by Susan Dexter
“Shhh,” Kellis said to her, with lips and eyes. “Oniy children have tiny hands.”
By the day’s end—so many hours later—Kellis was finally confident the wound was staunched. Druyan had been sleeping most of that time, which was fine so far as it went—asleep, she would not move about and reopen the wound. Presumably she was in no pain. Enna had at his direction bound new wrappings iight over top of the old, so as not to start the bleeding afresh. She should heal, and even if the wound festered, a fever could be fought off. He knew plenty of simples to treat such maladies—when one lived by hunting, wounds were a commonplace.
Only Kellis greatly feared that Druyan would not live long enough for a fever to set in. She slept, but it seemed more like a swoon. Her heart still beat fast as a caged bird’s, and her pale skin was damp and cold despite the fire that warmed the chamber. Kellis had seen men take terrible wounds and readily recover, but he had likewise seen men suffer what appeared to be trifling hurts and die of them, once this same cold pallor had come over them, the same rapid, weak heartbeat manifested.
Fear was a huge portion of it. Kellis could feel the terror in her, even while the lady slept or swooned. She was frail and frightened and dying of the shock of her hurt, more than its severity. If only he could gift her with a wolf’s courage, a wolf’s strength and lust for survival.
There was a way, if he would risk it.
Enna had brought a fresh pot of medicine. The cooling liquid was a tisane of nettle leaves and dried briar hips, mostly. Kellis’ nose sorted out the ingredients easily. Parsley, too, he thought, and a little honey stirred in. The sweetener and the rose fruits would scarcely overcome the other, less pleasing tastes, but each dried herb in the simple was a blood-builder. If Druyan woke, he would make her drink the brew, and it would do her good.
She drew in a breath a little deeper than the last, and her eyes unclosed, with no more warning than that. “Still here,” Druyan whispered. Which of them did she mean?
Kellis nodded, and lifted her head so she’d be able to swallow the tea. He held the cup to her lips. A single sip, then he had to let her sink back into the pillows. She had not swallowed, and Kellis was fearful of choking her. A coughing fit might stop her heart. He wiped the corners of her mouth, carefully. Her lips were palest mauve, ever so slightly shading to blue.
“When’s the turn of the tide?” she asked him then, those pale lips moving against his fingers.
“You know I’ve never figured the tides out,” Kellis answered, smiling at her and getting the cup ready again. “I get a saltwater footbath every time I go near the marsh. I can remember the water comes in farther sometimes than others, but never when. Why?”
“Nothing that lives by the sea can die till the tide goes out,” she breathed.
“You mean like snakes can’t die till sunfall?” Kellis raised an eyebrow. “That’s superstition. I have killed any number of snakes, and when I’m done, they’re dead, no matter where the suns stands.”
“When the tide ebbs, life ebbs,” Druyan whispered, ignoring him, and shut her eyes.
Enna was determined to send him away, once the bleeding was staunched. She would not have him spending the night in her lady’s bedchamber, no matter the reason. Kellis could not convince her of the danger that still lay waiting, though he scomfully thought that anyone with two working eyes should have recognized it. Second sight wasn’t needed to know that future.
“When’s the tide?” he finally asked her, exasperated.
Enna reckoned it up, though she didn’t trouble about answering him—shorefolk knew the turn of the tide as they knew their own names. “What sort of trick is that? What are you up to?
“Your lady thinks she’ll die when the tide goes out—and if she believes it, she might just do it! Beware the turn of the tide—her spirit will follow, if we let it.”
“You won’t touch her again, you filth!” Enna said, outraged. “That’s a stupid superstition. I know well enough that you’re free if she dies.”
I shall have to do samething more than touch her, Kellis was thinking. He wasn’t afraid to turn his back on Enna—she needed him able to walk out on his own legs, because she couldn’t drag him, so she wasn’t likely to hit him. He saw that Druyan’s gray eyes were open again, and watching him. Her freckles stood out like brands against the bloodless white of her skin. Kellis thought he could see her heart beating, right through flesh and cloth and blankets, having a very hard time, and more than ready to surrender its fight, like a brave horse overidden. She looked past him.
“Enna.” Very, very faint. A hummingbird’s wing stirred the air more loudly.
“Lady?” Enna bent close by the bed, ignoring Kellis beside her.
“Do whatever he tells you.”
Enna started back and glared at Kellis. “I have done,” she said. “The wound’s well closed. You’re fine, you’ll mend, you just need to sleep. And he’s not staying in here. I’m sure he’s full of fleas, if not lice—”
Druyan’s eyes went to Kellis’ face, to the message his golden wolf’s gaze sent. Let me help you. . .
“Enna, let him stay. Do what he says. Whatever he says—” Her voice was slight as wind rustling through grass, a shuttle through the warp threads. It was an order, all the same.
Enna gave him a look fit to stop a man’s heart. Kellis swallowed hard, then found his voice. The time was come. He didn’t know how the tide stood, but he saw ebb in Druyan’s face.
“Just . . . heat me some water, please. Lots of it.”
“There’s tea brewed already—”
“Hot water,” Kellis repeated firmly, and stared her down.
Enna hobbled out grumbling, and Kellis went at once to peer round the door, stepping softly on his toes. When he saw Enna start down the stairs, he swiftly barred the door with oak—for strength, and magic—for silence. Then, confident they could not be disturbed, he turned back to the bed.
