The Wind-Witch (25 page)

Yvain turned the full force of his smile upon Druyan. “What do you say, Lady? Will you help us? Be our ears?

Druyan could have had a bed—any one of the post riders would gladly have slept in an empty stall to give his sleeping pallet up for her—but she wanted to return to Splaine Garth before her nerve failed her. Or something else, less under her control, did.

“What if he’s gone?” she whispered into the black ear cocked back to catch her speech, while she and Valadan flew through the last rags of the night. The ends of the stallion’s mane fanned her cheeks, like sable moths’ wings.

If he has gone, I will trail him
, the stallion assured her, unconcerned.

“He may have taken one of the coursers,” Druyan fretted. “I promised him a horse. The fastest ones went with Travic, and the army’s got them now, but—” She could not relax. Too large a portion of the new-hatched scheme depended upon Kellis. If he had considered their bargain early concluded and vanished, what would she do?

If he is on a horse, he will only be easier to find
. Valadan sounded amused. The long run had put him in a good temper—as had Yvain’s exclamation at the sight of him . Robart might be steadfast in his dismissal of the stallion as just a nobly named black horse, but Yvain and the other Riders had been willing to see the truth that stood munching hay in the ducal stables, and had made much of him.

When they turned down the familiar lane, the sun had risen just high enough to throw their shadows before them. There was a dew halo about the shadows—Druyan started at the sight. Their dark shapes were clothed in a moving rainbow. Was that a blessing on the task they’d set themselves to? A portent of success?

The beneficent light dimmed—thin clouds were crossing the sun’s face. Druyan dismounted and undid the gate, then led Valadan through. She pulled his saddle off at once and turned him out into the orchard to take his ease. As she left him, he was already lowering himself to the ground, indulging in a back-scratching roll, his legs waving in the mommg air.

It felt strange to have her feet on the ground, as she walked toward the barn—she and Valadan had been one creature for so much of the past day-span of hours, and when she was astride him she had not felt the uncertainty, the trepidation that she felt now, alone on her own two legs.

The saddle needed to be cleaned and oiled. The stirrup leathers had developed a squeak as she came homeward. It could wait. She set the tack aside and went to find Kellis.

She found him stacking the turves he’d cut from the peaty edge of the marsh, arranging them into roof peaks as Dalkin had taught him, so they’d catch a drying breeze more surely and would shed any rainfall quickly. It would be autumn ere all the moisture was out of them and the turves were ready to burn. The bricks of soil would have become light shingles of fuel.

The sea was the color of the post riders’ garb, and the marsh was mostly a gently rippling green. Kellis’ eyes picked up touches of both colors, as if the goldish gray was but a mirror to whatever his eyes looked upon. Shadows crossed them, like clouds, as Druyan told him how matters had gone at Keverne.

“I have their routes and schedules from Robart,” Druyan said. “So I can reach the nearest, whenever there’s a raid to warn of. It’ll be faster than guessing where they should be.”

Kellis said nothing. His left eyelid was twitching like the hide of a horse pestered by flies.

“The Riders have been passing news about the raids all along,” Druyan went on, wishing he’d make a conversation of it with her. She couldn’t tell what the man was thinking—all his face showed was his unhappiness. “Trying to help the army get to the trouble in time. It never helped—now we know why that was! Brioc thought it useless, he never tried. He sent the army away to cut trees! So the Riders will turn now to rallying whatever local support there is.”

“And you will go with them, Lady?” His voice was carefully neutral, and his eyes were on the limitless sky overhead.

“I’ll help them as I can.”
If I ask him, I think he ’ll refuse
, Druyan thought.
It’s no part of our bargain, but I must not let him see that
. She used her best weapon. “I don’t want to see another Teilo.”

He nodded, resigned to it, and did not shift his eyes to hers or return his gaze to the sky. The wind stirred his thistledown-colored hair.

“If it makes you feel any easier,” Druyan said, “my brother Robart’s no happier about trusting you than you are about being trusted.

Lady, don’t mock me.”

