The Wind-Witch (34 page)

Run with me. Run from nothing, but run in the night, for the joy of it
.

And in her dream she did, beneath a huge silver moon and a sky of wooly tumbling clouds.

Kellis had not expected her to take to the wolf-form so eagerly as she did—he had sung her into it, but when she questioned he was startled into losing his own hold on the wolf-shape for an instant, and he should have lost his grip on hers, as well.

Instead. . .

He had been trying to give her courage, but the gift was not needed. He had not deceived her: She had bravery and to spare, in her, not forced upon her from the outside. She had been taught to hide what she was, to smother her nature relentlessly, but the lessons were all at once swept away, by the free wind that blew shatteringly through them both.

The moon darted through a sky of wind-tousled clouds, flirting with the two wolf hunters, sometimes only a faint glow, sometimes revealing her full glory to them against a starry gap. It was different from hunting deer—there was no scent of fear wafting from the quarry, and they were all of them, all three of them, reveling in the sport. It was a hunt, but the object was not a kill.

Tussocks of heather, rounded bellies of cloud. Patches of white blossoms, silvered edges on the huge shapes sweeping overhead. The wolves seemed to cross from land to sky at their pleasure, one instant heather stems beneath their pads, the next moment only springy moist air. The moon played at hide-and-seek, and they leapt joyously after every slightest clue, howled rapturously when She showed them Her full face for an instant. The great silver wolf coursed the sky, with the pewter-hued she-wolf ever at his side, running swiftly on her big, strong paws.

All at once he lost her in the windswept clouds. With a startled yelp, he sought her earnestly, keen nose to the ground, then thrust into the concealing clouds. When he did not find her at once, he put back his head and howled.
Where are you?

He listened, but was not answered, and he quested desperately on. He dreaded to smell blood on the wind.

She lurked in ambush behind a hillock of faintly purple heather, and when he rounded it searching, she sprang out at him, mock-growling and boring into his shoulder with her muzzle, playfully snapping first at his forelegs, then his belly. Grinning with relief, he tried both to follow and to keep out of reach of her nipping teeth, spun and skidded through wet grass and came to a splay-legged halt.

Behind him, she yipped excitedly. He turned. She was crouching, forelimbs flat to the earth, rump and waving tail high in the air, bowing in exaggerated invitation:
Play with me
.

When he ran to her, she leapt to her feet and met him in a rush, yipping eagerly. He reared back to evade her, but she rose on her hind legs, too, and they crashed first together, then into the heather, rolling tangled through shades of silver, black and white and gray, all the dewdrops flying, little glistening copies of the great moon above.

Kellis had a hand on either side of Druyan’s face, his fingers twined in the silvergilt and copper of her hair. He did not recall choosing to shift out of the wolf-form, and for an instant his senses swam indecisively between wolf and man, betwixt windblown night and still room. One was reality, one was healing dream, but he could not tell which was which. Only the moonlight, pouring through the open window, seemed constant and familiar.

Then he was firmly back in the bed, pressing his face against a face that nuzzled back at him as urgently as the playful she-wolf’s had her lips parted under his, welcoming. Her skin was warm, smelling faintly of apricots and heather blossoms. Her eyes had the moon in them, and the wind sighed in her blood. . .

Her arms were clasped about his neck, warm and strong, drawing him to her. He did not resist.

Kellis was on the far side of the room, in his human shape and his tattered human clothes, when Druyan stirred in the morning light. She opened her eyes, half expecting to see waving seas of heather and the silver face of the moon. Instead she beheld dapples of sunlight on the pitched ceiling and a pale sea of bedclothes that seemed more disarranged than Enna would ever have left them. The wonderful palette of scents and sounds was gone out of her reach—she had only her normal senses now, in the daylight world. And her wolf-strength was fled as well, drawn within her, deep inside, to heal her. She recognized that but regretted its loss.

She ached in every bone, every sinew. She was gnawingly hungry, pathetically thirsty. And her right hand—Druyan tried to raise it, found the effort too great, and stared wide-eyed at the thick swaddling round about it from forearm to fingertips. Her hand hurt, but not with that terrifying, stupifying, guilty agony that she remembered too well.

