The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  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.

  Enna came in, flustered, to report there was a
visitor in the yard. Druyan laid down her shuttle, possibilities making her heart pound.

  “Who is it?” No one ever called at Splaine Garth—they had few neighbors, none near and none sociable. The road ran many leagues between towns, drawing no more than local notice. Druyan strove not to fear the worst—that her visit to Keverne had somehow drawn notice to Travic’s heirless passing. Her heart thudded nonetheless, from canter to gallop, running away with her.

  “It’s a post rider, Lady,” Enna said.

  “Just one?” She had not thought of Riders. “They ride paired.” Maybe `twas Robart, passing by. “Show him in here, Enna. It’s not so drafty this season, and Kellis swept it out last week.” She ran a smoothing hand over her skirt, as Enna gave the room a doubtful glance. It had been long years since Splaine Garth’s hall received any sort of guest. It looked nearly as much like a barn as the barn itself did not an obstacle to Druyan’s weaving craft, but hardly what one wished a guest to see.

  “Can’t be helped, Enna,” she said, acknowledging the problem. And if the caller was her brother, perhaps it didn’t matter. “Show him in.”

  Enna went, frowning. I can’t help it, Druyan thought. We work, here. I have no time to keep company-best.

  “Lady Druyan!”

  She had been assuming ’twould be Robart, so to see red hair and a more sculptured face confounded Druyan far more than it should have. After all, surely Robart would have given Enna his name and stated his connection to her. “Captain Yvain? What brings you to Darlith?” Her face felt flushed. She hoped he would not notice. And hoped, too, that there was not dust smeared across it, or slubs of wool caught in her hair last time she scooped it impatiently back.

  “My route, Lady. And then my social instincts, which led me a little way off that well-ridden track, to call upon you here.”

  “More than a little way off, Captain. I hope you will take some food—or is thirst more pressing? You will be weary from riding.” At least he wasn’t wet. The rain must have ceased. Her duty as hostess was bred into her, Druyan thought, as her lips spoke of themselves, her brain still spinning.

  Yvain lifted her hand to his lips before she could guess his intent. Druyan winced inwardly as she saw his nostrils flare—bad enough their uncouth size, but her fingers were tainted with grease from the wool she wove with. The eye might not catch it, but the nose certainly did. She made light of the matter.

  “I assure you, Captain, my hands may taste of the outside of a sheep, but we don’t put the wool into the soup pot along with the lamb! Enna crafts fine fare.”

  “If only Keverne’s court ladies with their rosewater lotions but knew the virtues of wool, they’d all turn weavers, Lady. Your hands are soft as a babe’s cheek.”

  Druyan blushed and was discomfited by her reaction as much as by his words. She withdrew her hand. “By your leave, Captain, I will go and wash them.”

  “Don’t stop your work on my account, Lady,” Yvain begged, stepping smoothly to place himself between her and the door. “I have intruded upon your peace without warning, which makes me no better than a raider. And I may not tarry for a meal—my horse is fleet enough to gain a bit of time on my companion’s mount, but I knew as I came that I dared not steal more than a moment.

  “For courtesy?” Druyan asked in wonderment.

  “For courtesy, Lady.” His smile flashed bright as sunlight on wavecaps and suggested something more than good manners. He finally allowed Druyan to slip past him, escape out the door into the kitchen and thence the farmyard, her face still too warm for the season and the weather.

  Druyan saw to it that Dalkin watered the captain’s bigboned bay, which had indeed worked hard for his master’s whim. “What have you heard of raiders?” she asked Yvain, while they watched the horse drinking.

  “Naught—but the weather’s been especially foul downcoast. I think it spared us.” He hesitated, then spoke low. “All the Riders know now, Lady. We are of one mind in this matter. Should you receive any . . . news . . . you are safe to take it to the first Rider you can get to. He’ll do the rest.” Yvain smiled once more. “There are not so many of us, but that only makes it easier for us to agree together. There’s no man among us thinks we’d do well to sit back while our duke sells our remounts to buy himself useless ships.” He swung lightly into his saddle, gathered his reins expertly. “Good day to you, Lady Druyan.”

  “Safe journey, Captain Yvain.”

  He made her such an extravagant bow, Druyan felt she had no choice but to watch him out of sight. Sure enough, he put his horse at the wall rather than waiting for Dalkin to run and unlatch the gate, then turned to wave once more as he proceeded at a handgallop toward the road. The bay’s black tail and Yvain’s red locks streamed in the wind they made.

  “Is he known to you?” Enna asked disapprovingly, as they stowed away the untasted food she’d prepared, the new bread sliced but umiibbled, the cider unsipped in the mugs.