“I’m not.” The bleakness of his tone made her falter, like a stumbling horse. “I swear to you, Kellis, I’m not. But the raiders will come, whether I trust you or I don’t trust you. And if a warning comes too late, it’s no worse than if it didn’t come at all.” She sighed. “I don’t see the dangers the way you do, and I don’t think you can teach me to. Right now, I’m going home and to bed.”

He raised that brow at her.

“I don’t need you to tell me that it’s safe, no. There’s no smell of sea to this wind.” Druyan lifted a hand, letting the air pass between her fmgers. “There’s rain in it, though. Finish this up by sun-high, and then find yourself some work to do in the barn, if you don’t fancy a soaking.”

Kellis stayed at the edge of the marsh long after spatters of rain had turned to a steady fall. The wind was not particularly chill, and it was clean to his nose and his lungs. The barn would smell of chickens. No use to think how he should have gone when he had the chance. He knew very well that he could have outwitted the dog, had he chosen. He knew very well that he was bound to Splaine Garth now, as if with fetters of cold iron.

He watched the falling drops pock the surface of the rivulet he sat beside. No danger of visions in it—the top layer was too roiled to mirror even the real world about it All the surface gave off was a sparkle, now and again. The water danced to the prompting of wind and tide. accepting new water from the falling rain without a qualm—Kellis wished he could be more like that water, taking whatever came, urrtroubled beneath. He could not. He was too much aware of consequences.

She asked too much of him. No, that was wrong. She did not so much ask, but assumed his compliance, because she could never see a creature in need and pass it by. Now, suddenly, her plan was greater by a score of human parts, and his responsibility had grown correspondingly heavier. If she rode out into peril, he could slip after her, protect her with every considerable skill at his command. Kellis knew himself a much better wolf than a prophet, he did not feel inadequate for the task. But suddenly there were a score or more of other lives involved, too many for him to safeguard even if he wanted to.

His woolen clothes shed much of the rain, but his hair was plastered flat to his skull, dripping into his eyes. Kellis tried very hard not to remember why that hair had all gone silver, every lock of it, in one single night.

He had no success. After a while, he trudged back to the farmstead.

The rain lay like a soft gray blanket over Darlith for a week. Druyan applied herself to the never-ending tasks the farm’s life required. Spring planting had been the first claim on her time, then the matter of the raiders—but now the clarnor of lesser chores could no longer go unheard. Much of it she could delegate—feeding, milking, thinning the rows of new-sprouted vegetables. Pru could chum, Lyn could take the new-made soap and launder clothing, Dalkin was line about doing whatever he was specifically bidden to do. Kellis could handle any heavier work and the less pleasant necessities—making wethers out of surplus ram lambs, mucking out the henhouse and the pigs’ sty. But Splaine Garth had been worked by a half-score of men, men who had done more than tend their own garden plots and thatch a roof as needed. Hides could wait untanned, packed in a barrel with moist wood ashes and borax till there was leisure to deal with them, but few other tasks were likewise accommodating. Every crop had a series of things that must be done to it, each in its proper time and not
too
much later, if they were to keep the farm going at all. When the cows needed their hooves trimmed, they didn’t understand that the pole beans needed to be encouraged up their poles just then and that the beehives urgently required attention.

Most such work had never been Druyan’s province. The household chores had, and there were fully as many indoor chores as outdoor. Some could wait, some could not. Falling-down weary she might be, but Dalkin must have a new sark and trews before his outgrown, outworn clothing fell off him entirely. Enna could not grasp the slender needle, nor even hold the shears to cut the cloth. So Druyan cut and stitched in the iirelight, struggling not to think of ships upon the seas, out beyond the mist that settled in with the evenings all along the coast of Darlith.

Kellis hauled up a bucket of fresh water and poured from it into the black bowl, while Druyan waited anxiously. He sat down on the well coping, took a deep breath, and began the crooning that sang up the vision. Druyan took up a position at his right side, her left hand resting on his right shoulder, the bowl where she could look down into it as easily as he could. The song went on, for a very long while. Kellis’ breathing showed strain.

“Rain,” he said, interpreting what she could see for herself. It rained every day, in some part of Esdragon. The sea brought it. By itself, useless information.

There was quick movement on the bowl’s surface. Druyan peered intently. Was that ships, or armed horsemen?