Kellis knelt down beside her and cupped his hands carefully about what remained of her right hand. When she looked up, his gray-gold gaze captured hers and held it.

“It was a terrible wound, but a very clean cut,” he said judiciously. “There’s no fever in it. You will not lose the rest of the hand, nor the use of it.”

“How many fingers do I still have?” Druyan whispered. Better to hear the worst and have it over.

“Two.” He stroked her forearm, above the bandages. “And the thumb. It could have been worse.”

“Yes.” Her eyes were brimming, and Druyan agreed only in principle. If she thought about what it would be like to have no hand at all, would that help? She drew in a breath and felt how easily it could turn to a sob. She held it, a delicate balance.

“I have heard tales of maimed warriors given magic hands of silver, with fingers that moved like living flesh,” Kellis said. “But I have not the skill to do that for you, Lady.” He had stopped meeting her eyes, slumped till his forehead touched the rumpled sheets. “Lock charms and Mirrors of Three don’t answer.”

“Three fingers are enough, to twirl the spindle, throw the shuttle,” Druyan whispered, reaching out blindly for the wolf’s courage. “I can even hold a needle. Is that Enna at the door?” The sound was faint, but insistent as a fly trapped by window glass.

“Probably.” Kellis shook himself, rose, and crossed the room to the door. The lock spell dissolved at his touch, and instantly Enna’s voice could be heard plainly.

“—or I’ll have Dalkin break it down.”

Kellis lifted the bar, stepping nimbly back before the swinging panel could more than brush him.

Enna had the poker in her hand again, and the will to use it. She came straight at Kellis around the door, trapping him in the corner, and held off her attack only when she heard Druyan’s voice, calling her name.

“
Lady!
” The poker’s tip hit the floor with a
clunk
.

“Enna, I would like some breakfast,” Druyan ordered calmly.

“Praise be!” Kellis was instantly forgotten. “And you shall have it—a new-laid egg, and some fresh bannock, with cream. I’ll bring it up—”

No, I’ll come down.” Druyan tried to swing her legs off the bed and felt unexpectedly giddy. “Or perhaps not.” She sank back onto the pillows.

Enna helped her to lie comfortably once more, plumped the pillows and fussed with the sheets, striving to reorder the bedding. “You’ll not stir from this bed, and there’s an end to it! You’re bled white as a trillium, and it’s rest and healthy food will mend you soonest. No flitting about! And some nettle tea, to build your blood up again.”

“Yes, Enna,” Druyan agreed mildly. “But no calf’s liver, I can’t abide it. Don’t you dare go killing one of my calves for something you know I won’t eat.”

“And that blackguard Kellis!” Enna scowled darkly. “Bolting that door so I couldn’t get in to see to you, not all night long! `Tis a wonder—”

“All night?” Druyan asked faintly.

“Aye—as if he was some sheepdog, set to guard the fold. He tricked me! Sent me to fetch hot water for you and then locked me out, bold as you please. When I get my hands on him, he’ll rue the day he ever stepped thieving foot here.”

Druyan lifted her head to look past Enna. The chamber was empty. except for the sunshine.

Kellis had no notion how he`d come to be at the edge of the marsh. The first he noticed of his surroundings was a soaked boot, which squished till it attracted his attention. He looked down and saw he was standing in water.

All he’d planned was to take himself out of Enna’s way, and he’d supposed himself bound for one of the upland pastures. Instead, he stood surrounded by waving salt grass, his ears full of the tiny sucking sounds the faithest reach of the tide made as it left the land. He stared at the green-gold grass, gemmed with tiny crystals of salt all along its stems. That was how the grass survived its twice-daily flood of saltwater—it excreted out the salt that would otherwise have destroyed it, and glittered with those wind-dried tears like a dragon’s treasure trove.

Pain was like sea salt—kept in too long, it would burn and eventually kill. He ought to have learned that, very long ago, Kellis supposed, stepping back to drier ground. He had held tight to his guilt and self-loathing, and there had been room in him for nothing else—until she had pushed it all aside and made a place for herself, however much against his well-intentioned will. It had let him help her—he was glad of that. That was the sparkle on the salt-gems.

Kellis looked up, and there was that black horse, with his uncanny eyes like a moonless night sky. The stallion stretched his neck, to blow a soft puff of hay-scented air across Kellis’ cheek.

