
‘. . . A gripping read . . . A beautifully narrated, warm thriller of a book, full of inventiveness, action and passion’
Guardian
‘A lyrical, evocative and powerful story’
Kate Agnew
‘. . . A truly imaginative, fantastical and distinctive adventure story that grips from the very beginning and absolutely refuses to let go’
Amazon
‘An accesible, rebellious and fast-paced adventure, and, as you would expect from the author of
Shadow lands,
a heart-wringing celebration of love’
Sunday Times
‘. . . A potent mix of thundering adventure and purposeful fantasy’
Guardian
‘A page-turning quest adventure that crackles off the page’
Books Magazine
‘. . . A story that delves deeper into human nature and relationships’
Bookseller
Books by William Nicholson
The Wind on Fire Trilogy
The Wind Singer
Slaves of the Mastery
Firesong
The Noble Warriors Trilogy
Seeker
Jango
Noman
For older readers
Rich and Mad
First published in Great Britain 2000
This edition published 2011
by Egmont UK Limited
239 Kensington High Street
London W8 6SA
Text copyright © 2000 William Nicholson
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978 1 4052 3969 1
eBook ISBN 978 1 7803 1210 1
www.egmont.co.uk
www.williamnicholson.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,Or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner
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.
Contents
2 Kestrel makes a horrible friend
5 A warning from the Chief Examiner
17 The Hath family fights back
Long
ago
A
t the time the strangers came, the Manth people were still living in the low mat-walled shelters that they had carried with them in their hunting days. The domed huts were clustered around the salt mine that was to become the source of their wealth. This was long before they had built the great city that stands above the salt caverns today. One high summer afternoon, a band of travellers came striding out of the desert plains, and made camp nearby. They wore their hair long and loose, men and women alike, and moved slowly and spoke quietly, when they spoke at all. They traded a little with the Manth, buying bread and meat and salt, paying with small silver ornaments that they themselves had made. They caused no trouble, but their near presence was somehow uncomfortable. Who were they? Where had they come from? Where were they going? Direct questions produced no answers: only a smile, a shrug, a shake of the head.
Then the strangers were seen to be at work, building a tower. Slowly a wooden structure took shape, a platform higher than a man, on which they constructed a second narrower tower, out of timber beams and metal pipes. These pipes were all of different sizes, and bundled together, like the pipes of an organ. At their base, they opened out into a ring of metal horns. At their upper end, they funnelled together to form a single cylinder, like a neck, and then fanned out again to end in a ring of large leather scoops. When the wind blew, the scoops caught it and the entire upper structure rotated, swinging round to face the strongest gusts. The swirling air was funnelled through the neck to the ranked pipes, to emerge from the horns as a series of meaningless sounds.
The tower had no obvious purpose of any kind. For a while it was a curiosity, and the people would stare at it as it creaked this way and that. When the wind blew hard, it made a mournful moaning that was comical at first, but soon became tiresome.
The silent travellers offered no explanation. It seemed they had come to the settlement with the sole purpose of building this odd structure, because when it was done, they rolled up their tents and prepared to move on.
Before leaving, their leader took out a small silver object, and climbed the tower, and inserted it into a slot in the structure’s neck. It was a tranquil summer dawn, the day the travellers departed, and the air was still. The metal pipes and horns were silent as they strode away across the desert plains. The Manth people were left as baffled as when they had arrived, staring at the overgrown scarecrow they had left behind.
That night, as they slept, the wind began to blow, and a new sound entered their lives. They heard it in their sleep, and woke smiling, without knowing why. They gathered in the warm night air, and listened in joy and wonder.
The wind singer was singing.
1
Baby Pinpin makes her mark
‘S
agahog! Pompaprune! Saga-saga-HOG!’
Bowman Hath lay in bed listening to the muffled sounds of his mother oathing in the bathroom next door. From far away across the roofs of the city floated the golden boom of the bell in the tower of the Imperial Palace:
mmnang! mmnang
! It was sounding the sixth hour, the time when all Aramanth awoke. Bowman opened his eyes and lay gazing at the daylight glowing in the tangerine curtains. He realised that he was feeling sad. What is it this time? he thought to himself. He looked ahead to the coming day in school, and his stomach tightened, the way it always did; but this was a different feeling. A kind of sorrowing, as if for something lost. But what?
His twin sister Kestrel was still asleep in the bed next to him, within reach of his outstretched arm. He listened to her snuffly sleep-breathing for a few moments, then sent her a wake-up thought. He waited till he heard her grumpy answering groan. Then he counted silently to five, and rolled out of bed.
Crossing the hall on the way to the bathroom, he stopped to greet his baby sister Pinpin. She was standing up in her cot in her fuzzy night-suit, sucking her thumb. Pinpin slept in the hall because there was no room for a cot in either of the two bedrooms. The apartments in Orange District were really too small for a family of five.