“Are those your pigs?” Kellis asked. “Wait. Yes, I know that fence. They got through there just the other day. Either I need to mend it again, or we’re seeing them go through that dav. I can’t—”

He put a hand to his head, suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath. The bowl tilted precipitously, and most of the water spilled out, splashing Druyan’s skirts. “I’ll check the fence again,” Kellis said faintly. He was still holding his head, pressing his fingers against the light furrow of the scar on his forehead, and his eyes were tightly shut.

“Are you all right‘?” Druyan asked. His shoulder, still under her hand, felt hard as a stone, not like living flesh at all.

“The summoning always gives me a headache.” Kellis shook off her concern, opening his eyes again. “One reason I never cared much about practicing it.” He got up uusteadily, almost missing his footing entirely.

“Careful!” Druyan snatched at his arm. “Don’t fall down the well. Maybe there’s just nothing to foresee,” she added, trying to comfort him.

“But there’s no way to tell, is there?” His eyes went narrow. “You’ve loaded too much of this on me! I
told
you—”

“Not to trust you,” Druyan conceded. “A dozen times, at least. This isn’t sailing weather anyway, Kellis. Trust yourself a little.”

He stood still a moment, doing nothing more than breathing, possibly thinking. “I am still going to see where those pigs are.”

He was trying, Druyan thought, to make light of the failure, for her sake. Kellis was failing at that as badly as he’d failed to capture the vision. His eyes were bleak as the middle of winter—he knew what the failure meant as well as she did.

He didn’t
want
to see. Didn’t want to send the post riders—and worst of all Splaine Garth’s lady—into the teeth of whatever was coming. That was the trouble, Kellis thought. He was not empty of visions, he always saw
something
in the bowl, but he could not see what he—needed and feared—to. He kept watch every day, so sure there was a danger to be seen—if only he could manage to glance at the proper spot at the right moment—that he tended to lose himself in his quest until a familiar hammer-blow of pain brought him back to himself.

Sometimes the pain was real. He caught a nasty blow from the edge of the horse trough, and suspected he might have fainted and fallen against it. He made the boy Dalkin finish watering the stock, and went about his other chores with one eye swollen shut and the other averted from anything that might cast a reflection.

“Once a day’s enough,” Druyan said stemly when she saw the blacked eye and learned how he’d gotten it.

“You’re optimistic,” Kellis retorted bitterly. “It’s not like riding a horse, always there when you want to do it. It’s more like sailing a boat, catching the wind. Sometimes there
is
no wind.”

“Sometimes you have to tack across the wind,” Druyan told him firmly, coastline-bred where he was not and well able to bend his metaphor to her own use.

“Lady, I am
trying
—” He clenched his jaw on whatever else he was going to declare.

“You’re trying till you fall down,” Druyan said. “Wanting’s not always enough.”

She recalled all at once how desperately she had longed to give Travic a child. And how she had failed at it, while being reminded of her failure monthly for each of eight long years. No other’s reproach could have been half so foul as that which she heaped upon herself. A tear slid hotly down her cheek.

Kellis was right—tack as you might, sometimes there simply
was
no wind.

It was an indulgence when she returned to her loom, which had stood idle since the end of winter, but Druyan needed its solace, even for the bare snatched moments when she ought to have been abed. She could not make a child, but she could make cloth, to keep another’s children warm. She set up a warp of blue threads and green, and wove a pattern like the shadows among the sea waves, seen from the clifftops. She had a fine store of cloth laid by perhaps she would offer some for sale at Falkeriy’s autumn market. Most of the cloth had been woven for her pleasure, not for utility, and the woolens were finer than any of them would wear about the farm. They’d sell to city folk and fetch decent prices.

The rain was good for the crops. They could take a second cutting of hay in another month, and the barley harvest promised to be bountiful once more. One ridge she’d sown with oats was growing better than that grain generally did in Darlith, evidently not quite drowning in the field. The lambs were thriving on the lush grazing, and two of them were black sheep, promising darker wool for her loom without the chores of dyeing it first. Druyan suspected there’d be little time for nonessentials like gathering dyestuffs that autumn.