“She lives,” Kellis told him. “And she will be safe.” He could guarantee that, he thought. His tenn of servitude would soon enough be up. Splaine Garth’s lady would be recuperating all that while and longer, and neither he nor the stallion would permit or tempt her again to ride into danger.

By the time she was truly well, he would be gone, on his way to the mirage of the Wizards’ City, no more a danger to her. That was how it would be.

Valadan snorted softly, as if content.

After a week of lying patiently abed, drinking teas of parsley and spinach, sipping soups made from lamb’s quarters and dandelion greens, eating pies stuffed with dried apricots and rhubarb, resignedly accepting black molasses by the spoonful, Druyan was at last permitted to descend the stairs. She might sit quietly in the garden, forbidden to rise from the chair that had been carried there for her use but at least allowed to feel the breeze and the sun against her skin, while she sipped more of Enna’s tisanes and potions. Dalkin was bidden to keep himself in earshot so Enna could inform him at once of any need Splaine Garth’s lady had, and Meddy lay by her slippered feet, no matter how many times the dog was dragged off to her real job of helping Rook watch after the flock.

Kellis was, Druyan was reluctantly informed, stacking the peat ricks into castles, the turves of fuel having dried enough for that step. And then he was putting new posts in, along the orchard fence; and how he and the iron axe and the iron spade were getting along, Enna did not know and barely cared, but whatever befell the wretch was surely no better than he deserved.

Next day Druyan refused the sun and settled under the apricot trees, with the industrious bees and Valadan for her company. Eventually she looked up from the pages of the book she had brought along to gaze at between dozes, and saw Kellis standing under the next-nearest tree, a fencepost propped jauntily on one shoulder.

“Do you have the
slightest
idea how to set a post?’ Druyan asked him.

He shook his pale head in cheerful denial of the skill. “My people don’t build fences. But your animals are very well bred, Lady, except maybe for some of the pigs, and the posts look fine so long as nothing bumps them too hard.”

I’ll remember that, next time I’m walking by,” she said, smiling. “That will be soon, Lady,” he predicted, smiling back at her. “You look well.”

“I feel well. But I’m tired too soon—all I want to do is sleep in the sun, like an old dog.” Just crossing her bedchamber got Druyan out of breath, making her heart beat a frantic measure. It was most disconcerting—she had never had a sick day in her life, save for early childhood fevers that had long faded from her memory. “When you’re done with the fence, the flax field needs to be pulled.”

“Pulled?” His right brow rose at the mystery. “I thought we
planted
that field. On purpose.”

“We did.” Druyan nodded her head at a plant that had strayed into the orchard, likely assisted by a linseed-robbing bird. Its pretty blue flowers were gone, replaced by round seedpods. “You don’t cut flax to harvest it, just uproot it and spread it out to cure. In a week, Dalkin can start rippling to get the seedpods off. Keep the best for next spring’s planting, the animals get the rest, in the winter. The stalks get bundled and put in the marsh to soak. Pru will show you where—we’ve got stones there, to hold them under.”

Kellis nodded carefully. “Sheep are a
lot
less work, Lady.”

“And I haven’t even touched on braking, scutching, and hackling, before I can spin and weave.” Druyan rolled her eyes. “It takes most of a year, to turn flax into linen cloth. Worth it, too—much better next to the skin than even the softest wool. Speaking of which, there’s a sark of Travic’s in the press. You can’t keep going around in rags and tatters, even if it is summer.”

Kellis looked away, watching the lazy switching of Valadan’s long tail. “I don’t think Enna will like you giving me her master’s clothes.”

“I hadn’t intended to ask what she thought. Travic was
my
husband, and
I
wove that linen and sewed that sark. I’ll do what I please with it.”

“Dead men’s clothes are luckless.”

“He wasn’t wearing it when he died,” Druyan said, exasperated. “The sleeve ends were frayed. I was waiting to darn them.”

Kellis shifted the post on his shoulder. “I should set this, while I still remember where it’s going.”

He might avoid the shirt, but Kellis was not quick enough to escape Druyan’s question.

“What does the bowl show?”

His eyes shadowed to a muddy amber, and then he frowned, his mouth going stubborn. “I have not looked, Lady.”