The Wind-Witch (29 page)

“Tell your men,” Kellis interrupted harshly, “not to do this again.” He waved an arm at the bumed boat, smoking and steaming on the beach sand. “Trap them like rats, they’ll fight to their deaths—or yours.”

Robart ignored him, save for a glare. Druyan was better quarry, or else he simply had not finished with her. “
Where’s your husband?”

“Travic is—” Is
what
? Druyan frantically wondered. Nothing plausible came to mind. She hadn’t a wit left. Home, tending the crops? Too dead to disapprove? “My husband, not yours,” she said to Robart, amazing herself. “Not your business.”

Robart’s blue eyes fairly started from his head, whites showing all around. His horse, responding to his temper, to the hands tightening on his reins, shied back and tried to rear against his rider’s iron grip. At once Valadan’s head snaked out, his teeth bared to fend off the other stallion from his mistress, afoot and imperiled whilst he was burdened with a helpless rider and hard put to protect her. Robart’s horse half reared again to escape him, was pulled back under control ruthlessly, the bit dragging his mouth wide open. His rider’s temper was not improved by the battle.

“He doesn’t ask where you go, when you ride out? Doesn’t question? Travic must be in his dotage! And we’re none of us any better, acting on prophecies from that!” Robart hissed, jerking his chin at Kellis as he dragged the plunging horse back to Druyan’s side. “You know nothing about this creature—except that he took service with sea thieves who’re stealing everything in Esdragon they can carry away!”

“He’s right about the ship,” Druyan said angrily. “You cut off their only escape. Nowhere to run—they
have
to fight. What else would you expect?”

“I don’t need a lesson in strategy—certainly not from something that’s barely human and probably all traitor!”

“He’s trying to help us,” Druyan protested, her voice gone thin enough to tear, like a cobweb.

“Help us?” Robart laughed mirthlessly. “You mean by guessing where his old friends will strike next? Once he’s won our coniidence, what’s to stop him sending us where he knows they’re
not
, so they can raid undisturbed? Or sending us all into a trap?”

“He hasn’t done that!” No, only begged her, over and over, not to trust him—and all the while hiding what he was, what was inside his human skin.

“Maybe he hasn’t found a way yet. Well, I am for certain not so trusting as your husband! If this shape-shifter of yours makes one false move, he’ll face my sword. You said he can’t abide cold iron? I’ll use it on him. Shift him straight into a corpse.” Robart pointed his weapon at Kellis’ nose for emphasis, but spoke to Druyan. “You hear me? No questions, no
trusting
, no second chances. He’ll be dead.”

Druyan tried to speak, but there was only silence when her lips parted.

Robart whirled his horse, shouted back at her. “You remember what I said!”

As if she was likely to forget any of it.

Kellis was silent during the ride homeward, and Druyan suspected he might have slipped into a drowse. It was a longish trek over the moors, and she held Valadan to a gentle trot, out of consideration for the double load on the horse’s back and the condition of the second of his passengers. She had ordered Kellis to hold onto her belt, and she could feel one of his hands pressing obediently against her backbone, but she did not think him apt to keep his seat long should Valadan go at his best speed.

All at once he sat up straight, brushing against her, and Druyan realized she had been all but asleep in the saddle herself. She looked about. The sun was coming up mistily. The ground nearby had a familiar look to it. They’d come home, into one of the high, windswept pastures. She heard a sheep bleat, one of the dogs bark sharply thrice.

“Lady, let me down,” Kellis begged her. “I’ll fetch my clothes and come back to the barn.”

Valadan halted without waiting to be reined.

“I can find you other clothes,” Druyan said, her thoughts fuzzy with sleep. “The stuff you left up here is nothing but tatters anyway.” She’d been thinking so each time she saw him, for weeks. She’d just never guessed why. She looked back at him, suddenly uncomfortable.

Kellis shook his head at her, then glanced away at the ground, which might look awfully far away if he wasn’t used to riding. “It’s been a nice, diy week,” he said, explaining. “Enna’s bones won’t have been bothering her, she’ll have attention to spare. Let me down. I’ve got a headache, I don’t want to come in like this, with you, and be answering her questions halfway to tomorrow.”