  “He serves with my brother Robart,” Druyan said blandly, as if disinterested.

  “Had he a message?”

  Druyan gave Enna a hard look—and got one back. She dropped her gaze. “Th-that’s what post riders do—carry messages,” she faltered, trying to remember that Enna really had no right to ask.

  “Aye.” Enna poured the cider back into the pitcher and set the crockery in a cool spot. “Likely he’ll be back, with more messages.”

  Druyan felt it would be beneath her dignity to deny or agree with that speculation, so she returned to her loom, too aware that her cheeks were flaming once more.

  Swords and Wolves

  Pebbles rattling against the shutters waked Druyan sometime prior to the midpoint of the night. At first she took the noise for rain, but she heard wind whistling and, fearing hail, she rose from her bed hastily. When she flung the easement wide and thrust a hand out, the air was dry. And the whistling wasn’t the wind. It was Kellis.

  “Lady!”

  He stood below in the gloom, his face tipped anxiously up to her, and what she could see of his expression looked tense. Druyan whirled from the window without troubling to latch it, snatched clothing randomly from pegs on the wall, and donned it hurriedly. It might be that a horse or a cow had colicked—emergency enough—but she thought Kellis had been cradling something in his free arm, the one not flicking pebbles at the shutters. Something like a bowl.

  He was just outside the kitchen door when she tugged it open, and did indeed have the bowl clutched to him. Most of the water had slopped out of it to soak his trews and the ground aroimd his boots.

  “Why are you bothering with that now?” Druyan asked, more amazed than cross. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  Kellis shoved his hair out of his face, distractedly. “If you call a thing long enough, it will come to you—at the least convenient time, just for spite. One true thing my master taught me. I woke up with a headache so fierce, I couldn’t bear to lie still. It got better—a little—when I went to the bowl, and I knew I’d been answered?”

  “You saw something?” Druyan asked.

  Kellis nodded and winced in pain. “Lady, I think it was the first place you rode to, the one with the sea stacks outside the harbor—”

  “Falkerry?” But he knew too little of Esdragon to be sure, Druyan thought. Would they touch Falkerry again, having failed there? Would one captain know of a fellow’s defeat?

  “It looked the same. You can better judge.” Kellis’ dark brows knotted. “But there was something odd—they sailed—rowed, the sails were down—past the city, up the river.”

  “Surely they can’t be after Teilo again? There’s nothing left to steal.” The Eral raiders worked independently, though. It came back to that. A captain might not know of other ships recently plundering the quarry he had chosen for himself.

  “I watched awhile,” Kellis said. “I was afraid when I broke away to fetch you, I’d lose my hold on it. I wanted to see whatever I could, to have that much—but I couldn’t work out where
they were going. Then the image was gone, I thought that I’d fallen asleep, let it snap, but—I’ll try to show you. It doesn’t feel to me like it’s tmly over, I can hunt it down. . .”

  He gripped her hand and bent his head over the dark bowl. It was dark in the yard, even when your eyes were accustomed to gloom, Druyan thought. No light but from the stars. How could Kellis see anything, even with sight beyond that of his eyes? A black bowl, dark water within, and barely a few drops of that. . .

  Kellis sang an insistent phrase. After a heartbeat’s pause, he repeated the summons. The water in the bowl began to glow, faintly pink gold. Druyan could make out dark shapes against it, ships riding the current. Long, low ships, with their sails furled. Heading downstream.

  “To take the town unawares,” she whispered in horrified understanding. “They’ll come at Falkerry quietly, from a direction they never use, where no one expects danger, sails down so there’s next to nothing for anyone to see. With the sun rising at their backs, Falkerry’s watch will never spot them—if they’re even looking in the right direction. The tower faces toward the sea. No one keeps a landward lookout.”

  Kellis’ one hand shook in hers and the other on the bowl. The vision trembled, the dawn became merely ripples. The golden water went dark.

  “But which dawn?” Druyan whispered, shivering as if his grasp had been a contagion she’d caught. “This one’s only a few hours away.”

  “Did it rain yesterday, early?” Kellis was willing to grasp at any straw he could find, but he had said he felt there wasn’t much time.

  “Here,” Druyan agreed. She looked skyward, to judge clouds and wind. “But at Falkerry?” There’d been no rain in the vision, that was sure. The break-of-day sky had been too vivid. Druyan started for the barn. “I can’t take the chance—I’d better warn the Riders.”

  Kellis heeled her, like Rook after her flock. “Can they get there, by dawn?”