“I feel so light,” Druyan said wonderingly. “As if I could fly on the wind.”
“That’s the blood-lack,” Kellis explained reassuringly. He sniffed twice. “You lost buckets. Don’t fret. I won’t let you die. I swear it.
“Trust vou?”
He winced. “There’s no help for it. You’ll have to.” He sniffed again.
“It was so confusing,” Druyan said, not really hearing him. She frowned. “The battle. All that shouting . . . no order to it—is war always like that?”
“I can’t judge,” Kellis admitted, busy. “The first fighting—that sort of fighting—that I ever saw was right here, and I think having my head bashed in right at the start of it warped my perceptions a trifle. It’s more confusing than hunting deer. It isn’t any harder, but it’s muddled.” He flared his nostrils.
“Deer don’t hunt you back,” Druyan said wisely. “What are you doing?”
He was searching all about the bed—between the sheets, beneath the blankets, along the head and foot, among the goosefeather pillows, in the seams of quilts and hangings, sniffing and then questing with his fingers. And it was taking him too long.
“Enna hides nails in all your clothes, to keep you safe from me,” he said lightly. Iron scent led him to his quarry, a wicked long pin worked into the mattress edge.
“I take them out.”
“I know, but she’s persistent,” Kellis said, easing the fell object free of the cloth gingerly, with his nails. “And I need to clear every last bit away, even the smallest pin. It’s not quite true that my folk can’t touch cold iron—you have seen.” He flicked the pin away, out the open window, and blew on his flngers. “It’s painful—sometimes excruciatingly—but it can be done, for a while. And we can be near it without much distress, though I do think my heart’s been scared out of a beat, now and again. But I dare not work any magic upon cold iron—the results may be less than predictable, but they’re predictably unpleasant. You’re hurt already—I don’t want to find out how much more harm I can do you by being stupid.”
“I’m going to sing to you. You like that.”
But even as Kellis answered her, she had faded once more, beyond the reach of his words.
He sniffed out three nails dropped into floorboard cracks, and flung each one out the window, hissing at the brief contact. There was something sharp worked into the hem of her bed gown—another nail, Kellis thought, or a big pin. The only sure way to be rid of all such tiny traps was to slip the gown from her. He did that, gently. Kellis stripped the bedclothes away, as well, still wary of the linens despite his unrewarded search of them. And the warmth of woolen blankets no longer reached Splaine Garth’s lady.
The firecoals gave the room its only light—all was darkness now, outside the unshuttered Casement. ’Twas quiet, too, thanks to his lock charm on the door. The oaken bar would stop Enna short of reaching his magic with cold iron, try though she likely would, and he did not think Dalkin was strong enough to break down the panels by force. The wall beneath the window was sheer, he did not think it could be climbed. The chamber was secure. He could begin his work—and none too soon.
Kellis slipped out of his own garments and lay alongside Druyan on the bared straw of the pallet. If this desperate chance worked at all, it would only be while they were skin to skin.
He gathered her to him carefully, alert to her irregular breathing, the still-frantic hammering of her heart. She was so cold, only the rise of her chest offered him any hope at all. Kellis calmed his own lungs, calling upon all the care and control he had ever managed to learn, and then he sang them both into wolf-form.
Druyan dreamed that she ran lightly over the moors—not carried upon Valadan’s familiar back, but on her own four legs. And though the world about her was all muted shades of gray and silver, lacking any stronger colors, it was rich beyond imagining in its scents. She could smell the grass, the earth, the rabbit that had crossed her path an hour gone, the birds wheeling in the air. She could read by scent the places the wind had visited, all the shores the sea had touched. . .
Something loped alongside her, at her right shoulder. A great silver wolf, with slanting golden eyes she knew she had seen ere then, somewhere, in another sort of face.
Fear not, he said to her, tongue lolling from his pointed muzzle. You have the wolf-heart inside you—you have always had it. I am only showing it to you. You have more courage than you know as much as you can ever need.
The grass was soaking with dew—sparkling drops flew up with her every stride, were deliciously cool against her legs. Suddenly one paw flamed with pain, and she yelped, breaking her stride, nearly falling.
There is no loss you cannot withstand, the wolf told her, steadying her against his shoulder till she found the pace once more. There is no loss that even matters, you are so strong, so brave. . .
I’m not brave, Druyan said, confused, and faltered once more. It seemed to her that there was some reason she could not run so, some disaster of her own making that had befallen her. Something she should not have done—she ran faster, to get distance on the troubling thought. There was darkness at her heels, like a storm cloud on the far horizon, sweeping ever closer, about to overtake her.
The silver wolf still galloped beside her, easily keeping pace. Your courage lies within you, he said. Only hold tight to it, do not deny it, Do not let it go. . .
I don ’t know what you mean! she howled in utter despair. The darkness was sweeping closer. It was cold, so cold . . .
Be what are you, the wolf insisted, forcing her to hear him. Not what others tell you!
What you tell me? For some reason, the advice seemed ironic.
Now the silver wolf faltered, in a manner she found somehow familiar. Just for an instant he did not look like a wolf at all, save for those golden eyes. But in another moment he was by her side again, long-furred, long-legged.
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.
The Crow
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 wo
nderful 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.