Or facing the kitchen knives, Druyan thought. She braced her hand against Valadan’s neck as Kellis slid down from the horse’s back, was relieved to see that the man was able to stand steady when he arrived at the ground. “That out wants tending,” she said. “I’ll bind it up when you get back.” It hadn’t bled much—the dark smear in his hair was no larger than it had been.

Kellis shrugged, unconcerned. “Just a scrape. Woundwort grows all over up here. I can take care of it.”

“It’s over your
ear
, there’s no way you could possibly see what you’re doing.”

Kellis only shrugged again.

“I could tell Enna you were with me,” Druyan went on, working it out aloud. “She might just be relieved to know someone was looking out for me.”

“What else will you tell her, Lady?” His tone was reluctant, but unshirking. In the morning light, his gray eyes looked clear as water running over limestone, shafts of golden sunlight striking through now and again.

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.” Now that she was forced to, Druyan had no idea what to do. She sidled up to the issue like a nervous horse. She could well imagine Enna’s reaction to the truth about what Kellis was probably not far off from Robart’s, only the kitchen knives in place of a sword. Maybe she
shouldn’t
be told—but was it fair
not
to tell Enna what she was helping to harbor? Was she sure how she felt about him herself?

Some of that dilemma surely crossed her face. Kellis was watching her, knowing every twist, every turn in the conflict of loyalties assaulting her, or guessing them. There was no vestige of hope in his expression—not for mercy or anything else.

“Are you dangerous?” Druyan whispered, wondering how she’d know whether he answered her truly. She remembered how guileless those changeable eyes of his could be, the size of the secret he’d hidden effortlessly behind them. There was still blood around his mouth—only now she knew how it had gotten there.

“Lady, you have given me shelter and kindness, where I had no reason to expect either,” Kellis said gravely. “I swear to you, I will never do harm to you or yours.”

“But you’ve warned me not to trust you.” It was out before she thought, she couldn’t help herself. Valadan jigged under her, restless, tense with her sudden unease.

Kellis looked stricken. “The
prophecies
. I told you not to trust the prophecies. You do it anyway, no matter what I say, no matter how often I say it! You’ve dragged all those men into doing it, too—”

“And I suppose if you weren’t trustworthy—
you
, not your foreseeings—we’d have lost a sheep or two ere this?’ She didn’t want to bring the prophecies and the post riders into it, Druyan thought. That was only smoke.

She wanted an answer, and Kellis gave it to her, looking straight into her eyes.

“Wolves take sheep because it’s easy, Lady. Or it’s the only food. I’m not lazy, and I am not starving. I’ll do you no harm.”

“I know,” Druyan whispered, ashamed. “I shouldn’t have asked. It was an insult.”

“It was a reasonable question, and taken so,” Kellis said mildly. “And I answer it. I
am
dangerous—but never to you.”

“Then it’s not anyway unfair to Enna—she’s at no risk I can see if she doesn’t hear about any of this. I won’t tell her,” Druyan said, relieved to have made the choice. “Now go find your clothes—I’m sure that cloak’s lousy, and even if it isn’t, it’s mostly holes, and the wind’s cold up here.”

That right eyebrow lifted, then one corner of his mouth, just as she turned Valadan toward home.

He should not have told her. He
would
not have, Kellis told himself, except he had been dazed by the glancing blow to his head and the resulting loss of his wolf-shape. He had not been himself. His tongue had escaped his control and gone its own merry wayward way. She’d asked, and he’d answered, while his wits were still so scattered that he hadn’t quite realized what he was doing—till he’d said it and it was too late to dodge back from telling her the whole truth.

Not that he likely could have managed such wordy nimbleness if he
had
been able to think about what he was doing. Feeling well enough on the horse, he had misjudged himself. Once he was on his own legs, matters were much otherwise. Kellis discovered it was all he could do to get himself down from the upland pasture—his balance was unsure and his sight as unreliable as his visions, showing him double the usual number of sheep in Rook’s flock as he staggered through them, a fuzzy mist on the peripheries. Putting one foot in front of the other took concentration, seemed a miracle when he succeeded at it. He never actually fell, but there were near disasters and many a clutch at a fencepost or outbuilding, while sea sounds came and went in his ears.

Finally, the weather-silvered bulk of the barn itself swam before his eyes. There was a dark, cavelike opening in itthe door standing welcoming wide. Kellis made for that and held onto the jamb, getting splinters in his fingers and happy beyond measure that there was no sill to trip his feet.

Once he was inside, there was nothing more for him to cling to, just a vast dim space lit by the doorway at his back and slanting rays of sunlight that entered through gaps between boards. Kellis stopped, swaying uncertainly, staring at the light-lances. Somewhere within the maze lay his goal, the soft pile of blanket-covered straw he used for a bed.

He heard a horse nicker, part greeting, part question. For a long moment, Kellis could not determine which form he was presently in, man or wolf. He remembered dashing unwarily in wolf-shape past a corner and being surprised by a horse earlier. He had surprised the beast, too—the horse had kicked out in a panic. He had dodged, of course, but only enough to prevent the hoof’s catching him square and shattering his wolf’s skull. The blow glanced, but flung him a dozen feet and out of his senses . . . not to mention out of his wolf-shape, courtesy of an iron horseshoe. If this horse, now, had it in mind to stomp a wolf, he did not think he could save himself, man or wolf, either one.

He smelled horsehide and hair, right in front of his face. Warm, sweet air puffed across his skin as the stallion blew at him. “Good boy,” Kellis said with relief, recognizing Valadan, the only horse he knew to be allowed free run of Splaine Garth. He patted the stallion’s neck, then took an unsteady step forward, trying to decide if two legs were superior to four or in fact inferior. Less of them to manage, certainly, but ’twas so much easier to fall on one’s face after a misstep. . .

A great, warm bulk came alongside him—the horse had circled around him, was walking with him instead of at him. Kellis put a grateful hand on Valadan’s withers. Six legs were better than four, so long as he had to personally direct only two of them. He tangled his fingers firmly in the long black mane. “Where are we going?” he asked.

The stallion turned his head. His near eye was as dark as the night sky and full of twinkling stars. Kellis looked automatically for the green of Valint, but the Wolfstar must have set or else had not yet risen—he could not find it. The stallion snorted. When Kellis looked away, the sunshafts looked like a thousand sword blades, slanting all about him. He had lost his bearings, but he didn’t much care. He didn’t need to find his bed—if he could just sit down, somewhere out of the way, where nothing could step on him. . .

He smelled hay, and pearwood, shavings from the fork he had begun carving what seemed half his lifetime ago, with a thick handle that a woman with sore hands could comfortably grasp. Kellis put his left hand out and swung the half-door open. He’d made it after all, thanks to the horse’s support. His bed was only three steps ahead, and he could hold onto the wall the whole way. . .

A racket of happy barks exploded behind him. Meddy had discovered he was back and was headed at him with her usual riotous greeting.

“No, little sister,” he begged her, but she flung herself at him anyway, paws on his shoulders and warm tongue on his face. Falling, Kellis hoped he would fetch up on the cushioning straw, not bare wooden boards.

She will hate me
.

He returned to the thought as the dark whirled about him. Kellis couldn’t remember whether the sun had gone down. The Wolfstar had set, hadn’t it? He smelled hay and horse sweat. Dust tickled his throat. He coughed, and pain stabbed alarmingly through his skull. Somewhere near, a dog whined.

She will fear me and, being brave as she is, try to hide it
. . . Straw poked his cheek; he had either lain down or fallen. Either way, he need not fear a ftuther collapse, and he seemed to have made it to his bed after all. But there were other fears to plague him.
She will hate me
. . .

“Kellis?”

Hands touched him, shifted him so that he lay on his side rather than his face. The process hurt. He had no notion why he was being tortured so. Kellis bit his lip till he tasted salty blood.

Truth was, he should never have come back at all. He should have taken the wolf-shape back, then denned up somewhere secret till he recovered. And then he should have vanished.

Of course she’ll hate you. She saw you with blood all over your teeth; even your own womenfolk don’t much care for that. And she’s not one of the Clan
. . .
no reason to expect
. . .

Blessed coolness touched the pain biting into the side of his head.

“Is that better?” Druyan asked, sponging again with the wet rag.

Actually, it was not. She was probing gently at the wound, trying no doubt to decide whether his skull was cracked, and Kellis thought he could not have born a spider’s walking across his skin just there, just then. But the lady was speaking to him, she had searched him out—his astonishment at that reality swallowed most of the pain. It would be ungrateful of him to groan at her touch, so he did not.